The Curse of Rha-kan'Ocka Ch16

CHAPTER 16.

Mistrust

The ground far below swung chaotically hither and thither as the gliding brute of Gha’enbesch wobbled in the air. Its flight could be described with almost any antonym of steady. It was as though the steed had sensed there was someone aboard who loathed rollercoaster rides and sudden steep heights, and presently wanted to do its best to ridicule this lamentable ninny-winny. It swerved back and forth like a pendulum gone berserk. Though, the other travelers hardly seemed to mind this irregular swing. They were so grown to it, that they automatically shifted their weight onto one side as a new tremor hit the course.

The wide-stretching landscapes, on the whole, had a rather depressing quality. Gray, dank shades of brown, and the all-enveloping charcoal hues greeted you everywhere you laid your gaze upon. The inferiorly sewn, mismatched patchwork quilt - or rather to say patchwork torture rack, since nobody in their right mind would have used anything like this as a warming comforter - of black thickets, spiky rock clusters, drenched riverbeds, craters, potholes, and the desolate old road, wriggling amongst it all like a fingermark dragged over an extremely sooty window, were prone to make you wish you would have at least a fleck of portable lawn with you. Just for the sake that you did not altogether forget what green was.

In her small endocranial universe, Hiid was arduously attempting to hammer some sense into all this. It was providing to be somewhat difficult, due to the strong feeling of nausea. Every time the soaring absurdity made spirit levels go topsy-turvy, her stomach went glurrpblublbblp. A faintly green hue tinting her cheeks, she kept her eyes shut tight. That however comforted much nothing. The violent rush of wind in the ears, the creaking of the beast’s chitin joints, and the sharp smell of leather and some pungent herb wafting from the fellow passengers constantly reminded her of the instant reality. Revolting reveries of her getting dropped and ending up pierced by one of those stinglike rocktops formed in her awareness all over again.

Enkev was in trouble, no doubt about that. It was knotty to determine which aspect frightened her more: the fact that she was utterly devoid of expression in front of this unknown language, or that she was being hauled into some unknown hole, packeted and encircled by blue half-giants with more or less murderous attitudes. Even if she could not perceive a flying ostrich’s hind leg about the gobbledygook itself, the tone of voice, with which it was gabbled, did reveal some of the intentions behind. There were both suspicion and anger. Since the girl did not completely belong to the category of those humans whose ears were shining when you pointed the cone of a flashlight into their nostrils, she did not get stuck with the heel while knitting the sock of thought onward.

Apparently she was considered as some sort of intruder and freak. The way the lancefellow had scowled at her, suggested that the conventionally trademarked look for a human being did not apply here. These men were probably quite as prejudiced against her as she was against them.

Then there was this omnipresent nastiness with heights... Granted, Enkev had worked for ages in spaceships and shabby unstable planetoids in danger of falling into the nearest hyperactive sun. However, in space there were no depths. Nor anything that could be labeled with ‘up’ and ‘down’ -tags. Just the simulated gravitational field inside the vessel. And nobody forced you with a plasma blaster pressed against your temple to peek out of the window when the spacecraft took off into the star-polluted vacuum.

Notwithstanding... now that she came to brood upon it... was the vertigo the actual problem, or this abominable swinging above a vast nothingness? Maybe it was a combination of both of them. During your stereotypical superfluospace travel you experienced bumps and proton storms just as frequently as inferior fanfiction was uploaded into the Holoweb. But then again, you were assured of the firm floor beneath.

This current sleighless sleigh-ride was just unbearable. The mechanic could not even hold onto anything, due to the tied hands. The mere protection consisted of a solitary leather strap attached to the saddle and tied around her waist. The boy behind possessed the aviation security attentiveness of a boiled cabbage. He was more interested in picking his nose and humming some irksome jingle in a false note.

She risked a one-eyed peek into the surrounding aerial panorama. Just then the brute decided to take an especially sharp and wonky swing. Hiid could have sworn they were almost upside down for a twinkling. This was too much for her groaning stomach. Spluttering, she retched halfway over the beast’s back. The other half ended up splattered across the boy’s bare leg.

A hard curse erupted from beyond. Enkev had to astonish whether these people had some extra set of specialized vocal cords for forming all those gurgling guttural cronks. The sharp jolt of someone’s elbow told her that she was not to act like that any more, or less amiable strokes would follow.

Nonetheless, the stomach tends to think with its own set of brains. You cannot merely tell things like fever and influenza to slink away just because you do not feel like having them around.

