Above the Snowline

by Steph Swainston

  The hunters sitting on the floor looked round. Blind Lainnir had woken up and was leaning on the bar. His windburnt face was amazingly lined, his opaque eyes recessed in dark hollows. He was very old, as much as fifty years, a relic like those which melt out of the edges of glaciers.

  ‘The Carnich drink destroyed his liver. You know their goods are shoddy and dangerous. They have no respect for us; they are laughing at us, thinking they can swindle us. We must not let them!’

  Behind me Ouzel said, ‘Attagirl!’

  I glanced at her indignantly. ‘Surely you don’t want them to fight?’

  ‘I’ve never seen this before, ha ha. I’ve never seen them standing up for themselves.’

  ‘San sent me to do that. She’ll wreck everything!’

  ‘She’s suffered, Jant. Let her blow off steam.’

  Lainnir aimed his voice in Dellin’s direction: ‘The Awians brought us wealth. They made us what we are - better than the hunters in Stravaig.’

  Dellin spat, ‘You’ve picked up their dangerous ideas as well as their sluggishness! “Better”? Through owning many possessions? Whoever heard such a thing! How can you be better when they made you blind!’

  ‘Age blinded me, Shira.’

  ‘It was the gin and you know it! You Rhydanne—’ she pointed at one or two who were wearing garish odds and ends of lowlands clothing ‘—who hang around their fortress are making fools of yourselves. Your ridiculous swaggering makes Awians laugh. You’re wearing so many bangles you can hardly run! You traded them, not made them, so they mean nothing! You, why are you wearing a metal hat?’

  ‘It’s a helmet,’ a young hunter said proudly, pulling it down until his hair stuck out in bristles.

  ‘What did you pay for it?’

  ‘The furs of one week’s chase.’

  ‘See! You look like a clown. How will a metal hat stop your ears getting cold? What’s this chequered cloth? And a pendant made from a spoon! First, put your proper clothes back on and have some self-respect! Stop hanging around their fort! Second, stop hunting to excess, just to pay for jewellery. Have you forgotten we only kill animals we need? If we need a jacket, it’s a simple matter to spear a snow leopard. But now you’re hunting to give furs away! You’re learning the Awians’ greed! It’s terrible to see …

  ‘The Awians are a sick people, because no matter how much they have it’s never enough. They accumulate goods until it drives them mad. Eventually they collect mountains of polished rock and metal and live inside them. I have seen these hills of stone all crammed together - they made me feel trapped. The Awians also feel trapped; I can sense their sadness and frustration. They will trap you too, at last. They’ll kill you, drive you away or send you as mad as they are. Greed saturates their lives; they overeat at every meal. They need so much grain they have to grow it. They proliferate, with more people in each family than everyone in this room. They never kill newborns. How can such a people live except by theft?’

  Dellin gestured towards me and all the Rhydanne looked. She continued: ‘Lowlanders have lost the skill of making their own clothes. If you also forget how to sew hides and find food you will have to rely on them - as Jant did - or you will die.’

  Suddenly finding myself with an audience I strode forward to Dellin’s side, introduced myself and said, ‘Don’t listen to her! You can trade with Ouzel, the way you always have. She isn’t the same as the other featherbacks. The silver man says you should stay away from the keep altogether - until I tell you it’s safe.’

  There was general agreement at this, but Dellin clawed her hand. ‘We’ve already spoken to Raven! He is treacherous; he considers us less than goats and our language no better than bleating. Do not make deals with the settlers. They are bound to cheat us. Do not learn the idea of money from them; money leads to greed. Every autumn the leaves turn a thousand shades of gold - that is all the gold we need. Every evening we see silver in the moon and in running water - that is all the silver we need. Be satisfied with your original life, a simple life, and you will be happy.’

  She darted over to the card players. They had been staring at her throughout although they couldn’t understand a word she said. One man was bristle-chinned, the other woolly-hatted, and their cards lay face down on the scored table. She batted the cards about until they flew all over the place, then leaned and yelled directly into bristle-chin’s face, ‘Greedy Awian!’

  The Rhydanne fell about laughing - this was their sort of humour.

