Above the Snowline (33 page)
I closed my hand over cold metal and realised what I was holding. They hadn’t asked for the axe back. I rotated the shaft and examined its sharp pick opposing a narrow, serrated chisel, with a spike at the foot of the shaft. Metal loops at both ends held a long canvas strap. What a useful weapon, I thought. I’ll have this. I slung the strap over my shoulder and looked round.
Dellin was gazing at me . . . straight at me, with pleasure and appreciation glittering in her eyes. The Rhydanne around her seemed admiring, too. She smiled and skipped towards me. She pressed a beaker of vodka into my hands and gently guided me over to sit beside her in a corner, on some bear furs rucked and folded over a soft pile of cushions. ‘Well done!’ she said warmly. ‘That was worthy of a hunter!’
‘I
am
a hunter.’
am
a hunter.’
‘And so swift! Snipe didn’t even land a blow!’
‘You’re the swiftest I’ve seen,’ said Feocullan, and I felt incredibly grateful to him for a second. I said, ‘Listen, Dellin, when I was young I rounded up red deer hinds on the mountainside, thinking they were escaped goats which had somehow lost their horns. That’s how fleet of foot I am.’
She smiled at me. Now maybe I would learn their plans, I thought, but they wanted to hear from me instead. They treated me like a hero. They brought me cup after cup of spirit while I sat beside Dellin, acutely aware of her movements and turning her words over and over until they embossed my mind. I didn’t want to miss anything she said and I began to unsettle myself, wondering if any of her remarks were about me.
She was flawless, strong and wild. I hadn’t noticed her beauty before, and I suppose that was because I was used to elegant women, superficially elegant women. Dellin was so much harsher than they, but her poise was a type of elegance all her own. She’s like a sculpture come to life, I thought, light-headedly. I wanted to hunt the Rhydanne way with her. I wanted her to teach me. The wind on my face, setting my own strength and skill against the power and grace of the deer. Her skin smelt of pebbles; her hair of woodsmoke and gales. No doubt from sleeplessness and the vodka I began to feel light, as if I was floating. But a great energy surged through me. The little annoyances - the uncomfortable draughts and terrible vodka paled into insignificance. I had tapped an immense, calm, golden energy and I could go on for ever. I wish I had this energy while flying. Why now? Whether it was adrenalin from the punch-up, or because the Rhydanne had really, at long last, welcomed me as one of their own, I didn’t know, but I was certain of one thing: I didn’t want the night to end.
RAVEN
Next morning I woke long before the servant entered to light the fire. I rose promptly, for there is no point in lying abed with the same unpleasant thoughts about my brother circling in my mind time and again. As I dressed I planned how I would consolidate my grasp on the kingdom. I would love to set my brother’s corpse on the throne, dressed in his most regal finery, and taunt him: ‘You weren’t the only one born to the throne. Why did you presume to hold it without sharing it with flesh of your flesh, blood of your blood?’ Then, when I have satisfied my humour, I will cut off the hand that caused my scar and throw his body in the Rachis River.
I opened the curtains, unbolted the shutters and pushed them wide, breaking the film of ice that had formed over them. The drab blue sky around Capercaillie, by now a familiar backdrop, was just beginning to leak dawn, but the air seemed more still and silent than usual. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and looked up at the pine skirts of the mountain. Darker strands seemed to reach from the sky to the ground - a phenomenon of the clouds, perhaps? No . . . palls of smoke rising into the air. They rose calmly and sedately from several places in the forest, as if they were the last smoulderings of much larger fires, and each column reached to a third of the height of Capercaillie before its smoke levelled out into gauzy cloud.
Seven, eight, nine columns. One ascending from a hollow where the pines were still night-black, several by the trail where it crooked to meet the stream gorge, and one further away over the tree-covered shoulder of the mountain. One at every site where my prospectors had thrown up cabins or commenced quarrying. But why light such fierce blazes in the middle of the night? While I wondered, a lone horse walked out from the trees onto the snow, its saddle empty and its bridle dangling. Then I realised, and a horror like the cold stole into me as I watched the smoke from my people’s razed homes climb and disperse. The Rhydanne had retaliated.
