Snow Queen fhk-4

by Mercedes Lackey

  Then we will wander in circles until you are ready. I think you should send them home in one of your sleighs. She is of no use in a wilderness.

  Aleksia had to shake her head. All the braver, then, for setting out into one. Thank you, Bear.

  The Bear chuckled, and the mirror slowly filled with white mist before clearing again.

  All right. The women were on the road going north and would not depart from it for a while. Now, what was on or near that road that she might be able to use?

  “Mother Annukka, if I have to ride another step — ” Kaari ended her sentence with a groan of real pain. The sunrise had been glorious, the woods to either side of the road were a riot of golds and scarlet, punctuated by the greens of the great fir trees. Neither woman had been able to appreciate the view.

  As Annukka had anticipated, they were both in pain. Riding stretched and exercised muscles that were used in no other ways, and no matter how sturdy one was, no matter how used to doing hard labor, one would still be sore from riding.

  “There is a stream down there.” Annukka pointed to a place where the road was cut by a foaming brook. It was shallow enough to ford, but more than deep enough to support fish.

  “We can stop there, rest and eat.”

  “And sleep?” Kaari begged.

  “Taking it in turns.” She cursed herself now for not thinking of getting a dog. But in the village she hadn't needed one, neither as a guard nor as part of a sled-dog team, for she had always had a riding reindeer or reindeer trained to harness. If she had “kidnapped” one on the way out, not only would that be wrong, it would only have run home again. But she surely wished for one now. If they'd had a dog, they could both have slept. The half-wolf sled dogs of the Sammi were loyal, as vigilant as their wild cousins and could be counted on in a fight.

  But then again, the deer would have been understandably skittish around a dog like that, for it would remind them too much of wolves. That was one reason why those who had dog teams did not usually bother with reindeer. Trappers and hunters used dogs, mostly, and herders used the deer.

  Bah, my mind is wandering.

  First things first. Get down the hill and get a camp set up. Not just any camp, either, a relatively hidden camp.

  Dismounting was a bit of an ordeal, actually. Kaari tried to be stoic, but a whimper escaped her, and as they went about the chores, they were both hobbling stiffly. Annukka's thigh muscles screamed at her as she moved; she knew that Kaari could not be in a much better state, her youth notwithstanding. The only good thing about the pain was that it took both their minds off their worry about Veikko. They watered the deer at the stream, which poured over its rocks with great enthusiasm, then tethered the deer in a thicket that would hide them enough that they would look like a wild group, but still give them enough browse within reach that they would be contented there. Then they found another spot, close to the deer but just out of reach of the tethers, where they could tuck their bedrolls under a bush and be invisible from the road. The nearness of the stream was both an advantage and a disadvantage. Any sounds someone might make sneaking up on them would be covered — but so would any noises that they might make. Annukka was not going to chance a fire; the sun would warm them enough while they slept the morning through. At the moment, she was most concerned about others traveling on the road. There could be bandits very easily, and not everyone that traveled openly was going to be safe.

  “No tea?” Kaari said wistfully as Annukka laid out some cold food for both of them, barley bread, dried blueberries and water. “Willow-bark tea would be welcome right now.”

  “Here — ” She handed Kaari some strips of willowbark to chew. “It's bitter but it will do the same thing.”

  Kaari made a face, but took the bark — really the inner bark of the tree, that carried the pain-killing properties — and began chewing it. Annukka chewed her own bitter-tasting bark until there was nothing more to taste, then spit the wad of pulp out.

  “Do you want to sit up first, or shall I?” Kaari asked, doing the same.

  Well the answer obviously was, I would like you to, but Kaari was not at all used to riding, ever, and at least Annukka had some practice in it, so she was probably the least sore of the two of them. “I will take first watch,” she said, and tried not to sigh as Kaari wrapped herself up in blankets and rolled under the bush. A moment later, the sound of her even breathing told Annukka that despite frantic worry over Veikko, anger at the villagers and fear of what was ahead of them, exhaustion and pain had taken their toll, and she had succumbed to both.

  Now the question for Annukka was, what should their course be?

  Go straight to the last place I know Veikko was, I suppose. I can get the Moon to show me, I expect.

  She could, if she wanted to draw attention to herself by working a Great Magic.

  Drat.

  There was always a price to be paid for doing magic, and in this case, the price would be exposing herself and Kaari to possible discovery by the Snow Queen. That was not an option. Not now. She rubbed her aching thighs as she considered other courses of action. If she didn't ask the Moon to show her — well, she needed to be clever, then. She knew that Veikko and his Master had gone looking for the Icehart. She could go to the village where Lemminkal lived, and do the simplest thing, which was to find where Veikko and Lemminkal had gone from there and keep listening for tales of the Icehart. Find the Icehart, and the Snow Queen was probably not far away. That, at least, would not draw as much attention. One definite advantage they had was that the Snow Queen would probably not expect two women to come after the men.

