Northlight

by Wheeler, Deborah

  The inner folds of the vest were still warm as I picked it up and put it on again. It settled over my shoulders like an old friend. I guess I wasn’t ready to stop being a Ranger yet.

  “I’ll see you in hell,” I said cheerfully, and gathered up the brown gelding’s reins.

  Chapter 21

  For the next few days we worked our way through the maze of wind-eaten badlands north of where I’d last seen Avi. Despite the name, this country was far from a desert. The horses grazed well on quick-rye, which sprouts, ripens, and seeds within a week after a heavy rainfall, and my belly was full of the brush-grouse that fed in the same patch. Now the morning shadows stretched long over the dew-wet sauge and wire-grass, below the blue-white sky.

  A hell of a morning to have my nose stuck in sheep droppings.

  I sighed and straightened up from crouching on the canyon floor. “I don’t think we’ll find much. Wild sheep have been through here, covering up anything else.”

  Terris muttered something no nice University boy should know.

  Etch chuckled. “Can’t be helped now.”

  The gray mare rubbed her head against my back and butted me with her nose as if to say, Crazy two-legs, what are you doing on the ground? She almost had her full strength back now and wanted more than a sedate stroll along the canyon floor.

  I said, “You’re so uppity, Terris, you take the lead.”

  He swung his leg over the sorrel gelding’s rump and jumped lightly to the ground. Earlier I’d watched him riding and knew Etch’d been talking to him about horses. He’d got the rhythm of his horse’s gait. Now he kept his eyes to the scanning pattern I’d taught him, and I was right on his flank, checking everything he saw, everything he didn’t see. He missed very little.

  We went on through the noon hour, marking each canyon and all the branchings on our makeshift map, stopping to water the horses when we could. After that I led and then Etch, each of us checking the other. Boring, nerve-wracking, neck-stiffening, eye-watering work. Just before dusk, we halted at the branching of three gullies, a natural crossroads. Ground-hugging rosemarie grew everywhere here, thick enough to hide something small.

  “We’ve cut so far eastward, we’re closer to due north than we were when we started,” I thought aloud. “There are connections, and these gully walls can be climbed.”

  “We’ll have to mark this on the map and then go through the tributaries one by one tomorrow,” Terris said. He was tired, more from worry nerves than anything, and trying not to show it.

  If it were me, I thought, this is where I’d leave something for Avi to find. If I could. A coin, maybe, a bit of torn clothing, a horseshoe nail...

  I crouched down on the loose dirt and pushed aside the pungent clusters of leaves. Scanning, forcing myself to focus on each shadow in turn and yet to see the pattern of the whole. My eyes flickered over something small and circular, carved, bone-white.

  “Ah!”

  My fingers closed around it, smooth under its lightly incised markings. I handed it to Terris, grinning despite myself.

  He smoothed off the dust. “A button?”

  “Not just any button. It’s chevre horn, see, and this far north there’s only sheep. It’s too cold here for chevre — they do better by the Inland Sea. The horns fall off every year and the village women carve them like this. Each family’s got its own design, and each worker adds her own mark here, on the back. I know this pattern — it’s one of a set I bought for Avi. She left it just where she knew I’d look.”

  “Hidden,” Etch said, looking grim.

  “There’s been no sign of a struggle,” said Terris.

  “She was well enough to leave that button where it wouldn’t be found except for someone who was looking for it.” My heart pounded.

  “The light’s not good for much,” said Etch. “I’ll make some torches.” He bound kindling strips together to burn long and slow. We each lit one and went on, on foot. The night closed in on us.

  The flickering torchlight turned everything to shadows that seemed part alive and part illusion, watching us as we passed with their lidless eyes.

  There was nothing I was afraid of, not in this night. The things trapped in the shadows had no wings, no teeth, no knives.

  Partway up a rapidly widening gully, Terris spotted what looked like faded footprints.

  “Boots,” I said, “but they’re old enough so I can’t tell much more.” I held my torch up for better light. There, on the ground-clinging rosemarie —

  I knelt down, hardly daring to touch it. The break wasn’t fresh, but neither was it very old. The exposed woody core was dry and yet the leaves beyond the break were still water-soft.

