Winter of Ice and Iron

by Rachel Neumeier

  Now they rode down and down, straight into the lowering sun. Shadows filled the pass behind them, but daylight lingered above and ahead, the granite glowing rose and carmine in the late sun. Soon the sun would slide down below the edge of the world and they would ride through the dusk a second time and into night. But the Wolf Duke had not yet signaled the halt.

  It was snowing. It had been snowing all during this ride: tiny grains of ice or fat lazy flakes, but always snow. But Eänetaìsarè swept the pass clear of any accumulation. It was not at all like Gheroïn Nomoris in Anha Pass: This was no local, temporary blaze of power. The snow here simply blew aside before it could touch the road, sweeping off to fall on the mountains beyond. Kehera found it endlessly fascinating to watch snowflakes almost land on the duke, only to slide aside at the last moment and spin away. They landed on her easily enough, frosting the fur of her gloves and hood and the mane of her horse with a glittering white-on-white veil.

  The column of soldiers that rode behind her was also snow-dusted. The column stretched, she knew, for many miles back toward the eastern mouth of the pass: thousands of men in the gray and silver of Eäneté with the Wolf leaping at every shoulder.

  It had shocked her that any provincial duke, no matter how powerful, should have been able to raise so great a force, not to mention the ancillary staff necessary to support it in the field. It had shocked her more that he was willing to strip his own lands to do so. He had only said that if he needed more than a handful of soldiers to guard Eäneté proper, he had already lost. Kehera had not asked him why he had so many soldiers if he did not need them. She knew—it was obvious now—that he must have already meant to break with Irekay. He must have been working toward this for years.

  He knew his own power, that was certain. So did she, much better now. Because he could handle more than the delicacy of falling snow. When they had come only a short way into the pass, an avalanche—set off, perhaps, by no more than the sound of ten thousand men breathing—had rumbled with slow, breathtaking power down the slopes before them. Kehera had checked her mare, gasping, and behind her the voices of officers had lifted to command stillness and order of the men. The duke had said nothing, but gazed at the tumbling snow with abstracted calm. Kehera had judged the avalanche would pass safely in front of them, but how they were to get past the barrier it would form was a question.

  No sooner had she wondered about this than the question was answered for her. The descending wall of snow had passed over the road in front of them entirely and roared its implacable way up the slopes on the other side of the pass and down the other side of those peaks, out of sight. She had listened to its diminishing thunder as they rode past the spot it should have filled, knowing that the sight of the hurtling snow and the sound of its thunder would be a vivid memory for a very long time.

  Even while turning the avalanche, the duke had looked exactly as he did now: faintly distracted but unconcerned. His lean, spare face was remote as the sky, and whatever occupied his thoughts, he clearly did not intend to share them with her. Or with anyone, probably, since Gereth Murrel was riding somewhere before them. He was probably already out of the pass, maybe already riding north toward Raëh. She was sorry for that—for the duke’s solitude. Especially since it had gained her nothing.

  Working out what she felt about Innisth terè Maèr Eänetaì was hardest of all. Certainly she would never have claimed to like him. She resented his arrogance and high-handedness and willingness to dispose of everyone else’s life just as he pleased, and yet at the same time she couldn’t help but admire him. She couldn’t help but believe he might offer Harivir its best chance of throwing back the aggression of Methmeir Irekaì.

  It was all very exasperating and hard to sort out. It was easier to just watch the snowflakes fall around the duke without ever quite touching his horse or his cloak or his still, remote face. He was not ill-favored. Far from it. But she wondered if he had any passion in him at all. Then she thought of his voice cracking as he faced his seneschal in the pass and knew his coldness was like ice masking the violence of the storm.

  He frightened her. But she knew Caèr Reiöft was right, too, and that he could be hurt. And though she couldn’t quite sort out what she felt for him, she was beginning to be certain she didn’t want to hurt him.

