by Gayle Greeno
Stiff mouth cracked at the corners from windburn and leaked tears, he sputtered, “M ... m ... Mat ... ty ... V ... van ... d ... der ... sm ... ma.” He tried again. “Vandersma.”
Someone thrust a mug of broth in his hands, and he laced grateful fingers around it, lifted it to thaw first one cheek, then the other, would have hugged it if it had been big enough. “Vandersma, hey? Well, if you was making up a name, that likely wouldn’t be one you’d choose, so I’m thinking you’re real.” Hard to judge the man who spoke, wrapped in furs and leather, an earflapped cap of wolf fur low on his forehead, flaps snugged under his chin. Clutching one mitted hand in the other, the man dragged a hand free, bare flesh outthrust for Matty to shake. “I’m Elion Udemans, head man here. If you want to stay, best be willing to earn your keep.”
“’Course I can!” Overpowering exhaustion swamped indignation as Matty slumped down the wall into a heap. Hands lifted him, carried him through the starry havens to the delight of a fire, piled furs over him, and he slept, relieved and relaxed for the first time in many days. Kharm purred as she burrowed underneath to nestle against his stomach.
Shoving his sleeves to his elbows, Matty began to scrape the hide, removing the last bits of fat and fiber, careful not to tear it. Stretch the hide too tightly when pegging it and spots thinned, vulnerable to rips or gashes. When done, he’d rub in a mixture of ash and clarified fat to keep the skin supple. He whistled under his breath, stepped back, and admired his handiwork.
Kharm had an assignment as well, sniffing through hides prepared earlier: fox, marten, wolf, rolapin, deer, and even a few elk, so much larger than the rest that Matty had to stand on a chunk of wood to reach his work. The ghatta determined which, if any, hadn’t been properly treated, a spot overlooked. Her sensitive nose detected spoilage, made him appear more competent to the other hunters and trappers. His task was to prepare the pelts, enhance their trading value. They’d tried him at trapping, but he’d quickly discovered he now lacked the stomach for it—animals writhing in steel traps or snares, Kharm’s mindmoans resounding through him as she relived her mother’s death. Straightforward hunting he could manage, except that his archery skills were pitiful, his arrows possessed by their own sense of destiny, not his.
About thirty men lived in Free Stead, their winter numbers higher than in summer. Some resided year-round, grizzled veterans of the woods averse to human contact, content keeping themselves to themselves. Others made Free Stead their winter home to help support their families. These men tended to be more comradely and talkative, the winter octants offering an interlude of sorts from the responsibilities of home and family. A lark, but a dead serious one at that. Men froze to death in the wilderness, risked being killed by Marauders.
He’d thought Gilboa had been bad, but this was the most ferocious winter Matty could remember. True, he’d been raised in a more southerly part of Canderis, but Udemans and the others assured him this winter was a killer. Blizzard upon blizzard lashed them, with only a day or two between to clear the accumulated snow from the interconnected paths inside the stockade. They’d run out of space to shovel the snow and now packed it down on the paths, rolling a gravel-filled barrel to flatten it. As the paths rose higher, the huts grew shorter, doors once at normal height a menace to the unwary head.
Worst of all, the snow constantly drifted, piled halfway up or higher against the stockade’s sides, and Udemans implacably decreed it be shoveled clear, hauled away. Since each wall ran thirty-five meters long, it wasn’t a speedy task; a day’s backbreaking effort could be obliterated by a night’s mocking wind. Shoveling was one of Matty’s prime duties, unskilled brute labor on command. Frankly, he felt as if he’d moved half the snow in Canderis at one time or another, probably some of it twice.
And necessary it was, for Udemans’s peace of mind, because if the snow settled and hardened in place, it provided Marauders with a ramp up the palisades. Matty and any others not on trapline duty struggled through short daylight hours, crude wooden shovels swinging, dragging the snow away on crude sledges to dump in the river or pile on its frozen banks. Plying his shovel in steady rhythm, indistinguishable from the other hard-bitten men, cloaked and covered in layers of fur, his efforts had earned him his clothes, food and lodging, but little more. Still, he was alive, and if he hadn’t found welcome at Free Stead, he and Kharm would have wandered lost until they froze to death.
