Above the Snowline

by Steph Swainston

  ‘I’m not your usual Eszai.’

  ‘Well … it’s a trading post, called the Frozen Hound Hotel.’

  ‘The Frozen Hound! Yes!’ Dellin burst out with a torrent of chatter so fast it’s a wonder her pinched cheeks could encompass such rapid words.

  Jant listened and laughed. ‘She said she’ll show me the way. She prefers it to my staying here.’

  I thought she’d used stronger terms than that. ‘If you insist. I have never been to the Hound, but my steward goes there - don’t you, Snipe?’

  ‘Yes, my lord. To trade with Ouzel. She only has a few rooms but she rents them to anybody.’

  ‘Does she trade with Rhydanne?’ Jant asked.

  ‘Yes, Comet. She barters their silver and furs for hardware and the food they can’t make themselves. Ouzel’s a formidable woman. Very eccentric, but what do you expect? She’s lived there for years!’

  ‘Dellin said the Hound is half an hour away.’

  Snipe looked doubtful and wiped a drop of beer from the corner of his mouth. ‘I’d make it two or more … Ha! Well, it’d take us two, but yes, half an hour for a Rhydanne and even less for you, Comet. It’s a few kilometres west, on the cliffs this side of the glacier.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Jant nodded. He picked up Myths and Legends of Ancient Awia, which rested like a moth on his thigh, and glanced at the cover. ‘By Lightning Saker Micawater.’

  ‘Yes, one of many,’ I said eagerly. ‘Have you read it?’

  ‘Huh. Life’s too short.’

  ‘Even for an immortal?’

  ‘Especially for an immortal.’

  ‘I read factual books too,’ I said. ‘The sort you prefer. But Snipe only salvaged five books out of the whole library before Tarmigan stopped him. See how dog-eared it is? I’ve read it so many times I’ve practically worn it out. I miss my library …’

  ‘That’s between you and your brother,’ he said abruptly, as if he had suddenly recalled the reason why I was exiled. I wanted to steer his thoughts away from Tarmigan, back to the Rhydanne, and not onto books either; any new publications Jant may enthuse about will only serve to rub salt in my wounds.

  I stood up. ‘Would you like to see the settlement?’ Dellin, who had been fidgeting with her bangles as if she thought their jingling would intimidate me, bounded to her feet and down past the arras. ‘Her too. There’s half an hour before dinner. And Snipe, accompany us.’

  My gloves and scarf were warming on the mantelpiece. I avoid going outside as much as possible; the grasping cold permeates every inch of my being. I wrapped myself in my overcoat, cloth-of-gold scarf, sable fur hat and furlined boots, which took some time, and while I did so Jant examined the huge panels of carved limewood forming the chimney breast. ‘What’s this?’ he asked suspiciously, pointing to my coat of arms in the centre. It was a large shield with no features whatsoever, topped by my prince’s coronet rather than a plain governor’s circlet, and supported by two Rachiswater eagles with their wings closed and beaks agape. But instead of holding blue roses in their free claws, with thorn branches entwining to form the mantle - as in my brother’s shield - they held wolf pelts draped into an ornate mantle around the crest.

  ‘It’s my coat of arms,’ I said.

  ‘But there’s nothing on it.’

  ‘I left the escutcheon above the gateway smooth as well.’

  ‘I noticed. What does it mean?’

  ‘I’m deciding what emblem to adopt,’ I said, lightly in response to his grimness. ‘Since my brother expelled me I no longer wish to use the family’s coat of arms, but I’m entitled to one. So I’ll keep those shields blank until I think of a heraldic cognisance for Carniss I can pass down the generations. A pair of frozen feet, perhaps, on a field blue with cold.’

  He laughed, relieved. ‘I see, I see. Or a tankard of this excellent beer?’ He poured himself the last of it and, as he turned back to me, the edge of his wing caught a stack of letters and sent them all cascading to the floor.

  ‘Damn!’ He stepped back and put his mug down, but Snipe quickly knelt and scooped them all up.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  ‘Never mind,’ said Snipe, who reached up and deposited a handful haphazardly on the table.

