The Winter Road

by Adrian Selby

  “No.” I said it too quickly, too hard, like a slap. As I was walking up the hill out of Crimore I knew we was nearly halfway across the Circle, and I was only a week or two from my own family.

  He reached behind him and felt about in a sack, pulling out of it a flask of potskas. I took a good slug, savoured its fiery aniseed. I kissed him on his cheek then, as he was taking his own swig. I hated that he had some doubt about me, and I hated, as I looked about me, that I was wanting to bawl for how it had all gone. I didn’t want him to see me upset, but that’s one thing. I could not let any of the van see me upset. So I kissed him, though a tear on my cheek touched his and he felt it.

  “You mustn’t cry now if Eirin comes over. Spadeface, Chalky’s little girls call her.” I smiled at that.

  “No, that’s not right. She’s been at the gruet sure,” which is a Fasties way of saying she was big all over, “but she’s fine to look on. And what about Yalle? What about me?”

  “They aren’t going to tell me what they call you, are they. Yalle, well, she has that small sharp nose and drawn-in cheeks and she’s tall and slim so she’s the Pickaxe.”

  “I think she’d be fine with that. Spadeface and the Pickaxe. I just wish they got on more.”

  “It’s down to you. It always is. We’re with you, Mosa and I. A ‘stroll in the big country’ is vanner’s humour, a way of saying it isn’t easy. You need to see if anyone else has the heart for a stroll now, with Crogan dead. It’ll take a good crew if you want to keep us safe.”

  I looked behind us, as we was facing outward from the camp, which our wagons was arranged around in a half-circle. They was in their pipes, and Thad was playing his flute, a sailor song, “Crackerdock,” that had them tapping along with their hands and reminded me of days spent drinking and smoking with Thad, Nazz and Ruifsen down in the Roan Province, before greed tore it all apart. Thad was doing a fine job keeping their spirits up, something he always managed on a campaign or a van.

  I kissed Aude and jumped down off the wagon to join Thad and the others. As they saw me approach, Thad finished the verse with a flourish so’s they’d stop singing.

  “I didn’t mean for you all to stop.”

  “Come and sit with us,” said Thad. “We know we’ve all got to talk, and I don’t think we’ll get much sleep before we head out of here tonight.”

  “And the question is which way,” said Eirin.

  “We should toast Crogan before anything else,” I said, surprised that Eirin hadn’t already decided. I raised Aude’s flask of potskas and passed it to those that didn’t have one themselves and we all said a line or two about him, Eirin recalling him falling off the edge of the dock once while pissing and her having to fish him out, Skallern’s keep slapping him in front of the crown prince of Farlsgrad for saying she was pregnant when she wasn’t. I said something about the Othbutters’ support for merchants but I was fooling no one and began to wish I’d not offered the toast, though it was right.

  Yalle and Steyning was there, along with Sanger. The rest of the crew was either guarding or in their pipes about the wagons, spreading us out as a precaution against sporebags.

  “I want to toast you all too, that saved my life and maybe all our lives down there. To debts that cannot be paid!” And they responded.

  “I haven’t ever been one for a speech,” I started.

  “Pig shit,” said Thad, scratching out his pipe bowl, and this got a laugh.

  “Well, when I’m forced to. Now I’m forced to. We had come to build relations with the clans of the Circle. We haven’t done it because of this Khiese. But I believe he hasn’t got to the Auksens or further east so I want to go on. First we have to make our way to the Almet, to the heart of the Circle. It’s even more important we push hard to get there. I don’t know what help we’ll get, but the gift I have for them they won’t be able to ignore. Their help could make all the difference. With or without them, we then make for the Auksen settle. Unless Khiese’s got a standing army he won’t have the crew to cover all that land, nor maintain it from those Families that might want to fight back at him. So if we go on I need all of you, because with all of you we got enough to make him think about hitting us. Sorry to say it would mean leaving Crogan here, because the two it would take to cart him back to Hillfast are two we could do with.”

  “And if he has got to them?” This was Sanger. “Then you can’t deliver my purse.”

