Roll, thunder, roll
Down from mountains tall
Where lightning touched once
Let never lightning fall.
With haying time so soon past, the barn might as well be a box of tinder—and he had seen enough to expect fire in the sky tonight. He went sunwise from corner to corner, burying a stone and singing the charm at each one. When he rounded the northwest corner he saw Niiv up on the ladder, freshening the paint on that side’s hex signs. When she saw him she stopped her work and came down the ladder.
“Did Sifrid talk to you this morning?” she asked.
Irrel frowned. “Did you not ask him that?”
She laughed. “I think you scared him, father. I haven’t seen even his shadow since dinnertime.”
“Well. Yes, he did talk to me.”
“And?”
He took a slow breath. “And you already know what he said, so what questions could you have of me?”
“Are you happy for me?” she asked, wrinkling her nose with exasperation. “Do you approve? Will you bless our wedding?”
“This is not some fancy then? You haven’t just cooked him up a love-apple, or twisted your belt to get him hot?” Like her brother, she had always been skilled at the children’s charms: like her mother, hers had served to get the village boys running around after her like puppies.
She crossed her arms. “Father. No. This is real—we both want this. And we . . .”
He let her silence hang in the air. “Your mam could have taught you a crafting for that,” he said quietly. “I haven’t given you everything she would have, I know. But the wise woman owes me for winter corn—she could . . .”
“It’s what I want,” Niiv said.
Irrel nodded. “It’s love, then? Truly?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “His father is the best goldsmith in Rebenstod. We could craft a charm that would make me the most beautiful woman there is.”
He smiled. “You are the most beautiful woman there is.”
She smiled too, sighing. “I know, Father. But really.”
“And do either of you know any handfasts?”
Niiv shrugged. “Sifrid doesn’t. I’ve tied a few, with boys from the village, but . . . Well, they weren’t ever meant to last.” She looked away, towards the farmhouse, then back to him. “I thought—I was hoping you could teach us the handfast you and mother tied.”
Irrel said nothing, holding his hands in front of him: he curled his fingers and then straightened them again, slowly. “No,” he said at last. “That’s past me now—and besides I needed your mam to tie that.”
“Of course,” Niiv said.
He let his hands drop, put them on his hips. “You know, when your mam and I were young we spent our winter nights learning handfasts. There was none of that sledding around to farm and village you have today.”
“I know, Father.”
“There are plenty of fine handfasts I could teach you, ones that will last you a lifetime.” He brushed his hands against the front of his pants. “I’ve got to finish burying these thunderstones and then get on my other work. I’ll see you at supper.”
When he passed by the porch he saw that Tyrrel was not there: there were about a dozen knotted harnesses lying abandoned on the ground—the first few tangled messes, the rest perfectly tied Lamb’s Knots. He sighed and set out to find out how Sifrid was doing with the fence.
He followed the fence’s circuit until he heard voices ahead, one a young man’s and one a child’s—answering the question of where Tyrrel had gone. Irrel looked at his hands and began to move them, stiffly at first, to do the charm his son had done that morning. He had not crafted it since he himself had been a boy, but he found his fingers remembered the motions—held up flat, then turned inwards, then coiled into a ring, bowing, dancing, tucked away into fists—as he quietly chanted the charm:
Ten little men standing straight
Ten little men open the gate
Ten little men all in a ring
Ten little men bow to the king
Ten little men dance all day
Ten little men hide away
Irrel could feel the craft working through him as he did the charm, and unlike his son he did not need to repeat it to keep it going. Sifrid was leaning against the fence, his face covered with dust and his shirt damp with sweat; Tyrrel sat on the fence post, curled like a gargoyle as he interrogated the young man.
“Will you and Niiv live in Rebenstod?” Tyrrel was asking.
“I expect we will, if we get married,” Sifrid said.
“Is it a big place? Are there wizards there? Did you ever see my uncle there?”