  “Look there,” Etch pointed. “More. Leading north.”

  I nodded, balancing the heady adrenalin rush against the day we’d had, the night ahead.

  Terris marked my hesitation. He was as tired as any of us, but his voice was firm. “This is far enough. We make camp here.”

  “We can’t give up now,” Etch said.

  “We aren’t giving up,” Terris shot back.

  “What good will we be to her half-asleep on our feet?” I added. “You said it yourself, the light’s gone and it’s too easy to miss a track by torchlight. Against the chance of an error like that, what difference will a few hours make? Tomorrow morning with clear eyes and good daylight will do us just as well.”

  In the end, Etch and I agreed. Terris had better sense than either of us. We might wander around as if we had no more brains that the brush-sheep, losing the track because it was too damned dark. We might face a fight to the death. Part of me wanted to go on, but I couldn’t listen to that part. I couldn’t make a mistake, not with Avi’s life.

  o0o

  I was in the lead when we came to a sharp bend in the canyon. Here the clumps of rosemarie and wire-grass gave way to split-bark oak, so there must have been an underground spring for their taproots to draw from. Split-bark meant squirrels nesting in the branches and getting fat on the acorns. Just our luck, because the nitbrains would chitter out a warning as soon as we got close.

  Beyond the grove, part of the western canyon wall had tumbled down and half across the trail, huge rough boulders easily big enough to hide a mounted man. All in all, an excellent place for an ambush.

  From the gray mare’s back, I studied the narrow passage ahead. Nothing moved except for a branch that a squirrel had just jumped off. The squirrel, of course, was gone.

  As for Terris and Etch, I couldn’t count on what they’d do if someone came barreling at them, knife in hand. Best thing’d be to run and hope their horses were faster, and I told them so.

  “Stay behind me,” I said.

  “And ride right past that?” said Terris.

  “Around that,” I answered, sliding the long-knife out. The leather-wrapped hilt fit exactly into my hand. The steel whispered through my veins. “And we’ll be ready for them.”

  I nudged the mare with my knees. She arched her neck and pranced forward.

  Everything came clear now, as still as if the little canyon and everything in it held its breath. I could see every pebble, every shadow, every leaf. I could smell the squirrels cowering in their dens, smell their fear, hear the beating of their tiny hearts. I heard the beating of men’s hearts, too, behind the rocks. Adrenalin shivered through me.

  “Get ready.”

  The squirrels shrieked out their warnings, tinny and powerless, then scampered for cover. The mare’s hooves made a hollow sound on the dirt. We moved forward as if in a dream, she and I, knife and mare. Any moment now...

  I caught the flicker of pale gold elkskin behind the first big rock. The mare wheeled on her hindquarters, smooth as silk. Behind us, two northers sprinted toward us on their scruffy-maned ponies.

  “Go!” I shouted to Terris and Etch, and felt rather than saw them kick their horses forward, back towardthe trail, the rat-head brown in the lead.

  The first norther closed with me, spear aim
ed to hook under my knee. He meant to topple me, not kill me, but I had no time to consider how peculiar this was. I shifted my weight, signaling the mare. She pivoted and slammed one shoulder into the norther’s pony. The pony whuffed! in surprise and went down, legs flailing. The norther scrambled to kick free, but the frantic pony rolled the wrong way, across his legs.

  Where the hell is the other one?

  There he was, pounding after Etch and Terris, hidden now as they regained the trail. I kicked the mare into a flying gallop, angling her between the fallen rocks. An instant later two more of them veered in from the side. The mare swerved toward the nearer one, a big man waving his brightly decorated spear over his head. I tensed for the impact, readying my knife.

  Without warning, pain exploded across the back of my skull. The world went gray and shivery. I heard a roaring in my ears. I saw, as if from very far away, some other woman Ranger, copper-red hair stained with fresh blood, sliding from the gray mare’s back...

  o0o

  My body turned into a drum — POUND POUND POUND all through my head, huge round ripples of pain — POUND POUND POUND. I swayed and heaved as if a pair of dancers tweaked out of their minds on dreamsmoke were tossing me back and forth, thwacking at me with their sticks.

