by Gayle Greeno
His plan was rudimentary, the best they could cobble together on such short notice, but all agreed any plan, any action, beat passively waiting for Antoon, Donner, and Braldt to be tortured, killed. Assuming they didn’t freeze to death first, a sweeter death than the Marauders promised. “Kharm?” Matty ’spoke, reconnoitering on each side, snow melting and glazing his cheeks. “Safe for me to move yet?”
“Be patient.” Although nowhere in sight, her mindvoice chimed brittle-bright with glee, “Let me distract them a little more, just a little further. It’s necessary—and it’s fun.” He waited, tried to be patient, not to shiver. Excitement or cold, he wasn’t sure which. Again he fumbled with the hammer, chisel, and crowbar strapped around his waist under the white shirt, fearful they’d clank and betray him. His fingers itched to check the pottery container shaped rather like a miniature clog, with its plug at the neck and its tiny air hole. Three glowing coals nestled inside amongst moss and punk to provide sustenance, keep them glowing. What if he’d blocked the air hole, smothered them? “Head there now!” he heard at last, discerned what passed for a ghatti-giggle. A dark shape capered and darted off, shadowy figures he hadn’t noticed rising out of nowhere and following in hot pursuit, away from the outbuilding.
Crawling, slithering on his stomach when necessary, he made his way through the snow to the deserted outbuilding. Although if Kharm had done her job right, Roiker and his mates now occupied it, overwhelmed by the need to seek it out, hide in its close safety like hibernating animals, the ghatta having planted the suggestion in their minds.
The snowbank and the path beside it almost unidentifiable as such, resculpted by drifting snow, Matty guessed at their location from the soft hollow and the sharp overhang of the drift at right angles to a low mound. The blizzard had altered all the landmarks. With a quick glance around, he rolled into the hollow and sank into the powder as if it were a featherbed. Half-floundering, half-swimming toward the mound, relief flooded him as he picked out shallow depressions—footprints filling in, Roiker’s and his companions’, he hoped. An outstretched arm glided under the snow surface, made contact with something unyielding. Squinting through eyelashes frosted with snow he saw the rough outlines of the door, already recoated with blowing snow like spun sugar. This was the tricky part: Roiker and the others fearful and jumpy, ready to fight anyone who forced a way inside. “Roiker?” he whispered, fearful the wind would snatch his words. A faint stirring inside, then absolute silence. “Roiker?” The wind grabbed the name, knotted it into a growling, grumbling complaint. “It’s me, Matty! Let me in!”
“Who else I got with me?” Suspicion, more than a touch of fear and raw anger, the hibernating animal awaking, realizing its den has been broached. “Name’m!”
The cold seeped through Matty’s knees, crept upward. “Teiguid and Wensell. Wensell got a marten skin last time out. I’m doing a good job curing it, should be worth a lot—” The door cracked open and Matty tumbled inside. He landed hard, scrambled to push Teiguid and Roiker away, make them leave the door open just a crack. “Wait, just a little,” he pleaded, a heart-pounding eternity until Kharm slipped inside, chirping a greeting merow as she shook her coat, began to groom damp fur. Jamming the door behind her so fast he almost nipped her tail, he heard more than saw Teiguid bar it again in the darkness. He sat, panting with relief, hugging his knees, one hand possessively gripping the clay container in his pocket, hoarding the warmth.
“What are you doing out here, boy?” Roiker whispered at his ear, his face and beard a dim gray blur while Matty’s eyes slowly adjusted. “Any way to get us inside?”
He shook his head, realized they couldn’t see that. “No. Need us here more. Marauders have got Antoon, Donner, and Braldt staked out naked in the storm, planning on torturing them if we don’t surrender.” A deep breath. “Thing is, they’re going to kill them anyway—and us, too, if we surrender.” A strangled curse from Wensell, a strapping man with a temper hot-blooded enough to turn the hut tropical. “Udemans figured we’d best try something, anything.”
Tinged with spruce gum, Teiguid’s breath puffed soft against Matty’s face. “Better to go down trying and dying than just dying. But what we gonna do?”
And quickly, heads together, Matty outlined his plan, and they started to work.
