Mapping Winter

by Marta Randall

  MAPPING WINTER

  Marta Randall

  Copyright © 1983, 2019 by Marta Randall

  Marta Randall has asserted her rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published as The Sword of Winter in 1983 by Pocket Books;

  This completely revised edition first published in 2019 by Endeavour Venture, an imprint of Endeavour Media Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  For know this: there has been no step in human progress that was not bought at the price of a deep betrayal.

  - Alvaro Bonnard de Sietes

  Chapter 1

  The kitchen boy raced around a corner of the inn but she caught him easily. A benefit of long legs. She reached for his collar, hoisted him off his feet, and carried him struggling back to the yard. The innkeeper and his wife and a crowd of terrified village folk gathered at the inn’s door. They gasped together as she dropped the boy beside her horse. Traveler rolled his eyes but let her put her hand on his withers.

  “Fix it,” she said, furious.

  Another collective gasp. The kitchen boy put his shoulders back and glared at her, unrepentant, then came to the horse’s side. Murmuring, the boy began to loosen the girth.

  “When did you make friends with my horse?” Kieve demanded.

  He shrugged. “I can handle horses.” He slid his hand under the saddle blanket. Traveler stepped. The boy murmured and brought his hand out, holding a nasty twist of metal; two slender nails bent each around the other. He dropped it into Kieve’s waiting palm. It fell apart when she turned it over. He had probably made it himself.

  “He almost threw me.”

  The boy didn’t respond.

  It had been a shocking moment. She had swung aboard Traveler as she had hundreds of times, but this morning the moment her foot touched the stirrup the big black horse reared then bucked, and she vaulted off him. He quieted but still widened his eyes at her. The innkeeper and his wife had followed her into the yard and stood gripping each other, as townsfolk drew close as though called to witness. Kieve had seen a flash of bright gold hair disappearing around the corner behind them and took off after him.

  The boy crossed his arms and raised his chin, unrepentant. The Rider began to check Traveler’s tack, then reconsidered.

  “Unsaddle him and care for him,” she said. “Cleanly and well. He does not deserve what you did to him. Then come inside.” She gave him her most frightening glare. Again the villagers gasped. They scrambled out of her way as she carried her saddlebags back into the inn. The innkeeper groaned a little.

  “Rider! You are returning? You are come back? Welfred, get the, take the, open the, something!”

  His wife wrung her hands under her apron and gestured at the bench by the hearth. Kieve dropped onto it, as she had the night before. The villagers crept in and lined the walls, silent, eyes wide. The kitchen boy came in last and marched over to her, head high and back straight. He had shown spirit the night before, too. She leaned against the settle, surrounded by the black fur of her cloak, and stared at him.

  “What in the name of the gods am I going to do with you?” she said. He raised his chin. It trembled the tiniest bit. His hair shone golden under streaks of dirt. Kieve shook her head, annoyed with herself. Now she had to think of some suitable punishment, and she was already late.

  * * * *

  Last night, sitting her horse on the hillside, she had paused to look at the tiny, snow-bound village below. If not for the map, sketchy as it was, she would have missed it. Nothing advertised its presence: no semaphore tower on the mountain ridge, the path little more than a line beaten down by sheep and even that covered with early winter snows. The track widened as it looped down to the village, threaded between clusters of squat stone houses, passed the inn with its two lit windows, and became a hunch of stone over the river. The river itself shone like tarnished silver, broken where the millrace kept ice from forming. At the valley’s far side a smooth shoulder of mountain blotted out the stars.

  Cold touched her cheeks and lips. Snow had fallen within the last week but no prints save Traveler’s marked the path between the village and Three Crossings, the market town down-mountain. She rolled the map into its case, slipped the case into the map pocket of her breeches, and urged her horse toward the inn. Traveler’s breath puffed clouds in the cold. This place, Minst, would be the last before she had to ride down the mountains and back to Sterk. With luck, the Lord was already dead. If Minst had the telegraph, she would be able to learn that. If Minst had the telegraph she would not have had to make this ride, but it was better to be on the cold mountain, alone, than crammed onto Sterk waiting for the old bastard to die.

