Snowbrother

by S. M. Stirling

  He was clothed, this day, in sheepskin coat and cap, only the scars and drum marking him. At ten paces she could smell him, the cold stink heavy in the forge-warmed air, blue eyes hooded.

  "Don't piddle yourself, Minztana," he said dryly, bending to examine her tools. Maihu swallowed, forced herself erect and her mind calm. Odd, how careful he was not to touch the iron; Adepts were like that too…

  "I'm… under the Chiefkin's ward," she said. She used the Kommanzanu word; it actually meant that she was the commander's exclusive prey. "You can't touch me, wizard."

  "Oh, I know, yes, well pleased she is with you. And I know her thoughts, and her plans, better than she thinks. A deep one, that Mek Kermak, with strange knowledge. But she doesn't… know all."

  He looked her over, carefully. "Witchborn, you are. But not mage-strong; I could tell if you had the knowledge. Power is not gained without pain and trial, even the devil power your forest witches have."

  "Then why do you want me dead?" she said. She could sense the Eater's killing-lust, more than his usual malevolence.

  "You're alive, are you not so?" He laughed, and her spine crawled with a feeling that had little to do with her own peril. He sobered quickly, mercurial, the light of madness on his face. "I smell … a wind blows out of your future. You are a branching. I scent…" His eyes closed, and he muttered in his own language. "Curse the demon-dung tree-fog! If only I could see more clearly!"

  He snapped back to alertness; suddenly he was close to her, his hands making grasping motions without conscious volition.

  "I sense a fate in you, and no good one. Know this: one hint of witchcraft, and the Chiefkin's shield drops away. She commands, but I smell out witches. One slip, and you"—his face thrust forward—"are mine."

  Maihu stared back, with a loathing so strong that it cast out fear. For long moments they stood, regarding each other, before the plains wizard turned and strode from the room. Shuddering, she relaxed.

  It would have to be done carefully, very carefully.

  7

  The wheelbow spoke, hum of string, rattle of pulleys. The flat smack of steel driving into flesh sounded across the frozen river.

  The Kommanza cursed. He had been riding with a shaft on the string, normal on a scouting mission like this. The deer had been a flash in the comer of his eye and his reaction instinctive. But there was thick undergrowth, reed and thicket, along the banks of the river he had been following. Beyond the forest was no longer pure stand of pine; there were groves of birch and the occasional aspen or ash or maple showing bare and skeletal against the snow-flecked green of the conifers. Cautiously, he examined the ice along the edge of the westward-flowing stream he had been tracing. Even when the deep water was frozen solid the edges might be rotten, laced with weakening stems. He tied his remount's string to an overhanging branch and led his mount up the low bank, shoving frozen bush aside and taking care not to risk his horse's feet.

  There! he thought. Fresh blood on the snow, gouts of it, and a thick blood trail leading off. He had been certain that the arrow stuck just forward of the hind-quarter, and there were a couple of big arteries there. The arrowhead had been a narrow pile-shaped armor piercer, not the broad three-bladed hunting head designed to slice an animal's insides open, but even so the beast ought to bleed out fairly soon. The more so as it was running heedlessly, judging from the crushed bush: the fear-driven heart would quickly pump it dry. There would be little delay in his task—and he was supposed to comb the woodlands as well as the direct route to the west. Some fresh venison would be a welcome relief from jerky and hardtack…

  Scraping up some of the snow, he tasted a little of the blood, sweet and salt and still faintly warm. Decision was swift, and he swung back into the saddle. To follow the blood trail was no great matter. The scout came from a village near the forest edge and had often hunted the fringe of the woodlands: game for food and fur, Minztans for sport. At the thought he grinned with hatred. Witches, traffickers with the Zoweitz of the Dark, worshipers of Illah, the loathsome, cowardly and sly. Nothing was more pleasing to gods or humans than killing a woods rat. Still, campaigning against them on their own ground called for real skill. They could hide under cover you'd swear wouldn't conceal a rabbit, and they would track a ghost over naked rock.

  He touched his scalp belt. In the end, though, to fight you they had to come out and fight.

