Acton turned to Harald. “Grandfather . . .” he said pleadingly. Harald stared away from him in silence, his arms folded. Acton swallowed hard, and then took a deep breath and reached for the Mootstaff. Swef handed it to him, and patted him on the arm as he did so. Acton nodded acknowledgment. He was paler than Bramble had seen him before.
“Because the future of my people — my grandfather’s people — is at stake, I speak here with the voice of Swef.”
Bramble expected the crowd to react noisily, but they were completely silent, although some moved uneasily, putting their hands to their swords, or stroking their beards as if for comfort. Some of them had wounds bandaged; a few had an arm or an eye or an ear missing, the wounds still red and proud. Recent fighting, then. A lot of it.
“Brothers,” Acton said, “we all know the dangers facing us. If danger was all that confronted us, we would laugh at it.” The men below nodded. “If fighting were all that was required of us, we would fight. If dying were required of us, we would die. If killing were required of us, we would kill the enemy in their thousands!” They were nodding harder. “We are warriors and we do not flee any man!”
They shouted agreement.
“But it is not men who confront us. It is the Ice King.”
He let that sink in. The crowd subsided, murmuring.
“I have seen the Ice King,” Acton said quietly, so that they had to be silent to hear him. “I have seen the Ice King,” he said a little louder. “I have seen the Ice King,” he shouted. “And we cannot survive him!”
They were silent. Swef watched their faces — singling out some for special attention, Bramble realized. Key men. The ones whose opinions would sway others. Some were unconvinced, but most looked suitably grave. Bramble wondered how Acton knew what to say. She was reminded of the way Thegan had put on an act for his people at the Sendat fort, but that had been pure play-acting. No matter how rehearsed his words, Acton meant them. She wasn’t even sure they were rehearsed. Perhaps he was speaking from the heart, remembering Sebbi and the cliffs of ice.
“He will come, and he will grind our halls into splinters and our fields he will crush and cover until there is no place to lay our heads nor even any place to burn our dead!” That was heartfelt, all right. Acton licked his lips, shifted his grip on the Mootstaff a little, and continued. “To flee the Ice King is not cowardice, but courage. Courage to admit that he is greater than any of us. Courage to save our women and our children and our beasts from hunger and misery and want. Courage . . .” he paused, gauging the mood of the crowd. Swef seemed amused at the tone of the speech; Bramble felt him suppress a chuckle. “Courage to leave the land of our fathers and find new lands to make our own.”
The crowd stirred at that and one man shouted out, “The sea lanes are closed!”
“But the mountains are not,” Acton replied. “There is a way through the mountains. A way of danger, a way for heroes. On the other side, with the good will of the people already there, we shall find a wide, empty land for us to settle. A good land, away from the fear of the Ice King. A land for adventure and trade and prosperity. If my brothers wish it so.”
The crowd clamored, most in favor, it seemed to Bramble, but some objecting strongly.
Acton handed the stick back to the old man and, after hesitating, came to stand next to Swef. They exchanged glances. Swef murmured, “ ‘With the good will of the people there’? That’s a big if.”
Acton grinned at him, restored to his usual cheerfulness. “First things first,” he whispered back. “Let’s get the Moot’s permission and then go negotiate.”
Swef clapped him on the back. “You’re your mother’s son,” he said, laughing as the waters rose up like a clear spring and floated Bramble away.
Not again! Bramble thought. The noise of battle was unmistakable. This time she was in Baluch’s head, no doubt about it — each sword stroke was accompanied by martial music, horns and drums. His eyes were clouded by blood — he reached up to wipe it away and winced as the back of his hand caught on a tear in his scalp. From his right, an auburn-haired giant with plaits down to his waist screamed and brought down an axe — not a battleaxe, but the kind you used to chop wood. Baluch raised his shield, but it was clear the blow would shatter it and break the arm underneath, leaving him wide open for a killing blow.
