Steelflower in Snow

by Lilith Saintcrow

  We rode through a postern at the south edge of the city, next to the Death Gate—named thus because in winter nothing but Death rides through, or so they say. Those on watch inquired in their rough rolling tongue as to our business, and whatever Redfist said gained us entrance without even a token bit of copper tradewire spent. Indeed, they became respectful, both of them pale-haired, ice-crusted giants with massive flails. No doubt they could hold the postern against any southron invasion, and they peered at Darik and me with no little curiosity. What little of Redfist’s tongue he had managed to teach me did not help much, though I could now ask for the location of the privy and three mugs of mead comfortably enough. I would have to soak myself in the city for a short while to gain more than a child’s clumsy pointing and babble.

  Inside, my first taste of Karnagh was the reek—wet stone, cold damp, the hot nastiness of some large animal’s dung, a haze of smoke, unwashed bodies. My second was the sight of a torkascraugh, a bearded and well-furred figure clinging to its broad black back and shouting drunkenly as the beast’s legs pumped so frantically they blurred. It was quick, for such a massive creature, and the onlooking crowds laughed as the rider blundered his way down a high, choking-narrow cobbled street. Redfist’s coppery eyebrows rose and his laugh joined the others, a deep-welling thunder.

  They laugh often and fight each other oftener, the men of the Highlands.

  I glanced at D’ri, who frankly stared, that line between his eyebrows growing deeper. It was either a mark of perplexity or fastidiousness, but I could not decide which. In either case, Redfist cupped his hands and shouted something, and I looked along the walls and roofs with a thief’s practiced eye and a sellsword’s consciousness of possible escape routes.

  It did not look promising. The slopes looked too ice-crusted slippery for good thieving, even for one light and quick. Barred, solid shutters looked sturdy enough to keep both the cold and thieving climbers away. Perhaps it was a pickpocket’s city, but such an operation requires anonymity, and good luck achieving such a state if you are surrounded by blunt-eared barbarians who apparently have never seen a copper-skinned face for long seasons.

  Redfist turned, clapped D’ri on the shoulder with bruising force, a jolt I felt. “A good sign, that! Means the gods are with us. Come!” He set off with an entirely different gait—limber and loose, for once not hesitant as if the stones would crack underneath his big boots.

  D’ri walked his pony, but I rode, and noted the sideways looks and hush of the crowd. The barbarian was not the stranger here. We were, my s’tarei and I.

  The most dangerous time in a city are the first few days, before you learn the rhythm of cart-and-foot traffic, the subtle shadows of its alleys, the unspoken rules of tavern and bath-house.

  Of course, Redfist had intimated there were no such things as bath-houses in his homeland. I suppressed a curse and Darik caught at my pony’s reins as well, obviously meaning to lead me as a s’tarei would any adai a-horse on a crowded thoroughfare. I set my jaw and let him, though I would have much preferred to steer my own course in Redfist’s wake. Karnagh swallowed us; we had achieved the Highlands.

  Behind us, the Road was nigh impassable. Or so we thought, then.

  Not Something I Wish to Propagate

  “No baths,” I repeated, for it beggared belief. I had not believed him before now, thinking it a jest. “None?”

  “Nary a one.” Redfist settled in a massive wooden chair, a twin to the one I perched upon. All their furniture was on his scale, and though it appeared clean enough, I hesitated to lay even a knife upon the table. How could they not bathe? “There’s oil and the skauna, instead.”

  Our dark-paneled, high-roofed wooden room was cozy enough, and Redfist had bargained hard and sharp for it. The innkeep, a black-browed giant with multicolored red-and-blue cloth bunched about his ample waist, had jabbed a thumb at me more than once, and Darik’s glower had not dissuaded him one whit. Redfist had made little answer to the innkeep’s questions, jests, or whatever they were, and I affected ignorant uncaring. Underfoot, the board floor was smooth enough, and the commonroom’s grumble and bursts of sharp foreign laughter was welcome after the howling of the wind and the grinding of ice and rock.

  There was even a fire, thank the Moon, though I still shivered in my damp cloak. The warming-breath kept life in me, but even the discipline bred in G’maihallan might struggle with this freeze. “This does not sound sanitary.”