  “Agreed,” said Steyning, “and the terms were clear, two- thirds of the final amount to be paid if we couldn’t reach Stockson. Are you saying you’ll pay up once we know if Khiese runs your clan? Because that’s what’s happened; I don’t think Jeife was lying about that.”

  “Yes.”

  “First sign of trouble, eh, Steyning?” said Skallern, who was a veteran of Hillfast’s militia, mostly up in the Moors.

  “Master Amondsen understands us,” said Yalle.

  “I’m sure there’s a purse for avenging Crogan’s death,” said Eirin, but she hadn’t thought this through before saying it.

  “That would mean killing Jeife for one, then going after Khiese. How much silver do you have in your packs, Captain?” said Steyning.

  She shook her head. They never dealt with mercenaries much of course. “I’m for seeing the Auksens,” she said. “Crogan can be buried tonight, in this clearing. We were meant to bring the Chief’s justice and support to the Circle; turning back to Hillfast means we’d fail him.”

  “We’re all agreed?” I said quickly. I was thrilled we would move on with so little disagreement. The Auksens and my own family was my main hope of turning about the ambitions of this Khiese. Few of us here would have any fear of his crew with a fort and more to fight alongside us in familiar lands.

  “We are, Master Amondsen,” said Sanger, who rose and stretched. “Let’s find us some wood.” He whistled for Jem. I looked over to where I heard movement on the back of one of the supply wagons, where Bela seemed all wrapped around Jem, who did his best to right his leggings under the thick oilskin they was sharing.

  I stood and walked over to Aude. He jumped down off the wagon and stood before me.

  “Do you need me for anything?” He smiled. I’ll never get past the joy of seeing him smile at me.

  “We’re burying Crogan here and pushing on to the Almet, then down to Auksen lands and my clan.”

  “Right.”

  I could see he was nervous and I could understand that.

  I heard a horse approach at a canter, it was one of Eirin’s that we’d posted as a lookout on the track back along the hill nearer Crimore.

  “Captain Eirin about, Master Amondsen?”

  “She’s in the camp.”

  “Can you hear it, Master? Perhaps not, if you’re only on dayers. It’s horns,” said the rider.

  We walked away from the campfires down the track a bit, and I could hear it, just, with any falling off of the wind to quieten the pines. It was a screeching of sorts, high on the air.

  “Too far for Crimore. That over east near the Shield forest, do you think, Woodsen?” I said.

  “Yes, Master, feels like it.” The rest of us gathered to listen. Only those of us on Thad’s dayer could hear the horns; Steyning’s wasn’t refined enough. It put her nose out of joint a bit but there we are.

  “What shall we do, Master?” said Eirin.

  “We give Crogan Othbutter up to his tapestry, to Halfussen. Then we head for the Almet, prepped and ready for whoever is blowing those horns.”

  “They sound like people screaming for their lives,” said Bela.

  “They’re meant to,” said Sanger.

  “Do they have soldiers, the Oskoro?” said Eirin.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do we get a few of their drudhas in return?” said Thad.

  “I don’t know that either. But if Khiese gets anywhere near us in the next few days, I feel better about being in the Almet than anywhere else bar my bloodlands.”

  “I’m glad
it gives you some comfort, Master Amondsen,” said Eirin. “Hope you can share that with my crew, because they’re shitting it.”

  Chapter 5

  Now

  The swollen river makes us faster as we head away from the burned-out Kelssen theit, home of these children and Ydka, mother to two of them. It has been raining hard, and they have long since gone through crying about what’s happened.

  “Pot’s filling up quick, Blackeye.”

  The girl Dottke is smiling now despite the cold rain hammering down as though it hates us. The one pot that had been stashed in the boat with the pack of food, clothes and plant is filling up nicely with water and should replenish our flasks.

  Brek is asleep next to me. The arrow-shot boy woke in the night and a finger of opia eased him off again. Ydka’s baby starts whining, barely an hour after she last give him her bab. She jerks awake, her hands moving around under the cloak she’s wrapped in, helping it onto her nipple. She pulls a face before looking over at me.

