Blood in Snow (15 page)

“Damn it!” One of them rubbed his bare hands over the dying flames. “If it ain’t this blasted snow and accursed cold, it’s wolves. I say we let the filthy rebels have the damned place. It’d serve them right.”

“Can’t you make a better fire than this?” a second snapped.

“Not with no wet wood,” a third answered. “Everything out here is either frozen or covered in snow. It won’t burn proper-like.”

Edmund stood nearby in the blackness, sword drawn, waiting for them to go to sleep. The men’s horses snorted and stamped as though sick of the cold as well.

“With no supplies,” the first man grumbled, “there’s no sense in us even being up here. I say we make like the others and head back south. There’s no glory up this way anyhow.”

“Nothing but snow and cold,” the second agreed, wrapping his face in a blanket until only his eyes could be seen.

“And all these damned hills,” the third added. “I feel like a blind rat trapped in a maze.”

They fell silent, each hunched over the fire so close they were practically in the sputtering flames.

Eventually the first man spoke again, this time in a near whisper. “I’m serious.” The other two looked over, firelight reflecting off their bluish skin. “I say to hell with orders. Let’s hightail it southward. Those lads guarding the supplies had the right idea.”

“Those lads will be strung up for treason when His Majesty catches up with them.”

“Catches up with them?” The first man laughed. “He can’t even find a blasted city! We’ve ridden here, we’ve ridden there. Nothing! Not this Rood, not a village, not a stinking farmhouse. We’ve seen nothing but hills and forests and rivers and ruins. It makes me think this whole damned place is haunted or something.”

The other men tried to scoff, but their faces were too cold.

Edmund stepped closer.

Their horses snorted again, but the men took no notice.

“What about the smoke?” the second one asked. “Can’t you smell it? There has to be a settlement somewhere around here, and when we find it, we’ll have all the hot food and warm beds we’ll need.”

“And women,” the third added. “I didn’t come all this way not to have a little fun with the farm girls! I hear the women up this way all have big breasts!”

“Oh, stop talking about big breasts already,” the first said, disgusted. “Besides, we’ve followed smoke before. Remember the ride along the river? Look how that turned out.”

“Nothing but dead bodies,” the third muttered.

Come on! Go to sleep. At least one of you needs to get some rest.

“There’s something mighty wrong up here,” the first went on, “and I don’t want any part of it. How can an entire city just up and disappear?”

“Maybe there aren’t any cities here. Not big ones, at any rate.”

“All right then,” the first countered. “What about villages? Or farms? Or ranches? These lands are supposed to be good for sheep, and we haven’t seen a damned thing other than giant deer!”

“They’re called elk.”

My god, they’re never going to lie down! They’re going to talk all night.

“Whatever. They’re queer, like everything else up here. I tell you we should leave.”

“You can l-l-leave if you want to,” the third said, teeth chattering. “I’ll turn you in and get a reward. I should just turn you in now.”

“Now, n-none of that,” the second said. “We’re all just cold. No use adding worse to bad. This campaign will be over soon enough, I say, and then we’ll have something to tell those who stayed behind.”

Oh, forget it!

Edmund shuffled into their camp.

“If you want to leave,” he said to the startled men, “then leave.”

One of them leapt up and drew his sword; the other two remained on the ground, cold fingers fumbling with their hilts.

“Put down your weapon,” Edmund said, as commanding as he could with numb lips. “I’m not going to kill you.”

The standing man-at-arms tried to laugh, but the wind stole his breath.

“You won’t kill us?” He eyed Edmund’s black blade. “Th-th-there’s three of us against y-you!”

“Is that what you think?” Edmund gave his practiced smile.

The men looked about, scanning the shadows. Their horses snorted. One reared.

“Sheathe your weapon and I won’t kill you, though you might freeze to death before long. We need you to run an errand for us.”

“Wha-what, what do you want?” the man with the drawn sword asked, shivering.

“To deliver a message to your King.” “Message?” the other two said together.

“Tell him I’m willing to help him and his men, to give him warm clothes and supplies, if he agrees to leave the Highlands for us to govern as we see fit.”

