Snowbrother

by S. M. Stirling

  "Good as new, yes," he said, grinning, as he strapped bandages around the shoulder. "Don't put any strain on it for a while." Playfully, he gave a slap on the shoulder and rose to a torrent of scatological abuse.

  Shkai'ra had been using them as a focus, her eyes blank as she weighed factors. Now she threw down a pouch from her saddlebag.

  "Dreamweed," she said. "As much as you like of that, but no more once it's finished." To the officer: "This smells of a diversion; no sense to a weak attack like that, otherwise. I'll take your Banner—you whistle in the odds-and-sods on guard duty and the two inner ranks of the right-flank scoutmesh, and hold them here as reserve—"

  At that moment the four slave-guards from the coffles came pounding around the bend of the river; the details of the Minztan attack floated ahead of them in an intricate sequence of trills. Shkai'ra wasted no time; she fluted HighKestrelBanner into double line and chopped her arm forward. Seventeen horses rocked into motion, the whole mass curving down the ice in a hard, controlled arc that would bring them around the narrow bend and into the slightly wider area behind in perfect contact alignment.

  Shkai'ra suppressed excitement; this was no time to lose the self in battlejoy, no, she must remain alert and clear-witted. The lance was held loosely in her hand. Under her the horse rocked into a long, loping gallop, seeming to float across the surface of the frozen river, touching its hooves down at intervals to keep speed in that weightless trajectory. On either side, narrow leafshaped steel slivers jutted hungrily, the pennants streaming in the wind of the riders' speed. One with her mount, she leaned gracefully into the curve as they turned, their ranks rippling as instinctive skill maintained exact distance between riders. Overhead the arrows went whistling, whup-whup-whup, hoi-ah, the Breath of Baiwun streaming out over the battlefield! Exultant, the troopers screeched, couched their lances, each transformed into a hammering, sharp-pointed projectile of flesh and bone and armor. Hooves tossed gouts of packed snow and blue-gray ice into the air; white-eyed, flare-nostriled heads pumped with the effort of the gallop, huge muscles bunching and coiling between tight-clamped thighs.

  Shkai'ra felt the keening welling past her clenched teeth, felt the shivering desire to kill rising in a hot tide in her throat, a warm rank taste like blood. Even then she was freezing the scene before her into memory: the last slave guard falling among the Minztan blades (and that was a good death: that one would be reborn as ofzar; she herself would raise a tablet in her kuoheaith). Thirty or so of the forest warriors running, scattering before the unstoppable horror avalanching down on them. More scrambling up into the woods, but that was beyond control.

  Time slowed. A moment stretched as the lancers braced their feet. Time was… now.

  Her lancehead dipped to spear one Minztan through the back, low. His speed lessened the impact; she was able to jerk the weapon free without pivoting it, the sharp reverse shoulders of the blade completing the bisection of his kidney as it pulled free of the ravaged flesh with a shower of drops. White shreds of fat clung to the rivets through the tangle. With a continuation of the same movement she flicked the lance backward; the ceramic buttknob connected with the skull of a woodsdweller four paces behind her horse. There was a hard thock, a wood-on-wood sound, and the Minztan halted with an egg-sized depression in her skull that glistened like a third eye, dark red in the whiteness of her forehead.

  Shkai'ra did not bother to look back again; instead she tossed the ashwood shaft up, twirling it over her head like a huge baton to poise point down to her left. There was an enemy there, running with terror-wide eyes, so intent on flight that he did not see his own death. She rammed it down with a snap, surgeon-precise, in the spot just over the collarbone. And then cursed; his dying spasm clenched the metal hard against bone. She wheeled the horse in a near half-circle and freed her arm from the twisted half-sling. A strong pull brought no result, and she had no time to dismount and brace the body with her foot. She abandoned the lance for the cleanup teams.

