“Did you have to pick the coldest place the gods have made for your escape?” growled Rulf. “And the coldest time of year?”
“I had a better plan.” Sumael sounded less than delighted with the total ruin of it, too. “But it sunk with the South Wind.”
“Plans must sometimes bend with circumstance,” said Jaud.
“Bend?” growled Rulf. “This one’s snapped in pieces.”
“Over there.” Yarvi pointed with the frozen stub of his finger. Up ahead a stunted tree clawed at the night, each branch picked out on top in white, underneath in the faintest flickering of orange. He hardly dared believe his own eyes but he started towards it as fast as he could even so, half walking, half crawling, all desperate. At that moment, even a dream of fire seemed better than nothing.
“Wait!” hissed Sumael, “we don’t know who—”
“We don’t care,” said Rulf, floundering past.
The fire had been built in a hollow beneath that twisted tree where there was some shelter from the wind, the fragments of a broken crate carefully arranged, the smallest flame flickering in their midst. Hunched over it, coaxing it into life with his smoking breath, was Ankran.
Had Yarvi made the choice of who to save Ankran’s name would have been far from the first on his lips. But freeing Rulf and Jaud meant freeing their oarmate, and Yarvi would have thrown himself at Odem’s feet right then had he offered warmth. He flopped onto his knees, holding his shaking hands towards the flames.
Jaud planted his fists on his hips. “You made it, then.”
“Some turds float,” said Rulf.
Ankran only rubbed at his crooked nose. “If my stench bothers you, you could find your own fire.”
A hatchet slid silently from Sumael’s sleeve, the dangling blade gleaming. “I like this one.”
The ex-storekeeper shrugged. “Then far be it from me to turn the desperate away. Welcome one and all to my mansion!”
Sumael had already shinned up the frozen rocks to the tree and neatly lopped off a branch. Now she wedged it in the ground so its twigs were towards the fire. She snapped her fingers at Yarvi. “Get your clothes off.”
“Romance yet survives!” said Rulf, fluttering his lashes at the sky.
Sumael ignored him. “Wet clothes will kill you in the night sure as any enemy.”
Now the cold was loosening its grip Yarvi was feeling his bruises—every muscle aching and his head sore and his neck throbbing from Trigg’s hands. Even had he wanted to, he lacked the strength to object. He peeled off his soaked clothes, some of the hems already stiff with ice, and huddled as close to the fire as he dared, near naked but for collar and chain.
Rulf dumped an old fleece around his shuddering shoulders. “I’m lending that,” he said, “not giving it.”
“Much appreciated … either way,” Yarvi forced through his chattering teeth as he watched Sumael hang his clothes facing the flames, where they began to gently steam.
“What if someone sees the light?” Jaud was asking, frowning back the way they had come.
“If you’d rather freeze, sit in the darkness. You’ll find plenty of it.” Ankran tried to prod more warmth from the fire with a twig. “For my part I suspect the fight, then the ship aflame, then the ship sinking, will have dampened their appetite for a search.”
“As long as we’re well gone before dawn,” said Rulf.
“Gone where?” asked Sumael, squatting beside Yarvi.
East was the obvious choice. East along the coast the way the South Wind had brought them. But west was where Yarvi needed to go. West to Vansterland. West to Gettland. West to Odem, and vengeance, and the sooner the better. He glanced around this motley fellowship, all huddled over the life-giving flames, faces pinched and strange in its light, wondering how he could possibly convince them to go the wrong way.
“East of course,” said Rulf. “How long ago did we pass that trading post?”
Sumael spent a moment reckoning on her fingers. “On foot we might make it in three days.”
“It’ll be hard going.” Rulf scrubbed with his nails at his stubbly chin. “Damn hard going, and—”
“I’ll be going west,” said Ankran, bent jaw clenched and his eyes fixed on the flames.
There was silence as they all looked at him. “West to where?” asked Jaud.
“Thorlby.”
