Snowbrother

by S. M. Stirling

  She turned and prodded the huddled Minztan with her toe. "You'd better be worth the trouble."

  Then Shkai'ra turned her attention to the newly gathered booty. "So, a good haul," Maihu heard her say. "Enough metal to give every killer in Stonefort twenty new arrowheads; ten good swords; all this caravan stuff… and as much woodwork and inlay, furs and suchlike as we care to carry back. The highsmith there gave us good redes."

  "Ahi-a, for a village this small, quite a bit." She finished the last of the sausage and belched. "Hoi, Minztana, if you've such wealth, why did you come this close to the steppe?"

  "We … were crowded in the deep forest, Chiefkin," Maihu said slowly, looking down at the table that ran the length of the thirty-meter room. It was inlaid with bright flower patterns in colored glass and stone; Maihu could have told the legends behind each one, -nothing without meaning. I must be clever, she thought. Answer with truth, but not all of it.

  Eh'rik grunted skeptically. "The Minztan ranges are big enough, and they live even more scattered than we do," he said.

  Shkai'ra sighed. It was exasperating, how even intelligent ones like Eh'rik did not see.

  "What do the Minztans buy at the fairs?" she said.

  "Buy?" he asked, surprised. "Wool. Hides, flax, grain, salt meat… sssssa, yes."

  "Right. Piss-poor land, sour and rocky, so it takes more hectares to support a person. Hmmmm?" She glanced at Maihu.

  "Yes, Chiefkin," she replied. The politics of the New Way were a result of that basic pressure. This savage was almost perceptive. She would have to be very cautious.

  "After a while, the fields have to rest, and we live as much from trade and hunting and crafts as farming; if we're too crowded it injures the halassia, the Harmony. Cutting more trees than grow, or hunting more beasts than are born. We had wealth, but it couldn't buy more than the land will yield."

  Shkai'ra nodded. "But stupid, to try expanding into land we claim. We don't live here, can't, not enough open space and grass… but we need the timber and the trapping."

  "You raid farther east anyway!" Maihu snapped. Then added, appalled at her outburst, "Chiefkin."

  To her surprise, both the Kommanza snickered. "Of course, when we want to. But on land we claim we'll kill anyone who sets foot." Shkai'ra turned to the war-master. "How many of the prisoners are worth slaving?"

  "Hmmmm, about a hundred and fifty, Chiefkin, including walking wounded and hale older children. They'll all bring good prices when the caravans come after snowmelt. We could swap a few with Ardkeep and Highbanner before then, depending on what skills they have. Best you take a look at them, Chiefkin."

  She shrugged, stuffing more of the food into her mouth with her thumbs and swallowing with a grunt before buckling her coat. Not awaiting a fight, she had donned the fleece-lined trousers and long hooded coat that were standard winter wear. The coat was of snow-tiger tanned cloth-supple, with embroidery at the cuff and hem, and carved walrus-ivory latches down the front. Her belt bore the weapons no freeborn Kommanza was ever willingly without; she had added a bone flute and many-armed lucksprite. As one of the godborn ofzar class, the buckle of her belt was of silver, shaped in the holy sunburst.

  Maihu followed silently as they left, willing herself to the invisibility of obedience. Outside the wind bit chill but clean, and there was astonishingly little damage evident: the bodies had been cleared away, after the ritual scalping that prevented haunts. A few of the conquerors were about, seeing to the horses, that being a task too important and sacred for untrained slaves. Most of the rest would be indoors, resting or working on their gear; others would be ranging in a broad loose-meshed net of scouts around the settlement.

  Shkai'ra looked back at her, then offered a hunk of bread. "Hungry?" she said.

  Maihu hesitated, then accepted and began tearing at it eagerly. She had not eaten for a full day—and it was her own grain, after all.

  "Ever seen the steppe, Minztana?" Shkai'ra asked.

  "Yes, Chiefkin: Ardkeep for the trade fairs, and Highbanner to arrange ransoms."

  "Good," she said. "Ever studied chickens?"

  Warily, Maihu shook her head. "You should. In every flock, there's a lord chicken who can peck everybody—then a number two who can peck everybody but the first, and only be pecked by the first, and so on down to the last one. That one gets it from everyone and can't fight back.