  Far enough, she decided, looking up. The snow was about to begin; the crisp floury smell was unmistakable. Once the easterners were over their panic they could hide, and strike back from cover. Not much chance that they would rally, but . . . Her whistle trilled out, authorizing a haif-kylick of pursuit before rallying to the main column; she herself turned back, pulling out her bow and scanning quickly over the field of battle. Bodies scattered about, all Minztan except for the one guard; infantry had little chance against a charge like that, none without pikes and bill and missile weapons. Some of the wounded were still moving, and she decided to take care of that; it would not do to have any escape, or sham dead long enough to get within knife range of a trooper collecting scalps. These damned trees again, she thought disgustedly. Even when you had a decent fight like this the nearness of cover interfered.

  Shkai'ra saw what was happening at the travel sled before the preoccupied Minztans glanced up. Her mount halted to the clues of knee pressure and balance that signaled her command. She curled her thumb under the shaft, locked two fingers over it, and drew to the ear. They were no more than fifteen meters to her left, a clear shot; the stave of the bow flexed against her arms as she threw back and shoulder strength into the draw, familiar pressure falling off as the pulley wheels at the tips flipped over on their offset pivots and levered against the pull of thick wood and horn and fiberglass. The rigid central handgrip pushed its molded curves against her left palm; the arrow slid smoothly back through the grooved cutout until the base of the head rested snugly against the front of the rest.

  She hesitated. Taimi was chopping madly at his tether with the cutting blade of the weapon; Maihu was dithering, uncertain. I should kill him, Shkai'ra thought. More trouble than he's worth, and he's trying to run. Maihu saw her; she seized the billhook and threw it pinwheeling away, caught her kinchild to her. The blue eyes met hers. There was a long moment of tension.

  The Kommanza lowered the bow. Glitch, she thought. Then: don't want her made sullen again, anyway. The thought frightened and disgusted her, to be shaping her actions for the approval of a slave. For a moment she thought of witchcraft, then pushed it away. Besides, the other's actions were a good sign that the taming was going well. And why shouldn't she do as she pleased with her own, to kill or to spare?

  "Enough," she muttered softly to herself. There was work to do. She turned the horse and scanned for a target.

  A double hand of minutes twice repeated had passed by the time Shkai'ra came trotting back to the reserve unit, wiping the blood from her saber. The Bannerleader had whipped the small detachments on guard and scout detail into tight formation, ready to strike in any direction. An energetic officer, Shkai'ra decided. But the sight reminded her that she had lost two-thirds of a Banner on this raid; it was turning into a running dogfight on unfavorable terrain. That would reflect on her, despite the rich booty; treasure was good, but the Kommanz were not a prolific people, and they needed every lance to keep the nomads at bay. That was a matter of survival, not wealth. It was luck that the Sky-Blue Wolves of the High Steppe bred no faster, she reflected, or there might be hard trouble.

  She returned the nodded salute. "As I awaited," she said. "This was a diversion, up here. The main effort was to free the slaves and get them into the forest while we were occupied here. A close thing, but we stopped them and killed most, few losses. Best you get a detail back there, before the ones in the coffles start getting ideas again."

  "Good killing, Chiefkin," the officer complimented her. "No word from Bannerleader Kh'ait yet. Do you think there's any cause for concern?" She sounded worried. Not at any effort the bark-eaters might put up, of course, but over the unknown force that had been killing the sentries every night. It was daytime now, but it was still out there.

  There was a sudden gust of wind, hooting through the trees and down the river, flicking snow into their eyes. It was thickening as they spoke, cutting visibility. Shkai'ra's horse snorted and tossed its head; she smoothed a soothing hand down i
ts neck, annoyed.

  "Nia, if they had something better they wouldn't have tried such a half-arsed plan. It needed twice the force they had to work, and they'd have had to be dead lucky as well." She scowled. "They shouldn't have been able to get the degree of surprise they did, either."

  The shaman started up, caught her eye. He nodded, closed his mouth, and sank back down in a crouch, fingers dancing over his drum and eyes shut. One does not spit on the tiger's tail. His consciousness groped out again, puzzled. The woods wizard was blocking him, yes, but what was the other thing?

  Shkai'ra bared her teeth at the sight of Walks-with-Demons and swung a foot out of the stirrup. "Kh'ait has a grip like a greatwolf," she said to the Ban-nerleader. "I'd better go and pull him back before he chases them all the way south to the Middle Sea; it's not safe in weather like this." She dropped to the ground.

