by Dave Duncan
The bedding was where he had known it would be, and so were axes and oats and spears and shovels . . . he cached his loot in an empty stall and then set to work on horses.
Firedragon was a temptation, but he was stud for the royal herd, so the temptation would have to be resisted. Young animals would be the best, but even some of those were beginning to show the effects of their harsh winter confinement. In the cold, uncaring moonlight he saddled Joyboy and Crazy; he loaded Peppers and Dancer with the bags of fodder and equipment.
Then he was ready and he slumped down on a bag of chaff to catch his breath, wondering what he might have forgotten. The stable was dark, warm, and smelly with horses, filled with their little snufflings and shiftings, homely and familiar . . . and as Rap sat there, the implications of what he had done suddenly struck him like snow falling off a roof. The storerooms had opened to him because he was Foronod's helper—Foronod's trusted helper. He had been entrusted with the keys, and he had betrayed that trust! He was disobeying his king. Who was he to summon Inos to a perilous trek back through the winter forest, when her father would not? Had Andor bewitched him? He began to shake and stream with sweat. Traitor! Thief!
He was crazy! Perhaps there was just time to correct his error before Andor arrived—then no one would ever know. Frantic with guilt, with fingers that seemed clumsy as toes, Rap began unloading the ponies.
He had hardly started when a door creaked. He jumped, but he knew it was Andor before he could see him.
Andor thankfully slid a huge pack of supplies off his back. “Good man! Almost ready, I see. You're a wonder, Rap, even among northerners—and you know what people say about them.”
“No? What do they say about us?”
“Oh,” Andor said vaguely, “you know. Self-reliant, tough, dependable. That sort of thing. Now to business!” Grinning, he held up Hononin's keys and jingled them.
How had he managed that? Rap's heart pumped cold terror as he remembered the tales of the fisherman Kranderbad and the others. “What did you do to him? Tell me!”
“Not a thing, my lad, He's still drinking Winterfest punch at the King's Head.”
“He gave you the keys?”
“No. He dropped them on the floor right here, but he doesn't know that yet. Now, what are we missing?”
Ten minutes later they unlocked the stable gate and walked out into the bailey and the deadly cold.
“Damn!” Andor said. The expedition had run into trouble already. Although the outer gates were never locked, only barred, a giant snowdrift lay across them. The postern was open, and a path through it well tramped, but the packhorses would not be able to pass that way with their burdens.
“We'll have to unload and load up again outside,” Rap said, feeling the bite of the cold already.
“I suppose so,” Andor muttered. “Is there anyone out there to see?”
“I . . . I don't know!”
“Use your farsight.”
“I can't!” Rap felt a sudden panic. Was his mysterious power going to fail him now, when he had just agreed to use it? He could sense nothing which told him how much he had already become accustomed to using his farsight without realizing. A tremor of guilt teased at his conscience again. Were the Gods about to withdraw their gift to him?
Then Andor chuckled. “Try this, then. Go outside and see what happens.”
Puzzled, Rap handed him the lead rein and stepped through the postern. A moment later he returned. “You're right! The gate stops it—whatever it is.”
“Should have known! The castle is magic-proof.”
“Magic? I'm not a sorcerer!”
“No, lad, but your farsight is something more than mundane. Why do you suppose old Inisso built a castle, anyway? There are no armies here! Sorcerers fear only other sorcerers, so the castle wall is magic-proof. Magic'll work inside or outside, but not through the walls . . . I've heard of that. I'd forgotten. Well, come on! We'll freeze to death if we don't start moving!”
With Andor following, Rap led their string down through the alleys of Krasnegar and the Gods seemed to be cheering them on. The few people they met were so far advanced in festive preparations that they did not wonder where Rap might be going with horses at that time of year. Most did not even recognize him in his new clothes, and the rest were content to call a cheerful greeting as he went by. The town gates were unlocked. Andor swung up the bar, Rap followed him out to the docks—and stopped to check for bears.