Yarvi could only raise his brows at help from such an unexpected quarter. Rulf burst out laughing. “Thank you for giving me one good chuckle before I die, Master Ankran! Our ex-storekeeper’s walking to Gettland.”
“To Vansterland. I’ll try to find a ship to take me from there.”
Rulf chuckled again. “So you’re only going to walk to Vulsgard? And how long a stroll do you reckon that to be, oh navigator?”
“At least a month on foot.” Sumael said it so quickly she already must have worked it out.
“A month of this!” Rulf waved his broad hand towards the snow-covered emptiness they had struggled through already, and Yarvi had to admit the thought was by no means a heartening one. “With what gear?”
“I have a shield.” Jaud swung it off his back and knocked at it with one fist. A large, round shield of rough wood with an iron boss. “I thought to use it as a float.”
“And a generous guard lent me his bow.” Rulf plucked at the string as if it was a harp. “But with no arrows it plays no music. Does anyone have a tent? Extra clothes? Blankets? Sleds?” Silence, aside from the moaning of the chill wind just outside their firelit hollow. “Then the very best of luck, Master Ankran! It’s been my pleasure to row beside you but I fear our ways must part. The rest of us will be going east.”
“What fool put you in charge?”
They all spun about as the voice croaked from the darkness, and Nothing was there. He was streaked with soot as well as his usual dirt, rags and hair and beard all blackened. He had Trigg’s boots on, and Trigg’s jacket, blood crusting one shoulder. Over the other he carried a great roll of singed sailcloth, and cradled in one arm, like a babe against the freezing night, the sword with which Yarvi had seen him kill six men.
He dropped cross-legged beside the fire as though it was a meeting long arranged and gave a satisfied sigh as he held his palms to the flames. “West to Gettland sounds well. We will be followed.”
“Trigg?” asked Sumael.
“You need give no more thought to our overseer. My debt to him is paid. But between me and Shadikshirram the account is still open.” Nothing licked a finger and polished a blemish from the blade of his sword. “We must put her far behind us.”
“Us?” snapped Sumael, and Yarvi noticed that, just behind her back, the hatchet was ready. “You’re inviting yourself along?”
The firelight shifted in Nothing’s mad eyes. “Unless someone else wants to invite me?”
Yarvi held his hands up between them and smoothed the way for Father Peace. “We need all the help we can get. What’s your name, even?”
Nothing stared off into the night sky as though the answer might be written in the stars. “I have had three names … perhaps four … but all of them brought me bad luck. I would hate them to bring you bad luck too. If you must talk to me, Nothing will do, but I am no great talker. Shadikshirram will be coming, and she will expect us to go east.”
“Because going west is madness!” Rulf rounded on Sumael. “Tell them!”
She pressed her scarred lips together and narrowed her eyes at the fire. “East is quicker. East is easier.”
“There!” barked Rulf, slapping his thigh.
“I’m going west,” said Sumael.
“Eh?”
“East there will be people. Anyone who got off the ship. Then that trading post was crawling with slavers.”
“And Vansterland isn’t?” asked Rulf. “Because we always did good business in Inglings there.”
“East is dangerous,” said Sumael.
“West is nothing but weeks of wilderness!”
“There
is forest. Forest might mean fuel. Might mean food. East has the trading post, but then? Only the fens and the wild, hundreds of miles of it. West is Vansterland. West is civilization. West is … maybe … ships that go further west. That go home.”
“Home.” Jaud stared into the flames as though he glimpsed his village there, and that well with the sweetest water in the world.
“We head inland,” said Sumael, “out of sight of any ships. Then west.”
Rulf flung up his hands. “How will you find your way out in the snows? You’ll end up walking in circles!”
Sumael slid a leather package from inside her coat, unrolled it to show her eyeglass and instruments. “I’ll find my way, old man, don’t worry on that score. I can’t say I much look forward to either route. Especially in this company. But west might be the better chance.”
“Might be?”
Sumael shrugged. “Sometimes, might be is the best you can hope for.”
