by K. Eason
“Haven’t found one yet. She’s a chirurgeon, Dek.”
“So what, her partner can’t die? Look. Istel. That motherless Talir half-blood knew Snow’s name. I want to know why.”
“And you think she’ll tell you?”
“I think she gets away, we can’t ask.”
“Dek.” Wearily. Resigned.
“Give me to the top of the hill. We don’t find them, we turn around.”
“Dek.” He sounded bad now, breathless.
“All right. We’ll turn—”
His knee knobbed into her shoulder blade as he lurched forward. Whisper and creak of cold leather as he reached for his weapon. Grunt as he wrenched it out of its sheath. She stayed down, because that was the smart thing, with naked steel overhead.
But she didn’t hear anything except wind sifting through branches. Nothing but quiet, deep and oppressive as any she’d heard in the caves. Snow falling thick enough she couldn’t see more than five paces, and then only trees, dark stripes in the otherwise white.
“What,” she began to ask Istel, and then a shee-oop cut the quiet.
Dek folded backward. Hit Istel in the knees and took him down, damn near cut her own throat on his sword. The svartjagr whipped overhead, wingslice through the snow, sounding exactly like an arrow.
“The fuck is that?” Tight-voiced, pain or panic. Istel was Cardik-born, had never been Below.
“Svartjagr,” she told him. “Pack hunters. Keep your head down. There’s always more than one. They’ll go after people, if they’re desperate.”
Which they must be, to hunt in a storm. She rolled off Istel, went flat on her belly. Instant coldseep through leather and flesh, instant chill that turned to hard shivers. She gritted her teeth against chattering. Twisted and one-eyed the branches. No sign of the svartjagr or its nestmates. She’d never seen them this far north. Never thought there were any.
“Long as we’re low, we’re okay. They need altitude to fly. They get on the ground, they’re in trouble.”
“Right.” Heard him panting now, close and shallow. Bet he was bleeding again. Bet that damn animal smelled it. She glanced toward Istel. Impossible to tell blood from shadow in the fold of sleeve and coat.
And then she could see, suddenly, because a
witchfire
blue light spilled and spread through the darkness. Dim to twilight in three seconds, showing Dekklis the half-blood and another big dog in the middle of the trail. The witchfire bobbed in Snow’s right palm, gentle glow that smoothed her features and gleamed blue off the naked edge of the seax in her left.
“You’re lucky,” Snow said, “that Briel’s not that hungry.”
“The svartjagr’s yours?”
A shrug. “More or less. What are you doing up here, First Scout Szanys?”
Dekklis pulled her knees under her. Stood warily. “Followed the trail you left. Lot of blood. It’s not yours.”
Snort. “You worried it was? Well, I’m fine.”
“Whose is it?”
“No one you know.”
“Teslin’s dead” slipped out before she caught it. Hung there while she forced the grief back down her throat.
Snow shook her head. “Sorry for that. I can’t bring her back.”
“You can tell me why she died. Start with that Talir half-blood back there.”
“Her name is Ehkla. And you were right.” Snow’s eyes gleamed in the witchfire glow. “It was prayers on that pole. To Tal’Shik.”
The back of Dekklis’s neck prickled, sweat and chill and sweat again. “How do you know that?”
“She told me. And I saw the mark on her hand. That’s what you’re dealing with. Godsworn, yeah?”
“She knew your name. How?”
“Sorry, Szanys. That’s all you get.”
“Hell it is. That woman is dangerous—”
“Oh, you reckon?”
“—and I need to know how she knows you.” Dekklis put a hand on the hilt of her weapon.
The dog growled and took a stiff-legged step. Snow grimaced. “Logi. Sit, idiot.—Need? No. What you need is shelter. Istel needs a chirurgeon’s care. You want him to die out here? Keep arguing. Or come with me now.”
“Go with you?”
“Istel’s looking bad, yeah? I don’t think he’ll make it, you try and go back.”
“All compassion now, are you?”
“No. Practical. My partner’s bleeding out. So’s yours. We can do something about that, you and I, or they can both die.”
