Snowbrother

by S. M. Stirling

  The cat stalked over and rumbled, patting at Maihu's knee for emphasis. The Minztan poured him a cup of the milk; he crouched, sniffed dubiously, and began to lap, purring absentmindedly as she scratched behind the nightblack ears.

  "We are alike, Dh'ingun and I," Shkai'ra said, stretching out a long arm for a bowl of the same milk. She sipped, then looked up in surprise. "What did you put in this stuff?" she asked.

  "Sugar, vanilla, a little cinnamon."

  "Not bad," Shkai'ra said, tossing off the rest of the heated drink. She propped her shoulders against the side of the sled. "Glitch! I could've sworn we were settling in for a stretch of clear cold when I turned in…"

  She looked sidelong at the Minztan. "Shaman says your folk are dogging our track, that they've got a weatherworker with them, bringing the snow down on us."

  "The porridge is ready, Chiefkin," Maihu said, tensing.

  She spooned out a bowl, then flipped the backbacon onto the buttered bread, added some pickled tomatoes, and closed it to make a sandwich. Shkai'ra ate with noisy relish, belched, wiped her mouth on the back of her hand and her hands on the blanket.

  "Nia," she said easily. "That wizard, she'll learn it takes more than a little bad weather to stop a Granfor warband on its way home."

  Maihu relaxed, and winced at the grease stains on the wool. This would all be easier, she thought, if only they weren't so filthy.

  "Feed yourself when I've gone," the Kommanza said. "It'll be another hour before we break trail, and I wouldn't want you to go into a decline for want of eating, not when it turns out you can cook along with everything else."

  She braced the soles of her feet together, pressed the knees down on the furs, and touched her chin to her heels.

  "That's easier than it would have been if I'd been under the stars in a skinbag," she said, beginning a series of exercises. Dh'ingun flopped down beside her, waiting patiently for her to finish before rolling onto his back. She began rubbing him absently.

  "Cat's the only creature under sky that can look dignified while having its stomach scratched," she said, and sighed. "It's a pity I'll have to give this up once we're back home; it makes a winter journey a real pleasure. But the killers would think me soft and useless did I keep it. Perhaps one of the Valley traders will give a price for it, and then a bag in the open will have to content me."

  "Well, I hadn't noticed it made me less hardy, Chiefkin," Maihu said. "And I slept out often enough on hunting trips without feeling weakened."

  "Yes, but who owns who?" Shkai'ra replied, beginning to pull on her clothes.

  "Why do you Kommanza cultivate hardship, though?" the Minztan asked with genuine curiosity. She doubted that they did it to improve their souls by ordeal, as some Enlightened Ones of her own people did.

  Shkai'ra opened her mouth to answer, thought, frowned, and paused. "Saaaaa… I don't really know," she answered at length. "It's the custom." That would have been enough for most of her folk; still she continued: "The Sayings of the Ancestors tell that it makes us brave and fearless, but"—she licked her fingers clean—"slaves and nomads live even rougher, and I don't notice it helps them. I think it's . . . indirect. We haven't the skills of hand and eye that you forest-dwellers do, but we'd have to waste time better spent on training for war to gain them; better to do without."

  Now that, Maihu thought, is almost perceptive in a perverse sort of way. Concentrate on war, so you can take what you cannot make, because you concentrate on war, so you can… A stubborn sense of justice made her add: but they do need to fight more often than we, with the other enemies they have. Or is it just that they make enemies of anyone they can reach?

  Shkai'ra pulled her tunic on, and mused through the wool: "It just seized me that learning about the way your folk think gives me a new way to look at my own people."

  She frowned: the thought was not altogether welcome. Knowledge was power, and power was always good. The Words of the Gods and the Ancestors were clear on that. But something gave her a feeling of vague disquiet, as if the ground were moving under her feet. "Come, give me a hand with the armor. You've a better touch than that cowhanded stripling."

  A little later: "No, that lacing has to be tight. Use both hands and brace yourself with your feet. Good, smithing's given you a fine set of arm muscles."

  Smearing fresh protective grease over her face, she loosened the lacings on the front flap and looked out. A blast of icy wind swirling with granular crystalline snow flooded in.

