Snowbrother

by S. M. Stirling

  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.

  "Have… you any commands for me, Chiefkin?" Maihu asked uneasily.

  Shkai'ra shrugged. "No." Wryly: "This expedition is over-officered: good Bannerleaders, and a clutch of experienced staff types. So far, nothing has befallen that needs my care. I saw to the horses, checked the wounded, and sent out scouts—or watched my officers do it. For the rest, all I can do is wander around looking fearless and noble as a Mek Kermak should."

  She studied the smith. The Minztan was centimeters shorter than she; her head would barely reach Shkai'ra's chin. In build she was halfway between stocky and wiry, typical of her folk, taut and well muscled from her work and much running, hunting, and traveling. That prompted a thought.

  "Squeeze my wrist," she said. "Harder. Hard as you can. Ahi-a, pounding iron's given you a good grip."

  She produced a ball of imported rubber and began tossing it from hand to hand, squeezing hard: a habit from childhood. After a few minutes she continued: "But I'd still have thought some of these tools too heavy for you."

  "My kinmate Dennai helped me with the heavier tasks, Chiefkin. He was a good smith, even if he lacked the finer touch. He was the one you killed when you captured me and Taimi."

  "Pity about that," Shkai'ra said casually, regretting the loss of a skilled servant. Her folk made little of death in battle, that being the commonest and most honorable ending. "But he would try to match fighting skills with me. 'Don't try to outrun the horse or bite the tiger,' as we say."

  Glancing around, she picked up a piece of work. It was a ceramic plaque, a circle a little wider than her fingers could span. The base was softly iridescent in blue and green, and over it had been laid an intricate pattern in silver and gold wire, soldered, with the intervening spaces filled with turquoise. The pattern reminded her of… what? A snowflake? Stars? Or sunlight through a raindrop?

  She traced the lines with a finger, and wondered at the pleasure it gave her. It was well and skillfully wrought, to be sure, but it was useless and not in the prairie style.

  "This is…" She hesitated, searching for the word. In her own language she could have called it well-made, or pleasing, but that was not what she was trying to say. And Kommanzanu had no word for beauty in the abstract. "What is the word… pretty?"

  "Thank you, Chiefkin," Maihu replied. Anxiously, she watched the ornament. It was one of her favorites and had taken half a year to fashion. "You don't want to break it up for the metal, do you?"

  "Hmmmm? Oh, no, I'll keep it. No, you hang on to it. Does the pattern mean anything?"

  Maihu stared at her blankly. How could a Pattern not mean something?

  "Of course. Ah, of course, Chiefkin, everything has meaning—otherwise it would break the Harmony of the Circle."

  Shkai'ra frowned and made the sign against magic, but leaned forward with interest. "What does it signify, then?"

  "Why a vision-dream. One of us asked the Indweller of the forest, and this came to him as he slept in the woods. It shows how the Otherworld looks around here, the lacing of the patterns making up the whole…"

  Shkai'ra struggled to follow the explanation, almost meaningless in her people's terms. The words the other woman was using were n
ot familiar in the simplified trade-pidgin she spoke herself; that had a specialized vocabulary that did not include much in the way of religious or philosophical terms. And she had begun to suspect that her understanding of the words she did know was often twisted in some subtle way, that in a manner she could not quite grasp simple terms like "time" and "death" carried a different significance when she spoke them in this tongue. It was a disturbing thought and a new one.

  "So…" she said at length. "Is that a dream of the spirits you worship, or a picture of the dreaming the spirits make?"

  "Well… both and neither, Chiefkin," Maihu said in a baffled tone. The difficulty of explaining was a welcome distraction, but she did not want to arouse the murderously unstable Kommanz temper with suspicion that she was evading. Shkai'ra was silent for some minutes, stroking her cat.

  Then she rose to prowl the confines of the smithy, occasionally stopping to touch some unfamiliar shape.

  "Maihu," she said, producing some dried fruit from a pouch and tossing a piece to the Minztan before herself chewing on a tough sweet section of apple, "I'll be glad to see the last of this place."

