Winter Song

by Colin Harvey

  Soon after they stopped for the night.

  Bera emptied the last of the horse-feed into a bag which he gave to Teitur. "A last meal," she said. "It's not as if we can eat it, is it?" Karl decided that it wouldn't be right to say that in an emergency, yes, he could eat the horse-feed. Better to leave her some consolation.

  Bera loaded the rifle. When Teitur had checked that there was no more food to be had, she wrapped her arm around his neck and kissed him on the nose. "Farewell, my lovely boy," she croaked. With her free hand she pointed the rifle-barrel between his eyes, and fired once.

  The rifle absorbed much of the recoil but it still jerked her hand away. Teitur spasmed and then – it seemed in slow motion – toppled over.

  Bera checked Teitur's pulse, although Karl couldn't see how he could still live. Routine is her consolation, he thought.

  She took up her knife, waving away Karl's help. "Could you make a fire like the other night?"

  Karl wasn't sure that he could spare any more nanophytes – those that he had were long overdue maintenance, but he didn't argue. "I'll gather vegetation." He spoke to Coeo, and they walked in two halves of a great circle.

  Almost forty minutes later, Karl dropped his feeble haul beside the corpse.

  Bera had laid out their furs and was sat among them, resting her hand on a stack of Teitur-steaks wrapped in horse-skin packets as if assessing them. The horse's cadaver lay outstretched nearby, much as he had fallen, but with the skin stretched away from where Bera had cut the steaks.

  "I decanted his blood into whatever empty bottles we had," she said, eyes red, her teeth chattering between sentences. "I feel like a vampire, I've drunk so much horse-blood lately." She stood. "I'll help you," she said.

  "No need," Karl said. "You sit–"

  "No!" Bera continued, more calmly. "I need to do something."

  Karl wanted to say what happens when you stop, as sooner or later you must? Instead he passed her the remains of a fur he'd already cut strips from. "Make yourself gloves. These things are full of thorns." He sucked his thumb where he'd learned that lesson.

  "If we place the plants on him," Bera said. "We can make him a sort of funeral pyre, and cook the steaks."

  They placed the thin covering over Teitur's corpse. "It seems an insult to defecate on him," Karl said. "But we need the nanophytes to combust."

  "Do it on the leaves." Bera picked up a canteen, ostentatiously looking away. She gave it to Coeo, picked up two more, and when he had finished, passed Karl one. She raised hers. "To Teitur, faithful servant to the end." Karl echoed the toast. Coeo said, "Teitur."

  They placed three steaks in the fire, and when Bera judged them cooked, ate their sad meal. The little pyre burned down all too quickly, but they had already retreated to the furs, Coeo beneath one set – as usual – Bera and Karl another.

  Karl linked his hands across her stomach, wishing that he could stroke her naked body. But now was no time to take advantage of a vulnerable young woman. Woman, heck, he thought. She's a young girl, not much older than the baby she bore.

  Karl relaxed his hold when Bera's whole body shook, her frame heaving as if she were hiccoughing. A great cry erupted from her, and she sobbed, so violently that he feared that she might shatter and the pieces of her fly apart.

  Even Coeo sat beside her, crooning and stroking her arm, though it did little good. Karl had never felt so helpless.

  They spent a cold, restless night, the wind gradually strengthening. It was so raw it might have come all the way from the South Pole to cut through the furs as if they weren't there.

  If we don't get there soon, Karl thought, it'll be too late. We'll freeze first.

  They slept late and awoke to dauskalas swooping.

  "Young glamurbak," Coeo said. "Separated from his mother."

  The little animal ran one way, then another, each time blocked by the black shapes, its mews parodied by the dauskalas' rasping shrieks.

  The mother ran at the predators, but one grabbed at the cub, lifting it off the ground, then dropping it from several metres up. The cub lay still, but for an occasional post-mortem twitch.

  Reaching her cub, the mother nuzzled it with her snout. When it didn't respond, she edged away, ducking back to see if it might yet move. After another minute she walked away again, keening pitifully, as if her calling it might yet revive her cub.

  While this was happening, the humans had dressed quickly. Karl stopped, suddenly overwhelmed.

  "What's wrong?" Bera said.

  Karl finally found the breath to say, "So much death. How do you cope with it? It's everywhere you look."

  She stroked his arm. "I guess Avalon's a gentler world?"

  Karl nodded. "People die, of course. From old age, and illness, and some still from accidents. We have wilderness worlds, where those with a taste for death can hunt, or play survivor strategies."

  Bera's lip curled, but her voice gave nothing away. "Isn't the whole point of visiting a wilderness world that you can leave at any time?"

  "I… you have to survive until pick-up, but yes, the time is finite. I've never had the taste for such things… they must seem like games to you."

  "Exactly." Bera indicated Coeo who had doubled back to rejoin them. "Here, there is no escape for us, or you, if your plan fails. So learn to live, or don't. I can only do so much. I can't make you to want to learn to live, Karl." She added, "So the first lesson starts here. See the dauskalas trying to prise open the cub's armour?"

