Bone Trail Read online

  ‘Happen we might have found us a winter den after all,’ he said.

  ***

  ‘Fresh water. Clean air. Wood close by to burn, and space enough both for the five of us and all the stores we’ll need to survive fullwinter.’ Eli poked at the embers of the fire, which crackled and pulsed and sent sparks flying up into the darkening sky. ‘Reckon this den could really work out for us.’

  At the cragclimber’s instruction, they had already cleared the newly fallen rocks and rigged up a slab of sandstone inside the cavern that, when the time came, they would be able to use to seal the den. They had also emptied their backpacks.

  All the stuff they had gathered along the trail was lying in different piles. Fibrous bollweed that would yield up string and yarn; wyrme-carcasses, to be stripped for their skin and bones. A full pouch of salt. Roots, funguses and a range of pungent herbs that the cragclimber ­identified either as having medicinal properties or tasting good. And there was also the knife – a folding affair with a jag-blade and a small saw attachment – which Ethan had spotted in the valley pass through the east mountains. One of the kith must have dropped it and, to Ethan’s delight, the cragclimber had allowed him to keep it.

  ‘Course, it ain’t going to be easy getting set up,’ Eli was saying, his face earnest as he looked at them each in turn. ‘We’re going to have to work hard. Fullwinter’s always closer than it seems.’

  The lightning storm had finally passed overhead and the air felt cool and fresh.

  ‘First off, we’ll need to start laying up stocks from hereabouts. Fish to be smoked. Any fruit and edible roots we can find. And firewood. Lots of firewood. It gets bitter cold inside a winter den in the depths of fullwinter,’ he said, looking at the two brothers, each in turn. ‘Then there’s stuff we can’t forage and can’t do without. Flameoil, green liquor, spitbolts and medicine.’ He shrugged. ‘Items that can mean the difference twixt life and death.’

  Eli turned to the others. ‘We’re gonna have to journey back east and trade for such things in a scrimshaw den,’ he said. His eyes ­narrowed. ‘And when we do, we’ll need to keep our wits about us – as Micah can attest.’

  Eli sat back and smiled. The others searched Micah’s face for his reaction, but he merely acknowledged the cragclimber’s words with a nod.

  ‘Now get this lot packed away,’ Eli told them. ‘We’ll begin our preparations tomorrow.’

  The others nodded and set to work. Eli left them to it. He climbed to his feet and shambled out of the cave, then perched down on a rocky outcrop, high above the ravine that fell away below the cave. He reached into the pocket of his heavy hacketon and drew out the huge claw he’d secreted there. It was blue-grey and heavy in his hand, the point vicious sharp – the larger of the two he’d found at the scene of the massacred kith.

  He surveyed the sky. Whatever creature this massive claw belonged to was out there somewhere, and the prospect of running into such a beast filled the cragclimber with foreboding. He turned the claw over in his hand thoughtfully. Greywyrmes in harness. Kith marking trails through the mountains. And these massive unknown wyrmes roaming the weald . . .

  These were strange times in the high country. And Eli Halfwinter did not like them; did not like them one little bit.

  Twenty-Six

  The night-foragers were out. They were hunting round the dewponds, where swarms of insects were at their most plentiful.

  There were tufted skitterwyrmes, their shaggy crests flaring like struck matches as the sporadic moonlight came and went. There were bearded rockwyrmes and silver snapwings, and a pair of nightwyrmes, with angular snouts and huge black eyes. Some were scratching at the ground for grubs; some flapped low over the rocks and grass, snatching bugs and beetles from the air.

  A warm breeze blew across the grasslands, rippling the wild barley and plains vetch and bringing with it a sweet yet acrid odour. The wyrmes twitched and tasted the air, then scattered, chittering and screeching into the night.

  High above, the clouds parted momentarily and the moon shone down on a line of figures moving silently through the long plains grass – tall, heavily-armed men in wyrmescale armour and bleachedbone masks.

  The valley keld were on the move. They had left their subterranean caverns and were moving silently through the night.

  The first carried a woven basket strapped to his shoulders, containing the small wizened figure of Blue Slake the poisoner, in his grubby high-collared coat of faded velvet. As the basket swayed, he scanned the trail ahead, one clawlike hand gripping a spyglass, the other dabbing at the hole in his ruined face, where a nose had once been.

