by Julia Knight
Kepa gave him a rueful grin and got the rest of them picking up the swords, moving the tables back while he got Morro to his feet. A jerk of Kepa’s head and Maitea joined them, her eyes cold on Kepa’s neck.
“Got to take them to Scar,” Kepa said to Petri, and they moved out into the abrading wind, heads down against the flurry of snow it brought to add to the rest. They trudged along the path that back-breaking and constant digging kept clear between the mess and all the other huts.
Inside Scar’s hut Petri flung off his furs and headed to the pot of stew hanging over the fire. Even Scar’s had little in it today. Kepa took the magician over to the table, where Scar waited for him. One meaty hand shoved the magician down in the chair opposite her, while Maitea hovered in the shadows by the door and watched.
“Well then,” Scar said. “You told me, when we met, that you could be useful to me, that the snow would not bother me. Tell me how, if you want to keep eating.”
Morro shot a glance at Maitea as she stood silent in the shadows. Petri hardly caught the movement, a mere flicker of an eyelid, but Morro nodded as though she’d spoken.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Oh, that’s much better. I had Kepa show you around a bit today. What did you see?”
Morro’s gaze flicked about the hut, looking for escape perhaps. It slid over Petri like oil before it stopped. Some thought seemed to strike him, and the smile it brought was quickly hidden. Petri shifted, loosened the sword at his side. Never trust a magician. Never.
“You’re dying,” Morro said, voice growing stronger now. “Cold, cut off, little wood, less food. You need me to help you live.”
Scar twitched at that, but there was no denying the truth of it. “Go on.”
“A bowl of that over there first, and one for Maitea too.”
Morro shovelled the food in like he hadn’t eaten in weeks, let out a contented sigh at the end and sat up straight.
“Snow,” he said. “The snow is trapping you, and everyone else. But they’re all cosy in their well stocked homes and you are not.”
“And?”
“And I can help you with that.”
“So you said. In return for?”
Once again his gaze oiled over Petri. “For the moment, in return for not starving, me and Maitea. A place we can be. When spring comes, we’ll see.”
“When you help us, we’ll see,” Scar said. “Because maybe you can and maybe you can’t.”
“Oh, I can. Let me show you. I’ll need a drop of blood.” He reached for Scar’s knife, next to her hand on the table, but Petri got there first.
“No.”
Scar looked between the two of them, frowned and gave the knife to Morro. “But you keep your sword at his back. Just in case. I don’t trust him any more than you do, Petri.”
Morro took the knife with a secret little grin, spun it in his hands and stood up, making Petri jerk the sword in his still wobbling hand to keep it at his back.
“Snow,” Morro said. “Simple to win against, if you had enough wood to burn, eh? You could melt a path to wherever you wanted to go, and all the prelate’s guards and guildsmen couldn’t stop you. But never enough wood. Do you have paper?”
“What for?” Scar said with a snort. “Most of us can’t read so it’s all just pretty squiggles. Only thing paper is good for around here is wiping your arse.”
Morro sighed as though Scar’s bluntness scraped jangled nerves too highly strung for normal men to know. “Maybe I won’t ask for any then, in case I get some that’s pre-used. The crude way it is.”
He made to take off his gloves, but Petri’s growl stopped him and produced a sigh, so he rolled up a sleeve instead. The knife flashed, and a line appeared on Morro’s arm, leaking slow red blood that he dabbed his fingers into and drew a crude symbol on his arm. Scar bent forward to look, but a twitch of Petri’s sword backed her up. The symbols, always changing, never still, were how magicians trapped men into their wills. Morro looked at them both and laughed. “As if I would try something so… crass on you. Petri here at least has the sense to look away. And you, Scar, would I use magic on my benefactor?”
The voice was as oiled as the look, or tried to be, but without the work of the changing symbols the words sounded merely ludicrous.
“Get on with it,” she snapped, “before I have Petri stick you.”