  Put me down, you filthy crot-assed —

  Then came the gut-whirling sick after being knocked over the head, but I had no time to spare, wallowing in it. I was slung belly-down over the gray mare. Her silken canter pulverized every still-intact bone in my body. I tried to get a full breath to clear my head, but it came out in a pathetic grunt. The arch of the pommel was excavating a hole in my short ribs big enough to drive a herd of brush-sheep through.

  Actually, that was a good sign.

  If I was pissed, I was alive. Cautiously, because my head felt like a huge, round, blood-filled sausage about to burst its casing, I looked up. All I could see were tufts of wire-grass and the muscular rump of Etch’s flea-bit roan. My hands and feet were securely tied.

  “Hold!” a man shouted above the thudding hooves.

  The mare slowed to a walk. Hands took hold of me, big and iron strong. A few quick jerks and my ankles were free. Next moment I sat upright in the saddle, my wrists still tied in front of me, telling myself I was ready for anything and not believing a word of it.

  I eyed the man standing in front of me, the quilted vest bright with stitching and beads, the braided leather dagger sheath, the long plaits of ashy-yellow hair tied with dyed elkskin fringe. I recognized the designs as Cassian and couldn’t decide if that were good news or bad, my head still felt so muddled. The norther’s face was weather-rough, his cheeks soft with a naturally sparse, almost invisible beard. His eyes had the washed-out look of someone who’d stared into the sun a long time. My long-knife and its sheath were strapped behind his back.

  He jabbed a thumb in the direction of my chest. His voice was slightly lilting, his face grim. “Prisoner.”

  I nodded. If he meant to impress me with the gravity of my situation, he’d made a poor start. I was still alive, although I hadn’t yet figured out why. He’d taken my long-knife and the one in my forearm sheath, and probably the boot knife and folded utility blade. I wasn’t about to check on them now. But he’d clean missed the buckle knife.

  From the corner of one eye I glimpsed the roan mare with Etch on her back and blood seeping through the bandages around one shoulder.

  “Pay attention!” snapped the norther. “I say this only once. You disobey any order I give, you try to escape,” he pointed at Etch and then, quickly, behind me to where Terris sat white-faced on his sorrel, “he dies. No warnings.”

  The norther offered no explanations of which he he meant, nor did he wait for any sign of agreement before jumping on his pony and booting it forward. He’d tied the mare’s reins to his saddle. I considered leaning forward, slipping the headstall off the mare’s head with my bound hands, and guiding her with my knees. She would outrun these ponies easy, and I could saw through the wrist ropes with my buckle knife. Which showed I wasn’t nearly as clear in the head as I thought I was, to even consider such a dumbshit idea.

  I twisted around for a quick look behind us and saw only the haze-fogged outlines of the Ridge. The overcast was so heavy, I couldn’t tell the time of day from the position of the sun, or how long we’ve been traveling.

  We headed north at an easy canter, dropping back into a trot from time to time to breathe the horses. The ground climbed and flattened as toward the end of the afternoon we passed from scrubby wire-grass prairie to wet tundra, thready ice-sod and low, dense-wooded thorn trees around patches of seeping melt water. I spotted something far ahead — forest maybe or low hills, but it might be only a trick of the shifting air.

  I shivered and tried not to think of the warm cloak with the extra gear on the rat-headed brown. I told myself the cold was something good — a friend to clear my head and keep me sharp. Mother knew I’d lived enough of my life being cold. Cold and dry on the steppe, cold and wet on the Ridge. And now?

  Now I was alive and in one piece. I still had no idea why. Terris and Etch, too — if they were well enough to ride, how bad off could they be? They could be norther prisoners, that was what.

  But the northers didn’t take prisoners. The northers never took prisoners.

  What the hell did they want with us?

  Chapter 22

  Late in the day, we came to a stretch of jagged low hills stretching north and east. Between the failing light and the low clouds, I couldn’t see much of them except the ghostly gray of bare rock. Here the northers set up camp, cold and windy, and fed us from our own provisions. They filled our cooking pot with water and horse grain to soak overnight. It would probably be their breakfast, and ours too if we were lucky. The horses they tethered to graze with their own ponies.

