The Legend of Vanx Malic: Book 02 - Dragon Isle (26 page)

Vanx was half-Zythian and might live to be three or four hundred years old, if he didn’t get himself killed first. He was in no real hurry to move on. He was a bard, and the custom at the Iceberg was pleasant and appreciative. The owner wasn’t too demanding, either. Vanx and Darbon spent enough coins on their rooms that Lem couldn’t complain if Vanx only performed on the busier nights. After all, he just played for his supper. Everything else he paid for.

During his roaming, Vanx had met an old sailor who’d sailed with his infamous father on the
Foamfollower
. He spent a lot of his days buying the crusty seadog drinks down at the Mighty Mackerel while listening to tales of the great trader captain, Marin Saint Elm and his heathen ship witch.

Vanx had learned a lot. He was content to wait out Darbon’s grief, which finally seemed to be subsiding. For what Vanx intended to undertake in the summer, he needed Darbon clearheaded and healthy. It didn’t hurt that Poop would be almost fully grown by then, too.

“A warm spring meadow,” the barmaid said as she put down two fresh mugs of ale and took away Vanx and Darbon’s empties.

“Last time you said a field of summer grass,” Darbon snorted. “They are nearly one and the same.”

“No.” The barmaid, a cute round-faced girl named Salma, touched his nose with a finger, causing him to blush. “They are not the same.”

Vanx shook his head. He thought Darbon was too young to have suffered so much already. The boy couldn’t even tell Salma liked him despite his scars. Vanx wasn’t sure, but he doubted the boy had seen seventeen summers. Either way, Darbon wasn’t over Matty enough to move along just yet.

Vanx was over fifty years old, but didn’t look more than a few years older than Darbon. No one but Darbon knew of his heritage, though. He’d had to tell Skully, the old man who’d sailed with his father, that he was Captain Saint Elm’s grandson, not his son. The old salt had dismissed the relation as doubtful, but as long as Vanx was buying the ale, the stories kept coming.

“A spring meadow is a livelier and lighter shade of green,” Salma was explaining. “Summer grass is dark and thick.” She turned her gaze from Darbon to Vanx. “He is starting to lighten up, I think. It’s as if he’s come to a great decision and the weight of making it suddenly lifted.”

Vanx lifted his brows in surprise and took a long swallow from his fresh mug of ale. “You might be right.” He nodded. “As soon as my friend here says he’s ready to move on, I think we will be on our way.”

Salma looked disturbed by this news, and her eyes shot back and forth between the two men. The smile never left her face, but it changed a bit. It went from genuine and hopeful to forced and unsure. Darbon didn’t notice, but Vanx saw it plainly.

“You’re not leaving for good, are you?” she asked.

“Where are we going?” Darbon turned to face his companion, oblivious of the girl’s reaction.

“Not too far, and not for too long.” Vanx gave her a knowing look that seemed to ease her worry.

“Where?” Darbon asked again.

Vanx was pleased to see eager curiosity in his friend’s countenance. It was a far better sight than the empty pools of grief that had haunted him the last few months.

“We’re going on a hunt.”

“Snow leapers, elk, grizzlies?” Salma asked.

“No, no, no.” Vanx’s smile grew even wider. “We’re going to hunt and kill a shagmarian saber shrew and have a tailor make us garments from its fur.”

Darbon was smiling ear to ear, causing his scars to lose their pinkish color. For a moment they looked as if they’d been handed down from nature, as if he were some half-beast.

“You’re jesting, right?” Salma asked dubiously. “Even if you find one of the mammoth drift moles, you will never be able to survive its wrath.”

“That’s what makes it such a fitting prey,” Vanx said, feeling his own blood begin to tingle with excitement. “Anyone can kill an elk or snow leaper.”

“Never underestimate the wiles of a guy with eyes the color of iced jade,” Darbon told her.

“Oooh, that’s a good one,” Salma smirked. “But you’d better invite me to the spring dance before you go.” She touched Darbon on the nose again. “I doubt whether you two will be coming back if you run across a real saber shrew.” With that she whirled away to attend another customer.

“Was she talking to me?” Darbon asked.

For a moment Vanx thought that the memory of Matty had struck, that the boy would slip back into his grief. The idea of another woman might be a bit too much for him just yet. Still, Vanx had to try to coax him out of the slump.