A mocking little bow. “But of course. If your friendly giant could open the door you’ll see what I’ve already done.”
Kepa opened the door, but Petri had an inkling before it was even fully open as a puddle leaked beneath the wood. Scar stood wide-eyed and grinning when she saw the neat path melted into the drift of snow between her hut and the mess. It didn’t go far, only a few feet, but the implications were clear.
Morro turned back to her with a sidelong look of triumph at Petri. “As you see, I can make it easy for you to move around. No being stuck up here for the winter, you can raid and thieve. Or even go to town and buy things.”
“In return for how much blood?” Petri asked, bringing a scowl from Morro and Scar alike. “Because it seems you could take yourself to Ikaras doing that without much trouble. Unless you didn’t have enough blood.”
Morro sat again, primly arranging his tattered robes around him. “Not enough blood, exactly. Me and Maitea are stuck in these mountains until thaw, or until I can gather enough blood. In the meantime I can help you, Scar. Whatever it is you want, and I think it’s more than just a raid here and there, I can help. All the best warlords have magicians, you know.”
The faint scent of cooking blood turned Petri’s stomach, but Scar didn’t seem to notice or realise that she kept shooting little glances at the symbol Morro had painted on his arm. Petri moved between them, and she snapped back to the room from whatever dream Morro had tried to give her.
“Take them back to the mess hut,” Petri told Kepa. “Dry all that blood off first and make sure he can’t open up that wound again. Keep a sharp eye on him.”
Morro said nothing to this, merely bowed his head as though he humbly acquiesced to anything they wanted. But his eyes on Scar were very bright, his smile only for her.
Chapter Fourteen
Now
Vocho was glad when he could sneak off to his room without it seeming odd. This last hour he’d had trouble stopping his hand from shaking, and as soon as he was in the room and had locked the door behind him, he rummaged in his pack.
He took the jollop out with trembling hands and had a swig. The twinges in his hip subsided, as did the inner voices. A sudden knock on the door made him drop the bottle, and he only just caught it before it hit the floor and smashed, and then where would he be? The thought made clammy sweat pop out all over. He stashed the syrup and answered the door.
Carrola gave him a bright grin before she frowned and gave a cautious sniff. “What’s that smell? You’re not secretly getting drunk, are you?”
She didn’t seem to notice the strain behind his own smile. “Absolutely. A couple of gallons of rum a day or I can’t even get out of bed, then I snort mead until bedtime.” She raised an eyebrow, and he went on with, “Medicinal. What the surgeon gives me for my hip. Got a terrible wound in the line of duty and while being brave, handsome and dashing, as it happens. Plays up when it’s cold. Eder let you out to play then?”
Her lips pinched, and she gave a tiny shake of her head as though despairing of him. “I can deal with Eder. Your sister wants you downstairs.”
“All right.”
By the time he made his way back into the bar, Kass had rolled out a map marked with all the places the bandits had attacked over the last few months, at least the ones they knew about–some villages were all but cut off during the winter, and more reports had only just started to filter in now the thaw was nominally under way. Eder watched her pore over it with a curl of his lip that could not quite hide his interest. Even as Vocho joined them, another messenger, diverted from a longer trip to Reyes by Eder�
��s commands left at the guard outposts, turned up mud splattered, snow frosted and freezing.
“Took a whole village!” the man said after a smart salute. “When we finally got your orders, sir, we did what you said, checked every village and smallholding we could reach. One or two had trouble in my area, and then we went to a tiny little place right up near the border but off the main road. Well, we got there in the end, though it was hard going. But when we did make it–nothing left, sir.”
“Nothing?” Eder’s incredulity mirrored Vocho’s own. “Houses? Goats?”
“Nothing, sir. It’s only half a dozen houses anyway, but they was all burned down. Everything was gone–what livestock they had, the communal barn emptied before it was burned if I’m any judge. Even the bridge over the stream was gone. All that was left was bodies.”
