Above the Snowline

by Steph Swainston

  And so we ran. I followed her, her long legs scissoring ahead of me, elbows flashing at her sides, her tight bottom bobbing at the top of my vision. Her long hair flowed down her thin back. Our footsteps crunched lightly on the crust of ice covering the snow. It was transparent but pitted, having been warmed by the sun and refrozen every day. Toe down, the crampons bit; toe up, they flicked out tiny ice fragments, giving me the impression we were running across the surface of a gigantic crème brûlée.

  On our right the cliffs soared up into a flaky arête. Fine powder snow hung in their folds and fanned out at the foot of each to merge with the snowfield. Glass-clear ice filled the cracks in the cliffs, in unbroken shafts for hundreds of metres as if it had been poured in to freeze there. Rock columns, their edges as sharp as knives, stood proud of the rock face. Shards shattered from them formed mounds at their base, smoothed by the deep drifts.

  We crossed the long shadows of Klannich’s aiguilles striping the snow, cast equally across the surface of the clouds building up below us. Our shadows angled over the ice as we ran on, out of Raven’s manor and into an alien world.

  On our right the crags closed towards us; on our left a steep pitch of fifty metres or so fell to the glacier. The snowfield was narrowing and becoming the Turbary Track, a trade route that ran unbroken alongside the glacier, up to its source and over the pass at the head of the valley. It ascended between torn peaks and snaked across cols for over a hundred kilometres, past the impossible cone of Stravaig, onto the high plateau to Scree pueblo.

  The sun set behind the ridge at the head of the glacier and the temperature suddenly dropped. The snowfields greyed in the fading light. I took my sunglasses off and smeared grease on my lips from a little leather pot Dellin had given me. Grey-brown clouds were gathering over the head of the valley and yet more clouds were moving in placid herds around the contour of the cliffs and joining them. Thick nimbus was forming on the arc of Klannich’s ridge, blowing off and building into one great mass - the cloud base was lowering until the summit of Klannich then the tops of the lower peaks disappeared from view.

  We passed a cairn of rubble, to which Dellin gave a wide berth, so I called, ‘What’s that?’

  ‘A crevasse marker!’

  ‘Why is that one marked and none of the others?’

  She huffed a laugh. ‘It gave someone a nasty shock! Maybe their partner is still down there!’

  The crevasses curved out on our left, like wrinkles on an old woman’s face. Those closest to us were the shallowest, elongated ovals and almond-shaped holes. I could see recent snow at the bottom of the nearest one as if the old woman had packed make-up into her wrinkles. In the distance clouds were creeping down from the top of the valley and obscuring the source of the glacier. The glacier’s surface was less dirty there, where the ice was new. Its broad tail curved up and branched into three, no longer striped but pure white, emerging from the snowfields of the cirques that fed it.

  ‘I see the Hound!’ Dellin cried.

  ‘Where?’

  She pointed to the cliff on our right, buttressed by a jumble of snow-sheeted boulders, but we were loping along so quickly I couldn’t see where she was indicating. I stared at the boulders until my eyes stung - and a slow movement caught my attention. Above them a black shape was flapping like a huge bat.

  ‘I see a flag!’ I called to Dellin.

  ‘Yes! So we can find the Hound against the snow!’

  Where on earth was it, then? I scanned the cliffs and realised that the boulder pile below the crag was the Frozen Hound Hotel. Just as growths on tree bark resolve into a face, or clouds floating past morph into maps of the world, now I saw that the crevice in the centre was a doorway, and a zigzag cleft below it was a staircase carved into the rock. Diverse recesses at differing levels and of various sizes must be shuttered windows. I couldn’t tell how far the Frozen Hound extended. It rambled away on both sides under the shelter of the cliff and merged indistinguishably into the rest of the talus froth and ice.

  Dellin stopped and crouched down. I anticipated some disaster and braced myself with the rope but she beckoned me over. We had come upon a set of tracks proceeding in the same direction. ‘A Rhydanne?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, just one, about two hours ahead. A hunter, probably, and a poor one - he only has bone crampons.’ She spread her hand like a bird’s claw over one of the heel marks. ‘It’s good to have footprints to follow among these crevasses.’ A snowflake landed on her nose. She brushed it away, grinned at me, then we were up and running again, with scarcely enough light to see by. All the time I was thinking, she’s fantastic. I admired her skill, her knowledge of genuine things. And why did I never notice before how cute her bum is? Bobbing in repetitive motion, her bottom hypnotised me and I ran almost in a trance.

