The light burdens of Ki and Vandien did not trouble the horses. They trudged willingly through the snow. Ki’s head still gave her a jab of pain whenever she moved too suddenly. She kept the grays to a walk, for Vandien’s sake as much as her own. They made good time. Vandien had been right about that. A person on horseback would have had little trouble with his pass. Ki smiled bitterly.
A bend in the trail brought her wagon into view. Ki had never approached it from such a distance. The blue panes of the cuddy were sparkling with a layer of hoarfrost. The winds of the night had swept a light layer of snow over and around it. It looked as if it had been abandoned for centuries. As they drew nearer, she saw that the snow close to the wagon had been disturbed, and recently. A dim foreboding overshadowing her, she tried to think of ways to approach the wagon cautiously. But there was no shelter to take cover behind, no way to hide from the Sisters that loomed above them, or from whatever might be inside the wagon. A glance at Vandien made her want to hurry. He swayed visibly at every stride Sigmund made. Ki reined in her impatience. To hurry the horses now would only make it worse for him.
He seemed to feel her eyes on him. He gave her a one-eyed glance. “It is only the pain, and the horror,� he explained. “The wound itself is not that grievous.�
Ki looked long at the red stain that began at Sigmund’s withers and crept partway down his dappled shoulder. Another slow drip fell, to deepen the color and enlarge the patch.
A short distance from the wagon Ki halted and slid from Sigurd’s back. “Wait here,� she commanded him needlessly. “I want to check the wagon first.�
“It had stood long in the shadow of the Sisters,� Vandien replied gravely.
“I don’t think they made the tracks around it,� Ki snorted and set off through the snow. The wind seemed more chill away from the moving warmth of the horse. She was awakened to how the huge body had wanned her legs and thighs, of how she had profited from his rising body heat. It was as if she had shed another cloak. She pulled her own cloak closer together where it had torn.
The wagon was dead. The frost was thick on its panels. Swept snow had covered the singletree and heavy harness straps that were stretched out before it. The tops of the tall wheels were frosted with snow. Lines of snow clung to the wagon wherever it had found the tiniest purchase. Nothing alive waited in that wagon, Ki felt sure. She stopped by the first impressions in the snow and felt relief at her own foolishness. The Harpy had called here first, only to find his prey had fled. With a pang, Ki realized that but for the team’s presence, the Harpy might easily have passed them by where they slept under the snow. She smiled hopelessly at the thought. It made as much sense to her as any other reaction.
The cuddy door was frozen shut. Ki hammered it loose with repeated blows of her fist, until suddenly it slid a small distance, and then scraped all the way open. She whistled to the team, and the horses came on at their usual methodical pace, bringing Vandien only incidentally.
She was rummaging within her cupboard for supplies when she felt the wagon give. Vandien’s bandaged face appeared at the cuddy door.
“I didn’t think you could manage that alone,� she greeted him.
“It couldn’t be as bad as it looks,� he replied. She took his arm as he climbed in, and he sat down on the straw mattress gratefully.
He watched her tear a finely woven green gown into strips. “You may as well rest here for a few moments,� she suggested, moving to the door. “I’m going to make a fire and melt some water. I have no salve or unguents to treat such a cut, but at least we can wash it out. A Harpy’s talons usually carry all sorts of filth. Those who survive the wound often die of an infection.� Her hand went to the side of her own face as she remembered gratefully Rifa’s soothing oils and gentle hands. But her wounds had been scratches compared to Vandien’s slash. And Rifa and her healing powers were a dream and a memory away.
Ki frowned at the dimming light as she emerged from the cuddy. The sky had remained clear, but somehow the snowy pass seemed darker to her now. A trick, perhaps, of the dark shiny rock looming over the wagon in startling contrast to the snow—or of eyes that had grown accustomed to the cuddy’s dim interior and now faced snow again.