  Following behind came four hulking slaves, a hammock of lakewyrmeskin slung between them. In its folds there reclined the eel-mother, an immensely fat woman with serpentine curls and sharp broken teeth, two plump crevicewyrmes coiled around her shoulders.

  Next came two more slaves, in heavy black cloaks, carrying a padded chair on two poles. The occupant of the chair was Cutter Daniel the distiller. He wore a spiked skullcap pulled down low over his pallid grey face, and a leather coat that had small bottles attached to it, each one individually wrapped in a wad of gauze so they would not knock together and clink their wearer’s ­presence. As he raised his hand, the moonlight glinted on the needlepoints of his filed nails, and on the long knotted whip of plaited wyrmeskin he held.

  A dozen more heavily-armed slaves followed, axes, flails and intricately barbed gutting tools gripped in their huge fists. The bone masks at their faces made them as grotesque and inscrutable as demons in a nightmare. They moved stealthily on moccasined feet, peering this way and that as they crept through the grass.

  At the back of the column, seated on a cushioned bench that was slung between two more bone-masked men, a black-hooded figure rocked gently back and forth.

  ‘They came this way,’ Blue Slake called back from the front of the line.

  ‘Yes. And they’re close. I sense it.’

  The voice from beneath the hood was soft and honeyed, with a silky musical lilt, little more than a whisper. The keld mistress pushed her hood back, and her alabaster-white face, white hair, white eyelashes, seemed almost to glow in the moonlight. Her turquoise eyes sparkled; bloodless lips parted to reveal small ­sharpened teeth.

  ‘Eli Halfwinter . . . and the boy . . .’

  Twenty-Seven

  Micah looked ahead, his eyes narrowed against the low morning sun. They were on the western fringes of the valley country. A hundred yards or so further ahead, the ridge they were standing on dropped sharply away into a broad valley with pine-pocked sides and a barley-fringed river that meandered along its floor. On the far side – maybe half a mile or so off, where the mountains rose up again – was a cluster of man-made constructions.

  A roof, fashioned from long straight logs, jutted out from the rock close to the bottom of the cliff-face, and beyond its shaded cover were low stone-wall pens and runty outhouses. To one side stood a tall pine, stripped, dead, a tattered banner fluttering limply at its top.

  Micah turned to Eli, who had his spyglass to his eye and was taking it all in. Behind them, Cara, Ethan and Cody remained silent, shifting their heavy backpacks on their shoulders and exchanging weary looks. They had been on the trail for seventeen days, and they were footsore and bone-tired and desperate for some sort of respite.

  It was Cody who spoke up. ‘Eli?’ he said, his voice flat, blunt. ‘Have we found us a scrimshaw den or not?’

  The cragclimber lowered his spyglass and turned to him, then to the others. He tipped back his broadbrim hat, mopped his brow on the back of his hand.

  ‘It’s a scrimshaw den all right,’ he said. ‘But not the one I was heading for. Seems to be a new operation by the look of it. The Deadpine Den it proclaims itself.’ He paused, nodded, and a small smile cracked his dour expression when he saw Cara’s expectant face staring back at him. ‘Fancy
heading on down to take a look?’

  Cara smiled back at him. ‘You try stopping us,’ she said.

  ‘Greetings, strangers,’ came a voice.

  Eli stopped in his tracks. The others came to a halt behind him. A man was crouched at the edge of the jutting log roof, peering down at them. He was sunbrowned and wiry, with greying hair, salt-and-pepper to his grizzled jaw, and eyes that looked in two directions at the same time. It was difficult to see where his gaze was fixed, but Micah assumed it was on them.

  ‘Come for trade?’ he said. ‘Or do you want lodging?’

  ‘Trade,’ said Eli. ‘We ain’t fixing to stay longer than we have to, friend.’

  The man nodded. He was chewing lazily on cudleaf, and his mouth slipped into an easy smile to reveal brown-stained teeth. He scrambled to his feet, then slid down one of the thick uprights that supported the roof. He was more agile than his age might have allowed. He thrust out a hand to Eli that was lean and bony, the skin as loose as an old leather glove.

  ‘Fletcher Crow,’ he announced. ‘Denkeeper of the Deadpine.’