  "Black as Glitch's arse," she muttered. "Zoweitz take it, how're we going to make speed through this?" She glanced back. Maihu had wrapped herself, in a blanket patterned in blue and yellow, against the cold. Suddenly, Shkai'ra put an arm around her neck, pulled her close, and kissed her on the mouth; it was firm and possessive but without desire.

  For a moment their faces were close. "Now, I wonder why I did that?" Shkai'ra muttered in Kommanzanu. She pulled away and shook her head in puzzlement as she rolled out of the sled to join the waiting officers.

  Maihu closed the flap and knelt for a moment in silence. I wonder too, she thought.

  11

  The commanders crouched in the lee of the sled, helmets almost touching and voices loud to carry over the wind. In the dim light, Shkai'ra looked around the circle of faces and felt an interior chill that had nothing to do with the gusts driving fingers of cold through the joints of her armor. There was no open show of emotion; that would take a disaster of monumental proportions. There was merely an additional coldness, a remote, detached withdrawal from the moment, more ominous than shouts or tears might have been among other folk.

  "Zaik with you," she said. "Report. What's wrong? Enemy action?"

  "Yes, Chiefkin. That is, one of my scouts disappeared from the mesh last night." The officer glanced aside, flakes driving in to lie almost invisible against the ash blond of his brows before they melted slowly. False dawn was making the eastern sky a blur against the darkness. "About two hours ago, just before this accursed-of-Zaik storm started up again."

  "Disappeared?" Shkai'ra said, her voice soft and dangerous. "How does a scout 'disappear' from the middle of a mesh?"

  "Chiefkin," the Bannerleader began helplessly, "she—I got a short-signal that there was a gap in the relay, then cross-connected through the inner link and called for a close-in. We swept—"

  He offered a helmet. The straps had burst, and the noseguard was hanging loose by one rivet. It had been ripped away, and the padding inside was slick with hard-frozen blood.

  "This was all we found. No body. The horse had bolted. Just this and her bow and one arrow in a tree."

  Shkai'ra glanced up from beneath lowered brows.

  "No tracks?" she asked.

  "Just the mount. It threw her and then ran. Fast and far, from the trace. No human tracks around the blood, except the scout's."

  "Animal tracks, then?"

  The officer let his eyes slide away from his commander's once more. "Yes… it might have been bear, Chiefkin, but—"

  Shkai'ra held up the helmet. "A bear did this?" she said. Her voice was normal, even easy, but the Bannerleader went rigid. "And at this time of year?"

  The shaman stirred. Shkai'ra quelled him with a single savage jerk of her head that sent him back to his patient crouch. She leaned across to the officer and spread her fingers at eye level, then drew them down into a fist.

  "Your Ancestors are ashamed!" she said coldly.

  The officer went chalk-pale, then bowed his head and grunted: "The Chiefkin wishes." It was a deadly insult, but there was no excuse for failure. And a commander was always responsible for subordinates.

  "Your Banner does double duty from now on, watch-and-watch, until I say otherwise. Perhaps they can learn to be more alert. Dismissed! Zailo shield you," she added formally.

  "Zaik lead you, Chiefkin," came the reply.

  "Not you, Warmaster. Stay. You too, spook-pusher."

  Turning, she spent a full minute staring out over the camp,
into swirling blackness that lifted now and then as gusts blew spaces in the storm. And she saw it clearly, with the eyes of the mind. They had halted out on the ice in the middle of the river, to put the most distance between them and the threatening forest. A circle of sleds marked the center, with the slaves penned within. Around it were grouped the off-duty Banners, their fires in neat rows on log frameworks that kept them clear of the ice; each squad had its own, marked by a wigwam of stacked lances. The troopers slept around their fires, feet to the flames and weapons to hand. Most slept in their armor; it was warmer, and they could jackknife their way out of the bags ready to fight in an instant. Their favorite horses were staked out nearby, without the saddles that served the riders as pillows, but with their saddleblankets on.

