He was yanked up into the snow — its resistance spilling, clouding around him as he was pulled through it, then dragged a way over gritty surface .. . and left to lie there on his belly.
Lie... It was the first time in twelve days that Baj had been able to lie down. The first time his body's weight had stretched out easy on a level, wonderfully pressed down by his pack and what had been the clumsy, maddening impediments of sheathed rapier, dagger, bow, and quiver. The sensation was so wonderful... so new and old at once, that he closed his eyes to enjoy it. He heard conversation, people saying something much less important than lying still on a surface that wouldn't let him fall to his death.
"Baj..."
"What is it, sweetheart?" Still lying with his eyes closed, feeling muscles easing after days of desperate labor, and the cramps of fear.
"Baj, look."
He opened his eyes... and sat up to see they had climbed the Wall.
He and the others — all but Errol — sat or lay in the snow like exhausted children. Most of the climber Shrikes sat also, while their tribesmen — having camped spaced along the crest, waiting — ministered to them, giving them body-warmed water-skins to drink from, laughing and joking with them about what had been, apparently, a near-record slow ascent.
The last of the climbers, Dolphus, came over the rim, stumbled in the snow, but kept his feet. "So far," he said, "— so good." Wonderfully apt, certainly from a copybook.
Baj, reluctant to leave the level even to stand, crawled to Nancy, took hold and hugged her to him, feeling that small strong body deep in plush fur, kissed her and was love-nipped on a chapped lower lip. He squeezed her hard, grappled her to him as if tears of honey might be pressed from golden eyes.... His prayer for her, or his avoidance of prayer, had been answered, and she lived.
"Well," Richard said, and coughed, "— we're alive. And thank Frozen-Jesus for it."
"Thank the Shrikes," Baj said.
"Yes," Patience said, "thank the Shrikes." With some effort she got to her feet, and went to those climbers as they sat resting, or stood coiling line, and kissed each on the cheek.
Murmurs from the other tribesmen. Baj counted fourteen, fifteen men. They'd brought no women with them.
A number of long light sleds lay near — with each harnessed team, three pairs of caribou, standing restless, casting the stretched shadows of end-of-day. A small herd of the animals shifted in a rope enclosure, antlers clicking softly as they touched others.... Past them, the gently undulating plain of snow, the great glacier's cap, stretched away and away to its own horizon.
The waiting Shrikes, short and sturdy in their caribou parkies and high muk-boots, javelins casual over their shoulders, were taking their friends' heavy packs, rope-coils, and bandoleers of gear from them, to pack on the sleds.... Three came to Baj and the others, and shouldered their packs to load. Left them their weapons.
Baj stood, took Nancy's hand, and walked back near the Wall's crest as if to assure himself they'd truly done what they'd done. There, standing safe from that supreme vertical, it seemed to him this snow-prairie was one world, and the land miles below, quite another. So strong a notion was this that he looked up as if a third — a sky-world — might hover still higher over their heads.... But there was only depthless blue.
They walked back to Patience and the others; Marcus-Shrike and several tribesmen were standing with them. "You all," Marcus said, "did very well, for strangers. But that witless boy," indicating Errol, who was peeing a pattern on the snow, "— he did best."
"We are very sorry," Patience said — and was certainly going to say "sorry about the loss of Henry-Shrike" when she noticed a change in the tribesmen's faces, so she never finished. And no one else mentioned it, either.
"I know why," Richard spoke low to Baj later, as the Shrikes rocked their sled-runners loose, preparing to travel north. "For them, what is not spoken of is not completely so. They will never want a final good-bye for Henry-Shrike, since that will mean he's truly dead."
Whistles, then. Apparently the Shrikes' equivalent of drums and trumpets. Whistles for the start.
* * *
All the climbers rode for a long while, resting, as the sleds glided behind the caribou over glittering perfect white that undulated slowly up, then slowly down, as if they sailed a calm snow-sea. But after a distance gone toward night and halting, first the Shrikes, then Baj and the others, climbed off to stretch their legs, trotting alongside. Poor trotting, with staggers and tripping at first, even for the tribesmen, the level taking getting used to.
The relief from every instant's threat of death also took getting used to — Baj startling the tribesmen once by diving into the snow to stretch and roll like a hound freed from kennel, in celebration of the gift of safety. Nancy fell to join him, and Richard also lay ponderously down. Then Patience came, and Errol bounded over to flop down beside them.... They all mouthed the snow of safety, as the tribesmen turned to watch them, and the sleds slid by.