OUZEL
After an uneasy night, the drama between Jant and Snipe had so worried me, I went into the bar to coax the candles alight. It was completely empty. Usually at least a few sleeping Rhydanne litter the floor, but this morning there were no bodies to step over - everyone had gone. No, not everyone; Jant was sitting on the cushions, half-lit in a shadowy corner, in exactly the same place as last night. He had wound a striped kilim around his shoulders, but although the temperature outside last night must have dropped to minus forty, the chill in the bar didn’t seem to bother him.
I circled the room, then stubbed out my taper, bent down and stirred the fire into life. Jant didn’t greet me. In fact, he hadn’t moved, head in hands and his wings half-open, resting on the floor.
‘Good morning!’ I enthused.
He removed one hand from his face and regarded me blearily. Dark shadows ringed his eyes, and they were bloodshot too, as if Snipe had given him a shiner rather than the other way round. In the gloom he was spectral white, and his hair all black tangles. Slumped in this manner, it struck me he looked much like my son in one of his welters of thinking too much. Nonsense, I told myself; letting superficial appearances fool you. He’s far too old to succumb to angst. But he did seem to be suffering some type of anguish. Maybe he felt guilty at having overstepped his authority. Perhaps he was regretting having beaten Snipe - if he had spent all week calculating how to alienate Raven and the whole bloody colony he couldn’t have done any better.
‘I’ve porridge for breakfast,’ I said. ‘If you’re in a rush, toast and sausage will be quicker.’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t want to eat.’
‘But you must eat! I’ll make you some porridge.’
He sighed rather dramatically, but an Eszai is an Eszai so I left him to his Empire-scale contemplation and went to pack faggots in the oven. I warmed a bowl of goat’s milk, stirred in oats and set it before him. He didn’t register it for a time, but I pressed a spoon into his hand and he idly began to pick flakes of ash out of the porridge with it. He sat head bowed and high-shouldered, like a vulture with no appetite, which alarmed me. You need good food to fortify you against the cold. I’ve never seen a Rhydanne anything less than voracious, and quite rightly so. Their lives are so demanding, they must keep their energy up.
‘Dellin and the others have gone,’ he said.
They certainly had. They had plotted and supped late into the night and Dellin had fallen asleep with Jant beside her. However, I think she had only been pretending because when he was deep in slumber she got up and roused the rest. They lit torches in the fireplace to light their way and dashed out. They left a tense atmosphere behind. I’m finally troubled about what might happen to Macan and myself. That girl hates Awians. She hates too powerfully for a Rhydanne, all in all.
‘They might return tonight, ha ha.’
He pressed his lips together: he didn’t seem so sure. ‘I thought I’d won her over, but she’d gone when I woke up. I expected to run with her today but, damn it, she’s going ahead with her plans and I’m not even part of them.’
‘Rhydanne are thoughtless,’ I said. ‘They come and go their own way.’
He traced a double S-shape in the air. ‘She let me lie close behind her, right here on the floor. Our bodies fit together well . . . I even put my arm round her, and she didn’t mind. We might have been hunting partners, but today she’s gone! Does she have more caprice than the worst tart in Galt or was she just using me for warmth?’
‘She probably didn’t intend to hurt you.’
He sprang to his feet and strode to the fireplace, whirled round to face me. ‘I’m not hurt! Don’t be ridiculous!’
‘Sorry.’
‘
Her
, hurt
me
? An Eszai? I’ve hardly any time for this. I must go and see Raven.’
Her
, hurt
me
? An Eszai? I’ve hardly any time for this. I must go and see Raven.’