  The fires showed as dim red glows through the snow. She could imagine them moving about; they would be waking now, the squadleaders would see to that. Rolling their gear and heaving saddles onto their mounts' backs, gulping a quick breakfast. The air was very cold, and smelled of pine and smoke, of dung, and of blood sausage grilling over the fires. Shouts and stampings were growing louder through the long surging roar of the wind in the branches. The remount herd milled about, the Minztan cattle lowed for their feed and barns, the slaves were rousing to kicks and curses and blows from the buckle ends of belts. Everything was normal. Shkai'ra felt the creeping-spine sensation of worry, a tension she knew would stay and grow. A gloss of unreality covered the homelike scene.

  "No bear did this," she said, tapping the helmet.

  The nasal bar was a broad strip of steel, ridged below, and flat where it swept down flush with the surface of the helm from crest to rim, serrated like a saw-edge on the sides. Four rivets held it in place, hammered home red-hot and then plunged in cold water to shrink on and hold the metal almost as strongly as a weld. From the state of the padding and the chinstraps she would have thought that… something had gripped the noseguard in its… hand and torn the helmet loose. Most of the luckless warrior's face and scalp had come with it. She would have thought that, if it had been possible. A tiger or bear would have enough strength, but they had no hands.

  "No human wh'uaitzin one of our killers that fast, without wounding, then got away so quickly. And carrying the body, Chiefkin," Eh'rik said.

  "Ahi-a, the woodsrats are good at skulking."

  "Chiefkin, nothing is that good. Nothing natural." He shivered.

  "Zaik-uz, don't talk like that!" she snapped.

  He was the steadiest of them. This was going to wreak havoc with morale. Zoweitzhum, it's affecting my morale already! She watched the youths harnessing the sled teams, and having trouble with them as the drafthorses backed and snorted at having their muzzles faced into the snow-laden sting of the wind.

  She turned to the spellsinger and bared her teeth. "You're supposed to guard us from witchy peril." The fingers of her gauntlet scraped clotted snow from her scarf. "And you can't even stop the woods wizard from dumping this shit on us!"

  Walks-with-Demon's palm thumped down on the head of his drum, a flat banging sound. "There was going to be a storm soon again anyway," he snarled.

  "Isn't your magic as strong as his?"

  "Not stronger than the weather!" he yelled, then pulled himself back to calmness. "If a man sits on a cliff over me and rolls boulders down, am I weaker than he because I can't throw them back? No human has the power to cause a blizzard—the force of it has to come from somewhere."

  "Great wisdom; what use is it?"

  He lurched erect. "This. The tree-fucker is better at weather-magic here, because"—his arm waved up—"the seasons are with him, a pile of energy standing over our heads waiting to be called down. And the land is… fitted to his hand, here. But war-magic, that I can best him in." His face writhed, mirroring the obsession within. "And I will eat his heart." That was a scream.

  Shkai'ra's foot nudged the twisted helmet. "Words," she rasped.

  "Two can strive at that contest," he said. "Wait for the night. I will teach them to fear the dark."

  He stalked away, stiff-legged. She turned to Eh'rik again.

  "Something may come of that, or not," she said. At length: "We're on clear ground, now. We can make good speed even in this weather." Another pause. "As far as the band is concerned, the scout was careless and got chopped by a stray gang of Minztans. This"— she tapped the helmet—"was done with a warhammer." Which weapon the Minztans did not use, she thought but did not say,

  Eh'rik shrugged and saluted. "The Chiefkin wishes," he said evenly. The warmaster was not an excitable person, even by Kommanz standards. He had lived longer than was common among his folk, and done enough deeds that he felt confident of a good rebirth, perhaps even into a chiefly kinfast next time. The shadow of a smile touched his gaunt, bony features; after a lifetime of worship, it would be interesting to meet the gods face to face and see what was truth and what poet's lies. A pity if Shkai'ra did not make it back, he thought. She was the best potential leader Stonefort had produced in many a year.

  "Is there anything else you wish done, Chiefkin?" he asked.

  Shkai'ra tucked the helmet into a bag slung beside her sled. "Nothing, old wolf," she said. "What is there to do? Except pray."

  The conversation outside the sled had been low-voiced, muffled by the wind, filtered out by the thick padding that itself hummed under the storm's lash. Maihu laid her head against the leather and used a certain skill to force ears and nerves beyond their natural limits. Not the Inner Eye, that would be too dangerous with the Eater near; this was passive, an enhancement of sensitivity rather than a projection. And it was at the limits of her skill.