  “Neither does soaking in other people’s piss like ye do doon south, K’na.” He stretched his legs out, enjoying the space and freedom. I wondered if he would find a skirt like the other men wore here.

  “Nobody pisses in a bath, Redfist.” I stared at the flames, and the dull flush suffusing my cheeks might have been welcome in this cold place if he had not been so insulting. “That would be uncivilized.”

  His shrug was a mountain’s shifting under heavy snow. Darik peered out the window. I will say, the North has fine glass. It is not the small diamond panes of the Rim’s cities, or the tinted sheets of my homeland. Somehow, their glass is clear and beautiful, and they place in in square panes divided by iron and framed in wood. Much thinner than the Rim’s, it nonetheless insulates marvelously well. Beyond its clear carapace, snow fell in steadily thickening clumps; we had brought weather with us from the Pass. It was a great comfort to be watching the white ice fall with its deceptively gentle kisses onto every surface than to be trudging in it, or camping in the chill stone cube of a waystation. Even better to be snug in a room of heavy lumber and too-big furnishings with a respectable fire.

  Even if said fire did not warm me overmuch. I was well upon my way to hating this country, and that is never a good sign. I do not even hate Pesh outright, merely found it uncomfortable, and that land is as harsh as the Danhai plains in its own way.

  “There’s nae skauna for women, though.” Redfist’s cheeks had turned red as well. “Not in an inn.”

  I did not care where the women of his country bathed, in river or streamlet, I merely wished to sluice the journey from my skin. “And not even a fallwater? How am I supposed to clean myself, Rainak Redfist? With sorcery?”

  “Well, ye are elvish, and J’na was teaching you—”

  “Redfist.” I swallowed a hot flare of annoyance and pushed aside the urge to pull my heels up to rest upon the chair with me and hug my knees. “I dislike that word.”

  “Teaching?” Now he looked baffled, blue eyes wide and clear. He scratched at his furred neck with blunt fingertips, chasing an itch.

  “Never mind.” If he did not understand, at least he could not needle me about it in his rough way. My own scalp crawled, travel-dirt ground in among my braids. “I care little if this skauna does not take your countrywomen, but I will be clean.”

  “Then you’d best take both of us with ye to bathe, lass. Otherwise…”

  What in the name of the gods is this? I pulled my damp cloak a little tighter. “Do you mean violence? Or rape? Or both?”

  “Well, a girl in the skauna…a pretty girl, men will think…”

  The incredible misapplication of the tradetongue for pretty was only the first problem with his hints and intimations. I had the strange sensation of the world shifting under me. “Men will think what?”

  “Kaia…” He glanced at Darik, as if expecting help.

  My s’tarei looked merely perplexed, sliding out of his cloak and hanging it upon a wooden rack near the fire. Maybe he found the fire enough to dispel the chill, but I was not so lucky. “Do you mean…” He paused, as if hesitant even to suggest such a thing, “that men of your country would offer my adai insult? While bathing?” He glanced at me, too, to see if I knew aught of this strangeness.

  Redfist colored even more deeply, his cheeks rosy as fresh Shainakh bricks. “Some barstids might think to take advantage, aye.”

  “No wonder they all smell so foul,” I muttered, sagging into the rudely constructed chair. One does not expect fine carvings or cuisine in
a border-city inn, but still, the furniture here seemed barely sanded. A sword-sized splinter now seemed the least of my worries, however.

  “Honest stench is nae bad thing.” The giant shifted a little uncomfortably. I was, perhaps, keeping him from this oil and skauna, whatever it was.

  I wanted to be clean and dry more than I wished to untangle the issue, though. “Tis not something I care to propagate, my barbarian friend.”

  It turned out the process is almost pleasant—a thick application of oil all over the body skimmed off with a bone tool, though the weedy (for a giant) young attendant blushed and would not wield it upon me. D’ri made a fair job of it, and I scraped him in turn while the young giant attended to Redfist and gawked. It was difficult to credit that the attendant may not have seen a naked woman before, and I wondered what he would make of the baths in Shaitush or Antai’s great marble temples to cleanliness. The bath-house is sacred. Even political rivals in Hain do not break the peace of fallwater-rinsing and long hot or tepid soaks.

