by S. L. Viehl
The Iisleg who followed the oldest ways were some of the finest warriors Teulon had ever seen. Unfortunately, they also remained loyal to the Kangal long after other tribes had turned to the rebellion. Such traditionalists believed that the best ensleg was a dead one stripped of its worgald. Teulon had been hard-pressed to bring them over to the rebellion. “Is Navn a declared loyalist?”
“I cannot say. With Navn’s son here to petition to join the rebellion, likely not.” A peak formed in Hasal’s lip. “Doubtless Navn’s people grow hungry. They were some of the first to be cut off by Skjonn.”
Orjakis. Yes, this made more sense now. “I will see him shortly. Leave me.”
Teulon sat in darkness for a time, clearing his thoughts and preparing for the meeting with Navn’s son. If the emissary did not try to kill him, Teulon might actually learn something that could aid Reever in finding his wife, and confirm one of his own suspicions—that the Toskald had sent spies down to infiltrate the rebellion. The fact that Navn was a traditionalist would help—the tribes that followed the old ways were also among the most superstitious—and Navn’s son might become worthy of his grandfather’s blood.
One raid on an unguarded storage depot had yielded some interesting garments, which the battalion commander had forwarded to Teulon’s headquarters. The Raktar reserved several for his personal use, and now went and changed his robe for one of them. After he had armed himself, he signaled for Navn’s emissary to be sent alone into his planning room.
The man turned out to be a boy, barely large enough to fill out his hunter’s outfurs. “Raktar, I bring greetings from my father, Deves Navn, rasakt of Iiskar Navn. I am Aktwar Navn, his son.” Aktwar bowed, although it was obvious that he could not see Teulon.
Teulon stayed in the shadows. “Why do you come here, son of Navn?”
“My father petitions the Raktar and bids him allow the men of Navn to join in defending Akkabarr from the depravities of the windlords and their ensleg allies.” The boy presented a scroll with a slight flourish.
“We do not defend Akkabarr,” Teulon informed him. “We will attack the windlords first and take their cities.”
“I spoke in ignorance, Raktar.” The boy went down on his knees and bowed his head. “My father wishes to support the rebellion in any manner the Raktar sees fit. Forgive my clumsy tongue for implying otherwise.”
Teulon rose from his chair and walked into the light. “Look at me.”
The boy slowly lifted his head. His eyes seemed to bulge out of their sockets for a moment. “You are not Iisleg. You are ensleg.” He eyed the Toskald uniform Teulon wore. “You are a windlord?”
“I was their slave. As you are now.” Teulon crouched down to put himself on eye level with the boy. “Will you and your tribe still fight for me?”
“I—my father—”
“Go back to your iiskar, boy.” Teulon rose and stood over him, leaving himself open, waiting for him to strike. “I have no use for your kind.”
“You ensleg are everywhere.” Aktwar rose and began to move toward the shelter flap.
Teulon seized his shoulder and spun him around. “What did you say?”
“Nothing.” Aktwar cowered.
“What other ensleg have you seen?”
“It was no one. Only a woman. My father cast her out.” The boy grimaced. “He should have let me kill her. It would have been better for her to die.”
Teulon grabbed the front of his furs and dragged him up onto his toes. “Describe this woman to me.”
“She is not like you.” Aktwar swallowed hard. “She is human, like us. Only she is not like us. She is not like any woman I know. She killed a ptar with a piece of metal and one strike.”
Teulon released the boy and turned away. “Your father, he killed her?”
“No. She is skela now.” Aktwar’s gaze shifted, and his voice lowered. “Some of the hunters say she cannot die.”
He looked back at the young hunter. “What?”
“Nothing kills her. Not being alone on the ice, not being given to the jlorra, not the ptar, not beatings, nothing.” Aktwar’s shoulders moved. “Had she no face, she might be vral, spirit made flesh. They say they have come to walk the ice daily now.”
