Snowbrother

by S. M. Stirling

  The interior of the wound was like a diagram, nothing missing but a slice of the liver. And there was impossibly little blood. A sudden suspicion formed. She touched the blood on the leather sheet: it had had time to dry before it froze, time to blacken. She stripped off a glove and touched the victim's flesh.

  The warrior turned and ran half a dozen paces into the concealing curtain of the snowfall before falling to her knees again. Her sword flashed out, and she began hacking at the ice; flailing at first, then with steady methodical persistence.

  Narritanni saw the band group around the body, then suddenly back away as if from a fearful menace. He hurried forward, and stopped in puzzlement. The sight was foul, yes, but not enough to throw adrift the mind of one of his trained followers, who had seen far worse things.

  He slid to a halt beside her. She was speaking, under her breath, in a tone like cursing, like weeping.

  "No, no, no, oh Circle, please, no…"

  He laid a hand on her shoulder before speaking. "What… ?" he began.

  A face streaked with tears looked up at him. He waited in shock.

  "The body," she said, breast heaving. Her sword rested in a pit of blue-green ice chips. "The blood was dried, hours old-from last night."

  "The Eater," he said, lips tightening. "Well, we knew—"

  "The body hasn't stiffened," she ground out. "Barely even cold. It's been ten hours, and she was alive all the while."

  The one who had named himself Man of Stone hid his face in his hands, then wheeled into the wind and forced down huge breaths of the damp cold air. His body prickled, with a fearsweat that was wholly impersonal.

  "Ah, ah, ah," he gasped. Then calm settled over him. "We can't attack until… We'll have to ask the Wise Man, and try the Litany for It to help…"

  She rose, checked the sword, and rammed it back into the sheath as if that was a body. "Tomorrow, then," she said.

  Leafturn held the eyelids of the victim closed, long enough for them to stiffen in that position. He read the symbols painted on her body, with knowledge and a grimace of distaste, sinking back on his heels. Probing at his foreboding, he could not force it to become more definite; but he had walked the Way too long not to know the smell of fate. There was more here than he had imagined, and more than the destiny of these few scores of folk. He had an uneasy sense that he and his opponent both ran on leashes.

  What was it that the steppe peoples called tragedy? His mind groped for the phrase. The laughter of Zaik.

  Slowly, sullenly, the walls of the forest slid by as the column moved down the thirty-meter-wide corridor of the frozen river. Above, the low cloud roiled gray, filtering the afternoon light to a pale monochrome. Wind blew, smelling of cold and the hinting dampness of snowstorm, ruffling the manes of the horses and sending lance pennants snapping out. Shivering, the slave comes bent their heads and trudged. The sound of their shuffling made counterpoint to the muffled thudding of hundreds of hooves and the hissing of runners. A crow launched itself from a skeletal maple leaning out over the ice, its grawk-grawk-grawk loud among the quiet murmur of the warband.

  Shkai'ra followed its flight with longing eyes as she cantered down the line. High it would fly, until the struggling humans were a string of black dots on the snow, ants lost in a wilderness of trees. She shivered. Morale was bad; they had been losing the outlying scouts by ones and twos for days, more casualties than the battle had cost them. Her killers were not afraid to face death, she thought. It was the unknown lurker that frightened them. Her lips tightened. This morning, one of the scouts had refused duty. Her Bannerleader killed her on the spot, of course, the traditional punishment for insubordination in enemy territory. But the decay of discipline shook Shkai'ra.

  And they had found the first dead scout's horse— or the head, left by the riverside impaled on a pole, with runes cut in its forehead. The Horse Curse, most deadly of all doomsayings.

