Anderson, Poul - Novel 18

by The Winter of the World (v1. 1)

  Here is the dwelling itself. I can show her how carefully I’ve spared it, everything she owns.

  Elsewhere his men were commanded to sack, demolish, and burn. When the cold weather came and they had no dens, the wolf-people might yield to human wisdom, come take what shelter he assigned them; and that example might work on their kindred in regions yet untouched. (Might, might, might!)

  I But when Inil en-Gula, the factor at Fuld, said he had visited Donya on business occasionally and could guide the Imperials to her garth, Sidfr led them in person and decreed nothing be damaged. His explanation was reasonable; solid buildings like these, well out in the wilderness, provided a base of operations. Then by himself after dark, he sought the huge bed where surely she slept

  He padded about the carpet, between racked weapons and eldritch murals, fondling things, books, lamps, vases, bowls, remembrances. Sunbeams slanted through the windows high above. The air was warm and smelled faintly, pleasingly of leather on cushions and ledges. Knowledge that this was hers overwhelmed him. She had revealed him well-nigh nothing of her soul, until that last night when she sought to tear out his throat. How he wished he could read the Rogavikian pages.

  7 can’t stay on, he made himself recall. I should never have come. The work at headquarters must be finished before I can set forth—before the prairie wind, day after day, can blow this obsession out of me—and if we don’t start soon, we’d better not till next year. It’ll be hard as is, tracing a way to Roong in summer; and winter rolls early across the Ice.

  He had a hope that that capture would do more than bring the Throne an incomparable booty, more than cut the foe off from their prime source of metal. Could morale outlive such a loss? And on his side, could a renewed will for victory fail to follow such a gain? He had sensed the tiny signs of wavering among his troops, no decay of discipline, no slackness in action, but they laughed less and less, they grew elaborately cautious, and walking incognito through camp at night he heard mostly talk about their homes---------

  Then why do I dawdle here?

  I won't. I’ll go to the Jaguars because this is a chance to deal with a substantial number of Rogaviki and I may learn something valuable. Thence I’ll head straight back to Fuld.

  Though if Donya is among them—

  No! Sidfr smacked fist in palm, turned on his heel, and stalked from the room. Within the hour he was on his way.

  Travel was rapid, for a wide hoof-beaten trail ran westward along the Stallion River, paralleled by ruts which centuries of wagon wheels had worn—the Sun-dog Trace, a major trade route across a land which dwarfed the Empire. The courier had easily taken it by starlight. He seemed untired, and the guards rode as briskly. A prospect of honest combat, not a hidden trap or a leap from nowhere, heartened them. Likewise did the morning. Small clouds moved in a dizzingly tall heaven where larks chanted. The water gleamed, reeds swayed thick on its banks, fish jumped saber-bright. Earth reached green, green, grass and strewn trees, steaming forth its fragrance beneath the sun. Two miles off, a herd of wild cattle quartered the horizon. Donya’s country.

  “Ai-uh,” said a man of the escort, when they paused to rest their steeds. “I’m for a share of this, right hereabouts, when they pay us off. What a ranch!”

  “Don’t sell whatever you’ve got in Baromm just yet, my friend,” advised the courier. “No part of the Northlands’ll be fit to settle for ten years, is my guess.” “Why?”

  “The natives. What else? Till the last of them is dead, and I mean right down to babes in arms, we’ll have murder to fear each hour we stay.”

  “Ho, now, listen—”

  “You listen.” The courier wagged a finger. “No insult meant, but you’ve mainly drawn garrison duty, true? I’ve been in the field. I’ve gotten to know them.”

  “They’ll break,” said another man. “I was in the Hozen war. We thought those tribes would never quit either. Rachan, you’ve not seen war till you’ve stood before a thousand painted devils making a death charge! But three years afterward, I was snugged up with the nicest little brown wench that ever decorated a grass hut. I felt sorry when my tour ended.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you about the women here,” the courier retorted. “They’ll do for, uh, an example. If you catch any, stand clear and shoot.”