Dekklis had sworn oaths to Illharek. Serve, uphold, and defend, with life and honor. So ask what honor Snow understood. Smuggler and probable heretic, with that godmark on her hand. And she had patched Istel once already, picked locks for them, hadn’t betrayed them to Ehkla. Hadn’t attacked them here, either. A hundred maybes to answer the why, but it was clear enough she didn’t want a fight. Clear enough, too, that she knew more than she’d say, and Dekklis couldn’t force a confession. Not with Istel hurt this bad, against that dog and Snow’s conjuring and that svartjagr, wherever it had gone.
Dekklis had sworn oaths to Illharek. And dying out here wouldn’t serve those oaths.
She sheathed her sword. Locked stares with the blue-eyed half-blood. There was no point in asking can I trust you, so Dekklis didn’t. “Let’s go.”
The cave looked like two rocks propped together, a narrow V that might, at its center, let a woman stand upright. Snowdenaelikk hadn’t tried it. Her exploration had stopped at getting Veiko inside, and
please, Laughing God
hoping he survived until she got back. She’d left him slumped over a small collection of wet brush, one-handing his flint and promising fire when she returned, like she only meant to go out for more wood. She came back now to warm yellow spilling out of the cave, and to Veiko propped against the exterior, eyes half-shut like a man dozing at guard duty.
Dead, she thought on a punch of panic, and then No, because Briel sat sentry on the rock beside him. Cold Briel. Miserable, wings and tail wrapped tight. She would’ve been warmer on Veiko, hell, Snow could see his fever from here. Faintest pink under colorless skin now, and sweat beading like rain.
She let Logi go on ahead. Held her breath and pretended to wait for Dekklis, who was coming at Istel’s pace. Watched as Logi nudged Veiko’s left hand and licked bare fingers that might’ve twitched at the contact. Let her breath out when those witchfire eyes opened wide and found her.
“Didn’t we say you’d stay inside?”
“We did not.” He skinned a smile. Shook his head. Snowmelt sluiced off his braids. “I heard voices.”
“Fever dreams.”
His eyes slid past her. “Fever dreams in armor.” Which meant, then, he wouldn’t show weakness, not
in front of the enemy
for first impressions. She could blame his pride, sure, blame his honor, and pretend her shoulder blades didn’t itch with armor creaking behind her. She felt better with him watching her back, even if he shouldn’t be.
“The woman’s Dekklis. The man’s Istel.”
Veiko nodded. Winter peace, he’d called it, where enemies might share a fire and shelter and set a quarrel aside. But what happened when the storm ended—yeah, just guess, they’d be right back where they’d started. And maybe not. Maybe she’d work another deal with Dekklis. Get the legion after Ehkla, let them hunt her down.
Let them die, yeah?
Not her problem. She had Veiko to worry about.
And after?
Tsabrak. Ehkla. Godmagic and Tal’Shik. All of that would wait for later. For now: inside, all of them. Snow held out an arm for Briel. Collected a chilled svartjagr across her shoulders, and a wide-eyed stare from Istel.
But Dekklis had eyes only for Veiko. Narrow, thoughtful eyes that Snow didn’t like at all, that lingered too long on wounds and weapons and scraped the length of him.
“You’re the one Teslin and Barkett couldn’t catch. The ghost.”
“I
am no ghost.” Veiko drew up straight and returned her stare, in a way that Dvergiri men simply didn’t.
The surprise on Dekklis’s face would’ve been funny without the anger that came with it. Expect an oathsworn defender of all things Illhari to distrust what she didn’t know, yeah, whole histories full of that; the Purge hadn’t cured it. But it was Dekklis’s temper that worried Snow, the spear-thrust—
“Where are you from?”
—as if Veiko was a man in her household, or her prisoner.
“Little settlement north of the border,” Snow said quickly. “Very north. Takin herders, yeah?”
Dekklis ignored her. “What did you say your name was?”
“I did not say.”
“Veiko,” Snow said, to settle it. She put her hand on Veiko’s chest, as much to hold him back as hold him up. Fuck and damn, he was hot. “Can we move this inside?”
He grunted, which was Veiko for no. She put her face close to his, so that he had to look at her. Red lines all through the whites of his eyes now, red on the rims. “Got them handled. Trust me, yeah?”