“She was talking to you, Dar. She’s sweet on you, you know?”

“Ya think? Then why is she always talking about your eyes?”

“Yours are usually pointed at your toes, or at the bottom of your cup, and mine… Well, it’s not really a fair thing.” Vanx patted his friend on the shoulder. “Either way, it’s you she’s after. I’d hate it if you to break her heart and not take her to the spring dance.”

“That’s over a week away. What about the hunt?”

“We have preparations to make, supplies to gather, and a party to round up. The way I see it, it will take seven, maybe ten, men to bring a saber shrew down, and there’s only one man around here who can possibly put us on the track of one.” Vanx shrugged. “I’ve yet to secure Rendell’s help, but I think he’ll do it for a fair share of the meat and a few of those golden Parydon falcons we have left.”

“’Tis true,” Darbon agreed with a chuckle. “He’ll do it for the coin, if he can stay sober long enough to lead us out of the city. You said we are doing this so that we can make coats out of the hide. Where are we going after this?”

Vanx had to admire Darbon’s perceptiveness. “I’ll let you know when the time comes, Dar. You may decide you don’t want to go on the greater journey. I might, too, after this trek into the frozen wild. Let’s just say this hunt is sort of a training run, an exploration to see just how inhospitable the land beyond the ice wall really is.”

“It can’t be worse than the Wildwood or Dragon Isle,” Darbon said with a chuckle.

“Never say it can’t be worse, Darbon,” Vanx scolded. “As soon as you do, it usually gets that way.”

Chapter Two

Finding men willing to go after the notoriously treacherous shagmarian saber shrew proved a bit more difficult than manning a conventional elk or snow leaper hunt, but with the well-known tracker, Rendell, helping, they were managing to piece together a crew.

The world outside of the ice wall was a frigid rolling plain of snow, dotted with copses, and small forests of pine trees. In the heat of the summer, a short span of about a month, the upper layers melted away leaving the trees look like giant spears with only branches on their extreme upper portions. The rest of the year, save for the deep of winter, when even the treetops were buried, the woods seemed typical. Only these needle-strewn, pinecone-littered floors were full of loose drifts and crags that could swallow a whole party.

There were great ice falls and steep rocky hills out there as well, places where a man might be stricken speechless by the wondrous hues of a thousand foot tall cliff of compressed glacier just before a huge slab of the majestic stuff broke off and crushed him. The worst was the open tundra. Endless flats of white nothingness deceptively hiding the valleys and stream beds that are buried far below the surface.

That was the domain of the mammoth saber shrew. The rat-like creatures hollowed voids beneath the snowfields and tunneled through the depths of the compacted glacial ice with scoop-shaped claws and ice crushing saber-fanged jaws. They ate elk, grizzlies, and even the occasional frost wing that nested too low on the cliffs. Anything that trod across the tundra was its prey. A party could be walking just yards over a saber shrew burrow and never even know it. Entire caravans had fallen into a tunnel or had been attacked from underneath with no warning. Over the years, hundreds had met similar ends.

Getting men willing to risk their lives in the open tundra was hard. Quite a few came to the Iceberg Inn’s common room to speak to Vanx and Rendell about employment, but as soon as they heard that the party would not be traveling on the magically protected caravan routes they blanched. When they heard what the party was truly after most simply thanked Vanx for the offer and walked away. A few exceptionally brave, or maybe desperate, souls decided to sign on. After all, a share of the saber shrew carcass was comparable to a few years’ worth of wages.

Chelda Flar, a big-boned huntress, had thrown in with them. She was gruff but likable. She had the typical ice-blue eyes and snowy blonde hair of the native Bitterland giant folk. She and her kind weren’t truly giants, Vanx had long since decided. They were a big people, but not nearly as big as the real giant Vanx had seen hiding in the granite crags off of the Highlake Mountain Road. The creature, had it stood erect, would have easily been sixteen or seventeen feet tall. Chelda was only a few fingers over six feet, which put her roughly eye to eye with Vanx when they stood. Vanx was pleased that she hadn’t, as of yet, shown the normal female reaction to his appearance. So far, she’d been all business.