  So far, the loving-cup still retained that sliver of silver, which meant that Veikko was not dead. While that remained, there was hope. And until she and Kaari could find out exactly what had happened to Veikko and his Master, all either of them could do was to hang on to hope.

  Meanwhile, although they had gotten away with as much as she could manage, they were still not as prepared as she liked for this journey. Food, at least, they had in plenty, all things that were light — dried fish and meat, dried cheese, dried fruit, barley. The only fresh food she had packed were things that they would eat before they spoiled. They did have all of her herbal medicines, all of the things she used for healing. They had bedrolls. They did not have a tent. They had her bird bow, arrows, knives. They did not have bigger bows. They had Winter clothing, and thank heavens, she had finished the cloak for Kaari. They had a fire-starter and a cooking pot and an ax. They did not have a big enough ax to actually cut anything large, and she would have to use her cooking-knife to butcher things. They did not have fishing gear — and probably there were a great many other things that one needed for camping that they simply did not have. They were going to have to trade for things along the way…fortunately that, for a Wise Woman, was not an issue.

  She slipped out from under cover of the brush to gather the long, flexible stems of dried sweetgrass, keeping a careful eye on the road as she did so, and ducked back under the concealment as soon as she had enough. Once there, she deftly began weaving it into tiny charms. The fragrant dried grasses mingled their scent with the Autumnal tang of fallen leaves. The sun was warm on her back now, and if it had not been for the ache in her legs, and the circumstances that brought them here, she could have been supremely content. And, on the other hand, with Veikko in peril, she could have been frantic. But a Wise Woman learns how to put her own woes aside when the need calls.

  With each charm she wove, she softly sang a spell as she worked, binding the magic into the weaving. A little goat for luck, a six-pointed star for health, a four-armed cross with the seed-heads at the end of each arm for prosperity, a forge hammer for protection — she refused to make love-charms unless she knew the person asking for them, but these four symbols were always in demand. Once, her husband had spent long Winter hours carving little trifles for her to put such spells on; she hadn't had the heart to tell him that they weren't as effective when she didn't make
them herself, so she had compromised by weaving grass cords to string them on and wove the spells into those.

  When she had a dozen, the sun was halfway up the sky; she woke Kaari, and told her to wake her when it had reached the zenith. By then she was so tired, she could scarcely keep her eyes open.

  And it seemed as if she had barely closed them when Kaari was shaking her awake again. As she moved, it also seemed as if every muscle stretched and strained by that long night ride had stiffened, and now she hurt twice as much as she had when she had gone to sleep. But she wasn't going to set a bad example to Kaari by complaining; instead, she built a very tiny fire with almost no smoke; they made willow-bark tea to share and toasted some cheese and barley bread. Then they packed, harnessed the deer and resumed the journey.

  Now that it was light and they could see, the deer quickened their pace to the ground-eating lope they used when migrating. They had eaten well while the humans slept; now they were ready to move. They were very different in temper and nature from the horses that some folk like the traders used, but the traders only traveled in the snowless months. Annukka was just glad now that she had spent as much time on having them for riding as she had. But until she and Kaari were more used to it, Annukka had no intention of spending an entire day in the saddle. She planned to stop about sunset; if they were lucky, there would be a village where she could barter for supplies, or if there was a Wise Woman in reside once, actually get some help. Ideally, it would be better if they could overnight as much as possible among other people and within four walls. That way, they could save their supplies for when they were in the wilderness with no other choice but to camp. She regretted now that her own small travels had never taken her in this direction. She knew nothing of the lay of the land, nor who was living out this way. She only knew that Veikko had stayed on the road the whole way to finding his Master because he had told her so in letters. And that was another thing she needed to barter for — a map.

  Some things, however, were possible. You could tell if there was a village nearby by looking for smoke rising above the trees. Even in Summer, there would be cookfires, baking ovens, pottery kilns. As sunset neared, she scanned the horizon for such signs, and perhaps she spent a little too much of her attention on the horizon and not enough on her surroundings —

  Because Kaari gasped, she pulled her attention back to the road and saw a half-dozen rough-looking men blocking their way.

  Fear sharpened her vision; they were ragged, dirty, with hair and beards tangled and greasy. Their ill-fitting clothing was stained and torn in places. They were, however, well-armed.

  She heard a laugh behind her, and knew without looking that there were at least that many more to the rear.

  The reindeer snorted in alarm, and stood there quivering, threatening to bolt. Annukka could feel hers trembling under her legs.

  “I would keep a tight hold on those beasts of yours, woman,” said one. Neither young nor old, his blond beard roughly trimmed to just below his chin; his eyes were cold and appraising. “Our arrows can fly faster than they can run.”

  Annukka drew herself up. “You are bold, to risk the curses of a Wise Woman,” she said, trying to put menace into her voice, hoping she could bluff her way out of this situation.

  But the man shrugged. “Mummery and trickery,” he replied with indifference. “I believe in nothing I cannot see with my own eyes. If you were so Wise, why didn't you know we were here before we surrounded you?” He turned to his men. “Take them,” he ordered.

