Snowbrother (23 page)

Walks-with-Demon's palm thumped down on the head of his drum, a flat banging sound. "There was going to be a storm soon again anyway," he snarled.

"Isn't your magic as strong as his?"

"
Not stronger than the weather
!" he yelled, then pulled himself back to calmness. "If a man sits on a cliff over me and rolls boulders down, am I weaker than he because I can't throw them back? No human has the power to
cause
a blizzard—the force of it has to
come
from somewhere."

"Great wisdom; what use is it?"

He lurched erect. "This. The tree-fucker is better at weather-magic here, because"—his arm waved up—"the seasons are with him, a pile of energy standing over our heads waiting to be called down. And the land is… fitted to his hand, here. But war-magic, that I can best him in." His face writhed, mirroring the obsession within
. "And I will eat his
heart
." That was a scream.

Shkai'ra's foot nudged the twisted helmet. "Words," she rasped.

"Two can strive at that contest," he said. "Wait for the night. I will teach them to fear the dark."

He stalked away, stiff-legged. She turned to Eh'rik again.

"Something may come of that, or not," she said. At length: "We're on clear ground, now.

We can make good speed even in this weather." Another pause. "As far as the band is concerned, the scout was careless and got chopped by a stray gang of Minztans. This"—

she tapped the helmet—"was done with a warhammer." Which weapon the Minztans did not use, she thought but did not say,

Eh'rik shrugged and saluted. "The Chiefkin wishes," he said evenly. The warmaster was not an excitable person, even by Kommanz standards. He had lived longer than was common among his folk, and done enough deeds that he felt confident of a good rebirth, perhaps even into a chiefly kinfast next time. The shadow of a smile touched his gaunt, bony features;
after a lifetime of worship, it would be interesting to meet the gods face to face and see what was truth and what poet's lies. A pity if Shkai'ra did not make it back, he thought. She was the best potential leader Stonefort had produced in many a year.

"Is there anything else you wish done, Chiefkin?" he asked.

Shkai'ra tucked the helmet into a bag slung beside her sled. "Nothing, old wolf," she said. "What is there to do? Except pray."

The conversation outside the sled had been low-voiced, muffled by the wind, filtered out by the thick padding that itself hummed under the storm's lash. Maihu laid her head against the leather and used a certain skill to force ears and nerves beyond their natural limits. Not the Inner Eye, that would be too dangerous with the Eater near; this was passive, an enhancement of sensitivity rather than a projection. And it was at the limits of her skill.

At last, she could sink down the curved surface of the inner wall, weak with backlash and relief. The felt was scratchy against her skin; eyes and mouth watered as she fought nausea, and cold needles twisted in her ears. Sound levels faded back, but it came to her that hearing would never be quite as keen as before: there were reasons for the normal limits on the senses, and a price for overstepping them. Well, a person could only do as she might, then suffer what she must.

"Praise the Circle's Harmony," she said, drawing the sign over her chest. "All that is, is part of it."

No time for food, she thought, then made herself scoop up a little of the cold porridge.

The Eater's suspicions were locked on the Adept now, but it would take very little to reawaken them. Who should she try first? Yes…

Outside the sled she stooped to speak to Taimi where he lay between the runners in his sleeping bag. He was awake, his attention locked on something beyond.

She followed his eyes, puzzled. Half-visible, one of the Kommanz warriors sat his horse in the blowing snow; its knees were hidden in the groundwash, and the outlines of the rider were blurred. He was performing the endless practice drill that kept skills sharp; drawing his bow, first with the left hand, then with the right; then freeing his lance and twirling the long wooden shaft as lightly as a broomstick, striking at imaginary foes with head and butt, then flicking it up to stab overarm to his left. The horse moved and caracoled patiently, even in the weather that crusted mane and tail and coat with a layer of white that darkened as body heat melted it.

She frowned; the intensity of Taimi's gaze was disturbing somehow. She laid a hand on his shoulder. A hiss brought silence.

"Get the sled in order, kinchild. I have business." She forced a smile to lighten his somberness, and patted his cheek. "Don't fuss, now!"