Again, they tried to laugh.

“And who are you to give orders to His Highness?” asked one of the men on the ground.

“I am Edmund, elected Governor of the Highlands.”

They glanced at each other.

“Governor?” one repeated. “Wh-what, what the h-hell is that?”

“I kn-know who he is,” another said, reaching for his sword. “He’s the one-eyed r-rebel who killed the lord in these here parts, Lord Nevel or something.”

“Norbert.” Edmund pointed his sword at the standing man and stepped closer. “And I didn’t kill him. We have no lords or nobility in the Highlands; everybody has a say, and they’re free to do what they like.”

The standing man snorted, but the other two seemed to be thinking.

“What do you m-mean?” one of them asked. “How do they have a say?”

“Everybody got to vote and I was elected to run things for two years. After that, somebody else can be governor. We all voted on the rules and laws.”

They don’t care about this. Tell them about the land.

“One of our laws is if you work and help the community, you get land in return.”

This got even the standing man’s attention. His sword lowered a bit. “What do you mean, ‘you
get
land’?”

Edmund waved a hand at the surrounding darkness.

“We have m-more land than we can possibly farm. If settlers come and help rebuild this region, they get as much land as they can tend—for free. But they first have to help rebuild the towns and share their crops for two years.”

The three men gawked.

“Never mind all of this,” Edmund said. “Go tell your King what I’m offering. If he agrees to leave, we’ll give him supplies. If he doesn’t, he and his men … all of you … will freeze to death. This snow is nothing compared to what’s coming, and it hasn’t even begun to get cold yet.”

The men peered at the darkness above as more flakes drifted down amid leafless branches.

Scare them. Make them see what they’re in for if they stay.

“You’ll get frostbite soon,” Edmund said, “if you haven’t already.”

“Frostbite?”

“What’s that?”

“Your fingers, toes, ears, nose … anything exposed to the cold will become numb—painfully numb.”

The men looked down at their blue fingers then back to each other.

“They’ll hurt for a while,” Edmund went on. “Then you’ll have difficulty moving them. They may even start to itch or burn.”

“Burn?”

“Shut up and listen!”

“Your skin will get so cold,” Edmund said, “it’ll feel like it’s on fire. Then you won’t feel it at all, like your hands and feet and face are just blocks of wood or clay. Frozen.”

The men flexed their fingers as if trying to restore their feeling.

“At first, this’ll feel good because the pain will be gone and you won’t feel as cold.”

“But …?” one of the men said. “What then? What happens?”

Edmund shrugged. “You’ll start losing fingers and toes, maybe your ears and your nose. Anything that gets too cold.”

“Lose them?”

“He’s lying.”

“No, he’s not! I’ve heard about that from people who’d been trapped in the mountains. I’ve seen it. Their fingers are all black.”

“If they don’t fall off completely,” Edmund said. The men stared at their exposed fingers. “Have your horses started to die?”

“What? Horses? No. No, not yet. But they’re getting hungry.”

“They will. And when they’re too weak to carry you”—Edmund nodded to the three skittish horses tethered to a tree—“it’ll be too late for you to survive. Without supplies, you’ll need to be able to ride south quickly enough, and without horses …” Edmund shrugged again. “Y-y-you’re, you’re done for.”

One horse stamped and thrashed its great head, steam snorting from its flaring nostrils.

“Even with supplies,” Edmund went on sadly, “you’ll freeze to death soon if you stay out in the open like this.”

The three men were seasoned soldiers, no doubt veterans of past battles, but fear had nevertheless crept into their eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Edmund said sincerely, “this isn’t your fight; I understand that. You’re just doing what you’re told, following orders. But if you don’t leave these lands and go south soon, you will freeze to death. Look at your clothes, your blankets. The wind goes right through your cloaks, doesn’t it?”

One man gave a shivering nod.

“Well, if you stay, you’ll freeze. No nobility can change that, and it’s just a matter of time.”

Again the men exchanged frightened glances.

“I, I can’t feel my fingers,” one said. “My, my left hand, I can’t feel the fingers on my left hand!”