Sifrid turned to look at the boy. “He passes through from time to time. And it’s not as big a place as some, but it’s bigger than others. Bigger than your village.”
“Does it have a schoolhouse?”
“Several.”
Tyrrel nodded sagely. “In the schoolhouses there, do they just teach you children’s crafts or do they teach you to be a wizard?”
“I don’t know,” Sifrid said. He held his fingers splayed out in front of him. “I was never in a schoolhouse: I was apprenticed as soon as I could hold a graver. Every time my hands grew, my father wept.” He was silent for a moment. “But you don’t need a school to teach you crafting, or your uncle for that matter. I’m sure your father could teach you anything you might want to know.”
“Father?” Tyrrel asked. “All he ever does is farm-craftings. He won’t even do knots, because of his fingers.”
“Maybe now, but he did a great one once—he and your mother, that is. Didn’t you ever notice how you’re never short of water here? How spring comes a little sooner than in the other farms, and summer stays a little later—fruits ripen without rotting and keep without spoiling? That’s from the handfast they tied at their wedding. It bound them to each other in a way no other handfast had ever done—bound them to this farm and it to them, bound even time itself. My father said it was the finest working he ever saw—as great as anything the Margrave or the Thaumaturge ever did.”
“Is that why you want to marry my sister?” Tyrrel asked. “To learn our magic?”
Sifrid was silent for a moment. “No,” he said. “I want to marry her because I love her.”
Tyrrel jumped down from the fence post. “I think that would be a good reason to marry somebody,” he said.
A growing noise had been coming from up the road, and now it resolved itself into the tread of dozens or hundreds of men, marching together in ragged rhythm: soldiers, as many leaning on their spears as carrying them, and each with a holed coin sewn over his heart to protect him. Not the Margrave’s things, Irrel could see: these had to be the Prince’s men.
“Come back to the house,” he called to Tyrrel and Sifrid.
“I want to watch.”
“Tyrrel. To the house, now.”
The boy threw him an angry look and then began walking slowly towards the house. Irrel kept his eyes on the Prince’s soldiers: they were not nearly so wild as the Margrave’s beasts, but desperate men could do desperate things.
“Karten told me they’re letting people shelter inside the walls at Rebenstod,” Sifrid said quietly. “We could be there by nightfall if we rode.”
“I’ll tie the holdfast,” Irrel said. “We’ll be safe.”
“Yes, I know,” Sifrid said. “I just thought—”
“We’ll be safe.”
Without another word they went back to the farmhouse. Irrel and Niiv brought the animals from the pasture back into the barn, dropping the tally sticks into the pail to keep from counting the cattle too closely. Then it was time for supper: Irrel sat on a bench facing his daughter, eating his bread and soup in silence, while Tyrrel sat beside Sifrid, peppering the young man with questions.
They sat around the small fire for a while after su
pper, while Niiv did the dishes; then it was time for Tyrrel to go to bed. Irrel opened the bed-closet and crouched to tuck his son into the quilts, reciting the night-charm:
Touch your collar
Touch your toes
Never catch a fever
Touch your knee
Touch your chin
Never let the burglar in
Tyrrel giggled when his father tapped his chin, then smiled sleepily. “Do you think Uncle Allel will ever come to see us here?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Irrel said. “He’s a busy man.”
“Could we go to visit him? It’s not right, you know, that I’ve never seen my uncle, and I’m almost a man.”
Irrel shook his head. “I can’t be travelling, you know that. I’ve the farm to care for, and in the winter the roads are no good.” He took a breath. “But you might, perhaps—now that you’re almost a man. Or perhaps he’ll come to Rebenstod to see your sister, when she marries, and you can see him then.”
“Yes,” Tyrrel said, his eyes half-shut. “Yes, I think so.”
Irrel crouched there for a few moments more, listening to his son’s breathing settle into the slow rhythm of sleep; then he rose, with some difficulty, and went back out into the long hall. It was nearly dark, lit only by the embers of the small fire in the main room, and he did not know where Sifrid and Niiv had gone. Sighing, he went out the main door and up the path to the gate.