  Further on, a double set of prints curved in and joined us. Dellin pointed out scuffed snow on the shelves of the cliff where two Rhydanne had climbed up, and we followed their footholds, sipping the freezing air with gritted teeth.

  Another flake, white against the steel sky, then a gust of wind blew and the snow began falling heavily. I pulled my hood down to my brows, slitted my eyes and turned my cheek to it. In a few minutes I’ll be in the warm with my hands wrapped around a glass of whisky, I thought. I couldn’t wait.

  We climbed through shrouds of snow slung between the rock pinnacles, kicking footholds clear in every crevice. The snow we dislodged fell and rolled down the slope, gathering more and ending up at the bottom as fair-sized snowballs. Flurries swirled across my vision, left to right from the head of the valley. The granite front of the trading post came and went through them. It was so deeply blanketed it rose in a smooth, white tump. Hummocks were extensions leading off on all sides, passages and rooms, their roofs all varying heights. Some had two storeys, others were tumbledown as if burrowing into the cliff face.

  We reached some steps where yesterday’s snowfall had been shovelled clear and piled on either side. The blizzard was now driving grey and the sky so black I could no longer distinguish between it and the outline of the cliff tops above us. Snow was sticking to our clothes and freezing there: I was covered in it like a suit of armour and Dellin was completely grey against the pitch black, with lines at her elbows, knees and around her neck where the snow had cracked away.

  We passed a bothy where the heaped snow was dotted with trodden-in mule droppings, each one surrounded by a brown ring varying in size depending on how long it’d been there. Goat bleats swept on the wind; a low rattle of copper bells, then a louder jingle as one beast shook himself. We walked alongside the passage from the bothy to the front of the trading post. It was a door dark with creosote and two windows shuttered so tightly no light leaked from them. Smoke poured from a stout stone chimney and vanished immediately on the wind. So many extensions led off that the building looked like a grey mite: a rugged body surrounded by uneven, ugly legs.

  I walked straight into a cane with a beer bottle on top and set it rattling. I stared until my eyes watered and could just make out a few more, planted in a line in the snow. Good signs to attract Rhydanne - and here was one for Awians: the creaking timbers of the flagpole. Its weather-tattered flag cracked and flapped in the blackness above us, showering us with ice grains and unfurling momentarily to reveal a device of a white dog rampant.

  Dellin released the rope from her waist with a couple of deft moves, left it trailing and barged straight in. The door banged shut behind her. I sighed and coiled the rope around my arm. Alone now, I became aware of the colossal space around me, without being able to see it. Only gasping logic told me that the inhumanly vast valley pass still lay ahead, the glacier stretched from end to end of the landscape below me, and Klannich’s array of spines skewered the deficient air a thousand metres above.

  A multi-layered cornice as thick as a pie crust curled off the eaves over the door. I pressed my glove to the deeply weathered wood. Its grain projected like the bones on the back of the Emperor’s hand.
There’ll be other Rhydanne inside, I thought, and felt apprehensive. Then a fine contempt rose within me. I can deal with any Rhydanne. I’m not a boy now, as I was when they hounded me from Scree Plateau. I worked a hand under my parka and tugged at my sword hilt but the damn thing had frozen fast into the scabbard.

  Fuck it. My mouth was dry with dehydration, my tongue stuck to my palate and my face was so numb with cold I couldn’t feel it. I pushed the door wide and went inside.

  Many pairs of glowing pale gold eyes stared at me from a range of spiky silhouettes. The door slammed shut behind me on its springs. I stepped forwards, blinking at the brightness of the fireplace in the centre of the room. The silhouettes resolved into a handful of Rhydanne sitting at tables, backlit by its red light. Some further in lounged on cushions and rugs on the ground and against the walls. Others in niches recessed into the walls made the room look rather like a dovecote. I had never seen so many in one place before.

