by Paul Stewart
Hands on hips, the winter caller looked around him. His gaze fell upon the pile of dead wyrmelings. He grabbed first one, then another, and another, and used the warm pliant corpses to plug up the gaps till the sweet smell of burning wood was extinguished and the smoke ceased.
He climbed to his feet.
Where there was a chimney, there had to be a hearth, safe and hidden and warming the unsuspecting winter sleepers huddled around it. Judging by the angle of the chimney, the den lay somewhere on the other side of the mountain.
Somewhere close.
Five
At the sound of rock grinding on rock, Micah looked up. Frozen air lapped at his face and turned his bare forearms to gooseflesh. He gulped at the crisp clean air, aware suddenly of how fetid and stale the atmosphere in the den was by comparison.
He was sitting on his sackmattress, his legs folded up beneath him, surrounded by woodworking tools, scraps of leather, spools of twine and gut-thread. He had his hackdagger in one hand, which he was using to cut two small holes in the square of lakewyrmeskin leather he held in the other. The catapult he was working on lay in his lap.
The grinding noise repeated. Micah leaned to one side and peered through the low opening that led from the sleeping chamber to the store, to see Eli pushing the rockslab that sealed the entrance to the winter den back into place.
Micah set the catapult aside, climbed to his feet and ducked through the narrow gap to the adjacent chamber. ‘How was it, Eli?’ he asked.
‘Cold,’ said Eli, brushing dry snow from his shoulders and lowering his hood. Droplets of water glistened at the ends of his hair, his eyebrows, the tip of his nose. He hugged his arms vigorously to himself a couple times, then pulled off his gloves, his jacket, his scarf and hat, and hung them up beside the entrance. ‘Coldest it’s been. And blowing a blizzard.’
Micah nodded. If it had not been cold and blowing a blizzard, Eli would never have ventured outside in the first place, for it was only in such adverse conditions that he dared leave the safety of the den. The thick snow falling reduced the risk of his being seen and ensured that any tracks he made would vanish without trace.
‘Can’t have footprints leading up to the entrance if we want to say hid,’ Eli had explained when Micah had enquired the first time he’d left the den. ‘Might as well leave a welcome mat outside.’
Of course, best would have been if they could remain holed up without ever having to set foot outside. But if the winter den was not to end up a midden or cesspool, that was not possible. It took two weeks – three, if they were sparing with the sandsalt – for the shallow pit in the corner of the small chamber to fill. After that, it began to stink. Every four weeks or so, when it could not be put off any longer, and when the windhowl and winterchill indicated that the weather was at its meanest, Eli and Micah would shovel the contents of the pit into the waste buckets, and Eli would carry them outside and empty them into the deep snow, well away from the den’s entrance.
‘Did you see … anything?’ Thrace asked.
She stood by the entrance, just as she always did when Eli went outside. Every time the rockslab slid open, she would be there, poking her head tentatively outside and scanning the sky eagerly, until Eli pushed the slab shut behind him. Then, she’d wait by the entrance for his return, her arms wrapped round her slender body, teeth chattering and eyes downcast.
Sometimes Micah thought that, despite the repeated disappointments, Thrace lived for these moments, hoping against hope that each time might prove different. Once again, as the rockslab slid open, she had failed to see what she was looking for, though her hope persisted that Eli might have.
But he had not.
‘Nothing and no one,’ he told her, shaking his head. ‘And it’s unlikely we shall for a while to come. Fullwinter’s truly upon us now. The wind’s changed direction and the snow’s already started to drift. Keeps up like this, we’re going to be buried deep this time tomorrow.’
The kingirl turned away.
Eli’s face registered his concern for her. ‘A mug of yarrow tea would not come amiss, Thrace,’ he said.
But Thrace did not appear to hear him.
‘I’ll get some,’ Micah offered.
Eli shrugged. ‘I was simply trying to occupy her some,’ he told Micah quietly. ‘Happen I can make a mug of yarrow tea myself. You want one, lad?’
Micah nodded. ‘Surely.’