He took the previous night’s holdfast from where he had hung it on the fencepost, untied it and began work on the new one. None of the standard knots would be strong enough, not with what was likely to happen that night, but he might start with a Sheep’s Tail knot for a base: holding the end of the rope towards him he made an overhand loop, then passed the end through it and up behind the standing part. He passed the end down through the loop a second time and then continued to elaborate the knot, feeling his fingers soften like butter as the craft began to work through him. Soon he had a knot that would hold against the Margrave and the Thaumaturge both, but he did not stop. As the rope danced in his hands, twisting around and around itself and slipping over and under the loops he had made, he knew that if he wanted to he could tie a knot that would be greater even than the handfast he and Eliis had made: a knot that would hold everything just as it was, bind them all and hold fast against time and chance. He held the end of the rope in his hand and took a breath.
The night passed, as all nights eventually do: but it never grew very dark, with spells, lightning and dragon-fire lighting the sky. Unable to sleep, Irrel went to the summer kitchen, kicked at the coals in the fire pit until he exposed a glowing ember and lit a candle from it. Then he went to the storage room and hauled up the trap door to the cellar before going carefully down the stairs. In the dim light of the candle it took him a while to find what he was looking for: a few jars of blackberry jam, hidden away in memory of the day he and Niiv had gone foraging in the bush and Eliis had preserved the few berries they had brought home. He went back upstairs and sat on the bench by the cold ashes of the fire, licking the dark jam from his fingers.
When true dawn finally came he went outside and surveyed the farm. The barn was entirely intact, even the hex signs unmarked, and the stable door still held. He walked down the path to the gate and kneeled down to untie the holdfast, feeling the craft dissipate as he loosened the knot.
“Morning find you!” Allren was coming down the road towards him, the front of his hat pulled down low to block out the morning sun.
“And you.”
Allren stood on the other side of the gate, his hands on his hips. “Did you hear? The Prince’s men prevailed, if you can believe it. Why, they say the Thaumaturge himself took part in the battle.” He tilted his hat upwards as a grin crossed his face. “The Margrave is overthrown!”
Irrel undid the last loop and hung the now-slack rope on the fencepost. He stood up and nodded slowly, brushing the dirt from his knees.
“Well, there’s that.”
THE COLDEST WAR
“I may be gone for some time,” Gord had said.
It was their only joke, and like everything else in the base it had been worn smooth with use and re-use: Stan and Gord each said it before leaving the base, every time they went out to walk the inuksuit and fire the flare, their way of laughing at the dark.
The whole island was just over a kilometre square; on a good day, Defence had calculated the whole circuit would take just over three hours. The problem was that Hans Island had no good days. At this time of year there were hardly any days at all: only a little over an hour of grey twilight around noon, the remaining time given over to the endless Arctic dark.
Stan glanced at his watch, put down his book and went to start the Coleman stove. Though it was substantially warmer within Base Hearn than outside, where kerosene turned thick and white as lard, it still took the stove a few minutes to heat up; while he waited Stan unpacked two dozen frozen Tim Hortons doughnuts and a can of coffee. It was a challenge, getting the six thousand calories they needed each day, but the doughnuts and coffee were more than a contribution towards that: the two half-hour overlaps between their shifts were the only time either of them saw another human being each day, and the ritual helped them pretend that they were back in the real world—not planting a frozen toehold for Canada in a place so remote even the Inuit considered it uninhabitable.
Before long the stove was hissing with a bright blue flame, but Gord had not returned. Stan checked his watch: 14:35, just five minutes late—six hours was normally enough time to get from base to base, but with the storm he could hear howling outside it might easily take more. He turned the stove low, just hot enough to keep the fuel liquid, picked up the one-volume Deptford Trilogy and started reading, careful not to lose Gord’s place.
