Snowbrother (11 page)

"Defense has
always
been within custom," Narritanni replied heatedly, then forced himself to calm. "So has aid to our kindred. That is
enjoined
on us by the Way. And not everyone in Newstead has returned to the Circle; there are live prisoners. Would you let them be slaves? Blinded and chained to millstones, or sold to the Valley merchants?"

The elder subsided, silent but unconvinced. Well, he had not expected to make conversions. Missionary work
was
for others. "Those of you who feel you cannot do this thing, at least do not hinder us." Perhaps a third of those present left. By custom, they would not actively oppose the majority. The leavetaking seemed as much a spiritual as a physical act.

"Well, at least most of you are going to be sensible," he said. "How many will come? It should be a goodly number, this being winter." In the warm season many would have been faring about, or doing farmwork that could not be delayed.

"Perhaps eighty, I think," said one. "Not all are of our way of thinking, and of those some will be ill, or too old, or pregnant …"

Narritanni pulled thoughtfully at his snub nose, set in a typical wide, flat Minztan face.

He could count on perhaps twice that from smaller settlements within reach, but the timing would be more difficult.

"You've wealth to spare, though?" They should have, with Garnetseat's trade and craftsfolk. They nodded. "Then offer rewards for the reluctant."

That brought a gasp of shock. He might have been
suggesting eating the dead or setting a forest fire or killing animals for sport.

Patiently, he began: "You've no objection to fighting in self-defense?"

"No, but—"

"You don't think it's wrong to go help the dwellers in Newstead who've been attacked?"

"Of course not, but—"

He let a hint of irritation creep into his voice. "Then why is it wrong to help others to do what is lawful? This will take time, and some of us are going to return to the Circle rather than our homes: our kinfasts will suffer more than grief, they'll lose those hands and skills. Perhaps some will hold back for fear their kin-mates and children will suffer. Why shouldn't we reassure them?"

"Yes, but fighting for
pay'?"

In the end, they agreed. There was little poverty in a Minztan village: no one need go hungry or cold except in famines when all suffered. But there were those who had little more than was necessary to face another year of labor, even some who lacked the dowry most kinfasts demanded before allowing marriage-in. And the numbers of such had been increasing in recent decades, as population built up and foreign trade became more important. Few would seek battle merely for goods, but there would be waverers for whom furs and food and tools would tip the balance. That was another lesson he had learned, that to desire the end was to desire the means to achieve it. If you were not willing to do what you must, then you had never really wanted it at all.

Morning dawned gray with low clouds, the cold less bitter but carrying a hint of damp, an omen of snow to experienced eyes. Narritanni looked to where Leafturn stood, leaning negligently on his ski poles, and met calm, unreadable friendliness.

Nearly a hundred villagers had gathered to join the rescue party, stoutly dressed in their winter-travel gear, long skis on their feet and hunting weapons in their hands; on his instruction every one had a tree-felling axe thrust through their packroll. Breath misted from them, but less noise and talk than might have been anticipated; a few came shyly to the Adept to have their weapons touched, cleansing the steel. The commander could feel their mood, compounded of fear and excitement and determination; he weighed it, found it good. These were tough, hardy men and women, used to long journeys and living out in rough country; and they were all good shots. It was the lack of weapons and harness and skill in close-quarter combat that worried him, and the lack, as well, of discipline. They were willing enough, but simply not used to a swift unquestioning obedience that was outside their day-to-day experience.

"Hear me," he called out. A few at a time, they fell silent. "We go on a sacred mission."

The word actually meant something more complex, implying naturalness, an active intervention to restore the rightful and accustomed Harmony of the world. It was the term used to describe cutting diseased timber, or culling a deer herd that grew too quickly, or appeasing angry spirits that brought bad weather.

''The land will fight for us, against despoilers who know nothing of the Harmony. We can move faster here. We know the ways of the woods. But fighting is an art and calling which I've studied. Think of it as raising the roof beams of a building: if we pull together, in unison, to the chant of the work leader, everything will come together, strong and joined."

