Above the Snowline (41 page)

BOOK: Above the Snowline

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Three days later Balzan climbed laboriously through the snow in short, sliding steps. It had set in snowing at daybreak and it now snowed hard. I had left Eyrie village some hours ago and entered the forest. Here, under the trees, I was sheltered from the worst of the flurries and the snow on the ground was shallower too. But the woods were so dark I could hardly see: the weight of snow topping every sagging branch sealed the thickly meshed canopy above me and barely any light penetrated. There was no sound either, no birdsong, only the faint hiss of powder snow trickling down between the boughs. Occasionally, deeper in the gloom, a branch of a tree shed its load and rebounded, sending snow cascading off the branches around it.

I rode with my bow on my knee and an arrow at string - aware of the trees on either side, wondering if Rhydanne could really see better than me in this murkiness. Flickers of movement here and there were only tricks of the light. The trees were ranged like waiting sentinels, bulges of snow eerily resembled shrouded bodies, and I passed no tracks of animal or human. In fact, as I rode, the snow filled Balzan’s own trail and left no trace of our passage.

I had a terrible thirst. My water bottle, tucked in my coat lest it freeze, was already running low. Balzan was suffering too: he huffed and blew like a blast furnace and shook the snow from his mane as he walked.

My thoughts turned to Jant and I began to doubt whether he could be in love. He had never been able to shake off his street urchin days. It would be more his style to crave Dellin as a woman beyond the grasp of his lust. He was in many ways still a teenager - with the power of the Castle to back his vanities. Perhaps this was simply another way of seeking attention.

Then again, his very immaturity may be the cause of his passion. He is used to having so many women that Dellin’s inaccessibility must have unsettled him. That could tip him into love. He’s accustomed to women throwing themselves at him. He sleeps with them all and flies away the following morning. None has a chance of marrying him and gaining immortality - he is having far too much fun as a bachelor. And, by Murrelet, he attracts hundreds: gold-diggers and honest admirers alike. I suppose he treats them well. He adores their conversation and wine flows like the Gilt River. He prefers their company to that of men and flits from one to another, whereas I suspect he considers men more of a threat.

Once he had grown tired of the novelty of sleeping with aristocratic ladies he discovered the warrior girls of the front, then back he winged to Hacilith, to chat with the maids at the apple carts and chestnut stalls. At no time is love ever mentioned. Whatever happened to him in his gangland days has given him skin thicker than an Insect’s carapace and taught him to raise defences like shield walls. However, he might be vulnerable inside, through lack of practice.

So, does he love Dellin? Love is both the antithesis of friendship and friendship gone mad. Love strikes without reason and cannot be controlled; you can never resist it intentionally and remain unharmed yourself. Seven decades ago I wanted to be together with Savory, but I have to admit I hardly knew her. How much less does Jant know Dellin!

In fact, this forest was much like Savory’s, although they never have snows this deep nor slopes this steep in Cathee. As I rode, the silence and pines crowding the track brought back my memory of my wedding night. The murderers escaped into the forest; I ran after them but lost them among the trees. The other villagers fled to their houses and barred their doors against me. They wished me gone and indeed, having buried my wife, I did leave, and I swear on the Sunburst Throne I will never see Cathee again.

Jant thought I was stupid. Six months later he landed on my windowsill with withering contempt and a letter from the Emperor. He explained that as Savory’s husband I could have continued the blood feud. No wonder the Cathee had been terrified of me! A word to the Governor of Hacilith, another to call up my archers, and I could have burned their village to the ground. But why cause more bloodshed and waste of life, heap agony upon agony? I was not vengeful, I was devastated. I wanted the blood feud to end with me, if that meant it would be over for good. I stayed in my palace, half a year whirled by, and the only thing that brought me out of my shell was that pointed letter in the Emperor’s own hand.

The track wound higher and higher in relentless hairpin bends, and now large outcrops covered with ice rime and undersized pines showed where rock was forcing through the snow. The forest gradually lightened: there was more open ground between the trees and snow flurried down as thickly as before, settling on my shoulders and coat skirts. Tendrils and wisps drifted between the trees and across my path, greying-out the pines, thinning again so they regained their colour, then thickening into solid cloud. I had no choice but to ride into it, and I could no longer see anything but a shifting grey wall a metre or so in front of Balzan’s muzzle.

The forest seemed to end, and we climbed a completely white slope. The only sign of a path was a trench worn in the snow and about every fifty metres Balzan’s hooves crunched by the top of a black post, the last few centimetres of wood projecting from a drift shaped like a sand dune. I was riding on the inside of a grey sphere, the cloud puffing and bulging towards me, drawing back leaving gossamer fragments, blistering out and sucking into itself, throwing up twisted fingers of mist to the sallow disc of the sun which was backlighting everything bright grey. It smelt of a myriad droplets of numbingly cold water; it caught in my raw throat as if I was riding through a room full of freezing steam. All the time the snow still fell.

Balzan and I cast a vestige of a shadow, which moved along on the snow on our right like a miserable little cloud. My breath and Balzan’s crisp tread were the sole noises in the intense silence. I could be the only man alive in all creation, riding the only horse.

This is the highest altitude to which I’ve ever climbed. Every step is a first - which shows that no matter how long you live, a hundred years or fifteen hundred, you’ll always find yourself doing something new. As the penetrating cold grew yet more biting I hugged my coat tightly around myself and wished fervently I was back in Foin Hall. Yes, I may have spent hundreds of New Years in my manor, but there are always sufficient variations and new combinations to make it never boring. The immortals who, tired of life, go searching for ever more outré thrills, exploring Darkling, for example, generally do end up dead.