  A few Awians, halfway through a game of cards, occupied the table nearest to the fire. I shrugged the rope from my shoulder, flung it on a table and eased the crossbow strap and scabbard from my back. Slabs of snow fell from the creases of my coat and thudded to the floor. I hung my crossbow bag on the back of a chair, unwound the scarf from my face, unhooked my frozen coat from my aching wings and dropped it on the table.

  The Rhydanne uttered not a word and continued to stare like a pride of lions. The Awian trappers rustled their wings nervously and lowered their gaze but they hadn’t continued with their game. They were listening.

  The room smelt, I could sense it now my nose was defrosting, of a mixture of gloopy meat stew, the kind of thick, half-burnt gravy that sticks to the side of the pan; musty goat bedding; dog hair; creosote; lanolin; the sandy smell of crushed rock and, above all, rugs soaked with slush and almost rotten. There was also sappy pine smoke and whisky. The scents I’ve come to associate with Rhydanne.

  On all sides dark doorways led away. In the middle, on the stone chimney hood, hung an old dog lead, an iron spring trap and a shabby pair of snowshoes. Two huge, white avalanche dogs slept in front of the grate. Their ribcages rose and fell, their lips flopped back from drying canines. The breed was used by the Rhydanne for hunting, but their senses are so fine-tuned they can give advance warning of an avalanche. A couple of their canvas sled harnesses and the packs they can carry hung on the nearby wall.

  I looked down the room for Dellin. She was already sitting on the floor at the far end, talking animatedly to a couple of hunters, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying. The chunks of wood spat and crackled in the hearth and sparks whirled up the flue. A patter of feet and two Rhydanne children, one thigh-high, the other so small he ran under the table without touching it, dashed to me and stopped just short of crashing into my knees. They turned up their faces and stood regarding me solemnly with big cat eyes.

  ‘Hello,’ I said.

  The smaller boy looked to the larger one. Their faces were very pinched, pointed noses and chins, framed by black hair tangled with neglect.

  ‘If they bother you, just cuff their ears,’ a voice resounded from behind the fireplace. It was a fleshy voice, and added in Awian, ‘If you can catch them. I never can.’

  I stepped to one side, peered round the fireplace and saw that it had been obscuring the bar. A woman stepped out from behind it, untying her apron strings. She thrust out her arm as brawny as a man’s and offered me a hand like a side of ham. ‘Ouzel,’ she announced, in tones so loud she made the tankards rattle. ‘Welcome to the Frozen Hound!’

  I shook her hand, feeling rather put out. ‘Call me Jant. You don’t seem surprised.’

  ‘Last March Dellin told me she was going to find the silver man, and when she came in just now - she’s over there, see? - and said she had company, I thought: who else would the Emperor send? Though I never thought I’d see an immortal in the flesh. Ha ha. Excuse me, Jant. I’m sorry. Been up here a long time. Forgot my manners. Do you want some kutch?’

  ‘Anything apart from kutch.’

  She strode back behind the bar and vigorously slopped stew and dumplings into a wooden bowl. ‘I only sell homebrew, kutch and spirit. Here you go.’

  ‘Thanks. I’ll have water and a whisky.’

  She turned her back, unhooked one of the cups, opened the spigot on a cask, and filled it. Her voice was no less stentorian for her facing away. ‘Only beer, kutch and spirit. You see, everything has to be carried up here. By mules and my good self, ha ha.’

  ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘Oh, where people are from has become important, has it? I thought that’d happen, though it never should, ha ha. Well, I’m from Rachiswater - but a very different Rachiswater from the one Raven knows.’

  ‘Yes, Raven is the problem.’

  ‘Well, it’s very good of you to come and sort our problem out.’

  The bar was a low wall of coarse stone topped by a great timber slab, its grain worn to smooth corrugations. Behind it, rows of small kegs on stands nestled like fat suckling piglets. Above it, hefty stoneware bottles, all carefully corked and labelled, lined the shelves from which all shapes and sizes of tankard hung on pottery or stitched leather handles. It was a bizarre mixture of crockery of various ages and farmhouse designs, but all was clean and neat. It gave an impression of belongings kept carefully for a long time and added to with the wisdom of extreme economy. The can-do effect was embodied - and what a sturdy body! - in Ouzel herself. ‘Did you build all this?’