Fortunately, the airborne seasickness would come to an end briefly. In the lower horizon shimmered a broad, irregular gathering of what looked like sardine jars and rocky muffins from the current altitude.

***

Gha’enbesch’s steed hit the ground with a multilegged thwump in the middle of a small sandy square. All about sprawled grubby hovels amassed up from scrap wood, mudbricks, reedy bits of metal, tarpaulins, and basically anything that a semi-creative human being might consider as building material. A lanky man leaning against a dirty wall waved at the captain as he hopped down.

Enkev had not beheld any of this yet. Eyes twisted shut as tightly as possible, teeth chattering like hyperactive castanets, she furthermore roosted rigidly in the saddle.

According to the schiznit-fashion of the modern world, you were, as a woman, obviously supposed to be a brave and independent Amazon that held a cool, composed loftiness even if you were about to be crushed alive in a getawayless trash compactor. But here the normality raised its boring mundane head again. Hiid did panic in unexpected situations. She did cower when a grim-faced, gorilla-shaped bloke with knuckledusters ambled past. She could not run a whole mile before getting utterly out of breath. Normality, the average, the everyday. It held most of us in the Prison of Humdrum. Most of us included 90 per cent of the population. Or perhaps more.

Just when someone forcibly tore the leather strap off and nudged her to dismount, she grudgingly let the sparse daylight flow into the retinas. Walking after that dreadride was atrocious. Black specks flitted across the field of vision. The legs had turned into lead after all the forced tension. Holding back another burst of vomit, she staggered onward amid the warrior queue. It was not much of a eulogy for dignity, being dragged on like some misbehaved animal.

The mini-parade bypassed dozens of more shacks on their way to the vague destination. Enkev had no much stamina left to take it all in. Staring faces, rags flapping in the wind, the crunch of gravel underfoot, sharp shouts with meaningless content, the all-enveloping shadows, the confusion... they all became mixed into one foggy jumble in the dizzy consciousness. Perhaps a quick liedown would have banished the careening of the ground. But the instant knew not the conception of petty mercy.

***

“Oy, Schalonog? Wouldcha go an’ report to ‘em office that we is back,” Gha’enbesch inquired his fellow.

With a quick ‘aye’, the addressed stomped away into the opposite direction. The troop itself carried on the saunter for a while. In front of a two-storey cabin, they ultimately halted. It did not much differ from the surrounding flat-roofed hovels, only that it perchance had a slightly cleaner and cultivated aspect about it. The teensy patch of ground around held a desperate war against the land’s general attitude by sprouting a few greenish worts and some rather dispirited flowers in a minute kitchen garden. Greidr went to knock on the door, with surprising nerves in the manner of tapping. Jumpiness did not match well the haughty, spiked armor, which was so overly polished you almost needed sunglasses in order to marvel it the least.

Another woman appeared almost instantly in the doorway. This was an elderly one, with a dumpy but strong frame, the kind which you develop after birthing ten or more children and spending a lifetime with hard physical work. Her visage was motherly, and her long steel-gray hair was wrapped into a tight bun. The ginormous ladle in one hand and the frilly apron tied over an abundantly petticoated dress gave the finishing touches to the cooking-obsessed grandmommy-look.

Of course, hereby expressions like ‘dumpy’ need to be examined in the local Rha-kan’Ockian context. Any adult possessing a scanty six feet of height was generally considered short. Seven was the Gauss average, eight made you towering. Two or three who reached a round nine were born infrequently. In regard to the odd intruder called Hiid Enkev, she was a positive midget with her whopping five feet and five inches.

“Hay, Ghirn-Deary! ’S grandpa in?” Greidr piped up, with a much more girly voice than heard before, sounding distinctly like a seven-year-old begging for a pink teddy. Somehow the pompous warrior queen attitude had molten in front of the granny like snow in Kalahari. She had even removed the oversized helmet, and was trying to hide it behind her back as best as she could.

“Nay, hun. I s’pose he went to sharpen sum choppers ‘n scythes with sum others.” With the ladle, Ghirn’ubim-Ach pointed towards the left end of the hovel convention, where loomed the beginning of brownish, slightly undulating fields. Then her sharp gaze got adhered to Greidr’s armor.

“But my good girl, what are you wearin’ again?” She primmed her lips disapprovingly.

Greidr blushed. Or rather turned into a deep shade of purple, regarding the underlying blue complexion.