  "Now, normally a smith like you would be kinfast common property. Stonefort works like a chicken herd: the High Senior kicks somebody in the arse and the low chicken gets it seventeen times over at tenth remove. You're low chicken."

  Maihu could not hold back a slight shudder. The outlander's tone was light, but Maihu's imagination pictured the reality behind the words. She braced herself and turned her head aside to conceal the flare of anger. When the Summoning is made, she thought, we'll see who is put in fear.

  "So," Shkai'ra continued smoothly, "if I were to keep you as part of my loot share, and your tools and—" she glanced sidelong at her captive—"perhaps such of your kin as live, instead of letting them be sold off, you'd do better. I guard my own, and know better than to expect good work without proper care. Here, have some more bread."

  Maihu breathed deeply, struggling for control. "You'll feed me well, on grain I worked to sow and reap? Chiefkin?"

  The westerner stared blankly, then blinked as the meaning of the words filtered through. "It isn't yours if you haven't the strength to ward it," she said in the calm, matter-of-fact tone used for truths so obvious they are seldom spoken. She might have been observing that horses had four legs.

  How can they know the world's Harmony? the Minztan thought. She expects—she actually expects—me to fall down in gratitude, after what's happened.

  It brought home how alien these folk were, in their inward selves. The Minztan Way was to keep the Circle, taking nothing from the world without return, killing only to live and with sorrow. The Kommanz had been bred to war for generations, since the fabled Before, against the cannibal nomads from the high plains who would burn their crops, against southrons and Minztans, and in their own blood feuds. War was their life, an avocation, an obsession, religion and sport and pastime, woven into the fabric of their being.

  Savages, she thought fiercely: steal, kill, burn, rape, it's all a filthy game to them.

  Shkai'ra stopped and shot out a hand to grab the Minztan by her jacket.

  "Zaik-uz, Minztana, mok ah-zhivut to-a junnah-na!" she laughed in her own tongue, then dropped into the forest language: "You folk don't get much practice in hiding your thoughts, nia? Did I have a face that naked, I'd not have lived to grow warrior braids."

  It was true enough; there was little need or point in concealment among Minztans, when the ability to see with the Inner Eye was so common. Maihu sensed a remorseless willingness to kill, oddly impersonal, without real anger.

  Shkai'ra drew her knife and brought the point up to rest under the other's chin, pressing steadily until her head was craned back to its limit and a single drop of blood appeared to freeze on the etched steel.

  "Now, tell me, what use are you to me if I've to worry about you knifing me every time I turn my back? I need you bh'raikkun, or dead." The word meant tame, domesticated.

  Maihu looked about wildly. Nearby there were none but a work party of Minztans loading a row of long slender steppe sleds under the eye of a Kommanz warrior. Shamed, they refused to see her, fusing their eyes to the task; the guard leaned on his lance and watched her with idle curiosity, breath puffing white under the faceshadowing helm. A painted skull glimmered chalk-pale on the shiny black leather of his breastplate, drooling redly from fanged teeth. A string of fresh scalps clattered frozen at his belt.

  "Go ahead," Shkai'ra purred. "Convince me I shouldn't slit you open right now, for the pleasure of seeing your blood run out on the snow. Or why I shouldn't starve and beat you into meekness."

  Maihu forced her body to relax and dropped her eyes. The knifepoint slid away. "The Chiefki
n wishes," she whispered softly, crouching in the snow and reaching out to touch the other's knee: the gesture of submission, among the plainsfolk.

  "Good," Shkai'ra said. Pulling the Minztan erect she spoke again, slowly, their faces scant centimeters apart. "Don't try to fight me, ever, Minztana. Or tell yourself you'd rather die, because we both know the truth." She brushed chapped lips against her captive's mouth. "Remember that, and we'll suit well. And learn our ways quickly, because you'll spend whatever days are left you among us."

  They came to the barn where the Minztan captives had been herded. The guards rose from their heel-squats and saluted, raising weapons or bowing over crossed hands.

  "Any trouble, Bannerleader?" Shkai'ra asked.

  The man grinned wolfishly. "From these skinned rabbits?" he asked with contempt. A long-hafted war-hammer was slung from his wrist, the stone head clotted with blood and brains. "A few tried to scamper: we pinned one and brained another. Quiet as mice, the rest of them."

