Snowbrother

by S. M. Stirling

  "Ik'da yoim, gakk?" he called: What did she want?

  "Ofzara a-moi naikgutz," she replied in Kommanzanu: The Chiefkin ordered fodder.

  The Kommanza made no move, simply stared; after a moment she realized that was as much permission as she could expect. Swaggering to the head of the line, she elbowed the Minztan there out of his place. He staggered in surprise, straightened, his face tightening in scorn. It was Frussi, which was a stroke of luck; he was one of the few who had been near to being Initiate.

  "Very energetic, after sleeping warm and comfortable," he spat. "You learn their manners quickly."

  Turning, she dealt him a clout across the side of the face: mostly show, but hard enough to sting. In a loud voice she called out a few choice Kommanzanu insults; it was the first thing a slave would pick up. Grabbing him by the jacket, she swung him around against the supply sled, pretending to slam him repeatedly against the wood. Above there was a creak and click as the Kommanza eased the draw of his wheelbow back from his ear and relaxed once more. Maihu felt the skin between her shoulderblades crawl; seventy pounds at full draw, the bow would generate a hundred and forty with the pulley effect of the offset cams. Enough to send a shaft right through a horse and kill a man on the other side.

  "Act up, you idiot!" she hissed. "Snowbrother!"

  The guards were laughing, showing no sign of intervening. She had a few seconds, until their amusement was overcome by the need to keep the lines flowing smoothly. Greatly daring, she let her forehead touch the man's and bespoke him, less information-dense than speech, but there could be no doubting her soul-to-soul.

  Frussi's face changed, through bewilderment to recognition and back to a poor imitation of his first hostility. Keeping her body between him and the Kommanza, she pulled an engraved flute case briefly from her jacket.

  the Great Guardian of the Winter Woods, she bespoke, but only at night, don't tell anyone you can't trust! for the rest, you're singing to keep up your spirits.

  "The Eater?" he asked in voice-speech.

  "Distracted," she replied. "The Seeker's people, and an Adept with them."

  He nodded without speaking and touched her wrists by way of acceptance.

  "Zteafakan!" she yelled, then whispered: "Down, and yell as if it hurt."

  She swept him off his feet and mimed a hefty kick to the groin. His scream was satisfying enough to bring a wider smile to the guards' faces. The man on the sled stepped out into space and touched down lightly, almost weightlessly, the bow still ready in his hands. She approached the two warriors, smiling, blinking against the snow blowing into her eyes, and bobbed her head.

  "Oats?" she said brightly. "Chiefkin want, also, oats?"

  The guard with the quirt half turned and whipped the butt across the small of Frussi's back hard enough to stagger him.

  "Back to work, you," she snarled. "Or the next one will have you pissing red and tasty."

  The man peered at her. "Did she say oats?" he asked. "Glitch, not three wits among the woodsrats, all the way from the steppe to the lakes."

  "Oats over there," he said, struggling through in Minztan almost as bad as the Kommanzanu she had been pretending to speak.

  His partner looked the Minztan over. "Well, wits aren't what the commander's bedding her for," she said judiciously. "Not bad hocks, but a little old for my taste. That shoat of hers, he's nicely toothsome. Plenty of room and comfort in that sled, too: a sleeping bag's no good, not even if it was Jaiwun Allmate, much less a sullen woodsrat. Easier for prongers like you, kinless sheep-raper."

  Maihu stood, gritting her teeth behind the smile and face of blank incomprehension.

  The man giggled. "Oh, it's nice to have space and light. Like to look into their eyes, then sometimes use a knife at the last moment."

  "Extravagant tastes you've got, Dh'vik," the woman said with a smile. "Hoi, you'd better help her, she's lost."

  For a moment, Maihu met the archer's eyes. This close, her perception still extended from her contact with Frussi, she touched the surface of his consciousness. And recoiled, shivering; she had been lucky.

  Forcing her back to straighten, she walked off into the muffling snow. Death fanatics, she thought. Time would tell how they measured against the quieter resilience of her folk. She wondered how amused they would have been if they knew her true Wreaking here.

