Naming Bullets Read online

to civilization, but knew it measured at least fifty leagues. It would be a long journey back if he had to walk the entire distance. Ullu seemed perfectly content to let her greatdeer lope along, sampling bits of ground vegetation along the way, while he set a steady walking pace. He felt he’d be doing well to clear eight leagues a day across the open plains with naught on his back but the remains of his pride.

  “Elf go south, what work?” asked Ullu after a couple hours of silence.

  “I don’t know,” said Giryati. “Get another commission to make more maps, I suppose.”

  “Com . . .” Ullu stumbled over the word much as Giryati had over kohaddaween.

  “Someone who pays me to travel the wilds and make maps. Then I go back and give them the maps, and they make copies to sell to other people.”

  “Money first? No trade?” asked Ullu in surprise.

  “I make maps for them.”

  “Money first? No maps?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “Stupid Elfs.”

  “They trust me. They trust my reputation.”

  “Faw. Stupid Elf.” She pointed at Giryati, making it clear that he was the stupid Elf in question. “No maps. No money. No trade. Bad.”

  Giryati swallowed and didn’t immediately reply. Therein lay the problem twisting in his mind like a knife in the gut. He’d spent months cultivating a solid reputation as a mapmaker, and had received a decent commission from an enterprising merchant looking for new trade routes. But business, as they say, was business, and Giryati had spent most of the grant outfitting himself for the expedition. Ink was expensive; paper doubly so. And then there were the watertight cases, measuring and sighting equipment, rations . . . the list went on and on, and the crowns had flowed freely from Giryati’s purse. The merchant had invested an impressive amount of capital in him, and he had nothing to show but an apology.

  It could get a fellow indentured. Or killed.

  “I imagine there will be some trouble,” he said.

  “Faw. Elf hunt bad Elfs. Take maps.”

  Giryati scanned the horizon with a practiced eye, hoping to see a dust cloud or any other indication of horses in the distance. Nothing. But he did see something else of interest.

  “Trees.” He spoke aloud, as if by uttering the name it would make them more real. He shivered at the thought of them. Elves had a kinship with trees running back since before they measured time. It had been too long since he’d felt the grain of polished wood between his fingers and smelled the solemnity of hawthorn, the wisdom of oak, the playfulness of pine.

  Ullu looked at the dark green stain in the distance without interest and snorted.

  “We have to go there.”

  Ullu spat to one side.

  “So I can start earning my passage back.”

  “Stupid Elf.”

  “I’m not stupid, I’m trying to help. I can help, if we go to the trees. And what’s more, if those bandits passed anywhere near here, they would have stopped there. Maybe we can find their campsite, or a trail.”

  Ullu shrugged, but turned the greatdeer to face the distant grove.

  They drew closer, and Giryati’s nostrils pricked at the pungent scents of the strange Verigan trees. Soon he quickened his pace and in a few minutes was practically cavorting through the outer edges of the grove. The life infusing through him refreshed him more than a cool drink on a Summer day. He reached out to touch a bole, feeling the wisdom of ages flowing through his fingertips, and closed his eyes, leaning his head back and inhaling deeply.

  “Stupid Elf,” grumbled Ullu, plainly ill at ease amid the dappled shadows. “Go now.”

  “Shhh . . .” Giryati smiled. “There is plenty to learn here, Ullu. You just have to learn how to listen to the trees when they speak.”

  Ullu cocked her head to one side. “Ullu no hear.”

  Giryati turned. “There,” he said, pointing. “Deadwood was gathered. And here it was burned, and then buried.” He plunged his hand into the soft loam, so different from the hard sandy ground on the plains, and pulled out a charred piece of wood. “Three Elves slept here last night. Their horses grazed under these trees.” He looked around triumphantly. “And they left through that side of the grove, heading south.”

  “Trade maps?”

  “Certainly. They’re very valuable.”

  “Trees no talk Ullu.”

  “May I borrow your knife, Ullu?”

  Her eyes narrowed and she took a step back. “Why?”

  Giryati spread his hands. “I’m not going to hurt you, Ullu. I can make tools from this wood, but it will go much faster if I can use your blade. Mine is unsuitable for this kind of work.”

  Ullu considered this. “No tricks.”

  Giryati nodded. “No tricks, Ullu, but I’ll show you some more magic now.”

  “Good magic?”

  “A very good kind.”