“Three for west.” Ankran had the first smile Yarvi had seen him give since Shadikshirram knocked his two front teeth out. “What about you, big man?”
“Hmm.” Jaud propped his chin thoughtfully on one fist and looked about the circle. “Huh.” He carefully eyed each one of them, and ended on Sumael’s instruments. “Heh.” He shrugged his heavy shoulders, and took a long breath. “There is no man I would rather have beside me in a fight, Rulf. But when it comes to getting from a place to a place … I trust Sumael. I go west. If you will have me.”
“You can hold your shield over me when it snows,” said Sumael.
“You’re all bloody mad!” Rulf slapped down a heavy hand on Yarvi’s shoulder. “Looks like it’s just you and me, Yorv.”
“I’m very flattered by the offer …” Yarvi slipped from under Rulf’s hand and his fleece together and back into his shirt, not altogether dry but close enough. “But the first thing we have to do is stick together. Stick together or die apart.” That and his chair, and his oath, and his vengeance all waited for him in Gettland, and the longer they waited, the less his chance of ever claiming them. “We’ll all be going west.” And Yarvi gave Rulf a grin, and slapped him on the shoulder with his good hand. “I prayed for younger help but I’ll take what I can get.”
“Gods!” Rulf pressed at his temples with his heels of his hands. “We’ll all regret this.”
“It can keep the rest of my regrets company.” Nothing stared off into the darkness as though he saw a ghostly host beyond the firelight. “There are enough of them.”
20.
FREEDOM
Sumael led the way at a furious pace and they all walked her course with as little question as they had rowed it. Through a broken land of black rock and white snow they floundered, where stunted trees had all been swept into tortured shapes by the wind, bowing mournfully toward the sea.
“How many steps to Vansterland?” called Rulf.
Sumael checked her instruments, lips moving with silent sums, peered up at the smudge of Mother Sun in the iron sky, and headed on without answering.
Few in the citadel of Thorlby would have reckoned it a treasure, but Nothing’s roll of mildewed sailcloth became their most valued possession. With the care of pirates dividing a stolen hoard they tore it up between them and wound it under their clothes, around their frozen heads and hands, stuffed their boots with it. Half, Jaud carried with him so they could huddle beneath it when night came. No doubt it would scarcely be warmer than the utter darkness outside, but they knew they would be grateful for that little.
That little would be the difference between life and death.
They took turns breaking new ground, Jaud forging ahead without complaint, Rulf venting curses on the snow as though it was an old enemy, Ankran struggling on with arms hugged around himself, Nothing with head up and sword clutched tight, as though he fancied he was made from steel himself and no weather could chill or warm him, even when in spite of Yarvi’s prayers snow began to settle across the shoulders of his stolen jacket.
“Bloody wonderful,” muttered Rulf at the sky.
“It works for us,” said Ankran. “Covers our tracks, keeps us hidden. With luck our old mistress will think we froze out here.”
“Without luck we will,” muttered Yarvi.
“No one cares either way,” said Rulf. “No one’s mad enough to follow us here.”
“Ha!” barked Nothing. “Shadikshirram is too mad to do anything else.” And he tossed the end of his heavy chain over his shoulder like a scarf and cut that conversation down as dead as he had the South Wind’s guards.
Yarvi frowned back the way they had come, their tracks snaking off into the gray distance. He wondered when Shadikshirram would find the wreck of her ship. Then he wondered what she would do when she did. Then he swallowed, and floundered after the others just as fast as he could.
At midday, Mother Sun no higher than Jaud’s shoulder at her feeble zenith, their long shadows struggling after them across the white, they paused to huddle in a hollow.
“Food,” said Sumael, giving voice to every thought among them.
No one was keen to volunteer. They all knew food was worth more than gold out here. It was Ankran who surprised them all by first reaching into his furs and bringing out a packet of salted fish.
He shrugged. “I hate fish.”