  "Yes?" Karl said.

  "They're not having it. It's ours now."

  With a yell, Bera ran at the dauskalas. Coeo let out a bellow and followed her. Karl hesitated, then drew his sword and charged, yelling.

  The dauskalas shrieked and rose a couple of metres in the air, flapping their gossamer-thin wings, snapping at Bera with long, thin, crossed bills made for rending. She sliced one of the bat-like creature's wings and blood spurted. It crashed and immediately the other dauskalas dived on it, beaks snapping.

  Coeo dragged the glamurbak corpse away.

  Bera began hacking the corpse apart and said to Karl, "Give me a hand!"

  Reluctantly Karl cut off the tail, which seemed hardly worth the effort. He offered it to Coeo, who was chomping on a piece of bloodied meat that Bera had given him. Coeo shook his head. "Yours."

  "Your prize for helping," Bera said.

  Karl said, "Won't the rest of the meat be poisonous?"

  "Maybe," Bera admitted. "But it's the principle: 'waste not, want not', as the saying goes. And it'll feed Coeo, who's surely one of us?" She lifted an eyebrow.

  "OK," Karl conceded. "But let's not hang around, eh? Those brutes are eying us up." Two of the dauskalas were slurping over their comrade's intestines, but two more looked from the carcass that they couldn't reach, toward the cub's body, and back again, as if evaluating which was the greater prize.

  Bera shuddered. "My head knows that they perform a vital ecological function. My gut says kill every one of the ugly bastards."

  Coeo was still munching cub cuts as they resumed. He offered a piece to Karl, who shook his head. I may have to eat meat on this barbarous mud-ball, but something cooked from an animal I haven't seen die is one thing; the raw flesh of what was a cute little baby twenty minutes ago is another. He suspected that it was a view Bera wouldn't share.

  They walked across a landscape of undulating rises littered with ever-larger stones, sand giving way primarily to gravel underfoot, which in turn became mostly pebbles, and eventually cobbles.

  The ground shook from time to time, and smoke rose in the distance at right-angles to their route. "The further away we get from the hills, the more tremors there seem to be," Karl observed.

  Bera shrugged. Her mood all morning had been understandably dour. "There's no pattern to Isheimuri seismology. There are places of greater and lesser activity side by side. We think that the constant little tremors act as a safety valve, so we never get the big volcanoes you might expect."


  Karl nodded. And therefore little carbon dioxide.

  Coeo interrupted with a shout from the next ridge, waving frantically. Karl broke into a scrambling run.

  The sight that met him took his breath away.

  Ahead of them was a frozen lake, sitting on the very edge of the desert, rocks running right down to where the ice began. "Oh my," Karl said.

  "Jokullag," Bera said. "Where – if the Winter Song is true – the stars fell to earth."

  Close-up, the dirty grey edge was actually wateryslush, although barely two metres in it was frozen white, in stark contrast to the brown of the surrounding desert. On the far side, grey hills rose toward snowcapped mountains and cirques whose glacial tongues crept down to the lake. Gamasol reflected blindingly off the lake.

  "Krishna," Karl whispered. It was as beautiful as anything he'd seen on the sixty or seventy worlds he'd walked upon.

  "Everyone should see this," Bera said.

  "It's not for me," Karl whispered, wondering who he was trying to convince the most. "It's too wild, too untamed… too terrifying."

  They circled the lake, rather than walking on it. "The ice will leach the heat away from your feet," Bera said.

  Even when walking on the shoreline, the wind off the ice was bitter, and both humans soon shivered, even Karl, whose enhanced physique could normally cope with almost anything. He wondered again whether the nanophytes were failing, or whether the previous night had simply taken too much out of him.

  Coeo touched Karl's arm. "I walk here. You walk on other side –" Coeo indicated the ridge "– stay warm. I see it, I call you. Yes?"

  Karl somehow felt as if they were retreating, but they climbed back up the gravel slope. Up here, he could see that the ridges they'd crossed earlier were actually vast concentric rings, the heaviest debris nearest the lake, the smallest carried furthest. He guessed that the various ridges marked the tide-lines reflecting the various levels of the ice over the decades, centuries, perhaps even millennia.

  They descended into the trough, now sheltered from the wind, although periodically Karl swarmed to the top of the ridge and waved at the stocky, hirsute figure striding along as if out on a gentle stroll. This is his world, Karl thought. If he's the descendant of the Pantropists, he was made for this. What happens if the colonists Terraform this world? Will he still be able to live here, or will it be unliveable for him? He suspected that the dead humanoid in the valley disputed by Ragnar and his neighbour gave him his answer. They're probably no longer capable of breathing carbon dioxide in the amounts needed to warm Isheimur, nor of surviving human-optimum oxygen levels.

  He said nothing of this to Bera, who trudged beneath her backpack with her head bowed. Teitur's death and the skirmish with the dauskalas seemed to have drained her of fight. He drifted down from the ridge, crossing her path.

  When he linked his arm through hers, she looked up and a wan smile flickered across her face. "What?" she said.