I could tell the cloud was thickening further as less sunlight filtered through, disorientating me with the illusion that twilight was drawing close. The shadows deepened, giving me the impression they were deadening sound, as my mind tried to rationalise the silence. No sound from outside, only my breathing; I am alone. But I’m not alone, am I? Someone is walking beside me, a little behind me, just out of sight. It must be Jant, coming to meet me. I called to him and listened . . . Nothing but silence returned. I hesitated, and there he was again, walking just outside the scope of my vision, behind my right shoulder, a familiar presence in the palls of mist. I grew convinced he was dogging me and finding it privately very amusing. No, I assured myself, it’s a delusion, but I couldn’t shake the clear impression he was there, walking as steadily as Balzan, at the same pace and with no emotion. ‘It’s not funny!’ I said aloud, and glanced behind me. Nothing. Nothing but thick bands of mist blowing across the track like the ghosts of a thousand wolves.

What do Rhydanne
do
in this all day? What a horrible life, by god; I would trade it for that of a dumb beast. I rode on, every fear that crossed my mind projected on the colossal canvas of the clouds - the thirst, the silence, and my companion just out of eyeshot who walked and walked, forever at my side. I could not dispel the illusion, and eventually I simply had to put up with it. By god, I felt sympathy for Raven - he was cut off from everything, even sanity! No wonder he had built a little manorship on his crag, for what else was there to keep a man from madness? If I was in his position I would do the same.

Balzan raised his head and whinnied as if greeting another horse. I stared ahead - the weirdly dulled sunlight still had the strength to sting my eyes - and perceived a movement too rhythmic to be the swirling of cloud. It gradually darkened into a blurred form, swaying towards me. It approached, closer and darker still, and resolved into the figures of two men on horseback, riding with their heads bowed. All was colourless, shades of grey and white, and cloud strands blew in front of them, curling across the track.

I called, ‘Good morning!’

The men made no answer; their hooded heads made no motion and their mounts kept the same slow trudge.

I reined in Balzan and hailed them again: ‘Is this the way to the manor?’

The first man turned to his comrade and raised his arm, beckoning as if to say, ‘Pay no notice to this fellow.’ The shape of his muffled body, a pack on his saddlebow and the slow-stepping horse passed some distance away and gave no answer. Another illusion. I shuddered, then suddenly infuriated I flexed my bow and shot an arrow into the top of his pack.

He halted immediately. Good, so they are men and not hallucinations. I flicked the lid of my quiver open, drew out another arrow and nocked it.

He turned his horse and walked it towards me, followed by his second. He was a curious man, with a scarf pulled up over his mouth and hat down over his brows. His face in the slit so produced was pale, but a huge, plum-coloured bruise covered one eye and half his cheek. He carried a bow with an arrow at string, a Lakeland type with a draw weight of about fifty kilos. So, granted, he was strong, but his bow was shabby and the wax worn off around the grip, the string frayed at the tips and he carried no spare. It looked as if he did not take a great deal of care of himself.

‘Is this the road to the manor house?’ I asked again.

‘Yes.’

‘Maybe you will show me the way?’

‘We’re on the lord’s business.’ He gruffly slipped my arrow out of his pack and threw it on the ground as if to say, ‘Lucky shot, but if we weren’t in a hurry it would be the worse for you.’ His friend was gazing at me. Awe crept into his face and he removed his arrow from string. He had guessed my identity. He dismounted and knelt. I inclined my head to acknowledge his obeisance but Blackeye just scowled at me.

‘What business is that?’ I asked.

The awed man faltered, ‘Carrying a message from Raven.’

Blackeye spat, ‘Get up! Why kneel to a highwayman? What’s wrong with you?’

I made Balzan step forward, to give him a view of the Castle’s sun in tooled leather on the saddlebags, the strength of my longbow, Balzan’s matching livery in burgundy cordovan, the gilded stirrups shaped like bows, and my immaculate white thoroughbred himself, worth more than the compounded wealth of both their lives. I lowered my hood and asked, ‘Who is this message for?’

Blackeye stared angrily, and who I was slowly dawned on him too. He rocked back in his saddle and gave a great exasperated sigh. I was angry, starting to shiver and my head ached from the terrible cold. I was in no mood to be messed around by mortals. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Lightning the Archer. In Carniss. Visiting Raven. Now, you with the patch like a sheepdog, tell me where you’re going.’

‘A communiqué. Can’t say. Raven’s orders . . . my lord.’

‘And you are?’

‘Snipe. His steward.’

‘Then show me to your master’s keep and I will ask him myself. ’

‘We must deliver it!’ He kicked his horse and it leaped away, vanishing with him into swirls of mist. His friend remounted but sat as if frozen, watching me with a petrified expression. We waited a short while and the snow obliterated our horses’ prints until, again, we could be the only two men in the entire world.

‘Tell me,’ I prompted.

‘My lord Eszai, the Rhydanne are killers! Raven sent us to . . . meet . . . some people. To warn them of the danger and bid them hurry.’

‘Some people?’ I mused. ‘What sort of travellers would be climbing on a day like this, on the eve of New Year’s Eve?’

He was saved from answering by the return of Snipe, who had not trotted far downhill before he realised he was alone. He looked daggers at his friend: you had better not have told him
anything
.

‘Take me to the keep,’ I ordered.

‘But, my lord . . . Oh, very well. Follow us . . . and stay close. We’re due for an avalanche and anyway the weather can turn in an instant.’

‘I thought this
was
bad weather.’

He laughed bitterly, pulled his scarf up over his nose and, still laughing, rode into the cloud and disappeared.

BOOK: Above the Snowline

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