  The skauna was a small underground chamber, tiled on roof, walls, and floor, with heat rising through deep holes driven in the earth as well as fire-warmed rocks in a small depression in the floor. A ladleful of herbs and water is tossed over the rocks, and it is almost as pleasant as a bath, but not quite. Redfist told me the traditional skauna ended with flinging oneself outside into a snowdrift, and my disbelieving laughter seemed to touch his pride. “Who would be foolish enough to do that?” I asked, between chuckles, and he glowered at me.

  After the skauna-steam dissipates, one bakes in arid heat until wrung dry; snowmelt is often brought in by attendants for drinking, along with mead. Fortunately, none of Redfist’s countrymen came to use tiny, hot room that night. Working my way into dry traveling clothes and consigning our wet cloth to the inn’s staff was particularly pleasurable.

  Ill-luck chose not to strike then, but at dinner.

  A Quiet Gathering

  A metal platter bearing a great slab of meat is thumped upon a groaning table, surrounded by roasted, head-sized meatroots accompanied by pickled waxleaf, and crowded with great flowers of yeasted bread with a springy, chewy crumb. Strange implements are used to shovel this heavy fare into a Skaialan’s face—handles with odd tines, tiny ladles on other handles, and small, sharp knives to carve bits of the meat free and spear the meatroots upon. The pickled waxleaf is strong and good, and the bread, but there was no green to be found. Great tankards of mead and a deep, bitter ale are brought, too. No wine, no pirin sauce, no fish—even dried—and no flatbread. No small bowls to hold your portion in, but wide wooden plates which are cleaned by sopping the bread in juices and detritus. I contented myself with part of a meatroot and the cabbage, and filled the rest of my belly’s aching with the bread. A few swallows of the ale almost turned me green, so I turned to their mead and was pleasantly surprised. It is clear and fiery, full of spice, and summer-drowse can be tasted in its golden depths.

  I was the only female guest in the commonroom. Oh, there were Skaialan women with their light or ruddy hair piled atop their heads and wide brushing multicolored skirts of their strange weave, where each set of stripe-colors delineates a certain clan or family. But they served the food, refilled the tankards, and avoided the pinching, grasping hands of the men. Not even in Pesh had I seen such pawing and groping. The women wore loose linen shirts with a complicated truss about their middles, pushing great floury breasts high and showing a chasm like the Pass between.

  And they are all so pale. If not for the different shades of beard and clothing, I might not be able to tell them apart. They are all uncooked dough, with mushroom noses and gleaming smiles. Some of them had gold on the tooth, an accoutrement I had not seen since Hain. There, it is a mark of high wealth, but in the Highlands it is merely a sign of rot. Later, I learned the pale gold Highlanders mine is prized more highly than the yellow, the latter only thought fit for dentistry. Shainakh’s red gold is much in demand, though they perform an odd test to see if it is real—they rub it against their paler metal, to see if the two produce the proper smear upon each other’s faces.

  That evening, though, I luxuriated in eating my fill even if the fare was heavy. I suspected I would long for fish and flatbread soon, and even such humble greens as cressten or baia. I might even be reduced to eating the pungent needles of the trees on the mountainslopes, the ones who wear their deep prickling robes all year instead of stripping to dip into the tepid pool of winter. I watched the commonroom, noting the sly glances in our direction. D’ri applied himself to the meat with a will, to replace flesh lost on the mountain slopes. The cold will melt everything extraneous off the bones before it strikes to kill, and the warming breath requires much fuel.

  Uneasiness brushed my nape, cold fingers I could not blame on the wind outside. New arrivals slammed, swore, and yelled near the inn’s front door. They have curious antechambers, perhaps to rob the weather of its sting, though they do not leave their shoes there as the Hain do. They track mud and snow in with abandon, especially at inns and taverns, and leave the traces of their passage in rushes or sweetstraw spread upon the floor. The stamping and shouting must be heard to be believed. Even the Shainakh irregulars at their most riotous could not produce anything near the sheer quantity of noise. Near the fire were two men playing curiously shaped lutes, and their music was interesting—at least, what little of it I could hear. Mud stippled their hairy calves and thick boots; they spread their legs wide and I received the impression that under the pleated material of their…skirts, I suppose?—they wore very little.