  "I was wondering the same. Thinking?"

  "Of what happens when you're gone. If I'm an outlaw, it's decided for me. If not…"

  "Come with me," Karl said.

  "Easy to say," Bera said. "Not so easy to do – think how strange you thought we were, and you've experienced many different cultures. How would I fare? How would your family take to me?"

  "You don't have to live with us forever. You can stay for as long as you need to adjust, and move on when you want."

  Bera didn't answer.

  They walked on in silence, the bitter wind strengthening still further, blowing Bera's hair into her eyes until she grabbed some one-handed and pulling it back, took a length of ribbon from her pocket with the other. But the wind plucked at both hair and ribbon, pulling strands loose no matter how hard she fought it.

  "Here," Karl said. "Let me." He took the ribbon as she held her hair, and as he tied it, gazed into her eyes. He watched the colour flood her face.

  She jerked away. "Thanks."

  Over the next hour the clouds gathered, the sky growing black and whatever harsh beauty their surroundings possessed was subsumed by the sheer bleakness of the day. Karl felt the spatter of raindrops and muttered a curse.

  Within minutes the rain turned to big, fat whirling flakes of snow. Visibility plummeted to a few metres, and they looked around for somewhere to shelter. None of the boulders in the trough was big enough to provide cover for them.

  "Nothing for it but to press on," Bera said.

  "Don't we risk missing the shrine?"

  "You're right, but with luck this'll pass over. If not, we'll re-think. We're walking so slowly that if the visibility picks up we should be able to see the part we miss now."

  Their luck held; the flurry passed over in about half an hour, and the day brightened again. But throughout the afternoon the temperature fell further, draining them of energy, until every footstep was an effort, even for Karl.

  Coeo appeared on the ridge between them and the lake, waving frantically.

  Karl and Bera staggered up the slope, their feet sliding back half of each step that they took. When they reached the top, they were both panting, and leaned forward on their knees. Karl straightened again when he followed Coeo's outstretched arm, to where sunlight glinted on metal.

  "Winter Song?" Karl said.

  "Winter Song." Coeo added in Kazakh, "Godsfall."

  "It's real!" Karl flung his arms around Bera and kissed her.

  After a moment's hesitation she kissed him back. What started as a peck on the lips lengthened, deepened, her lips parting and their tongues touched. Lips ground against lips, teeth bumped teeth. She dug her fingers into the back of his neck. His hands slid down her back and cupped her bottom; she lifted one foot and wrapped her leg around his waist, then the other. His ailing nanophytes gave up the unequal battle against tumescence and he stiffened, pressing against her.

  When he guessed that she might need air, he gently put her down. She tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear, said, "Um."

  "Yes." He tugged a fur down, unsnagging his erection. She stared down at it, her face a swirling mix of nervousness and confusion. She bit her lower lip, blushing, and looking up at him, smiled beatifically.

  "Do you have – is there a map – an, um, a picture of the lake?" he blathered, getting his breath back.

  "Somewhere." She rummaged in her bag, and he noticed her hands shaking when she took the papers out and shielded them from the wind. He leaned over her to study the map, stroking her hair when she rested her head on his shoulder.

  Karl stared across the lake. Rising from the ice a kilometre toward the centre was a segment of white circle, a lattice joining it to the surface.

  "This wasn't on the original pictures," Bera said, tapping them. "That implies the ice has melted."

  "It must have thawed as the temperatures rose with the Terraforming." Karl said. "If so, the ice will cover it again in time as it re-freezes."

  They prepared to slide down the slope but then Karl turned. "Coeo?" he called. "Where you go?"

  "This way." The humanoid pointed along the ridge, and began to slide down the far side, away from the lake. "You go to shrine, Coeo go this way. I see you again. Fare you well, both." He didn't look back. In moments, he was a tiny figure, hurrying away without further explanation.

  "What's happening?" Bera said. She peered into the distance, perplexed.

  "I don't know," Karl said. "He's… he's just walking away. Maybe he was only ever going to guide us. Maybe he's scared of the ship." He looked after their erstwhile companion, barely comprehending what was happening. It came to him, hard, that for all their similarities, Coeo was from such a different culture to his.

  "I know how he feels," Bera said, squeezing his finger. "Part of me wants to go with him. Just turn and run."

  "Why?" Karl said. "It's just a ship." He turned to gaze back over the lake.

  "Maybe to you," Bera said. "What if there are spirits? Or whatever you call Loki?"

  "It'll be OK," Karl
said. "You're just overawed, and the fact that it's so quiet isn't helping."

  "I guess the havalifugils can't swim here," Bera said, "if it's frozen solid. The rock-eaters and snolfurs have all gone north for the winter. There's not even a dauskala. That alone shows you how lifeless it is here."

  "Think the Winter Song's scared them off?" Karl said, adding quickly, "Joking! Come on!" They slid down and with a running jump Karl cleared the slush. Bera landed short and teetered on the edge of a floe, arms windmilling forward, until Karl grabbed the front of her fur and yanked her onto firmer ice.