  Someone must have seen her. She rode into the inn yard as the innkeeper hurried out, tugging up the sleeves of a fleece shortcoat. Figures crowded the door behind him, in silhouette against the lamplight.

  “Welcome!” the innkeeper called, raising his lantern. “You’ve come up the mountain! Up the mountain, I say, in the winter! Most amazing! Welcome!”

  She swung off her horse and turned to him, one hand on Traveler’s neck, and lifted her baton from her belt. The innkeeper stopped where he was and his smile froze.

  “Rider,” he said. The people behind him fell silent.

  “Innkeeper. Thank you for your welcome.” She extended the reins. He reached for them without taking his eyes off her. “Traveler would enjoy a warm stable, and I a warm fire.”

  “Warm, yes, of course. Welfred!” he bellowed over his shoulder. “Wine for the Rider, and a place by the fire! Let me take your, that is, I have, be welcome...”

  “A minute, please.” His eyes went round with fear. He must have borrowed the shortcoat; its collar hid the sides of his thin face and the sleeves fell over his hands. Frost had already formed on his moustache. Another blind provincial dolt. She took a breath and let it go. “Be easy, innkeeper,” she said. “I’d take my bags before you take my horse.”

  “Of course. Of course.” He clutched the reins, dropped them, and grabbed for them again. Traveler whuffed, unimpressed. Kieve slid her baton back under her belt, took her saddlebags, nodded to the innkeeper, and walked inside. The figures in the doorway rushed away; when she entered they had backed to their benches and tables, maintaining a careful, silent indifference. An aproned woman gestured toward a bench near the fire. Kieve dropped her saddlebags by the door and unclasped her cloak. The careful indifference increased. She wondered what marks of evil they thought to see when she dropped her cloak.

  She spread it over a corner of the mantelpiece to dry; water dripped from the edges of the hood where her breath had frozen on the black fur. She pulled off her overgloves and stuffed them under her belt. The fingerless undergloves could wait until she felt warmer. The innkeeper’s wife dipped mulled wine from the pot by the hearth and handed her a cup. She nodded and folded her long body onto a bench near the fire, stretching her legs. Her boots steamed in the warmth.

  “Something to eat, Rider?” A plain brown woman with a plain brown voice, barely audible in the room’s quiet.

  “In a moment, goodwife.”

  The innkeeper came into the room, stamping his feet and beating his hands together.

  “A cold night, most certainly a cold night,” he said, his voice loud in the silence. “Welfred, you’ve not fed the Rider. What’s come to you, woman? I say, what’s come to you? Step sharply, now, some stew and good fresh bread.” He came up to the fire, still beating his hand
s. Behind him his wife clasped her hands and stepped from foot to foot.

  “Your goodwife offered,” Kieve said. He met her glance for a moment before moving away. “I’ll eat when I’ve given my message.” She turned on the bench to look at him and beyond him to the inn’s patrons. They stared back at her. Mountain folk, dark hair and dark eyes, all wearing the same apprehensive expression.

  “You’re not just passing through, then?” The innkeeper’s voice was almost comic with distress. “Not bound somewhere else?”

  “No. I have business in Minst,” Kieve replied. “Is your guildspeaker here?”

  Amid the shuffling of feet an old woman rose and stood with her hand on the shoulder of the young man beside her.

  “I’m Birgig Weaver,” she said. “I’m guildspeaker here.” She sucked in her cheeks, frowning. “Is it a Taking, Rider?”

  It was, of course, what they feared most. The silence deepened, save for the sound of a wooden cup rattling against a tabletop. Kieve followed the sound to a far corner; the heavy, balding man there jerked his gaze away from her. After a moment she put her cup on the bench by her thigh and returned her attention to the guildspeaker.