At length, everything was ready, the scent of apfeljack, strong and heady inside the enclosed hut, mingled with an overpowering aroma equally engendered by hard work and dread. Matty leaned against Teiguid’s shoulder, waiting, counting off the time, praying for a soft knock at the door to tell them Roiker and Wensell had returned safe from their mission. With an almost demented glee Wensell had claimed the right to plant the bear traps just behind Marauder lines, a dicey task for the two to crawl close unseen, set the two traps, maws wide and waiting. It might prove a worthless effort, a menace to them all, but Wensell and Roiker swore it had a chance, the traps silent, waiting, quickly covered by a thin layer of snow, invisible to anyone who didn’t know they were there. Now if they could only spook the Marauders to run that way, crest the hard-packed drifts, and slide down into their jaws.
“They’re coming,” Kharm announced, “and well pleased. I’ll guarantee someone runs in the right direction, chasing after me.”
“Kharm! No!” he grabbed the ghatta onto his lap, held her tight, Teiguid stroking her as well, glad for her warmth. “You might get hurt, have the trap snap on you!” The idea terrified him.
“Well, I planned to jump over before it snapped at me.”
“You’d better!” And with that, Roiker and Wensell crowded into the hut, blowing on their hands, shifting uncomfortably in the small space, even more cramped with the two sledges lying ready, repaired as best Matty and Teiguid could. Beside each sledge stood a keg of apfeljack, potent alcohol sloshing within. They’d painstakingly drained it from barrels still lined with fruity ice. Matty absently chipped a sliver and sucked on it, sharply intense with the essence of apple. Hard to secure the lids without pounding and banging, and Matty hoped they fit tight, that the few small holes he’d bored would vent them enough.
Without further speech, the four rolled the barrels onto the sledges and lashed them loosely in place, then began dragging them from the hut, checking nervously at every shadow, every sound. As promised, Udemans and the men massed on the front wall, letting off wild shots, yelling, shouting invectives, promises, threats, anything to distract their attention. Bodily lifting the sledges from the path and over the snow-drifts, they slipped away, hauling their cargo, sinking and sliding, praying the sledges wouldn’t fly out of control. Back, back, back around and up the slope to the rise of the treeline.
Now Matty crouched low, loosely braided wicks of oil-soaked rags in hand, thrusting them into the holes on the lid, prying open his clay container and blowing on the coals until they sprang to life. Roiker coated the kegs with the turpentine and lamp oil they’d mixed together, thick like syrup in the cold, as Matty pressed the coals to the wicks, waiting patiently, sheltering behind the others’ bodies until they caught. Then down the line to repeat the process with the other laden sledge. A cautious wave, barely able to be seen, and Teiguid slipped smoldering rags under the lashing holding his keg to the sledge while Matty did the same to his.
Teiguid and Wensell put their shoulders to the sledge and began to push it downslope, while Matty joined Roiker behind his sledge, gasping and slipping, leaning into it as hard as he could. And suddenly they coasted free, both sledges sailing toward the Marauders’ rear line, silent and sleek as they swooped down the snowy incline, tiny flares of red winking and bobbing. A blinding flash and the turp coating Teiguid’s and Wensell’s barrel burst into flame, swathing it in fire, scarlet bright against the night. Another flash, and the other barrel caught.
At the flaring signal, the stockade gates opened and Udemans and his men poured out in a densely packed wedge, swords and pikes at the ready, the four men still on the walls making every arrow count. Roiker rose with a roar
and began chasing the sledges, their packed trails offering easier footing, and the others followed, attacking from the rear, sowing confusion and dismay, their small number multiplied by their unexpectedness.
The right-hand sledge hit an ice patch, spun and overturned. Etched with its skin of fire, the keg broke its moorings, catapulted into the air as if an invisible giant hand had launched it, then plummeting like a shooting star, exploding as the fire reached the alcohol. Barrel stave splinters pierced the night, random but deadly as arrows. Matty ran, waving a short sword, and tripped over a Marauder sunk on the ground, a jagged splinter of wood through his neck, blood pulsing black on the snow. Out of the comer of his eye he caught Kharm enticing a man to chase her, halting just out of reach, taunting him, springing away. Screaming with frustration, determined a mere animal would never best him, the Marauder plowed after her, Kharm corkscrewing in midair, twisting clear at the last moment as he bumbled heavy-footed into the bear trap. A high-pitched scream pierced the air.