  ‘I really am sorry.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ I said, polite but infuriated. I collected the rest and tapped them into some semblance of the original pile. The sooner I am free from him the better. I led on and he followed, bearing his cumbersome wings at a greater distance from the table but perilously close to the fireplace. We went to the hall and I swung the door wide so he could see the empty room with folded tables resting against the walls. Two servants were up on stepladders fixing holly garlands to the beams. Then we descended to the floor below, down the spiral stairs, and Jant swept his hand along the wall, trailing his fingertips over the cold, rough stone. The blocks were neatly squared black granite, which is difficult to cut, and I could tell he was impressed.

  We stopped on the landing beside a barred gate. The savage sniffed the air for some reason, but I pretended not to notice and addressed Jant. ‘This is my treasury. Like the rest of the settlement, it’s open to your view.’ I selected my largest key and unlocked the grille, then a chrome-covered key opened the inside door. I pocketed the bunch and lifted a heavy lantern from its niche.

  Its light flickered on stacks and stacks of neatly folded pelts, receding into the darkness. Each pile was fastened with a cardboard tag, grading them according to species, colour and quality. Dellin cried out, ‘What have you done?’ She pushed past us and walked between the pelts, into the gloom, then turned to us and we saw tears running down her face. ‘Such waste! Such terrible waste!’

  Jant snatched the lantern and went to inspect the furs. I followed him in and sat down on my chest of silver and gems, surrounded by the warm smell of fur and suede, the white tang of camphor.

  The nearest were pure white wolf pelts, then subtly patched ibex skins, stacked flat like playing cards. There was chamois tan and beige, blue-white vair from squirrels, dark-chocolate zibeline from martens, and luxuriant ermine: long milky strips with black-tipped tails. There was velvety snow leopard, clouded mountain cat, the glossy sheen of mink and the silvery fluff of fox. Horns tied together in pairs hung from hooks along the walls: the black prongs of chamois, ibex knobbly and bowed, surprisingly gigantic for the size of the beast. There were smooth red deer tines and palmate elk. There was also a mound of the natives’ woven rugs, which some customers in Awia will buy, even though their retarded designs are no more than broad stripes and most have no designs at all.

  The savage strode up to me and demanded, ‘How can animals replenish their numbers if you kill them all at once?’

  ‘Don’t be surprised if our hunting is more efficient than yours.’

  ‘Answer her question!’ said Jant.

  ‘Comet, what she said is meaningless. This is just a fraction of the tremendous plenty. There is so much game that our trapping could never make any impact, even if we hunted a thousand times more thoroughly than we do. The mountains teem with game of all kinds. We could never have any effect on their numbers, because obviously more animals will roam in from further afield to take the place of the few we harvest.’

  ‘But all these skins!’ she wailed. ‘What do you do with the meat?’

  ‘Feed it to the dogs.’

  ‘Do you sell the skins to Tarmigan?’ Jant asked.

  ‘Yes. Every month I send a full wagon train down to Rachiswater, under Snipe’s guard. My brother’s steward and various other merchants pay Snipe, who purchases our provisions and returns.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘So this is just one month’s hunting?’ she whined in amazement. ‘It’s a year’s worth of food! The scale … twelve times this? Why work so hard? Why waste so much? You could freeze the meat and live off it for the rest of the year!’

  ‘We don’t eat carrion.’

  ‘Soon you’ll be eating nothing, be
cause there’ll be nothing left!’ Snipe was standing in the doorway. ‘If we keep trapping, there might be fewer wolf attacks,’ he said.

  ‘Ah yes, the white wolves have been a nuisance. We must protect our children and beasts from them … and from other carnivores.’

  Jant scowled. ‘Clearing wolves is one thing, but overhunting and inadvertently starving out Rhydanne is quite another.’

  ‘Comet, I am not overhunting, I assure you.’

  ‘Show me the rest of your fortress.’ He slammed the lantern back into its niche and we descended into the overpowering mountain sunlight. I led them through the bailey, between the chalets, as I had planned, using the track furthest from the armoury and our storehouses full to bursting - which would give the lie to my assurance that our livestock and trapping were all we had to live on. It was true, in a way - I needed every last sack of flour, because my troops will quadruple the population of Carniss.

  We passed the dog compound and stable where the sleds were kept. The barking was deafening. ‘Why do you have so many dogs?’ Jant asked.