Ducking his head outside the curing house, Matty gauged the sun’s level. Sinking fast and swimming in overcast, its light diffuse, another storm due soon. He could smell it, the air heavy and sodden. As if to taunt him, a large snowflake pirouetted past his nose, insolently chased by its mates. Antoon, Pieck, and Govaerts had led out their trapping parties three days ago; Antoon’s might be back tonight if they’d made a good start before the blizzard struck. If not, they’d have to camp rough again, rise out of their snow holes at dawn to fight their way back, sense of direction muted and baffled by the storm. Roiker’s hunting party had left just this morning—whether they’d turn back or press on, he couldn’t say. That left, he counted under his breath, sixteen men in the stockade. Assuming the storm struck soon, Udemans would rotate guard shifts often tonight, four men at a time, one to cover each wall. Not much sleep for anyone tonight.
Despite his lack of a jacket or hat, he lingered, watched his breath steam, varied his puffs to create cloud patterns in the air, like blowing smoke rings, when Kharm crested a snowbank, stripes dark against stark white. “ ’Ware! Danger!” An overpowering scream fractured the icy air as Mogens toppled off the narrow walkway that rimmed the inside of the palisade, an arrow lodged in his chest. Running before he even thought about it, unencumbered by his winter outer gear, still inside the curing shed, he loped toward the stockade entrance.
“Marauders?” he gasped. It made sense, a perfect sickening sense. Attack while they were shorthanded to defend the stockade—easy pickings if the Marauders had forces and desperation in abundance. And when hadn’t a Marauder been desperate enough to claim anything that wasn’t his, that he hadn’t worked to earn?
Others ran after him as well, pulling on outer gear, crude pikes and bows in hand. A quick headcount and he breathed a sigh of relief, no one outside shoveling. “Weapon?” Kharm prompted, and Matty realized he brandished the small scraping knife. Cursing himself for his stupidity, he detoured into the communal meal hut and snatched a hatchet from the kindling, grabbed a long carving knife. Better, but not much. It meant they had to be within reach before he could inflict any damage—and if he could, so could they. So don’t think about it. He charged back outside, not noticing the cold goosebumping his shirtsleeved flesh as he clambered up the ladder to the walkway over the gates.
Udemans, back from his trapline yesterday, shouted orders, deployed men. “Two with bows on each far wall to watch for attack! You rest, stand firm by the entrance.” With Mogens down, sprawled dead in the pathway, blood obscenely scrolled red across the whiteness, that left fifteen to fight—six in fixed positions on the far walls. Nine including himself to break the main attack. Sticking his head over the palisade before Udemans could thrust him down, Matty strained to tally how many Marauders they faced.
Twenty fur-clad figures scattered across the snow just at the edge of the woods, well beyond bowshot; over several summers Udemans had painstaking cleared trees to remove hiding places too near the stockade. Some clustered together, others moving forward on snowshoes and skis, seeking cover behind drifts. Yells from the east and west walls warned of more groups working their way around the sides of the stockade. Two men would be spread thin to defend each wall but could do it as long as their arrows held out.
Udemans cursed, laughed. “Could be worse, could be worse,” he yelled to his men. “More of them outside, fewer of us inside, but we’re behind strong walls, and they aren’t. ’Less we let them take the walls or break down the gates, they can’t hurt us much. Could sit tight until spring thaw if we have to.”
The sn
ow continued swirling, gusting sideways, upward, before falling back down in clinging, wet flakes. Pity for the men exposed to the elements surged through Matty until he realized he was more exposed, body quivering in regular waves. “Go get your gear on,” Udemans barked, slapping his shoulder with a damp leather mitt. “Not high summer in the Sunderlies here.” Grateful to scurry back to shelter, Matty dragged on his outerwear, bulky and furry as a bear. Back outside, the wait began.
As the night deepened, Matty busied himself passing hot soup to the men. A night with no stars, no moons hanging full and heavy, only oyster-gray swirls, squalls buffeting them, making them huddle behind the palisades. But if they suffered from the storm, the Marauders were fully exposed. Beyond arrowshot bonfires burned and leaped, flames streaming sideways, changing direction, precarious warmth at best.
