Snowbrother

by S. M. Stirling

  He had not cut any of the loops of gut, moving with more than natural sureness in the dim ruddy light, so the smell was mainly the heavy salt of blood, mingled with the musky sweat of fear and agony beyond common conception. At last the whole of the abdominal cavity was open, the flaps pinned back with bone needles; stray trickles of blood ran down quivering flanks to join older stains. At the last, his hand slid carefully in to grip the beating heart.

  Good. Now to step aside… through the Veil, yes… He moved in a peculiar and wholly nonphysical way that left the Essence of the scene closer to his sight. His own Symbol stood clear: that of the girl, a human destroyed; the network of the spell binding them together. The alternative reality he had constructed was there, potential, but still vanishingly unlikely. Still, anything was possible; knowing that was one of the keys of this art. Perception could alter probability. He sent a single signal down the neural pathways to where his body waited. His hand clenched.

  The girl's body arched in a final spasm; lungs convulsed and drove a hoarse grunt past the blockage in her throat. Dying seemed endless, and there was no end; Walks-with-Demons did not allow her to die, not yet. The shadow-pattern of his working blazed into Sight, overlaying the Essence of the red. He pushed his mind into it, directed the energies; most of all, he believed completely, in a place and on a plane where beliefs had tangible existence. The wrenching that followed was terrible. Quite possibly the pain was greater than that the sacrifice knew, but the shaman had long since learned how to redirect the pain input to the pleasure centers; had become dependent on that. Existence blurred and shifted; the tent and its contents became both there and not there. Energy flowed through the structure of the spell, guided by the stored data the shaman held, flowed back into the tissues of his body, down to the molecular level. He screamed, and the sound echoed through the camp, bearing over- and under-resonances that shivered in teeth, set hair crawling with atavistic fear, and made horses plunge and whicker on the picket lines. The screaming became a howl.

  At last, he nosed his way out into the night. Eyes could not see him now, not until he chose to let them. Scents flowed down the cold crisp air, paws whispered through the snow of yesterday's fall. In this form he could smell tomorrow's blizzard, and the unnatural vibrations of it; fangs bared in a snarl. He was not thinking as a human thought, not in words, but purpose remained in him, and hatred. He slipped through the Kommanz scoutnet effortlessly, and cast about for his enemies. Magic alone could not have found them, not under the woodswizard's concealment, but he had other senses. He slunk from tree to tree, and found the first of the forest warriors barely two kylickz from the steppe camp.

  He positioned fangs, then twisted himself into the villager's perception. That gave him reality enough for contact; ivory spikes as long as a man's smallest finger sank in. Prickling surface tension of skin, soft firm muscle fibers, crisp parting of cartilage and larynx, the intoxicating savory tang of blood overwhelmed him, with the delightful overtones of dying fear and pain as the Minztan's mind spiraled down into oblivion. He drank. For a moment too long: the victim's companion had time enough to strike, and the thing that had been the shaman felt the iron of the spearhead sliding through fur and hide and ribs.

  His head whipped aside, and jaws closed splinteringly on the shaft. He wrenched the iron free, cast it aside, and… adjusted the pattern of his pseudo-body back to wholeness. Then he reached out, took the terror-stricken Minztan's wrists in his mouth, waited a long malicious second before bearing down with shearing force that could have severed the thighbone of a bull plains bison. He left the man staring incredulously at the spouting stumps and faded back into the silver-black emptiness of the moonlit forest.

  Smiling to himself, he cast about. There had been enough of pleasure; now he must search out the thing that had been preying on his folk. Quartering through the woods he felt the life around him, dim and muted in this winter season: deer, wolverine, the sleepy grumble of a hibernating bear. Borrowed instincts urged him to turn aside and dig for the fieldmice he could sense running through their tunnels under the snow. Wiser than humans in their way, the things of nature scuttled and scurried to avoid the Presence they felt as a twisting wrongness in the night. And… yes, something strange. This body had less power of vision than a man—sight was colorless and shallow— but its nose was incomparably keen. Molecules drifted on the air, and wet black nostrils expanded to snuff them down. Like a man, the scent, yet unlike, as tiger was unlike puma. And a tone of strangeness that shuffled along his nerves… He turned aside to investigate.

