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The Broken Lands: Chapter 1
🕑 Added 2021-11-08 03:42:57 +0000 UTCIt was a clear day in the endless sky, though that doesn’t mean anything. With no sun, just a generally diffuse light that seems to come from all around, there’s no such thing as a real ‘day’ here, only what you make. And with truly endless sky, there’s always a cloud somewhere. But right here, right now, it’s clear and easy to see, at least until things are too far away and swallowed by the haze.
We were sitting on Granarrik, floating upside down and underneath relative to a small sky island in the middle of nowhere in particular. Our hair would have floated around us, and tangled in the breeze, but we were both wearing flying leathers and strapped to the saddle of the enormous bird who stayed in position with his feet lightly gripping the rock. Granarrik was a giant bannari, a bone eagle in the dwarven tongue, and like us, completely used to free fall. Fully outstretched, his wingspan is easily fifty, nearly sixty feet, bigger even than my father’s griffon, though he’s more of a soarer than an agile flyer. Despite both Conrin, my dwarven mentor, and myself, plus our weapons and packs tied to the saddle, there was room to move around.
Not that we did much of that. Conrin is half deaf and half blind, both on the same side, but he’s a master hunter. And me, well, I notice things. I see real well, which is the most important thing in the sky. And most importantly, I’ve been trained to watch.
I also had a helper. Mica, my familiar, is a black crow with a few white speckles on his chest. He’s as smart as some people, and utterly terrified of getting eaten by one of the many dangers of the sky. He was always watching for danger. However, being smaller and more agile than us, he was able to peek around the edges of the island, looking for game we wouldn’t be able to see coming. We hid in the lee, ready to ambush, as most things in the sky go along with the wind, and few things would go upwind to see us first.
Mica cautiously flew around the edge, keeping a low profile. His black feathers are, unfortunately, one of the worst colors for hiding in the omnidirectional light, so he was wearing a tiny little grass cloak of wilted plants and rag scraps.
He can speak common just like you or I, but we’re also mentally linked. So when he had a flash of fear on seeing something, I felt it, and though my heart suddenly pounded, I didn’t stir. Honestly, fear is the first thing he feels about most things. You’d think a constant mental link with a creature that gets startled by a rustle of grass or a windblown speck would make you numb to sudden burst of fear, but it’s an empathic link. His fear is my fear. It’s why he was presented as my companion years ago. Even at home, the skies aren’t safe.
When his fear turned to relief, I felt it. That happens a lot, too. He’s not actually a coward, but he startles very, very easily.
When his relief turned to excitement, and added a tinge of hunger, I actually sat up straighter and nudged Conrin.
“Game of some sort,” I whispered, pointing at the small black bird barely visible over the tops of some rocky protrusions. Although it was unlikely anything on the other side of the rocks would be able to hear us, you never take chances. Not in the Broken Lands. Adrift in the elemental plane of Air is not an easy place to make a home, certainly not for humans and dwarves.
The excitement grew, with hunger increasing as well. Then, he started an exercise we had practiced quite a lot. He pulsed his emotions. A long moment of determination. Beat. Another long moment. Beat. A short pulse. Then a repeat of the three. G-G, in the heliograph code the ships used.
“Greatgoose,” I whispered.
Conrin smiled and perked up, but I was still focused on Mica. Long pulse, long pulse, long pulse, pulse pulse.
“Eight of them. Very nice,” I added, my own excitement mounting. If he had sent G-T, it would have meant giant, and we would have had misgivings. Granarrik is a giant, for instance, and I wouldn’t fight him on a bet. Great, however, meant merely large, and a greatgoose was a five to six stone, or seventy to eighty-five pound, vaguely gooselike bird native to the plane of air we resided in. One of the relatively few actually native birds that still had legs. A fifteen or sixteen foot wingspan coupled with a body that approached my own modest weight. One would feed all four of us one good meal, which in Gran’s case would keep him going for about five days. Two or three would be a good hunt. Four or more would be wonderful. And while their wings could break bones and smash skulls, and their beaks could rip flesh and snip off a finger or a nose, they were practically harmless by the standards of Air.
We needed it, too. We’d been out here for eight days already, and all we had to show for it was a quartet of madkites, flying mouths on wings that hunted us more than we hunted them, and didn’t even have the courtesy of being edible. Their only redeeming qualities were that they were so mindlessly aggressive they’d try to eat an arrow fired in their direction, generally dying in the attempt, and their skin and wing membranes were useful. We carried food with us, of course. Corn pone, dried mushrooms, and potatoes, and it didn’t much matter if we ate the food at home or out here hunting, but at least at home we could do other work too.
Hunting was important, though. Every day, the winds carried just a little more dust off our home islands. Without hunting, without bringing home more material, food, offal, or at worst just bags of dirt if we couldn’t catch any game, the soils of our farms would grow thin and poor until we starved. Even the poop in our guts was important, since it could be added to the mushroom farms. It wasn’t quite to the point of carrying home a bag of dookie after a hunt, but we did buy a hold full of farm manure from a trader ship once every other year.