  He turned to the door and shouted: "Hoi, in there, the Chief comes!" The doors swung open. A body was nailed to the boards by knives through its wrists and ankles. It still twitched and whined thinly.

  Maihu retched once and forced herself to speak. "Chiefkin?" Shkai'ra looked around at the touch on her arm. "Please… could you…" She glanced at the figure. It was Sharli. She remembered how skillful he had been with his trapline. Shkai'ra thought for a moment, pursed her lips, and signed to the officer. He turned on one heel, the warhammer flung out in a sweeping circle. There was a thick, wet crunch and the crucified Minztan was still.

  Within, the huddled captives flinched and gripped each other more closely for the animal comfort of nearness. There were enough of them to keep the barn too warm for frostbite, with straw and blankets; also enough to raise a powerful stench, given their captors' ideas of cleanliness. The uninjured shuffled to their feet, clutching at friends, kinmates, children in their forlornness.

  "Line up!" barked the red-haired Bannerleader. "Not a bad lot, Chiefkin, but sullen."

  "Ahi-a, can't expect them to like us, Kh'ait," she replied reasonably, spreading her hands. She reached out and gripped Maihu's neck. "Now, Maihu Jonnah's-kin highsmith, show me your usefulness. The name and skills of each."

  4

  Ingrained habit saved the trappers. They had been out walking the woods, not merely for what they might gather, but to know them, that Newstead might grow into this stretch of earth. For that it was needful they spend much time traveling about, sampling, exploring game trails, noting the types and manner of plant growth, perhaps waiting and meditating by this oddly shaped tree, that solitary rock, for the vision that would tell them how this particular guardian-spirit aspect of the infinite Harmony wished to be known and served.

  It had been some weeks since they had left. With sleeping bags, firelighters, the experience of generation upon generation, even the winter woods were home. Any Minztan could survive there, and specialists such as they could be safe, even comfortable. Still, their kinhalls beckoned and their pace increased as they came within the last few kaelm of the village. But eyes, ears, skins were sensitized; the holistic sense-awareness field that their way of life demanded scanned about ceaselessly.

  The elder braked to a halt and thrust her ski poles upright in the snow before she crouched.

  "Horse!" she hissed in surprise. Her companion moved up beside her, stared wordlessly, then began to backtrack while she cast about.

  He returned. "One only," he said. "Big, and shod." Even durcret horseshoes were expensive, and their people rarely bothered to so equip the few ponies they kept. He held up a few russet hairs that had caught in the bark of a tree. "No forest pony, this!"

  She nodded and pointed ahead. The trail passed beneath a leaning pine: several of the lower branches had been cut. Hacked, from the look of them, and with something knife-sharp. Her mind computed angles and heights.

  "Kommanz," she said, touching the sheared end of one limb, muttering a silent apology for the needless destruction. "That was done with a saber."

  Their eyes met, shared a great sickness. "We should head for Garnetseat?" he said.

  "No. We check first. This could be the screen for a raiding part looping around to strike from the east."

  "Do you really think so?"

  "No."

  This was climax forest, huge trees and more open space beneath them than was comfortable. But hunters learned the arts of concealment perforce, and they slipped through the scout mesh with silent contempt for all clumsy hearthdwellers. It was bad luck and a shift in the wind that carried their scent to the hounds that the raiders had brought along, and unlike their masters those could outpace humans on skis. The westerners followed, but their quarry led the way through ground too barren to carry the tall trees, and therefore thick with undergrowth, tangled and spiny. They tried to ride into that as well, by sheer instinct: shrieked curses and crackling and neighing told of how well that fared. Luckily for the Minztans there were only a few of the tracker dogs. Huge gaunt beasts with the blood of the giant man-high steppe wolves in them, they were trained to kill as well as follow.

  For a moment combat ramped through the bushes, while the raiders sent shafts plunging blindly into the melee before thinking to dismount and force their way through branch and thorn. By then it was too late: the Minztan crossbows had spoken, and the trappers were away on a swift zigzag route through ground chosen for low visibility and deep snow.