Then all were on their feet again, trotting unsteadily over the snow in sunset light after the Shrikes' steady-pacing teams, whose harness jingled with steel-and-copper sequins. They hurried along the narrow ruts the sled-runners left behind, Baj holding Nancy's mittened hand to confirm he had her still.
... At nightfall in a sled-circled camp — the rising moon blurred by buffeting wind, blowing ice-crystals — Baj and the others, drowsy as tired children after meat and blubber cooked over cold-dried caribou dung, were steered to hide-sheltered fur pallets. Where, nested with Nancy in an odd little leather tent pitched within a larger round one — for additional warmth, apparently — Baj had no reason but fear-remembered to jolt awake, certain a braided climbing-line had parted, and the long fall begun.
... Then, what more delicious than safety realized? Safety, warmth, and love, with Boston's North Gate seeming only a Map-place, to be found in some forever future, but never now.
CHAPTER 25
The glacier's snowy plain — broken only here and there by stupendous crevasses whose depths, blue vanishing to black, echoed to no tossed chunks of ice — proved otherwise featureless but for its gentle rises, gentle descents.
It became a dream's frozen landscape for Baj as they traveled on, trotting beside the sleds, then riding for a while, then off to trot again. They traveled as if through time, on time's white and frozen road — from day to night, night to day, day to night once more — with only occasional howling storms come over endless ice to fasten them to a present.
The Shrikes ran almost silent over the glacier's broad back, but for impatient whistles, signings of this task or that to be done: lashings to be checked; the restless caribou stung with whipped leather lines to stay hauling each sled in harness together; scouts to go running ahead... scouts to drop behind to catch up later. Then, as early evening fell in shrouds of hazing ice-crystals or blowing snow, the caribou unharnessed to wander in a guarded herd, pawing the snow for last season's lichen. The sleds unpacked, the great round hide-tents — "biggies"— set up supported by long fanned struts of precious southern pine. Then "bitties"— little hide tents placed as dens within the great ones — were pitched with tensioned cords tied strut to strut.
And all labor made twice — three times — the labor by cold and wind. At its gentlest, the wind sliced slowly, shallowly as a stroking razor; at its fiercest, it struck like an ax.
When — rarely now, as days went by — the sun came flashing off the ice, it blinded for hours anyone who stared without slit-goggles to take pleasure in it.
The cold days' work wore fingers raw through every glove or mitten. Made numb faces, feet, and hands. So Baj saw, in their world, the forming of the Shrikes by weather with no mercy, no forgiveness in it, where only green lichen and the caribou made life possible at all.
Still, there was an ease. When lying exhausted in a close bitty-tent, with Lord Winter bellowing a gale outside the biggy, Baj rested wonderfully warm by a single tallow candle and the heat of naked Nancy be
side him on the furs — her odor mingling fox with weary girl — so his sleep was the richest he'd known, a pleasure anticipated through each traveling day.
... More than a Warm-time week had certainly passed when this fine sleep was broken by an animal's bleating scream — and Baj was off the furs and out of the bitty-tent, struggling into his parky, hopping to get fur trousers on, and muk-boots. Then out of the biggy's entrance-flaps into still and absolute cold under rich moonlight, bending to set his bow. Nancy was coming out behind him, scimitar drawn, when the animal screamed again — and Baj saw, an easy stone's throw away, a great mound of snow with dead-black eyes standing upright over a fallen caribou. The mound of snow opened dreadful jaws, bent for a great ripping bite, and the caribou's screams ceased.
Icy arrow nocked to the string, Baj stood clear of a sled's heaped load, drew to his ear — and as he released, was struck hard across the face with a whipping crack as the bow exploded in his hand. Its ruins hung by the bow-string as Shrikes came running in shuttling moon-shadow, setting javelins to their atlatles.
The white bear turned toward them. Annoyed, unafraid, one huge paw resting on his prey.
"A relative!" Richard, heavy double-bitted ax in hand, had come up beside Baj.
The javelins began to hum, the Shrikes grunting with effort at each throw, and Baj saw what their atlatles provided — another foot-and-a-half of throwing leverage as they whipped the light spears away. The javelins flicked over the snow, far, and almost quick as arrows. They hummed like short-summer bees, swarming, converging on the bear, impaling him thump thump thump so he staggered, snarling, quilled with them. He turned to pace away as if disgusted, leaving spattered blood black in moonlight.