Abandoning the sledge tracks, Matty, Roiker, Teiguid, and Wensell waded toward the prisoners and began slashing their bonds, the three bodies hanging limp against the stakes. Intent on freeing Donner, Wensell never noticed the Marauder skiing down on him, and Matty flailed backhanded with his sword as he tried to swung round to face the enemy, cover Wensell’s back. An elbow in his chest drove him aside, his sword stroke falling wide, carving an arc in the snow. The Marauder’s sword drove into Wensell’s back, and Matty scrambled up and lunged, swinging the sword with both hands at ankle-level as if he chopped at a tree. The man toppled on Wensell and rolled off, Matty hacking again and again, working his way upward until his blade took the Marauder through the throat. He sank the point in the snow, hands shaking on the hilt, and began vomiting, unable to fight any more, no matter who attacked him. At last he sank to his knees, head bent, refusing to look up.
Abruptly it was over, Udemans and the Free Steaders in control, some dead, some wounded, but the Marauders captured and contained or driven back into the blizzard. As Udemans hauled him to his feet, Matty watched the others calmly finishing off any Marauders who remained, even those who’d surrendered. He vomited again, nothing left to throw up, but unable to stop the spasms. “Treat them as they’d treat you.” Udemans surveyed the scene of carnage, rubbed absently at the side of his head, his right earflap missing, as well as a piece of the ear itself. “Nothing else to do with them out here. Finishing them off’s a kindness of sorts. Can’t hold them and try them. It’s rough justice, but justice all the same.”
Matty nodded blearily, eyes and nose streaming from the strain of his exploding belly. This was justice, without his aid or Kharm’s, although Udemans didn’t realize how Kharm had helped bolster the odds by sharing the truth. In this case truth was truth, pure and uncomplex, and he felt a certain repugnant relief at that.
Kharm sniffed at the Marauder Matty had dispatched, and from what he could see, he looked like a man, a normal man, the guise of the enemy, the Marauder fading with death. “Better to kill by your own hand or to reveal the truth and sit back, task done, and let someone else determine the punishment? Does it make your hands any cleaner?”
He shivered, wondered if Udemans viewed him as a coward for his babylike response to violence. No matter which way he did it, he was responsible for death. Whether by his own hand here or by seeking the truth that sent Flaven Pelsaert to his death at the end of a rope. Truth was, he didn’t like either way very much.
Truth was, she didn’t like either way very much either. She compulsively drew her boots back under the chair as far as she could to avoid the vomit and bloodstains invisibly crowding her feet. Shaking her head only increased her queasiness, and Doyce discovered she wielded a crochet hook in one hand, had already shell-stitched three long rows with a blush apricot yam. What had she absentmindedly acquiesced to while invisibly battling in the snow at Matty’s side?
“Oooh, that bear trap!” Khar gave a delicious shiver that rippled from ears to tailtip. “And wasn’t Matty resourceful and brave?”
“Yes. It’s no easy task being brave when you’re afraid and unsure. ” She wrapped the yarn around the hook, looped it in and out. “But dead is dead, Khar. I feel as if death’s their third companion—invisible but always with them.” Not a good omen, but at least the hostages had been rescued.
“So it is with everyone; death shadows us all.” She’d turned Khar pensive as well.
Death shadows us all—don’t think about that, don’t think about how closely it shadows Swan, don’t think about how she’s doing because you’re too far away to make a difference. “But it practically rides on Matty’s shoulder. In all our years of Seeking we’ve never heard a murder case. Jenret
and Rawn have, Rolf and Chak heard two, I know.” Her hook froze. ”But I have killed, just as Matty did, in that old stable in Sidonie.” She began pulling the shell-stitching apart, unraveling it with a vicious tug, much to her mother’s startlement. ”I hooked into the wrong spot, figured I’d undo it and try again,” she temporized, not meeting her mother’s eyes.