  At last, she could sink down the curved surface of the inner wall, weak with backlash and relief. The felt was scratchy against her skin; eyes and mouth watered as she fought nausea, and cold needles twisted in her ears. Sound levels faded back, but it came to her that hearing would never be quite as keen as before: there were reasons for the normal limits on the senses, and a price for overstepping them. Well, a person could only do as she might, then suffer what she must.

  "Praise the Circle's Harmony," she said, drawing the sign over her chest. "All that is, is part of it."

  No time for food, she thought, then made herself scoop up a little of the cold porridge. The Eater's suspicions were locked on the Adept now, but it would take very little to reawaken them. Who should she try first? Yes…

  Outside the sled she stooped to speak to Taimi where he lay between the runners in his sleeping bag. He was awake, his attention locked on something beyond.

  She followed his eyes, puzzled. Half-visible, one of the Kommanz warriors sat his horse in the blowing snow; its knees were hidden in the groundwash, and the outlines of the rider were blurred. He was performing the endless practice drill that kept skills sharp; drawing his bow, first with the left hand, then with the right; then freeing his lance and twirling the long wooden shaft as lightly as a broomstick, striking at imaginary foes with head and butt, then flicking it up to stab overarm to his left. The horse moved and caracoled patiently, even in the weather that crusted mane and tail and coat with a layer of white that darkened as body heat melted it.

  She frowned; the intensity of Taimi's gaze was disturbing somehow. She laid a hand on his shoulder. A hiss brought silence.

  "Get the sled in order, kinchild. I have business." She forced a smile to lighten his somberness, and patted his cheek. "Don't fuss, now!"

  Hurrying along to the slave herd, she flourished an empty sack at the guards who stopped her. "Chiefkin send," she said in broken Kornmanzanu. "Chiefkin order." It was enough; she was well known as the commander's personal servant by now. Luckily, she would not be expected to pick up more than a few words of her captor's language this quickly. Kornmanzanu and Minztan stemmed from the same root, but three millennia of isolation had changed them beyond recognition, and given the plains tongue a fiendishly complex syntax that was both rigidly positional and intricately inflected.

  The capt
ives were up, tying their blankets and spare clothes into bundles. No hope there; the guards would certainly not let her near the files of prisoners, and it was forbidden for them to talk to each other anyway. From the look of them they had taken the night hard, especially the children. Minztans were used to traveling rough, but not through heavy snow without skis or snowshoes, and the Kommanz were forcing the pace ruthlessly. And despair made for poor endurance.

  Maihu bent her head into the keening wind, forced herself to ignore the shivering misery she saw, and felt, a little, with the Inner Eye. One captive had been freed from every coffle to carry bowls of mush to the others. That was dished out from great kettles slung over fires, and those had been built near the sleds carrying the grain. Even through her excitement she admired the efficiency of the arrangement; the slaves were fed with the least possible waste of time, and the smallest possible number of them unbound. The Kommanza certainly knew how to manage large numbers of people, she thought. Of course, her mind added sardonically, between war and slaving they got plenty of practice.

  She edged nearer to the supply sled. This would have to be handled very delicately, even with the storm masking sight and hearing. There were two guards nearby, one pacing beside the line of captives as they carried loads of parched grain to the cauldrons, the other on top of the sled, his bow in his hands. The woman carried a quirt with the lash wound around her glove, making a weighted club of the butt; Maihu could feel her readiness to use it. The archer stood easily, eyes scanning restlessly across the Minztans. She was close enough to see detail, the rigid carved block of hardwood that made up the centerpiece of the wheelbow, the centerline cutout for the arrow, the massive laminated arms of the bow glued and pinned to the grip. A snapshooter's rack clipped to one side of the bow held four shafts, hunting broadheads that would slash open wounds as broad as paired thumbs. The weapon had a sight and rangefinder as well, but Maihu had learned enough to recognize the sniper's sigil lacquered onto his shoulder armor; that meant he could put twelve shafts a minute through a nine-inch circle a hundred meters away, from the back of a galloping horse.