  Into woolly-hat’s astonished face she said, ‘Slow Awian! You have taken our hunting ground and my heart revolts. I will never rest until I have driven you back to the lowlands where you belong!’

  She flitted towards me and into the square of Rhydanne around the walls.

  Instead of standing in full oratorical glory, she sat down in the middle, cross-legged, upright, and continued in a conspiratorial whisper, ‘We meet here tomorrow night to defeat the Awians. I will show you how!’

  I went to sit beside Dellin. I tried to make her recant but she wouldn’t take back her words. She fell to conversing with Miagail, not the usual directions to find prey but about the location of prospectors’ shacks. I couldn’t stop her and I certainly couldn’t use force after our journey through the snow. The trust between us when we were roped together had disappeared and she was independent again. I was so torn I gave up arguing, because the more I stayed near her, the more I enjoyed doing so. Her energy and enthusiasm shone from her, and even without touching her I could feel the latent power of her hard body. Her quicksilver potential for movement tingled over her even now. I sat for hours listening to her, the most talkative and the most eloquent Rhydanne I had ever met. Meanwhile in the background the Awians quietly resumed their game of whist and the Rhydanne baby chased a spider running across the floor, pounced on it and gleefully pulled all its legs off.

  Dellin’s powerful words rang in my ears. They multiplied like echoes and resounded through my mind. When Ouzel brought me a lantern, showed me my room, and I lay between the furs in a pallet bed on the floor, I was still wondering at her speech, and I thought of her all night.

  RAVEN

  In the window seat, I made good use of the light to go through the ledger and check my accounts. Our furs had earned an excellent profit, even more than I had estimated. I could have afforded more fighting men than the hundred I was mustering and the five hundred Francolin was sending. No matter, they would suffice.

  Below me, Snipe occupied the table with his back to the fireplace, weighing silver nuggets on a scale and slipping them into cloth bags. Click, click, rustle. He placed the small weights on the plate, paused, then his pen scratched as he recorded the values. The clicking must have been going on some time, but once it registered on my consciousness it seemed interminable and annoyed me intensely.

  I put the ledger down. Snipe, feeling my attention on him, scribbled a note on his blotting paper, peered up and smiled sheepishly. He was not a man blessed by nature with good looks. His forehead was high and his chin was long, but all his other features were squashed together in the middle of his face, leaving forehead and chin empty expanses. He looked like a human being reflected in a tap.

  ‘My lord?’

  ‘Have you seen Jant this morning?’

  ‘No, my lord.’

  ‘Hmm.’ I was beginning to worry he may have sneaked in. It would be his style to question my staff without my knowledge - or worse, the Rhydanne porters. ‘Has any servant seen him?’

  ‘No. The bad weather could have stalled him, my lord. Or one look at Ouzel’s spit-and-sawdust shack and he fled back to the Castle?’

  ‘No, that’s not like him. Trust me; I know.’

  Snipe nodded, hunched his shoulders and fell silent. I scanned the snow-heavy sky.

  Snipe came to life again. ‘My lord, how old is Jant?’

  ‘Ninety-five, or thereabouts.’

  ‘Uck! He looks in his early twenties.’

  ‘He is. He always will
be. The Emperor freezes time for him.’

  ‘Because he can fly? That’s not fair.’

  ‘Snipe, how in this life can you possibly have imagined that anything was going to be fair?’

  ‘Sorry. He looks younger than you, my lord. Um, I mean younger than both of us.’

  ‘Anyone treating him as if he’s twenty-three comes to grief. He knew my great-grandfather; he comes from the era when the Tanagers were on the throne … Yes, it makes me shudder too. As Phalarope once said, death defines humanity. If the Eszai aren’t human I wonder what they’ve become …’

  ‘Who’s Phalarope?’

  I sighed. I wished this picayune picaroon had read something, anything; his ignorance cramped my style. ‘Phalarope was a philosopher. ’

  He tapped one nugget on another. ‘I never thought I’d see an Eszai in the flesh … Once, when I was at school, my lord, a circus troupe drove by the yard. A train of wagons, one after another … I remember it well. They were yellow and blue, and an Eszai was painted all gaudily on the side of each one: the Strongman, the Swordsman, the Messenger. They were in the circus. Not the real Eszai, of course. Performers dressed up.’