  "Alone, Chiefkin?" the officer asked. Shkai'ra nodded and transferred her bowcase and quiver from saddle to back.

  "Ia; we don't have enough troopers to spare, at the moment. Get the guards in order, put the right-flank scoutmesh back in place, and patrol the river upstream and down with your own Banner until I get back. And see to the usual things, collecting spent arrows and so forth." She looked up. The short winter day was ending above the white fog of snow, and she suddenly realized that she was reluctant to venture into the woods with… whatever it was.

  Disturbed, she turned to go quickly. "This looks like heavy snow. We'll camp hereabouts. Zailo shield you."

  "Zaik lead you, Chiefkin."

  She drew blade, trotted past the FangBanner horses where they stood drop-reined, and climbed the bank. The underbrush was trampled and crushed, paths plowed through the deeper snow on the bank. Beyond, the trees were pincushioned with arrows, and dead and wounded were lying about. All Minztan, she was pleased to see; only to be expected when so few of the enemy had good harness, or training in war. She loped on, wondering if the left-flank mesh had been able to cross-connect through the middle rank, and close in westward to trap the fleeing Minztans. That was the standard procedure, but difficult to accomplish in this terrain. It still puzzled her how the attack had been able to punch through in the first place, with so little warning.

  She was well back when the trees fell. Thunder rolled through the woods, but she could see little. Through a gap in the treeline the pointed tips of the white pine quivered as trees swayed and began their crashing descent to the ground; then more, trying to cut off the Kommanz line of retreat to the river. Glitch, she thought, in reluctant admiration: her whistle shrilled out a warning back to Fangbanner, lest the Minztans try to punch through to the coffles again.

  "Thought they wouldn't come back once they started running," she mused to herself, and spat. Momentum was everything; if Kh'ait thought he was pursuing and ran into a surprise like this… She had better get forward and put things in order.

  An animal snarl alerted her. Whirling, she managed to get her shield up in time to catch the leaping hound on the leather. Impact sent her staggering back and gave the beast time to dodge her return thrust; it had the weight of a small human, a great shaggy-brown hound with the blood of timber wolves in it. The jaws snapped shut scant millimeters from her face, spattering slaver, and carrion breath puffed at her. A brief wild gust of humor ran through her mind: that its breath was still better than the shaman's—and then she bent to her task.

  The beast danced back from the whirring menace of her blade, and Shkai'ra knew she had to kill it before its master came. This was a hunting dog, trained to obey; in her harness she had little to fear even from jaws strong enough to rip the face from a human skull, but it could hamper her fatally. In the open few had any chance against two opponents; the hero songs told of such things, but the warmasters taught that two had eight times the strength of one.

  The forest was lit by a dim white glow, slowly darkening. Not much of the snow was falling through the dark green ceiling twenty meters above, but it filtered the dying light to a soft luminosity. The soughing rush of wind in a million branches filled the air, louder than panting breath or the creak and slither of feet in the snow.

  Skipping back, she went down on one knee, hoping that temptation would overpower learned response. Instinct made the hound take the bait, come rushing in a charge that ended in a soaring leap. She rose to meet it, shieldboss to muzzle, and stabbed low for the belly. The saber slid through flesh, grated on bone, and the dog's baying roar turned into a scream of pain that ended in a whimper. The twisting steel severed arteries and flooded its lungs, and it flopped, drowning. For a moment she wondered mildly at how human its blood smelled.

  The Minztan came up at a run, and halted when he saw the dead hound, anger flaring in his eyes. He was tall for the forest folk, shaggy in his furs, probably a trapper by calling. A javelin in one hand rested in a throwing stick—a simple grooved lever with the butt of the spear resting against a notch. Throwing, he would release the javelin in midcast and continue to bear down on the spearthrower, adding enormous leverage. The honed edge of the spear glinted blue. In his left hand was a spike-ax, broad half-moon blade on one side, tapering conical spike on the other, shrunk onto a meter-long wooden shaft covered in thick leather and bone rings. He wore a coat of interwoven leather strips, boiled black in vinegar for strength and reinforced in strategic spots with horn plaques; his helm was similar, and heavy gloves with laminated wood and bone splints covered his hands. Not nearly as good as her armor, but vastly better than nothing. It would take a solid cut or thrust to do harm.