  ‘They’re sled dogs.’

  ‘Yes, but hundreds!’

  ‘Only one hundred. I’m making sure all my villagers know how to dog sled. Mushing is the most convenient way to get around.’

  ‘What are those buildings over there?’

  ‘The settlers’ cabins. You can see how dedicated they are.’

  ‘If we didn’t work hard, we’d perish in days,’ Snipe added. The log cabins in neat lines were indeed poor but meticulously kept as I had ordered. Every one had foundations of rough stone and covered stores of firewood in the space where their sloping roofs reached the ground. Their shutters were cheerfully open, and smoke poured from every chimney.

  ‘And that,’ said Jant, pointing to the empty barracks. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘A new smokehouse, as yet unfinished.’

  ‘I see.’

  He doesn’t believe me, I thought, and felt a rising sense of dread. He doesn’t believe a word I’m saying. I fought the panic down, lest it show on my face, and breathed steadily in the thin air. I swung my arms casually, although my palms were sweating.

  We ascended between snow-covered outcrops, every one of which we had used in our building, so the fronts of some cabins emerged from roofed-over cracks in the rock; a terrace of stables had been built against a crag providing their rear walls, and other houses were ingeniously constructed over shallow chasms, which gave them cellars for cool stores in the summer. We ascended a causeway between granite slabs stained red with iron ore and I noticed that neither Jant nor Dellin felt the need to use the handrail. Eventually we arrived at the end of the promontory, where on a clean swathe stood a tall pylon of flexible green pine. We walked up to its base and I patted its timbers.

  ‘And what on earth’s that? A bell tower?’

  ‘Another of my innovations.’ I said. ‘For avalanches and earthquakes. If the ground shakes, the bell tolls and gives us warning. What do you think, Comet?’ I added proudly. ‘Rather remarkable for two years’ work?’

  ‘It’s extraordinary.’

  Our Rhydanne guest had been gazing around with her arms tightly folded, paying no notice whatsoever. She was as petulant as a teenager on a school tour. It’s typical of Rhydanne: as soon as you bring them to a serious topic their attention disappears, they become obstreperous and dash away to start drinking. Sure enough, she made some remark and set off back to the gatehouse, her moccasin boots squeaking the snow. We followed.

  ‘She’s hungry,’ said Jant.

  ‘They always seem to be hungry.’

  ‘Fast metabolism. Otherwise they’d freeze.’

  ‘So they must eat continually? Yes? And drink?’

  ‘There’s stuff in their blood that naturally stops them freezing solid.’

  ‘Gin?’

  ‘It’s metabolised from alcohol. That’s why they have to drink all the time. Would you be comfortable in a minus-forty blizzard?’

  I winced. ‘Considering she knows you’re an Eszai, she doesn’t pay you much respect.’

  He smiled, as if he preferred it that way. ‘You don’t know the half of it! You should have seen me trying to put her in a coach.’

  The awe-inspiring bulk of Capercaillie reared in front of us, dwarfing the gatehouse. Jingling goat bells echoed back from its rock walls, giving the impression that the mountains themselves were ringing. ‘Capercaillie always takes my breath away,’ I said, and laughed. ‘Literally, at the beginning. Everyone had altitude sickness, and although we’re acclimatised now it still sometimes affects us. But I believe my climbers will scale Capercaillie one day. We need to discover a means to breathe up there.’

  ‘It’s called Klannich,’ said Jant.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘That mountain is called Klannich. Not Capercaillie.’

  ‘Claniss?’

  ‘Klannich.’

  ‘To you, perhaps, but not to us.’

  ‘It means the Hitching Post of the Sun,’ he insisted.

  ‘How pretty. It had no name on our maps - none of them did - so I named them all.’ I stopped and pointed to the long arête which joined the two summits. ‘Raven’s Ridge. And that one’s Becard Spur after my father.’

  Seeing me pointing, the Dellin woman demanded a translation. She heard it in dismay and clawed the air. ‘No! It’s always been called Klannich!’

  ‘Then what do you call Raven’s Ridge?’

  ‘That’s Klannich too!’

  ‘And Becard Spur?’

  ‘Chir Klannich too!’

  ‘So all the mountains have the same name?’

