Anderson, Poul - Novel 18

by The Winter of the World (v1. 1)

  Donya’s lips drew taut across her teeth. ‘The word I shall give you will show that it must be done.”

  She shook herself, spread her arms high, and cried, “But not yet, for us. Before the horror is spoken, we’ve earned a day and a night. O fathers of my bairns—” Josserek missed the rest of what she said, and what the company shouted in response. He stood sunk in aloneness.

  —While her men collected food, drink, lamps, furs, a tent, a wagon, horses, merrily helped by their friends, Donya played with her children and grandchild. A number of persons sought Josserek, offered him hospitality, made eager but polite conversation such as he had encountered before.

  —After she and her consorts departed, people from Wildgate and Dewfall Dale began drifting in to meet the stranger.

  —When her hilltop camp was a star-twinkle through dusk, her half-sister in Owlhaunt, Nikkitay the huntress, drew Josserek aside and murmured, “—she asked me if I would. I am very willing.”

  “Not this night,” he got past his gullet. Mindful of good manners, he would have thanked her; but he could not do that in Rogavikian.

  CHAPTER 16

  Remembering the effect on Donya of Sidfr’s plan to exterminate the herds, Josserek feared what the kithfolk might turn into. Reaction at Dunheath had surprised her as much as him. Some personnel there had exploded. But most merely yelled their outrage.

  Krona developed an explanation: “I didn’t lose myself in fury either, deep though the shock went. Like me, these people do not live by the chase. The hunters do, in spirit still more than in body. For them, when the big grazers go, so does the whole meaning of existence. But a Station is just a clutch of buildings and businesses. If the owners lose it, they can hope to reconstruct elsewhere. It lacks the sanctity of the great ancestral spaces.” Did the word that she used quite mean “sanctity?”

  Later Donya admitted to Josserek that she wasn’t sure the Forthguide had guessed right. “Never would I have thought that words alone could lightning-strike me, the way those did at first. I could bear the threat of invasion—yes, the fact, as long as it had not yet touched Hervar—and stay self-controlled. Was this because I knew we cast back every such venture in the past, and so did not look for any in the future to harm our lands unhealably? I know not. I only know that—this thing about the beasts—I still only keep my calm and have my merriment, by holding fast to a belief that we will stop it from happening. Maybe I’m not able to believe that it can happen.” She said no more. It was the nearest she had come to baring her heart to him.

  Accordingly, when she addressed the camp from a wagon bed, she insisted that nobody bear arms. Perhaps this was wise. The news did send a minority running | and shrieking across the plain as she had done, or tearing the sod with nails and teeth, or off on horses which they flogged to gallop with unwonted brutality. Yet the largest part of them stood their ground and roared; some wept; a third of the whole, especially older people, covered their faces and went off by themselves, “I don’t know why,” Donya said in response to a question from Josserek. “Nor do they, I am sure. I might imagine that the very strength of feeling drives them apart, till they can’t act on each other as a pack of excited dogs does.” She wrinkled her nose. “Aye, the wind reeks from them. Can you really not smell it?”

  A race of humans who have no mobs—have no politics? Josserek thought in total bewilderment. Impossible!

  Donya sprang down to earth. “I will fare off among my men,” she said, and left him standing alone.

  By evening the households were reassembled. Families went into their pavilions, unwedded individuals made groups that sought into the bush, muted but unmistakable sounds told Josserek how they found comfort, other than in the mead which he glugged. Nobody invited him. He had been given a.pup tent, and folk were cordial about sharing food, but they left the alien out of their lives. It wasn’t a delicate affront, he knew; the Rogaviki took privacy for granted. The knowledge didn’t ease his bitterness.

  Nikkitay did, a little, when she sought him anew. She said hardly a word, though she often uttered noises, and left a web of scratches for remembrance. But during that while, he could put Donya out of his mind, almost, and afterward sleep.

  Next morning she returned, and suggested a ride. “People will take the rest of this day, and belike tomorrow, deciding what they want to do,” she said. “They’ll ponder, talk, go walkabout, argue, till the sun grows weary watching them. You and I know already, don’t we?”