“She might also be a drone, modified to look and act and smell and bleed like a living woman,” Teulon told him.
The younger man gaped. “There are such things?”
“In the skim cities, there are all manner of drones.” He checked the hour. The largest storms never lasted longer than a day and a night, Hasal had told him, and it would take until dawn for the battalions to breach the remaining trenches. By the time the Toskald realized that every weapon on the planet was now in rebel hands, it would be too late. In a week the rebels would be in position to launch their first assault on the skim cities.
Teulon could lead the attack on Skjonn from Iiskar Navn as well as anywhere. “As soon as the sky clears, you will take me and my men to see this ensleg woman who will not die.”
TWELVE
Rasakt Kuorj would not lend Reever a skimmer, something for which he apologized.
“My men need them here, to be ready for the time when the summons arrives,” Kuorj explained as they walked through the small encampment. “Once the armies are ready to make their attack on the windlords, an alert will be sent, and all of my men must take up arms, go, and join them.”
“All of your men?” Reever had counted twenty, if that.
“Only I am permitted to remain behind, with the women and the children,” the headman said. He nodded to one of the hunters passing by. “It is the same with every iiskar. I would say this general of ours wants no challenge to his leadership.”
“If the fighting draws close, you may have to relocate the camp,” Reever said.
“We have made ready to move at any time.” Kuorj made a casual gesture toward the shelters. “The women can do it by themselves.”
Iisleg women, Reever was learning, could do a great deal without help from their men. Yet they were utterly subservient. He looked out at the large patch of darkened ice just beyond the camp, where the hunters’ game was butchered. While telling Reever about Iisleg customs, Kuorj had given him scant information about the outcast women.
Reever had the distinct impression that there was more to the skela than he was being told. “When you relocate, what happens to the skela? Do they accompany you?”
“No.” A flicker of distaste crossed Kuorj’s face. “They are Navn’s concern, not mine. He has the largest iiskar in this territory.” He followed Reever’s gaze. “You show peculiar curiosity about them, and you should not. We have no contact with the unclean, ensleg. They are as the dead are to us.”
They were also the only Iisleg permitted to remove bodies from crash sites in this territory. One of them had to have seen Cherijo. “If this is true, why do you allow them to make your game fit for your consumption?”
“They handle the dead. I do not know how it is for ensleg, but we cannot.” Kuorj glanced at his wristcom. “You have eight hours before the light is gone. It will take you three to trek to your destination, four or five if you tire easily.”
“I have not said where I intend to go.”
Kuorj glanced at the stained ice. “From this place, there are few destinations.” He called to one of the hunters, and asked for his bow, which he handed, along with an elongated pouch of bolts, to Reever. “Ensleg weapons do not always work out on the ice,” he told him. “Best to carry this, in the event that yours fail you.”
Reever slung the pouch and bow across his back, hunter fashion. “I thank you.”
“There will be other hunters out on the ice today,” the headman said. “They will not cross your path if you keep yourself out of theirs.” He sighed. “I begin to sound like my father in his final years. Next you will hear me call for more furs and a larger heatarc.”
“I appreciate your concern.” And Reever did. The old rasakt had taught him a great deal about the Iisl
eg, and had the sort of wisdom that came only after many years of leading other men.
Kuorj clasped the top of Reever’s forearm with his hand. “May the vral’s work not be made wasted today.”
“Farewell.” Reever inclined his head and started out on the ice.
The sky was a hard, glassy dome of white that settled without seams over the polished bone plate of the world. Had there not been patches of the dense blue ice showing through the surface snow, Reever might not have been able to tell up from down. Even Kevarzangia Two, with its emerald skies echoing the lush verdancy of its surface, had not been so monochromatic.
The magnetic fields on the planet rendered directional-guidance equipment useless, and the ice fields offered little in the way of landmarks. Reever reserved his thermal scanner and used the Iisleg’s method of navigating, shadow shifting, which he had learned during his last visit to Akkabarr.