“Well, Free Stead was better for Matty than Neu Bremen, you have to agree. Mayhap things will be even better after Free Stead.” It was Doyce’s decision about when she’d explore Matty’s life, but Khar couldn’t resist dangling a lure. Doyce had to persevere, see it through, or all Khar’s efforts and, by extension, the ghatti’s efforts with the Elders would be a waste. And the future, what would the future be like if Doyce refused to learn from the past? The world she’d bequeath to her ghatten, the world Doyce’s babies would inherit.
“I’m willing to wait. Here and now seems good to me. ” And to her mother’s surprise, Doyce got up and kissed her, unprovoked. “I’m going to put on the kettle for cha.” Mayhap that would wash the bitter taste from her mouth. Here and now was more than enough to cope with.
Addawanna rested a knuckle against her lips, hummed tunelessly against it. The only movement she’d make all morning now that she’d settled into place, surveying the Resonant encampment that held Jenret Wycherley and his friends. Unless they moved, and then, as always, she’d follow or arrive ahead of them, since she knew their own minds more intimately than they did. Or rather, she knew the land and its hazards, conversing with it at will, so attuned to its slow tides of love, longing and lament that every fiber of her body experienced it, pulsations pouring into the soles of her feet, her hand as she touched the earth, brushing it as lovingly as a mother ruffling a beloved child’s hair.
This morning, long before the sun had risen, she’d chosen the old long pin pine as her vantage point, scrambled up it like a squirrel until she reached its forked crotch and settled in. Few pines boasted a crotch, but this one’s crowning spire had been blasted young, two subsidiary points struggling for ascendency, each racing skyward. She knew because the tree told her so, grumbling about past trials for supremacy in whisper thin voices like its long needles, richly resinous. Indeed, even now they tried to lay claim to her, pitch clinging to her long, gray braid.
She’d informed the Monitor, Kyril van Beieven, that she would rescue Jenret and the others with or without his help, because never before had she witnessed a man so burdened, bowed down by sorrow and fear, coated with indecisiveness like a hardwood tree encrusted with ice. Dangerous, that, because he wouldn’t bend but would shatter suddenly instead. Were he a tree, ice-encrusted branches would snap, a sharp retort splitting the frozen air as a healthy branch reluctantly detached itself and fell. In a human the mind would snap in much the same way, she suspected. A shame. She would ease his worries if she could, but the time had not yet come. The earth told her that, counseled for patience. And that she had in abundance, though she wasn’t as sure about Jenret. The others with him, the young woman with hair like a beckoning pale candle flame and a name like a sigh, the earnest woman who spoke with her mind, and her loyal husband, they strove for restraint. But Jenret, like the Monitor, was liable to crack. Knowing that Doyce was alone, pregnan
t, she could understand his impetuosity—except that he was always impetuous. His mother’s grace but not her tolerance in abiding with the bad times.
After spending yet another day in watching, what would she return to but another young cub, wearing his pain and disgrace the way moss weaves itself into bark, the bark itself becoming almost invisible? Worst of all, he wanted to help so desperately, but was well-nigh useless at the narrow, covert watching she desired, motionless and content, absorbing everything until it was time. Faertom had promised not to leave their camp, but to tend it and wait for messages. Not that any messages came, but she’d impressed on him the importance of being available. And when she returned each night for a brief respite before the evening watch, he inundated her with a storm of words, worries, fears, apprehensions, a pounding hail of emotion. Still, Faertom was a good young man, adrift from all he held dear, but not half the man her grandson Nakum was. An unfair comparison since Faertom hadn’t been gifted with an earth-bond.
At that instant her own earth-bond pulsated, and she clasped the waist pouch to still it. Power in that pouch, more power than the children of usurpers, children of the silver birds that had landed so many years ago, could ever imagine. In that power an enduring strength, a will to survive that succored the Erakwa despite the changes in their world. The earth informed her of travelers, travelers across the land, not one or two but many, several hundred at least. Not an army, for the earth did not protest their passage but noted it with surprise, grumpy at being shaken so thoroughly this late in the season when it was ready to sleep. The earth rumpled itself like a bear trying to hibernate, disturbed by a flea. Interesting. She suspected who some of the travelers were, would know for certain shortly. But this, this might be what she waited for, a way to free her friends without loss of face on either side.