  Shkai'ra circled, shield forward, sidling closer. Her boots scuffled through the crust on the snow as her feet came down with neat, precise movements. Elation filled her; here was something concrete, not shadowy terror that slipped away from her grasp. The Minztan feinted with the throwing spear.

  "Not as brave as your dog, bark-eater?" she gibed, low and throaty. "Sa, sa, sssssssssa, come closer, so I can cut you, man." Her blade tip twitched through the air with a tearing-cloth sound of cloven air.

  The forester ignored her. A cool one, she thought, belike with some combat experience; there was always a little skirmishing along the frontier fringes, between hunters of the two peoples. She grinned into his eyes and waited. He would have to strike soon; these woods were full of Kommanza, and FangBanner would be coming back this way at any time.

  He realized that time would work against him too. His throw was blinding-fast, with the leverage of the spearthrower behind it and no warning in his face. But his stance had changed, a slight twisting in the torso, toes digging into the snow. She blocked with a reflexive movement of her shield, bringing it up and around at a slant, batting at the flung weapon from the side. The spearhead gouged a line across the lacquered leather and skittered away in a flurry of snow. Metal clanged on treeroot.

  He lunged behind the throw, body almost horizontal, chopping at her legs as he shifted to a two-handed grip in midleap. Surprise almost froze him as she bounced back in a standing jump to land poised and ready just beyond the swing of his ax; he traded momentum for distance in a forward roll, and felt his jerkin turn her overarm cut. He rolled to his feet and came up in a defensive crouch, sweating. He had fought the steppe-dwellers before, but that was mostly distance skirmishing. And herders and farmers did not work in full war gear.

  The Minztan knew the harness must be half her own body weight or more, helmet and shield and thick strong leather, but it seemed to slow her less than his own jerkin of woven strips did him. She moved easily under it, like a lynx, no, like a great machine of joints and bearings and steel springs, one movement flowing into another in patterns as precise as compass-drawn curves on paper. Mad, and bad, every one of them, he thought, watching the slitted eyes in the high-cheeked plains face. He could read a little of the insect-bright patterns on her armor. And the chiefs worse than any. Reluctantly, he began to move forward.

  Shkai'ra studied his stance; feet at right angles, one hand at the end of the halberd, one a little abov
e the middle. The set of his muscles, the heavy blocky shoulders, thick wrists and arms.

  So, this one has been to school, she thought. The surface of her mind was like a pool of still water, blanked to allow trained reflex to function faster than possible for conscious thought. Beneath that ran knowledge, weighing the strengths and limitations of the weapon she faced. Less reach than a saber, no point, but plenty of momentum, and the spike would punch through a breastplate with a solid hit. She knew the counters for it, of course, but it was too difficult to use from the saddle to be popular with her folk. Besides, although hugely strong for her size, she had never felt she had the heft for it.

  They flowed together, seeming to cooperate in dance of shield, ax, sword, halberd-butt, boom and clatter and deep quick breaths. He was using short hard chops, sacrificing sheer battering mass for control, parrying with the bone-covered haft. He feinted with the butt, then reversed and cut full-swing for her head; she jerked her body back from the waist, just enough to feel the ugly wind of a bright blade passing close before her eyes. Her return thrust was blocked with a daringly simple twist that deflected her point over one of the reinforced gloves. The flat top of the ax snapped out at her throat, driven with one palm cupped on the bottom of the ax-handle; it did not need an edge to do harm with all his weight behind it. Her shield darted up and caught it, but the blow forced her to cat-jump back to regain balance.

  Shkai'ra tasted exultation, a warm coppery tang in her mouth; she felt totally alive, doing the thing for which she had been born. The passage of arms had taken a scant ten seconds; data flowed into her mind, extrapolated subconsciously, produced a gestalt-picture of her opponent's fighting style.