  ‘I did.’ She indicated a table, and the two Rhydanne sitting at it sloped away to lounge on some floor cushions. ‘Eat your stew. Well, you won’t do that without a fork, ha ha. Here’s a fork.’ She had a weird way of half-saying, half-laughing ‘ha ha’, but heartily, not suspiciously, with her head thrown back. ‘I didn’t build it all at once, of course. It took twenty summers. And not all by myself; with the help of my boys.’

  ‘Your boys?’

  She gave a piercing whistle. ‘Snowblink! Spindrift!’ The dogs by the fireplace pricked their ears, sprang to life, bounded over to her and collapsed like drifts onto her boots, which I saw were thick leather with reinforced toes. She tickled their tummies. ‘My boys, ha ha. And my son - in the back room. And some Rhydanne, of course.’

  ‘Raven said the Rhydanne aren’t capable of building.’

  ‘Raven knows nothing of Rhydanne! Nothing at all, ha ha.’

  I cut into a suet dumpling and munched it thankfully. I knew I was hungry from the climb, and that would have affected my judgement, but Ouzel’s cheese dumplings were one of the best things I have ever tasted, on a par with the pepper-glazed sirloin served at Rachiswater palace and Tre Cloud the Cook’s signature chocolate torte. As I ate I watched Dellin, at the end of the room. She crouched and leant forwards to harangue another group of hunters bedecked in tooth necklaces and bangles.

  I had never met a woman quite like Ouzel. She was enormous in every respect: her very physical presence, her capacity for talking and the fact she quite clearly didn’t give a damn whether she was addressing the Emperor’s Messenger or a muleteer. She had the practicality, but not the suspicious shrewdness, of the orphan girls I had known in gangland Hacilith. She was nothing like the drippy aristocratic women with whom I’ve mostly had to deal since I joined the Castle: the vain wives of governors, or the gold-diggers, crystalline with envy, who inhabit boudoirs and emerge fully fledged each night like basilisks into the ballrooms. She was nothing like the female Eszai, who were constantly intent on their work. She looked with matriarchal fondness on the people in the bar, Awians and Rhydanne alike. And to be honest, a room full of Rhydanne is rather like a room full of hyperactive six-year-olds. Ouzel’s formidable vigour made all those other women look pale. Her rounded brown wings were too small for the rest of her. Her red check shirt was made of the same material as the curtains. She wore her sleeves rolled in a businesslike manner, and her trousers, swelled by her belly, were patched and darned to within an inch of their
being. She was as rosy as a cask of very powerful cider and she gave the impression of seizing life and hugging it in her strong arms every day.

  I became aware of a tugging on the back of my chair. The two Rhydanne babies had unlaced my crossbow bag, managed to pull out the crossbow and were investigating it. The older one poked his thumbnail into the cracks between the mother-of-pearl inlay. His smaller accomplice in crime, who couldn’t have been more than a month old, was biting at the drawstring of the quiver full of bolts.

  ‘Put that down!’ said Ouzel, and leapt out of her chair.

  The boys evaded her and nipped under the table. ‘Tearaways! Little terrors!’ She reached under for the nearest and they both raced past her, almost quicker than the eye could follow. ‘Told you I’ll never catch them!’ she said. ‘Rubha, will you look after your children?’

  The smaller child dropped the quiver and instantly his brother pounced and scooped it off the rug with one clawed hand. He rolled onto his hands and knees, tipped the bolts out onto his long palm and poked at them inquisitively. He had left the crossbow unguarded, and his brother hunted it down, dived onto it and tried to escape but was brought up short by the elder grabbing his hair. They began fighting over it. Ouzel waded in. They scattered. Then the taller one, who was probably only eight months older, rolled his brother over, cuffed him soundly and gained both crossbow and bolts.

  I was about to intervene when a Rhydanne woman at the next table shot out an arm and grabbed him by his collar. He stopped at once and went limp. She lifted him up and put him on her back. He clung with his arms around her shoulders and his knees on her hips as if riding. I hastily retrieved my crossbow and reached for the quiver, but - too late - the other boy snatched it, zoomed under the tables, past legs and with a high-pitched giggle was soon hunting fleas and other peoples’ belongings at the far end of the room.

  I’d look ridiculous if I chased him. I looked to Ouzel, ‘He took my bolts.’

  ‘Don’t worry.’