Eder swore viciously under his breath, then blushed as he realised the landlady was giving him a stern look.
“Any indication how long ago?”
The messenger thought for a while and rubbed his three-day growth of beard. “Well, sir, we came on it a week ago, and I reckon it can’t have been much longer than that. The ashes were cold, but we’d had a big storm before that and they weren’t snow covered. Not to mention the tracks, sir. They looked fresh enough. Between a week ago and a fortnight, I’d say.”
“You spent a lot of time in the mountains?” Kass peered at the flash on the man’s tunic, which was partly obscured by a dark swatch of mud. “Sergeant is it?”
“Sergeant Danel. Born and bred, miss. Brought up in a village just like that one. They only put mountain men on the higher outposts, miss. Lowlanders can’t take the winters, see.”
“And did anyone follow the tracks?”
“Of course, miss. Petered out not far away–there’s a big old slope where the wind scours the rock of snow, makes it tricky to track anyone. But they were headed up towards No Man’s Land. Where else would they hide? Any mountain man could tell you that. Snow up there for all but the hottest days. They reckon there’s two seasons up there, miss. Winter and Midsummer’s Day.”
No Man’s Land. Where it snowed all year. Well, that sounded friendly. Vocho’s hip twinged just thinking about it.
“Of course, they don’t call it No Man’s Land no more. Skull’s it is. Staked his claim on it, and I don’t reckon there’s a man in a hundred that’ll go near it.”
Eder had the sergeant mark the village on their map, and he added a few more places they’d checked that’d had trouble, along with this No Man’s Land.
“What do you think then, Eder?” Kass said in the end.
It looked pretty obvious to Vocho, but the jollop was still humming in his veins, and he couldn’t be sure Kass wouldn’t notice what it was doing to him.
Eder frowned over the map, for once seeming to ignore the fact he didn’t want Kass or Vocho there. “I think Danel here is right. If you look at everywhere attacked, all are within a day’s ride or so of this edge of No Man’s Land, though it’d take longer in the snow. They’re getting bolder too. Whether that’s because they’re hungry, or they have some ultimate plan, I couldn’t say. But I will say I expect them to get bolder still.”
“But how are they moving around?” Vocho enquired when it looked like no one else was going to ask the obvious question. “Your sergeant here says they can’t reach everywhere, and yet this Scar wanders wherever she feels like it through snow and wind and the Clockwork God knows what like it isn’t there.”
Kass gave him a look he knew well enough, the “Shut up” look, but it was too late.
“Got a magician, we think,” Danel said. “Heard enough rumours to that effect, anyways. They say he—”
“Thank you, Sergeant,” Eder snapped.
“That definitely wasn’t in your report,” Kass said. “And yet it’s not the first time I’ve heard it since we started our merry little trip.”
“It’s rumour and supposition, that’s all.” Eder shrugged. “And I don’t include those in my reports. People up here’ll believe anything.”
“Especially if it might be true,” Danel muttered and snapped off a salute when Eder turned a glaring eye on him. “Superstitious lot, to be certain, sir,” he said louder. “Can’t believe half of it.”
“It might be as well to assume they have some edge,” Kass said, earning her a formidable frown all her own from Eder. “Magician or something else, they’re moving where we can’t.”
“You may not be able to—”
“Unless you’ve got some spare wings stashed away, you’ve no better way of moving through snow than we have. All we’ve heard, all the way up here, is this winter has been the harshest anyone can remember, by far. But Scar and her lot don’t seem to have a problem with it. Also, according to the people I’ve been talking to, the thaw is supposed to have started, in fact did start but is now retreating in a way unheard of. That doesn’t suggest anything to you?”
“Plenty that involves actual facts. Not rumour or superstitious daydreaming. These mountains are treacherous in winter at the best of times, the timing of the thaw unpredictable. But if Scar can move through it, so can we, without any heretical magic. Sergeant, how well do you know No Man’s Land?”
