The Dread Wyrm (Traitor Son Cycle) (35 page)

But the archbishop leaned down from his horse. “Shut her up,” he said. “Your bastard goes to the fire with you.”

“This is your God of mercy, my lord?” Desiderata asked, her voice gentle. “To kill the child with the mother? The innocent child?
The heir of Alba
?”

“God will know his own,” the archbishop spat.

The King was having trouble remaining mounted. A pair of guardsmen came and supported him. He tried to speak, but de Rohan waved, and the men-at-arms led his horse towards the Royal Pavilion.

De Rohan lingered. “Count your remaining breaths,” he said. He smiled.

Desiderata felt liberated. She’d seldom been so calm—so strong. “You enjoy making hell come to earth, do you not?”

De Rohan’s smile, if anything, grew. “It is all shit,” he said. “Don’t blame me for it.” He breathed on his vambrace and polished it on his white surcoat.

She met his smile with one of her own. “It must be terrible,” she said with the clarity of the edge of death. “To be both selfish and impotent. How I pity you.” She reached out a hand—not in anger, but in sorrow.

He flinched. “Don’t touch me, witch!”

She sighed. “I could heal you, if you gave me the time.”

“There’s nothing to heal!” he spat. “I see through the lies to the truth. It is all shit.”

“And yet from your shit grow roses,” she said. “Burn me, and see what grows.”

Now he backed his horse away. “No one will save you,” he said.

She smiled. Her smile was steady and strong, and utterly belied the fatigue graven into her face. “I am already saved,” she said.

The Wild

N
ita Qwan and his two companions, Gas-a-ho, the shaman’s apprentice, and Ta-se-ho, the old hunter, spent one of the most comfortable winters of their lives—even a life as long as Ta-se-ho’s—in the halls of N’gara. Food and warmth were plentiful. So was companionship. Gas-a-ho passed in one winter from a gawky boy with aspirations to the rank of shaman to a serious young man with dignity and a surprising turn of mind. Tamsin, the Lady of N’gara, had passed much time with him, and he had benefited from it.

Ta-se-ho had also benefited. He looked younger and stronger, and when the sap began to move in the trees, and when the preparations for war began to grow serious, it was he, despite his age, who sat down in the great hall and suggested that they leave.

“I have heard matrons and shamans agree that the early spring is the most dangerous time to travel,” Nita Qwan said. In fact, he sought nothing but reassurance. His wife would bear their first baby soon, and he wanted to be home.

He also wanted to be away from the endless temptations of the hall—flashing eyes and willing companions and the new seduction of fame. Nita Qwan the warrior. Nita Qwan, the Faery Knight’s friend.

Nita Qwan, Duchess Mogon’s ally.

Ta-se-ho nodded as he did when someone younger made an excellent point. “This is true. The soft snow of spring is the most dangerous snow. Heavy rain on snow is when those walking in the Wild die. Nonetheless—”
The old hunter sat back. “It came to me in a dream—that the sorcerer’s people would have an even harder time. The Rukh? They would die faster than we, as the ice breaks and the waters move. His men? His allies? Without raquettes, they are dead. Even with them—this is a time of year when the People can travel. Not safely, but safer than our enemies. We know the ground and the snow and the little streams under the rotting snow.”

Unannounced, Tapio, the Faery Knight, appeared and sat. His recovery from his duel with Thorn had been rapid, but it had left its mark—his face was thinner and one shoulder sat higher than the other.

“Your people, oh man. They will need to move quickly. Sssilently.” He flashed a fanged smile. “Before Thorn can ssseize them.” He nodded to Ta-se-ho. “You think well, old hunter.”

“I had a dream,” Ta-se-ho said with a slight inclination of his head. “I was reminded by ancestors that we used the snow of spring to escape
you.
”

Tapio showed his fangs mirthlessly. “Perhapsss. Timesss change. Enemiesss change.”

“You killed many of the People, Tapio,” Ta-se-ho said.

Tapio raised a hand and moved it back and forth as if it was a balance point. “And now I will sssave many.” He looked around.

Duchess Mogon, utterly graceful despite the bulk of her big reptilian body, came and squatted down. Lady Tamsin was with her.

She waved a hand, casually, and a glowing curtain of purple fire descended on them.

Mogon gurgled. “It is time,” she said, as if she was answering a question someone had put to her.

“I had a dream,” Ta-se-ho said.

Mogon nodded. “My hearing is not limited to the tiny fraction of the world humans hear,” she said. “Nor am I so very old. You wish to move across the spring snow.”

Nita Qwan thought of his pregnant wife. “He proposes that we move the Sossag people
now
.”

Mogon shook her head. “My people are all but useless at this time. Until the sun warms the hillside, we have only our human allies to protect our fields.” She showed all her teeth. “Not that we are impotent. Merely that we do not go far abroad.”