It was around 14:45 when Stan checked his watch again, and he decided to brew the coffee and fry the first dozen doughnuts. He had to give himself a good ten minutes to suit up, not to mention warming his hands enough that he could stand to insert the catheter, so he unsealed the pack of frozen doughnuts and tossed them in the skillet. The smell quickly filled the small space, the fat surrounding each doughnut melting and starting to sizzle, and when the coffee aroma joined it Stan could almost imagine he was home.
When another ten minutes had passed he began to worry. Gord was now almost a half-hour late, and Stan began to wonder if something had happened to him. Of course, he might just be holed up in Base Franklin; they were under strict radio silence—anything battery-powered died within a week in this cold, anyway, and their hand-crank radios could receive but not send—so there was no way to communicate between the two bases, just thirty-five metres apart as the goose flew. No way, for that matter, to send a cry for help.
Stan sighed, drank the last of his coffee; a layer of frost had already begun to creep inwards from the rim of the mug. “Sorry, Gord,” he said as he shut off the stove’s low flame, hoping the fuel would not have time to thicken again before Gord got back. He pulled his undersuit off the hook, stepped to the middle of the room where he could stand up straight and stepped into it, cotton and Kevlar covering everything but his mouth and eyes. Then he popped a bulb of hydrating gel into his mouth, minty and medicinal, and stepped to the first door of the heatlock.
He reached towards the emergency override before stopping himself. If something had happened to Gord—if he wasn’t just late, hadn’t just decided to wait out the weather at Base Franklin—what if it hadn’t been an accident? What if there was a Dane out there?
It was no secret the Danes wanted them gone; it was their government, after all, that disputed ownership of the island with Canada—the only reason anyone cared about a barren hunk of rock halfway between Ellesmere Island and Greenland. Or not exactly halfway, as each government claimed. Hans Island was at the edge of a strait that had opened up in recent years, in summer at least, making a Northwest Passage finally viab
le for commercial shipping; if the island was Canadian then so was the strait, and if it wasn’t the strait was international waters. For want of a nail, the horse was lost. . . .
Neither Canada nor Denmark, both NATO allies, were willing to fight over it. That was why he and Gord were there: to live for twelve full months on the island, firing a flare each day at the two times satellites passed overhead, to prove Canadians lived there year-round. Gord and Stan had been detailed from the Ranger base at Alert when no Inuit had been found willing to do it; even for them this was no place to live. As for the Danes. . . .
Stan drew his hand back, let the heatlock cycle at its normal rate. They had seen no sign of Danes since they had arrived the previous spring, but in planning the mission Defence had assumed they would face some covert attempts to interrupt their stay, come up with as many countermeasures as they could. The heatlock was one of those, designed to prevent the expulsion of too much warm air that might betray the location of the camouflaged base. With no knowledge of what similar technologies the Danes might have—only that they were likely ahead in the race—Equipment, Procurement and Supply had done what they could while Stan and Gord trained in the near North, learning lower-tech survival skills.
After what felt like forever the outer door opened. By that time Stan was chilled through, despite his insulated undersuit. The outersuit was hanging a few metres away from a hook attached to the heat baffle that rose over the base. Unlike the undersuit, which was designed to keep him warm, the outersuit kept the air around him cool: it was basically a man-shaped thermos, filled with gel-packs that stayed liquid to sixty below, absorbing and storing the heat he threw off so he would have no infrared signature. The breathing mask drew air in from outside, cold and dry, but stored his exhaled air in cooling chambers before expelling it, again to keep him as cold as the world around him. Outside the suit was Kevlar covered with a layer of a nanofiber that tuned itself to the ambient light around it, grey in twilight and black in darkness; the headpiece’s visor, sealed away from his breathing mask to avoid fogging, was an insulated crystal display that gave him a digital feed in IR as well as the visible spectrum. He looked like the Michelin Man with it all on, but in this terrain he was nearly invisible to conventional or IR sight.
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