Also, in the sky, you might find treasure. I had, once. It cost me, though. But I’m reliably informed that there’s no such thing as a free lunch. You might be able to make something else pay the bill, but the bill has to be paid all the same.
My mangled, ugly hands braced the super heavy crossbow in front of me, and my twisted grip found the carved handle of the crank as I started the laborious process of cocking and loading the weapon. I wore gloves, custom made to fit, with heavy, padded palms and backs. Behind me, Conrin checked and rechecked the spools of line carefully coiled in their sacks, with the harpoons and gaffs sitting securely but ready in their holsters. He also had a quiver of arrows and a stout recurved bow so thick and strong even I couldn’t draw it, and I wasn’t just strong for a girl, I was strong for a boy.
I could still use a bow, but my messed up hands could only nock and shoot one arrow at a time. If Conrin started shooting, and he wouldn’t unless he absolutely had to, he’d put eight arrows in the sky in the time it took me to do one. I had to make up for quantity with quality.
My eyes stayed on the sky, and silent nudges with my feet woke Gran out of his patient indolence. It’d be a bad, bad thing if I let our ambush get ambushed. People died that way. Granarrik pulled himself into a crouch against the rock, ready to launch. The big crossbow was heavy, two stone in weight, or almost thirty pounds, and with the gearing it took ten turns of the crank to get the string back and cocked. By feel and rote memory, I got it ready and slotted in a thick wooden bolt fletched in chicken feathers, which trailed a long line made of braided leather tied to a breakaway anchor on the saddle.
Metal was expensive. Wood was, too, but wood regrew. Metal, lost to the sky, did not. So the bolt didn’t have a metal head like Conrin’s arrows. Instead, it was carved and polished wood, with edges as sharp and fine as Conrin’s knife could make them, and three backwards pointing bone barbs, to make it catch and hold. Wood could be sharp, but it’s too soft to hold that edge as it cuts into something. I had it covered though.
Even as Mica started up a metronome steady pulse, pulse that slowly increased in tempo, I focused my mind on the spells sitting there, coiled tight like a spring, ready to be unleashed.
I can’t cast a lot of spells, not like my Mom, who’s a magecrafter of notable skill. My mangled hands just can’t make the gestures anymore, so I’ve been forced to use only what I can do mentally.
No force bolts or streams of fire here. I literally can’t make the gestures. But transmutation and alteration mostly rely on mental focus and imagery, and just need a touch to imbue the effect.
“Aspect of steel,” I incanted, and ran my crooked gloved finger along the shaft of the wooden bolt. It was a great spell, something I used often. It allowed me to apply a single trait of a given material to an item of a different material. In this case, the durability of steel was applied to a bolt made of wood. As I said, you could make wood sharp, so I didn’t need the potential sharpness of steel, I needed its ability to stay sharp when used.
That was probably enough to snare the goose. However, I had one more spell, the most difficult one I could cast without gestures, to help make sure.
“Impact,” I cast, and imbued a triggered effect to the bolt. Now, as soon as it was fired, the apparent mass of the bolt would be magnified, enhancing the momentum and thus the impact felt as it slams into its target.
With the bolt now strong as steel and travelling with three times the force, it would pull the line easier, hit harder, penetrate deeper, and the barbs would hold strong. The line was unaffected, but it was good leather, would stretch to absorb shock, and would keep the prey from getting away if I didn’t kill it outright. Most of the line was coiled in a bag in front of me, but about a dozen feet were in a coil hanging on a rod attached to the front of the crossbow, ready to spool off and follow the bolt it was tied to. There line was tied to a wooden attachment on the saddle that was strong, but would break off if the force was too much. And before that, I could wrap a few coils around a saddle horn to slow it down with friction.
Had to be careful with that, though. Getting my hands caught in coils like that is how I messed them up in the first place.
At my command, Gran flexed his wings out and up, ready for the crucial first beat.
Mica’s pulses of determination increased in tempo, letting me know how close the greatgoose flock was to the island. For a minute they slowed, presumably as the birds looked see if there was anything worth investigating on it.
It did have some scrub, some scraggly dry patches of grass and thin bushes grimly sprouting from cracks in the rock, but our earlier investigation didn’t even find any marooned mice or small birds. Greatgeese prefer water, giant blobs of free water floating in the air, or any island large enough to have a pond.
I started hearing them then, their harsh ‘koh!’ calls just making it too me in the swirling winds coming around the rocks. It might be my imagination, but I thought I heard disappointment in their voices. Beneath me, mighty muscles bigger than I am tensed with power.
Mica’s tempo suddenly accelerated, tinged with excitement and worry. Understandable worry, greatgeese aren’t really predators, but they’re big enough to swallow a normal sized crow.
Pulsepulsepulse-EXCITE-ACTION-GO!