Reever had not taken twenty paces on the ice before the imperative began burrowing in his mind again. Go. Find her. Hurry.
He cleared his thoughts and concentrated on the ice. It wasn’t enough to watch his footing and keep a steady pace; he also had to look for the discolorations and cracks that heralded crevasses and hidden vent shafts. He regularly came to narrow chasms in the ice that were barely two or three meters wide but appeared to be bottomless and hundreds of meters in length. Probably created by earth tremors and sub-mantle magma shifts, the gaps sometimes sported snow bridges and inner walls lined with innumerable icicles waiting to tear into any flesh falling into or past them. So far none of the gaps had proved to be too wide to jump across, but Reever tested the other side of each gap before he leaped, to assure it would hold. He had ice stakes and safety lines in his survival gear for the chasms he could not go around or cross.
Did she walk this way? Reever scanned the vista from right to left, trying to imagine his wife following the same path, and her reaction to such a place. It wouldn’t have been a happy response; Cherijo didn’t like extremes in temperatures. She had been kept in near-total isolation by her creator for most of her life, but as far as he knew, never in such a frigid climate. After living happily on Kevarzangia Two, the garden of border territory planets, and being exposed to the outrageous alien beauty of Joren, the home of her adopted people, Cherijo would hate this place. There is no color, no life here except where it can cluster and hide from the wind.
How long has she been here? Reever wasn’t sure. The reports were vague; she might have been trapped on Akkabarr anywhere from six months to two years. How long was it before they found her?
Reever knew Cherijo had survived. Because his wife had been bioengineered to be virtually indestructible, it would take much more than a crashed ship to kill her. He saw her clawing her way out of a wreck, and walking across the ice alone. No protective clothing, no survival gear. No knowledge of where she was. No hope of escape. No means with which to contact him.
She doesn’t even know Marel and I are still alive. The rage, always there, burned deeper, until the imperative swept over it, as it did everything.
Go. Find her. Hurry.
Reever stopped at Akkabarran noon, as the sun overhead erased the shadows and created visual whiteout, making it impossible to continue on without becoming disoriented. He ate some of the preserved food Kuorj had given him, and walked in a circle to keep warm until the shadows shifted into view once more.
Kuorj had told him that the skela who served his iiskar lived in shelters built of ice blocks that adjoined the natural caves inhabited by their pack beasts, and after two and a half hours, Reever saw color interrupt the line of the horizon. As he drew closer, he identified the color as a wide patch of stained ice—black instead of dark red and brown, as it had been outside the camp—and several collected salvage heaps and a single pile of bones. Behind the debris stood two large ice caves and the skela’s built-on shelters.
Reever waited and watched the open entrance to the caves as well as the narrow space between the ice blocks that made up the shelters. There was no movement, light, or sound, and no sign of heat being used within. He breathed in and smelled cooked food, damp animal fur, and cured hide. People occupied the place.
Snow crunched behind him, but he turned a moment too late. The tip of a blade pierced his clothing and stopped short of inserting itself between the second and third ribs on his right side.
A woman dressed like a hunter but wearing a modified face wrap stared up at him. “Drop the bow.” Reever allowed the weapon to slide from his shoulder. The woman kicked it out of the way but kept her knife in place. “To the crawl. Slowly.”
Reever could have disabled her with one sweep of his arm, but decided to humor her and began walking toward the crawl. “I thought you respected men on this world.”
The knife jabbed him, drawing blood. “You are not a man. You are stupid. Men never travel alone.”
The narrow opening in the ice blocks was actually a hatch that had been recovered from a troop freighter. It slid inside, and a familiar form appeared.
“Malmi, what—” Daneeb peered at Reever and took a step back when she recognized him. “You.”
“Me.” He glanced down. “Would you ask this woman to remove her knife from my abdomen?”
“Malmi, leave him.” Daneeb pulled the hood of her parka over her head before stepping outside. “Go inside and wait.”