Tapio looked at Nita Qwan. “Can you do it?” he asked.

Nita Qwan shrugged, his hands in the air. “Ta-se-ho says we can do it,” he said. “I am not really a great warrior and I know almost nothing about moving at this time of year, except that it will be brutally hard and very cold and wet.”

Ta-se-ho laughed. “When has the Wild been anything but cold and wet for our kind?”

Tapio nodded. “I will prepare you sssome toysss, that may make your journey easssier.”

Nita Qwan bowed. “The Sossag people thank you.”

Mogon snorted. “I will go home in a week or two, when the lake begins to break up,” she said. “Bring the People to me. We will be strong friends.”

“But not your warriors,” Tapio said.

Nita Qwan and Ta-se-ho nodded. “We know what to do.”

The journey around the inland sea was hard. It was so hard that, later, Nita Qwan thought that all his life as a slave had been nothing but a test for the trek.

There were only the three of them and three toboggans. Tapio and Tamsin gave them several wondrous artifacts; a clay pot that was always warm, day and night, and whose warmth seemed to expand or contract depending on where it was—on the toboggans, it was merely warm enough to warm hands, but in a small cave, it was like a large fire. Each of them had mittens, made of a light silky stuff by the lady Tamsin and her maidens, and the mittens were always dry and always warm. Gas-a-ho had a small staff with which he could make fire.

“I made it with Tapio’s help,” he said modestly. “He and the Lady taught me so much.”

Even with these items and several more; even with the best and warmest clothes made by all the Outwaller women at N’gara and with blankets provided by the Jacks and the good wishes of every man, woman, and creature in the fortress—even then, the trip was horrible.

Each day, they walked across soft snow. Their snow shoes plunged into the snow as far as their ankles and sometimes as deep as their knees, so that half an hour into the day, walking was already a nightmare and after eight hours, it was like walking in deep mud. Every stream crossing was treacherous, and required the careful, patient removal of the raquettes, the plunge up to the groin in deep old snow so that each man could cross, rock to rock, on now-exposed streams. Toboggans had to be carried across, and every day the streams rose. Ponds and small lakes were still highways for rapid movement on the ice, but the ice would break soon.

They went as fast as their muscles would allow.

Camps were made in places no sane man would camp in summer—on exposed rocks, in the snow cave created by two downed evergreens, under looming rock faces and in the middle of stands of birch. Fires sank into the snow and vanished unless supported by a lattice of sodden logs. They slept on their toboggans. No one bathed or changed clothes.

Ta-se-ho smoked constantly. But he would not let them give in to fatigue, and when they had turned the corner on the endless swamps and soft snow of the N’gara peninsula, he led them along the edge of the inland sea, where for two days they made rapid time, all but running on the ice.

Until the ice broke and Nita Qwan went in.

They were close to shore, near the end of a day of cutting across a big
bay, so far from land that they had passed terrifyingly close to the ice edge and the water. And late in the day, safe, apparently, Nita Qwan had turned aside to piss in the virgin snow, taken a few steps off the beaten snow where their toboggans had passed…

He felt the ice give, saw the snow darken, and then—faster than he’d have thought possible—he was in, all the way in, the black water closing over his head.

He had never been so cold. The water, when he went in, gave a new definition to what cold might be. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t see. He panicked instantly.

And then he was out again.

Gas-a-ho pulled him out with one mighty heave on his blanket roll, which was buoyant and high on his shoulders. Gas-a-ho had run to him, thrown himself full length on the snow, and grabbed the pack. Ta-se-ho had his feet.

The ice on which he lay made noise, a low grumble like the rage of a living thing, and Ta-se-ho pulled them both back, and back again, and then they were all crunching through the swift-breaking ice over shallow water that did not immediately promise death.

Ashore and exposed to the wind, drowning seemed kinder. And now Ta-se-ho was like a madman, driving them on, making them run, walk, and run again, over and over, along the exposed shore. To their left, the inland sea went on, apparently forever, in an unbroken snowfield. To their right, atop bluffs that lowered over them, were snow-covered trees and naked black spruce that went on to the horizon, a wilderness of trees that seemed to cover all the earth.

When Nita Qwan thought he must be near death, the old man stopped them in a cove that offered some protection from the wind and pulled the cover off his own sled. He took the pot from his sled and carried it to an exposed rock at the base of the tall sand and stone bluffs and placed it gently there.

Almost instantly, it began to give more heat. Nita Qwan fell to his knees.

“Strip him,” Ta-se-ho said gruffly.

“My hands are still warm!” said Gas-a-ho in wonder.

“The greatest gift the Lady could give.” Ta-se-ho did not smile. “He’s far gone. He went all the way in.”