‘My mistake,’ I said. ‘I’m glad you’re here to do business with Raven, because - ha ha - if by any chance you were harbouring feelings for Dellin, she would hurt you every single day. She can’t help it.’
He returned to the porridge and thankfully began eating with a healthier appetite. As he leant forward a pendant on a surprisingly sheer gold chain swung from his unfastened collar. It was a garnet double-sided seal on a finely wrought swivel, and I caught a glimpse of the Castle’s sun engraved on one side. I wouldn’t hazard to set a price on it.
‘Where do you think she’s gone?’ he asked, too nonchalantly.
‘I haven’t the faintest idea. I never know where they go. But, Jant, will you be staying here for long?’
‘Until I’ve prevented Raven carrying out his schemes.’
‘Good, because I feel safer with an immortal under my roof.’
‘Have the Rhydanne threatened you?’
‘Not directly, but the atmosphere couldn’t be worse. I haven’t traded so much as a snowflake since Dellin made her speech. And after last night I don’t think Snipe’s men will come here again.’
He paused, possibly reflecting on his part in our dwindling business. Good, I thought. Eszai have no right to beat up mortals, especially in my hotel. He was supposed to act as an adviser, not like a bloody gangster! I wanted him to get rid of Raven, not wreck my livelihood.
‘I wish I felt better myself,’ he admitted. ‘I’m just tired, though . . . Last night she was encouraging, then she left me. No wonder I’m perplexed.’
‘She has to hunt,’ I said soothingly.
‘Bollocks. I’ll buy her the best dinner you can offer. She can have the best Tre Cloud can cook. There’s no need to hunt.’
‘She prefers her way of life.’
‘And won’t let me join it.’ His wing nearest me flexed open a little and closed, and I noticed he had clasped bangles around its broad wrist. ‘I wanted to stay up all night, talking to her about anything and everything. In all her speeches I thought she might be hiding some sort of message for me . . . What she wanted me to do . . . Hmm . . . Maybe I said the wrong thing and put her off. Have you got any whisky?’
I fetched a bottle, poured two slugs into cups and he knocked his back. It gave him confidence, or at least a moment of clarity, because he leant forward conspiratorially. ‘I’ve never had this feeling before. Nothing as strong as this . . . I actually feel sick. Don’t tell anybody, will you?’
‘Who on earth is there to tell?’
‘Good.’ He nodded, one hand on the bottle. He knew his eyes were striking, and he was so vain he kept eye contact longer than normal, in a very mischievous manner. ‘Raven’s men - Snipe, Crake, all of them - say that although Awians and humans are people, Rhydanne are more like animals.’
Life is too arduous to waste time and energy by being angry. I felt my anger rising sure enough, but I laughed it down because no good ever comes of it, as he’d proved yesterday. ‘No, Jant. Don’t lose perspective by talking to the colonists, ha ha. Don’t let their stupidity sway you, when you were right in the first place. Rhydanne are the rightful occupants of Carnich.’
‘The Castle’s Doctor told me they were indigenous. She was interested in Rhydanne, so when I joined the Castle she studied me thoroughly.’ He spread his wing across his lap, plucked a broken feather and crumpled it, deep in thought. ‘She said Rhydanne could have been humans who came to the mountains long ago . . . maybe even hundreds or thousands of years ago . . . and the harsh climate changed them. The mountains altered them, a little every generation, until they were suited to live here. Whenever I drank too much, she tried to keep me on the straight and narrow by saying, “The mountains were your ancestors’ gymnasium. You’d never have won into the Circle without being so fit.”’
‘Ha ha! So Rhydanne are more than human!’
‘No. Neither more nor less, just different. Rayne said, “Everyone knows things gradually improve. The Castle shows us that. The Castle keeps the best of every skill, which always improves as better practitioners come to light. Similarly the best of every species survives, and people and animals grow to be the best match for their surroundings.” But Dellin . . . well, somewhere along the line Rhydanne lost the need to rely on each other.’
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