“Me, sir?” The sergeant looked suddenly stricken as he looked wildly about for some excuse not to volunteer himself. “Oh, I know where it is, sir, but that’s about it. That and folk tales and such. You know, trolls living in caves, snow fairies, frost giants ready to rip all your arms and legs off for lunch. Nothing really real, sir. The point is, no one really knows because no one goes there. That’s why it’s called No Man’s Land, sir,” he said desperately. “Because of the name. No one goes to No Man’s Land.”
Eder’s mouth twitched in a smile. “Then you’re the best we’re likely to get, us all being soft lowlanders and likely to get lost when we see our first proper snowflake. Good of you to volunteer, Danel. Well done.”
Kass shot the man a sympathetic look–she and Voch had been “volunteered” once or twice themselves–but she didn’t naysay Eder, and the two of them turned back to the map in some sort of temporary truce, leaving Danel to slump in a woe-is-me attitude.
Voch felt a stab of sympathy himself and took the man by the arm. “Look at the bright side,” he said. “You’re in an inn, with free beer for Eder’s select few and a friendly landlady about your age who I am pretty certain is single. At least you’ll get to enjoy yourself before you go.”
Speaking of which, while Kass was distracted by Eder and his map it would be a fine time for Vocho to enjoy himself before they left. There must be lots of people here who’d never heard him tell any of his tall tales. Like Carrola perhaps, seeing as Eder was otherwise occupied for the moment. He picked up a jug of beer, took a heroic swallow and set out to enjoy himself with as much dedication as he could manage.
Vocho found Carrola eventually, in the stables, making sure her new horse was fit for the next day’s ride. He watched as she checked hooves, ran a hand over legs, fiddled with the blanket to make sure it was snug, all the while talking softly to the beast.
“I don’t see why,” she said to it, “everyone has to be so difficult.”
“I think that’s called life,” Vocho said from where he leaned over the stall door.
Carrola turned sharply, startled. When she saw it was him her face couldn’t seem to decide between a smile and a disapproving frown.
“Really?” she said tartly, giving the horse a final pat. “I thought it was more idiots.”
“That’s no way to talk about your commanding officer.”
The frown won. “He’s not the only one in the vicinity.”
“Hey, I’ve hardly been idiotic at all. Barely even rash.”
He moved out of the way as Carrola came out, shut the stall door behind her and went past him with a sniff. “I’m not supposed to be talking to you.”
“I gathered. But you are anyway.”
That stopped her. She turned and regarded him
with a sideways look that seemed to go right through him. Funny, he hadn’t noticed her eyes were grey before, but he saw it now, the deep dark grey of snow clouds. He was so busy noticing it, he failed to realise she was standing with her hands on her hips and in the middle of saying something.
“I’m sorry, could you say that again?”
A brief roll of her eyes. “I said Eder’s warned me, all of us, off talking to you or Kass, especially you. I was also just about to say that I was inclined not to follow those orders. I can change my mind if you aren’t going to listen.”
Something strange was going on inside Vocho’s head. He always wanted to impress, it was his reason for living, but he found he wanted, very much, to make an extra special effort with Carrola. That wanting seemed to tangle his tongue up in knots though, and he couldn’t think of a damned thing to say that didn’t sound stupid, so he fell back on the banal.
“Did he say why?”
“Who? Eder?” The hands fell away from her hips and waved about in a “Who knows?” sort of way. “He said I’m too young and impressionable and should keep away from people likely to warp me. Especially you. It didn’t make a lot of sense, which is why I was inclined to ignore it. At least when he’s not around. Besides, you’re quite funny, and I could do with some laughs on this trip.”
“Only quite funny?”
Carrola perched on a saddle rack and Vocho perched next to her, taking care to arrange his hip so that it wouldn’t seize up. They really were very grey eyes, even better when she was grinning at him.