  Narritanni had kept the pursuit slow, drifting along behind the rear screen of Kommanz scouts. Still, the pace they managed to force out of their motley caravan astonished him: a first estimate of twenty-five days to the steppe boundry was modified to sixteen, if they could keep the pace. He decided that without the slave train to slow the Kommanz troops most of his force would have had difficulty in keeping up at all. But two weeks or so left plenty of time to plan and to build up the information he needed.

  The horse gave them the first inkling. They came across it at first light, standing head down and shuddering with exhaustion in a clump of bushes. The first Minztan to see it was a Garnetseat villager with little experience of steppe chargers. He tried to walk up and take the bridle. The animal raised its foam-lathered head and watched him, rolling its eyes. His scent was wrong, and that was enough. It made no move until his hand touched the reins; then the long neck shot out snakelike and great yellow slab-teeth sank into his shoulder. Much of what they gripped was tough leather and wool jacket; it raised the man high and shook him. Through his screaming, those watching could hear the sickening crunch of bone parting. Released, he flew through the air to land against a tree with shattering force, slide downward, and lie still.

  A horrified onlooker raised her crossbow. That was a mistake; the horse had been taught what to do about missile weapons, and charged with a shrill bugling neigh. The bolt thudded home at the angle of throat and chest, a serious wound but not enough to stop seventeen hands of enraged equine avalanche. The Minztan was trapped by her skis and went down under the hooves. The bolt had raked the animal to the point of madness, and it stayed plunging and chopping over her corpse while the survivors shot it a dozen times.

  Narritanni arrived while they were disentangling the bodies; very little was left of the woman but a bundle of sopping-red rags with ends of pinkish bone and gray loops of gut showing here and there. The Adept knelt by the man who lay slumped beside a tree. At Narritanni's glance he removed his fingers from where they rested against the villager's throat and shook his head. Narritanni sighed.

  They paused for only the briefest of services over the bodies of the slain. There was no need for burial; to the forest people there was no better way to dispose of the bodies than to give them back to the land. Scavengers were part of the Harmony, flesh as well as spirit distilled to return transformed in the great sweeping cycles of the Circle. As he stood in meditation with his hands hiding his face, Narritanni pondered the matter of the horse. Full gear, except for lance and bow, and the quiver held the regulation thirty shafts. When the prayer-silence was completed, he knelt by the animal's head and scraped off some of the clotted foam that spattered its neck and shoulders. This horse had run, far and fast, and from the scratches all over its forequarters, without much regard for what was in its path.

  They found the first piece of armor an hour later, dangerously close to the left rear edge of the Kommanz guardmesh. It was a gauntlet and arm guard. For a few moments, the Minztans didn't realize that the hand and forearm were still in it. Next came a boot and greave, with the leg to the knee; after that it was as if whatever had carried off the body had realized that the covering could be detached. Not that the method was overly subtle; the pieces were simply ripped off by main strength, the thick hard surfaces twisted and torn like cloth. The torso, what was left of it, they found wedged into the branches of a maple.

  "I hadn't heard they were so aggressive," one of the rangers said.

  Narritanni nodded. "They aren't, usually. But they don't like strangers who don't use the proper rites. They feel sensitive about trespassers. And the Summoning is past due,
from what the Garnetseat Initiate and the Enlightened One have told me. It is probably very hungry. This sort of thing is what the rituals were set up to prevent."

  "There's only one?"

  Narritanni looked at the Adept.

  He nodded. "They have large ranges, in winter. As you'd expect, they live in Harmony." Which meant a territory broad enough to support that much body mass without undue pressure. Only humans fouled their nests.

  Narritanni glanced aside at the Adept. "The Kommanza will be sweating," he said. "Has the Eater tried anything?"

  The Enlightened One's gaze rested on the westerner's body, compassionate but utterly serene. "Yes, he tried to break my grip on the weather. Quite a good try, but I had a better position on the energy gradient. Always, it is easier to move with the Circle than to cut across it." He directed Narritanni's gaze to the shattered corpse. "He'll think this is my doing, and be working on something nasty to counterstrike. I cannot be certain of anticipating him."

