The Snow Queen (18 page)

“Offer no resistance,” she had hissed to Kaari, before the men converged on them and seized the halters of the deer. She need not have bothered. Kaari was frozen in her saddle. They were in a tremendous hurry to get off the road, it seemed, for they did not try to pull the two women from their mounts, but instead, loped off in a body with the reindeer in their midst. Annukka feigned the same terror that Kaari was showing, but only so that she could memorize the way back to the road—which turned out to be absurdly easy, as the robbers fled south until they struck a watercourse, then followed it all the way to their camp, leaving a trail a child could follow.

The robbers had not been in these parts for long. They had only a rough camp, fires and bedrolls, some stockpiles of weapons. No tents, nothing near enough to weather out the Winter, which meant they had only two recourses when the weather turned. They could find a steading and take it, or they could find a cave and make it Winter-proof. Either was possible, the former was a risk, the latter took labor.

Annukka rather thought they would try the former. Somehow she couldn’t see this lot doing anything that required work. They hadn’t even set up latrines or a proper cooking area.

She and Kaari were roughly pulled from their saddles, the deer were stripped of tack and packs, and everything was gone through as the leader took possession of Kaari. Annukka wondered if he would rape her there and then, and from her expression, so did Kaari, but instead, he merely hauled her over to a rough seat made of a log, pulled her beside him and began alternately drinking and pawing her. Annukka was tied by the hands to a tree while the rest of the robbers went through their things.

“What’s this trash?” one snarled, looking through her bags of herbs. He was about to throw it aside, when another stopped him with a whisper and a glance in Annukka’s direction. She narrowed her eyes at him, and he whispered something more. The herbs were set roughly aside. There was some hilarity as they tried on her clothing and Kaari’s, none of which fit, and which also was set aside with the herbs. There was fighting over the bedrolls and more fighting over the weapons and anger when they got down to the bottom of the packs and found not even a single copper coin.

“Make dinner, old woman!” the leader shouted, one hand up Kaari’s shirt. Kaari was a stone, but Annukka assessed the situation and judged that she was in no danger of rape from the leader, at least. He was too drunk to perform at the point, if she was any judge.

Hmmm.

She held up her tied hands mutely, and with a snarl, the same man that had tied her up now cut her loose. It was clear at that point that none of the robbers intended to lift a finger as long as she was around to do their work for them. So she gathered together everything that looked like a foodstuff or a cooking implement, then she hauled wood and water to the camp. She did her best to leave her own stores intact, although she did use some herbs and juniper berries for flavoring—not because she liked these bastards, but because she wanted to disguise the taste of the meat she found that was starting to turn. If what she was planning didn’t work, maybe she could give them all the flux with this stuff.

She started stew with that bad meat, some turnips and carrots they must have stolen from some farmer, thickened it with rye flour that could only have come from the same source. It still smelled just a bit wrong as it cooked, but they all sniffed appreciatively when their tasks took them near the pot. She supposed that since they themselves smelled so rancid, they probably couldn’t tell there was anything wrong with the stew. She wasn’t worried about Kaari; as petrified as the young woman was, she wouldn’t be able to eat a bite.

She mixed up flatbread to bake on a griddle improvised from a shield no one seemed to want. She kept her eyes and ears open.

This was not a band that had been together for very long. Even robbers could develop camaraderie and a kind of family feeling; this lot showed none of that. And more telling, there was a great deal of grumbling going on over how the leader had handled the division of the latest spoils. Kaari had excited lust and avarice in equal portions, and the fact that the leader had taken her for himself and clearly had no intention of sharing her had made no few of these men very angry indeed. They were even angrier when they realized that the women had carried nothing of any great value with them, meaning that Kaari was the only “prize” to be had. Add to that, there were some who, unlike the leader, were clearly not happy that he had risked the wrath—and curses—of a Wise Woman, and you had the situation where, after the sun had set and the food was ready, the men did not gather together to eat in company, but rather sat apart, in twos and threes or by themselves, glaring at their leader who sat with a terrified Kaari, her clothing pulled all about as he pawed at her breasts and fumbled at her thighs.