  ‘Eli,’ the cragclimber told him. ‘Eli Halfwinter.’

  He shook the scrimshaw den owner’s hand stiffly, his shoulders hunched and his eyes impassive, and Micah was aware that the cragclimber was on his guard, and that he should be too. He glanced around at the entrance to the den.

  There were empty pens, covered in netting and intended for rockwyrmes, flitterwyrmes and the like. Beside them stood several shacks with drystone walls and half-anchored tarpaulin covers that flapped in the wind to reveal drying racks and gutting slabs for the curing of wyrmepelts. These too were empty. The sturdy roof over the cave entrance was constructed from bleached logs that were sunk into holes cut in the sandstone at one end, fixed with crossbeams along their length, and supported on stout uprights at the other. A wooden sign hung from one of the crossbeams, its carved letters announcing The Deadpine Scrimshaw Den – Victuals, Liquor and Goods for Trade.

  Eli looked up at the sign, then back at the man called Fletcher Crow. ‘Been here long?’ he enquired.

  ‘Long enough,’ Fletcher Crow replied, and spat a jet of cudleaf juice onto the dirt at his feet. ‘Had a pitch in a den down near rooster rock. Back east of here. Happen you might know it.’

  ‘I know it,’ Eli confirmed.

  ‘Owned by Garth Temple.’ Crow frowned. ‘Took fifty per- cent of everything I made. Happen you might know him too,’ he added. ‘Old fellow. Face like a sack of weasels. I figured I’d do better if I struck out alone, so I came out here and found myself a likely spot.’

  He turned and headed back into the cool shade beneath the log roof. Eli followed him, but not before shooting Micah a backwards glance. Micah nodded, and fingered the spitbolt holstered at his side. Cara noticed the movement and her eyes grew wide.

  ‘Stay close,’ Micah whispered, taking her hand and following Eli.

  Behind them, Cody and Ethan stepped forward.

  ‘What the hell you doing?’ Cody muttered, trying and failing to shake off Ethan’s hand, which had suddenly gripped a hold of his shoulder.

  ‘Lead me,’ said Ethan.

  Cody turned, to see that his younger brother had his eyes clamped tightly shut.

  ‘What foolishness is this now?’ he said.

  Ethan smiled, but kept his eyes shut. ‘I ain’t never seen the inside of a scrimshaw den before,’ he said, as though that were explanation enough. ‘You tell me when to open my eyes.’

  Cody hesitated, and for a moment Ethan thought he was going to refuse. But then Cody grunted and walked on, and Ethan knew he was being indulged.

  ‘You’re still just a big kid, ain’t yer?’ he grumbled, but there was affection in his voice.

  ‘Just as well I’ve got you to look after me, then,’ said Ethan.

  They stepped over the threshold.

  ‘You can open them eyes of yours now,’ Cody announced, his voice shrouded with echo.

  Ethan hesitated a moment, enjoying the anticipation. Over two weeks on the trail – weeks of barleymeal, hardtack and dried wyrmemeat, and a rucksack for a pillow. But now he was finally here, in a scrimshaw den, where all the riches of the weald were to be found. Leastways, that was the way Micah had told it. He sniffed long and deep.

  The air was moist and steeped in odours. Stale liquor, woodsmoke, and something sweet and pungent that Ethan could not place. And from the echoing tone to the various noises he could hear – scratching and scraping, footfall, voices and such – the place sounded enormous.

  Ethan opened his eyes and blinked, and could not help but be disappointed. The promised hustle and bustle and cornucopia of items for sale was so much less than he had been led to believe. Certainly the place was large, but that only served to diminish the scale of its contents.

  Like an amphitheatre, the cavernous den fanned out from the entrance, rising up in broad semi-circular, stonecut terraces. To the far right, a stream of water trickled down over the copper-stained rock and collected in a large pool. Dip-torches in iron brackets cast shadows over the high ceiling of the cavern, from which dozens of metal cages of various shapes and sizes hung down on chains. But like the abandoned pens and the squat shacks outside, the cages were empty.