  “Oh, they’re spitfires—”

  “Hear me out, will you? I’ve listened to plenty of men, besides what I witnessed for myself. The local she-cat keeps trying to kill you. Hold a knife at her throat, and she’ll drive herself onto the blade, yelling like she’s glad to die if she can blind you first. Beat her, cage her—or treat her nice, like a queen—she’ll still fight. Tie her down, and when you get on top she’ll crash her forehead into your nose and rip out a jawful o’ flesh. Only way is to club her unconscious, or fasten her till she can’t twitch a toe. And what’s the good of that? Too much like a corpse, right? Sir,” the courier appealed to Sidfr, “couldn’t you ship in some decent Arvannethan whores?”

  A guard ran fingers through his unhelmeted locks and said, puzzled, “But everybody—traders, everybody— told about native whores, or how the girls would take a man on for sheer fun.”

  The courier spat. “We’re invaders. Makes a difference. You can no more civilize a Northlander than you can tame a scorpion. We’ll have to clean them out.”

  “What does the Captain General say?” asked the corporal.

  Sidir had listened through a darkness which deepened behind his face. “They’re a fierce lot,” he answered slowly. “However, I’ve seen wars too, and I’ve studied the past. Nations often swear they’ll fight to the last man. They never do. None has ever even talked about fighting to the last woman and child.” He rose from his crosslegged seat on the earth. “Come, let’s get on.” Toward evening he arrived at the siege, a few miles off the river. On an area the size of a parade ground, a dull-yellow limestone mass reared in blocks above sloping tiers. The bareness around spoke well for the soldiers; they had brought back their dead and wounded from repeated futile charges. Sometimes a head thrust briefly between two monoliths, to peer; sometimes a weapon threw sunlight. But nothing rippled the stillness in which the rock squatted. The sounds of the regiment were themselves nearly lost beneath the sky; metal and banners made infinitesimal splashes on immensity.

  “I’ve offered the best terms the Captain General has authorized,” said Felgai. “We’d take them to a reservation, provide them the necessities, leave them a couple of hostages till they trusted us. When my herald finished, they put an arrow through him. Under his flag of truce, sir! If we weren’t needed elsewhere, I’d enjoy penning them here till thirst and hunger do for them.”

  “A different approach might work,” Sidfr responded. “I sympathize with your anger, Colonel, but we can’t waste men on revenge. Truce evidently isn’t in their culture. Bargaining is; remember their peacetime trade. I’ve planned an experiment.”

  From chopped branches, tight-bundled grass, and chain mail, engineers improvised a safety shield for a squad to carry before him. He stood under the rock and cried through a megaphone, “Is Donya of Hervar among you?”

  For a minute he heard only his heart, and a distant singing of wind. Then a man’s voice returned accented Arvannethan: “Who are you that ask?”

  “I command this army. I knew her when she was last in the South—I, Sidfr of Clan Chalif. Is she there and will she talk to me?”

  “She is not and I think she would not.”

  Sidfr drew breath. His pulse slowed. Well, I go back to headquarters. “Hearken,” he urged. “You know you can’t break out. We know you’ve scant supplies. Your wives, sons, daughters, parents are with you. Must they die amidst barren stones?”

  “Better than in a corral.”

  “Hearken, hearken. Are we beast and butcher, or man and man? Because I am eager to send your people my message, a message of good will, I grant you this: you may go free. Keep your arms, and we will return your animals and gear. Only leave these parts, h
ead west; and tell your fellows when you meet them, Sidfr will come to any place they like, if they will talk with him of peace.”

  Tell Donya.

  After a silence, the Rogaviki called, “We must think on this.”

  The sun had sunken, a last orange streak burned and stars glimmered eastward, when he declared, “We agree. Stand by for us.”

  Swallows flitted, coyotes yelped, through chilly blue dusk. Sidfr made the Rogaviki out as shadows until they entered the glow of lights held on high before soldiers whose lines formed a pair of walls. In their front walked

  a grizzled man, belike he who had spoken for them, and a big woman, both in buckskins, both with no dread on their faces. Behind came the hunters, young men and women, old men and women, striplings, children led by the hand—some thinly weeping, some big-eyed and silent—and milky babies and those unborn, to the number of about two hundred.