Eli poured water into the boiling pot and set it over the fire, which he poked at until flames were lapping at the base of blackened copper. He looked round.
‘How’s that catapult of yours coming along?’
‘Slowly,’ said Micah. ‘I’m taking my time over it, Eli. Just as you advised.’
‘It’s good to have something to distract your thoughts,’ Eli observed, glancing at the entrance to the narrow sleeping chamber into which Thrace had retreated. ‘Specially now, with the den sealed up till the thaw.’
Making the catapult had proven to be every bit as time-consuming as Eli had planned it would, and Micah certainly appreciated having something to take his mind off the cramped and repetitive nature of life in the winter den.
On the first day of his endeavour, Micah had sanded the wishbone, smoothing away its rough ridges and imperfections. The second day he spent carving a grip into the handle with his hackdagger, and two notches, one at the top of each of the twin prongs of the Y-shaped wishbone. Then on the third day, while the bone was hardening off in the hot ashes of the fire, he had made ready the other materials. He’d tested the elasticity of the various pelts that Eli had stored, before deciding a mistwyrme pelt would best suit his purpose. He’d cut two long strips from the soft tensible leather. Then he’d cut out a square of stout lakewyrme skin which, attached to the drawstring of the catapult, would form the pouch from which pebbles and shards might be fired.
Slowly and carefully, sleeves rolled up to his elbows and the tip of his tongue protruding from the corner of his mouth, Micah stitched, knotted and fixed everything in place. He held the catapult up.
It sure did look the part, and Micah could barely resist trying it out there and then. But there was still one last thing to do. He reached for the wooden spool of gut-thread which lay beside him on the sackmattress.
Micah remembered Eli trading for it at the scrimshaw den. How long ago that now seemed, he mused as he measured out four pieces of equal length and cut them off.
It had been the rain season back then, not fullwinter, and he and Eli had been little more than strangers. At first, the cragclimber had seemed closed off and distant, and there had been times when Micah had feared Eli was about to strike out on his own and leave him to fend for himself in the high country.
But he had not, and Micah was grateful to him for that. He knew he could never have survived on his own, for the wyrmeweald was a harsh and unforgiving wilderness, so different from the plains he’d left behind. It was a place where adventurers came – some to hunt and trap, others to thieve and swindle; all to exploit the land that had once belonged only to wyrmekind. Three seasons earlier, Micah had made the arduous journey to the high country, his head filled with fanciful notions of making his fortune, and he would have died in the attempt had Eli Halfwinter not taken him under his wing. And as they’d shared the trail, Micah had begun to get to know the cragclimber better. He’d learned when to speak and when to allow the silence between them to go undisturbed; to watch and learn, and to respect the ways of the harsh weald. Just like Eli did.
Micah pushed his thick hair away from his eyes, then bound each of the knots tightly with the thread, fixing them permanently into place.
‘Looks just about ready to me,’ came Eli’s voice, and Micah looked up to see the cragclimber standing over him.
Micah grinned. ‘Looks that way to me too.’
Eli hunkered down next to Micah and took the catapult out
of his hands. He inspected it closely, but gave nothing away. Then, leaning back, he reached into a pocket and pulled out a handful of pebbles that were white and spherical.
‘You mind if I try it out?’ he asked.
‘Go ahead,’ said Micah.
Eli loaded one of the pebbles into the leather pouch and raised the catapult to his eye. Slowly, he pulled back on the drawstring.
Micah watched, his eyes wide and heart quickening at his chest. Was the bone hardened enough? Would the bands hold?
‘See that mark there,’ said Eli.
Micah looked at the black star-shaped mark high up on the wall opposite, and nodded.
Eli opened his fingers. The bands snapped back and the pebble whistled across the underground chamber. With a sharp crack, it struck the centre of the star, denting the sandstone before thudding down onto the floor of the cave.
Eli nodded slowly, sagely. He handed the catapult back to Micah, who held his breath.
‘That is one excellent piece of workmanship,’ he told him.
‘You think I did a good job?’ said Micah, scarcely daring to take in Eli’s praise.