  “Think he was born with teeth, this one.”

  “Does he have a name, Ydka?”

  “Not until he’s a year. My ma was clear on that rightly from the moment she heard I was with him. Same with me as it was with Jorno.”

  “A Fasties woman then.” Which meant, among other things, the da wouldn’t have really had a say, not least because these was hard lands and nobody wanted, in Hillfast winters, to be stitching names into the weave only to unpick them before spring.

  “I’m sorry for your family,” I says, “for Murin and all the Kelssens.” She looks about us, only Dottke awake, but she has lain back down and curled up into Litten and Aggie.

  “Thank you, Amondsen.” She’d been crying in the night. This miserable and bitter dawn, a mist fogging up the lands beyond the banks of the river, give us a solitude and quiet that is needed. It hides us too, though the sounds of the horns faded in the dark hours before dawn. I don’t think we are being followed.

  “Whose lands will we be in now?” I ask, looking to put her mind onto something useful.

  “Jannissens. There’s a river dock we’ll come to shortly. Nakvi-Russ joins the Nakvi-Anssi and the docks are just past their joining.”

  She looks ahead at the river. We’re not talking about how we go from here; what I will do, what I won’t do, what will happen to these children. I have given no promises, no word, and that is as it is meant. I don’t want this. From the moment Ydka’s keep come out of the trees, freshly mutilated by the whiteboys, I hadn’t wanted this.

  I’m tired. I lift the hood back away from my head to let the cold rain soak me and keep me awake.

  “I didn’t want to say something the last few days you been with us, but you been beaten haven’t you? Was it the whiteboys did it?”

  “Yes,” I says.

  “You paid colour though, you must’ve seen a few of them off too. Were you working for Othbutter then?”

  “No, I … I used to be a merchant, in the port of Hillfast. We was attacked when I was coming back to my homeland.”

  “You got away with your life. You must owe Sillindar.” This is a saying meaning that it is thanks to the magists that I am still alive. I have fuck all to thank a magist for, this much is true. I have even less reason to tell her my troubles.

  “I do owe Sillindar, among others.”

  “How come you’re not headed back to Hillfast then? You lose the shirt off your back, as the saying goes? Is there a way you can help us now?”

  “There’s nothing for me at Hillfast. I expect there’s debts, mind, I don’t rightly know.” I look about me at the sleeping children. Ydka’s dut wriggles about again, he’s fed and he’s awake. She lifts him up a bit from her babs and arranges a hood over both of them to protect him from the rain.

  I think about Mosa and I need to look away from her, though my face is now so soaked she might not notice my tears. My face still hurts, cheek and eyes still puffy to the touch. Swelling has gone down a bit in my mouth. Seems like the spear I took and this change in my eye and the scar next to it hurt less in every way than what Khiese did to me. The woollens and boots the Oskoro left me from the herders are at least helping with my feet and the cold. I don’t know what they’d have used the bodies for.

  “Where will you go?” says Ydka.

  “To the port, then south to Jua or over the Sar somewhere. I got my letters so maybe a cleark, enough to feed me and to put the citadels behind me.”

  “First time I seen a bit of light in your eyes, you saying that, Amondsen. I see you mean it.”

  She says it with a smile but I feel there’s a bit of sadness too and she never meant for me to feel guilty about wanting to leave them, but she is alone with the last of her family, last of all the Kelssens, in this small boat.

  A couple of the duts are whispering and it’s the littlest girl, Aggie, who pokes her head out of the blanket.

  “I’m hungry. Where’s Ma, is she coming?”

  “Ssshh, Aggie, she’s not.” This was her brother, Litten. He’s looking at me and I do my best with a frown to persuade him to hold telling her for now and he says no more than that.

  “There’s a few bits in the sack there,” says Ydka. She points under the stern sheet I’m sat on while I work the scull. I drag the sack over to Ydka, and the movement of Aggie and Litten wakes the other children.

  “Breakfast,” says Ydka. I watch them as they take the broken bread. They can hardly look at me as they nibble away. They’re staring at the sides of the boat or out onto the river, and the previous night will be at the front of their thoughts. She’s young, Ydka, young to have a dut and Jorno, who must have been nine or so years old.