  Narritanni glanced around the circle of New Way troopers and volunteers. A few were looking pale. The body was not a pleasing sight, and the manner of death touched on the sacred—although in a way the extreme mutilation was reassuring. It made the corpse look more like a predator kill, and all of them were familiar enough with that; it bothered them less than the sight of a sword wound.

  "Gather the band," he said.

  His second looked up. She had been standing with her arm around one of the younger troopers, comforting him; Narritanni remembered vaguely that they were lovers.

  "What for?" his assistant said. "Won't that slow us?"

  "Not enough to matter, now that we're up with them. More snow coming"—he glanced aside at the Adept, who nodded—"and they can't force the captives to march as fast as skiers can travel. Besides, we have plans to make. This will be tricky, even with the Wise Man to help; It will be nervous, and we don't have a local Initiate." His smile was wolfish. "The Kommanza do, but I doubt it will do them much good."

  "What're you planning on doing?"

  "Doing?" he said with an unpleasant chuckle. "Why, singing."

  Turning his face aside, Taimi met the lambent green eyes of Dh'ingun, glowing in the darkened sled. The cat was lying less than an arm's length away, paws folded under its breast, watching the act with detached feline curiosity. Mounted astride Taimi, Shkai'ra moved steadily, her hands pinning his shoulders and her braids brushing across his chest. Her face was relaxed, softened by enjoyment, almost drowsy in its introspective concentration on the flood of sensation. The eyes… the eyes were cool, considering, lazily tracing the play of emotion across his face. The smell of her sweat and musk was sharp in his nostrils, mingling with panting and the creaking of the sled bottom and the small wet sounds their bodies made moving on the blankets.

  He had tried meditation, childhood memories, anything that might relax and distract him enough to thwart her, but the steady pulsing grip was… too real.

  Well then, he thought, there is another way. He willed himself to let go, moved as much as the confining weight of her body would allow. A few moments later he arched and cried out involuntarily, a muffled sound.

  Shkai'ra made a strangled spitting cry of frustration as she felt him wilt. Vindictively, she clamped her thighs and clenched him with her internal muscles, hard enough to bring a wince of pain to sensitive post-coital flesh.

  "Jaiwun geld you," she cursed. "I told you to wait until I was ready!"

  He glared at her, then dropped frightened eyes. "I couldn't, Chiefkin. You moved too fast, and I couldn't help it."

  His satisfaction was obvious under the thin pretense of docility. "You defied me," she said, almost as much amazement as anger in her tone. "You deliberately tried to spoil my pleasure, you little Minztan bark-eater!"

  Raising her hips, she freed him and then squatted back on her heels. Now, what was it he had flinched from before? Ah, yessss…

  She gripped his head and forced it down. "Not there—farther back."

  "I won't!" he said.

  "What?" She froze.

  "I… you don't wash there after you… I won't!" His voice edged toward hysteria.

  Suddenly he turned his head and tried to sink his teeth into the inside of her thigh. The pain was nothing to her—he found himself trying to bite into what felt like hard, living rubber—but the surprise and her awkward position were enough to put her off balance, and a desperate heave threw her off. He tumbled to the rear of the sled, barely avoiding the red-hot surface of the stove. He did not avoid Dh'ingun, who responded to a sudden weight on his tail with a yowl and a taloned swipe that left bloody stripes down one buttock.

  The sight was comical enough to leach out much of Shkai'ra's rage. But disobedience could never be tolerated. She sprang, ignoring his clumsy attempts at defense, got his wrists together in her left hand, and began slapping him across the face with her right. Wide, openhanded blows rocked his head back and forth, cracking loud as gunshots in the narrow confines of the sled. She stopped and released him when she sensed that his resistance had broken.

  "Are you going to obey?" she asked, in a normal, even tone. One hand was lifted to strike.

  He nodded through tears and hatred. "Yes, Chiefkin," he said and began to fumble his way forward. She pushed him aside.