  All the while his eyes moved endlessly in well-trained wariness, scanning back and forth across the dusky avenues of the forest. Even the bright sunlight of midmorning cast little illumination here; scant fugitive gleams slanting down into a pale green gloom, crisp white snow crunching and creaking under hooves, ceaseless soft murmur of wind through branches. The scout relied on a lifetime's experience to alert him to the subliminal consciousness of movement, disturbance, the minute disruptions of the pattern that give a few seconds' warning of danger. The air lay on his skin like liquid, too cold to carry scent; sounds were muffled by the weight of helmet, padded lining, and coif.

  He relied more on his horse for those senses. It needed little guidance from the reins looped over the high horn of the saddle: knees, voice, and balance were enough, a union of bodies born of years in the saddle, the art of a people who rode from the time they could walk. It was the mount's snort and forward flick of ears that alerted him to expect his quarry. The deer had halted in a small open glade, trapped by snow too deep for its weakened legs. The flight feathers of the arrow were sunk flush with the fawn-colored hide a handspan below the spine and just in front of the hind leg. He was amazed the beast had managed to run half a kylick. Blood still flowed, not spurting but in a steady trickle down the flank to the snow. It was not worth risking damage to the delicate feathering of another arrow. He swung to the ground and began floundering forward through the drifts; the snow was deep but light, less packed here than under the forest canopy where little of the last fall had penetrated. The deer awaited him with the curious fatalism that wild things show before the predator, knowing their own deaths and accepting them. He was wary still, for deer had been known to deal shrewd hurts with hoof and antler, especially a young two-year male like this. But weakened by pain and bleeding, it stood passive. He twisted the head aside and cut its throat, catching the blood in his helmet and drinking it hot and delicious. That done, he made haste to drag the body back to the trees. It was important to gut it before it froze stiff, and that would not be long in this weather; also, the smell of blood might bring predators, timber wolves or perhaps even a tiger. In cold season hunger-rage wolves were a real menace even to an armed human, and a snowtiger was nothing for a single man to meet at any time. Working quickly, he ran a rope through the slit tendons of the hind legs, hoisted that over a convenient branch, and made the first stroke from throat through paunch to anus. The work was messy and foul-smelling but familiar and soon finished. He tied up the quartered carcass into a bundle in the hide, slung it over the saddle, and began to lead his mount back along the broken trail to the river.

  And all the while, he was watched. By eyes that missed little, by nose and ears keener than any humanity had bred, by senses more subtle, by an awareness that knew itself. That mind did not think as a human might: it used no words, different images, and dwelt in a timeless Now that had only shadow-knowledge of the past and faint concept of a future. Yet it was no beast and could reason in its fashion, limited only by lack of a vocabulary to conceive abstraction. And it had a oneness with the land that no human could match. The smell of blood agitated it; only the instinct of stealth prevented moans of unease from breaking forth. There should be no killing, not here, not now. That was not the way memory said things should be. And the smell of the human was wrong. Where were the food and warmth? Where were its friends, where the feathers and dancing, music and gifts of sweet meat and fire? Strangeness plucked at its mind; to this one there was no barrier between the physical and the Otherworld, all were a single rush of sensation. Mixed drives of flight and aggression fought in i
ntolerable confusion. Curiosity won out, and it followed after the man, drawing concealment around itself until it drifted as undetectable as a ghost.

  The scout would not have noticed the tracks on horseback. Indeed, he had overrun them on the way in. On foot, chewing with relish on a slice of warm, raw liver, he had a different perspective. From the ground even slight irregularities threw betraying shadows, and also his horse was nervous. Not nervous enough to make him fear immediate danger, but enough to justify extra vigilance. What caught his attention was a row of depressions in the snow at right angles to his passage, very faint, for last night's snowfall had overlain them. He halted and stared, frowning. There was not enough detail to make out what sort of creature had made the tracks, and a trial showed that there was too little of a barrier between the layers of snow to brush off the top covering and find more data.