  She looked upward; the snow had lifted for a while, but there would be more soon, pulling at boot and fetlock, draining strength and spirit. There was a scuffle around one of the coffles. She pulled up. A Minztan had sunk to the snow and sat on his haunches; the guard reined in and leaned over to snarl and strike with her quirt. The slave looked up and shook his head with infinite weariness. The Kommanza pulled her lance out of its rest, flipped it up to the overhand grip, and stabbed downward with clinical precision. The man toppled over and flopped as she pulled the long razor-edged lancehead out of him with two swift jerks and cleaned it on his jacket. Without dismounting she used the edge to slice the body free and then left it to lie. The rest of the dead man's coffle stood, staring dumbly, motionless. The guard yelled, a shrill note in her voice, then prodded savagely with the butt of the lance. Still soundless, the Minztans slowly turned and resumed their weary plodding.

  Shkai'ra shivered again, and debated getting out the bison-pelt cloak. No, she thought: bad example. It would be pleasant to go back to the sled and lie with her head in Maihu's lap and listen to one of those strange stories… even to that accursed flute that put Dh'ingun's fur up. But no, that would be weakness. It was more important than ever to set a standard; it was more than the lurker that was eating at her followers' hearts, it was this Zaik-forsaken, Zailo-damned country. Out on the steppe the sky was the most endless on earth, but in this forest you couldn't see, each kylick was the same as the next, and there was an infinity of places for things to hide… She jerked her mind out of that track as she passed the still form of the Minztan.

  At least the ravens will be happy tonight, she thought dryly.

  She had not been listening to the whistle calls, not consciously. They were a language of their own, woven into the fabric of the mind in earliest childhood. The background mutter was conversation; mostly routine, position changes, time checks, a running commentary on the terrain. You could always pick out something meant for you, the way your hearing could filter your own name out of the babble in a crowded room. And it was a marvelously compact language, stylized, each sound standing hieroglyph-like for a phrase or sentence.

  Thus the first relay brought her head up. "Gap," it said, and followed with identity and position references, all over in a few seconds. A chill of apprehension prompted her to send a signal of her own down the line of the column: attack-alert, left flank. And right on the heels of that came confirmation, a hostile-sighting call from the left-flank third-layer scouts—the ones next to the column itself, pacing it a few hundred meters out in the woods. That shocked her to her soul. How could anyone punch through the mesh that fast? Magic… unless the scouts were demoralized enough to close in and report false positions. Neither bore thinking about. She heeled her horse into a gallop.

  13

  Maihu and Taimi had been sitting inside the sled; there was little to see outside, and no point in enduring the cold without need. Both wore ankle tethers: linked sections of hardwood covered in sheaths of iron-hard rawhide slipped on wet and then warmed and greased. The ropes ended in maplewood rings fastened likewise, wound around with wet thongs in a massive knot that could be cut but never untied. Taimi crouched listlessly in a corner, staring fixedly at the opposite wall and picking at the bindings on his ankle.

  Worried, Maihu looked up from her work. She had been carving a piece of antler for the hilt of a hunting knife, holding the bone between her bootsoles and attacking it with gouge and emery and polishing cloth. The sled was not really the place for such work—the occasional lurch set the tools awry—but it was better than letting her thoughts chase each other around and around on the same well-worn tracks. What the Circle gave would happen, and she could do no more than she was doing already. It was Taimi who gave her most concern; he had taken to copying the Kommanz isometric exercises, which was well enough, but…

  It was a blankness at the back of her mind that alerted her. Even with the Eater out of the camp she was cautious, but a hint of familiarity emboldened her to probe.

  And that brought shock: It, there was no mistakin
g it. Rage, and cunning, then concealment: no hostile mind could likely catch that perception now, unless perhaps the Eater's. Shouting resounded dimly through the padded walls of the sled, as the Kommanz threw themselves into ordered motion at the prompting of the code-calls. Hooves thudded past, and there was a neigh as a horse was pulled up. She heard the youngling driver call a question.

  "The gutsucking bark-eaters have gotten up their rabbit's courage and attacked," a harsh voice barked in Kommanzanu. "Report to your duty station. We go to our chiefs."

  The youngster gave a yelp of delight. Taimi had come to life, tense and quivering; he thrust his head through the entry curtain to see what was happening. The driver cursed and lashed him savagely across the face with the loose end of the reins, then looked in to check on their bonds.