  Hours later they lay up in a thicket and watched one of the pursuers ride by. The horse came at a slow trot, plunging through drifts with a heaving leap; the rider sat relaxed, bobbing and swaying with awesome, unconscious skill, bow in his hands and eyes scanning restlessly. He was close, close enough for them to see the patterns enameled on his armor, the ribbons wound in his forked beard, to smell horse and leather and sweat. They lay very still with their breathing controlled to shallowness; Kommanza from the border villages hunted the forest and had some woodcraft. The Kommanza stopped, backed his horse. It was restless, whickering; his eyes swept methodically over the bushes.

  The elder Minztan drew a deep, controlled breath. Fingers drew a tiny pattern in the snow before her eyes; with a straining effort no less real for the stillness of her body, she sent her consciousness plunging through it into the totality of the woods around. She did not attempt to spin illusion, or turn the hunter's mind; such was work for an Adept. Instead, she pulled the patters of the wilderness around her, made it fit like a seamless web that left no telltale detail to disrupt and catch the eye. The plains warrior shook his head, muttered, heeled his mount into motion. The Minztan could feel his unease. But no steppedweller was at home in the deep woods; the strangeness played on their nerves, until the true hunter's sense was lost as imagination put a lurker behind every piece of cover.

  After he passed, the young man raised his crossbow, It was an easy shot, and the armor would be no protection this close. His companion touched his arm and shook her head. Seconds later a whistle call came from their left, faint but clear in a rising-falling four-note pattern. The man repeated it through the bone whistle in his mouth, the sound loud and piercing through the trees. And faint and far, to their right, another echoed it. Just then another horse came up: the squadleader riding the line of her section. Passing at a canter, she shouted at the lone scout and plunged on into the woods.

  Silence fell. When it was safe the younger Minztan whispered: "Did you hear that one"—he nodded toward where the noncom had disappeared "—coming?"

  She shook her head. "They scout in a grid, like a diamond-mesh fishnet. If you'd killed that one they'd have spotted the gap and had a troop on the way here in minutes; each one keeps in touch with those little flutes."

  Bitterly, she pounded her fist into the snow. "Why didn't they get the stockade finished? With that and the pigeons, the Seeker's people in Garnetseat could have come up, we would have swamped them with numbers. Fools! Why did the New Way give us aid in goods and food, if
not for that?"

  "Can we do anything?"

  "Perhaps. Perhaps. It depends on how soon the raiders leave, how fast they travel, how quickly we can alert the relief. They won't be counting on our having a force ready to move on short notice. But we didn't think so many could come into the woods in winter, not the full hundred we have seen."

  She bit at the knuckle of her mitten. "Of course, if they go the right way, It could come, if the right people survived the first attack."

  She looked to where the westering sun threw red light on the treetops. That was a huge flock of ifs, though. "We'll wait for full night, then travel. Best we try to get some sleep; you nap first. Safe enough, now their first line is past us."

  Curiosity prompted him as he curled into the snow. "What did she say, the one who went by?"

  For the first time that day the woman smiled, hard and sour. "She said, 'Be careful, they may try to turn in the dark.' "

  Taimi was glad of the work that morning, and gladder still of the enforced silence. Hours went by as he helped empty the village granaries, heaving wicker baskets of oats and rye from the bams to fill a long train of slender steppe sleds. The task was not heavy; there were plenty of hands, and the Kommanz were in no hurry. It was near noon before he began to notice detail: grain dust coating the inside of nose and throat, hunger, the number of empty sacks in the sleds the enemy had brought… It was a moment before the meaning of that struck him. His folk fed the stock they kept over winter on hay, not having breadstuff to spare. But the Kommanza had brought hundreds of war-horses and draft beasts many days' journey into a land where the winter snows hid only pine needles and weeds. The animals had traveled fast and kept in condition on grain, and the raiders had been so confident of victory that they had brought only enough to last until the village was reached; that was what had enabled them to strike so fast and deep in the cold season. It was a gesture of purest contempt.

  Anger was healing, gave him energy for the oatmeal porridge and cheese dished out to the working detail. He took the opportunity to glance around and take stock. Much of the clearing was covered by the horse herd, bounded by leather ropes slung from poles; no more was needed, with mounts as well trained as these. Taimi remembered hearing that every Kommanza of the freeholding yeoman-farmer kinfasts had as many as half a dozen war mounts. Surely they had not brought so many here, but there were still more animals than he had ever seen in one spot before.