  Soon, even though they chased the sun down this side of the pass, it would be too dark to see the falling snow. Very soon after that, it would be too dark to see even the man who rode beside her. Especially with his black cloak and black gloves and black mare. He would be able to see her much longer, which did not seem quite fair. Kehera turned to Tageiny, riding on her other side, and started to say something—she hardly knew what—and then her vision blurred with more than the gathering dusk.

  Warmth rose around her, dizzying, so that she blinked hard against the sudden vertigo. She glimpsed whirling snow and sky, and . . . the mountains reached up and caught her. She blinked dazedly up from where she lay, confused. Behind and above and around and within her, the tie hummed, deep and warm, like a voice made of harp notes and summer. Raëhemaiëth was very pleased. There was trouble, yes. A ragged darkness to the north and the east that grasped and froze and broke and rose again, a cold, clutching darkness that sometimes ebbed, but never far enough. But despite that, Raëhemaiëth was very pleased. She was back in precincts it knew, lands to which it was allied, and it knew her and was pleased.

  Kehera smiled involuntarily. She knew she had come home.

  Except she wasn’t home at all. For a long moment, she had no idea at all where she was. Her home stretched out across farmlands and into the gentle slopes of foothills. The stone beneath her should have been sandstone rather than this polished granite. . . . The earth should have been deeper. The fire here was close to the surface. . . . She did not know where she was. . . . Cold stone hiding fire, and long shadows, and the nearby bulk of horses. . . . She was lying on the ground. Yes. But braced against a warm, solid bulk. Someone’s knee. Someone was touching her. A firm hand on her cheek, reminding her that she was herself, human and mortal. Helping her sort herself out from the Immanent Power of Raëh.

  The Wolf Duke. He held her. He knelt on the cold stone of the road. Her head was on his knee. It was his hand on her face. She blinked, and shifted, and he drew back a little.

  Tageiny knelt on her other side. He was touching her, too, one hand gripping her wrist, but she had not been aware of his hand until now. He wasn’t looking at her. He was staring at the duke, fury in his eyes. The duke was pretending not to notice, but his mouth was tight.

  Frightened for Tageiny, Kehera sat up quickly and caught his hand in both of hers. “It’s all right,” she said breathlessly, “I’m all right, Tag.”

  The duke said quietly, letting his hand fall away from her shoulder now that she was sitting up on her own, “It was the Raëh Power, of course. You are in Harivir again, and the tie has risen in you. Is it close? Is it strong?”

  “Yes,” she said, thinking, Of course the Eänetén duke understands. “It’s not like it was. It’s not like the heir’s tie. And I can’t—I can’t find Tiro in it.” She hesitated, then shook her head. “No. But I think Raëhemaiëth still holds him. I think so. He’s not quite lost. I don’t think he is.” She closed her eyes, shuddering. If that was so, if Tiro was not lost, if he could yet be saved without her efforts—by Gereth, maybe—then perhaps she had been right to trust Raëhemaiëth and turn back and stay in Eäneté. She could hope she had been right. She said, “I should have expected the tie to come up fast and—and violently. I’m sorry.” Then she blinked and said, “You did expect it. That’s why you were ready to catch me.” And then, as she realized this must be true, she added in surprise, “That’s why you didn’t want to stop earlier. You were waiting for this.”

  “Yes,” said the duke. He glanced up the slope of the pass the way they had come, back toward Eäneté. Then he looked at her, and his eyes narrowed in satisfaction. “This is earlier than I’d hoped.
Good.”

  “You might have”—warned me, but Kehera cut that off. She shouldn’t have needed a reminder. But she had grown so used to lacking the close tie. . . . She looked into the humming awareness that had opened behind her mind and knew that whatever else might have happened, however many miles still lay between herself and Raëh, Raëhemaiëth was right here. Raëhemaiëth was with her. The knowledge was immeasurably comforting. She drew a deep breath—it felt like the first deep breath she’d taken in months—and accepted Tageiny’s help to get to her feet.

  “Very good,” said the duke, watching her. “We will camp here.”