‘I could not have done it better myself,’ Eli confessed. He got to his feet. ‘Gather up them stones and come with me.’
‘You left, right or either-handed?’ Eli asked.
‘Right-handed,’ said Micah.
‘’S what I thought,’ said Eli frowning. ‘Then you’d do better to hold it in your left hand and pull back the drawstring with your right. You’ll get more power that way. And, any luck,’ he added, ‘a jot more accuracy.’
They were standing close to the back wall of the main chamber. An oily smell of frying lingered in the air from their supper, though the fire had since burned down to shimmering embers. Thrace sat folded up on a wyrmepelt by a side wall, the hood of her soulskin pulled up over her head and her arms wrapped around her raised legs. Opposite them was the rockslab at the entrance to the den, upon which Eli had drawn a charcoal target; three concentric rings, with a blacked-in circle at their centre.
Micah swapped the catapult from one hand to the other and pulled the pouch back till the drawstring bands went taut. Eli was right, he realized.
The cragclimber observed him critically. ‘Keep your grip loose,’ he told him.
Micah relaxed his hold a fraction. The pouch slipped quickly forward between his knuckles, taking with it the pebble, which shot off through the air, across the chamber and thudded against the slab of rock. Thrace looked up. Micah ran over to inspect his shot.
‘I hit the target!’ he exclaimed, fingering the small indentation between the first and second rings.
‘Pretty good for a first attempt,’ said Eli, nodding.
‘Beginner’s luck, I reckon,’ said Micah modestly, though inside he was glowing with triumph.
‘Natural talent, I’d say,’ said Eli. ‘Now, all you got to do is hone it.’
‘Which means practice,’ said Micah.
‘Which means practice,’ Eli repeated.
Micah returned to the opposite wall. He shot pebble after pebble at the target, then gathered them all up and started again.
Eli sat behind him on one of the wyrmeskin pelts, his back against the wall. He’d collected together all the knives they possessed: cooking and hunting knives, straight-edged and serrated – even Micah’s hackdagger – and they lay before him in a line. One by one, he was sharpening the blades. The soft hiss of metal sliding over the block of whetstone accompanied the hollow thud of the pebbles as they struck the rock.
Every so often, Eli would look up and make some comment or other. ‘Keep your elbow in.’ Or, ‘Keep your head still after you’ve fired.’ And every once in a while, ‘Excellent shot, lad.’
Micah would blush each time the cragclimber complimented him, but even he recognized he was improving. With each freshly collected bunch of pebbles, the average number of bull’s-eyes was going up. More than that, as he kept on practising, something began to change. Something inside of him. With his stance and movement coming automatic, he could concentrate on the flight of the pebble itself, till each time he let one fly, it was like he was willing it to the target.
The charcoal circle Eli had drawn got pitted and flaked away as, time and again, he struck the very centre. And each time it happened, instead of being surprised, Micah was overwhelmed with a growing understanding that he was in control.
He glanced over his shoulder, and saw that Thrace was looking at him intently, her grey eyes glittering from the shadow beneath her hood. She climbed to her feet in one graceful movement, crossed the floor of the cave and plucked the catapult from his grasp. Then, with a single swift movement, she turned, pulling the drawstring back as she did so, and sent a pebble thudding into the very centre of the target. Turning back to Micah, she let the catapult clatter to the floor, and returned to the wyrmepelt. Micah felt his face burning.
‘Time to hunker down, I reckon,’ said Eli soothingly, and Micah heard the sound of a cork being pulled from a liquor bottle.
Three small pewter beakers stood in a line, each one filled to the brim with green liquor. Eli picked one of them up and took it across to Thrace. Micah heard the two of them exchange soft words and saw Thrace shake her head, but Eli bent forward and set the beaker down next to her anyway. Then he returned and gave Micah his, and the two of them clinked metal on metal, and Micah downed the liquor in one. He wiped his lips on the back of his hand.
‘It’s a good batch,’ Eli commented, having downed his own beaker. ‘Triple distilled.’ He smacked his lips. ‘Fiery, yet smooth.’