  “I suppose.” He looked at her with a flicker of pleasure above his depression such as he felt certain no out-land woman could have given him. She was several years younger than her half-sister, lean, long-legged, summer-tinged, blue eyes crinkled from gazing across distances, white-blond hair drawn into a pony tail. Today, besides shirt, trousers, boots much like his, she wore a big silver-and-turquoise necklace, Southland materials but austere Northland workmanship. “Have you any particular place in mind?”

  “Aye.” She didn’t specify, and he had learned that questions harmless elsewhere counted as nosiness here.

  They prepared two horses, packed canteens, sausage, bannock, dried apples, weapons, and jogged off. Air lay still, cool, damply odorous, beneath a wan overcast. No big game was visible; herds soon moved on after man tracked them down and took toll, modest though it was in proportion to their multitudes. Songbirds held the scattered trees, rabbits and woodchucks moved in grass. Hoofbeats fell muffled.

  After a time he said, “Uh, I can’t unravel your meaning, when you told me these Fellowships will be slow in settling what to do. Isn’t the sensible thing to go to the Landmeet?”

  Nikkitay gave him a surprised regard. “ ‘They?’ What do you mean?”

  “Why, why, I’d expect them to—” He recalled that he knew no word for “vote,” and finished lamely, “Either they come along to the Landmeet or they stay in Hervar. Am I right?”

  “The whole of a Fellowship?” Nikkitay frowned, thinking. She lacked Donya’s experience of the world beyond the plains. However, she had ample intelligence. “Oh. I see. What happens is simply this. Most persons ask the opinions of others, to help them decide. And in certain cases, of course, because of family ties or the like, they may do what they’d rather not. But I can tell you, it’s foregone, few will leave Hervar, whether to go directly with us to Thunder Kettle or as messengers who start the word spreading among other kiths.”

  “In short,” Josserek realized, “each individual chooses.”

  “What else? Well-nigh all will stand fast. Abandon the land when it’s threatened, even for a few weeks? Unthinkable. I’d stay and kill invaders myself—Donya would, everybody would—were it not that the news should be carried, the meeting should be held, and that we know plenty of defenders will remain.”

  “But ... if nothing else, won’t they want a say at the Landmeet?”

  Nikkitay shook her head, half laughing, half exasperated. “There you go again. What could they say? We’ll do naught at Thunder Kettle but tell people how things are—you and Donya will, mainly—to help them think.” She paused, assembling an explanation. “Naturally, persons will exchange ideas. That’s what Landmeets and Kithmeets are for, don’t you know? To swap information and thoughts, as well as trade goods, see old friends and make new ones, celebrate, maybe find marriage partners—” Did her voice hold the least wistfulness? Probably not, Josserek concluded. There was no social pressure on a woman to get married, and the unwed state had its advantages.

  Dismay surged in him. He smacked fist on saddle and exclaimed, “Have you no idea of ... of cooperation ... on any scale larger than a hunting team?”

  “What for?”

  ‘To keep from being destroyed. That’s what for!” “Aye, big bands of us have gathered to meet invaders.” “And if you won, it was by sheer numbers, squandering lives of your own like water. If you had your fighters trained, in units operating under orders—”

  Nikkitay seemed lost. “How could that be? Are men tame animals? C
an they be put in a single harness like a, a team of carriage horses? Do they set the will of other men above their own, as their hounds do for them? If they have been caught and then released, will they return to the hood and jesses like a hawk?”

  Yes, yes, and yes, Josserek thought. He closed his jaws till they ached. Man was the first of animals to be domesticated. You Rogaviki . . . what form has your selfdomestication taken? That fanatical, unreasoning, suicidal compulsion to kill interlopers, regardless of prudence or long-range interest or—

  Presently he managed to say, ‘The Imperials are just as you describe, my friend. And they’re not contemptible on that account. No! In the past, Northfolk made the cost of entering this country too high. This time, the enemy can make the cost of resistance too high.”