  The Wise Man stepped out from behind a tree. His staff was in his hands, carved with runes of power; also, he held it with one hand in the middle and another a quarter from the end, an expert's grip. His eyes rested unerringly on the shaman, full of interest.

  That one crouched back. The shape he had taken was no breed of these woods; tall as a man's chest at the shoulder, long of leg, with a massive skull to provide anchorage for muscles strong enough to power jaws whose fangs overlapped the black lips even when they were not pulled back in a rictus of killing-lust. The steppe wolves were giants compared to their forest kin; five hundred generations of merciless selection had made them the terror of the northern grasslands as the lion was of the warm deserts, bred to hunt the huge grazers of the prairies. In winter, even snowtigers turned aside from their packs.

  He snarled. Drool ran from his jaws, to mix with blood on fur where tufts of white hair marked the scars. Yet he remained cautious; this form was immensely strong, yet fragile. In a sense it did not exist at all. Knowledge and skill and stolen energy had forced it on an unwilling universe; it was a part of the primeval chaos that underlay the seeming order of the world. It could exist only as long as the sacrifice in his tent hung suspended between life and death, and one who knew how could break the linkages with a lucky blow. That would dismiss the form he rode back to the halfworld of unrealized probability, make it never have been. And his tent would hold only a mindless husk clutching a corpse.

  The Adept stood, blocking the shaman from a trail that might have shown him too much. The staff twirled in his hands, a blurring circle marked with energies for those with the eyes to see.

  "Shall we dance?" he said, pleasantly.

  12

  Maihu rolled into the sled. Shkai'ra was sitting on her heels, redoing one of her braids. Her long fingers gave the end a final tug, then she took the leather thong from her mouth and began tying it off, leaving a tuft of loose red-blond hair beneath a plait fifty centimeters long. The pale yellow light of the lantern glistened on her skin, showing the smooth ripple of muscle as she shifted position or raised her arms; white droplets clung in the thick reddish curls between her legs. The Minztan waited tactfully for several minutes, busying herself with fluffing pillows and tending the stove. At last she ventured: "Did Taimi trouble you?"

  "He was insolent," Shkai'ra snapped. "Tell him there are other things he might be set to that wouldn't need a pleasing manner. Turning a millstone, for example. For that he wouldn't need his eyes, either; or his stones."

  Maihu froze, suddenly realizing that she had grown dangerously complacent. The tiger might purr, but it was not tame. "I'm… I'm sure he will learn better behavior," she stuttered. "He's already given you much pleasure, Chiefkin."

  Shkai'ra looked up in annoyance. "The whelp is never going to make a satisfactory slave. He just doesn't have it in him. Ahi-a, don't worry, I won't blind him… That was just a thought. Unless he does something serious. I've no complaint against you, and you seem foolish-fond of the little idiot."

  "Well, he's my eldest wombchild."

  Shkai'ra grunted again. Of course, Minztans were usually closer to their children than the Kommanz, who turned them over to the warmasters almost as soon as they could walk and regarded them as nonhuman until they reached adulthood.

  "He's almost more trouble than he's worth. Sheep-shit, it's been a jackalbitch of a day, this raid is fuming into a hellride, and then h
e starts giving me trouble… Maybe I won't have you bred after all, if that's the type of foal you throw."

  Maihu swallowed a bubble of rage. "Chiefkin," she said, to change the subject, "you said you wanted to learn more of our customs?"

  The Kommanza nodded, interested. "Have you ever had a sponge bath, Chiefkin?" Maihu continued.

  "No," the westerner said. "What's a sponge?"

  Maihu tapped a bowl of hot water from the jacket that surrounded part of the stove. She dipped the sponge into it and stroked it down Shkai'ra's cheek.

  "It comes from the Middle Sea, Chiefkin. Expensive, but very useful. We use them instead of rags for moonblood, very absorbent. And for padding, and for washing. Please, try it. It's quite pleasurable."

  And it will make my work easier if you're a little cleaner, she thought. A fine body, I might have enjoyed lying with you if we'd met otherwise, but Circle, how you smell! She was not looking forward to the Kommanza's bleeding-time, either.