Nothing moved in the black stillness. Neither eyes nor farsight detected danger. Spring and fall were when white bears roamed the coast. Midwinter should be safe—but not necessarily.
“Can't see anything,” Rap muttered nervously.
“Right!” Andor led the way to a boat ramp, and the insane escapade had begun.
Windless and still, the night was yet cold beyond belief. Steam from the horses rose like the smoke of bonfires. Sealed cozily inside his new furs, Rap could feel the deathly touch only on the small corners of his face that were still exposed, but the insides of his nostrils crackled. Snow crunched noisily below hoof and boot.
The half moon had banished the aurora and most of the stars. Now its ghostly light fell from a clear black sky to glitter on the ice-covered bay. The islands of the causeway were drifted over and tangled with piled floes, but the bay ice itself would be safe enough if they could ever get to it, for its edges were a crumpled horror of tilted blocks and jagged monoliths, sharp ice and soft snow mixed in random confusion. Drifts and shadows concealed deep holes, deep enough in some cases to reach down to the water itself, with only a treacherous thin cover of new ice. For the first few minutes Rap floundered, convinced he would never find a way through such a trap, tripping and constantly sinking through surfaces that looked hard and yet were not. The horses behind him were doing no better and he could sense their terror.
“Take your time,” said Andor's voice from the back, calmly. “The farsight will help you.”
Rap's right foot sank deep into soft snow. He stumbled against a crystal wall, extracted that foot and lost the other, then both, and stopped of necessity, buried up to his thighs. He was gasping with nervousness and exertion, blowing clouds of steam that glistened faint rainbow colors in the moonlight. He thought of the endless leagues before him. At this rate they would starve to death before they even reached the mainland, far less the forests.
“Wait!” Andor called as Rap struggled to free himself. “Close your eyes!”
Rap closed his eyes. He knew that there was a giant canted slab on his right, and a heap of massive blocks to his left, but of course that smooth stretch ahead was all snowdrift and the ice below sloped steeply down. His eyes had not told him that. Over there, however, the snow was thinner . . .
It seemed a long time, but it could hardly have been more than ten minutes before he had found a route through the labyrinth, out onto the smoother surfaces in the center of the bay, where the floes had not been so contorted by the tide. Then it seemed safe to mount the horses. He had mastered the technique. He did not need to close his eyes now, he could blend the two types of sight in his mind and reach out ahead. When they came to the jumble on the opposite shore, he led the string through without having to backtrack once.
“Magnificent! Rap, my lad, you're incredible! This is going to be a joyride.”
Praise from Andor was a hot drink, sweet and warm all through Rap.
And his magic worked on land, as well. He soon developed a sense for the depth and packing of the snow—where the horses could go and where they could not. In truth there was not much snow on the ground. Krasnegar was a dry place and the snow seemed impressive only because the wind made every flake do the work of ten. Open areas were mostly swept clear, and drifts formed only in the lee of obstacles. His headache faded as his confidence grew, or perhaps that was an effect of the clear and frigid air. Their route was less direct than would have been possible in summer, but they began to advance steadily into the hills, four horses in line se
nding up thick clouds of steam in the moonlight, the jingle of harness blending with the crackle of the snow crust, their shadows tracking beside.
As the sun ruled Krasnegar's sky in summer, so the moon prevailed in winter. A full moon hardly set at all, riding high around the sky, ducking but briefly below the northern horizon to hide from the transient sun. But now the moon was waning and it would fail them in time. Yet even at midwinter there would be some daylight, and a brash new confidence was telling Rap that he perhaps did not need light at all.
They took their first break in the same little valley where he had met Jalon the minstrel, many months before, although now the countryside was strangely changed by the snow and the spectral light. This far from the shore bears were unlikely, because bears ate seals in preference to people.
Rap dug out a canteen from under a grain sack on Dancer, whose body heat had kept it unfrozen.