  Yet it was not the trail of a game animal. His mind calculated angles and distances, added in the outline and size of the tracks. He ended with puzzlement. Not the right size for a human even on snowshoes, nor for aught that went on four feet. It would be well to seek further into this; the safety of this trail was his to say yea or nay, and he would not care to face the Chiefkin if he proved wrong. That meant following this trail, which meant dumping the meat for a space. Cursing again and calling on Glitch, godlet of fuckups, he lashed the venison into a tree beyond the reach of most scavengers and set out down the line of tracks.

  He made only scant distance before suspecting that he was on a worn trace. Not a well-traveled one; the signs were faint and hard to detect in winter. But the marks were there to see on bark and bush, in the branches and the feel of the land; a path had been here, might still be in use, and the… whatever he was following had walked down it not two days past. He kept his bow ready, pausing first to scrub the blood from his short blond beard with a handful of snow. Two kylickz brought him to the clearing. It was not large, perhaps half a bowshot around. Neither was it natural: a perfectly regular circle amid the sort of tail timber that showed rich soil by Minztan standards.

  It was noon now, and the vertical light poured down pale yellow on the building that stood in the center. It was not small; three single-story cabins joined to make a U around a central court in the manner of the forest people. No smoke came from the chimney, and the windows were shuttered. The decoration on the walls was lavish even by woodland standards, but much was hidden where the snow had drifted up to the eaves. The drifts lay heavy against the door. That meant the clearing had not been visited lately, perhaps not since the first snowfall. Not in the last month for sure, he thought. It ought to be safe to approach.

  Despite that thought, he made a wary circuit of the cabins before trying the entrance. What he saw added to the mystery. This was too elaborate for a hunter's shack, too small for a permanent dwelling even if anyone could have lived thus alone in unpeopled wilderness. And it was old, well built and well maintained but decades older than the new-founded village the Kommanz had sacked. Well, Minztans had hunted and traded over these borderlands for generations beyond number, more so than the steppe people this far from the open lands. But why had they gone to the trouble of rearing such a garth?

  Wading through snow, he used his shield to dig a passageway to the door. The last part of it was difficult, needing a cutting deeper than his head, and the labor left him sweating and in no good humor when he reached the portals. Those were intricately carved, with flower symbols picked out in inlay work. The beauty was lost on him, but the stout panels' refusal to yield to the hooves of his horse when he reared the animal against them awoke rage. He unlimbered an ax from his saddlebow and went to work. The steady thock-thock echoed from the walls of the forest, and presently white splinters began to show. That gave him a vicious satisfaction, as if the wood were an enemy he could punish for the delay and trouble these accursed-of-Zaik tracks had forced on him. Soon he could reach within and use his knife to pull the bar out of its brackets. He entered with shield up and ax ready.

  His shadow waited within the sheltering forest. So much meat within easy reach had tempted it to stay where the Kommanza had left the carcass of his kill, but it had satisfied itself with the discarded entrails and forced its steps on down the well-marked trail. It watched in growing distress as the man beat in the door. Sacredness was not a concept it could entertain, but seeing this place despoiled awoke revulsion. A thought was born, that there were two types of human: the ones to which it was accustomed, and this new breed, who smelled wrong and did things that were worse, were not what years of unchanging sameness had taught it.

  The inside of the building was reassuringly musty; from the smell, he judged there had been few visitors, and none in the last month. Yet all was in order, furniture and bunk beds for a dozen, leather bedrolls, even the makings of a fire ready in the stove. The second room brought a yelp of delight: rat-proof bins full of grain, salt meat and nuts, dried fruit. A trapdoor revealed a cellar full of still more provisions. Whatever their reason, the Minztans had done the Stonefort warband a great service by leaving so much provender right on the path of their retreat. It would be a powerfull aid, enough to swing the decision around to taking this route. To have supplies waiting here without taking up space on the sleds would leave that much more room for loot.

  The third room also held boxes and chests. Confidently, he threw open a lid. What he saw within sent him back with a groan of dismay, clutching at his amulets. Carved wands, masks and feathered headdresses, rune-graven stools…

  "Witchcraft, witchcraft," he moaned.