  “You had Jorno young, must have,” I says.

  She’s chewing on some bread herself, and it seems to diminish her age further, cowed by the rain alongside the children, letting it moisten what is in her fingers.

  “I was fourteen years. My da promised me to Murin as Orgrif hadn’t the women enough to give him any choice and you know how it is with the blood. It helped my own ma wasn’t from these parts either.” She means by this the mixing of clans that is seen to strengthen blood. She’s got hair a bit darker than the children in the boat, darker than Jorno’s too, like wet sand to their dry. I look at Jorno as she’s talking but he doesn’t seem to be listening. “More important for the match was a stretch of some three acres that was around here, Gabb’s Pen, where I was sniffing a few days ago as you know. It was known to be good land for hazel and with that come the belets and of course the henbane if you’re lucky. Orgrif felt Murin was worth it.”

  “He was very lucky, I think.” She’s a fine beauty too and I feel she’d lift a bit to hear it. Her smile and the joy for her duts as she gives them comfort are startling, like a fierce sun flashing through cloud, beautiful enough I feel my own cheeks flush a bit.

  “So this is your own family’s land we’re passing through?” I says.

  “Not my family no more and not for years. I weave the Kelssen rope now.”

  This is more true now than it was yesterday morning. It’s possible I might have been sold off like she had, and thousands like her, but for the Amondsens being a bigger family.

  Of course Jorno was listening though. He leans against Ydka and hides his face.

  “I want Ma!” shouts Aggie. “I want to go home.”

  “And me,” says Dottke.

  “You can’t go back, bluebell,” I says. “And there isn’t an easy way to say this. Those men with the painted faces, they … well, they burned your theit. All your homes are gone, and your mas and das are gone and all, I’m sorry to say.”

  “They kilt them all is what she’s saying,” says Brek, who’s not opened his eyes but is clearly listening.

  Litten gets upset now, and he starts crying and he’s only got Aggie to hold on to, who sees her brother upset and so she cries too and it hurts me the way Aggie cutches into him. Me and Ydka have to let them cry, and she hums for them a bit, reaching over to h
ug them in her spare arm.

  “I need more of that rub, Blackeye,” says Brek, meaning the opia.

  “You don’t. I’ll look at your wound when we get to the docks, for now you’ll have to hold till we reach it.”

  “It’s hurting bad.”

  I lean over him. “You sound like a drooper. You need your wits in this world, now more than ever with this lot to care for, don’t you think?”

  It pleases me to see him firm up, not liking the comparison. There’s two ways people go when they get their first good taste of opia. They either shrink, like their bodies want to settle around it, and after years of seeing droopers, that shrinking’s done long before they’re robbing and killing for it. Or, like Brek, you tell them they don’t need it and they see it right, see the weakness looking to rob them, and they knock it back as much out of fear as of hate.

  Late morning and voices—shouting, singing, whistling—are carrying through the last of the mist on the river. The rain’s cleared and there’s a bit of blue peppering the sky. The Russ and the Ansi join and I need Ydka’s help to oar us to a small rotted-looking pier in the current. It’s a small dock, no more than ten piers for barges, though a few more are tied to posts around.

  I haven’t slept and I need to badly. I step out of the boat and tie it. There’s a couple of stone houses but the rest is tents, paddocks for the horses or dog teams doing the hauls or sleds up through the riverways, and so a lot of yapping and howling, in part from the men about.

  We might as well have been a boatful of honey-glazed boar meat to all those that watch us through their pipe smoke. We are noticed by all who are stood about taking the air, or distracted from their haggling over the wares here: piles of raw and filthy furs, kegs of whale oil from the coast, linens, cottons and fish. The smell of stews and frying oils catches the attention of the children most and they look about for the source of the smoke drifting to us through the vanners, bargemen and scratchers at their business.

  The moment we’re off the boat a man walks up, the only one about with a weapon in hand, a spear. He’s wearing a leather jerkin but it’s old and worn enough it should be torn up and used for polishing.