  "Good," she grunted, and dropped from the seat, picked up her light bow, and trotted away to where she would help with the wounded and shuttle spare arrows. Her scalplock bobbed.

  "Quick, kinmother," Taimi gasped. "This must be the rescue."

  "Wait," Maihu said. Reaching inside a concealed pocket in the sled lining she produced a heavy knife, tucking it inside her jacket. Restraining Taimi with one hand, she listened cautiously. There was a slave coffle behind them. Thence came only a low murmuring, rising now as the captives realized that something unusual was in the offing. Ahead, around the bend in the river, forest and earth cut off sight. Yells, first; then the humming snap of massed archery, the whickering of shafts. Then screaming, one voice at first and the others picking it up, a shrill ululating wailing falsetto shriek that raised the hairs along Maihu's spine. Madness, and death, and hatred, quavering through the chill restless air; the Kommanz warcry. Then all sound faded with surprising speed; wood-strained ears told her why.

  "They're retreating," she told Taimi. "No, it may be a trick," she continued as his face crumpled.

  They jumped down from the sled. Behind it the slave lines had turned into a surging chaos where the villagers heaved against their bonds and roared out anger and hope. Most of the Kommanz guards had been drawn forward to the combat at the head of the column, or into the left-flank woods in an attempt at counterambush. The few remaining Kommanza struggled with lancebutt and whip to keep the captives under control; only the unwieldy size of the coffles kept them from making a break for the woods a mere ten meters away. That had been the point; groups that size could walk slowly, if they moved in unison under direction, but in a situation like this where each individual tried to move in his or her own track, they hampered each other, jerked each other off their feet. Maihu saw one whole coffle go over in a tangle of limbs, with the guards lashing out as the slaves tried to regain their feet. One rider had his saber out. She knew with gruesome certainty that fairly soon it would be in use, and not the flat of it either.

  They were on the right side of the sled, and so Maihu saw the Minztans come sliding down the opposite bank of the river a moment before the Kommanza did. There were many, perhaps thirty, Maihu thought. Taimi was yelling, frantic, jerking at the wood-and-leather chain that bound him to the vehicle, setting it rocking on its bone-and-fiberglass springs. The three ponies hitched to it were catching the infection, snorting and backing, their eyes rolling white against the shaggy brown hair.

  "Quiet!" shouted Maihu, shaking him by the back of his jacket. "Quiet! If the horses run, we'll be dragged." On the third repetition that sank in.

  The squad of Kommanza reacted swiftly. It was no part of their mission to waste their lives against impossible odds. Their squadleader shrilled out an order on his whistle, and they raced their horses forward toward the head of the column. All except one, whose horse was lapped by a wave of prisoners gone mad with the sudden hope. They pressed in regardless of hooves, a many-handed grasping monster terrible in its clumsy power.

  The saber rose, its edge glittering even in the dull cloudy light, fell, rose again stained where the curved cutting edge had landed with a drawing slash. The horse sounded, loud as the rider's shrilling, lashing out with teeth and battering feet, rearing and plunging. It pulled free before bound hands had a chance to haul the steppe killer from her saddle, but by then the free Minztans had arrived.

  Maihu saw who led them and leaned back against the sled, suddenly weak as her heart seemed to lurch under the confining breastbone. Most were Garnetseat villagers, but at their head ran two in light armor and helmets, armed with shortsword and billhook, their smocks of gray and off-white making them almost impossible to see against the snow. They swarmed around the Kommanza as she spurred to escape, brought her to bay near enough for Maihu to see the taut grin on her face as she realized her death. The two rangers spread, darted in. One of them engaged the westerner with a clang and clatter of metal on metal, parrying and striking with the long polearm. The other dodged in, reckless, and swung two-handed to hamstring the mount. He succeeded; cavalry are most vulnerable when they lose momentum. A human on foot is more nimble than a standing horse.

  "The Seeker's people," Maihu thought, breathless. They came in time. And It must have come as well, for them to be this bold. That was what took the Kommanza in the woods.