  Not as glad as we would be to see you go, the Minztan thought silently. She bent her attention on the Kommanza. The conversation disturbed her. There was an enforced intimacy to it that made her skin creep, and she sensed a probing intelligence more menacing than the straightforward brutality of most of the raiders.

  Musing, Shkai'ra half-chanted in her own tongue, not suspecting the other could understand:

  "Endless spaces under sky/Sea of Grass where falcons fly/Horse between thighs/And banners snap/Smell of the sod crushed/Under the hooves—

  "Not," she continued, "that this hasn't been a profitable raid. Not much glory, but plenty of loot for small loss. Mek'ame! That is war the way I like it! But this land weighs on the soul."

  "It is our land, and the spirits do not welcome you, Chiefkin," Maihu said, greatly daring.

  Shkai'ra shrugged and touched her lucksprite; it was a little six-armed joss of Glitch, godlet of uncertainties, grinning under a half-coyote face and a red roach of hair.

  "Don't seem to be able to do much about it. Our gods are stronger." Grinning, she added, "Another legend of ours: when Eh'mex the Godhammer struck down the cities of Darkness and ended the Before, the Ztrateke ahkomman left the earth to live in the Sun. And they left the earth for a legacy to us of the Zekz Kommanz their children. 'To you,' they said, 'we leave the world of humankind, and all that is in it— but only so much as you have the strength to take.' Or so run the Sayings of the Ancestors."

  Maihu could not hide a wince of distaste. "Not to your liking?" Shkai'ra asked. "But your ways are strange to us.

  "We've never gotten along well, your breed and mine. Apart from your being so tempting to attack, I mean. There's something about you that puts us on edge."

  The phrase she used translated literally as "puts an itch in our saber hands."

  "More than your being so witchy. I don't quite understand what it is."

  "Perhaps envy, Chiefkin," Maihu said, surprising a giggle out of the Kommanza.

  "There, see what I mean? It's as if we lived in different worlds. That didn't matter so much years ago, when there was less contact. Most of my folk don't care, they think things will just go on as they always have.

  "I don't. I've listened to the old songs and stories and thought much about them. Why, a few generations ago the nearest Minztan steading was twice this distance from the grasslands. And very far back, when the Sky Blue Wolves of the High Steppe"—she paused to spit into the forge at the mention of the hereditary enemies of her people—"drove us eastward off the shortgrass plains, there weren't any Minztans within reach of the Red River country. A few came as traders after a month's journey."

  She pulled the Minztan closer and caressed her absently, as she might have stroked a dog.

  "The world is changing, and not for the better: more people, more trafficking between them. The cityfolk merchants come to us, and our cousins southward in Ihway; it seems that brings us wealth, but always we feel poorer."

  Her eyes grew hooded. "The southrons press on us, and we bicker among ourselves; they say that in the far south the Wolves push into the desert country, burning the steadings of Mehk, and there are wars in the Great Valley… Things will change in the dealings between the forest and the steppe, within my lifetime. I'll be a high one in Stonefort before too long, and Stonefort stands high in the Komman of Grantor. To steer well, I'll need real knowledge of your folk.

  "Maihu, that's why you're worth more to me than the wealth your work will bring, or the pleasure of a tumble now and then. By knowing you, I'll be better able to deal with your landsfolk, to understand how they think, how they're likely to react to what I do. For example, if more of you come to dwell in the near borderlands, it might be worthwhile to force regular tribute in goods and slaves, instead of raiding. We're not so many we can afford to fight on two fronts every year. And why shoot the cow if you can milk it?"

  She felt the Minztan stiffen. "I wish you could understand us, Chiefkin," she said quietly. "It would change you."

  "Or maybe the other way around," Shkai'ra answered, releasing her. "But think on this also: if I gain advantage, and become a mighty one, a favorite of mine could gain also… Perhaps as my agent among Minztans, although that would be years in the future. Then you'd have a place after the strength to work is gone, instead of being thrown out for the wolves. And there would be reason to keep your living kin around. Perhaps you could even earn your way back to a measure of freedom, in time. Think on it. I can tell you're a deep one, and used to foreseeing years ahead."