“Careful with this,” he warned as he passed it to Andor. “It will freeze to your lips if you let it.” He felt an unworthy twinge of pride in his superior knowledge, the jotunn guiding the imp.
They chewed pemmican and spilled some oats on the snow for the ponies. Rap muttered over their gashed ankles, he scraped the packed snow out of their shoes and carefully picked the icicles from their nostrils. He was almost laughing aloud with excitement, exhilarated by adventure and a sense of escape. Krasnegar had been a jail for him—he had broken out into freedom. He made a promise to himself: this journey would be the start of his manhood. If the air had not been so cold, he would have been tempted to sing.
They made camp in a peat cutting under the glorious canopy of stars. If there was some way to pitch a tent when the ground was iron, then Rap did not know it. They finally used their tent as a giant sleeping bag, putting the bedrolls inside it and then wriggling into them.
“This,” Rap said firmly, “is fun!”
“Great Gods!” Andor muttered. “He's mad.” After a minute he added, “But it's different, I'll grant you.”
After another minute Rap whispered, “Andor? Have you ever had an adventure like this?”
“I'm not sure. I'll tell you afterward; this one may be different.”
“How?”
“Because the others, I survived.”
About two hours before noon, a faint glow appeared in the south and gradually spread into a vague twilight, then a dim and foggy daylight. For a few minutes an edge of the sun showed. Soon it was gone and the day faded as slowly as it had come.
The moorlands were difficult, the rough ground heavily laced with drifts, the best trail winding and twisting like a tangled cord. But now Rap's head did not ache at all, and he could choose the firmest route without even having to think.
Once that day they saw wolves far off, or at least Rap did, but they slunk away into blurry distance without any signs that they might be contemplating attack.
If the weather held . . . and the weather did. On the third day, while Krasnegar would be feasting and celebrating Winterfest, the moors dipped away and the first stunted trees stood as sentries for the great taiga ahead. Here ended the realm of the king of Krasnegar. Ahead lay a land that neither he nor the imperor could claim with conviction. Yet it was not no-man's land. Trees were shelter from even the worst that a blizzard could do, but they were shelter for other men, also, and those could be more deadly than any blizzard.
Seven days into the forest, they were still alive.
For two rank beginners, Rap thought, they were doing well. True, Andor was an experienced traveler, but he was a man of the south. Rap was a native, but a city dweller. Only trappers, seal hunters, and prospectors left Krasnegar in winter. All that he had known of life in the wastelands had been gleaned from conversations with men such as those, and there was much that must be learned the hard way.
But Rap and Andor learned, They learned not to build fires under branches laden with snow; they learned to take their boots into their bedrolls with them at night; they learned to stay in the densest forest, where the undergrowth and snow cover were least. In that primeval gloom there were game trails and mysterious paths along which Rap led the horses unerringly with the aid of his supernatural vision.
So far they had seen no signs of the dreaded goblins. Even animal tracks were scarce and neither of the men could read what stories they might have had to tell. Only once was there obviously wolf spoor, and for two hours thereafter Rap's ghostly farseeing was stretched to its limit as he nervously scanned the forest.
Andor grumbled that he would never eat pemmican or pancakes again, but Rap seemed to thrive on the monotonous diet. The horses were doing less well, and he hated to drive the poor creatures so hard. Their ribs showed like sapling groves. They staggered often. They spent the hours of rest pawing at the snow in search of the meager forest grass below.
And the human food supplies were dwindling fast. The self-taught pioneers would have to learn hunting soon or face starvation, but they agreed that they should press on southward as far as they could, as fast as they could, as long as the weather allowed. Some days they endured a bitter wind and light snow, but the trees gave shelter and no real killer storm had come seeking them.
