“You!” the man said accusingly, pointing at Ash. “You’re that Traveler they’re looking for! I saw you before, with the two whores.”
Ash froze, caught between two equally strong impulses. The first, the oldest, was to run. The other was to kill. If they let the carter go, he would raise the valley against them. They would be tracked, captured, probably executed. Even the Golden Valley executed murderers. He thought fleetingly of the pressing box, and hoped it would be a quick hanging instead. But if he killed the carter now, it would buy them enough time to get out of the valley. Particularly if they hid the body and let the bullock loose… He found that his hand had moved to his boot knife without him willing it. He could hear Doronit’s voice, teaching, “Assess the threats against you and then remove them.”
It was good advice, and might save their lives. It might even save the Domains, because if they didn’t complete their task and meet up with the others, there would be no one to stop the ghosts… One life against two. One against many… The time seemed to stretch out endlessly as he sat, poised between the two choices. The carter pointed his whip at them and almost snarled. Ash’s fingers took a firmer hold, a throwing hold so he could draw and flip the knife right into the man’s throat in one movement.
“You’re scum, all of you!” the carter said. Ash’s hand twitched, wanting to throw the knife.
“Death of the soul,” he heard Martine’s voice say quietly, and remembered another ghost, a girl he had killed, who had warned him against this path. His fingers loosened on the knife hilt.
“Say nothing. Just ride,” he said to Flax quietly, and they swung around the man and pushed the horses to a canter. Once they were out of sight, they found the next path up into the hills and took it as fast as the horses could safely go on the steep ground.
They went fast and silently for an hour or two, cutting between tracks, heading back up the hillside, and then behind them they heard the belling note of hounds on the scent.
They looked at each other in alarm. The horses picked up on their nervousness and tossed their heads, Cam dancing a little sideways, which almost knocked Ash and Mud off the path. Ash recovered with difficulty and nodded his head to Flax to lead the way.
They came to a brook tumbling down the hillside in a mist of white spray, so they headed the horses upstream through the rocky flow and picked their way past two obvious trails until they came to a large stone jutting out into the water. Flax swung down from Cam and cajoled the horses into scrambling up onto the stone and stepping from there to a patch of thick grass, so that once the wet hoofprints had dried there would be no sign they had left the stream.
The sound of the dogs grew fainter behind them.
Ash felt as though he moved in a dream. After all, this was the stuff of Traveler nightmares: Acton’s people on the hunt, dogs, a wilderness with no refuge, and he himself as guilty as he could be; no defense possible. He was a killer. Sully was dead. That thought made him wake up.
“They’re after two of us,” he said to Flax. “And you haven’t done anything. If we split up, you should be all right.”
Flax shrugged. “That carter saw me with you. He won’t forget.”
That wasn’t quite true. The carter had stared at Ash the whole time.
“You know what the grannies say,” Ash reminded Flax. “It’s our duty to survive.”
“Survive and breed?” Flax grinned. “Not likely to happen with me, anyways. Never saw a girl I’d give a tumble to. Come on.”
He led the way up a narrow track, barely a deer trail, threading through the byways as quietly as they could. On the stony paths they had to move more slowly than Ash would have liked, but a lame horse would be the death of both of them.
Twice more during the day, in the distance, they caught the sound of baying hounds, and sweat broke out all over Ash. But the belling notes became no louder, and they found another path which took them further south.
“I just hope we don’t go too far up,” Flax said, giving the bluff ahead of them a worried look. They were much closer, but they wouldn’t reach it that day.
Just before night they found a hollow in the cliff which trickled spring water down into a small pool. It was as good a stopping place as they could hope for on the hillside, screened from view from both sides. They couldn’t risk putting up the tents, so they slept on the ground, rolled in a blanket, cold and uncomfortable, and they kept the horses tethered right next to them. Ash took the first watch. He was more used to going without sleep, and Flax was tired out. Waiting in the dark, danger lurking in every rustle of the bushes, he blessed Doronit for her relentless training. He and Flax might not get out of this alive, but at least he wasn’t sitting here panicking and feeling helpless. If the hunters came, they’d get a fight.