  She squeezed the other's thigh, just short of painfully. "Don't tire yourself too much here. We're holding a feast tomorrow night, and you'll be serving there after the Sacrifice."

  She called to the cat. It streaked to her and swarmed up her coat like a black shadowstreak, settling down in the hood with alert yellow eyes showing over the rim. Eh'rik waited for her outside, and so did Walks-with-Demons. That one was more still than was his habit, and he made no challenge, waiting silently. Dh'ingun stuck his head out of the hood and considered the shaman unwinkingly, then turned and hissed at the warmaster, producing a grunt of annoyance.

  "Why do you keep that beast, Chiefkin? If it can't do something useful like catching rats, it could at least make a pair of gloves."

  Shkai'ra reached backward to ruffle its ears. "Dh'ingun is a kinsoul of mine," she said. "Any more trouble?"

  "Not since we chased off those two forest rats."

  "Only two?"

  "From the tracks, or so those who've hunted in the woods tell me. Probably just returning hunters or trappers, but I'd be more glad had we caught them."

  "Ahi-a, as we thought; not likely that we could catch every fugitive when they've more woodslore than we. As it is, we lost the warhounds for no good purpose."

  Eh'rik glanced uneasily at the carved pillars of the smithy. "The troopers swear the woods rats must have had spirit help to get away so clean."

  "Sheepshit, they have more skill in running and hiding. Well, scant good that'll do them, being as unready as they are." She cocked an eyebrow at the shaman.

  He shrugged, and slapped his fingers across the drum. "No great magic, yes, that's true," he said. "I would have felt that, from the World Beyond the World. But a small working wouldn't have caused much… rippling. Not Minztan witchcraft, it's sneaky and sly, hard to catch."

  He wrapped his arms around himself and glanced sidelong. "Better to leave as soon as we may; the earth spirits are hostile here. Hungry, and strange."

  Shkai'ra hawked and spat into the soot-tinged snow. "Aren't they always?" Kommanza believed themselves children of the Sun; their gods were sky powers, spirits of storm and fire, ever at war with the old dark ones of the soil. Her hand made the gesture against ill luck.

  "If the westernmost steading of theirs proves this easy to pluck, we should be clear out on the gra
sslands before any great host comes up. And even a Minztan isn't crazy enough to come out onto the plains after us."

  She put her hands in the small of her back and stretched, yawning. There were a few small clouds in the sky above, which otherwise was the pale blue of good steel. She sniffed at the air.

  "Weather could turn," she mused. "Clear enough, but the air smells wet. Tricky." That brought thoughts of other matters. "Is the Sacrifice ready?"

  "Ahi-a, yes," Eh'rik said. "One of the ponies we captured; the shaman says that's lucky enough."

  The shaman nodded. "Goods taken in war are always pleasing. Though a charger might be better, or a human." His eyes flicked toward the metalworker's shed.

  "No sense wasting a good war-horse," Shkai'ra said. Slightly shocked, Eh'rik turned his head.

  "You'd not grudge the Mighty Ones their share!"

  "No, no… particularly since many of our doughty, fearless warriors tremble at the thought of ghosts eating their souls while they sleep! But we've no need to make a Great Calling; this should be enough. Victory shows the gods favor us. Would they like us to come whining to them for help every time some zh'ulda sees a shadow?"

  She bared her teeth at the shaman, who returned the smile with the same bright hatred.

  "My part of the ceremony will be ready," he said.

  "So will mine," she answered. "The Mek Kermak's-kin know the Mighty Ones, and their wants, spell-singer." Her palm caressed the eagle-head hilt of her saber. "We're alike; we also don't care to be angered…"

  He gave the salute with the faintest trace of mockery as she and the warmaster moved off, their boots squeaking on the packed snow.

  Inside the smithy Maihu clutched her hammer in a sudden dizziness of hope. It could only be Sasimi and Ewunnu; the Seeker's people would know, and follow. And if she could slow the Kommanza down, weaken them … For a moment she scarcely heard the crunching of gravel as the Eater slunk into her workroom. She darted erect and retreated toward the forge, frank terror on her face. Nor was it feigned. Bracing herself against the anvil, she faced her enemy.