  “I doubt that,” she responded levelly. ‘They seldom fight to the death. After little torture or none, a prisoner spills everything he knows---------- But can you tell me why, afterward, they complain before we kill them? What are we supposed to do?”

  “You keep no prisoners?” Josserek was appalled. “Nikkitay, they’ll avenge that on every Rogaviki they catch.”

  “Civilized soldiers always do. We have records from former wars. And why not? One of us, captive, is not just useless to them, like one of them to us, but a downright menace.”

  “Prisoner exchange—”

  “What? How could it ever be bargained about?”

  No parley. No strategy. No army. If they had, if they had— The Imperials are stretched thin. An organized effort might well cut their lines of communication. Probably Sidir never would have come if he weren’t sure there would be no such hazard.

  Do I seriously think I can talk these ... these two-legged panthers into changing ways they may well have been following since the Ice came? I’ve seen enough cultures across my half of the world. Many have died rather than change. Maybe because change is itself a death?

  I’ll speak my piece at the Landmeet, and they’ll look at me without understanding, as Nikkitay is looking at me now, and I’ll go home while Donya— O Shark of Destruction, let her be killed in battle. Let her not be a survivor, starved, ragged, tubercular, alcoholic, begging, cadging, broken.

  The woman reached across to lay a hand over his.

  “You are in pain, Josserek,” she said quietly. “Can I help?”

  He was moved. Such a gesture was rare among the Rogaviki. He forced a smile. “I fear not. My trouble is for your sake.”

  Although he used a plural pronoun, she nodded and murmured, “Aye, you must have grown fond of Donya, traveling in her company.” After a silence, and with difficulty: “Tales go about, of foreign men who came to care for Rogaviki women. It isn’t wise, Josserek. Our kinds are too unlike. She does not suffer for it, but he may.” Later on, almost defensively: “Think not we have no loves, we Northfolk. I ... I should tell you where I’m bound this day. To where those lie who fell in fighting the last troop of invaders, before you reached us. Two brothers of mine are there, a sister, and three lovers who were more to me than partners in sport. Since I may not return here—Will you mind waiting aside, while I seek their graves and remember?”

  He couldn’t well ask what he was to her. A romp, a curiosity, a favor to Donya? At least she was trying to be kind. Quite likely, for that, she was scaling greater obstacles within herself than he knew of. He owed her much gratitude already, and would doubtless owe her more as they trekked west; for Donya had her own men back, who were sufficient unto her, and Nikkitay could sometimes help him endure this.

  —The graves bore no markers, nothing but their newness to find them by on the prairie. If travelers’ accounts spoke truly, such mingled burials had no outward rites. If Owlhaunt had any, Nikkitay offered them in the hour she spent by herself. Afterward, rejoining him, she was cheerful.

  From the Landmeet / will go home, he repeated, and be again among my kind of people.

  CHAPTER 17

  Four hundred miles down the Sundog Trace lay Thunder Kettle, where the kiths always gathered. Josserek protested the unhurried pace of the score who accompanied Donya there. She replied that haste was useless, for distant groups would need time no matter how hard messengers galloped. “And can you too not muster the strength to enjoy this summer?” she added. “It may be our last.”

  He saw her before him, her mane aglow in the spilling sunlight, and thought, Well, I won’t escape you any sooner by running away from you. For a month, then, he fared, hunting, fishing, sporting along the way, doing his camp chores, afterward at the fire drinking dry pungent mead till his blood hummed, swapping tales, songs, jests, ideas—though never any inmost dreams—and at last retiring with Nikkitay to the tent they now shared.

  He learned much about the Northfolk, not only journeys east and west from end to end of Andalin, warily south into civilization and boldly north onto the Ice, not only wild hunts and mighty feats, but arts which were often too subtle for a foreigner like him to appreciate, and social orderings which left him still more bewildered.

