Page 39 of Swordheart #1

“It’s the Vagrant Hills,” said Zale. “It’s got to be.”

“But they’re south,” said Halla. “Much farther south! Days of travel, at least, and there are hills and…” She knew that her voice had a hysterical edge to it, but she couldn’t quite seem to control it.

“Not if they don’t want to be,” said Zale.

Sarkis looked from one to the other. “The what?”

“The Vagrant Hills,” said Halla. “They… well, they sort of move around a bit. Sometimes they grab people. But we should have been much too far north for that!”

“Perhaps they made a special effort,” said Zale, glancing at Sarkis. “To get a closer look at something that interested them.”

“A gnole is not getting paid enough for this…” muttered Brindle.

Halla put her hands over her eyes. Of course the haunted Vagrant Hills had grabbed them.

Why wouldn’t they? Her life had been wildly out of control ever since Silas died.

A cranky, if attractive, warrior in a magic sword, random people attacking her…

what was one more patch of enchanted geography, more or less?

Quit dithering. Roll up your sleeves and get to work.

“How are we going to get out?” she asked. “Does anyone have any ideas?”

“All my knowledge of magic is abstract,” admitted Zale. “I do not even know if the Hills count as magic, in the sense that we understand it, or if they are something else we have no word for.”

“A gnole’s job is to drive the wagon. You want magic, you find a different gnole.”

“Well, I don’t know anything much about magic,” said Halla. “My family hasn’t even thrown a minor wonderworker in generations.”

“On your mother’s side,” said Sarkis.

“… true.”

“Of us all, the only one with significant firsthand knowledge is Sarkis,” said Zale. “So if anyone is qualified—”

“What?” Sarkis laughed, mostly in disbelief.

“My firsthand knowledge is all from the wrong direction. One might as well say that getting trampled by a horse would make you an excellent rider.” He waved his hand toward the landscape before them.

“And even if it did, this is wildly different than anything I’ve ever seen. The Weeping Lands doesn’t do this.”

“What, bits of your countryside don’t get up and move around to suit themselves?”

“Certainly not.”

“It’s these decadent southern landscapes, I expect,” said Halla. She sighed and slid down off the wagon.

“Where are you going?” asked Sarkis.

“To check the edge,” she said over her shoulder. The hillside road was wider than the hollow way, but not by much. “If we can turn around, maybe we can still get out of here.”

Her heart sank as she neared the drop-off.

It wasn’t a sheer cliff, but it was at a nasty angle, and if a wheel went over, they weren’t getting it back up in a hurry.

Most of the hill was a growth of pokeweed and blackberry bramble, full of fluttering as birds popped up from the tangle and then flew back down again.

She leaned forward, frowning. How the devil had the road been cut into the hill at this angle, anyway?

You’d need a great many men with shovels…

well, it could be done, of course, but who would come out to the Vagrant Hills to do such a thing?

Even if you assume the hollow way was linked up by magic…

hmmm. No, the hollow way looked exactly like the rest of the hillside, just with the embankments higher than the roadway, with trees growing on top.

Arms went around her waist, and Sarkis lifted her back from the edge of the cliff.

“ Please don’t stand so close to the drop. I may be immortal but I would rather not die of heart failure just yet,” he said.

“I wasn’t that close to the edge…” grumbled Halla. She was having a hard time concentrating on being indignant, however, since his arms were still around her waist. His chest pressed against her back, very solid and very warm.

Was he holding her longer than necessary? It certainly seemed like it. What if she turned around right now and put her arms around his neck? Would he drop her, startled? Would he kiss her again? Would—

Zale cleared their throat loudly.

Sarkis dropped his arms.

“I don’t think we can turn around,” said Halla, feeling a flush rising up her face. “Not without risking a wheel going over the edge.”

Brindle nodded to her. “Think the same, fish-lady. An ox is strong, could pull the wagon back, but if an ox goes over…” He spread his hands.

“I suppose we just follow the road, then,” said Halla. “Since our other choice is to abandon the wagon. Which at this point will probably just leave us in the Vagrant Hills with no wagon.”

“I can’t believe the Vagrant Hills reached out that far,” said Zale. “The road was put there mostly because it was too far north for the Hills to bother with.”

“I cannot believe that your people have rogue mountain ranges roaming about and have not dealt with it!”