“Runnin’ around again in silly bits o’ tin. And not even a prop’r shirt on. What have I said about those daft oddments? You listen to your gran now, you’ll catch a cold, runnin’ around in nought but bleak jars on. ‘S wool and long dresses that’re proper for a twee lass, not foolish mangarments.”

“But Ghirn-Deary, it’s fer ‘em battlefield! Ye knows me is in ‘em troops, me needs ‘em if ‘em enemies strikes whilst we is patrollin’. An’ it ent cold, it’s ‘em summertime. Even up der-” Greidr pleaded, seeking in vain for a figurative mole-hole where to slink into.

Ghirn’ubim-Ach’s eyebrows contracted. “An’ flyin’ too with that callous thing on?” One of her large hands grabbed Greidr’s arm. “You’re comin’ in right now to warm up, otherwise you’ll catch a nasty fever by morrow. ‘S a good fire cracklin’ in the kitchen an’ lotsa thick blankets in the shelf. Anywise, I was knittin’ sum more warm woolen knickers, you’ll be needin’ them, no doubt. Now, ‘s get you in...”

“But Ghirn-Deary, it’s me shift still-” Greidr glanced half-nervously, half-abashed at the troop standing just outside the garden fence. She was hard attempting to squirm out of Ghirn’ubim-Ach’s steady, commanding hold. Indubitably this sort of episode had been dreaded.

“They can do without you. But we cannot do with an unwary lass gettin’ a cold!” the old woman snapped.

“But...”

“Nay, nay, nay. Don’t you argue with your gran. And you look all peaky. Have you been bitin’ nought but your fingernails lately? ‘S good I have sum stout soup on the stove!” It was rather off-the-highway to accuse someone like Greidr of anorectic habits. A head taller than Ghirn’ubim-Ach, she sported brick-fashioned biceps and legs like tree trunks. Yet even the elserealms are habited by that stereotypical grandmother variety that will worry about you having earmuffs on in the sweltering midsummer temperatures, and stuff their scions with lard-dripping nosh until they roll.

“If you’re seeking for Guarh, I s’pose he’s in one of the toolsheds near the fields,” Ghirn’ubim-Ach shouted at Gha’enbesch over the yard, while pushing the embarrassed Greidr in. “But our li’l Greidr stays in, poor lass’s all fluish and needs feedin’.”

“Aye, m’am. Thank ye, m’am,” the captain responded. You did not squabble with Mrs. G’Uhageid. You rather sat a month on a hedgehog.

“How ’bout you lads comin’ for sum soup too? Pray tell, you look a tad off color,” Ghirn’ubim-Ach evaluated at the males with a nutritively critical eye.

Gha’enbesch blanched slightly, but managed to hold his posture nerveless. Admittedly the old lady made excellent-tasting cookery, but afterwards you felt as though you had devoured a monolith. The meals were so heavy that you hardly got up the following day.

“Erm, grammarcy, m’am, but we has our shift. Pardon, m’am.” He saluted, under his breath yet urging his men to start dashing towards the fields. Otherwise they would be kindly forced to get acquainted with Mrs. G’Uhageid’s colossus culinary.

“Ow, pity. Maybe after the curfew, then? I shan’t let the cauldron go cold.”

Ow , pity, thought Gha’enbesch with a concealed grimace. You did not trample a second offer. Especially as the madam saw through every pretence, and he did not have another plausible excuse reserved.

Hopefully the village’s medicine man had some stomach-healing potion abundantly in the stock...

***

“Nay... I am afraid I cannot wholly arrive into a plausible conclusion with the case herein. Quite a regular human, I deem, if it was not for the hue and ears. Whence it came, is beyond my reckoning. Unless we are dealing with some extremely inbred lowlanders here, but then again, the language is an issue of bafflement... Above and beyond, it holds the signs of no known ancestry, if nought at all. And... in recounting, you found it ashore some far-off pond?”

“Aye. By ‘em Curst   Road. Dunno whither it exactly was aimin’ at, but we thoughts it best to take it with us anyhow.”

“Hmm-mmh. An enemy agent with highly phoney bearing, you are inclined to postulate? Someways I do not agree at all. What sense would there be to send someone of suchlike stature on an errand to infiltrate our haven? Ha! Forsooth, even the bonegrawing maggots of the deep earthen pits would cease the chewing of our forebears and stare. Here now, wherefore did you deem thusly? A major flaw in the induction.”

“Erh...”