  ‘The Castle is rather like a circus,’ I said.

  ‘Dame Goslin said if we behaved ourselves she’d take us to see them. So we were ’specially quiet all week and on Sunday she trooped us out to the big top - we got to sit high up, on the back row. But the “Eszai” weren’t very good, looking back. They were a bit crap. The Messenger was a trapeze artist. And check this out: it was a girl.’

  I laughed.

  ‘A girl in jeans and a T-shirt. They got that right.’

  ‘And was she a good likeness?’

  ‘Perfect. Except her tits were much too big.’ Snipe chuckled and returned to weighing silver. Behind the money bags, he looked like the hunchback Gog out of The Miser King. ‘How much silver have we obtained this week?’ I asked.

  ‘Nearly seven kilos, my lord.’

  ‘Excellent.’

  He poured some more fetid juniper-berry coffee. ‘I wish I could think of a way to make cat-eyes work faster. The sooner we leave this place the better.’

  ‘Ha - it won’t be long now! Send the profit from this batch to Francolin.’

  ‘All of it?’

  ‘Yes. It’s the last he will receive from here. Next time it will be from the royal treasury.’

  ‘But, my lord—’

  ‘No buts.’

  ‘It’d be all right if these snow-brained ’danne actually brought silver half the time,’ he complained. ‘They’re too dumb to tell the difference between metal and any other shiny rock.’ In one hand he picked up a chunk of steely crystals chipped from granite and in the other a heavy block of cubes, which all adjoined each other. ‘She brought me magnetite instead of silver and iron pyrites instead of gold.’

  ‘Fool’s gold,’ I said.

  ‘Well, they are bloody fools. And she wanted bangles for it: “Demre bangles. Two. Demre.” They have bangles on the brain.’

  ‘Who brought it?’

  ‘How do I know? They all look the same. This one is bauxite, of no use whatsoever, and this …’ He lifted a small slab dusted with peacock-blue powder. ‘I asked for purple, meaning amethyst, but instead she brings me flowers of aragonite.’

  ‘It’s attractive.’

  ‘It’s worthless … except as a paperweight.’

  A sudden movement outside caught my attention. Five brown goats stampeded from behind a snow-laden cabin at the fringe of the forest. I sighed. ‘Idiots, why don’t they just teth—’

  A darting movement. Stopped. I squinted against the brightness of the snow. Now the goats veered towards the trees, away from something in their path, a shape white on white. A wolf? I wished for my bow.

  ‘Snipe—’

  The shape moved, exploded into a sudden sprint after the goats. It was a savage, a Rhydanne all in white. Now I saw another flicker at the edge of my vision, a dash between huts.

  I ran to the speaking tubes, flicked the cover off the connection to the roof and yelled to the sentries, ‘Savages! Can you see them?’

  Muffled shouting, then, ‘I saw one!’

  An arrow zipped past the window. I ran back to the niche and looked down to see an orange flight sticking out of a drift. Another savage was crouching in its lee, undoing the tethers of our llamas. Back to the tubes. ‘Is Jant with you?’ I yelled.

  ‘No, my lord.’

  ‘Is he flying over?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Then bloody shoot them. All of them!’ Then the tube to the guardroom: ‘Everyone on the roof! With bows! Now!’

  I jumped down, swirled on my coat and pulled my gloves from the pocket. Snipe swept the tapestry back and we ran up the stairs.

  I emerged onto the top, light-headed. The freezing wind nearly tore my coat from my body. The two sentinels leant over the parapet, scanning the snow, seemingly at a loss. I took hold of it to brace myself and looked down. All was silent below, nothing to be seen but the swathe of snow between our curtain wall and the margin of the forest, along which settlers’ cabins were scattered. A clamour from the stairs and then Captain Crake was beside me, his archers stumbling up behind. ‘My lord—’

  A crack of splintering wood blew on the wind. Two settlers pelted out of one of the more distant cabins and ran towards us, heading for the gate. A second later a savage appeared in their doorway and set off, long legs sweeping. He sent quick glances around as he dashed, so fast the settlers, running at full speed, looked sluggish.

