He raised his eyebrows, but kept his thoughts to himself. He seemed to become much more alert and energetic once she began her tour of kisses, and more vigorous still when she pressed her naked body against his. But as she took her pleasures from him, she began to see more fractured images and hear segments of lost speech. They started to merge together.
A lurchcaw howled, and a blizzard was settling into the mountains. It was a heavy storm, the sort she’d seen so many times before; the sort that would only become worse and could last for days. She knew that a couler, a sort of cave made of ice, lay within the peaks ahead. Neri struck out for it, tearing through the snow at a speed few others could match, pushing herself hard against the frozen winds. Her goggles were beginning to steam up, and her scarf was making it difficult to breathe. She tore them off as she moved, and her lungs screamed at the sudden shock of cold air. But she was close now. Ten more forceful strides pushed her to the base of the peaks, and then she found it; the entrance to the couler. The insides were blue and glistening, but silent and entirely windless. She’d made it in good time.
Neri trotted to the back of the couler, where she had bagged and hidden firewood in previous years. A quick dig through the ice was all that was required to exhume it, and soon her hands were warmed by tiny flames. A lurchcaw sounded its call again. It had moved closer. No doubt the animal sought shelter from the storm just as she did. Neri withdrew her sabre to place it at her right side, just in case, and listened closely to the noises from outside. The principal sound was, of course, the howling of the winds. Beneath that were the occasional snow falls and avalanches from around the valley, and deeper still were the regular thumps of footfalls. Footfalls.
She sprang to her feet, sabre in hand, and watched the entrance intently. The steps were ever nearer. The lurchcaw roared again. Fluff, fluff, fluff, fluff, fluff, went the rapid footsteps. A moving, grey form took shape amongst the rushing snows, and it darkened as it drew closer. But then it did something quite unexpected. The shape resolved into two separate figures: one was a man, and the other…
The man was wearing entirely black, and he ran well, which probably meant he was an imperial ranger. Neri was quite tempted to leave him to his fate, except that the lurchcaw was chasing him into her hiding place. She raised her sabre above her head, and waited for them to come into striking distance. No less than three yards from the couler’s entrance, the man stumbled, and snapping forward, the lurchcaw clamped its smiling jaws onto his chest. His entire left arm and shoulder became entirely subsumed. He cried out in a strange mixture of fury and pain, but Neri had seen enough. She leapt out, turned the sabre so that she held the blade in her palm, swung and brought the hilt down hard on the lurchcaw’s muzzle.
The animal roared again, but released its prize amid the howl.
“Go!” she shouted at it, “Leave this place.”
The lurchcaw lowered its vast head, turned and trotted off down the slope.
When she hauled the wounded and unconscious ranger into the cave she found herself faced with two options: either she sewed him up and made him her prisoner, or she left him to bleed to death in front of her eyes. She decided upon the first, and set about removing his snow goggles, mask and coat. The black-haired man she found underneath was far more pleasing than she had expected. He was almost… pretty. Neri shook her head at her own stupidity and began pulling the white, triangular teeth out of his shoulder. Numerous stitches were required to tie off each puncture, but the end result was not bad at all. She fixed a few more holes on his back, and then rolled him onto his own cloak. His eyes snapped open.
Neri was ready with her dagger faster than an icicle could drop, pressing it into the side of his neck. But he was just as fast. Ice-cold metal teased her jaw. Minutes passed in which neither of them moved.
“You saved my life,” he said at last.
“A thank you would be nice.”
A smile touched his lips, and he withdrew his blade. “Thank you.”
A ranger would never have lowered his defence when faced with an armed, rebel fighter. Whatever he was, he was definitely not a ranger. She removed her own dagger and sat back on her heels. “You’re welcome.”
“What is a Šona woman doing with knives?”
“What is an imperial soldier doing in The Snowlands?”
He frowned and dropped his oddly coloured eyes to his chest. “This is good work.”
“You are a very lucky man.” She stood and tended to the fire, building it up to give off more heat.
“I suppose we are trapped here.”
She nodded. “It’ll last at least another day, if not longer.”
“Then I suggest the rebels and the empire come to a temporary truce.”
Neri crouched and examined him from her slight distance. He was hardly in a good position to bargain, not with his injuries as deep as they were. Then again, she’d seen some of the older imperial fighters continue with their slashes and strikes with half an arm or leg missing. “I could kill you in a second.”
“And you’ve had plenty of opportunity, but have not done so.”
Idiot man. “Do you know a soldier named Grailer?”
He blinked. “Of course. Wait… you were there, weren’t you? Is that what these swords are about? Šona revenge?”
“They had no weapons. I do.”
The man nodded slowly. “It was wrong. Do you have a name, Šona?”
“I am a ranger!” she spat. How could he admit it was wrong and continue to fight for such people? “Call me Mia, if you must.” A name long-since dispensed with.
He smiled and held out a hand. “Kyron.”
Against her better judgement, she took it and shook it, but moved her gaze rapidly back to the fire.
“Is it true, what they say about Šona women?”
Neri narrowed her eyes as she glanced over her shoulder at him. “Yes.” A slow smile crept onto her lips. “Would you like me to show you?”