Bramble
THE DIRGE OF pipes being blown slowly filled her head. The sound was almost torture, but saved from that by the gradual change of tone in the music. There was melody there, if she could only concentrate enough to follow it. She strained through the darkness and found that, although her sight cleared, she was still in the dark.
All she could tell was that she was in a room, somewhere inside. The darkness pressed in on her as strongly as the sound of the pipes, droning outside. The dirge was a sound that remembered grief, or promised it. She, he — Baluch, she thought, from his reaction to the music — was sitting on the ground with his back to a wall, his knees drawn up in front of him. The air was hot. Too hot, but the only comfort in the place was the warmth of another body next to his, and he didn’t move away. Acton, perhaps? Or Sebbi?
Without the sound of the pipes she would have believed them benighted in a cave. She was fairly sure that the pipes were real, not just in Baluch’s head, but she couldn’t be certain.
Then the pipes outside mounted in intensity and a door was flung open, letting in a blinding light.
“Come on, then,” a voice boomed, echoing off the walls. Baluch turned his head. It had been Acton sitting next to him, with Sebbi on Acton’s other side. They looked tired and Sebbi was trying not to look scared. Baluch’s heart had started to beat wildly. Whatever was happening, Bramble thought, it’s not good.
The voice belonged to a shortish, heavy-muscled man with red hair. His shoulders were huge and he wore only a length of undyed wool wrapped as a skirt. The rest of his body was warmed by a thick cover of hair. His beard obscured most of his face, and his head hair reached in many plaits down past his waist. There was so much hair on his face that it was easy to miss the sharp intelligence in his eyes.
“Out!” he ordered.
The three boys stood and walked slowly out the door, Acton first. They were all taller than the man, but Baluch, at least, didn’t feel as if he were looking down on him. Bramble could feel the real fear that curled inside his stomach.
Outside, in pre-dawn light, there was a large circle of people, men and women and children, all with red hair. Bramble noted one girl with eyes red from crying, and thought, that’s the one from the mountain, I reckon. Lost her lover. She couldn’t feel much sympathy.
The hairy man took a knife from his belt — a black stone knife, the kind that never lost its edge. A knife from the gods.
“The Ice King has been sent as a punishment by the gods!” he declared, his deep voice booming over the silent gathering. “And why? Because we have been lax in our worship! We have foregone the ancient sacrifices! We have turned from the old, true ways and followed the ways of greed and easy living. So we are being punished!”
He pointed to the north. As one, the crowd turned to look and a moan broke from every lip. The Ice King towered over the village, less than an hour’s walk away. Around the houses, Bramble could see carts laden with household goods. Ready to leave.
“It is time to return to the old ways!” the man announced. His eyes shone with fervor. “We do not even have to give up one of our own. The gods have sent us their sacrifice!”
He raised the knife and a roar went up
from the crowd. He shook the knife in the air and they roared louder. Then he lowered the knife and they quietened.
“But the sacrifice must be chosen. I have inspected these gods’ gifts and all are fit. So we will leave it to the gods.”
He gestured to a woman standing nearby, a thin-faced woman with eager eyes who reminded Bramble of the Widow Farli in Wooding. She handed over three straws. One was short.
The hairy man turned away from the boys and put the straws in his fist, then turned back and offered it to them.
“What happens if we won’t choose?” Acton asked.
The man looked hopeful. “Then you all die.”
Acton looked at Baluch, and then at Sebbi. “If one of us is chosen, will you let the others go?”
The hairy man stilled for a moment, then nodded. “Aye.”
“It doesn’t matter who dies,” Acton whispered. “What matters is that the others tell the chieftains about the Ice King.”
Sebbi laughed shortly. “Hah! Easy to say.”
The hairy man thrust his fist toward Baluch.