  “No, I carry no warrants. Lord Cadoc Marubin is taken ill,” she said, pitching her voice to fill the room. “He is not expected to live and may be dead by now. I left Sterk two weeks ago and my news is old.” She paused for the murmur to still. Cadoc had been lord in this Province for forty-seven years, a bad lord but the only one most of these people knew. When the murmur faded she said, “A council is called to confirm the new lord. You are required to send your guildspeaker or someone who can swear the oath for Minst. The council meets four days from now in Abermorat, and continues until the sword passes. The penalty for nonattendance is suspension of trade for one season.”

  She felt in her pocket for the last of the tarnished silver coins that Cadoc’s Chancellor had reluctantly provided. The lord’s head, incised on one side, was worn smooth. Glancing around the room, she saw a man in faded yellow robes at a nearby table.

  “Here, seminarian.” She tossed the quarter-capit to him. He snatched it from the air. “You are to pray for Cadoc’s safe passage to the Mountain.” He nodded. She lifted her wine cup and turned toward the old woman. “That’s all. Grandmother, your guilds had best elect a substitute.”

  Birgig Weaver’s grey brows drew together. “Must we send at all? We’ve always made reports and paid taxes by messenger, through Three Crossings down mountain. Can’t we do that now?”

  “No. You can’t swear by some petty messenger.”

  The seminarian moved his shoulders. “I think, I’m sure there’s a prayer cycle for a lord’s passing.” He looked doubtful. “Rider? Are there additional prayers required? And to whom?”

  She shrugged. “Cadoc pays only for his death prayers, but you can pray to whomever you want. The Marubin worship the Mother, but the lord worships the Father.” The seminarian looked confused. “Perhaps you’d best pray to all of them.”

  “To Death? We should pray to Death?”

  “Who better?” Kieve replied. The people stared. The innkeeper’s wife placed a bowl of stew and a slab of hot bread on the bench beside her. The stew smelled rich and looked to be thick with mutton.

  “When must we let you know?” the guildspeaker said. “About the substitute?”

  “Me? Not at all. I am here only as a messenger and leave at dawn tomorrow.”

  “Without the speaker?” the innkeeper said, surprised.

  “I go cross country,” Kieve said, the bowl halfway to her mouth. “Send your speaker through the pass to Three Crossings.” She brought the bowl to her lips. “My route is not a path for the old.”

  The innkeeper said, “Who’s to go, then? Not me, I say, I can’t, I’m far too old. Not young anymore. And who’s to run the inn, eh? Who’s to run it then?”

  Kieve finished her meal while the discussion rose and fell behind her. She watched the play of firelight and lamplight on the inn’s heavy wooden walls, smelled the aroma of stew and wine and damp wool, touched the worn, comfortable bench. A group in the corner had returned to their spinning as they listened; two men at a table stretched a length of leather between them while a third cut thin laces from the piece. As in most villages, the people gathered at nightfall to share warmth and light for their evening tasks and would separate, before midnight, to go each family to its own hut or cottage. Two girls and a boy, bent over the hearthstones, copied their letters with pieces of charcoal. They glanced at Kieve from the corners of their eyes. Someone went out, someone else came in, the heavy man used both hands to refill his cup. Birgig Weaver listened and said little. Kieve wiped her bowl with the last of the bread and ate it, then refilled her wine cup. When she turned to face the room again, the voices died.

  “Will you hear the news?” she said. “Otherwise I want to go to bed.”

  “There’s more?” the innkeeper said.

  “There’s more.”

  “Of course, certainly, assuredly.” The innkeeper felt for a bench at his back and sat, thin knees held together. “Well then, Rider? Well then?”

  So, as was her duty, she told them the news. An outbreak of the dancing illness in Vedere Province, confined to one village and soon eradicated. The seminarian made a ritual gesture of thanks: the plague’s last major visitation, a century and a half ago, had ravaged the plains provinces and killed almost half the population. The Merchants Guild debated the launch of another trading fleet, to journey toward the unknown boundaries of the world. The first one was presumed lost, for no word had come back in the three years since it sailed. Towers for the semaphore telegraph had been built to the head of the valley of the Morat, continuing the line running down the Morat all the way to the capital at Koerstadt and beyond that to the port of Mayne.