“Ah... well, I suppose there’s a whole day to-” He fell silent as she sat in his lap. This would be far more rewarding for her than for him, and for once her partner would be fewer than twenty years her senior. She kissed him softly on his lips, and down his neck, and his chest. His body felt very warm against the cold, very warm indeed.
Afterwards they lay in silence; the only noise was the howling of the wind and the crunch of distant avalanches.
“I didn’t expect it to be like that.”
Neri laughed. “Then what did you expect?”
“I don’t know… just not… that.” He propped himself on one elbow to look at her, his brows drawn together. “You’re perfect. The perfect woman.” There was not a hint of humour in his voice.
A sudden urge to stab him in the throat took her, but she fought it off and gave him a grimace instead. “And what do you say to all the other women?”
“I say few things to them; I said few things to them.”
“So it was just a ‘hello’, ‘let’s go to bed’ and ‘thank you’?”
Kyron laughed. “There were a few to get through.”
“What?! Were they on a machine or are you really that magnetic to them?”
“No.” He tried to move onto his front, but finding that uncomfortable, slid back onto his side. “I come from a… an important family. Heirs are vital. When I was twenty my fa- my family decided that I was not meeting expectations, and that a new heir had to be generated. They rounded up every woman of consequence in the area, and made it my duty to… you know. Doesn’t sound so bad, does it, sleeping with a different woman each night? But it became a chore I dreaded. Frequently the women were in tears at their predicament. It wasn’t what they wanted, or they were afraid. Many times I simply lay in bed with them until the morning.”
“And did you make your heirs for your family?”
“Not one.”
“No children?”
“No. You can consider yourself safe.”
She wasn’t entirely sure how
to respond. Reassure him that children were a curse? Or commiserate in his failure? She settled for another question instead. “And are you on good terms with your family now?”
He laughed. “No.”
“That is not your fault. I did something terrible to mine.” She told him of her guilt, her desire to see the snows, and the things Grailer had made her do.
“You cannot take responsibility for that,” he said when she had finished. “And pursuing Grailer will not fix it.”
“But it will finish it. I need to kill him.”
Another moment of silence ensued in which they stared at the blue ceilings or huddled together for warmth. At length he said, “You shouted at the lurchcaw to make it leave.”
Neri shrugged. “Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t.”
He raised his eyebrows and adjusted his cloak over them. It wasn’t long before they were love making again, and through the night, and again the following morning. The storm raged on outside, so they filled their time with more talk of their past actions or mistakes. Neri confessed to her affairs with the five leaders of the rebellion’s forces, making Kyron’s eyes widen with each infamous name she mentioned, and in turn he spoke of the battles he had won against her comrades. And after that they slept together three more times, and again, and the next morning the storm broke. She was almost sad to see the blue skies and calm winds again.
“I suppose this means our truce is at an end.”
He pulled his shirt on and smiled. “Will you at least let me out of the cave first?”
“If I ever see you on the battlefield, I shall not raise my sword at you.” It was a solemn promise.
He nodded. “Likewise.” Once he’d finished dressing he leaned forward to kiss her. His lips were soft amongst the roughness of his stubble. It was so tempting to ask for a little more. “There is one thing I can offer you in return for saving me,” he said, stroking her hair. “Grailer may not miss his eye, but he is utterly deaf in his left ear. Perhaps you can use it when you finally meet him.”
That was new. “I’ll be sure to do so.”
He nodded soberly, and led her into the brilliant sunlight that skittered off the slope. His eyes… “And if you tell anyone of our meeting, don’t mention the colour of my eyes.”
A distant howl from the mountains of the east stole her attention for an instant, but when she looked back he was gone. Vanished.
Neri knew the mountainside well, and that there were no places to hide. Had she become snow-mad? She ran back to the couler, but all she found of his presence was a pile of lurchcaw teeth.
“Neri? Are you alright?”
Her eyes locked onto his. Green. As green as the leaves in the woodland around them. She moved her gaze down to his chest, and the dashed scar that ran across it: teeth marks. “You named your daughter Mia.”
“Yes.”
“The name I gave you when we met.”
He took a deep breath. “Yes.”
“That was the name my parents gave me.” The name she had cast aside with the rest of herŠona identity.
“I know.”
“Wouldn’t her mother have objected? You gave her child the name of an old lover! A woman you claim she did not even like!” she pushed herself off him and set about gathering her clothes.
“Neri, wait.”
“How could you do that? Did you think it was fine because she was dead and couldn’t complain? Was that it? Choose between the names of your dead girlfriends?”
“I thought the name was beautiful.”
“I met you when I was twenty-four. Mia must have already been a year old! What name did she have then? And how could her mother have known me if she was already dead?” She pulled on her trousers and stomped out from the shade of the tree.
“Neri! Listen! There’s more you don’t understand! There are things you haven’t remembered yet!” Noises of his stumbling followed her.
“I don’t need you to tell me what to think!” She strode farther into the undergrowth, but the sounds of his movements had stopped. It was no good, and she had no desire to run out of there alone again. She hissed at the sky, turning around to face him. He was gone. “Not again! Not here! Bastard!” Neri marched back the way she had come, but very nearly tripped over his body on the way. She kicked him to check if he was alive. Valyar did not respond. “Cada’shan!” she yelled at the trees, then looking around in embarrassment. No one was there to hear, surely?