He linked his fingers and held them up, twisting and tugging. "If we act at cross purposes, the timbers can break free and crush us." It was a little daunting to have to repeat such basics. But his people had traditionally fought skulking in twos and threes when they fought at all, striking and harassing with techniques adopted from their hunting methods.

"So listen when those of us who follow the Seeker speak. Even if what we say seems to make no sense at the time, don't stop to argue or ask the reasons." That might save lives, if they could learn to do it. Some might, but he would still have to explain any plan carefully before ordering them into action. Which meant he would have to keep it simple.

"And now let us ask that our actions be taken into the great Harmony, in the fullness of the Circle."

They bowed their heads, falling into meditation and reaching out to touch their neighbors. Narritanni strove to empty his mind of plans and numbers and contingencies, to feel himself one with the land and folk: it was well to remember the purpose of the fighting and striving. Then he hooked the curved toes of his boots into the ski straps and pushed off across the silent white expanse. The first soft flakes drifted down as the others followed.

Ting-ting-ting
! The sound of a smith's hammer echoed through Newstead, iron on hot metal.

Shkai'ra heard the belling from the enclosure of leather ropes where the remount herd milled. She had been spending the late-afternoon hours with her horses: currying, checking hooves, braiding their manes. That was needful not only to keep them in good condition, but to cement the deep bond between rider and horse that was life and death in war. Besides that, it was one of the few times a Kommanza could afford to love without reservation or distrust.

With a happy chuckle, she pushed aside a soft muzzle that nuzzled at her face and strolled idly through the lanes of the village. Two days had taken the edge off its strangeness, but that lent an extra interest as eyes saw through the alien patterns to focus on detail. Roofs were wood shingle, high and steep-pitched, with jutting beams shaped into flowers and branches laden with berries and the heads of doves with eyes of colored stone. The houses themselves rose three stories, the upper levels often joined by enclosed walkways.

There were many windows of real glass. She wondered at the display of wealth; Stonefort itself had only two such.

Construction was stone to knee height, then massive logs cut flat on their upper and lower sides and left gently curved on the outer: some of the timbers were carved in low relief with swirling abstract patterns picked out in paint, and she supposed there would have been more, if the settlement had lasted. For all the massiveness the overran effect had an airy lightness, compact yet uncrowded; it was obviously incomplete, but you could sense how the finished village would have been, not just a collection of buildings but an artifact in itself. Less than two years old, Newstead seemed to have grown like a tree from the soil that bore it. The thought of the labor that had gone into the project was daunting.

She ran fingers over the join between two balks of wood—almost seamless, and held in place by the huge weight of the building as well as by pegs. Minztans had an almost instinctive affinity for wood; cut, shaped, laminated, rendered down for tar and synthetics, it was the substance of their lives. Musing, she drew her flute and began to play, a wild slow skirling. Her first reaction to Newstead had been that it was simply an easy target: poorly sited for defense, and badly built. Her own people would never have erected something so small, or easy to burn.

It's like
… a
tune
, she thought.
But of no music we know
.

The concept was satisfying. Her own reactions had been puzzling her, and the Kommanz were not an introspective folk. The simile made her less uncomfortable. Still, she would be glad to be back on the grass sea. Even the fangs of a midwinter wind blowing three thousand treeless
kylickz
from the Westwall mountains to Stonefort would be welcome. Her eyes ached from staring at distances that were not there; it was not natural for the horizon to be so close. And the ever-present forest made her feel as if something were always about to pounce, a continuous low-level crawling between the shoulderblades.

It was then that she realized what she had been playing: the Song Against Witches. That brought minor irritation. The Mek Kermak's-kin were descended from the Mighty Ones.

Even if she was not fasted into the kin, not fully adult, she had been born to it. The Ztrateke ahkomman would guard their own blood, and the Sun their home looked down on the forest as well as the plains.