“Keep moving it,” Edmund told him. “Keep the blood flowing. And go back to your King’s camp. I’m sure they have better fires going than this.”

“We have to get out of here,” another man said.

But the man still standing with the drawn sword seemed doubtful.

“Let me ask you this,” Edmund said to him, “have you tried to urinate recently?”

All three looked at him abruptly.

“You don’t mean …!”

“You’re not saying that …!”

“It happens”—Edmund grimaced—“frequently.”

The men looked down at themselves and then back to Edmund.

“Will you deliver my message to the King?” he said.

“Y-yeah, yeah. We’ll tell him.”

“He won’t like it; he won’t leave until he has your head. No offense or anything.”

“None taken,” Edmund replied. “Just give him my message. If he wants you all to die in the snow, I can’t stop him. I just feel sorry for all of you. This isn’t your fight.”

Chapter Nineteen

The next morning, Edmund emerged from a sheltered hollow between two hills. He’d managed to build a tolerable fire the evening before and had gotten some sleep, but his days of camping outside were almost over. Snow had fallen throughout the night and had smothered the entire world beneath a foot-and-a-half-thick blanket that glittered like tiny grains of glass.

Judging from the ash-colored western sky, more snow was on the way. But it wasn’t snow that would save Rood; it was the cold, and it needed to get much colder to force King Lionel to take Edmund’s deal. Cold enough to kill.

Edmund turned eastward.

Trails of black smoke still streamed up to the heavens, which meant the King’s army wasn’t advancing yet.

Edmund braced himself for what needed to be done, shouldered his pack, and trudged toward the lines of smoke, snow making a muffled crunch under his snowshoes with each heavy step, bitter air burning his lungs.

Cold and alone, he plodded on for hours, weaving between white hills and keeping to the leafless trees as much as possible. Occasionally he’d come to streams and rivers. The smaller ones had long been frozen solid, but it would take a few more days before the larger rivers and lakes would be safe to tread upon.

By mid-afternoon, it had begun to snow again, the biting wind making it difficult to see more than a few feet in any direction.

His exposed skin burned; his forehead felt frozen into place. He wished he had more moose fat, but there was nothing he could do other than to keep going. He had to end the King’s search before hundreds of people died.

Somewhere nearby, he could smell smoke. Great black clouds rose on the other side of the hills before him.

You’d better hope this works.

If it doesn’t, it won’t be my fault all of those men die. It’ll be the King’s. I have enough blood on my hands.

Legs aching, head down, Edmund climbed the hill, fighting through the whipping wind.

Upon reaching the rocky summit, he peered into a narrow valley shielded somewhat from the churning snow. Skinned moose and deer and elk roasted over scores of campfires.

Well, they aren’t starving.

No, but they’re freezing.

He watched the King’s men huddle around their pitiful fires, thin cloaks and blankets wrapped about their shoulders and faces. Even the horses looked miserable; penned in rope corrals, they stamped and pawed at the snow, puffed steam from their nostrils. More than a few lay on their sides, nearing death.

It looks like they’ve eaten some of the evergreens.

Poor beasts. They don’t deserve this.

Edmund scanned the dismal camp, trying to count the men visible. He’d expected a thousand but guessed that there were no more than five hundred spread out along the valley.

Maybe some have already started to desert.

Or die.

He surveyed the camp again.

At the center stood a large red-and-gold pavilion with smoke rising through the hole at its top. Men in platemail guarded its entrance, unmoving, as if their armor had frozen solid. Several people had emerged from the pavilion. Edmund recognized one of them immediately.

King Lionel was wrapped in several fur-lined cloaks and deer pelts, while all around him, men shivered, still in their autumn attire.

Ass.

The King and his company made their way through the camp, stopping to talk with various groups of men who approached. Lionel seemed agitated, gloved hands moving this way and that as if swatting away gnats; his company huddled together for warmth.

Edmund studied his surroundings through the blowing snow.

The valley’s hillside was sheer; the King’s riders couldn’t come up that way. They’d have to swing a half mile to the north or south until they reached gentler slopes. That would give Edmund the time he needed to escape.