  The volunteers moved in as the Kommanza leaped from the saddle. She landed rolling and bounced erect. In that moment a tall hunter threw a cord around her neck from behind and closed strangling hands—but he had forgotten the gorget that guarded her throat. A spurred boot snapped up and back, ripped down, left him yammering anguish at his mutilated groin. Her hands went up and gripped, leaving the sword to dangle by its wrist thong. The armored body twisted and heaved, and the wounded Minztan flew over her head to land with breath knocked loose on his back before her.

  "Zaik!" she screamed. "Zaik with me!" A single chopping motion of the shield stove in the man's larynx, leaving him to strangle slowly.

  Leaping the body, she sprang into the midst of the enemy, forcing her way into the center of the crowd where their own numbers would hamper them, where they could not strike freely for fear of striking their own folk. No such limits hindered her. Lacking any hope except to make an honorable death, she had gone ahrappan. Her face twisted into a gorgon's mask that startled her foes into panic by its sheer hideousness. Froth dripped from her wide-stretched mouth, and she fought with sword and shield and feet, whirling and striking and slashing like a dust devil edged with knives. Armor protected her, and what blows did land she seemed not to feel.

  Driven two-handed, the spike on the tip of a bilk hook drove through the side buckles of her gorget-She turned, wrenching the point free with a twist that brought blood gouting out in throbbing red pulses. And even then she did not fall; the curved sword flicked out, took off half the hand gripping the shaft of the weapon that had killed her. The wielder screamed and spasmed, sending it flying to land at Maihu's feet. With a last thrust the Kommanza stabbed her slayer through the throat and collapsed. And died, still struggling mindlessly to rise as the last of her blood pumped out on the trampled snow.

  Not in vain. Distracted, the Minztans had no time to free their landsfolk. Now around the corner of the river bend came the shivering thunder of hooves. The Minztans were about to learn why the armored lancer and horse archer ruled the steppe lands.

  "Into the woods!" screamed the wounded Minztan. Most of the freed slaves followed him, but others burst east in panic, down the open road of the river.

  The space between the sleds and the north bank of the west-trending river was just wide enough for ten riders abreast to deploy comfortably in line. A full Banner rounded the bend at a pounding gallop, and checked the barest fraction of a second to dress ranks before plunging forward. The front rank leveled lances; the second kept theirs at rest and fired over their comrades' heads, arching shots that fell among the forest folk in whistling sheets. Then the charge struck. Watching in fascinated horror, Maihu half expected to hear a crash of impact. Instead the Kommanz ranks passed straight through the loose Minztan formation without slowing. The loudest sound under the Kommanz wailing and the sc
reams of the wounded was the heavy massive thudding of lanceheads striking home with hundreds of kilos of swift-moving horse and rider behind them. Few survived such impact.

  Then the riders were through, turning, sheathing bows. The lancers let the long ashwood shafts pivot free about the balance point of the grip, or shook their arms out of the elbow loops of broken weapons; and now the sabers came out, bright and long. Those of the Minztans near to the forest edge had some chance if they survived the first passage; a few scrambled back into the sheltering trees. Most broke in panic fleeing downriver, and the Kommanza followed them whooping with delight. Seven thousand years of history had shown that it was death to run from a lance; the principle had received another demonstration.

  Maihu heard Taimi beside her, cursing and sobbing with frustration. Not far away on the ice a Garnetseat villager was crawling, dragging herself along on her hands; the bright-dyed Serening of an arrow lodged in her lower spine showed why, bobbing and jerking with the movement. A man sat and stared at the stump where a hand had been. With painful slowness he began to fumble at his belt, for a loop to twist around the wound, then he fell soddenly into the stain spreading around him through the packed layers of snow. The first swift flakes melted as they struck it, then began to draw a merciful curtain of white over the redness.

  Maihu shook herself out of her daze. Taimi snatched up the billhook and began hacking frantically at the tether that held him, driving two-handed blows that might have done more good had he been calm enough to land two on the same spot.

  "Come on, kinmother," he gasped. "Help me, oh, help me!"