  The sweat burst out on his face despite the cold; he could feel it trickling down his flanks. Breath pumped, pupils went wide, almost he turned and ran from the gruesome sight.

  Slowly, a measure of calm returned. No blasting spell withered him, and strength returned to his shaking limbs. Carefully he used his ax to close the lid of the chest and backed into the first chamber, calling on the Mighty Ones by the secret names the shaman had told him at his adulthood ordeal. He had always made the sacrifices the law prescribed and never broken discipline or turned his back in a fight. Surely the gods would protect him.

  In fact… yes, merest chance had brought him here, sheer luck, and there was often the will of a god or spirit in luck. Perhaps he was chosen to find this spot of foul spell-wreaking so that it might be cleansed. Should he set the fire himself? No, it would be better to let the Chiefkin decide. The Mek Kermaks were descended of the gods themselves and knew how deal with such matters.

  Of course, there could be no question of remaining here for the night as he had planned. That thought set him shuddering anew. Best to head back at once. He had gone far enough west to know where the river emerged into territory he had hunted over before, and there would be no difficulty in guiding the main party through to the steppe. Pushing his remounts, he could be back in the village in a few days, and in the meantime his hide sleeping bag under the clean stars would do.

  Swinging back into the saddle, he held to a steady pace as he rode down his backtrail. He sternly suppressed an impulse to gallop, but the sense of menace was so strong that he made no check on his cache of venison; the wolves could have it for all he cared, so long as he put distance between himself and the spell-hut. Once back on the pack snow of the river he heeled his mount into a canter.

  The haste saved his life. The watcher trailed back from the cabin, uncertainty growing into rage. Yet this was the hungry season and the venison was tempting; when the man passed under the cache the thought of its passing beyond the watcher's reach almost triggered attack. When he left and returned to the river it was enough like withdrawal to damp the sense of territory violation and take the edge off killing anger. The smell of meat was rank and sweet, irresistible. It settled down to feed.

  Snow was falling, soft and thick and straight. Huge puffy flakes spilled down out of the darkening sky, batting at faces like kitten paws; sound was muffled, until the hiss of ski and crunch of poles spiking down into the deepe
r layers sounded hushed and remote through the cold dampness of the air. None of the Minztans minded much; shadows flitting between the trees, they stroked tirelessly onward with the smooth sustaining rhythmic stride of hunters. There was a comfort to the silent closeness of the snow, and a peace.

  The man the others called Leafturn speeded his pace, until he drew level with Narritanni.

  "Old Bone Place ahead," he said, matching breath to movement.

  The commander nodded, and signaled. Soon the first travelers broke through a narrow screen of underbrush into a clearing perhaps a thousand meters broad, traced with lines of mound and wall too regular to be natural. Normally they would have avoided the ancient buildings, but there was need and they had an Enlightened One with them. Besides, these ruins had been sparingly mined for some time; their folk had fewer taboos about such workings than most, since there had been little of the lingering death hereabouts. That was natural enough. These woods had had no targets worth a missile, and most of the real fighting had been beyond the atmosphere. Still, the dwellers here had found some way to die; it had been easy, that year when nine-tenths of humanity had fallen. It might have been hunger, in a world turned night-black and icy, or the flaying sunlight that followed when the clouds lifted. Or the diseases that had scythed through famine-weakened populations; some of those had been gene-tailored to lie dormant for generations as spores in tainted ground. Or they might have been overrun by starveling refugees from the south, hungry enough to kill for a few cans or the meat on the villagers' bones.

  Three millennia had not been enough to soften the memories of terror; the Minztans were uneasy as they settled in to camp, unrolling their sleeping bags and kindling small fires in sheltered corners and nooks. Their own ancestors had suffered less than most; they had been smallholding farmers and craftsfolk by choice, reviving old skills that had stood them in good stead, and remoteness had sheltered them from the worst of the chaos that followed the death of the cities. Even they had been surprised at the degree of their dependence on the urban-industrial civilization they despised, but enough had survived to form the nucleus of a new people, a core for refugees and the last survivors of the tribal folk to form around.