  She told them the current price of mutton and beef in Koerstadt and rumors from Moel about possible new ore lodes. Trapper raids in Bergdahl Province, quickly controlled and avenged by Lord Olwydd’s troops. The folk widened their eyes at this. Kieve’s lips twitched. Minst was a long way from the outlands border, which in this province was a soaring tumble of mountains and cliffs, in large part uninhabited. The white-haired Inguruki, the Trappers, were to these people more a frightening superstition than a real threat.

  She talked about the province itself. The succession was not clear and the folk listened with interest as she named Cadoc’s son Gadyn and his cousins Cairun and Drysi, the possible heirs to the sword. She spoke of who backed which candidate and what the various guilds and seminarians had to say about it.

  When she paused to sip from her wine cup, one of the leather workers said, “Pardon, Rider, but Lord Cadoc? He had a daughter? Will she not seek the sword?”

  “You mean the Lady Isbael?” Kieve said, after she had swallowed. The man nodded but wouldn’t look at her. “She was still in Koerstadt when I left Sterk. I have no news of her.”

  “But she is alive? And legitimate?”

  “Yes.”

  “Of course she’d seek the sword, naturally, Cadoc’s daughter, of course she would,” the innkeeper said.

  “Would she, then? Out of the province as she’s been? For so long?”

  Their voices rose, augmented by partisans on either side. Kieve wondered how often these people heard news from the outside. Possibly once or twice during the summer months when wool, weaving, and flocks were taken down mountain to market; probably not at all during the winter, with no semaphore tower, the passes blocked, the valley in its mountain fastness sealed from the rest of the province as the province, on its high northern plateau, was sealed from the rest of Cherek. A new lord might raise or lower taxes, border skirmishes could bring a visit from the Lord’s troops, come for recruits to their guild. A new lode in Moel meant tools more cheaply come by; a rise in the price of mutton or wool in Koerstadt would bring the money to buy those tools.

  She finished her wine, gathered her cloak and saddlebags, and asked to be shown to a
room. She followed the innkeeper up the narrow stairs, hearing subdued talk from the public room. It would not last. The man opened the door of a room, wrung his hands under his apron until she nodded to him, and hurried back down the stairs.

  They’d given her the best room, probably the only private one. The windows, heavily shuttered against the cold, faced the inn yard; the wall opposite was formed of the huge stone chimney rising from the fireplaces below in the kitchen and public room. A small fire burned in a grate let into the side of the chimney. A pitcher and washbasin occupied a stand near the chimney, along with a clean, coarse towel. The room was warm enough so that ice had formed only along the very edges of the pitcher. She took her map cases from her saddlebag and breeches pocket and, hauling the table close to the fireplace, set out her ink bottle and unrolled the scroll maps. Only a trace of ink remained in the bottle. She filled it with water from the pitcher and added a generous pinch of ink. The gritty powder stained her fingers. She wiped them on her breeches and shook the bottle. The bed creaked when she sat on it to pull off her boots. She spread the warmed cloak over the chair and sat, wrapping herself from her toes to her ears. By the time she had read her notes from that day’s ride and compared them to the scroll map, the ink had settled. She dipped her stylus in it and bent over the maps. The rest of the world went away.

  Every Rider held a limited mapping brief from the Guild, to note new features on the face of the land and corroborate those already known. Her notes on the route from Three Crossings to Minst verified or corrected distances, or the silhouettes of mountain peaks, or recorded the presence of new moraine below a summit ridge and the absence of the bridge across the Altwash. That had been a nasty extra two hours, finding a way down the stream’s icy bank and up the other side. Still, she was in the mountains and there was some mapping to be done. Coming here from Abermorat and the island castle of Sterk was a definite improvement.