The fire was easily kindled. The snow seemed to melt and quench it every time Ki thought she had it started. The wood itself seemed impregnated with ice crystals and loath to take the flame. But at last the orange flames blossomed freely, and Ki set her blackened kettle packed full of snow to heat.
Vandien lay still as a dropped doll. Ki stood over the mattress, looking down on him. His face was small and lopsided under the red and brown bandage. “I’ll have to take this one off so we can do a better job.�
He nodded. His eye was distant but clear. Her awkward knots had caked with moisture and blood. They were frozen. The damp bandage was a stiff mush of ice-blood on his jaw. Vandien twitched as Ki slid the blade of her knife carefully beneath the layers and sawed through the cloth. It parted raggedly before the sharp blade. Ki laid the parted bandages back gently from his face. The blood had smeared around the wound. The flesh had slipped, and the cut hung open. Ki set her teeth at the thought of touching it. She felt an echo of the anguish she had felt when she stood over the bodies of Sven and the children. The closer she was to their pain, the hotter burned her own. Blood had leaked around the eye closest to the wound, to congeal there. The eye was caked shut with it. Vandien read her face as if it were a mirror, and went pale. He closed his other eye.
The little fire burned valiantly. The kettle water was not boiling but was hot to Ki’s wary fingertip. She lifted it from the fire, to carry it cautiously to the wagon. The shadow of the Sisters loomed over her, darkening the trail. Ki noted with annoyance that the team had moved off and were farther from the wagon than she liked them to stray. It was no matter. A shake of grain upon the snow and a whistle would bring them back. But not just now. She had Vandien to tend to first, and she was weary. Every step she took seemed an effort. Her feet were weights at the ends of her legs. She thought longingly of sleep. Vandien would have to rest for a while after she had finished with him. She tried to tempt herself with the thought of hot tea and a kettle of soup. But it seemed a pallid attraction next to the sweet forgetfulness of sleep.
One green rag she soaked in the warm water to gently sponge the blood away. His eye was revealed, closed but still sound in its socket. Washing the blood from his face did not make the slash look any less angry. Steeling herself to the necessity, Ki held the cut open as she trickled a little of the warm water into it. It seemed that as much blood as water washed out of it for her efforts. Vandien scowled and tried to lift his head from the wet bedding. He opened his eyes to look at the red puddle and promptly closed them again.
“More water than blood,� Ki assured him, hoping he would believe her. She wasn’t really certain of it. “And a free-bleeding wound cleanses itself. So the Romni teach.�
“And the moon keeps track of our sins. They teach that, too,� Vandien replied grumpily.
Ki held the cut delicately closed, the skin lined up in its original place. The thinner cloth of the gown was a better bandage, easier to wrap firmly and tie in tighter knots.
“The Romni would have shaved around the wound, too, but I have no tools for that.�
“Don’t fret about it. I have no courage to let you try.�
Vandien started to sit up, but fell back heavily. “My head feels so heavy. All of me feels heavy.�
“Loss of blood makes you weak. And killing another thinking being makes the soul sick inside you. I know. You may as well rest. I’ll make some hot food.�
She left him, sliding the cuddy door shut behind her. The shadow of the Sisters overcast them deeply now. The glitter w
as lost from the snow. Ki looked up at the blackness that loomed over them and longed suddenly for their beauty to reach her as it once had. But all she sensed was their watching.
The fire had gone out in a puddle of black water. Ki moved on leaden feet to the back of the wagon to get the last of the wood. They would miss it tonight, but she felt she must have some hot food to put some strength back into them, to give her the energy to attack the problem of the ice ridge. The last sack of grain lay in the back of the wagon beside the pitiful pile of wood. She might as well do that, too. It was an effort to pull the heavy sack to her, to tug it open and spill a feed of grain upon the snow. She looked up, whistling for the team. They were nowhere in sight. Their passage through the snow was plain. They had headed back toward the campsite and the dead Harpy. Ki cursed their sudden whim and set out to retrieve them. They would never hear her pathetic little whistle now that they were around the bend of the mountain. And once they reached the two sacks of grain at the camp site, they would have no inclination to return.