Nita Qwan heard them only from a distance.

He merely knelt and worshipped the warmth.

The wind rose, and icy rain began to fall. They stripped him and only then did the two Outwallers begin to collect materials for a shelter.

Unbelievably, as soon as Nita Qwan was naked, he was warmer—much warmer. He began to wake up.

Ta-se-ho was tying gut to a stake. He looked over. “Did you see the spirit world?” he asked.

Nita Qwan was having trouble speaking. But he nodded.

Ta-se-ho shook his head. “I dreamed all this. You do not die.”

Nita Qwan looked at the old man. “Do you?” he asked.

The old man looked away.

But by sunset, all three of them were warm enough, and dry. A roaring fire lit the edge of the coast and the bluffs behind them, and they made a chimney of hides and the fire came up through it, drying Nita Qwan’s clothes and moccasins.

The next day they killed a deer. Ta-se-ho tracked the buck, and Nita Qwan put an arrow into him at a good distance, earning him much praise from the other two. The old hunter nodded.

“In this snow, I couldn’t run down any of the deer’s children,” he said. He walked with a spear in his hand, but he never seemed to use it as anything but a walking staff. It was a fine spear, made far away by a skilled smith, and the old man had taken it as a war prize in his youth.

Like the spear, the deer was thin, but the meat was delicious, and they ate and ate and ate.

“How much farther to the People?” Gas-a-ho asked.

Ta-se-ho frowned. “Everything depends on the weather,” he said. “If it is cold tonight, we will risk the inland sea again. We must. This is not just for us, brothers. Think of all the people coming back this way. Every day matters.”

Morning saw them rise in full darkness. It was snowing, and coyotes bayed at the distant moon. Tapio had provided them with three beautiful crystal lights, and with the lights they were able to pack well and quickly, but even with light, there were numb fingers and badly tied knots. Each morning was a little worse—each morning, the damp and cold seeped into furs and blankets a little further. Nita Qwan’s joints ached and he was hungry as soon as he rose.

He looked at Ta-se-ho, who bent over, touching his toes—and cursing.

“I am too old for this,” he said with a bitter smile. Then his eyes went out to the hard surface of the inland sea. “Pray to Tar that the ice holds,” he added.

Nita Qwan watched the ice while he ate some strips of dried venison and drank a cup of hot water laced with maple sugar.

“Let’s go,” muttered Gas-a-ho.

Ta-se-ho stood smoking his small stone pipe. He smoked slowly and carefully and watched the lake and the sky, letting the younger men collect the last camp items and pack the toboggan and tying down the hide cover.

“Ready,” Gas-a-ho said, sounding tired already.

Ta-se-ho nodded. He threw tobacco to all four compass points, and the other two men sang wordlessly. Nita Qwan went onto the ice carefully.

But the ice held all day. The clouds were high and solid grey, and snow fell for most of the morning, and then the wind came in great gusts
towards evening. They camped in the spruce hedge along the shore, a cold, miserable camp made habitable only by Tapio’s pot. There wasn’t enough wood to make a fire big enough to warm a man. But the pot warmed them, and warmed their water and their venison, and they slept.

They woke to fog. It was deep and bleak, and very cold. Despite the freezing fog, Ta-se-ho led them out onto the ice and again they walked, and walked, heads bowed, backs bent against the strain of towing the toboggans at the ends, walking as swiftly as the snow and ice under their feet would allow them. The fog was thick and somehow malevolent.

Twice that day, the ice cracked audibly, and Nita Qwan flinched, but in both cases Ta-se-ho seemed to commune with it and then led them on. He was aiming for a distant bluff that towered above the lake, visible when the wind shifted the fog, then lost again as the fog came back and covered the sun.

The old man made the other two men uneasy by taking the shortest route, which was across the great north bay of the inland sea. They walked almost thirty miles, the hardest day so far. With the intermittent fog and the flat surface of the inland sea, the day took on a mythical tinge, as though they were travelling across one of the frozen hells that most of the Outwallers feared. The presence of the lake under their feet, the groaning of the ice, the odd sounds in the fog…

From time to time the old man would stop, and turn around. Once he stopped and smoked.

To Nita Qwan, the day seemed endless and the fear increased all day—fear of drowning, fear of being lost. When the fog covered them they had no path and no landmarks, and yet the old man kept walking, barely visible a few yards in front.

Ta-se-ho stopped for the fifth or sixth time.

“Is this a break?” asked Gas-a-ho. He began to drop his pack.

“Silence,” Ta-se-ho said.

They were perfectly still.

The ice groaned, a long, low crunching sound that came from everywhere and nowhere in the frozen, fog-bound hell into which they’d stumbled.

“Something is hunting us,” Ta-se-ho said suddenly.