  Redfist leaned back, patting his stomach, and loosed a prodigious belch. He took a long pull from his tankard—proper ale, he called it, and poured it down at an alarming rate—and beamed at me. “Feels good to be back!” He had to lean almost into my lap to be heard. “How do you like the roast? Wild scruagh!”

  “Tis very rich,” I all-but-shouted back. “Is it always this loud?”

  “Nae. This is quiet gathering, lass.” His laugh was freighted with ale-smell, a healthy heat-haze I almost welcomed. Even in this crowded press, with the fire in the great hearth and the door to what had to be a kitchen swinging back and forth to belch heat, I could not warm myself. They say those from the South have blood too thin to stand winter in the Highlands, and I can believe it. The warming-breath kept me from freezing outright, but only just.

  Thank the gods I had not braved this place before Janaire’s teachings and the taih’adai, or I would have turned to an ice-statue in the Pass itself and never seen what lay beyond.

  Yet more Skaialan stamped into the commonroom, two man-mountains with their cloaks streaming snowmelt. A roar of laughter went up, and my swordhand itched. I saw the smaller of the two newcomers glance once across the room, and the flat murderous sheen upon his eyes sent a bolt of wrong through me. Our gazes met, and the shorter man-mountain saw Rainak Redfist. A flash of recognition and a crafty little gleam on those pale, ratlike eyes were all the warning I needed.

  I laid my eating-picks down, carefully, and D’ri tensed on my other side. Redfist, his eyes blissfully closed, tilted a fresh tankard brought by a harried, pale-haired wench. I disliked the idea of heaving a sotted barbarian up the stairs to our room, but the thought was very far away. My hand blurred for my dotani-hilt, and I shoved my chair back, its legs scrape-screaming through a rime of mud dried to a paste from its last inhabitant. My left boot landed on the table and I flew, barely clearing the roast, my dotani blurring solid silver.

  The Skaialan carry axe, flail, or sword. Said swords are much longer and heavier than even Danhai pigstickers, straight and with functional guards. Those blades can carve a man’s face off, or even cut a child in half; I have seen as much. They are terrible weapons, but only if they catch you. Some northern giants are quicker than one would suspect; I had seen Redfist’s deceptive speed and curious grace as he wielded his axe. A flail-wielder might have given me pause, if he could have untangled his weapon from the fat-dripping
lightrack depending from the ceiling on an ornate iron chain. As it was, the first battle-eyed barbarian managed to unlimber his blade and raise it while I was gaining speed. His cloak, bunched over his breast and secured with a heavy, curiously-shaped pin-and-lutecurve, would blunt the force of any strike I could deliver. A collective gasp, chairs moving, the taller one reaching for what had to be a knifehilt, and I would down him too if I could just move quickly enough.

  My dotani dipped, biting, and I had judged the strike aright. Even the largest of barbarians cannot absorb a sword to the throat.

  A bright spray of blood, chaos erupting around me, and the taller one yelled something in Skaialan. Redfist was on his feet, drawing breath to bellow, his axe hefted and the blade glinting dully. Not the best weapon for close combat; neither is a dotani but a G’maihallan sword looks a paring-knife when compared to their gigantic blades. My opponent spasmed, throwing out a meaty arm, and the sudden change in his weight threatened to drag me with him. I pitched sideways, my boot sinking just above his hip as I wrenched, and the grating of my blade on cervical vertebrae jolted up my arm.

  A glitter streaked past; I almost saw the knifeblade cleaving air. It clanged dully—had it hit Redfist?—and battlerage made every movement other than mine slow and clumsy. My longest knife, jerked free of its sheath, slapped against my forearm, and there was precious little chance I would be able to pull my dotani free.

  In a battle, though, one uses anything to hand. My grip changed as the smaller barbarian began to fall, his arms turned to headless snakes as blood and breath both left him. My dotani blade tore free, and I slid on my knees across the mud-spattered floor, my trews might not survive the splinters but I did not care, sweet wine-red jolts of pain up my knees. I was no longer truly young, but the experience of many battles may stand for youth’s speed and flexibility—once survived, that is.