“Consequently, live and learn, my lad. Provided that the sludgebrained Khran-Av’ees had the vigor to launch a spy assault upon us, he would select a warrior or warriors akin to our people, as to make them devoid of suspicion. That would be the means, nought analogous to as what we have hereabouts.”

“Um. But what shoul’ we do with it? Me still ent gots even a wee idea if it’s makin’ all ‘em odd doings up or nay. An’ ye ken, we cannot overlook ‘em dark arts.” The current speaker lowered his voice, as if afraid that some diabolical netherworld creature was listening behind the nearest bush. “’Em says when conjurers get too much tangled in ‘em murky dealings, it alters ‘em. Ye ken, turns ‘em all odd with wicked glowin’ red eyes an’ sorts. ‘S probably why they says that don’t ye meddle with ‘em affairs of wizards.”

“Nnh... And if it were thusly, what hindrance would your flimsy bindings grant at long last? Banish the darkness from the halls of reasoning, and behold the larger picture, Gha’enbesch. An inexperienced dwarfish female solo and ham-handedly on a route nowhither, void of even the lousiest weaponry and rations... And what may I denote with inexperienced? Any well-versed spy or conjurer would master traveling by air better, and not spoil himself suchways. But what may it be with the consequences now...”

An elderly man squatting upon a chiseled stump of a tree tapped a finger against his chin, mouth drawn into a tight line. His one-eyed squint was directed at Enkev, who slightly swaying stood on the toolshed’s mid-floor. She truly was not tidied up to attend the Academy Awards, with a week’s dirt smeared upon and sick splattered across the front. She had had a minuscule sit-down on the ground while Greidr had conversed with her grandmother, but hardly felt any better whatsoever. Someone was still whipping a donkey in her stomach, and now she was tormented in the incomprehensible questioning crossfire of these... anti-elves, or however they could be nicked. It was tiresome to attempt picking even a single intelligible expression from the torrents of all that fast-flying schrrghzffgrrzig. The girl was minute by minute hoping more that she had not come across ‘civilization’ in the first place. Maybe it would have been easier to cope with the empty wilderness than abide these harsh barbarians.

This hoary eyepatched oldster was presumably some sort of chief around here. Once again Hiid had endeavored to get responses to her own share of panicky questions, but no, no, no. It would have been less demanding to nail bonnyclabber in the ceiling, than to get these oversized blueberries to realize that she would have wished to sit down for a jiffy and get the grating bindings off her wrists. They had begun to hurt halfway round the insufferable flight. And with the hands free, she could have, as a minimum, resorted to crude sign language.

The bloke on the stump just kept shrugging.

“Hmh. Yet peradventure, better safe than sorry, if you ultimately have the daimons of misgiving and dread baiting your heart. This is mostly against my opining, yet you may keep it under arrest for a while if you wish. Scrutinize on what it does and mayhap we may judge its demeanor subsequently,” the old man concluded after some silent deliberation. “But enow with the ill tidings, we must get on with our own assignment. The harvest is about to start. And fie, how have our utensils slackened beneath the corroding power of the snowtimes.”

A few other villagers, all white-haired matrons and grandpas, were seated around him with blunt blades and grindstones before them. They had halted their job as Gha’enbesch’s troop had stomped in, but were now returning to their business. The captain’s incessant nervousness made him soften a teensy bit.

“If in need of further counsel concerning the matters at hand, come hither and we shall contemplate upon it. But keep in mind, my lad, that old Guarh does not even pretend to have savvy over all the accounts of this world.” He gave a gap-toothed, wrinkly grin.

A polyphonic singing erupted behind, as Gha’enbesch’s men emerged from the shed. The oldsters always chanted when working together, reliving half-forgotten legends in joyful melodies while getting engrossed in some tedious routine. Gha’enbesch sometimes stopped to listen to them behind a corner if he happened to walk past one of those occasional choirs. The songs warmed the heart, bringing in mind a vague anticipation of gentler epochs. Any flicker of happiness, however stellarly distant, was welcome amid the mournings of constant war.

Near the center of the shack picnic there were a few reinforced wooden cabins that served as prison compartments. They were originally piled up for the very purpose of arresting shady snoops, but had stood vacant most of the time. One of the recent occupants had been Mrs. Ghi-Ljughaulh’s very temperamental nuljaskh,* which had needed a secure place to cool down. But even that had occurred several moons ago.

After Enkev’s cords had been slashed broken, she was pushed into one of these. The door was barred shut, and the half-dizzy mechanic was left into the dusty three-quarter-darkness.

=========================================