  Giryati took the knife and began cutting and working pieces of deadfall quickly. Woodcraft was something that every Elf learned from an early age. The greatest artisans could make anything from it, from tools to blades to finely-wrought carvings decorating the King’s palace. He was no artisan by a great stretch, but in less than an hour Giryati had made a serviceable bow and fletched several arrows. “Now,” he said at last to Ullu. “I can hunt too.”

  “No talarin here.” Ullu looked up and down the bow, her hands on her hips. “Faw,” she grunted at last. “Good magic.”

  Giryati chuckled. “So glad you approve, Ullu. But you’re right, though. This grove is too small to find any real game.”

  “Talarin no stupid. No smell ahwhalas here.”

  “I don’t live and die by my nose.”

  Ullu wrinkled her own considerable proboscis. “Elf smell bad.”

  Giryati ignored her jibe. “I don’t suppose you’d want to camp here tonight?”

  “No.”

  Giryati sighed, touching the bole of a nearby tree. “Farewell, dear friends.”

  They departed the grove, heading south once more. Giryati’s spirits had lifted considerably, with a swing in his step that had been absent prior to their brief rest amid the trees. As they walked, he amused himself by twirling an arrow around his fingers. Ullu didn’t seem impressed by his dexterity, but he didn’t care. Just feeling the extra weight of the bow hanging over his shoulder made him nearly forget why he was even traveling under such unusual circumstances.

  Ullu raised a hand suddenly and pointed. “Gahaks.”

  Giryati shielded his eyes from the afternoon sun, scanning the distance. Finally he saw the dark specks in the sky circling. Vultures.

  An hour later and the sun touched the mountains to the west. Giryati and Ullu stood atop a low rise overlooking the object of the vultures’ attention.

  An Elf lay on the prairie grasses, his legs bent at an awkward angle, his chest a bloody mess. A horse stood nearby, grazing quietly. Giryati recognized him as one of those who had robbed him. It wasn’t difficult to imagine the series of events that laid him out. Giryati had seen enough bullet wounds in his lifetime to know he’d been shot, probably by his companions, and fell awkwardly from the horse.

  “He’s dead?” he muttered.

  “No dead. Gahaks no eat. No ahwhalas.”

  “He can’t have much longer. Look at that wound.”

  Ullu snorted. “Ullu see horse. Why no run?”

  “It’s probably trained to stay with a fallen rider. It might even be a war horse.” Giryati knew his words were wishful thinking. A true combat horse would be half again as large, shod with hardened steel, and standing over the rider instead of grazing to one side.

  He knocked an arrow loosely to the string. “I’m going to check him. Maybe he’s got some supplies.”

  The Elf coughed as Giryati’s shadow fell over him. The bullet hole in his chest made a hideous sucking sound with every shuddering breath. “You,” he whispered.

  “Me.” Giryati noticed a glint of metal in the setting sun and knelt down. He found a
pistol, fallen into some soft sand nearby, buried except for part of the barrel. He retrieved it, clucking in irritation at the state of the weapon.

  “Left you . . . for dead.”

  “Yes you did. Fortunately it was not yet my time to pass. You, however, don’t have long remaining. And I can’t say I’m the least bit sorry.” Giryati tucked the pistol into the waistband of his trousers. “You won’t live through this night. But I can at least speed your passing. It will be faster than letting the vultures and carrion-dogs feast on you while you still live.”

  “Yes . . . kill me.”

  Giryati twirled the arrow he held thoughtfully. “Not just yet. First you must tell me something. Then I will give you release.”

  “What?”

  Giryati leaned down close to the Elf. “Your partners. They are the ones who shot you?”

  The Elf coughed, bloody spittle leaking from the corner of his mouth. “Sons of . . . whores.”

  “Tell me their names and I shall free you.”

  Ullu sniffed the air and her greatdeer stamped a hind foot nervously. The horse whickered quietly. “Fast, Elf. Ahwhalas. Much ahwhalas.”

  “Their names. For a quick death.”

  With the sudden terrible strength of the dying, the Elf reached up suddenly, clawing at Giryati’s ragged shirt with his bloodstained hand.

  “Names . . . Lysonid . . . Baliele.” The Elf gurgled out the names, barely intelligible.

  Giryati raised the arrow over his head, point down, ready to send the dying Elf to his maker, but there was no need. The tortured breathing stopped and the clenching hand dropped to the ground, dead weight. Giryati reached down and closed the Elf’s unseeing eyes. A quick search of the body revealed nothing of use. The