Rap had seen trees before. There were a few twisted specimens in the castle gardens, and he had accompanied a search party southward two summers earlier, pursuing Firedragon and his herd. Yet he had never conceived that there could be as many trees in the world as he saw now in a single day; mostly spruce, black in their winter coats, silent and unfriendly. He had expected the taiga to be endless and featureless and unchanging, but it did change. It rolled up and down, it broke sometimes into open clearings, old firebreaks, which were tangled and hard going, and it had rivers and game trails and frozen marshes peppered with tiny, stunted spruce. He had never seen rivers before and he tried vainly to imagine how they would look with water in them instead of solid ice.
Some people never get lost, Sagorn had said, and Rap's sense of direction was unfailing. In the darkest dark or the whitest ice fog, he could always face to the south and he could always find his way back to the wagon trail whose general course they were following. The trail itself, however, was often plugged with drifts, and for men and horses, the trees made easier going.
On the seventh day they were still alive.
4
“Rap! Let's camp!” Andor's voice was a croak. There was no moonlight now, and the endless blindman's bluff was emotionally exhausting for him, as well as for the horses. Rap had become so expert that even in daylight he sometimes walked with his eyes closed, if the low sun shone in them.
Now the sun had just set, and Rap would have been willing to go on for longer. But he was secretly becoming concerned by Andor's weakness—imps did not fare well in winter. Rap had jotunn blood in him and was enduring much better.
“Good idea,” he said. “I was just about to suggest it.”
They found a campsite in a small clearing and set to work building a fire. Soon the light from the flames danced over snow and the encircling woods, and Andor had his eyes back. He rummaged for the food, while Rap set to work cutting more firewood and spruce boughs to build a lean-to. They were becoming efficient and they had long since discarded the tent as useless baggage.
Rap had moved into the trees, some yards from the flickering firelight. His attention must have wandered, for it was a sense of alarm in the ponies that alerted him first, and his farsight confirmed the danger a moment later. He plunged back through the snow to the camp and said: “Andor! Visitors!”
Andor looked up from where he was kneeling by the fire. His black impish stubble was caked with ice. His face was darkly filthy, and only a glint of firelight in his eyes showed from inside the shadow of his fur hood. “How many?”
Rap counted. “Twenty or so. They're moving around, making a circle.” His hands were beginning to shake, and he was astonished to hear Andor utter a low chuckle.
“Then this may be your last chance.”
“Last chance for
what?” Rap did not want to raise his voice, and yet obviously the fire and the sound of his ax had already proclaimed their location like a carillon.
“Your last chance to share your word with me, of course. An adept would be in no danger, but I doubt that my talent will work well enough on these fellows. Spit it out, Rap! Quick!”
“I have no word!” Rap protested, horrified. Had Andor been thinking him a liar all this time?
Andor threw down the knife he had been using on the pemmican and put his mitted hands on his knees. “Last chance, Master Rap!”
“Andor . . .” Rap felt his world crumbling. His terror of the goblins faded before a heartbreaking sense of betrayal. “Is this all a trick? The king isn't dying?”
“Oh, he's dying. That doesn't matter much now, does it? You know what the goblins will do to us, don't you?”
They were closing in now, the circle shrinking. Yet eyes could not have detected them, and they made no sound. Only a seer could have known.
Rap wavered on the brink of panic.
“I have no word to tell! You tell me yours, then! If I do have one, then two will make me an adept, won't it? Then I can save us!”
Ander uttered a snort of derision. “Not likely!” He climbed to his feet. “Which way are they coming?”
Rap searched with his mind. The circle had stopped shrinking and there was a knot of men advancing. “That way.”
“You're quite sure you won't tell me? It would be nicer than having bits pulled off.”
“I can't! Tell me yours!”
Andor shook his head in exasperation. “That wouldn't work! You'd need time to learn to control it. I don't even need to become an adept, really—not for this. All I need your word for is to boost the talent I already have, more power. Then I'll win over the goblins, and we'll be made welcome. So you have to tell me yours, don't you see?”