Ilvus
A Missing Jar
"A good jar of stuzsh can make a cold man feel warm, a warm man feel like a warm woman, and a warm woman feel you. Of course, like all things, stuzsh has its drawbacks, but a splash of ice-water will usually restore most of your sight. To be honest, if you're still capable of worrying about tomorrow, you haven't drunk enough of the stuff."
- The Collected Wisdoms of Pajan Ilvus
Snowflakes spiralled through the night sky, gently weaving their way groundwards as the harsh currents of the upper atmosphere tugged frivolously at them. The pure white crystals that weaved each snowflake's individual pattern contrasted almost completely with the darkness that was Varsavia's night sky. Above, and far distant, a maze of constellations blazed sweeping mystical patterns down into the night.
It was at times like these that the shamans and seers of the Angekkok and the Prognosticators of the Silver Skulls Astartes would gaze skywards to read the star-drawn destinies of men and gods, reading the slow-shifting lights like a million quills twitching on the parchment of the void.
From where Aefin lay, collapsed in a snowdrift on the edge of a rather forbidding forest, the swirl of constellations looked all too much like his father's grinning face.
"Oh yeah?" He shouted at them, shifting his numb buttocks. "Well you can shuddup! Yeah!"
He felt cold. Where was that jar of stuzsh? He flailed at the snow around him, but it provided no aid. Damn. There had to be at least half a jar left, too, if he was still cold.
"You too," he muttered over his shoulder at his pack. His knotted brown hair dropped into his face, and he brushed it aside in annoyance. Damn hair. He flopped back into the snow. It probably wasn't wise, lying in the snow like this. He'd get soaked through, and most likely freeze to death by mid-morning. But then again, he'd had just about enough of wisdom for a while. It wasn't like he had any particular desire to see tomorrow, anyway. Especially if the stuzsh caught up with him like it usually did.
Stuzsh. There was a lovely word. One of those ones that meant what it said. Stuzsh was what it was, what it did to you and what you said while you were feeling it. Stuzsh, stuzsh, stuzsh. Perfect. Now if only he could find some more of it before he sobered up.
He sat up again, and felt his head spin. Shouldn't move so fast. He might fall off the ground. He raised a hand to scratch at his scraggly beard and found that his fingertips were numb. Huh. He chewed on a finger thoughtfully. The forest, in front of him. There was something about it...
He regarded the darkened trees suspiciously. Yes. Definitely something about the forest. Was he going there? He couldn't remember. Didn't seem right for him to have stopped here, though, if he was after reaching the forest. It was only a couple of yards away, and it looked a lot warmer in there than out here. Perhaps he meant to travel through it in the morning? Yes, maybe. He'd stopped for a drink, hadn't he?
So that was it. He was travelling through the forest in the morning, and he'd stopped for a drink, having reached it. Perfectly sensible. He removed his gnawed finger from his mouth, feeling the chill as the cold Varsavian air took over biting at it. It was no wonder he'd wanted a drink, thinking about it. Who knew how many times he'd tripped over, running through that forest today?
Wait.
He stared at the darkened forest, and then awkwardly shifted around so that he could see the grass-dotted tundra which lay behind him, stretching out to the horizon. Oh, right.
So he'd come through the forest. Right. Why?
Aefin examined it for clues. The trees were low-growing, gnarled things, reaching out to grasp each other like tribal elders lost in the dark, their thick dark leaves creating a blanket of darkness across the ground.
He remembered running. Yes, running and tripping. Through the forest. Looking for something? No. Maybe. Perhaps, but it didn't seem likely. When he was looking for something, he usually took his time. Unless it was urgent?
He glanced around the snowdrift. Come to think of it, something was missing at the moment. What? The stuzsh? No, that had come afterwards. No, this was something more important.
In a flash of horror, he reached behind him, feeling for the very important thing strapped to the back of his pack. A hard shape bundled in a soft leather package met his questing fingers, and he breathed a sigh of relief. Whew. Okay, not that then. But something important.