She forced her leaden feet to jog trot through the broken snow. They moved slowly, but their strides were long. Ki panted as she tried to catch up. The thud of her own feet echoed painfully in the side of her head, and the cold poked at her through the rent in her cloak. Damn the man and the horses and the snow and the Harpy! And damn Rhesus for his crazy scheme to get his jewels safely to his home. And damn her heavy head that wanted to nod off her neck, and her heavy feet that seemed to gather snow and weight at every step. And Damn the Sisters, who could cloud the daylight with their shadows.
By the time Ki had reached the bend in the mountain, she had catalogued and damned every adverse condition in her life. It was a small satisfaction, but it seemed to warm her a little. And the grays, looking almost a dappled black in contrast to the snow, had on another whim stopped just around the bend of the trail. They set their ears back at her language, and disapproved when she tried to drive them back toward the wagon. Sigurd remained impassive to her halter-tuggings and slappings of his immense rump. It was only by mounting the more placid Sigmund and taking Sigurd in tow that she was able to get them moving back toward the wagon. Sigurd came sulkily, dragging his heavy hooves through the snow and snorting disdainfully at the bovine spirit of his larger and stronger partner.
But round the bend of the hill, Sigmund, too, came to a halt. His ears pitched forward with interest, but he would not take another step. Ki was a jigging monkey on his back, for all the good it did her. Tears of rage stung her eyes and froze on her lashes. She stared longingly at her wagon, thinking of the firewood that rested inside its shadowed box.
Her eyes caught on the wagon. Its box was shadowed deeply, blackly shadowed, as if the snow had turned to congealed blood. The snow about it was as black and deep as the rock of the Sisters that overshadowed it. Ki glanced again at the clear sky. The sun struck her eyes. The shadows of the Sisters lay on the wagon by their own will, not by the sun’s casting.
Ki joggled her heels against the barrel-body she straddled. Sigmund shook his head. She slid from him and went ahead on foot.
There was a dividing line, a place where white snow gave way to deep black shadow. And the shadow was deep, seemed to tell Ki’s eyes that it was a tall, standing liquid in which she must wade. She glanced up again at the sun, shaking her head in consternation. She stepped into the blackness.
Eerie. She stood, one foot atop a flat black lake of shining, eternal depth that did not reflect her. As Ki watched, her foot sank slowly into its surface. The black stuff pressed heavily about it, squeezing it tightly, like no mud that she had ever struggled through. In dismay, she tried to snatch her foot back. It came slowly and only with great effort. But her foot came out clean, undamped, no trace of clinging black. Ki stood again on hard ice beneath snow.
She looked to her wagon. The black sea had engulfed most of the tall wheels, lapped motionlessly about the bottom of the box. It had buried and quenched her fire, had covered the harness that lay before the wagon. And still the level rose.
“Vandien!� She roared the name with all the power in her lungs. The black stuff swallowed up the sound, reduced her shout to a whimper. Ki’s breath came raggedly. She heard motion behind her, saw the horses wisely retreating around the corner of the mountain trail. She wondered what they knew, and how.
“Vandien!�
Her scream was a whisper in the night. She imagined him asleep, his head heavy on the mattress, his body drained of blood and strength. He would die in the shadows of the Sisters, crushed as the legends had warned. She could not save him. She could not save anybody, not Sven or her children, or even ugly Haftor, and not Vandien. To venture out on that black stuff was foolish heroics. Her death would be an empty gesture, like bandaging a corpse. No one would expect it of her, not even Vandien. She watched the blackness lap higher. It would be like putting socks on a frozen foot, as insane as… as fighting a Harpy with a piece of harness.