The smithy was a long, low building detached from the rest. Minztans did not worry as much as her people about fire arrows, but sparks were sparks. A wide stone chimney jutted up through roof overtopped with stone slabs. Before the door were two pillars: on the left a half-human beaver holding a rose in one paw and a sickle in the other; on the right a woman with the head of an owl and wings wrapped around a child that held trustingly to one feathered pinion. Above the door itself was a symbol Shkai'ra had noticed again and again: a circle cut into halves by an S-shaped curve; one half was black, the other golden, and each half had a spot of the other's color in it.

A bored guard nodded as she entered. Even so, Shkai'ra touched the lucksprite at her belt as she walked into the smithy. Metalwork was powerful magic, involving the sacredness of weapons, and you could never be sure if ill luck was going to burst free of the mysteries and spirits chained in the metal. Even shamans felt it; Shkai'ra had long noticed the care they took to avoid cold iron.

Inside was a floor of gravel, and walls hung with a
variety of incomprehensible tools. A treadle-powered leather-and-wood bellows took up most of one side; the forge and anvils were in the center, and workbenches holding vises and a hand-powered lathe filled the other walls. The skylight let in ample light for work, but the glowing charcoal still gave the room a reddish, smoky cast. It was hot, with a smell of scorched metal, glowing stone, and heated wood, oil from the quenching bath and the dusty scent of dry gritty rock beneath her feet.

Maihu stood by the anvil, pounding on a hot iron shape. Sparks spattered on the long leather apron she wore. Holding up the piece of steel, she decided the final quenching could wait. It was just too difficult to get the temperature right without expert help. Her lips tightened. Those hands lay dead, or penned like cattle in a barn. Mostly, she had wheedled permission to come here to get away from those accusing eyes, working on some of the multifarious repairs they needed, that any large group would generate. It had not done any great harm to tell what she had told; the Kommanza would have torn it out with iron and twine from someone soon enough. And it was necessary to make her captor relax wariness enough for her to do what she planned.

Bitterly, she wondered how much that was a self-lie, to soothe her own spirit. Her plan was a forlorn hope, at best. Still, trader hardheadedness told her it would do scant good to get herself pushed back into the prisoner herd, or to excite enough suspicion to start the westerners working on her with knotted cords and heated metal. Pure luck, perhaps, that no one among the captives had let drop enough to arouse their captors' superstitious fury.

Or perhaps not. The plainsfolk did not know enough about her people to know what questions to ask, and under their ingrained suspiciousness they had less pure curiosity than Minztans. They made little idle chatter, and few of them understood enough of the forest tongue to follow whispers or grasp subtleties.

She laid aside the workpiece, turned, bowed. Shkai'ra perched cross-legged on a bench, hands on her knees and braids hanging to her waist. The great hood of her tigerskin coat jerked and a head popped out; black-furred, prick-eared, and yellow-eyed, the cat flowed out over her shoulder and down to her lap. He sat with his tail curled neatly around his feet and watched the Minztan unwinkingly.

"Come here," the Kommanza said. "You'd better get to know
Dh'ingun-Zhaukut-Morkratuk
." Black-night-Demon-Stealthkiller, the name meant: a torn, leanly huge and scarred and sleek. Maihu extended a band, halted at a warning hiss between bared teeth and laid-back ears.

"Friend, Dh'ingun," Shkai'ra said sharply in her own tongue, catching the beginnings of a lunge with a hand around the animal's neck. His temper was always uncertain, and not improved by a week in saddlebags or a sled. "Friend!" Reluctantly, the animal submitted to a quick, nervous pat. "He doesn't seem to like me, Chiefkin," Maihu said.

She was surprised that the Kommanz chieftain had brought a pet along on a raid; the steppe-dwellers were not much given to sentimental gestures. Of course, she reminded herself, there was as much individual variation among them as among any other race.

"Cats are more honest than humans," Shkai'ra said. "You don't smell right to him, I think." Reaching out, she slicked fingers down Maihu's neck, then licked them. "Your sweat tastes different from a Kommanza's. And Dh'ingun must have been one of us in another life, he's so eager for battle and slaying and blood."

She gave
a
fond smile and scratched the beast under its chin. Dh'ingun slitted his eyes in pleasure and purred.