Meanwhile, Annukka had not been idle.

Into the wood of the fire she built, into the food she prepared, she sang spells. Dissension, rebellion, discontent and rancor. Jealousy, envy, greed and anger. She built on the unhappiness that was already there, fed it and nurtured it. With every cheerful crackle of the flames, with every whiff of smoke, waft of cooking meat, her spells seeped into them. By the time she came around to serve the men, the pot of resentment was seething and ready to boil.

She brought the food around first to the chief and Kaari. “I like not the look of your men, warrior,” she said, handing him a bowl of stew and the best piece of the flatbread.

He pulled his hand out from under Kaari’s shirt and aimed a cuff at Annukka’s head; she evaded it. “Mind your tongue, hag,” he spat. “What have my men to do with you or you with them?”

“Only that, without you, who would protect us, my apprentice and I?” she whined. “They look at her with greed in their eyes and at you with envy. Have a care for daggers in the dark—”

This time, the blow he aimed did connect. Kaari gasped and made as if to run to her, but the man grabbed her and pulled her roughly back beside him. “Mind your place, slut,” he growled, and commenced eating his stew. He offered Kaari none, which was just as well, seeing what was in it.

Annukka had rolled with the blow and made a great show of getting slowly to her feet as if he had hurt her greatly, when in fact she had gotten worse blows from her reindeer butting or kicking her. She hobbled away to serve the rest of the men.

As she brought them their portions, she made sure that they heard her muttering curses against him under her breath, but interspersed with those curses were little suggestions only they could hear, things that were not meant to register with them consciously.

“You would be a better, a fairer leader than he is. You are smarter, tougher, more
cunning. You would never risk the curses of a Wise Woman. You would get her on your side and she would work her magic to bring you wealth and more women. And you would have the wench all to yourself. You should have her, you should be the leader. You deserve it. What has he done that he should get it all? He’s not as good a fighter, his luck is bad and he keeps all the best things for himself.

Their minds drank in her words, they ate her spells, and when they were all served she brought around the beer and wine in whatever containers she could find. But she had also worked a greater magic on the drink, making it a hundred times more potent than it had been. And with every flagon, mug and helmet full, she whispered into their minds.

You should challenge him. You should challenge him. You should challenge him….

And on the third round—they did.

She was not sure what started it, for her back was to them at the time. It might well have been that the fool finally decided he was going to try to have Kaari in front of them all, rather than just fumbling with her. All it would have taken, as raw as their tempers were, was a flash of breast to set them off. All she knew for certain was that one man began shouting. And suddenly the entire encampment was a battlezone.

She had been ready and had planned to get to Kaari, but before she could turn around, Kaari was at her side.

“I th-thought I g-guessed what you were about,” the young woman stammered, still white-faced, as they began to back slowly toward the cook-fire. There had been a man there guarding what she did, making sure she did not make off with a knife. Now he was gone, part of the melee, which was swirling around the erstwhile leader.

As soon as they reached the dying fire, she equipped them both with wicked long blades that she had been eyeing for some time. “Cut anyone who comes near us,” Annukka said grimly. “Go for the throat. They will be too drunk to defend themselves, I think.”

Kaari did not argue. Several hours of being mauled by a brute, with the promise of worse to come, was enough to make even the gentlest of girls prepared to take matters into her own hands.

With one hand she held the knife; with the other she tried to put her clothing into order. Annukka’s attention was not on her, but on the fighting and on what she was doing about it.

She sang a song so old that she didn’t know the exact meaning of the words, only that she had been told it was a song of battle-madness intended to make men fight against their enemies until they were cut to ribbons. And since every man here seemed to consider every other man his enemy…

With ax and sword and knife, with sticks of wood still ablaze from the fire and with their bare hands, they tore each other apart.