Acton appeared out of nowhere and tripped the man neatly, so that he landed at Baluch’s feet, face in the churned dirt. Baluch swallowed and brought his sword down on the man’s neck. It was a huge blow. He was reluctant and spurred by his own reluctance and the shame it brought to greater strength. Blood spurted wildly and the legs and arms twitched while the head rolled away from the neck, showing the man’s wild, dim eyes. Baluch spun away to block a spear thrust from another huge attacker. He and Acton stood back to back and fought together.
Around them, the melee swirled, blond heads and auburn heads intermingled, swords and shields swinging, spears flashing down and dripping as they came up again. The noise was tremendous, but Baluch didn’t seem to hear. He was concentrated on the rhythm of sword stroke and shield parry. Acton pointed to the side. Harald was nearby, standing on a small rise, laying about him with vigor. Acton broke from their back-to-back position and moved toward Harald, Baluch guarding their progress from behind. But before they could reach the chieftain, a grinning berserker rose up behind him with spear in hand and thrust down hard into his back. Harald’s arms went up in the air and he fell forward.
Acton shouted and surged ahead, heaving aside ally and enemy alike until he reached his grandfather’s side. He sank to his knees beside Harald’s dead body. Baluch stood over them, fending off two attempts to spear Acton. The berserker returned and Baluch dropped his shield to make a huge two-handed blow straight down on his head. It split the auburn head, the left ear coming away with part of the skull, soft brain oozing out. Astonishingly, the man stood, swaying but still alive. Baluch put a foot on his chest and kicked him away, then swooped to pick up his own shield in time to take the next blow from a raider on his flank. Baluch’s chest was tight and tears were running down his cheeks as he swung his sword. Bramble realized belatedly that they were not for Harald. Elric, Baluch’s father, was lying beside his chieftain, a great wound in his chest, the blood already drying. Acton rolled both men into seemly positions, then rose and lifted his sword.
“To me!” he shouted. “To me!”
The blond heads, one by one, turned and began to fight their way back toward the rise. Some fell on the way. When they were gathered, surrounded by a ring of swords and spears, Acton moved forward. He pointed with his sword to an older man to the far right of the attackers.
“That is their chieftain,” he yelled to Baluch. “We will feed him to the ravens!” Then he began to fight his way toward the man. His men fell in behind him, Baluch at one shoulder, Asgarn coming up to shield the other side.
“Kill them all!” Acton shouted, and his men howled back: “Acton! Acton! Acton! Kill them all!”
Energy ran back into Baluch’s limbs as the shout went up and he followed Acton with enthusiasm.
“Kill them all!” he shouted with the rest, the music in his head rising and rising until he could not think at all, just react: stab, swing, parry, block, swing again and rejoice as one of the attackers fell. No more reluctance, no more tears, just action and the satisfaction of killing those who deserved to die. Despite herself, Bramble was caught up in the storm of feeling and movement, in the music and the blood and the shouting. She felt Baluch’s blood rise in a kind of exaltation.
Part of her, the part that had kicked the warlord’s man out of instinct, out of a refusal to be conquered, understood that exaltation. Shared it. Kill them all, she thought. That’s how it works. You have to try to kill them all, or die.
She was glad when the waters came like a thumping ocean wave, lifting her and tumbling her and scouring her mind clean of killing. So glad she wanted to cry, but she wasn’t sure whether the tears were her
s or from somewhere deep inside Baluch.
Martine
ON THE SECOND night of the vigil, Cael and Safred stayed up talking around the fire until late. Zel was sitting with Bramble for a while. She and Martine had fallen into shifts. Cael was ruled out from that duty because they had been successful at getting Bramble to drink, which meant that occasionally she pissed and had to be cleaned up, and they all knew she wouldn’t want Cael involved with that. Or Safred, though it was trickier to justify her exclusion. They let her sit with Bramble every so often, in broad daylight, when one or the other of them was near, so it wasn’t so obvious, but they both knew Safred realized what they were doing, and she didn’t like it.