  Shkai'ra squinted at her doubtfully, then laid herself down and accepted the gentle touch of the hot sponge. Pleasant, she thought, and wondered whether it was weakening to have hot water on her skin so often. On the other hand, the shamans made you clean your wounds with boiled water, and that did seem to make them heal faster. Women had to wash before childbirth, and after.

  Hmmmmm, yes. Her skin did feel lighter, almost as if there had been a layer between her and the warm air of the travel sled. There was a glow, as well. The Minztan rubbed her with a heated cloth.

  "This makes it easier to keep the fleas at bay," she continued.

  Shkai'ra stretched, yawned, utterly unselfconscious in her enjoyment of the strange sensation. "Nonsense, only sick people lose their fleas," she murmured drowsily. "But they can be as bad as nomads in long grass, in the winter with everyone crammed together. The dhaik'tz do say they can carry ill luck."

  She wrinkled her nose at the memory of the fumigants the shamans used—sulfur-based, noxious stuff.

  Maihu shrugged out of her clothes at Shkai'ra's nod.

  "Wait, Chiefkin," she said, as the plainswoman reached for her. She poured pine oil from a pebbly green glass bottle into her palms. The sharp tangy scent filled the air. The small strong hands began massaging the oil into the Kommanza's skin, starting at the neck and kneading expertly at the tense muscles. Eyes closed, the warrior arched her back and purred at the skilled, almost impersonal touch working its way down her spine. She had been more knotted up than she suspected, and the Kommanz breathing exercises were designed to produce strength and flexibility rather than relaxation. Her joints crackled as they were stretched and twisted; palms and hand edges drummed along her deltoids and loosened the powerful long muscles at the back of her thighs.

  Maihu finished by probing the pressure points: nape of the neck, behind the ears, under the shoulderblades, small of the back, upper thigh, behind the knees, and the sole of the foot. She knelt, digging her thumbs into the arch and rotating the ankles.

  "How do you feel, Chiefkin?" she asked at last.

  "Ahi-a, boneless," Shkai'ra replied dreamily.

  "You have a fine body, Chiefkin," she said. It was true; long and sleek and tight, the skin smooth and fine-grained where it was not scarred or marked with the continual rubbing of the armor's chafe points.

  "So do you," the Kommanza said, stroking her with a foot. "A little chunky, but well-kept. No extra flesh."

  Maihu hesitated. It was inevitable, so why not? She reached up and turned down the lantern, then touched the other's breasts: the nipples were tight, and there were a few faint freckles on the milk-white skin.

  "You know we Minztans have arts your folk don't."

  Shkai'ra closed her eyes and smiled through parted lips. Her face had a reddish cast in the subdued light. "Yes," she murmured.

  "Shall I show you some of them?" Her fingers moved in small circles.

  Shkai'ra laughed, not the usual shrill giggle of her people, but an almost silent husky sound. "Lead on," she said.

  Much later, she lay with her head on the Kommanza's stomach, one hand cupped over her mound, feeling the pulse leap and slow. Her own body felt relaxed and restless at the same time, as if her skin were too tight, prickling. Spillover, but…

  Shkai'ra bent and kissed her. "What would you like?" she whispered.

  "Does that matter?" Maihu said, looking up at her. "Sometimes. Tonight."

  They lay tangled together. The sled smelled pleasantly, of warm fur and pine oil and sex; through the thick covering the wind sounded cold and distant. It was easy to imagine yourself outside, Shkai'ra thought, out in an unpeopled immensity lightless under stars, endless, traveled by wolf and tiger and demon. Easy and pleasant lying here in the comfortable afterglow; her body felt weightless, ready for sleep yet alert.

  Best I've ever had, she thought drowsily.

  She turned to the Minztan and ran her index finger over the other's closed eyelids.

  "Odd," she murmured. "I ought to despise you. I did, at first, but somehow, I can't help liking you, even docile as you are." She ruffled Maihu's hair. "Perhaps it's because I don't have to be anxious with you, the way I would with a Kommanza smart enough to understand my thoughts."

  Maihu touched the barely perceptible marks on Shkai'ra's stomach. "You have a child, Chiefkin?" she asked idly.

  "Hmmmm? Ah, yes. An accident. Last harvest but one, I was too drunk at the festival to remember the precautions." A smile at the pleasant memoiy. "But not too drunk to lie on my back. Then, with the lazy season coming on and no war, I decided to bring it to term." Not that she had seen it since; she had trouble even remembering the gender of it. The Mek Kermak kinelders had welcomed the chance of binding one of the village chiefs by fostering the child out, but there was no question of contaminating the god-born strain by keeping it.

