Songs of Reamere entries: Chapter 4

“We fare,” Decima called out to the mystery voice. “Can you show us to the nearest town?”

 

“No towns here,” the mystery voice replied. Prendergast looked all around them, but the morning fog was still thick in the air, and he could only make out a tall, humanoid figure– six and a half, maybe seven feet?-- and an ominous clicking sound that drew closer and closer.

 

The casua felt his rider reach for the Rgali cutlass on her belt. Honestly, he was surprised she’d kept it that long. She tapped his flank twice with the flat of the blade: their code for ‘stand up and look scary’. He did, rising up to his full eight foot height, but this was no Sol malcontent who could be intimidated.

 

A cariboutaur, one of those famed nomads of the north, emerged from the murk, his four legs clicking with every step. He was six and a half feet of coarse brown fur and pure muscle, yet he trod across the ice with the lightness of the smallest bird. Even without antlers, he looked like he could wrestle a bear without even blinking. Judging by the bearskin cloak draped across his human half, he probably had.

 

“No human has walked this floe in years. Who are you? Do you seek the Rea Smey, like all the others before you?”

 

Did everyone have some kind of backstory with this creature except them?

 

“Look,” Decima said, trying to sneak the cutlass back into its sheath, “this man needs medical attention. If you could just help us find a doctor– heck, even a cunningfolk– I have baubles. I can pay you.”

 

“There are no doctors here.”

 

The hoofed stranger trotted up to them, tilting his head at the unconscious Wayre. Prendergast realised this was probably his way of asking permission, and nodded. The cariboutaur crouched down, brushing the snow and powder down (oops!) away from his face.

 

“Your companion is frost-nipped, but he will live. My herd could tend to him, but we would ask a small token in return.”

 

“Just get me to the nearest bank, in Fyrrel maybe, I’ll make the arrangements–”

 

“Baubles do not interest us. But what is that, on your hip?”

 

“This?” Decima unhooked the cutlass, sheath and all, and held it out to him. “It’s an orc cutlass, sky-iron, I think.”

 

“Sky-iron is sacred to the Taymyr. It will be more than enough.”

 

The cariboutaur stayed crouched on the ground as Decima and Prendergast lifted Wayre up and draped him across his back. He flopped limply forward, like a sack of potatoes. Well, close enough.

 

“How fast will your bird run?”

 

“Pretty damn fast. Let’s make tracks!”

 

*

 

As it turned out, ‘pretty fast’ was nothing compared to a cariboutaur at full tilt. Prendergast was panting and gaping his beak by the time they left the ice floes and stepped onto solid ground. It felt like hours more until they saw another living thing. But as they crested a low hill, they were suddenly greeted by what felt like an unending sea of brown and white.

 

A few dozen cariboutaurs and regular caribou milled about in a loose group. They all looked up as the four of them arrived, muttering among themselves in some northern tongue. Their saviour, who had introduced himself as Yvgeny, called out to one of them, and a grey-haired cariboutaur, still sporting her impressive winter rack, stepped forward take Wayre in her arms.

 

“Sofya will tend to your companion. Now tell me: why do you seek the sea serpent?”

 

“Well, it started out because I wanted fish and chips for dinner, and the creature ate all the fish in Sol, but that sounds really stupid in hindsight. So now it’s sort of morphed into stopping Wayre from getting himself killed.”

 

“Yes, we have seen many a human vanish into the mists chasing the creature. None ever return. The Khitrai of Raudrev say that she is a sea goddess, whose return to the north brings the long day, but we know that she is only an animal, and it is this dangerous myth which lures the foolish to their deaths.”

 

‘What can you tell us about it?’ Prendergast asked.

 

“We know that she comes close to the ice every year, chasing the cod schools, but never before has she come this far north, or this quickly. You did not see it, but an hour’s trot east of where I found you, there was a long trail of broken ice, as though she had plowed through without care.”

 

“Could she be chasing something, then?” Decima said. One of the other cariboutaurs had been kind enough to lend her his fur cloak, and she looked nice and toasty draped under a black cave bear’s skin.

 

“Chasing, or returning to brood.”

 

‘Like a salmon!’ Prendergast said.

 

“I am unfamiliar with a ‘sah-men’, but yes, maybe.”

 

It was deep into the polar day up in the north, so the herd prepared to settle in while the sun was still high as noon above them. Decima and Prendergast found themselves a cozy corner at the edge of the herd, where Sofya the healer had laid Captain Wayre down in a bed of pelts.

 

“Health-full,” she said, waving her hand at him. She seemed less proficient in the common tongue than Yvgeny. “Sleep, now. Tomorrow, to sea town.”

 

He was in good health, he just needed some sleep? And tomorrow, they’d bring him to Fyrrel? Eh, close enough.

 

“Thank you for taking care of him,” Decima said. Fortunately, her tone seemed to tell what her words didn’t, and the old cariboutaur nodded and stood up to stand with the rest of her herdmates.

 

For a while, things seemed almost peaceful. Of course, if Prendergast had learned anything from this whole trip, it was that something, somehow, was going to prove him wrong soon enough.

 

*

 

Three whole hours later. That had to be a new record!

 

Prendergast snapped awake at the sound of thundering hooves all around him. The caribou herd was in chaos, but all of them were running in the same direction, away from what felt like a heaviness in the air.

 

“We must move!” Yvgeny shouted, pulling up beside them and yanking to their feet. “The fog approaches. It has never come this far south before.”

 

“W-what?” Decima mumbled, as Prendergast nudged her into the saddle. “Fog can do that?”

 

“This is no ordinary fog. Move!”

 

Yvgeny reached down to pull Wayre onto his back, but the human slapped his hand away with surprising force.

 

“Oh, hey. Welcome back. Start running.”

 

The human captain didn’t even seem to acknowledge Decima’s quip. His eyes were wide, staring directly into the approaching wall of fog.

 

“The edge of the world! We made it!”

 

Before Prendergast could cut him off, he grabbed his beloved tracking harpoon and took off at a full stumbling run towards the danger.

 

“Man’s resilient, I’ll give him that.” He was literally out cold like, three hours ago. “Wayre, you idiot, get back here!”

 

The captain didn’t even look back as he disappeared into the wall of mist.

 

“I swear to Day, it’s like babysitting Tiff again, except Tiffany wasn’t nearly this eager to die. In we go, I guess.”

 

Decima looked back at Yvgeny, and he nodded solemnly, as if acknowledging that this was where they would part ways.

 

“Thank you, truly. Wayre says thank you, too, once we knock some sense into him.”

 

“May your footsteps find solid ground,” the cariboutaur said, before turning to run after his herd.

 

“What he said. Let’s go find us some solid ground.”

 

Prendergast took a deep breath. He thought about closing his eyes, but then he thought of all the things he could walk into by accident, like a cliff, or a rock wall, or a banana peel. And so he kept his eyes open as he stepped through the mists, and as they emerged on the other side, he was glad that he did.