Malmi removed her face shield, revealing her features. Her skin had the bloom of a young woman, but milky cataracts covered one of her eyes. She turned her head slightly, looking at Daneeb out of the clear cornea. “Skrie, he is ensleg.”
“Go.” Daneeb waited until the door to the crawls closed again before she spoke to Reever. “We meet again. Why is that?”
Because you lied to me. “I need your help.”
“Again?” Daneeb glanced at him. “We tended your wounds and kept the hunters from killing you. Is that not enough?”
“I will explain, but I am not as accustomed as you to this climate,” Reever said, and gestured toward the salvage piles. “Will you walk with me while we talk, so that I may keep from freezing?”
“Skela do not have conversations with ensleg,” she pointed out.
Reever saw her mitt slip into a side seam of her parka. “No, I believe you only remove the faces from their dead bodies. I am still alive, fortunately.”
She gave him a disgruntled look. “Fortunate for whom?”
Daneeb did walk with him out to the salvage piles, which were an interesting jumble of useless components, scorched scraps of alloy, and melted lumps of plas. Reever stopped to pluck a length of frozen wire protruding from one-third of a stripped communications panel.
“How is your friend?” He inspected the pile of bones, but they all appeared to be from small to large animals, not humans. “The other woman who poses as vral?”
Daneeb shrugged. “She is as she always has been.”
“She cannot speak, can she?” Reever waited for an answer, and when he didn’t get one, he added, “I got the sense that something is wrong with her mind.”
“She can speak. She is quiet, that is all.” Her tone changed. “What of it?”
Now, why would she lie about the other woman’s disability? Was it some sort of taboo? Or— “There is something wrong with many of you, isn’t there?”
Daneeb took in a sharp, quick breath. “Wrong, you say. Is it wrong to be born blind in one eye, as Malmi was? Or to lose a hand to flesh rot, as old Ganna did? Not pretty, perhaps, not womanly, but wrong?”
Reever could feel the tension vibrating from her, and quickly wrapped one end of the component wire around his left hand. “I had not realized.”
“You are ensleg. Why would you?” She stared out at the ice. “You had better leave now. It will take you the rest of the light to make it to a camp.”
“I have one more question for you,” he said. “When you came to help me, the last time we met, why did you not tell me that you and Jarn are skela?”
Daneeb
snorted. “Why would I? You are ensleg. You know nothing about us.”
“Kuorj told me about you and the skela. How you are the only people on this world permitted to handle the dead. How you are sent to search every crash site for the dead.” Reever saw the tiny flinch she gave. “If anyone had found the woman for whom I am searching, it would have been one of you.” He waited a beat. “Was it you, Daneeb? Did you find her in the wreckage, still alive?”
“I do not know of what you speak, ensleg. I am going back; I have work to do.” Daneeb started back for the shelter.
He caught up to her. “You did, didn’t you? You found her, and she was still alive.”
“No.” Daneeb turned away and dipped one shoulder.
Reever caught her by the throat and wrist, using the loop of component wire to hold the dagger in her fist away from his face. “Where is she?”
“She is dead.” Daneeb made a strangled sound as his hand tightened. “Dead.”
Rage became a silent roar in his head as Reever wrenched the knife from her, threw it away, and dragged her close. “You will tell me.” If he had to beat it out of her.
Daneeb’s gaze shifted, and Reever heard a whistling sound just before something collided with the side of his head.
The white of the world turned black.
“General Gohliya,” one of the subordinate officers said from the strategy chamber’s entryway. “The Kangal signals.”
It was the Kangal’s seventeenth signal of the morning. His last sixteen had come in at ten- and fifteen-minute intervals, with unceasing demands for reports on why the surface defense grid was still off-line from the storm.
Gohliya looked up from the latest recon scans. “I am not here.”
The young officer paled. “God be, General, I am not able to lie to the Kangal.”