Bramble could feel the pressure of the gods suddenly descend. He hesitated. They were telling him which one to choose. He could perhaps save his comrades by choosing a different one, but then he would be disobeying the gods. She could feel him think it through. What if the hairy man was right, and the gods had chosen their sacrifice? Perhaps the one they wanted him to choose was the short straw. How could he know? He yielded to the pressure and closed his fingertips around the straw the gods insisted on, and drew it out slowly.
It was long.
Bramble found that she was almost as relieved as Baluch. Don’t be ridiculous! she thought. You know he doesn’t die here. He founds Baluchston. But somehow it didn’t feel like that to her, as though they were living a history already laid down in stone. It felt as though Baluch had made a real choice, could have chosen differently, could have died here.
Acton nodded to Sebbi to choose. Giving him a better chance. Sebbi glared at him, but reached for a straw. Short.
“Hah!” the hairy man shouted. “The gods have chosen!”
The crowd roared again. Acton put his arm around Sebbi’s shoulder. “I’ll take your place.”
Sebbi shrugged him aside. “The gods chose me, not you. It’s my death will save these people.”
Acton nodded respectfully. “Your choice.”
He and Baluch both pretended not to see the sweat standing out on Sebbi’s forehead.
In the crowd beyond, the men were assembling weapons. Spears, knives. No swords.
“I will be killed like an animal,” Sebbi said, his face pale. “Without a warrior’s death, how will I be reborn?”
Baluch moved to him and put a hand on his shoulder. “You will go straight to the gods, Seb. You are their chosen. Of course you will be reborn.”
“Unless the sacrifice is not just this life, but all the lives I might have had,” Sebbi said.
Neither of them knew what to say to that. They stood quietly, waiting. Baluch was fighting both grief and a kind of horror that life could go so quickly awry, so badly. Bramble could feel his longing for home. For once, there was no music in his mind. Then the pipes began again and he shuddered.
Sebbi noticed. “Thinking of music even now?” he mocked, his voice tight. “What’s the matter, isn’t it in tune?”
Baluch looked him straight in the eye. “I will write a praise-song for you and they will sing it until the end of time,” he said.
Sebbi’s eyes grew bright. “Yes,” he said. “Give me life that way, Bal. If they take away all my rebirths, make sure I live in the memory of our people.”
“I will,” Baluch swore.
The hairy man approached them and took Sebbi by the arm, not unkindly. “It’s time, lad,” he said. “Come, you must be blessed.”
He led Sebbi over to the space in front of where the men stood with their weapons.
“Can we do anything?” Baluch whispered to Acton.
Acton shook his head, his eyes fixed on Sebbi. “I’m not sure we should even try. Maybe this is what the Ice King needs. Besides, what’s important here is that at least one of us gets back to the Moot.”
His voice was implacable. There! Bramble thought with a strange relief. That’s the invader. Ready to let others die for his own purposes.
The hairy man moved to strip Sebbi of his clothes, but Sebbi forestalled him and undressed himself quickly. Baluch mourned over him, but he was also noticing the details so he could work them into the song later: the way Sebbi stood tall in front of the crowd, the respect that had awoken in those watching as he had undressed, the way the light seemed to gather over his wiry golden head. The hairy man raised his knife and started to speak but Sebbi cut him off, shouting: “I come as a willing sacrifice, to help the peoples of this place. I take your message to the gods: Save us! Curb the Ice Giants and let us live in peace and plenty!”
The crowd erupted in acclamation. The men shook their spears in the air, the women cried out and called as the goat girl had called the goats, ululating.
The hairy man pointed to the horizon, where the sun was just about to appear. “Be ready!” he cried.
As the first gold edged over the mountain, he pushed Sebbi in the back. “Take our evils, take our lacks, take our contrition to the gods and beg them to hear our plea!” he said. “Run!”
Sebbi ran. As soon as he started, the men began to chant while the women sang a two-note hymn.