  Sidfr trod between pikes and corselets. Joy lifted his palm toward the strangers. “Welcome,” he said. “I am the master here—”

  “Yaaah!” and the leaders sprang for him. Knives flew into their grasp.

  Right and left, the Rogaviki attacked.

  Surprise lent a terrible power. Sidfr barely drew his pistol in time. He shot the man, but the woman might then have gotten him, had an alert halberdier not brained her. Chaos ramped. Hardly a grown Northlander failed to kill or badly hurt an Imperial before he or she died.

  Sidfr could not blame his troopers, that they slew the little ones as they would have stamped on new-hatched rattlesnakes. Maybe a few natives escaped in the turmoil.

  By lantern-dullness among his dead, he wondered sickly, Are they indeed all bom mad? Can we do anything but uproot their race from the world?

  CHAPTER 15

  Three days out of Dunheath Station, Josserek and Donya found her Fellowship.

  His unwillingness for this moment had come slowly. At first, after he torched the rogue women off their backs, he felt himself less tolerated by his companions than endured. Not since he was a boy brought for sentencing before the deemster in Eaching had he known such withdrawal from him. Hatred would have been better. He closed his lips and did his share. At the Station he could get directions and supplies for his trip home.

  On the second evening, though, Krona came out of her thoughts and addressed him gently. Throughout the third and fourth days, she was much in his and Donya’s company, separately in the beginning, later as part of a healing friendship. On the fifth day they reached Dunheath, and that night Donya sought him.

  On the sixth morning they bade their hostesses farewell, and the Forthguide. Both of them kissed her. That carried more meaning among the Rogaviki than anyplace else where Josserek had been. The moon was now in its third quarter, and there was no darkness on the plains for two people before they slept.

  The seventh night she was more slow and tender than had been her wont. Often she chuckled softly, or raised herself on an elbow athwart the stars, smiled down at him, stroked his beard. According to what they heard at Dunheath, on the morrow they should meet the Owl- haunt families. He made a clumsy try at getting her to say something like “I will still care for you, I always will,” but she stopped his words in an irresistible way, as she had ever done. He wondered if she, if anyone of her folk was able to look on another human being as he had come to look on her.

  From dawn they rode fast, in silence, through blowing cool sunniness swept by cloud shadows. Pine groves darkened ridges, birches danced on hillsides, willows brooded in blueberry bogs, sward ran silvery-green over the curve of the world. Rising warmth upheld an eagle, a lynx basked on a rock, a stallion whose mane tossed like flags led his mares across miles, lesser life swarmed on millionfold ways. How they glory in their summer, Josserek thought, while it lasts.

  Once at a distance he and she spied horsemen. “Lookouts against invaders,” Donya judged. Dunheath knew of widespread enemy strikes. Such an expedition had come within a half day, then retreated before a larger force from the camp she sought. She had cursed on learning the Imperials had been too well-organized for destruction, and after a skirmish outrode pursuit on their larger animals.

  “Don’t you want the latest news?” Josserek asked when she didn’t change course.

  “Our arrival will be soon enough.”

  At midaftemoon they saw their goal, tents, wagons, beasts, humanity sprawled around a lilypond. “Aye, they’ve leagued for safety, as we heard,” Donya murmured. “Owlhaunt, Wildgate, Dewfall Dale—Hai-ah!” She broke into gallop.

  The scene was thronged. Few or no hunters were out today. The gathering was at work on kills lately made, as well as preparations for moving on. Josserek noted that tasks generally belonged to individuals or kin-groups spaced yards apart. He and Donya drew merely brief looks and dignified salutations as they entered, no matter his foreignness and her long absence. Folk assumed that if they wanted help or sociability, they would inform whoever was appropriate; until then, it would be ill-bred to push in on them. This was unlike their reception at the Ravens’ Rest Fellowship; but there the whole situation had differed, including the manner of their approach. When Donya had family to meet, she didn’t pause for palaver, nor was she expected to.

