Why did you follow me? She motioned.
He watched her for a moment, then nodded, his hand responding, I was told.
Even if she had not understood his meaning, further questions would have to wait. After smoothing the snow somewhat with their fur cloaks, they skirted just inside the tree line to the village, leaving only the ghosts of themselves behind, and the body of one they had claimed for his ancestors.
“The ghosts of Heiland far outnumber the living,” her nursemaid had told Adria, long before she had been beyond the walls of Windberth, city and citadel of her childhood. “They turn wild, wander the deepest and oldest forests, an’ wait for the time they’ll return to claim their own...”
As she grew, she would hear many such sayings before she would test the truth of them herself. From the towers of her childhood, she had watched the tree line beneath the mountains recede, watched farms and villages swell, watched Knights with violet banners ride into the wild and return with stories of the enemy in the wood, and with trophies of war which betokened far more than mere ghosts.
Still, in the mining towns at the feet of stone and frost mountains, in the villages of fresh-cleared pine groves, and even within the walls of the great cities of Windberth and Highreach, rumors of strange shadows and avenging phantoms haunted the bedtime stories of the Aeman of Heiland, the people who had been joined into a new kingdom under her father’s banner not so many years before. Stories of ghosts, of savages, and of the great War of Scars, stories of the time before, and whispers of what may lay ahead were all shared by Kaye, Adria’s nursemaid.
“Heiland was settled by a wild people, the Aeman in their longships, with spear and ax and shield,” Kaye told her. “And there were older and wilder people here, even then. There was war in Heiland as soon as the first of us stomped ashore with fire an’ anger, and we’re still a little wild to this day. Your father brought them all to order, child… but don’t you think it will last. There’s too many ghosts about for us all to sleep too well at night for too long.”
But it was the Wilding who captured Adria’s attention the most. She knew Aeman mothers put their children to sleep with the warning that if they made a sound or left their beds in the night, the Wilding Ghosts would climb in through their window and snatch them away to some dark place forever.
Hunters and travelers made signs of warding when walking alone between the hamlets and villages. And even the Sisters, who counted themselves beyond simple superstition, and whose god bore a secret name known only to them — even they warned against that which lay beyond town walls and village hedgerows, in the darkest places in the deepest wilderness. They spoke of beings summoned from the Otherworld by the Aesidhe savages, to tempt and destroy humanity.
The Wilding Ghosts were not dead, it was said, and not alive. They came only at night, left no tracks or sign of passing, and they took whatever they wanted. Farmers would awaken to find sheep missing or grain taken, guards would find prisoners or weapons vanished — and yet, as the stories went, no man had ever seen one of these ghosts, for the Wilding were ever vigilant, and ever invisible, and without Aeman mercy.
They lived by the moon, as did all ghosts of Heiland.
I have become a ghost of my own childhood.
Mateko was at a distance now, just at the edge of her sight, and she soon found another Runner at a similar distance on her left. They kept pace, covering their own tracks, and Adria knew the others were now in a full circle around the little Aeman hamlet that had grown up at the edge of field and forest.
Dell, she believed it was called. It had not yet existed on her father’s maps in the years before she had left.
As the circle tightened, she knew that other guards were laid to rest, either carried to the Afterlife or Otherworld, simply sleeping, or else left with the memory of dark faces painted in winter white.
So very like ghosts… at least in seasons of snow.
They were called Metehãloweye, the Runners of the Aesidhe who lived in wilder Heiland. They were people of the earth and air, of swiftness and silence. And though they were not invisible, they could pass unseen and unheard to all but the most watchful Aeman, and their eyes missed little that was of interest to them. They were sometimes thieves, often warriors, and, when the need arose, the Runners were indeed without mercy.
Mercy is a gift allowed those who hunt, not those who are hunted, the Aesidhe believed. They had learned this as prey to their enemy, from those times when the Runners had moved too slowly, from so many pillars of smoke rising from Aesidhe camps through the forest canopy into sun and stars. All by the hands and fire of the Aeman, of the Knights, of her own father.
Adria was one of only two among them who had no need to whiten her face for winter raids, though tonight she wished she had worn some mask, that her Aeman face had not shone so well in highest moonlight.
She did not have to kill another that night, but a part of her, a very small part of her, would soon dream that the village of Dell had burned, like another not long before. That the Aeman were slain or fled, that Runner scouts from Windberth would not return with their news, that her path would remain unchanged and the moon forever still in winter skies.
I live by the moon, Adria nodded. As do all the ghosts of Heiland.
The wisest among them had many sayings, and Adria had always loved a particular one: Chushezogmeya-ogu at’e p’o pugalo choachowela. Washemame zhechetegma p’o zhepushepi choachowela. The true ghosts are not the spirit divided from the body, but fear divided from memory.
She had seen such a fear in the eyes of many she had faced — that blue-white light, pale and dwindling, a ghost breath in winter sky.
I have become a story to frighten children, something men tell their daughters to bring them home before dark.