  Kehera nodded, unsurprised by his consideration. And then surprised, a little, to realize she had expected it. It was not kindness, exactly. But he was always so deliberately considerate. And she had known he would be.

  She thought she might need the rest of the night to think about that. And to recover her balance amid the warm awareness that was her tie to Raëhemaiëth. But she was no longer tired at all. She wished for dawn, for light enough to ride, for the moment when they would come around the last curve of the pass and find Harivir opening out before them.

  But the next day, riding into the lowering sun that gilded the stone before the hooves of their horses, she found that actually arriving at the Harivin end of the pass felt . . . very strange.

  This homecoming had been Kehera’s hope for months. Now she was home, by any reasonable measure. A glimmering net of presence stretched out before and around her, centered far to the north—Raëhemaiëth, of course, allied to the Immanent Power of Coär. Her restored sense of Raëhemaiëth was like sight after she had been all but blind; it was like coming into free air when she had been hardly able to breathe. It should have made her feel more at home. But she did not feel like she was coming home at all.

  This might have been because she was surrounded by people whom she had known only in Eäneté. Tag, Luad, Eöté . . . those were the people for whom she had spent thought and worry in these past days. Though in a way the Wolf Duke himself more than any of them. She was almost sure this wasn’t anything he had done to her on purpose. It was only that he seemed so much more real, so much more present, than other people—in his profound confidence, in his pride, in his certainty that what he did mattered.

  Or it might have been because the moment she entered Coär proper, the first thing she would be called upon to do was look Riheir Coärin in the eye and tell him . . . She still wasn’t sure what she was going to tell him. That he must surrender Coär, all his people and lands, to a Pohorin lord, and that somehow this was all right? That she was going to marry the Wolf Duke of Eäneté and that was all right? This spring, he’d sent her a courting poem to let her know he meant to speak to her father. What was Riheir going to think of her now?

  Beside her, the Eänetén duke murmured, “There are men waiting there at the mouth of the pass. You see, just there. Remember that you are their princess and that you bring them an alliance they must have. Trust that you have done well and that you will do well.”

  “Yes,” she said. Just “yes.” But his face, turning for a brief moment to hers, held that subtle lightening of expression that was closer to warmth than he had come since sending Gereth away.

  Riheir Coärin was himself in the forefront of his people. The proud White Stag banner of Coär, gripped in the hand of a boy at his side, rippled in the wind that blew through the pass, its silver antlers gleaming dully in the pale winter light. It had always been one of Kehera’s favorite Harivin standards, and she did not look forward to seeing it humbled. She could only imagine what Riheir must be feeling.

  It was immediately clear that Coär did not intend to resist the Eänetén duke; very few of the people with him were soldiers, and those were old men. Kehera guessed he must have sent his soldiers to her father to help defend the north, relying on the Wolf Duke to defend Coär. That was . . . that was quite a statement. It drove home the desperate circumstances Harivir must be facing. So she knew the Wolf Duke had been right. At least so far.

  As they drew nearer, it became possible to pick out Riheir’s expression, which was set and grim: the expression of a man determined to maintain his pride in the face of surrender. It made Kehera feel slightly ill.

  The duke lifted his hand. Behind them, Kehera felt and heard the army come to a crashing halt. It wouldn’t have been proper to look over her shoulder at them, so she didn’t. She didn’t have to look. She knew from previous glances just how grim and impressive the long ranks of gray-clad Eäneté soldiers looked with the Wolf of Eäneté running over their heads.

  For a moment no one moved. The duke’s lean face was unreadable. Before her, Riheir Coärin’s face was no less blank, though his gaze touched hers briefly before going to the Eäneté duke. Riheir looked older than when she had last seen him, just this spring. He was, she knew, only just thirty. He looked older. Thinner. Worn, as though the past few weeks had been years. She had no idea what her own face showed.

  Just as she began to believe that no one else was going to break the intolerable silence and she would have to do it herself, Riheir moved. He reached out, not looking away from Eäneté, and took the Coär standard from the hand of the boy who had been carrying it. Holding it high, he swung one leg over his horse’s back and slid to the ground. One of his men leaned over and took the gray’s rein as Riheir came forward on foot to meet the Wolf Duke.