  ‘Becard Spur is part of Klannich. It’s such a short run from the summit the Rhydanne see no point in giving it another name.’ Jant continued warningly, ‘You think you’ve travelled far, but by Rhydanne standards you’re still sitting on your brother’s doorstep.’

  We began walking again. ‘I had assumed Rhydanne didn’t name places. I thought they lacked our impulse to categorise.’

  ‘You have very strange ideas about them, Raven. Of course they name features. How else could they hunt if they couldn’t refer to places?’

  ‘Like pumas, I suppose - just taking down whatever game they come across. Many people say Rhydanne don’t have exploratory minds. I thought they never classified the world around them. They certainly don’t have any art.’

  Comet switched to High Awian for effect: ‘Raven, I have never heard such nonsense! It’s a matter of degree.’

  ‘Not of kind?’

  ‘No! You exalt history and heroes in your place names; Rhydanne may remember where a great hunter killed a fearsome bear. They have little parables too, and let me tell you, their titles are more poetic than yours! Far behind Klannich, there’s a mountain which no Awian has ever seen. It breathes sulphurous smoke and steam from holes on its bare slopes, and my grandmother called it the Mountain Where All Clouds Are Born. On the western rim of Scree Plateau is the residue of a lake; no water but just caustic soda - white crystals covering black grit as far as the eye can see. Eilean called it the Tarn of Stinging Salt. If you trek north to the furthest horn in the range, you’ll see it ends in a mountain as large as Klannich. In the remote past an earthquake sheared it in half. The half that remains is a neat wedge. It looks out over the Paperlands with a two-thousand-metre rock face as smooth as an iron, and Eilean called it Bhachnadich: “God’s Doorstop” …’ He was becoming angry at himself for seeming to side with the Rhydanne. His speech dried up, like a stream into sand, and he sighed.

  ‘Let it pass,’ I said.

  ‘Let it pass.’ He reverted to the common tongue. ‘You can call it Capercaillie if you want.’

  I began to think it would be easier to deceive him than I had feared. His memories were his weakness. Beside the keep the northern wall wasn’t yet finished, and some men on top were adding a course of stone. All were silhouetted against the sky, but a thinner black shape crouched nearby with his knees jutting out
and arms folded across them, his long fingers hanging down like claws. Jant shaded his eyes and looked up. ‘That one’s a Rhydanne.’

  ‘Yes. I employed him two years ago. He carried the first rope up the cliff, from which we ran thicker cables and mounted our pulleys. He’s still useful if we need someone to scale rock faces to fix the first supports for our climbers. Or if the builders drop something, he shins down the cliff and fetches it.’

  ‘So he doesn’t do any building?’

  ‘No.’ I frowned. ‘They’re not capable of building.’

  ‘They built Scree pueblo.’

  ‘By an accumulation of small dens, as rabbits build warrens, so I’m told. There is something of a difference between Scree and Carniss.’

  ‘Do you pay him?’

  ‘Oh, yes. In meat and drink.’

  Dellin was aghast. She raised her face and called to him. He ignored her, I was pleased to see, and when she continued her savage yells he shuffled around on the wall summit to face outwards, and presented her with the mute expanse of his back. She looked downcast and started spinning her spear as if to show she didn’t care.

  As we approached the staircase turret, hobnailed boots echoed in the undercroft beside it. A group of explorers walked out, blinking from the sunlight and laughing at some joke. Then they sighted the Messenger and turned as white as snow. My guard captain was leading them. He came to join us and bowed low, then put a finger on the bridge of his sunglasses and pushed them onto his forehead.

  Three Rhydanne bearers loped out of the passage, covered in the climbers’ equipment, with coils of rope across their bodies and karabiners jangling in bunches from their belts. They had adapted items of our clothing, and wore mismatched T-shirts and coloured scarves with their suede parkas. One had forsworn his native clothes completely and wore fyrd fatigues, which is understandable as our clothes are better quality. They all had necklaces made of pierced pound coins; they carried skis over their shoulders, and ice-axe handles projected from their rucksacks. When they saw that the explorers had gone inside they cheerfully dropped all the gear in the snow and dashed to the captain’s house, where many Rhydanne footprints converged on a barrel on the veranda.