  I sat cross-legged, hands still bound, chewing on a piece of salt-mutton. A norther stood behind me, the big one with the fancy spear. The point now hovered a half-inch from the back of my neck. The fire they built to cook their porridge or whatever it was they ate had long since blown out in the gusty, ice-edged wind.

  I couldn’t see Terris or Etch, although I knew where they were, across the camp. At last light they’d looked all right. Cold, but all right. A couple of times earlier, Terris had opened his mouth to say something and got a knife blade shoved in his face. He handled himself well through it all, and if he was as scared as the night those two goons jumped us, he didn’t show it. When I glanced over at him, sitting easily on the sorrel gelding, he looked...strange, tense of course, but something more — as if he’d seen in a dreamsmoke vision that all of this was going to happen.

  Etch too looked my way as we rode. Wait, I thought, and prayed he wouldn’t get some dumbshit notion to play hero. He was no fighter, but I remembered the way he went into action with the gray mare. That took a cool head and a different kind of courage than what you need to hack away at people who are jumping at you, screaming. Whatever kind of courage it was, I hope he’d keep it in his pocket. It occurred to me now, when there wasn’t a damned thing I could do about it, that I was the one who’d gotten herself thwapped over the skull and he might just as well have been looking over to see if I was all right. The thought surprised me.

  As for the northers, Mother knew what they were like among themselves, but somehow I didn’t think they’d be this quiet. All through setting up camp, getting us fed and guarded — especially me, they didn’t trust me further than they could dangle me by my toes — they hardly ever talked to each other. The most I heard was a whispered discussion on how to guard me while I used the latrine pit. Finally the leader, looking disgusted with the whole mess — You batbrains can’t even handle a woman who needs to pee! — pulled my boots off himself, put a slip-noose around my neck, and shoved me, hands still tied, in the right direction. All without a word.

  I wriggled into my bedroll — carefully searched first, no hidden weapons, but no ice-scorpions lured out of hibernation b
y my body heat. The tent was my own, rigged by the northers in a way I’d never seen before, low to let the wind stream over it. One of them, the little one with straw-colored hair who’d got half flattened by his pony, sat stoically outside in the wind. I hoped his leg hurt him plenty.

  I kept telling myself, If they’d wanted us dead, we’d be dead.

  Like a maggot eating its way through a palm-cactus fruit, trailing rot, the thought gnawed at me — maybe they have Avi. Maybe they were taking us wherever they took her. Maybe they wanted something from us — information, hostages, I didn’t know what — and that was why we were alive. Why they wouldn’t talk in front of us...

  It was death to think these things. To have such hope. I would find something else at the end. Something desperate, something hard. I would need to act, clear-headed, with no poison of disappointment running through me.

  I shifted into a more comfortable position on the hard ground, not an easy task with my wrists tied. My belt was still snug around my waist. It would be simple to cut through the ropes, but as they weren’t tight enough to cut off the circulation in my hands, it seemed hardly worth it. I’d save the buckle knife for when I really needed it.

  I wavered in and out of consciousness, wandering half in the past, half in dreams. Sometimes I thought I was back in the ragged country bordering the steppe, my body throbbing with fatigue and bruises, other times at Brassaford, snatching a few minutes’ sleep. I’d reach out for Avi, who should be sleeping beside me, and the sudden jerk on my wrists would snap me awake.

  By now, my body heat had warmed the blankets and my muscles began to relax. Let the bastard outside sit in the cold all night. I was going to get some sleep.

  o0o

  On the third morning of travel, when I was no longer dizzy all the time, we reached the lake. Like a stone of flat, deep blue, it stretched westward from the hills and snowmelt rivers that fed into it. Scattered conifers grew right down to the edge. The air was cold and damp and tangy with their scent. On the rocky island in the center of the lake, I made out two or three log buildings, an open fire pit sending up curls of blue-tinted smoke, people in elkskin jackets and breeches. They saw us and all started running in different directions.