Part 21 (2/2)

He hewed his way forward for more than an hour. If the retentive, obstinate fog thought it could outwait him, or discourage him, it was more than wrong. It had never encountered anyone like Etjole Ehomba, whose arms rose and fell methodically, mechanically, as he cut his way forward, dead dew dripping like transparent blood from his blade of crystallized nickel-iron.

Then, realizing that all its efforts were doomed to failure, the fog began to dissipate. Vast quant.i.ties of it drew back, rising upward in the direction of the cold mountain peaks from which it drew sustenance, while isolated pockets fled downslope to evaporate. A few persistent tendrils continued to clutch at the arms and shoulders of the determined travelers, but these were soon cut away. As they ascended through the uppermost reaches of the fog bank, the sun returned, warming their damp bodies. The clinging fog had soaked Ehomba to the skin, but in the thin air the un.o.bstructed sun made quick work of the lingering moisture.

A last gob of thick mist trailed him at a distance, darting and hiding behind one rocky outcropping after another. Used to watching for prowling predators while tending to the village herds, he kept track of it for a while, wondering at its intent. Perhaps it planned to drift down upon him when next he slept, covering his face, restraining not his arms and legs this time but his heart and lungs. He would not give it the chance.

Whirling, he rushed past a startled Simna to challenge the compacted cloud. Finding itself discovered, it immediately attempted to flee upward. The herdsman ran it down, catching up to it and dispatching it with his blade. Only the faintest hint of a moan rose from the wad of condensation as the meteoric sword-edge cut through its center, scattering droplets and inducing the rest of the gray blob to suicide beneath the unyielding rays of the morning sun.

Satisfied that he was no longer a source of interest to the vanished fog, or to any of its component parts, Ehomba sheathed the weapon and resumed his pace. Gra.s.s and soil in equal measure slid away beneath his sandals.

Free of the constraining, intemperate mist, they once again began to make good time. They had to.

There was an obligation to fulfill, and a family and herd anxiously awaiting his return.

If anything else attempted to stop or slow them, Ehomba found himself musing, he hoped it would do so more openly and with some substance. He had not enjoyed fighting the fog. Instead of anger, or evil, there had been about it only an ineffable sadness, and he had found no satisfaction in slaying what was after all little more than a haunting melancholy.

After all, it had only, to its unfathomable, unknowable way of thinking, been trying to help him.

XXI.

It was not long after they had left the inimical fog behind that they encountered the procession of humans and apes. Trudging along a trail that crossed the river gorge from north to south, the procession was heavily laden with baggage, from household goods dangling from stout poles supported by two or more individuals, to blanket-wrapped infants riding on the backs of females.

They s.h.i.+ed in terror at the sight of Ahlitah and Hunkapa Aub, and Ehomba had to hasten to rea.s.sure them. Their accent was thick and heavy, but with repet.i.tion and gestures each side managed to make itself understood. These were poor folk, the herdsman decided, simple and unsophisticated. Judging from the expressions they wore, their burdens were more than physical.

”Ehl-Larimar?” he asked of several individuals. After a number of inquiries a long-faced macaque clad in heavy overcoat and cap finally responded. Raising its long arm, it pointed westward up the canyon and nodded.

”Good. Thank you.” As Ehomba started past him, the ape reached out and grabbed his arm. Simna's hand went immediately to the hilt of his sword, while among the column there was an anxious stirring.

Primate hands fumbled for axes and clubs. Ahlitah growled low in his throat, his claws seeking purchase on the hard ground.

Ehomba hastened to calm his companions. ”It is all right. He is not hurting me.” Glancing down, he saw that the macaque's face was fraught with concern, not animosity. ”What is wrong, my long-tailed friend?”

It was uncertain if the ape comprehended the herdsman's words, but he certainly understood his tone.

Releasing his grasp, he raised a spindly arm and jabbed a finger violently upcanyon. ”Khorixas, Khorixas!”

”Hoy, what's a Khorixas?” Simna's hand had slid away from his sword, but his fingers remained loose and easy in its vicinity. ”Maybe an outlying town this side of Ehl-Larimar itself?”

”Possibly.” Smiling rea.s.suringly, Ehomba stepped away from the visibly agitated macaque and retreated slowly, taking one careful step at a time. ”It is all right. My friends and I can take care of ourselves.”

Even as he tried to explain he wondered if the ape understood any of what he was saying: These people spoke a language different from that of old Gomo and the People of the Trees.

Arm rigid and still pointing westward, the aged macaque rumbled ”Khorixas!” one more time before lowering his hand. With a sad-eyed shrug, he turned and rejoined his comrades. When he paused briefly for a last look back at the travelers, it was to shake his head dolefully from side to side.

”Grizzled old fella must not care much for this Khorixas, whatever it is.” Striding confidently forward, Simna kept a careful watch on the steep slopes that walled them in. Nothing he saw or heard as they continued to hike upward led him to believe they might be walking into some kind of ambush, or a trap.

Silhouetted against the scudding clouds, a few dragonets and condors soared on the updrafts.

Marmosets and pacas scampered over the boulders and talus in search of nuts and berries. Thanks to the deep canyon, the travelers' line of march remained well below the tree line. The temperature dropped at night, but not precipitously so. When their blankets proved inadequate to the task of warding off the cold, Ehomba and Simna simply moved their bedding closer to the radiant bulks of Hunkapa Aub and the black litah.