Hurrying along to the slave herd, she flourished an empty sack at the guards who stopped her. "Chiefkin send," she said in broken Kornmanzanu. "Chiefkin order." It was enough; she was well known as the commander's personal servant by now. Luckily, she would not be expected to pick up more than a few words of her captor's language this quickly. Kornmanzanu and Minztan stemmed from the same root, but three millennia of isolation had changed them beyond recognition, and given the plains tongue a fiendishly complex syntax that was both rigidly positional and intricately inflected.

The captives were up, tying their blankets and spare
clothes into bundles. No hope there; the guards would certainly not let her near the files of prisoners, and it was forbidden for them to talk to each other anyway. From the look of them they had taken the night hard, especially the children. Minztans were used to traveling rough, but not through heavy snow without skis or snowshoes, and the Kommanz were forcing the pace ruthlessly. And despair made for poor endurance.

Maihu bent her head into the keening wind, forced herself to ignore the shivering misery she saw, and felt, a little, with the Inner Eye. One captive had been freed from every coffle to carry bowls of mush to the others. That was dished out from great kettles slung over fires, and those had been built near the sleds carrying the grain. Even through her excitement she admired the efficiency of the arrangement; the slaves were fed with the least possible waste of time, and the smallest possible number of them unbound. The Kommanza certainly knew how to manage large numbers of people, she thought. Of course, her mind added sardonically, between war and slaving they got plenty of practice.

She edged nearer to the supply sled. This would have to be handled very delicately, even with the storm masking sight and hearing. There were two guards nearby, one pacing beside the line of captives as they carried loads of parched grain to the cauldrons, the other on top of the sled, his bow in his hands. The woman carried a quirt with the lash wound around her glove, making a weighted club of the butt; Maihu could feel her readiness to use it. The archer stood easily, eyes scanning restlessly across the Minztans.

She was close enough to see detail, the rigid carved block of hardwood that made up the centerpiece of the wheelbow, the centerline cutout for the arrow, the massive laminated arms of the bow glued and pinned to the grip. A snapshooter's rack clipped to one side of the bow held four shafts, hunting broadheads that would slash open wounds as broad as paired thumbs. The weapon had a sight and rangefinder as well, but Maihu had learned enough to recognize the sniper's sigil lacquered onto his shoulder armor; that meant he could put twelve shafts a minute through a nine-inch circle a hundred meters away, from the back of a galloping horse.

"
Ik'da yoim, gakk
?" he called: What did she want?

"
Ofzara a-moi naikgutz
," she replied in Kommanzanu: The Chiefkin ordered fodder.

The Kommanza made no move, simply stared; after a moment she realized that was as much permission as she could expect. Swaggering to the head of the line, she elbowed the Minztan there out of his place. He staggered in surprise, straightened, his face tightening in scorn. It was Frussi, which was a stroke of luck; he was one of the few who had been near to being Initiate.

"Very energetic, after sleeping warm and comfortable," he spat. "You learn their manners quickly."

Turning, she dealt him a clout across the side of the face: mostly show, but hard enough to sting. In a loud voice she called out a few choice Kommanzanu insults; it was the first thing a slave would pick up. Grabbing him by the jacket, she swung him around against the supply sled, pretending to slam him repeatedly against the wood. Above there was a creak and click as the Kommanza eased the draw of his wheelbow back from his ear and relaxed once more. Maihu felt the skin between her shoulderblades crawl; seventy pounds at full draw, the bow would generate a hundred and forty with the pulley effect of the offset cams. Enough to send a shaft right through a horse and kill a man on the other side.

"Act up, you idiot!" she hissed. "Snowbrother!"

The guards were laughing, showing no sign of intervening. She had a few seconds, until their amusement was overcome by the need to keep the lines flowing smoothly. Greatly daring, she let her forehead touch the man's and
bespoke
him, less information-dense than speech, but there could be no doubting her soul-to-soul.

Frussi's face changed, through bewilderment to recognition and back to a poor imitation of his first hostility. Keeping her body between him and the Kommanza, she pulled an engraved flute case briefly from her jacket.

the Great Guardian of the Winter Woods
, she bespoke,
but only at night, don't tell anyone
you can't trust! for the rest, you're singing to keep up your spirits
.