He made an attempt at standing up, and felt the world spin around him a little. Right. He should check his pack. That'd probably tell him what was missing. Of course, there was one thing in his pack that he'd love to have lost, but that was probably too much to hope for. He certainly couldn't imagine running through the forest looking for that, anyway.
It was funny, he thought, as he disentangled his rather deflated travelling-pack from his elkskin cloak. Now that he came to think of it, he seemed to remember that he had been running away from something.
He had just about got his pack off when two screaming warriors tore out from between the trees. "Djuk," Aefin cursed, fumbling for his belt as he stumbled away from them. Who were these ones, then? A spear sprouted from the snow at his feet. That was a new one.
"You're meant to take me alive!" he shouted at them, noticing for the first time that the two charging men were bare-chested. Unless they'd both managed to lose their furs on a tree somehow, that seemed to suggest they were seeking the battle-chills. Which didn't bode well for him.
"Thief!" One of the men yelled at him, leaping over a snow-dusted clump of grass.
"Well, maybe," he admitted, attempting to swerve skilfully away from the second incoming spear, but managing more of a drunken tumble. Luckily, the effect was the same, and the dangerous-looking weapon planted itself in the ground rather than in Aefin's chest. "But they usually want me alive," he continued conversationally, "to find out what I did with it, you see."
His attackers did not seem impressed by his bravado. One of them leapt at him Bear-style, arms held at right-angles, hands fixed into the shape of claws. Unfortunately for the no-doubt masterful unarmed warrior, Aefin had finally found the handle of his bone-axe. As he ducked under the warrior's grasp, he swung wildly with the three-pronged weapon. A jolting impact and a sharp intake of breath told him he had struck home.
"Well I never said I was going to go quietly," Aefin explained to the folding warrior as he scrambled away, leaving his axe wherever it had embedded itself. With blurred vision, he attempted to assess the situation. The second warrior was stood about two yards away, having retrieved his spear. The weapon's hooked ivory tip gleamed in the starlight. Somehow, Aefin had a very vivid idea what it would feel like embedded in his flesh. Right, time for a well-tested manoeuvre.
He ran for it.
Somewhere inbetween vomiting down the front of his jerkin from all the stomach-jolting motion and seeing the spear zip past him – alarmingly close, he might add – he made a somewhat conscious decision to head for the treeline. It was his best bet, by the looks of things. The warrior back there didn't seem the type to let a rather drunk, clumsy Aefin outrun him across the open tundra.
Leaping over shadows, Aefin dived into the safety of the dark forest. Immediately, the idea seemed to be a much poorer one, as twigs and branches lashed at his face and tore at his hair. He could hardly see a damn thing under all this cover. A crashing sound behind him signalled that his pursuer was having similar difficulties. Although from the way the crashing noise was drawing louder, it seemed that he was overcoming them a lot faster than Aefin was.
Picking a direction at random out of the gloom, Aefin picked up his pace as much as he could. If he could just get far enough away, then he might be able to just stop still and hide from the man on his tail, perhaps in a bush somewhere. It shouldn't be hard, in these conditions. Just a little-
Pain flared across his skull.
"Ahh, Djuk!" Aefin cursed reflectively. He stumbled back from the invisible but very corporeal tree that had flung itself in his path, floundering amongst the scratching branches. Little white flashes were popping in front of his eyes. No doubt they were what was leading his pursuer on so unerringly.
The whip of a branch being whipped aside nearby alarmed him into renewed flight. Once again he found the tree, this time only grazing his knuckles on its bark before being once more trapped by its branches. He was quickly developing a hatred for the thing.
A searching hand caught his shoulder. Iron fingers closed.
"I hope you rot," he said to the tree, as a thickly-muscled arm reached around and snatched him away. The resultant struggle was one guided by touch alone, as the two men wrestled in the near-total darkness, grunts of pain and effort heavy and close in the gloom. Aefin took a knee in the stomach and groaned his way to the floor. Bile was rising in his throat again.