“The man who used to starve us now feeds us,” said Rulf. “Who says there’s no justice?” He came up with a few biscuits well past their best, if they had ever had one. Sumael followed that with two dried loaves.
Yarvi could only spread his empty palms and try to smile. “I’m humbled … by your generosity … ?”
Ankran rubbed gently at his crooked nose. “It warms me just a little to see you humbled. How about you two?”
Jaud shrugged. “I had little time to prepare.”
Nothing held up his sword. “I brought the knife.”
They all considered their meager larder, scarcely enough for one decent meal for the six of them.
“I suppose I’d better be mother,” said Sumael.
Yarvi sat, slavering like his father’s dogs waiting for scraps, while she rationed out six fearsomely equal and awfully tiny shares of bread. Rulf swallowed his in two bites, then watched as Ankran chewed every crumb a hundred times with eyes closed in ecstasy.
“Is that all we eat?”
Sumael wrapped up the precious bundle again, jaw tight, and pushed it into her shirt without speaking.
“I miss Trigg,” said Rulf, mournfully.
Sumael would have made a fine minister. She had been thinking clearly enough on her way off the ship to grab two of Shadikshirram’s abandoned wine bottles, and now they packed them with snow and took turns to carry them inside their clothes. Yarvi soon learned only to sip the results, since unwrapping to piss in that cold was an act of heroism that earned grunted congratulations from the others, all the more heartfelt since everyone knew sooner or later they would have to present their own nethers to the searing wind.
For all it felt like a month of torture the day was short, and as evening came the heavens blazed with stars, glittering swirls and burning trails, bright as the eyes of the gods. Sumael pointed out strange constellations, for every one of which she had a name—the Bald Weaver, the Crooked Way, Stranger-Come-Knocking, the Eater of Dreams—and as she spoke them steaming into the dark she smiled, a happiness in her voice that he had never heard from her before, and made him smile too.
“How many steps to Vansterland, now?” he asked.
“Some.” She looked back to the horizon, happiness swiftly snuffed out, and upped the pace.
He toiled on after her. “I haven’t thanked you.”
“You can do it when we don’t end up a pair of frozen corpses.”
“Since I might not get that chance … thank you. You could’ve let Trigg kill me.”
“If I’d taken a moment to think about it, I would have.”
He could hardly complain at that. He wondered what he would have done
if she had been the one Trigg throttled, and did not like the answer. “I’m glad you didn’t think, then.”
There was a long pause, with just the crunching of their boots in the snow. Then he saw her frown over her shoulder at him, and away. “So am I.”
THE SECOND DAY THEY JOKED to keep their spirits up.
“You’re being stingy with the stores again, Ankran! Pass back the roast pig!” And they laughed.
“I’ll race you to Vulsgard! Last one through the gate gets sold to pay for ale!” And they chuckled.
“I hope Shadikshirram brings some wine when she comes for us.” Not so much as a smile.
When they slithered from their wretched tent at dawn on the third day, if you could call that watery gloom a dawn, they were all grumbling.
“I do not care for this old blunderer in front,” croaked Nothing, after tripping over Rulf’s heels for a third time.
“I’m not sure I like this madman’s sword at my back,” snapped Rulf over his shoulder.
“You could have it through your back instead.”
“How many years between you and still you act like children?” Yarvi pushed his way into step between them. “We need to help each other or the winter will kill us all.”
Faintly, just ahead, he heard Sumael say, “More than likely it will kill us all anyway.”
He did not disagree.
By the fourth day, the freezing fog lying over the white land like a shroud, they were silent. Just a grunt now as one or another stumbled, just a grunt as one or another helped them up and on to nowhere. Six silent figures in the great emptiness, in the great, cold void, each struggling under their own burden of chill misery, under their own chafing thrall-collar and ever heavier chain, each with their own pain, and hunger, and fear.
At first Yarvi thought about the men drowned on the ship. How many dead? The planks cracking and the sea pouring in. So that he could save himself? The slaves straining at their chains for one more gasp before Mother Sea dragged them down, down, down.
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