  As for knowledge and crafts, he had already seen that most people were literate. Some wrote or published books. Many corresponded extensively through a mail service which functioned very well though its carriers just operated when they felt like it; a person could always be found who did. Simple telescopes, microscopes, compasses, astrogoniometers, timepieces, and suchlike instruments were in common use, mainly imported though various homemade versions had lately been appearing. Medical procedures were good, at least for injuries; in their uncrowded open-air lives, the Rogaviki seldom contracted diseases. Zoology and botany were sophisticated; Josserek found few if any superstitions about nature, and an eagerness to learn about evolution when he mentioned it. Metallurgy was excellent, as was the processing of wild substances into fiber and fabric. This implied a fair variety of chemicals available, again generally through trade. Besides the Stations, every wintergarth was a site of sedentary industries.

  Summer was more than the season of roving and the chase. Then the arts were intensively shared. Almost everybody played a musical instrument or two, out of a surprisingly large assortment. Line drawing, painting, carving in wood and bone, ornamentation had, in their own forms, development equal to any Josserek had encountered elsewhere. Song, dance, drama perhaps went further. When his party visited a camp on their way, he saw an hours-long presentation, combining opera and ballet, which stunned him, little though he grasped of what was going on.

  These were not mere nomads. They had a society rich and complex, its traditions unbroken for centuries. Moreover, it was not static like most, it was in a highly inventive, progressive phase.

  And yet—and yet—

  Coming from an individualistic, increasingly industrialized and capitalistic civilization, he was used to sparse ritual and religious freethinking. But somehow it disturbed him to find the same traits here. Those who sought enlightenment, female, male, Forthguide, solitary thinker, or otherwise ordinary person who spared occasional time for it, were not prophets, mages, or seers. The best name he could find for them was “philosophers,” albeit a part of the philosophical quest took place in muscles and viscera rather than brain. Most people were indifferent, agnostics content to inhabit the world of the senses. According to Rogaviki historians, myths and magical practices had existed in the past, but were discarded in favor of a more nearly scientific attitude with an ease that showed how rooted they had been.

  Ceremonies, as distinguished from artistic performances, were short and spare: courtesies, not invocations. He was told that families had elaborate ones, evolved through many generations. But as far as he could discover, these amounted simply to communion between members, a means of dissolving an otherwise habitual aloofness. Ancestors might then be lovingly recalled, but there was no idea that they were actually present, nor any supernatural powers. This was as much as Nikkitay was willing to tell him, in her most intimate moods. She gave no logical reason for keeping the details secret. Divulgence just wasn’t don
e.

  Damnation, Josserek thought, these are not Killimaraichan city dwellers! They have an organic society, in the midst of an enormous wilderness. They shouldn’t feel so—detached?

  No, wrong word again, and again I don’t know what may be a right word. They act like cats. Which must be an illusion of mine. Man is a pack animal, like the dog. He also has the dog’s need of mystic bonds to something higher than himself.

  His grin traveled ruefully across wind-rippled grasses where a sparrowhawk hunted. I too, bachelor, soldier of fortune, former outcast and still pretty much outsider, I am not here because it’s an adventure; I’m on a mission for my country, which, below my gibes at it, I believe is worth preserving.

  And I'm in love with Donya.... Well, she’s devoted to her husbands. (In the same way I am to her?) And to her children, friends, home. Isn’t she?

  He wondered. Did the killing rage that invasion kindled in every Rogaviki breast—every, without exception, though in other respects individuals showed a normal range of diversity—did it really come from love of the land? A Killimaraichan, say, would fight for his nation. He would carry war beyond its borders, for its political interests rather than its naked survival, a thing which had never occurred to the Northfolk. But there were limits to his sacrificial willingness. If his cause grew hopeless, he would accept defeat, even military occupation, and made the best he could of a shrunken existence. Apparently a Rogaviki would not. Paradoxically, however—while the Killimaraichan, given victory or standoff, would be slow to forgive those who had seriously harmed his fellow citizens—throughout history, the moment the last intruder departed, the Rogaviki were prepared to resume relations as if nothing had happened.

  Might a key to them lie in their households, the structure and functioning of their families? The business of life is to bring forth life; upon the how of this in any race, everything else turns. But no, here Josserek found himself worse adrift than before. Alone among humans he knew of, maybe alone among animals on earth, the Rogaviki reproduced in such wise as to hold population far down.