  At her pavilion she drew rein. It was larger and finer than most, of oiled silk rather than leather. A banner flew from the main pole, owl argent on sable. Her kin was busy outside. They flayed and butchered, scraped hides, cooked over a firepit, refurbished equipment; several boys practiced archery, not with the rider’s hombow but the longbow of war; as many girls drilled with throwing knives and slim sabers; small children cared for infants. Hounds lolled about, hawks glared from perches. It was rather quiet. Nearing, Josserek did observe chat between partners, an occasional grin or lively gesture—but none of the bustle and racket common to primitives. An aged man, bald and blind, sat on a folding stool, plucked a snake-carved harp, and sang for the workers in a voice still powerful.

  He stopped when the newcomers did, hearing the sudden change. For an instant silence spread outward, like waves when a rock is cast into a pool. Then a tall man raised himself from his job. It was greasy, so he went nude. While sorrel hair and beard were gray-shot, his body could have lived thirty years or less, save for a puckered scar on the right thigh. “Donya,” he said, low, low.

  “Yven,” she answered, and left her saddle.

  Her first husband, Josserek remembered.

  She and Yven joined hands and looked a minute into each other’s eyes. The group made way for the remaining foremost: husband Orovo, sometime metal gatherer at Roong, stocky and blond; husband Beodan, notably younger than her, gaunt, dark for a Northlander; husband Kyrian, who wore his ruddy hair in braids and was a single year senior to her oldest child. Newer offspring had a right to immediate hugs and kisses: daughters Valdevanya, four, Lukeva, seven, Gilyeva, eleven. Son Fiodar could wait a bit, being fifteen, as could son Zhano and his wife and baby.

  When at last Josserek saw them all around her, she in the pride of her joy, he recalled a myth along the Feline Ocean, about Ela, the tree whose fruits are the Seven Worlds. At the end of time, the Hidrun Storm will tear them from its branches....

  He heard Kyrian blurt, “Must we wait on sundown, till you welcome us home?” He heard her say through a catch of laughter, “Too slow is the Bright Wheel, aye. Yet abide a turn and a turn—” He couldn’t understand the rest.

  Beodan caressed her from behind, beneath her shirt, and said something Josserek couldn’t follow either, but which made her go “Rrrrrr” like a happy lioness. Yes, I’ve read, I’ve been told, the man from Killimaraich remembered, kindred here make their own slang, generation by generation till a private dialect has turned into an entire language never shared with those who are not of the blood. He had not realized it would hurt this much.

  When he wrenched his thoughts to the fact that Donya had been missing from them for a quarter of an evil year, she for her part unaware who of her dear were alive, he admitted how restr
ained everyone was being. Because of me?

  Maybe not quite. Others were about too. Closest stood four spinster relatives, members of her household. (No, he conceded, “spinster” was wrong for hopeful maiden, rangy huntress, skilled carpenter, and formidable manager.) Then the companion families gave greetings. As nearly as he could gauge—which seemed more and more remotely—their behavior toward Donya confirmed Josserek’s impression that she was their leader. (No, again a false word. No Rogaviki had authority over anybody else. Later he would discover even the parent-child relationship was mutually voluntary, though the diffuseness of interrelationships took the rough edges off that. But Owlhaunt, and a large part of all Hervar, valued Donya’s counsel above most, accepted her arbitration, cooperated with her enterprises.) Her return blessed them.

  They needed encouragement. Erelong they were telling what had happened of late. Enemy garrisons gripped the length of the Jugular. Soldiers ranged ever further, looted, burned, slew; resistance cost them losses and slowed them down, but could not drive them out and grew steadily costlier as they became wise in its ways. Donya’s own wintergarth and its neighbors were in their hands. A few days ago, they had wiped out the conjoined Fellowships of Broken Ax and Firemoor. Information—from Imperial prisoners; from Arvannethan Guildsmen bribed, sympathetic, or in terror of reprisals—was that the invader chieftain planned a dash northeastward across the tundra to capture Unknown Roong.

  Poised about her people, who mostly crouched on the earth, Donya nodded. “I awaited no better,” she told them, flat-voiced. “Josserek speaks truth.” Somewhere in the course of events, he had been introduced. “No single kith can turn enough horns outward against yon wolves. There must be a Landmeet, and not near summer’s end, but as soon as messengers can fetch everybody to Thunder Kettle.”

  “Can this be done?” asked Yven in his soft fashion.