She retaliated by questioning them about their involvement with the gods. She wanted to know everything about Martine’s journey from Turvite, every detail she could remember about the ghosts, what the gods had said through Elva, and then everything about Elva and her relationship with the gods. To Martine it seemed that Safred was both reassured and piqued to learn that another woman had so close a tie to them. She questioned Martine closely about how the gods possessed Elva, how they spoke through her, what their voice was like when they did.
Martine called a halt. If they didn’t go to bed now, the others wouldn’t be asleep by midnight. “When you meet her, you can ask her yourself — or see for yourself. But I’m going to bed.”
“I just want to know —”
Martine lost patience. “Safred, I know it bothers you that other people have dealings with your gods, but they were our gods first. Lots of us have special dealings with them. It’s part of our lives. Every stone-caster in the Domains hears the gods talk at some point. If you try to know everything about every person who deals with the gods, you’ll be dead of old age before you get halfway through.”
Safred went very still, a look in her eyes that balanced between hurt and revelation. She opened her mouth to ask another question, but Cael shook his head at her. He nodded to her tent. “Bed, niece.”
She did what she was told.
Martine liked Cael, and right now she was thankful for his presence, but every now and then she looked at him and saw one of Acton’s men: the big, fair-haired invaders who had dispossessed her people. She could imagine him laughing as he killed. The image made her voice sharper than she intended. “Good night, Cael.”
He looked at her with surprise, but silently went to his bedroll, while she turned her back and walked over to Zel and Bramble. Bramble was crying, silently, tears rolling down her cheeks, her face set. It was a terrible sight, and Zel had hunched over so she didn’t have to look at her, fighting her own tears.
Martine was struck again with the sense that what Bramble was undergoing was profoundly unnatural; that only grief would come of it. Saker, she thought, falcon, predator — you have hurt more people than you realize.
She stayed with Bramble while Zel went to the privy and then went herself, gathering dead pine needles for tinder as she walked back. Midnight wasn’t far off, by the stars. Telling midnight by the stars at Spring Equinox was a trick every Traveler woman was taught by her mam. Martine wondered, not for the first time, what happened at the Autumn Equinox. The ritual then was reserved for older women, women who had gone through the change, the climacteric, and were past child-bearing age.
I’ll find out soon enough, she thought wryly. Another ten, maybe fifteen years, and I’ll be there. Excluded from the spring rituals, included in the autumn. Part of her found that depressing; part comforting. Somewhere to go to, somewhere where age had a purpose. Old women returned from the Autumn Equinox chuckling and grinning, but they didn’t seek out men afterward.
Martine and Zel walked out to the altar as they had done the night before, becoming a little more confident in finding their footing. Martine had no sense that the lake resented the ritual, but she did, again, have the feeling that it was watching. Tonight, it was Zel’s turn to provide the flint and Martine’s to hold the striking stone.
The small pile of birch fungus caught alight immediately, and the ritual went on as it had done the previous night, except that, as always on the second night, the kindling burned more slowly and Martine’s arousal was greater, her need more intense. She surrendered to the fire more easily, closing her eyes and releasing her body, if not her whole mind, to feel whatever he wanted it to feel. Desired, that was what she felt. His great gift. No matter what she looked like, every Traveler woman knew, deep inside, that she was desirable, because he desired her. Often, the plainest women were the fire’s most ardent followers.
As the fire died and she returned to herself, shivering, Martine wondered, as she often had, what it was they were doing. The ritual wasn’t worship. The contact between fire and woman was too intimate for that. They didn’t ever talk of the fire as a god, just as “him” or “he.” But — he gave and they took; they gave and he took. Was it simply a bargain, made and kept? Or was it something deeper? The old women said that it kept the Domains in balance. Woman to fire, man to water, they said in whispers. Sometimes they had whispered it to their stone-caster so that Martine had learned things young women did not normally know, and the stones had said the same thing, in whispers to her, many times over the years.