The reason Chelda’s people were referred to as giants, Vanx surmised, was that the other sort of human folk that called the Bitterlands home were smaller with almond colored skin, dark hair, and usually dark brown or coal-black eyes. The Skmoes were hearty little folk who claimed to have dwelt in this frigid place since the dawning of time. They said the giants were not welcome, but they tolerated them. They said Chelda’s people had migrated from across the glacial mountains only a few thousand years before. To Vanx, that made them both natives to the land. If a people lived somewhere for a thousand years, they were native.

Beyond Orendyn’s ice wall both races had villages, clans, territories, customs, and religions. It amazed Vanx that there had never been a war between them. It also irritated him because the big pale folk and the darker smaller people were both suspicious and spiteful toward the full-blooded Zythians that sometimes came to port. If they knew his true heritage they would no doubt feel the same about him.

“The reason we’ve never fought the Skmoes,” Chelda was telling him, “is because it’s such a hard life out there trying to stay warm and fed, while fending off nature, that the idea of creating more ways to die never has time to manifest itself. I think that the people who squabble over coins, boundary lines, and gods have far too much time on their hands and too little to worry about otherwise.”

“Yup,” Vanx agreed. He gestured for her to hold her next words and waved over a pair of Skmoes who were standing in the doorway of the inn, looking around as if they were searching for someone they were unsure of. Rendell was out gathering supplies and securing haulkatten sleds. Vanx thought he might have sent these two over.

“Please, continue what you were saying,” Vanx said.

“After you talk to them.” She started to back away from the table.

“No, stay, please.” Vanx smiled. “You are in this now as much as the rest of us. I want your take on them.”

“They’re brothers,” she said quickly, before they were close. “I heard they are good out in the tundra but a little off in the head.”

“You know them?” Vanx asked as he stood to make the customary Skmoe greeting of a head bow.

“I know of them,” Chelda mouthed before making her own head bow from the less respectful seated position.

They looked exactly alike, and like unruly children no less. They had short-cropped, yet shaggy, black hair and wide solemn faces. They stood a hand-span over four feet tall, which put the top of their heads at Vanx’s chest. Even with his keen Zythian senses, he couldn’t tell them apart.

They were dressed the same, too. Thick gray striped black sea tiger fur coats and elk-hide britches. The coats were worth a sizable bit of coin. Vanx could tell by the way they wore them that they hadn’t bought them, but had killed the sea tigers themselves. Out among the native peoples it was a sign of great skill and bravery. Here in the city it was a sign of great wealth.

The only difference Vanx could identify was that one of them had his left pant leg caught in his boot cuff.

Seeing Vanx notice this, the man with his pant leg fouled gave Vanx a serious look. “It’s like it so that we can tell ourselves apart.”

Chelda snorted out a laugh and Vanx smiled despite his attempt to remain serious. Both of the Skmoes managed to stay stone-faced, as if the comment were a completely serious remark.

The one who hadn’t spoken yet took a seat and his brother followed. The one with the fouled pant leg called for the barmaid.

Vanx waited patiently as a woman he didn’t know by name brought over a fresh round for all four of them.

“It is so kind of you,” the woman said to Vanx and nearly drifted away into his gaze when she caught it. “Salma is beside herself. I’m certain she will look splendid when your tailor is done with her gown.”

Vanx smiled and nodded politely. After Darbon formally asked Salma to the spring dance, Vanx sent them both to the tailor to be fitted with proper attire. He wanted them to look and feel like royalty. He wanted Darbon to lose himself in the evening. Salma too, for that matter, but at the moment he wanted the barmaid to go away so that he could talk to these odd twins.

Chelda must have noticed his intention for she slapped the woman on the ass sharply and sent her for some fresh bread. This caused Pant-leg to grin mischievously. After the barmaid had gone, the other Skmoe finally spoke.

“You’re going for saber shrew, no?”

“We are,” Vanx answered.

“We are going with you. I am Inda, and this…” He backhanded his brother’s chest smartly, drawing his attention back from Chelda. “…is Anda. We want enough of the pelt to make dungaloons and some meat for our clan. No gold.”

“I like them,” said Chelda immediately. “That means more gold for me.”

“Not necessarily,” Vanx told her. “If they… What are dungaloons?”

“Britches,” she snorted.

“If they take the fur to make the britches won’t it take from the value of the carcass? Darbon and I are planning on having long coats made from it.”