  It seemed like a long time that the Duke of Coär stood in the snow in front of the Duke of Eäneté, holding the White Stag banner in both his hands and looking steadily into the face of the man with whom he had shared a border all his adult life but never met. The Wolf Duke, not moving, returned the gaze with a look that gave away nothing.

  Riheir said to him, “Will you protect my people? Will you set your strength between Coär and every peril, and guard my people from all dark Powers that would enslave them, and stand for them before Fortunate and Unfortunate Gods?”

  The Wolf Duke lifted one eyebrow. “All this I will do, for my people.”

  Riheir looked past him, to Kehera. “Kehy,” he said quietly. “Can he be trusted?”

  Kehera’s throat ached. She said, “To protect everything and everyone he holds in his hand? Yes.” Just “yes,” very simply.

  Riheir took a long breath and let it out. It seemed he stared up at the Wolf Duke for a long time, but probably it was no more than the time it might take for an arrow-shot stag to fall, or for a heart to break.

  Then Riheir Coärin knelt in the snow and with his own hands laid down the White Stag of Coär before the fierce yellow eyes of the Eänetén Wolf. For a long, stretched instant, no one moved. Kehera’s eyes filled with tears that she refused to let fall.

  The Wolf Duke lifted his hand. One of his men rode forward, swung down from his horse, gathered up the fallen standard, and carried it to Eäneté’s own standard-bearer. This man shook it clean of snow, swept it upright, and let the wind open it again to the sight of the world. He thumped the haft of the banner home in his stirrup, specially made to support such things, and held both standards in one hand, the Coär White Stag behind the Eäneté Wolf and Kehera’s own Falcon.

  Regarding the bowed head of Riheir Coärin with dispassionate calm, the Wolf Duke asked in a soft, carrying voice, “What is it, Riheir Coärin, that you offer me?”

  Riheir lifted his head to meet the Eänetén duke’s yellow wolf’s eyes. “My lands. My people, if you will protect them.” Riheir paused and then added, with a hard, bitter edge to his voice that Kehera had not even heard from him the year his wife had died, “My obedience to your will, so long as you keep faith.”

  “All this, I accept,” said the duke. “And one thing more.” He tossed his reins to a waiting soldier and dismounted, striding forward. Riheir got quickly to his feet, and the two men faced each other for a moment in silence.

  Much of an age, both had come to power young. Occupying opposite ends of Roh Pass, they must have come to be familiar with each othe
r at a distance. Now each met the other’s eyes. The Wolf Duke’s manner was cool and deliberate. He was somewhat the taller, and to Kehera’s eyes, he seemed both more dangerous and more powerful. Coär was a little stockier in build and normally, at least, had a comfortable warmth to him. That warmth was not in evidence now.

  The duke beckoned to one of his soldiers without looking, and the man dismounted and moved to stand behind Riheir, who did not deign to glance back at him.

  Deliberately, the duke extended his hand to Riheir, who stared at him but did not move. “If you please,” said the duke, with excruciating politeness.

  There was a pause. Riheir said, “Coär has always been allied to Harivir and to Raëh. You can’t know the outcome for certain,” and Kehera blinked and drew a breath, understanding suddenly what this was.

  “I can. I do. Raëhemaiëth will yield its bond. And where I stand, is Eäneté.”

  Riheir hesitated a moment longer. Then he slowly answered the other man’s gesture. They gripped one another’s wrists for all the world, Kehera thought, like a greeting between old friends.

  The duke said in his most distant tone, “Eänetaìsarè.”

  Raëhemaiëth surged upward. The sense of its waiting presence was overwhelming. Kehera shuddered, for a moment blinded by its sharp, glittering awareness. But it ebbed almost at once, and she blinked, and blinked again, leaning on her horse’s neck, shaking her head, trying urgently to see the ordinary world of men through its lingering haze.