Teeth chattering, he squatted next to Udemans’s bulk to block the wind. “How long can they wait like that?” He held the mug under his chin, letting the steam lave his face. “I didn’t think Marauders had much patience, more slash and grab, not sit and wait.” Siege wasn’t the Marauders’ style and Udemans knew it; Kharm slipping his worries into Matty’s brain.
“Aye, that’s what’s bothering me, boy.” Slitting his eyes against the driving snow, Udemans paused before confiding his thoughts. “Weather’s not to their liking, nor the lack of shelter. Doesn’t make sense. I don’t think it’s a matter of waiting them out, but that they’re waiting for something.”
“What?” What would Marauders be waiting for? “They outnumber us—all they have to do is breach the walls, scale them on ladders.”
“First into the breach, first over the walls are the first to die.” Udemans spat, ducked as the wind sailed it back at him. “Marauders don’t much like dying, just killing others. Not about to make a sacrifice, even for their fellows.”
“You think they have something planned?”
“’Course. Just that I don’t know what.”
Kharm scrabbled up, claws digging into bark, leaped to Matty’s shoulders, whole body straining into the wind. “There! More by the fire!” her tailed whipped as she fought for balance. “Not theirs, but ours, one of the hunting parties—captured and bound!”
Matty strained to match his vision to hers, but all the figures appeared alike at that distance. Paying no attention to what he assumed were the ghatta’s usual antics, Udemans looked inward, not outward, checking his postings on the walls. Jerking his arm, Matty pointed, almost sizzling with excitement. “By the fire, there! They’ve got Antoon, Donner, and Braldt! Look, they’re carrying torches, maybe they want to parley!”
Udemans thrust the flapped hat back from his forehead, face snow-caked against the dark wolf fur. “Marauders don’t generally parley,” but he waved the others onto the walls, ready with drawn bows. “Bless them, they’re stark naked!”
And so they were, the prisoners that is—Antoon, Donner, and Braldt stripped to the skin, arms lashed behind them as they were prodded ahead, human shields. At a shout that barely carried above the wind, stout stakes were pounded through the snow crust, the blows sounding like distant, rumbling thunder, the prisoners tied to them. Four figures bent against the wind, toiled closer within hailing distance of the stockade. “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot!” Udemans commanded, desperate that everyone obey as he watched the Marauders’ slow progress.
“Yo! Udemans!” The wind whipped the words at them, slashed their faces with the icy tones. “Found a few of yours out here, nasty weather to be out. Wondered if you wanted them back.”
Hands around his mouth, Udemans shouted, “’Course we do! With or without clothes.”
“Then surrender the stockade and everything in it to us.”
At first Matty thought the growls were Kharm’s, only to realize that the noise issued from the men crowded on either side of him. Anger and anguish in equal measure ululated from their throats; anger at seeing their friends as pinioned, naked pawns, and anguish at yielding what they’d toiled for all winter.
Udemans pounded at the top of the stockade with a mitted fist, as if he’d drive the pilings into the ground. The others cast sidelong glances at him as they watched their companions standing naked in the cold. Not a man of them, Matty knew from Kharm’s thoughts, would abandon the others if he possibly could. Now Kharm had homed in on the Marauders’ thoughts, transmitting them to his mind, and what he heard, he didn’t like.
As Udemans opened his mouth, ready to capitulate, Matty blurted, “No! It’s a trap! Whatever we do, the men are dead. They’ll die if we refuse, and we’ll die with them if we surrender!” He fought not to cry, sickened at such casual depravity.
Profoundly relieved at having the matter taken out of his hands, the stark truth spoken by someone other than himself, Udemans spat once more. “Boy’s right. Ever known Marauders to honor the terms of a surrender?”
“But we can’t leave them there like that!” Shrill panic in Casten’s voice, for Casten was Donner’s cousin.
“Well, Udemans?” the shout from outside invaded their thoughts.
“No! No deal, no compromise! Come get us—if you can!” Udeman’s words were almost drowned out by stamping feet, jeers, growls. “Come ... get ... us!”
But their exhilaration snuffed like a candle flame as two men leaped to restrain Casten from vaulting the top of the stockade, running to fight with his bare hands if necessary. Kicking, screaming, Casten fought to break free, then slumped as he realized the futility of it all. The hopelessness of the situation chilled the others as well, though they struggled not to show it. “We’ve got to free them somehow! Can’t we make a sortie?”