  Figures sat hunched in small groups on the terraces, gathered around ill-stocked wyrmepelts spread out on the floor. An old man lay on a moth-eaten blanket, fast asleep and snoring. A way to his left, a couple – toothless and bony – were slumped up against one another, ­shoulder to shoulder, deep in slurred muttering. A ­straggle-bearded man, knelt beside a length of uncured wyrmeskin, was scraping the fat from the rough underside with a ridged block of pumice. Occasionally he would look up, eyes ablaze, to continue an argument with a second man, who seemed to be offering advice but little practical help. And a group of raggedy feral-looking ­children with tangled hair and grimy faces dodged and darted around the groups in what looked like a never-ending game of tag.

  Fletcher Crow waved a hand at the terraces in a broad sweep. ‘Business is a bit slow,’ he admitted. ‘Seems a lot of kith are heading back east into the badlands to trade these days . . .’

  ‘The badlands?’ said Eli, and Micah noticed the ­surprise in his voice.

  To his left, Ethan let out a rueful whistle. ‘Wouldn’t catch me going back there, not for anything, eh, Cody?’

  Cody ignored him. His eyes were fixed on an elderly woman in a filthy apron who was squatting beside a wyrmepelt covered with pieces of delicately carved wyrmebone.

  ‘It’s where the new settlement is,’ Fletcher said ­bitterly, and spat. ‘Folks say there ain’t nothing they can’t trade there for twenty times what they’d get here in the weald.’ He glanced up at the empty cages above their heads. ‘Even buying live wyrmes down there, according to the harpoon gangs.’

  Micah saw Eli flinch, and he remembered the dead greywyrme they’d found shackled and bound in the pass.

  Fletcher smiled. ‘So it sure is good to welcome kith such as yourselves, with heavy packs and an eye for a good trade.’

  Eli nodded, but did not return the den owner’s smile. Instead, Micah saw his pale-blue eyes scan the terraces above them, picking out the kith in the shadows; lean, half-starved men in tattered cloaks who looked back hungrily.

  Fletcher Crow bowed and headed back to the entrance, and Micah noticed several of the raggedy kith follow him. He suddenly had a panicky trapped feeling in the pit of his stomach. There was limebark, dried salsify roots, cudleaf and wyrmepelts in the pack on Micah’s back; goods he would trade for the tools and medicine they needed for the winter – if, that is, he could find them in this poorly-stocked scrimshaw den. And, more importantly, so long as they managed to get out again without being robbed blind.

  Twenty-Eight

  Cody leaned forward, picked up one of the pieces of scrimshaw laid out on the wyrmepelt be
fore him and turned it over in his hands. Then he replaced it.

  ‘Looking for something in particular?’ the old woman croaked.

  Cody did not look up. ‘Don’t rightly know,’ he mumbled hesitantly and blushed.

  He picked up another piece. It was round and ­delicate, and made from flawless, cream-white wyrmebone. A whitewyrme had been carved in an oval, its serpentine tail coiling and wings raised. A leather cord was threaded through the wingtips.

  ‘You fixing to trade for that or not?’ The woman sounded querulous and impatient.

  Cody looked up, the carving nestling in the palm of his large calloused hand. The woman was eyeing him suspiciously, as though she expected him to slip the medallion into his pocket and make a run for it.

  ‘Well?’ she rasped.

  Cody stared down at the scrimshaw carving, then back at the woman, and he nodded, the slightest incline of his head. He reached into the side pocket of his breeches and removed two silver coins, which he held out.

  ‘Not enough,’ the woman snapped, her face crimped and scowling.

  Cody shrugged. ‘It’s all I have,’ he said, putting the medallion down and making to stand up.

  ‘Not so hasty,’ the old woman said, the harshness to her voice softening a tad. ‘What you got in there, boy?’ She pointed at the backpack slung over Cody’s shoulder.

  ‘Barleyseed,’ he said, and heard her tut dismissively. ‘Red fungus.’ He swung the backpack to the ground and opened it, looked inside. ‘Some heads of bollcotton . . . Oh, and these.’ He pulled out a bundle of bones, the length and thickness of his middle finger. ‘Wyrmebones.’ He handed them to her.

  The woman’s interest was unmistakable. She undid the knot in the twine that bound them together and inspected the bones carefully; holding them up to the lamplight, putting them to her nose and sniffing.

  ‘Wingbones of a mistwyrme,’ she murmured. ‘I’ll take them. Along with the silver.’