Those who had seen her before falling, those she had left alive, would never know her name, much less her mind or spirit — they would only remember the ghost in the wild who had brought down a man twice her size and doubly armed. A last careless memory.
But this one, Adria thought as she gathered what she could from one corner of the storehouse of Dell, and again as they returned to add the tree-bound bundle to the rest of their takings. This one was different... The light in his eyes was recognition, even as it died.
She played out the moment many times as she and the Runners returned to camp. She and Mateko were paired, following paths in a pattern which could not easily be followed, and well-separated from the other Runners in case they somehow were.
They bore as much food and clothing as they could and still walk without leaving obvious signs. They could never take as much as they needed, and always had to make difficult choices of what to leave behind.
Dell would be little harmed. The Aeman seemed always to have far more than they needed, and the Runners overlooked those who did not.
The recognition in the eyes of the guard, the indistinct form in the corner of her vision… Despite the sharpness of her senses and the clarity of her memory, Adria could not remember what she had seen — the awakening from a dream, a violet born in snow.
Spring is a time for tricksters, she thought, Both awakenings and distractions.
For the Aeman of Heiland, spring was a season of life returning. Snow melt softened the roads to mud, and horseshoes clopped along and wagons rolled all the more. Gentler birds returned to nest and forage among the starlings, jays, and crows. Serfs birthed their livestock, planted their early crops — the oats, beans, and peas for September’s hopeful harvest — and searched for wild swarms of honeybees among the trees. The foresters of the border estates thinned the trees for wooden walls, for Knights’ arrows and spears.
Spring held more mixed feelings for the Aesidhe, and more so with each new cycle of the seasons. Snow and ice brought its scarcity of food, but even as the bears gorged on salmon and honey and slept the moons away, the Knights holed up inside their
wooden forts, monasteries, and the barracks of the border towns, their vigilance too hushed to repel the Wilding Ghosts of winter.
For the Aesidhe, who had once roamed from the shores of the Northland Sea to the Hollow Path beyond the Violet West, spring meant smoke. It meant ruins where Aesidhe camps and villages once lay, the sowing of Aeman fields where hunting grounds once thrived. It meant walls and ashes.
The snows of the foothills shallowed as the rivers and streams grew swift and swollen. The sound they made was called Wasutaináhe Poetoya, the Song of the Last Sleep, and was said to be the voices of those who had not survived the winter, carried by the spirit helpers of the water as a final farewell to their People.
With the help of the Runners, few among the tribes now starved, but with the refugees from the summer before came sickness, and many who were not strong succumbed to fever the Mechushegiya could not always drive from their spirit and body with Holy songs and Medicine.
Their weakness becomes the strength of the rivers, Adria thought. The voice of all our ancestors. The People may face a long retreat from this land, but their voices will remain, ever wandering from the mountains to the sea.
So many careless memories, Adria thought. It is not only my face that is reflecting moonlight. Something is changing besides the season.
I am changing.
A Careless Memory
In the Hunting Season, the Runners rarely camped two nights in the same place, and their camp was small and easily returned to the wild the next morning. Only half of them rested at once. To be on watch or on the hunt for several days was never unusual, and growing accustomed to this had been among Adria’s greatest challenges.
The Aesidhe word for sleep, taináhe, meant “place of night visions.” But there was another sleep, a sibling to taináhe — tainábe, the “waking dreams” of daylight, the deep imagination. Adria had learned that tainábe, like its deeper sister sleep, could return some measure of restfulness — a relaxation of the body, a freeing of the mind, and a freshening of the spirit. She had also learned that for some, like the Mechushegiya, tainábe could serve a greater purpose than rest.
Still, Adria would welcome sleep when it came, as she welcomed the company of the camp. Tonight, the Runners made Zhehomikhhoa Poehhe, an end camp, when the Hunters gathered at the end of a season to take stock of what was gained and what was lost.
They were now far enough away from the Aeman borderland to light a fire, to give warmth for the thawing of hands and the cooking of fresh elk, to give thanks to the heavens and the earth for their bounty, and to show the ancestors that they were still alive.
As was custom for Aesidhe, they spoke a prayer and made a small offering of their food. Though each would mourn in their own way in private, there was a moment of contemplation for those enemies who had been slain, and Adria thought again of the guard who had known her.
The Runners traded whatever information they had gathered on the Hunt, and counted and sorted through all that had been brought. They would take the most precious goods with them in the morning. The rest they would wrap for storage, bury, and conceal near the remnants of the camp.
There were dozens of these hidden camps still nestled in the forests and hills at the edges of Aeman civilization. Should even more troubled times come, every Runner knew just where to go, just where to find the things they’d always left behind, buried just deep enough to ignore the thaw of summer and the icing of winter.
Seventeen, Adria counted, pleased she could remember all those since she had joined them. She doubted anyone else had actually numbered them — Preinon, perhaps.