Another grunt. But he let her push him backward until he had to duck and fold himself into the cave, trailing Logi and a fresh smear of blood. She listened for the hollow thump of a falling body. Let her breath out when she didn’t hear one. Maybe he’d managed a quiet collapse. More likely he was still standing, axe raised, waiting for battle.
Stubborn. No shortage of that. She rounded on Dekklis, fast enough that Briel flared for balance. Istel flinched back, caught himself on the rock, and hung there. He did not, she noted, reach for his weapon.
Dekklis did. Stopped, halfway. “Do we have a problem?”
“We might, you go after Veiko again.”
Dekklis looked like a woman who’d had one surprise too many in a day full of bad ones. Looked like she had a mouthful of vinegar, too, and still, “My apologies.”
Snow wished badly for a stick of jenja, for walls and a roof and a city’s stink around her. For familiar and safe and no one bleeding. Bet Dekklis didn’t wish for something like that, too. Dekklis was at the end of her patience, more than a little bit scared. Tempers frayed under those conditions.
Laughing God, getting soft, if she felt sympathy for this soldier.
“He might not remember when that fever breaks. If it does. Need your help, Scout. I owe him. Life debt, yeah? And she did this to him. Savvy that?”
Another blink. Szanys Dekklis came back, hard-eyed and hard-jawed and focused. The soldier, wanting orders. Wanting order. “I savvy. Tell me what you need.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Warmth. Women’s hands and women’s smell. Women’s voices, that swelled and murmured and buzzed. His mother and sister, he thought sometimes, going about women’s business, which embarrassed and distressed him. He was a man now. He shouldn’t be in the women’s house. Other times, he recognized Snowdenaelikk by touch and scent and sharp Dvergiri syllables. There was another woman with her, and he would panic until he remembered
Dekklis
who she was, and where he was, and what had happened.
Sometimes he burned, and sometimes he shivered so hard that he forgot the other pains. And sometimes he could see, and hear, and speak. Rasped out yes and no to whatever Snow asked him and wished he could ask her how he was, truly—because she would not tell him, in front of soldiers, if she thought he would die.
He thought he might. He smelled vomit, sweat, and sour skin, and he knew they were his. And there was pain
almost
worse than any he’d known. It had its center in his thigh, but it had traveled to all his limbs now. Lodged in his chest and crushed him, so that he took bites of breath and saw white and blue on the back of his eyelids. Bright blue, like the witchfire, except on the edges, where it matched the bruise-midnight dark of Snow’s eyes.
That was part of his awareness.
The rest of it he spent on the twilight expanse of the glacier one day’s walk from his village, with a winter sky like metal and a sun that offered no warmth and hung, pale and sullen, near the horizon. He sat on the ice while the wind sang and whistled through the cracks and crevasses that a man could fall into if he was careless.
He was not cold, although he should be. He flexed bare hands that should be stiff and numb, took deep lungfuls of air that should burn and make him cough and that felt warm and smoky in his lungs instead.
“—more wood, Istel—”
The wind lifted the ends of his braids, and he turned his face into it. He was completely alone, except for the takin: his eldest brother’s herd, with the one-horned billy who had broken his leg seven winters ago and become a rug and several sweaters, jerky and bone needles and gut-thread. Had become a carving, too, palm-sized, that Veiko had given to Kaari’s eldest daughter, whose name was—
“Snow, listen—”
No. That wasn’t her name. Snow was Illhari, the half-blood Dvergir, whose hair was fair as Kaari’s daughter’s, but Kaari’s daughter had been round breasted and round rumped and dimpled when she smiled.
It bothered him that he couldn’t remember her name.
Helgi looked at him, slant-eyed, and put his head on his paws. Sighed, like Helgi did, gut-deep heave and groan as if all the sky pressed down on him. Veiko trailed his fingers through his
dead
dog’s fur, and watched the
“—what are—”
takin
“—don’t know, yeah, but—”
wander the edge of the glacier. There was short grass, which there shouldn’t be in winter, and the takin snatched mouthfuls as they moved.