No verbal commands, just silent touches and wordless understanding. I’d raised Granarrik from the egg, and had been riding him for three years, a connection not unlike, if lesser than, the one I shared with Mica. His legs pushed and his wings, each covering an area larger than the roof of a peasant’s hut, threw us into the sky with a force that sent my stomach south, only to float up on the upstroke, then down again. WHOOOSH… WHOOSH…
Goose calls that sounded like sad ‘koh-hanqk’s soon turned to panicked ‘khannk-annk’s-
But not soon enough for the geese.
They’d gotten close to look for food on the island, and even though they instinctively knew that some predators would ambush them from its shadow, it wasn’t a threat high in their primitive thoughts. Most things in the Plane of Air lived and fought on the strength of their flight, the conceptual, metaphysical aspect of Air to be wild and free and far roaming. Their main concerns were giant eagles and hawks, more predatory cousins of Granarrik who used their sight, speed, and agility to find and chase prey.
Gran had us as a burden, but we made better hunting plans. He lunged from behind the rock face just as the first greatgoose flew into view.
Predictably, it honked in alarm and immediately banked into a turn, flapping hard, but that was another predictable mistake. Though they were flying along with the wind, and could be quite fast, they had slowed to look at the island. And when they turned to break off and fly away from us, they lost even more speed. Their momentum and the wind carried them along an intercept course with us even as they tried to accelerate away, in the direction we were flying.
An eighty pound goose, however magical, has a lot of inertia to overcome, and air is a poor medium to push against.
Granarrik got his start against the island’s bulk, and each one of his wings moves more air than the entire flock of greatgeese combined. Yes, he massed about what the flock does, but even with Conrin and me we don’t weigh as much as TWICE the flock.
On the third beat of his wings, we’re right behind and to the left of the flock. With the wind drift, next beat will have us among them, and then they’ll really panic. But for this beautiful moment…
I lean close to Gran’s neck, heavy crossbow carefully angled to not hit my mount as I sighted in on the lead bird, which was probably going to be the heaviest and strongest. Behind me, Conrin actually got to his feet in the saddle, braced against the straps holding him, a harpoon in each hand.
The crossbow’s trigger was a well-oiled mechanism of spring steel and brass, which worked smoothly and let the bolt fly forward. The conditional spell activated as soon as the bolt left contact with the crossbow, and the magically enhanced weight of the crossbow bolt, which only had to cross twenty feet of space before slamming into the greatgoose right below its tail, ripping up through the bird and exiting at the top junction of its neck, trailing line straight through the body.
Whoops, heh. Probably didn’t need impact on that one, but at least we’ve definitely got at least one goose.
Crossbow spent for the foreseeable future, I yank the strap to secure it close to the saddle and reach for a harpoon. My hands are clumsy, and my limited finger movements only let me get three fingers all the way around the haft of the harpoon, but I pull it from the holster anyway.
Conrin leaned forward as Gran raised his wings, then threw as the giant bird pushed, adding to the momentum of the harpoon. As a master hunter, he picked one of the harder to hit birds on the far edge of the flock, which had kept turning to the point of heading back upwind, and thus lost nearly all of its velocity. It was thirty feet away to the right, and Conrin is blind on his right side, but he’s left handed and threw with a twist of his body. The barbed iron shaft slammed into the goose’s back and out the stomach. It wasn’t an instant kill, not like my bolt which turned the goose into a bead on a string, but it’s a safe bet that goose will be left struggling on the end of the line while we try to get more.
My mentor transferred his second harpoon to his main hand as I partially climbed and mostly leaned around the right side of Gran’s neck to stay out of Conrin’s way. The dwarf nailed another bird, this time solidly in the breast, as I lined up for my own throw. Gran’s flight had put us right next to the birds, and they’re starting to break in all directions. My mount can’t match that kind of agility, and we’ve got birds on the line, so I told him to slow before opposing flight directions ripped the birds off the hooks.
My fingers were bent and have limited ability to grasp, so I haven’t been able to train with swords and the like since the injury, but my wrists still flexed, and with my hand on the butt of the harpoon, I can push.
One goose’s wingtip came within feet of us as it breaks high and rolls over the top of us, but that startled another out of the maneuver it was about to make, and it screws up and hit Gran’s breast with a wing upstroke, which throws it even closer to us. I had an easy eight foot throw into the goat sized body, though my never to be sufficiently damned hands still nearly flubbed it. The harpoon missed the main body, but the barbed head sinks into the near wing and down into the joint. The goose’s ability to fly is now ruined, but its ability to flop and thrash may actually be enhanced, at least going by its newly found enthusiasm. Hopefully, the harpoon would hold.
The other geese’s erratic movements turned Conrin’s third throw into a graze, parting feathers but not hitting to hold. His fourth throw was even more of a miss, thirty something feet of space throwing off his timing so it hit a wing in motion and got deflected before it reached the body.
I reached for another harpoon, but my movements slowed as I realized it was too late. Four geese dead or dying on the lines, four thoroughly frightened birds headed in four different directions.
Disappointing, but still a very good hunt.
There were no shouts of triumph, no overhead brandishing of a harpoon, not by my stoic mentor, but the clap of his hand on my shoulder felt warm and good.
“Good job, Saras,” he said, once.
It rang in my ears the rest of the day.