  “Try not to harm the deer — trained ones are rare. And don't touch the women. I'll be having the pretty one for myself. We'll see how useful the old hag is before we decide what to do with her.”

  “Offer no resistance,” she had hissed to Kaari, before the men converged on them and seized the halters of the deer. She need not have bothered. Kaari was frozen in her saddle. They were in a tremendous hurry to get off the road, it seemed, for they did not try to pull the two women from their mounts, but instead, loped off in a body with the reindeer in their midst. Annukka feigned the same terror that Kaari was showing, but only so that she could memorize the way back to the road — which turned out to be absurdly easy, as the robbers fled south until they struck a watercourse, then followed it all the way to their camp, leaving a trail a child could follow.

  The robbers had not been in these parts for long. They had only a rough camp, fires and bedrolls, some stockpiles of weapons. No tents, nothing near enough to weather out the Winter, which meant they had only two recourses when the weather turned. They could find a steading and take it, or they could find a cave and make it Winter-proof. Either was possible, the former was a risk, the latter took labor.

  Annukka rather thought they would try the former. Somehow she couldn't see this lot doing anything that required work. They hadn't even set up latrines or a proper cooking area. She and Kaari were roughly pulled from their saddles, the deer were stripped of tack and packs, and everything was gone through as the leader took possession of Kaari. Annukka wondered if he would rape her there and then, and from her expression, so did Kaari, but instead, he merely hauled her over to a rough seat made of a log, pulled her beside him and began alternately drinking and pawing her. Annukka was tied by the hands to a tree while the rest of the robbers went through their things.

  “What's this trash?” one snarled, looking through her bags of herbs. He was about to throw it aside, when another stopped him with a whisper and a glance in Annukka's direction. She narrowed her eyes at him, and he whispered something more. The herbs were set roughly aside. There was some hilarity as they tried on her clothing and Kaari's, none of which fit, and which also was set aside with the herbs. There was fighting over the bedrolls and more fighting over the weapons and anger when they got down to the bottom of the packs and found not even a single copper coin.

  “Make dinner, old woman!” the leader shouted, one hand up Kaari's shirt. Kaari was a stone, but Annukka assessed the situation and judged that she was in no danger of rape from the leader, at least. He was too drunk to perform at the point, if she was any judge.

  Hmmm.

  She held up her tied hands mutely, and with a snarl, the same man that had tied her up now cut her loose. It was clear at that point that none of the robbers intended to lift a finger as long as she was around to do their work for them. So she gathered together everything that looked like a foodstuff or a cooking implement, then she hauled wood and water to the camp. She did her best to leave her own stores intact, although she did use some herbs and juniper berries for flavoring — not because she liked these bastards, but because she wanted to disguise the taste of the meat she found that was starting to turn. If what she was planning didn't work, maybe she could give them all the flux with this stuff.

  She started stew with that bad meat, some turnips and carrots they must have stolen from some farmer, thickened it with rye flour that could only have come from the same source. It still smelled just a bit wrong as it cooked, but they all sniffed appreciatively when their tasks took them near the pot. She supposed that since they themselves smelled so rancid, they probably couldn't tell there was anything wrong with the stew. She wasn't worried about Kaari; as petrified as the young woman was, she wouldn't be able to eat a bite.

  She mixed up flatbread to bake on a griddle improvised from a shield no one seemed to want. She kept her eyes and ears open.

  This was not a band that had been together for very long. Even robbers could develop camaraderie and a kind of family feeling; this lot showed none of that. And more telling, there was a great deal of grumbling going on over how the leader had handled the division of the latest spoils. Kaari had excited lust and avarice in equal portions, and the fact that the leader had taken her for himself and clearly had no intention of sharing her had made no few of these men very angry indeed. They were even angrier when they realized that the women had carried nothing of any great value with them, meaning that Kaari was the only “prize” to be ha
d. Add to that, there were some who, unlike the leader, were clearly not happy that he had risked the wrath — and curses — of a Wise Woman, and you had the situation where, after the sun had set and the food was ready, the men did not gather together to eat in company, but rather sat apart, in twos and threes or by themselves, glaring at their leader who sat with a terrified Kaari, her clothing pulled all about as he pawed at her breasts and fumbled at her thighs.

  Meanwhile, Annukka had not been idle.

  Into the wood of the fire she built, into the food she prepared, she sang spells.

  Dissension, rebellion, discontent and rancor. Jealousy, envy, greed and anger. She built on the unhappiness that was already there, fed it and nurtured it. With every cheerful crackle of the flames, with every whiff of smoke, waft of cooking meat, her spells seeped into them. By the time she came around to serve the men, the pot of resentment was seething and ready to boil.

  She brought the food around first to the chief and Kaari. “I like not the look of your men, warrior,” she said, handing him a bowl of stew and the best piece of the flatbread. He pulled his hand out from under Kaari's shirt and aimed a cuff at Annukka's head; she evaded it.