“—like a goat—”
Like a goat, yes, except larger, split-hooved and hulking, that children and women might ride. Thick tawny fleece that women could spin into thread. Veiko tried to explain, but the sky and the ice swallowed whatever he said, so that he couldn’t hear his own voice. Only his heartbeat, too loud, in his chest.
Veiko stood up and walked along the edge of the glacier. His leg did not hurt here. He rubbed the place where the witch-woman had cut him. It felt smooth through the breeches, unwounded. He scuffed his boots across the ice. Helgi trotted beside him, his tail curved over his back like
a wurm’s tooth
a crescent moon. The takin ignored them, except the one-horned billy, who lifted his head and eyed them suspiciously. Foul-tempered animal, to Veiko’s recollection. No tears shed for its dying.
But Helgi, now,
“—who is—”
had been a good dog. A fine hunter. Smart where Logi was merely clever. Brave, if one might call
“—a dog—”
him that. Men were brave, and men were heroes. Dogs were dogs. And Helgi
“—saved his life—”
was a ghost now.
Veiko’s heartbeat thumped, too loud and too steady. Sounded less like flesh now, and more like a drum, one of the noidghe instruments, rough-cured hide and crude painted symbols. He found himself walking in rhythm, while Helgi’s paws beat a counterpoint.
The glacier stretched on forever, and Veiko might have walked forever, except he rounded a curve and returned to the place where he’d started: the one-horned billy, the herd, the metal sky, and endless ice and wind. He stopped. Helgi did.
He thought about striking off across the glacier, if only to see where it ended. But only a fool would cross the glacier alone, and he was not a fool. Men died if they tried it.
But he had Helgi, didn’t he? And Briel, too, gliding circles against the iron sky. He wondered how he had not noticed her sooner, in this empty place. A svartjagr wasn’t a subtle creature, and Briel least of all.
Only a fool.
He called her name, and this time the sound carried. Echoed
iel, iel, iel
off the ice and the rocks while his heart throbbed a counterbeat. She turned on a wingtip. Saw him and began her descent. Her wings spread across the sky like spilled ink, churned the clouds into fog a
nd sent them swirling groundward.
His
drum
heart pounded harder, louder, painful against the bones of his chest. He gasped like a man drowning. Put his hand under his shirt, peeled the cloth aside. Symbols moved across his skin: noidghe symbols, and one that looked like Ehkla’s palm tattoo.
He rubbed at his skin, hard enough to sting. Pulled back red fingers and saw a hole where flesh and bone had been. His heart beat raw and naked and steady in the gap. He drew it out. Held it, twitching and throbbing, in his cupped hands.
Blur and flash, and Helgi leapt at him. Grabbed the heart from his fingers and sprang onto the ice. Stood there, tail waving and ears tilted back, with Veiko’s heart beating in his jaws. A game he might have played with a piece of antler or bone.
“No,” Veiko said, and, “Helgi, come here,” but he could not shout past Briel’s wingbeats, which boomed and gusted in time to the heart, the drum, because now it seemed to be both.
Helgi turned and trotted away, brush tail curved over his back like a
wurm’s tooth
moon, silver against the dull-grey ice, against Briel’s descending darkness—
No. Not Briel. A wurm, the sort that a
fool
hero might battle, finger-long fangs and gaping jaws and bloodstink breath. Almost upon him, only moments, and no place to run.
The ice.
He
always
hesitated. The wurm
always
struck. Claws long and black as Snow’s sword punched through armor and bone. And it hurt, oh ancestors, as bad as
exactly like
what Ehkla had done.
“—Veiko—”
And then he came back to the familiar ache and agony of his body. To Briel, curled over his heart, against flesh and under blankets. To Snowdenaelikk’s bruise-blue eyes.
“Veiko,” gently, as if he were a child. “Easy, yeah, you’re fine.”
No, he thought. But she knew that. He was dying. Burning and freezing by turns. Poisoned and fevered, despite her every effort turned to saving him. You’re fine was a lie as much for her sake as his.
“Fever dreams,” he croaked, as he always did. It was the second lie. The glacier was no dream. Too real for that, too regular and too stubborn. It hovered now on the boundary of his awareness. If he blinked, he might fall into it.