  "If you ever balk at anything I tell you again, that will seem like a lovetap. Now get out."

  Maihu saw Taimi stumble out of the sled half-dressed, crying, and even in the faint light that spilled past the lacings and from watchfires she could see the redness and swellings on his face. Concerned, she helped him with the buckles, gently moving his trembling hands aside and fastening the clasps.

  "Here," she said, wrapping some snow in a cloth and handing it to him as she tucked him into his sleeping bag underneath the sled, "I heard a little. Did she use the whip?"

  "No, hit me with her open hand," he mumbled.

  "Why? Did you anger her again?"

  "She was… forcing me, and I wouldn't do what she wanted, so she hit me and threw me out." He was sobbing, not the easy tears of a child but the harsh, racking heaving an adult makes. Maihu's people did not think it a disgrace to weep, but this was wrenching to listen to.

  "Taimi, you must try, you must," she said with quiet urgency. It was not what he needed to hear, she told herself with bitter self-accusation, but what could she say? Despair could make him desperate enough to do… anything.

  Shkai'ra had been more and more tense these past two days. There had been nothing overt to cause it, nothing that she could grasp at, but the Kommanza's manner reminded Maihu of caged peregrines she had seen, traded down from the arctic, destined for the mews of the lords of the south. Circle turn with us, she thought. She mustn't begin to suspect anything. And they're so suspicious anyway.

  "Taimi," she forced herself to continue, "you've got to keep her from thinking about things. You know what I mean. You've got to act as if you had no hope at all."

  "I want to kill her," came the dry whisper. "I want to see her die. I want to hear her bones break and her blood flow out on the snow. I—"

  "Stop!" she said sharply. "You must not let them turn you from the Way."

  He looked at her in silence for a moment and then turned away, pulling the hood of the sleeping bag over his head. She put out a hand to touch his shoulder. He lay stiff and unresponsive.

  "I'll try to distract her," she said. "Taimi, kinchild, will you do what you can?"

  "I'll try, kinmother," he said distantly. She sighed. Her own emotions surprised her. Compassion, yes, but also… irritation? After all, what had he to face that she did not?

  I cannot think straight, she reflected. Who could, under this stress? Best to get inside before she calls for me.

  Lacing the flap of his tent, Walks-with-Demons gave a slight smirk. Now that night had fallen, he could begin serious preparations; soon the woodsrat spell-singer would leam who was master. And the Chiefkin, too. All would cringe before him.

  He tur
ned to the Minztan youth. She was tied spread-eagled within a circle burned into the leather floor of the tent at its making; the bonds that lashed wrist and ankle were part of the tent itself. The girl's whimpering annoyed him; he touched her throat and it ceased. Eyes full of sick fright watched him as he carefully began painting the rune-symbols on her body from the feet upward. His touch was completely impersonal, since at fourteen she was older than those his tastes ran to.

  That done, he lit the horn censer and sat inhaling the aromatic smoke, considering the thing he meant to do. The Symbol was the thing it named, that was the important principle. The physical parts of a spell were mostly important as a declaration of intent and a manipulation of the symbols. His mind groped, swelled, finally encompassed the totality of the working and traced its origins and implications on all the planes.

  Next he slipped the wolfskin over his head and took the piece of dried wolfmeat between his teeth. Sightless, his eyes stared. Fingers thumped on his belt-drum, senses broke down, scanned the paired helixes of information, held it ready.

  Knowledge, intent, preparation: now the impelling energy. Pushing something the way it wanted to go was easy, like a throwhold in unarmed combat. This was more complex. He began withdrawing his mind, fixing his purpose and direction below the conscious level even as his hand picked up the little glass knife. His first stroke opened the Minztan from just below the breastbone to the top of the pubic triangle down the line of strokes he had painted; neatly, he folded back the layers of skin, carefully avoiding the major arteries and touching a finger briefly to points of bleeding to shock them into clenching tight. The girl's body jerked against the bonds, but they were tight; her throat bulged and her face darkened with the need to scream. As a refinement, the shaman had carefully propped up her head to keep the whole process visible.