A quick check of his pulse and breathing demonstrated that he was indeed living, though no amount of shaking would wake him. Sighing heavily, she hooked her arms under his and dragged him back to the ancient tree. It felt like something she had done too many times before. The fullness of night passed before he opened his eyes again, though she was tempted to force them closed once more with a quick slap.
“You’re still here,” he croaked.
“I don’t have much of a choice.”
Valyar pushed himself to sit up. “Do you want me to tell you how it happened? What you did for my daughter? Or do you want to remember it yourself?”
“Just take me to the desert.”
He nodded resignedly and threw on the last of his things. “Take my hand.”
She grasped it lightly, and they were in the blackness once more. The darkness turned to white, and finally to red. The same smells she had not known for the best part of nineteen years flooded into her head, reminding her of sand hoppers and water blooms and skylarks. It was blessedly hot there. She studied the swept landscape with old, old eyes. “We’re not far. Can you take me beyond those hills?”
“I need to rest, Neri.”
“Then we’ll walk.” She started off along the slip-sliding dust with lengthened strides.
“Stop.” He grabbed her hand again, and they shifted directly into the next valley. The transition was sudden and peculiar, to say the least. A groan came from her left; Valyar was clutching his head, his face wrinkled in pain.
“The house is here somewhere, or whatever remains of it. You can rest here while I look for it.”
He made a grumbling sort of sound and curled up on the hot sand. That spot would not be good for him for more than twenty minutes.
Neri hurriedly pulled out her goggles and typed the decoder frequency in, followed by the signal colour. Her father’s words echoed around her head as she put on the eyewear. With the humming screen as her new vision, the red sands turned to olive greens and blacks, but no emitter was visible. Not that she was surprised; though the empire was unlikely to have ventured this far into the desert, the bleeper would have been left unmaintained for far too long.
She kept the goggles on, however, and bounded down to the bottom of the slope. There she walked the line of the rocks that marked the edge of something she could not recall, and the wilted remains of kesflowers brushed at her legs. She broke into a run across the open and flat ground beyond, savouring the easy feel of the hard-packed surface beneath her feet. Then she hit the sinking sands again. She remembered… that meant the house was to her left! Neri turned, and something white flashed in on the goggle screen. It was brief, weak and fuzzy, but it could only have been one thing. She hurtled towards it, tearing off the visor in excitement, and promptly tripped over an exposed, rusted pipe. “Ow!” She cursed several times, though managed to avoid the use of her usual swear word.
Neri rolled onto her side and looked up at the mound before her. Though it merged perfectly with the sands around it, it did look rather unnatural. Of course, it wasn’t the entirety of the house; most of that was underground. This was just the entrance. She stood and limped towards the hump, then feeling around its base for the edge of the cover. A smile spread across her face as she realised it was intact, still in the same position as her parents had left it all those years ago. She heaved at it, and pulled, and then yanked hard. The best part of a tonne of sand shifted from its surface and slunk its way onto the ground around her. She knew she ought to have dug the stuff away, but time wa
s precious and her excitement was too high. She heaved at the tarpaulin again, and it started to give way. Slowly, little by little, a dark opening became a crawl hole, and the crawl hole turned into a doorway. It was dark beyond. Death black. She jumped as another heap of sand fell to the floor beside her. Neri caught her breath, and stepped carefully into the entrance. “Hello?” No sound came back to her. Not that she was expecting anything. Nothing but ghosts, anyway.
There were no such things as ghosts!
She placed her goggles back over her eyes, and switched them to night vision. The monochrome, peeled paint of the hallway and steps became clear, together with some scratched numbers and child’s scribblings. It was so much smaller than she had recalled. Neri descended farther into the cool, dry air of the stairwell, down and down into the chamber at the bottom. She stood there in silence for a moment, not even daring to breathe for fear of making noise. Nothing moved, but there was a strange smell. It was a bit like dried wheat.
She could remember exactly whose room each door led to, and decided to work through them anticlockwise. The first door creaked loudly as she pushed it on its rusted hinges, against a floor covered by several inches of dust and fine sand. But it led to her strong father’s room. Daddy Muscles. She grinned at the name, but the smile faded as she gazed at his empty room. The bed, also covered in dust and sand, was still made and his things had been neatly stored. Very little of his personality was on display, other than his fastidiousness. It looked so… empty. She wandered into the next room: Leno and Kara’s. Two fragile-looking beds lay at either wall, and stacked cupboards stuffed to the brim with clothing filled a third wall. There were pictures and drawings hanging all around Kara’s bed. Neri tried to examine them, but her night vision would not pick out the details of the images. In truth, it looked as if everything had been washed clean by unexpected rainfall.
Leno’s skill had been in her mathematics studies, and all around her bed were piles of books and crisped, dried papers. What would they have become if they had lived? Perhaps Leno would have been an engineer somewhere, and Kara would have painted portraits for the Šona elite. Both would have been in their thirties by now.
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