“Blood cleans, blood binds, blood scours, blood ties, blood washes, blood pulls . . .” they sang. The gods gathered, their pressure building, filling both Baluch and Bramble with holy terror. The gods’ attention was stronger than she had ever known it.
Then Bramble realized the men were chanting numbers. They were counting. Counting as she had so often counted before a chase. But this was summer, not autumn. After Mid-Summer, the gods told her, absently, with only a part of their attention. Any time after Mid-Summer, the sacrifice can be made.
The Autumn Chase, Bramble thought, appalled. This is the real Autumn Chase. She was expecting them to count to fifty, but at forty-nine the men sprang away, led by the hairy man, and the gods went with them, leaving she and Baluch stunned.
The women followed the band of men, and the children ran beside them.
Acton turned to Baluch. “Let’s go.”
“We can’t just leave!”
“We have to.”
“But —”
Acton dragged him away. “He’s going to die. Do you really want to watch?”
“Yes!” Baluch shouted. “I promised him a praise-song. I have to watch!”
He pulled his arm from Acton’s grasp and ran after the crowd as fast as he could. He was much faster than the women with their long skirts and he passed them easily, although his legs were cramped from sitting so long in the dark.
The men were loping after Sebbi. Bramble could see him, going up a rise in the near distance. He was running smoothly, his bare legs flashing pure white in the early sun. The men increased their pace and Sebbi turned, curving his flight away from them toward the Ice King. Bramble could guess his reasoning: if he was to die to banish the Ice King, then the best place to shed his blood should be on the ice itself. The men agreed. They let out a howl of approval and quickened their pace. Baluch pushed himself to run faster. He angled across the grassland so that his path would intersect theirs close to the ice.
The ice had pushed boulders, soil and rubble before it. Collapsed houses. Precious spars of wood. Sebbi faltered as his foot landed on something sharp. Then he straightened and ran on, limping just a little. He left a clear trail of blood behind him. The chasers yelled in triumph. The blood heat was taking them over, the thrill of chasing. Bramble felt sick. This was what she had felt, chasing the Kill. This was her ritual, her greatest pleasure — her salvation. She realized that she had been truly reborn in the Spring Chase because somewhere, sometime, perhaps a thousand years before, a man had died in
autumn. Life sacrificed, life returned, that was the bargain. It might even have been Sebbi’s life that had given hers back to her.
He was at bay, now, standing bravely before the ice cliff. The men came within spearshot and howled triumph again. The spears flew. Baluch was counting them: ten, twelve, fifteen… Blood blossomed on Sebbi’s chest and legs. He flung his arms wide, his jaw set, determined, then took the pain and used it to scream to the heavens: “Hear our plea! Save us!” Then he fell.
The men crowded around so that Baluch could not see, then broke apart as some of them picked up the body and hoisted it onto their shoulders, its arms and legs dangling. They were all smeared across their faces with Sebbi’s blood. Bramble’s gorge rose, but Baluch was calm now, all his grief transmuted into an arrow of concentration aimed at the party of men.
Acton appeared at Baluch’s shoulder.
“Time to go,” he said. The women came up, tearing at their faces and grieving for the young life cut down. But this, too, was part of the ritual and mostly their eyes were dry and bright with hope. Baluch put out a hand and stopped one of them, an older woman.
“What will happen to him?” He had spoken without thinking, in his own language, and she did not understand. Acton repeated it in her tongue. She hesitated.
“I do not know,” she said finally. “In the old days, he would be torn apart and scattered on the fields to ensure good harvest. Now we have no fields… perhaps he will be scattered on the ice.”
They could see, when they turned back to watch, that the chase party was following the line of the ice, stopping at intervals for prayer. Acton and Baluch watched long enough to see that the end of the prayer was followed by some part of Sebbi’s body being cut off by the hairy man and thrown onto the ice.
“Will it work?” Acton asked Baluch in an undertone. “What do the gods say?”
Baluch shuddered. “The gods say nothing. But I think it will take more than one man’s blood to satisfy the Ice King.”
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