Conscious of the discord, the possibility not so much of insurrection but of a wanton waste of lives in an impossible gesture, Udemans turned helplessly, striving to regain command, his voice unexpectedly gentle. “Too many of them and not enough of us. We’d be throwing our lives away if we do. I don’t mind, but I want a fair share of theirs thrown away, too.”
“Tell them! Tell them!” Kharm urged inside Matty’s head. “The one they call Roiker and his party are sheltered nearby, they turned back when the storm struck. Too few of them to fight the Marauders, and they can’t cross through the Marauders to make it back to the stockade.”
Diffident, unsure how to convince them, Matty slapped mitted hands together, the sharp sound of leather smacking leather. “Right, Roiker and his crew aren’t far, I spotted him. That’s three more of us, and them at the Marauders’ backsides for surprise value if we can come up with a plan!”
“You sure?”
“ ’Course I’m sure! He gave me the high sign from behind the outbuilding while you were all watching Donner and the others.” A lie, but the truth of Kharm’s knowledge bolstered him. Stubborn now, assured by the ghatta’s counsel, Matty’s mind desperately worked. The only structure separate from the stockade was a small outbuilding used for summer storage, sleds and sledges, odds and ends, nothing of value or they wouldn’t have been left there. He’d been inside only once, but suspected Kharm’s usual inquisitive nature had led her to investigate it before it had become completely buried by snow. He nodded, gulped, trying to look reassuring. “Sure. What’ve you stored inside the shed?” Maybe it contained something suitable for a distraction—if he could reach Roiker and his men. But that, his face fell, meant having Kharm contact them directly, and her alien touch would scare them witless.
Inventorying on his fingers, Udemans ticked off the shed’s contents. “Couple broken-down sledges, good enough for light loads but not much more, ’bout ready to crack in half with anything too heavy. Some bear traps we had out earlier and some extra snow shovels. A few empty kegs.” His face screwed up at the effort of recollection, “Crock of lamp oil I forgot to move inside for the winter, maybe a jug of turps for the traplines when we clean them over the summer.”
Silence then, until a shamed voice finally chimed in, “And two kegs of apfeljack, Elion. Guess we fergot to mention that, saving it for
a surprise-like.”
“What’s apfeljack?” Matty wanted to know.
“Hard cider, and then some,” Udemans almost grinned. “Wish I had some now. Fill a barrel or crock with hard cider and leave it to freeze. Water part turns to ice, but the alcohol stays liquid. It’s intense because it’s not diluted with water. Throw away the ice and you’ve a powerful drink.”
The germ of a plan began in Matty’s brain or, more accurately, his brain and Kharm’s humming as one. “Does apfeljack burn?” And inside his mind Kharm asked. “Rolling kegs. Wouldn’t that be nice?”
“Think it would,” Udemans sounded hesitant. “What you planning on doing?”
“Won’t know yet till I get there,” was the best Matty could offer.
“You can’t go out, they’ll kill you!” Udemans exploded.
Enjoying being the voice of sweet reason, Matty countered, “I’m likely to get killed if I stay in or if I go out. Besides, I’m the only one who knows precisely where Roiker and the others have holed up, Kharm and I,” he amended. “I’m not much of a fighter, but I am a good planner. It’s my life to save or throw away.”
As strong hands held the rope, Matty maneuvered himself down the stockade’s north wall, revolving like a plumb bob on the end of a line, swinging sideways when a gust of wind snatched at him. What if he landed right in the enemy’s waiting arms? Was this what a spider felt like when he dropped on his tether line, only to discover he’d lowered himself to the center of an occupied dinner table? To create a distraction Kharm had streaked over the east wall, hoots, shouts, and the sounds of muffled pursuit receded in the distance as Marauders chased after her, unsure what she represented but unwilling to let any of the stockade’s residents escape, even an animal.
The wind whipped, pendulumed him again as his feet finally dragged on the ground, midriff strung with parcels. He wore the lightest, warmest clothes the others could contribute, overlaid with loose trousers and a hooded shirt hastily stitched from an old bed sheet, once white, now dingy gray from less-than-fastidious launderings. Still, it provided some cover against the snow; anything dark and moving would attract attention and arrows.