It didn’t last very long; it couldn’t, not when you had men who were gouging out eyes and hamstringing each other. The leader went down first, with the killing blow being any one of a dozen lethal strikes aimed at him. Then they turned on each other.

At that point, Kaari hid her face. Annukka, on the other hand, watched the melee like a carrion crow, and whenever it moved, leaving behind wounded in its wake, she darted in with her long knife to finish those left behind before they could even realized she was bending over them. This wasn’t revenge; this was survival. There could be no one left standing at the end of this but herself and Kaari.

And so it was.

Although she was white-faced and nauseous, Kaari was made of sterner stuff than Annukka had guessed. The young woman helped Annukka harness the deer and the two women used them to drag the bodies far from the camp and leave them in a heap for predators and scavengers. There was enough there to keep anything that showed up busy for one night at least; once morning came, she and Kaari would be gone.

One fire burned high that night with all the garbage Annukka threw on it. The bandits’ clothing, the little they had not actually had on their backs, was not worth trying to save, so rank it was. But Annukka went carefully through everything she found and by the time the camp was cleared up, she had found enough copper and silver coins to make a small pouch bulge, two decent bows and the arrows with them and a lot of other weapons. She looked at the swords, but discarded them; neither she nor Kaari knew how to use them properly. The knives, however, would be of plenty of use, and she intended to have them concealed all over her person.

There was a lot more in the way of food gained than they had lost, too. And, surprisingly, a tent. It looked as if some attempt had been made, then abandoned, to set it up. It made her snort with contempt, although it did not surprise her, to see that these fools had not been able to assemble a simple tent.

It was probably midnight by the time the camp was clear and the two of them had sorted out what was useful and what was not.

“Mother Annukka,” Kaari finally said, swaying where she stood, “I c-cannot—”

Annukka barely had the strength to push a bedroll toward her with a foot. “We both must sleep, and trust to the wolves out there to eat the feast we have left them and let us be.”

Kaari did not even have the ability to do more than nod, drop down on the blankets and fall asleep. Annukka only waited to be sure that the fire was banked before doing the same.

“ALEKSIA,” ELENA SAID SLOWLY, GAZING WITH CONCERN OUT
of the mirror, “I hope you are not taking on more than you can handle.”

Aleksia chuckled dryly. “So do I. This is why I am telling you just what it is that I am doing, so that if something does happen to me, the rest of you will know that this Witch was good enough to remove me and be able to take steps.”

“I had rather that didn’t happen,” Elena replied, with a frown.

“Only because you would probably have to become the Snow Queen, since you are the one best suited to the job, temperamentally speaking.” Aleksia laughed at Elena’s expression. “Oh, yes, and then where would that handsome Knight of yours be?”

“If that happens, I swear I will go to the Under world and bring you back, you wench,” Elena growled. Then her expression sharpened, and she peered closely at her fellow Godmother. “I just gave you an idea, didn’t I?”

“Indeed you did! And a very good one!” Aleksia waved her hand at the mirror. “I promise, I will keep you informed every step of the way. Keep my book open in your library. Instead of writing down only what I
have
done, I will write what I intend to do as well, so that you have a good record. Now, I am going to go see what preparations I need to make to do this. It is going to take quite a bit of trickery on my part.”

After checking on Kay—still moping—and Gerda—still being led in circles by the Bear, and getting some good, sound advice on standing up for herself in the process—and making sure that there was nothing
else
that needed her attention—evidently The Tradition had decided she had enough on her plate—Aleksia retired into her library.

The Snow Queens had been in residence here for a very, very long time, and had been the only Godmothers to cover an enormous amount of territory, and the library reflected that. As Aleksia contemplated the huge, circular room that was the true heart of the Palace of Ever-Winter, she was struck once again by the likelihood that the first of the Snow Queens had been a true Fae, a real Fairy Godmother and not a human at all.