When he came up with a swinging fist, he contacted with what felt like a shoulder. Somehow, he'd ended up behind the warrior. Seizing this slight advantage, he leapt on the man's back and locked his hands around the man's throat, searching for the windpipe with his thumbs.
The warrior wrenched at his arms with impressive strength, and bucked violently, shaking Aefin off well before any kind of strangulation effect could set in. Aefin found himself once more tottering on unsteady feet. An elbow smacked him in the face, and he went down again.
This time, as he spat blood and massaged his aching jaw, his fingers closed on something. A fallen branch! He lifted it hopefully, only to find that the term 'twig' was perhaps more appropriate. A boot connected with his ribs, and he groaned in pain, pulling himself to his feet. Thankfully, the kick had been more about searching him out than crippling him. A fist caught him on the left of his collar-bone. It seemed the kick had done its job well.
As Aefin staggered, he felt a second punch fly by him on the right. The warrior had been too sure of his target, and had over-extended in the darkness. Aefin was all too keen to take advantage of this error. He hurriedly flung himself forward, raising his knee as fast as he could manage. From the very slight grunt the man in front of him made in response, it didn't seem that he'd hit his target.
Suddenly, Aefin was locked in a bear-hug. His right bicep felt like it was trapped between rocks as he tried to struggle free.
The warrior laughed in short breathless bursts as he raised Aefin off the ground in the hold. The lack of earth meant Aefin had no purchase with which to worm free. However, it also meant that his legs were free for other purposes. As the pressure on his ribs increased, Aefin's feet flailed wildly. One of them connected. The warrior stopped laughing.
Aefin was back on the ground again. From the wheeze the warrior had given, he had found his target from before. His right arm was trapped, still, but his hand held the branch from before. He stabbed at the warrior's back with it as he punched the man in the face to retain his advantage. The first couple of strikes did nothing, but on his third desperate jab, the 'twig' broke. Something about the way it snapped must've produced an edge, because all of a sudden Aefin could feel blood bubbling against his fingers. He'd pierced the man's lower-back!
As the bear-lock closed around him again, Aefin worked the branch deeper, drilling it through the meat of muscle. The man snarled at him in pain, but only pressed him tighter. Aefin was having difficulty working his arm by the time the branch slid in a little further than normal and his opponent let out a shocked scream.
The grip was released. Aefin moved back. A rare flicker of light highlighted that his opponent was on his knees, one hand on the floor, the other reaching around for the source of the pain. Kidneys. He must've scraped the djukker's kidneys. Landing a quick kick in the man's teeth, Aefin shuffled around with his feet, searching for another weapon. His leather soles felt rock.
It was fortunate that, in the minutes it took Aefin to dislodge the rock from the earth, the downed warrior did not move far. It was also fortunate that Aefin managed to spread the man out on the ground with a lucky kick, allowing him to drive his knees into the man's shoulders to pin him down. It was unfortunate – for one of the involved parties, at least – that it took Aefin at least five heavy, bloody strikes to end the man's life.
Some time later, Aefin stumbled free of the forest, somewhat disorientated. He glanced around, feeling suspiciously close to sober as he did so. Right. This wasn't where he'd plunged into the treeline. He moved a bit further out. Well, that fallen tree to his right didn't look at all familiar. Left, then.
A minute later, he found the snowdrift again. His pack was sat where he'd left it, he noted, as he pulled himself up the slope beside it. He glared across the tundra. With the aid of the starlight, he soon found what he was looking for. The warrior Aefin had lodged his axe in earlier was lead on his front, a dark stain spreading in the snow beneath him. He appeared to have been crawling towards the remaining spear, which was stuck in the ground at an angle.
Aefin tugged the spear out of the ground, feeling the weapon's weight speculatively. A well-crafted weapon. He knew what he was talking about, of course. Every Ilvenki boy old enough to lift a spear was well-versed in their design, construction and use. The old man had made sure he was no exception. Just like he had made sure of everything.