There was healing in the ritual, too. Women who had been raped were placed closest to the fire, and he healed them, burned away any disgust or hatred of men or self-recrimination. Set them free to feel and love again. That was a great gift. The one time that Traveler women had tried to introduce a woman of Acton’s blood to the fire, it had been out of compassion for her, because she had been raped by a raiding party from the next Domain, in the time when all the warlords raided each other.
The fire had burnt cleanly away and the altar was untouched. That was always a good sign — a sign that he was pleased with them. Martine flushed with gratification at the thought, then smiled at herself. Like a young girl with her first love. Well, the fire was everyone’s first love. Some women’s only love. Some never got over their first Spring Equinox. Never found satisfaction with a human male. Would rather have the intensity without the fulfillment than the flesh and blood encounter, which never quite matched up for them. Others went the opposite way; clung to flesh and blood and rejected the fire; stayed away from the ritual, especially those who secretly preferred women to men. Zel had said her mother had been like that — so obsessed with her husband that she had no interest in the ritual and only took Zel the one time, because it was her duty to introduce her to the fire. Martine’s mother had steered the middle course that Martine tried for: to perform the ritual but not be consumed by it.
“The fire will never die,” they said in unison, and sighed.
Martine took Zel’s hand and they went back to the camp, banked down the fire which was now leaping high, gave Bramble some water and lay down either side of her.
Zel sighed in the darkness. “It’s a shame he don’t like us pleasuring our own selves after,” she said wistfully.
Martine laughed softly. “He won’t come tomorrow night if you do,” she warned, as her own mother had warned her.
“I know,” Zel sighed. “Dung and pissmire. By the day after tomorrow, even Cael’s going to start looking good to me!”
Bramble was shivering as though she, too, were feeling the effects of the Equinox, arousal without release. Martine reached out and patted her hand soothingly.
“Shh,” she said. “It’s all right. Shhh.”
Bramble quieted a little, and Martine let her hand fall away. She looked up into the star-blazing sky and wondered what they would do if they couldn’t find a flint tomorrow. There was only one solution she could see, and it terrified her.
Bramble
HER NOSE WAS twitching, like a rabbit’s. The cold air hit as though a door had opened into hell. The body she was in was a man’s. Don’t think about it, she told herself, trying to ignore the sensation of testicles contracting as the cold surrounded them. She strained to see and suddenly was blinded by whit
eness: snow lit by high sun, dazzling, painful. On one side cliffs sheered up to the bright blue sky, on the other, a high slope covered with snow threatened them. Snow thin on the ground, gray stone, a thin, rocky trail between high boulders. Any noise here would echo off the cliffs and grow as it echoed. Bramble wanted to shiver — fortunately, the man she was with was shivering anyway.
The man was riding a chestnut horse, last in a line of four of the stocky little horses she had seen before. Asa was in the lead, followed by Acton, with another man behind them. That man wore bright red boots. Bramble felt herself smile at the sight of them, as if she had glimpsed something homely and reassuring. Swef, she thought. All she could see was his back, which was broad. Younger than Harald, but with gray hair showing beneath his cap, red to match his boots. He sat his horse well enough, but without the ease that familiarity brought. The bridle and bit were muffled with rags, and the hooves of the horses in front were in rag boots. Swef looked apprehensively up at the snow-covered slopes.
Death Pass, Bramble thought. They were in Death Pass. She realized she was looking through Gris’s eyes.
There was an end to the defile in sight just ahead. She had only a glimpse of the mountain falling away sharply, of green land below, of trees far beneath and then the waters swept in and seemed to knock her sideways.
A fire. Warmth. Flickering shadows. A deep, accusing voice.
“You ask for privileges in words you learned from those of our people whom you stole to be your slaves!”
Gris raised his head to stare straight into the speaker’s eyes. A younger man than Bramble expected, only about forty, and at last, at last, someone with dark hair! She hadn’t realized how much the eternal blondness and redness was irritating her. The man stared back at Gris with something like hatred.
Deep Water Page 24