"The Eater?" he asked in voice-speech.

"Distracted," she replied. "The Seeker's people, and an Adept with them."

He nodded without speaking and touched her wrists by way of acceptance.

"
Zteafakan
!" she yelled, then whispered: "Down, and yell as if it hurt."

She swept him off his feet and mimed a hefty kick to the groin. His scream was satisfying enough to bring a wider smile to the guards' faces. The man on the sled stepped out into space and touched down lightly, almost weightlessly, the bow still ready in his hands. She approached the two warriors, smiling, blinking against the snow blowing into her eyes, and bobbed her head.

"Oats?" she said brightly. "Chiefkin want, also, oats?"

The guard with the quirt half turned and whipped the butt across the small of Frussi's back hard enough to stagger him.

"Back to work, you," she snarled. "Or the next one will have you pissing red and tasty."

The man peered at her. "Did she say oats?" he asked. "Glitch, not three wits among the woodsrats, all the way from the steppe to the lakes."

"Oats over
there
," he said, struggling through in Minztan almost as bad as the Kommanzanu she had been pretending to speak.

His partner looked the Minztan over. "Well, wits aren't what the commander's bedding her for," she said judiciously. "Not bad hocks, but a little old for my taste. That shoat of hers, he's nicely toothsome. Plenty of room and comfort in that sled, too: a sleeping bag's no good, not even if it was Jaiwun Allmate, much less a sullen woodsrat. Easier for prongers like you, kinless sheep-raper."

Maihu stood, gritting her teeth behind the smile and face of blank incomprehension.

The man giggled. "Oh, it's nice to have space and light. Like to look into their eyes, then sometimes use a knife at the last moment."

"Extravagant tastes you've got, Dh'vik," the woman said with a smile. "Hoi, you'd better help her, she's lost."

For a moment, Maihu met the archer's eyes. This close, her perception still extended from her contact with Frussi, she touched the surface of his consciousness. And recoiled, shivering; she had been lucky.

Forcing her back to straighten, she walked off into the muffling snow.
Death fanatics
, she thought. Time would tell how they measured against the quieter resilience of her folk.

She wondered how amused they would have been if they knew her true Wreaking here.

Narritanni had kept the pursuit slow, drifting along behind the rear screen of Kommanz scouts. Still, the
pace they managed to force out of their motley caravan astonished him: a first estimate of twenty-five days to the steppe boundry was modified to sixteen, if they could keep the pace. He decided that without the slave train to slow the Kommanz troops most of
his
force would have had difficulty in keeping up at all. But two weeks or so left plenty of time to plan and to build up the information he needed.

The horse gave them the first inkling. They came across it at first light, standing head down and shuddering with exhaustion in a clump of bushes. The first Minztan to see it was a Garnetseat villager with little experience of steppe chargers. He tried to walk up and take the bridle. The animal raised its foam-lathered head and watched him, rolling its eyes. His scent was wrong, and that was enough. It made no move until his hand touched the reins; then the long neck shot out snakelike and great yellow slab-teeth sank into his shoulder. Much of what they gripped was tough leather and wool jacket; it raised the man high and shook him. Through his screaming, those watching could hear the sickening crunch of bone parting. Released, he flew through the air to land against a tree with shattering force, slide downward, and lie still.

A horrified onlooker raised her crossbow. That was a mistake; the horse had been taught what to do about missile weapons, and charged with a shrill bugling neigh. The bolt thudded home at the angle of throat and chest, a serious wound but not enough to stop seventeen hands of enraged equine avalanche. The Minztan was trapped by her skis and went down under the hooves. The bolt had raked the animal to the point of madness, and it stayed plunging and chopping over her corpse while the survivors shot it a dozen times.

Narritanni arrived while they were disentangling the bodies; very little was left of the woman but a bundle of sopping-red rags with ends of pinkish bone and gray loops of gut showing here and there. The Adept knelt by the man who lay slumped beside a tree.

At Narritanni's glance he removed his fingers from where they rested against the villager's throat and shook his head. Narritanni sighed.