He nudged the bleeding warrior with the butt of the weapon. The man groaned and waved an arm in his direction. As he had thought. Not dead, yet. Aefin slid the haft of the spear under the man's bare chest and levered him over onto his back. He winced in sympathy. The bone-pronged axe was lodged in the man's gut. From the looks of the tearing, the warrior had attempted to pull it out. Ill-advised, as the man no doubt now realised. Aefin could see something white and slippery through the largest of the holes.
"So," he said, prodding the man with his foot. "Who are you?"
"Gnhh," the warrior replied, spitting in Aefin's direction defiantly. The fact that he only succeeded in reaching his own frost-encrusted chest didn't detract from the sentiment of the action. Aefin jabbed at the man's stomach in response, eliciting a groan of pain.
"I'm not in a very good mood," Aefin said, "and thanks to your friend having got my blood-fire pumping back there, I'm clear-headed enough to make sure you stay awake until you answer all my questions. Understand?"
There was no vocal response, but the man's eyes seemed to reluctantly acknowledge Aefin's superior bargaining position.
"Right," Aefin continued. "So what did I do? Why were you chasing me?"
The warrior raised an eyebrow.
"You took from our tribe," he replied. "You crept amongst our tents like a treerat, you entrail-scraper, and robbed us."
Aefin blinked at the man blearily.
"You'll have to be a lot more specific," he replied regretfully. "Did I stay with your tribe, first?"
The man wrinkled his nose in disgust.
"We unwittingly accepted you amongst us," he admitted. "Guised as you were, our chief so no reason not to extend his great hospitality to you."
Aefin nodded. That was usually the way. People could be so nice.
"He shall not make the same mistake twice," the warrior continued.
"More's the pity," Aefin replied, nudging absently at the man's stomach as he did so. "Anyway," he continued over the resultant groan, "I presume that he sent you two after me? Are you all?"
The man's lip curled.
"We came of our own accord," he said. "My brother could not conscience allowing you to escape, knowing of what you took from him."
"He should've stayed put," said Aefin. "Nothing I stole could've been worth his life."
The warrior narrowed his eyes.
"Do you not remember what you took?" he asked, incredulously. "You flea-ridden drunkard! You wormed your way into the tent of his betrothed!"
"Oh," said Aefin. "Well that's different, then."
He flipped the spear around so that the ivory tip pointed downwards.
"Still," he said, "you shouldn't have come after me."
The weapon plunged through the briefly-protesting warrior's chest. A short muscular spasm later, the man lay still. Aefin bent over the body and retrieved his axe from the man's gut. He wiped it clean on the man's leggings and stood up. Huh. For the life of him, he could not recall charming any woman into her tent. Recently, that was. Then again, he was still having trouble remembering the events of the past few days.
He shuffled his way back over to the snowdrift, and his pack. He bent down to examine the long, leather-wrapped package strapped to the back of it. He traced his hands down its entire length, checking that nothing was amiss. No, it was fine. He'd have to check it more thoroughly in the morning. No light for it at the moment.
He picked the pack up. Right. Time to find shelter. His boot nudged something in the snow and he glanced down curiously. Oh for spirits' sake. He picked the jar of stuzsh out of the snow, brushing the sides clean and checking the insides. Hmm. A fair amount left...
He wavered for a minute or two, then glanced back at the corpse behind him. Maybe not tonight, then. His head was already hurting, come to think of it. Time to find some shelter. As he reached the treeline of the forest once more, he reached inside his pack and withdrew the thick, multi-purpose blanket from within. Even in his current state, he could smell the musky, wet odour that it issued. He ignored the blank, accusing gaze of the skull at the bottom of his pack.
"I'm getting to it," he muttered, as he set about creating a shelter. Some people just bugged you.
His pack formed a flat pillow beneath the canopy of his hurriedly-created tent. Huh. Still felt like something was missing.
He glanced around as he took off his cloak. Nope. Still couldn't figure it out. Oh well, it could wait till morning. He led down on the hard ground. The last thing he thought before he drifted off into slumber was that he'd never thought to ask the name of the warriors' tribe.