She wanted to run, but could not. Each time her foot touched down, the black stuff caught at it. Her whole body was heavy to her, her hands were weights that swung at the ends of her arms; her head, too heavy, wobbled on her neck. Even the air she tried to suck into her lungs seemed thicker, rancid somehow. There was no stir of wind. The black stuff made no sucking noises as it grudgingly released her feet. No noise existed on its black plane. And it was rising, visibly rising. Even as she watched, another spoke of the tall wheel was swallowed. It lapped, it climbed. And her feet dragged in it, threatened to spill her face-first into it. She grew heavier with every step, her arms dragged down from her shoulders; her chin kept dropping to her chest. Crawl, crawl, pleaded her body, but Ki saw herself horizontal on that blackness, never rising again.
At last her hands clutched the sides of the wagon. She clung to its wood like a drowning swimmer working her way along a steep bank.
“Vandien!� she gasped, the words falling heavily to the blackness, scarcely reaching even her own ears. There was no reply.
She fell on her knees onto the wagon seat, scrambled to open the cuddy door. Impossibly, the blackness was rising up inside the wagon as well. There was not enough space to clamber into the cuddy and stand. The black stuff was nearly level with the bottom of the cuddy door and rising as Ki watched. Soon it would reach the sleeping platform. “Vandien!� she screamed. He stirred faintly and failed to raise his bandaged head.
“Tired,� he mumbled complainingly. “Feel weak.� He closed his dark eye again. Ki’s hand sank deep in the muck, her fingers disappearing in it immediately. The black gripped her, squeezed her hand like a well-met friend. With a half-sob, she snatched her hand back. It came out clean, with a shoulder wrenching effort. Her breath jerked in and out of her body. She would scuttle across the top of it, swiftly, not give herself a chance to sink. She would do it now. She would do it this instant. The black rose a little higher, crept over the edge of the seat plank. Ki!s cry strangled in her throat.
She would have done as well trying to scuttle across the top of a lake. Under her full body weight, her hands sank wrist-deep, to be pulled out ponderously. There was no purchase to drag her knees and legs out of the stuff. With a wail of hopelessness, she launched herself forward, her full body length. Her hands fell on the edge of the mattress, gripped its straw-stuffed cloth. She could not drag herself to it. She could not pull it toward her. Everything was sinking, was held in the blackness.
The light in the cuddy went dimmer. Ki glanced in alarm at the tiny window, then back at the cuddy door. The seat was covered. Every moment the space between the top of the door and the blackness grew narrower. The blackness was rising up around her legs, holding them as tightly as leather boots as it lapped against her thighs.
“Vandien!� she screamed the name, and the sound seemed to reach him. His eyes opened a little. The strain on her back was terrific. She wanted to drop belly-first in the blackness. The weight
of her body seemed to increase every moment. “The shadows of the Sisters, Vandien. We have to get out of here! You aren’t weak, it’s the shadows. Come on, man, damn you!�
The mention of the Sisters seemed to prick him. The dark eye came alive, looked about him. Panic ignited there.
“We have to get out of here!� he exclaimed. The words barely brushed Ki’s ears. A hysterical giggle burst out of her at the inadequacy of his statement.
He rolled onto his belly as if it took all his strength simply to shift his body. He stared at the narrow hatch that remained of the cuddy door. Ki knew that her legs were nearly completely encased in the stuff. His dark eye widened in terror.
“Forgive me, Ki,� he said, or so his soft words seemed to be. He reared his body up on his knees and fell forward on top of her. Her face plunged into the airless, lightless, sensationless blackness. Horror snapped her neck muscles, and her head jerked up. Vandien was slithering over the top of her, was using her body as a bridge to the buried plank seat of the wagon. One of his booted feet scraped across her back. With a heavy spring off her, he was free. He was kneeling on the plank, in the black stuff, but not sinking deeper.
She could not crane her neck to see him. She heard no more movement. Panic, anger, outrage at his treachery energized her. The black stuff had seized her belly, but her hands had kept their hold on the straw mattress. With the strength that comes only with death-terror, she pulled up. But even as her chest came free of the blackness, a strong jerk pulled her down into the muck again. Her hands snapped free of their precarious grip.
Harpy's Flight Page 21