They had just crossed the crest of the Curridgians, discernable by the fact that all streams now flowed westward instead of to the east, when they heard the first roll of thunder.

”Hunkapa no see clouds, no see storm.” The hirsute hulk had his head tilted back while he squinted at the sky.

”It does not sound like that kind of thunder.” Holding fast to his spear, Ehomba strode along in front, maintaining the same steady pace as always.

Simna ibn Sind c.o.c.ked his head sideways as he regarded his tall companion. ”There's more than one kind?”

The herdsman smiled down at him. ”Many kinds. I myself have been trained to identify dozens of different varieties.”

”Hoy then, if it's not a far-off storm clearing its throat that we're hearing, then what is it?”

”I do not know.” A brilliant black-and-green spotted beetle landed on the herdsman's s.h.i.+rt, hitching a ride. Ehomba admired its glossy carapace and let it be.

”I thought you said you knew dozens of kinds of thunder?”

”I do.” Ehomba's smile thinned. ”But this one I do not recognize.”

Whatever its source, it grew louder as they began to start downward. Its measured, treading rhythm was abnormal, suggesting an origin that was anything but natural. Yet the percussive volume was too loud to originate with anything man-made.

Only when they came around a cliff and entered a small alpine valley did they see that both of their a.s.sumptions were correct.

It had not been much of a village to begin with, and now it was in the process of being reduced to nothing at all. The stately thunder they had been hearing was caused by the concussion of hammer against stone. The stones ranged in size from small boulders to c.h.i.n.kers light enough for a child to move from place to place. The head of the hammer, on the very much larger other hand, was bigger than Ehomba.

It was being wielded by a giant-the first giant the herdsman had ever seen. The village elders knew many tales of giants, with which they often regaled their attentive, wide-eyed children. While growing up, Ehomba and his friends had listened to fanciful fables of one-eyed giants and hunchbacked giants, of giants with teeth like barracuda and giants lacking any teeth at all who sucked up their victims through straws made of hollow tree trunks. There were giants that swam in the deep green sea (but none that flew), and giants who lived in the densest jungles and never showed themselves (but some that were too big to hide).

There were ugly giants and uglier giants, giants who cooked their victims in a ca.s.serole of palm oil and sago pastry, and giants who simply swallowed them whole. Oura had once told of a vegetarian giant, and of another who was shunned by all others of his kind for was.h.i.+ng his hair. Sometimes there seemed to be as many different kinds of giants as there were storytellers among the Naumkib, and that meant there were a great many varieties of giant indeed.

The one that stood before them using its great hammer to demolish the village was neither as horrific in appearance as he might have been nor as good-natured. Shoulder-length red hair tumbled in tangled tresses down his back and the sides of his head. Long hairs sprouted from pointed ears that stuck through the raggedy locks, and he had orange eyes. From his splotchety, crooked nose hung a booger the size of a boulder. His teeth were surprisingly white, glaring out from the rest of a baggy visage that as a face was mostly a failure. Dark and dirty treelike arms protruded from the sleeves of a vest comprised of many sewn-together skins, not all of them overtly animal. His furry lower garments were similarly fas.h.i.+oned, and his sandals with their knee-high laces bespoke the crudest attempts at cobblery.

He was three times the size of Hunkapa Aub, and when he swung the heavy hammer with its leather-clad head, the peal of disintegrating rock reverberated down every one of the surrounding canyons and gorges. Sweat poured from his coa.r.s.e countenance in great rivulets, and even at a distance his stink was profound.

”Hoy, now we know what happened to the village of Khorixas.” Simna's expression was grim. Another reverberantboooom echoed as the back wall of what had once been a fine two-story house came cras.h.i.+ng down. ”We also know why those hard-up folk we met a while back were migrating across the crest with their kids and all their possessions.”

”We do not know anything.” Ehomba was keeping one eye on the giant while a.s.sessing possible alternate routes with the other. The village lay directly athwart the most direct and easiest route westward and downslope. ”We will go around,” he announced resignedly. He started to turn away.

Hand on sword hilt, Simna all but jumped in front of him. ”Hoy, long bruther, we have a chance to right a wrong here!” He nodded sharply in the direction of the crumbling village. ”Whatever transpired between those poor wretches and this brute couldn't possibly justify the total ruination of their homes.”

He grinned knowingly. ”Why, this great blundering ogre isnothing compared to the dangers you and I have dealt with these past months! Watch him work. See how slow he is, how ungainly his movements?

We should teach him a lesson about picking on those smaller and weaker than himself and send him on his way. It will also earn us the undying grat.i.tude of those simple mountain folk.” His expression was eager. ”What say you?”

Ehomba replied in his usual unshakable, even tone. ”I do not need their grat.i.tude, undying or otherwise.”

He nodded leftward, to where the giant was maintaining his steady rate of destruction. ”Nor am I in the business of teaching lessons to rampaging giants or anyone else. My obligation draws me westward, to a destination that is, at long last, within reach if not sight.” Supporting himself partially with his spear, he took a step to his right. ”We will go around.”

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