Micah nodded. ‘Like burning velvet,’ he said, and added bashfully, ‘if that don’t sound too fanciful.’
Eli smiled. ‘It’s as good a description as I’ve heard. And wintersleep would be a deal harder without it.’
Micah held out his beaker for a refill, but the cragclimber shook his head.
‘Moderation, lad,’ he said, his pale blue eyes twinkling. ‘It should soothe the senses, not destroy them.’
Micah smiled ruefully as he felt the fire fade to a warm glow in his belly. He’d helped Eli in the making of the liquor, with the cragclimber talking him through the process. It was he who’d mixed up a mash of barleygrain, water and yeast, who’d skimmed it off as it was fermenting, then poured it into the still.
Eli was proud of his still. He had made it himself. The stillpot was like an onion in appearance, and had been welded together from beaten panels of copper. At the top of the pot, there jutted an elbow-shaped pipe that tapered towards its end, and to which twenty foot of copper piping – that Eli called ‘the serpent’ – was attached. With the still on the blazing fire and the copper pipe immersed in a barrel of ice-cold water beside it, it didn’t take long before a thin colourless liquid began to drip from the end of the pipe, and was collected in a flagon.
Micah had kept the woodfire stoked beneath the still and used bellows to make it blaze. Inside the pot, the wash bubbled and alcohol vapours rose, then condensed into liquid as they passed down the chilled coiling belly of the serpent. Micah recalled the warm, almost medicinal smells that had filled the air, so strong it felt like drawing breath might prove intoxicating. A whole day it had taken for the still to boil empty and the flagon to fill, and another two for it to be distilled twice more.
‘You want I should give you a hand finishing them knives off?’ Micah asked.
Eli went to reply, then glanced across at the hourglass. The sand had all but trickled through. ‘We’ll see to them tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Give us something to do,’ he added. ‘Right now, I aim to watch the fire burn down some, then turn in.’
He settled himself down on a thick wyrmepelt next to the glowing embers. Micah sat down opposite him, and watched the blackened stubs of wood flush orange then blue, and the wisps of smoke that seemed to hover around the base of t
he metal chimney.
This was Micah’s favourite time of day – when the hourglass had almost reached the end of its second turning, when the chores were done and they were all about to turn in. It was when Eli dimmed the lamp and handed out the beakers of liquor, and they took turns to talk as the embers glowed and the firelight gradually faded, until they were little more than disembodied voices in the darkness.
Thrace crossed the cavern and sat down beside Micah, her face pensive. ‘I didn’t mean to … to disrespect that wyrmebone you’ve been fashioning,’ she told him.
‘That’s all right.’ Micah sighed. ‘You’re a better shot than me, Thrace, that’s the simple fact of it. Spite of all the practice I put in.’
‘Thrace is kin, lad. Such things come natural to her.’ The cragclimber shifted his position and his boot heel knocked a burned-down log. Sparks flew up, orange and darting, then disappeared. ‘But I tell you this, Micah lad, that slingshot is a real fine weapon, and fashioned by your own hand. With patience. Precision. I’m proud of you.’
Micah smiled to himself. The dark silence settled back down, then fractured.
‘I miss my kinlance. It made me feel safe …’ Thrace’s voice was low, reflective, but Micah could detect the tautness of loss. Of recrimination. ‘I miss the air, the sky, and the high places where I felt safe. This … this cramped dark cave, with its stench of filth, our own filth – it’s suffocating me …’
‘Then talk about your life, Thrace. Your kin ways. Remember the clouds. The highstacks and the valley country.’ The cragclimber’s voice was touched with a yearning of its own. ‘Travel back to them open places in your thoughts … Trust me, it’ll help!’
The kingirl’s soulskin creaked, and Micah knew she had raised her hood.
‘I cannot.’
‘Drink the liquor,’ said Micah. ‘It’ll help you sleep.’
Thrace eyed the proffered beaker mistrustfully for a moment, then seized it and drank the pungent liquid down in two long gulps. She tossed the vessel aside.