Zale gave him a wry look. “How do you propose we ‘deal’ with it? Various churches tried to burn out bits of the Hills ages ago. It didn’t go well. There are songs about it.”

“They aren’t happy songs,” added Halla.

Sarkis grunted. After a minute he muttered, “You should have used more fire, then.”

“I’ll take your suggestions to the bishop if we ever get out of here. Now where do we go?”

“What are our options?” said Sarkis.

“Go forward, sword-man.”

“Or abandon the wagon, turn the ox, and go back the way we came,” said Zale.

“It’s got to be one of those two,” said Halla. “Since we can’t fly.”

They looked at the track in front of them. They looked at the track behind them. They looked at the Hills around them.

“I suspect that the Hills are going to let us go, or not, as they choose,” said Zale, dark eyes somber. “I doubt the direction matters a great deal. We cannot be anywhere near where we are, ergo it likely does not matter which way we go.”

There was a pause while everyone attempted to parse this.

“What does your god tell you?” asked Sarkis.

Zale blinked at him. “Uh… I’m a lawyer. I serve the Rat, and yes, I’m ordained, but I’m not… ah… god-touched. You want justiciars for that sort of thing. That’s… um… our equivalent of paladins. I’m merely support staff.”

“There’s nothing merely about it,” said Halla, with some asperity. “A paladin wouldn’t do me any good getting my inheritance back.”

“I suppose they could chop your relatives into tiny bits, but there would be repercussions. Anyway, justiciars don’t chop people up, except metaphorically and in court.”

Sarkis stared at them. “You… literally… have god-touched lawyers in your order?”

“Not many. We used to have more, but they’re really more of a frontier justice sort of thing. Once you have a legal system in place, you mostly need good clerks and people to make sure that the powerful don’t walk all over everyone.”

Brindle took matters into his own hands and tapped the goad across the ox’s back, clucking his tongue. The ox began to amble forward.

“I guess we’re going ahead,” said Halla.

“Better than talking, fish-lady.”

The path wound on around the hill, flanked by trees.

They looked like oaks and maple, familiar enough to Halla, but these were only barely beginning to turn color.

A few leaves spangled the hillside, but not many.

It might be late autumn in the outer world, but in the Vagrant Hills, it was still the tail end of summer.

“What lives in these cursed Hills?” asked Sarkis. “Do you know?”

“Well, there are plenty of reports,” said Zale. “But you have to filter those reports based on the fact that people lie and exaggerate and scare themselves silly. I don’t think there’s dragons living in here, for example, or giants herding trees like sheep, or kraken.”

“Kraken in the woods ?”

“You see why we considered that report unreliable.”

Sarkis ground his teeth in frustration. It occurred to Halla that he probably didn’t have to worry about damaging his teeth, since he’d get a new set whenever he came out of the sword.

She had not previously envied Sarkis’s imprisonment, but having had teeth drawn before…

yes, all right, she could see the advantages.

Brindle sighed. “A gnole knows a few,” he admitted.

“A gnole’s cousin went into Hills during a war.

” He held up his left hand and counted them off on blunt claws.

One claw. “Mandrake root. Little, throw rocks.” Second claw.

“Big stone fish. Doesn’t do anything.” Third claw. “Rabbit. Talks.” Fourth claw. “Rune.”

“Brindle’s cousin may be more reliable than many of our sources,” said Zale. “The Many-Armed God’s dedicates report that there are, indeed, rune in the hills.”

“What’s a rune?” said Sarkis.

“Stag-men,” said Zale. “And women, presumably. An intelligent people, though there is no written form of their language, so we do not know much about them. Not necessarily hostile, though they seem to primarily wish to be left alone.”

“Do they wear green body paint and carry spears?” asked Sarkis.

Zale was intelligent enough to know what that meant. “Where do you see them?”

“There’s one up ahead, in the shadow of that split tree,” said Sarkis, jerking his chin forward.

“If you see one, there’s probably at least a dozen,” said Zale. “Make no sudden movements. Do not draw your weapons unless they attack.”

Sarkis, nerves already taut, did not like how this was going at all.

He had only spotted the rune in front of him because the creature had flicked his ear.

He looked like a deer-headed man, more or less, but with fine green hair feathering his lower legs, and hooved feet.

His spear was taller than he was and had the look of a stabbing weapon rather than a throwing weapon.