  Maihu shivered at the explanation. Among her people, as with the Kommanza, paternity within the kinfast was anybody's guess, but the thought of discarding a child like that…

  It was no wonder they were as they were. It was a puzzle: the Kommanz, were perfectly fitted to their environment, but they seemed to break every rule of the Harmony that fashioned all things… Well enough, it was not her place to philosophize, merely to live within the Circle.

  Dh'ingun walked across and settled down like a ball of midnight where Maihu's thigh crossed Shkai'ra's. Maihu worked fingers into the fur at the angle of his jaw and was rewarded with a purr, a hoarse rumble that she felt as a vibration where the feline's body curled against her leg.

  The westerner pulled a book from a pocket on the fabric wall. "Read for me again," she said.

  "Which one, Chiefkin?" The Kommanza's taste was strange. Maihu would have expected her to favor the blood-and-thunder epics most like the chanted-sung poetry that was the great art form of the steppe. Instead she had a child's appetite for marvels, princesses with eyes like the moon who rode on swans from domes of crystal, or the funny earthy animal tales Minztans used for amusement and instruction of their youngsters.

  "The one about the talking animals," she said.

  "A wizard coupled with a poor woman once, in the city of the king," Maihu read. "She bore a son with one gray eye and one black…"

  Maihu propped the book against the curve of her hip and read on, the steady sound of her voice the loudest thing in the closed space, melding with the soft hiss of the stove and the sough of the wind.

  "Enough," Shkai'ra yawned. "I've a day in the saddle to await." Drowsy, she continued: "While you sit on the sled and tootle on your flute. Although Dh'in-gun doesn't seem to like it much; he yowled every time I rode by."

  Of course, thought Maihu, cats have the overhearing too. But they can't talk. The Kommanza dropped away toward sleep.

  Maihu watched her for a time. What is it I feel? she thought. Not hatred, although the Circle knows I have reason… Perhaps I'm nearer to Enlightenment than I thought. Pity? Yes, pity, although I will bring this one to ruin and death if I can. But she has the remna
nts of a soul, and acts only as her training commands. She turned out the light and smoothed a braid back from Shkai'ra's face before closing her own eyes. Together the women and the cat drifted into darkness.

  The commanders woke Shkai'ra early the next morning. She stepped out of the sled, looked around at their faces, and snarled.

  "How many?"

  "Two missing," the second-watch commander said.

  "Get the spook-pusher!"

  The shaman came swaggering, chewing with pleasure on a piece of raw liver. His face was livid with bruises; to the experienced eyes about him, much like the wounds of glancing blows with a wooden club. It took a moment for the glares of the officers to penetrate his self-assurance.

  "I thought your wisdom was going to stand over us 'like the shield of Zailo,' " a voice said. Shkai'ra was voiceless and motionless. Walks-with-Demons took a step back at the sight of her.

  "I…" He wet his lips. "I held the wood-switch in fight, this night past. He couldn't have made any strong magic—"

  "Out of my sight!" Shkai'ra said, with cold deadliness, "Out in the woods; maybe you can do some good there. You ride outer scout."

  "If he can find his own arse with both hands," one of the Bannerleaders muttered.

  Shkai'ra rose and stood tapping her gauntlets on the palm of one hand. There was an unfamiliar taste in her mouth, like tarnished copper; it took a few seconds for her to identify it. Fear.

  "Standard procedure," she said in the same steady tone. "Make speed; push it, kill any in the coffles that drag. Zailo shield you."

  "Zaik lead you, Chiefkin."

  The first scattered flakes fell from a sky the color of iron, and the wind began to keen.

  The Minztans found the body left bound on a leather groundsheet pegged to the packed snow that covered the river ice. They had been finding bodies all day, huddled shapes under blankets of snow. It was a moment before anyone realized that there was no snow on the corpse; it had melted off. Narritanni's second-in-command pushed forward and knelt beside the spreadeagled form, wincing at the huge splayed-open incision in the gut. She carefully avoided looking at the face, and suspected that her single glance would stay with her far longer than she wished.