The Aesidhe didn’t think of numbers in the same way as the Aeman. After the number of fingers on their hands, they had no exact names for them. There were several words for “many”, but they were not specific, even overlapped — and meant different amounts when applied to different subjects. A hundred years and a hundred soldiers were not really comparable to the Aesidhe. In Aeman, Adria’s first tongue, the word for a hundred years was actually borrowed from the Somanan word for a hundred soldiers.
That’s a telling difference, she thought as she spread out enough straw to keep the moisture from penetrating her bedroll too deeply. She spoke four languages, and knew a little of a fifth. She had been educated by several tutors of the Sisterhood, as well as by tribespersons and Mechushegiya of the Aesidhe. She had always been proud of her erudition, as well as her excellence in physical pursuits, though both had been difficult to pursue to the extent she wished.
In particular, there had been many who frowned at the daughter of the King practicing the staff, sword and shield, and the bow. Those who had objected in her presence had often done so only after losing a contest to her better archery, or after having their nose bloodied by her wooden practice weapon. In the end, it had always led to their embarrassment rather than hers.
Adria had been a proud, spoiled child when she had walked into the woods, in part because she had been able to better any her age who had stood against her — until the Aesidhe.
Even now, after having trained among them, hunted among them — after having been named by them as a child, as a woman, and as a Hunter — she still often felt a little clumsy, strange, or even stupid. She could still sometimes seem like a child, whose three other languages were not really needed, whose horsemanship and knowledge of Kelmantian royalty was irrelevant, and whose concentration, it seemed now, could be broken by a moment of…
…of daydreaming?
Adria glanced around the camp as her hand idly stirred up the straw. Many of the others talked or joked as they finished their camp duties for the night, but there seemed a circle around her which no one would break. The fire had melted the snow for some distance, but she still felt a chill. Mateko must have told them of my failure, and they are ashamed.
On top of the straw she unrolled what served as her bedroll — layers of elk fur and scavenged Aeman or bartered Moresidhe wool, laced together like a cocoon.
She heard Preinon approaching. Even though he was the largest among the Runners, he moved as silently as any when he chose to, and it comforted Adria to realize that she could still distinguish his footsteps from the others. She was at least that aware.
He hunched down near her as she smoothed out the skins. She turned to sit atop her bedding and wrapped her arms around her knees, pulling her fur cloak tight around her. This near the flames, half of her warmed quickly as the other half felt even colder in contrast. Beside and a little behind her, Preinon watched her or the fire or nothing at all.
It occurred to her just then that she had set her bedroll too close to the fire. It was an unspoken rule among the Runners that the elder among them, and those who had served them best during the day, were to take the best places by the fire. No one would reprimand her, but still she felt it was too worthy a place for the night. Were she to move now, though, she would only draw attention, and feel even more ashamed, especially with Preinon crouched in her path.
She realized that he was probably waiting for her to make some sign of recognition before speaking, so she stirred a little and turned to meet his eyes. He acknowledged her with a small nod and a slight smile before turning his face back to the fire.
“It is a thoughtful night,” he offered in his low and gentle Aesidhe. He might have spoken of her, or himself, or of something else entirely. She shrugged.
“The others are silent with me,” Adria said, in the honesty he and the Aesidhe expected. “There is nothing left but my thoughts.”
“And what are your thoughts?” he urged after a moment.
“I made a great mistake.” Adria blinked and shook her head at the fire. Mateko surely would have told him what had happened, or what he had seen, at least. But Preinon was asking what had happened within her.
“It was Tainábe,” she sighed. “And yet, it was not as it should be. I was not focused. I hesitated.”
Preinon nodded. “When it is not focused, the mind wanders to the past or to the future. Even the smallest lapse of attention shows a division. A mind divided.”
Adria sighed. “Yes, I know this. A Hunter acts without fear or regret, in perfect unison with nature. We do not choose life or death.… we do not accept or deny. We do not forgive or ask for forgiveness…”
She left the words of earlier lessons unfinished, and drew a long breath to still herself, enjoying the strangeness of the warm air, even a little bitter smoke.
She calmed.
And Preinon patiently watched her measure herself, chastise herself.
So petulant, like a child, Adria frowned, digging her chin into the nape of her cloak. I use words without care. This only proved his own words, of course, and made her realize that it had not just been one moment of hesitation. She had continued to hesitate, and her actions now showed just how divided she had become.
A careless memory. A mind divided.
Upon reflection, she also realized that she had distracted more easily lately, even before tonight. A year ago she might still have blamed it on the coming of spring, the freshness of life waiting to be awakened. But, still… there was something strange on the wind, a greater change than stirring birds and trees ready to bud, and even a dawning season of war, the long retreat that was not put aside at Palmill.
Because of me. Because of him.
“Did you send Mateko?” Adria asked, though she knew he had not. For all his love, he would not have coddled her so. Runners, for all their ability, nonetheless might fail, might fall. Failure, when survived, strengthened the survivor. Failure, when not survived, strengthened them all.
Even me… she frowned. I might have been mourned this night, instead of a guardsman.
Preinon only shook his head slowly, still without judgment.
Heir of Scars I: Parts 1-8 Page 2