  ‘There!’ I pointed. ‘There!’

  A couple of archers drew but loosed wide. I made the mistake of letting my gaze follow the arrows - with my attention deflected for a second the white figure disappeared against the snow. I clenched my teeth in exasperation.

  At the same time the captain cried, ‘I see one!’ Six bows flung heavy arrows hissing in the opposite direction. I whipped round, stared along their line of fire and saw sheep scattering, just the bottom of their feet kicking up against the whiteout. A savage drove them, hood raised and spear in hand. A slick of blood darkened the cabin door where he’d speared a sheep - no, two - and left them dying messily.

  The wind skewed our arrows, thrust them into the ground, and the archers could hardly see to shoot. The next gust bunched up an eerie whistle, whisked it away. Another whistle answered from among the cabins and we saw a glint of silver in a snow-filled alley between them. ‘My god,’ said Snipe. ‘How many are there?’

  ‘It could be the same few.’

  A second flight of arrows snicked into the snow well short of the thieving wretch and the archers drew again. The savage just dropped to the ground, lay still. Beside me Crake, looking down the length of his arrow, muttered, ‘Where is he?’

  ‘I can’t see him,’ said another, and lowered his bow.

  The wind crashed around the tower and I turned away from ice grains flying off the parapet. When I looked back I couldn’t see him either. Spindrift snow chafed over the patch where he’d lain flat, filling in his footprints and those of the sheep he had spirited away. There was nothing save the smell of our lunch cooking ripping past on the wind.

  Snipe broke the silence. ‘I see one! There, between the trees … He’s gone.’ The captain glared at him.

  ‘It was nothing,’ I snapped. ‘Keep searching.’

  Two figures came racing out of the forest. One flitted into the shadow of a cabin and I heard him break the door with a well-aimed kick. He vanished inside and the settler’s whole family poured out, three little boys and a mother in a red skirt. The mother scooped up her smallest son and they fled to the next cabin. They hammered on the door, shouted till it opened, admitted them and slammed again.

  Goats and sheep spilled out of the opened cabin onto the snow, some of them bleeding, all bleating, and the Rhydanne flashed after them. Long hair straggled from the sides of his hood and red-stained necklaces slapped the front of his parka. His barbaric regalia
struck fear, then hatred, into my archers. He whacked the beasts with his spear butt and turned them towards the forest but a settler followed him out of the cabin, axe in hand, and set his foot on the trailing tether of the last goat. The savage turned to face him and the man brandished his axe. I felt proud.

  The savage raised his spear, levelled it at the settler, then as I thought the brave man’s last minute had come, one of those barbarous whistles cleaved the air. The savage sidestepped faster than we could follow, shepherded the goats at a sprint towards the forest. The burly woodsman looked after him, bewildered, still with his foot on the rope and the goat bleating beside his leg.

  The savage reached the trees, swung round to face us, ran a few paces and hurled his spear at the settler. It transfixed with chilling accuracy the goat, which fell dead. Snipe swore beside me.

  Another raider dashed in from nowhere, pulled the spear out and used its point to slit the rope. They hunt in packs. No, in pairs. He flung the goat onto his shoulder and set off after the other, overtook him in the cover of the trees, and tossed the spear back to him. They both disappeared into the forest and again the gale swept up ice grains and hurled them straight at us, forcing tears from our eyes. The sky lowered minute by minute, darker with snow.

  Out of sight around the corner of the parapet a dog was barking furiously. I crossed over and looked down to see the door of the largest barn swinging wide. Every time it banged shut I could see behind it. A savage was there, driving the last of the sheep into the forest. He evaded the dog as it snapped at his legs. It bounded higher and with an irritated motion he spun round and thrust his spear into its neck.

  The dog collapsed and the plunderer ran on. He had strung settlers’ cups on a belt across his body. Cutlery in the cups rattled as he ran, and under one arm he bore off a haunch of smoked ham. He had stolen too much to carry, and dropped a trail of objects. His accomplice appeared and, crossing and re-crossing his trail, stooped to pick them up.