The Shrikes, with shrill celebration whistles, ran him down, thrusting javelins here and there — and as the great bear stumbled, two leaped on its massive snowy back, hacking, stabbing with their knives as it moaned, shuddered, and lay down to die while still the long knives worked away.
It was a sample of Shrikes in battle, and sobering.
Richard set his ax on his shoulder. "Your bow..."
"Went to pieces."
"Must have frozen through on the Wall, Prince!" Dolphus-Shrike returning from the killing of the bear. "Too many woods glued together..." He tossed a javelin in the air, caught it. "In Lord Winter's country, simplest is best."
"Yourself excepted, I suppose."
"I," Dolphus-Shrike said, "— am the exception that proves the rule." And on that fine copybook quote, strolled past.
The tribesmen retrieved the huge hide only — and squatted around it in the snow, industrious in the moon's uncertain light, scraping it clean of fat and sinew with their knives. They brought no meat to camp.
"Eat black bear or brown bear," Marcus-Shrike, answering Baj's question, "— and you get strong. But eat white bear, and you get sick and sometimes die. There's a badness in the flesh, for certain in the liver."
"No one in Boston," Patience said, "— eats white bear. Same reason. Either tiny worms in the meat, or something unfortunate in the liver."
" 'Unfortunate.'" Marcus-Shrike shook his head. "So much meat left to the ravens and white foxes."
... After the encounter with the bear, Baj looked for other interruptions, other events as they traveled. But there were none — except a painful interlude, when Patience plucked out the stitching in his cheek, and the side of his head.... Otherwise, nothing to vary the running alongside the sleds to spare the laboring teams, nothing to vary the occasional ride to rest, the sled's runners whispering, sliding through snow behind the pleasant tinkling of decorations on the caribou's harness.... Patience, usually running with them, sometimes Walked-in-air — but low, beneath the horizon's line of sight, and watchful of sudden crevasses falling away beneath her.... Once, as she trotted beside him, Baj heard her murmuring to her son, as if the child might hear her over a wilderness of ice and snow. "I'm coming to you, darling. My sweet, sweet boy..."
They traveled through various weathers. As if to a rhythm Lord Winter might be beating out, there came brutal cold in brilliant sunshine days, when the snow plain flashed and sparkled unbearably bright, so even the eye-masks were insufficient. Then, Baj and the others — the tribesmen, too — ran sometimes with eyes shut, depending on the sounds of the rest to stay close, and not stray out and away over the blazing prairie to wander alone and blind in searing light.
There were those days, and — almost alternately — days of blizzard, not quite as cold, but battering by howling wind and driven snow that flayed exposed skin, so Baj imagined the Wolf-General, head thrown back, howling as her condemned were flayed on Headquarters Street.
It came to him, as they ran and sledded, that the affairs of Sun-risers or Moonrisers would always seem of less importance, since Lady Weather had administered her lessons of the Wall, and the glacier's plain of snow. They were all only climbers, only travelers-by, whether Sunriser Kings or Khans, Moonriser Generals or Boston Talents. Even dear Nancy — and himself — were only come... to go, while the cold-struck earth, seeming so mighty a traveler, rolled on through even colder, grander emptiness, that noticed it not at all.
... As the days passed, then a second WT week, the drinking of snow melted in canteen or water-skin tucked against the belly, the chewing of seal blubber and strips of caribou slow-roasted over dung-fires — became the only way, and thoughts of other drink, other food, other weather, only foolishness. The climbing weariness was long gone, and Baj and the others ran as the Shrikes ran, and rested rarely.
Sometimes, in the evenings, he and Nancy fenced lightly — cautious for their steel's fragility in such cold — and both practiced hurling javelins from atlatles, providing amusement for the Shrikes, who stood out beyond the sleds as targets for them, considering that safer than bystanding.
"I see no reason," Dolphus-Shrike said, watching them one evening as their javelins gadded hissing off to left or right, "— I really see no reason why we Shrikes should not rule the world."
... Days later, in a clouded gray dawn following a snowstorm more severe than usual, the Shrikes rose only to squat in circles — as if around ghost fires — chewing the inevitable seal-blubber. Waiting, not traveling.
Baj and the others stood together, also chewing.
"Well," Patience said, "— who's going to ask, to be certain?"
They'd learned that the tribesmen, like all primitives — and, of course, many of those not primitive — counted power in momentary increments, so that to have to ask indicated weakness, and to be asked, strength, no matter how unimportant the question.
Baj sighed, and went to ask.
"Why have we stopped?"
The Shrikes at that circle seemed surprised. Why? Why have they stopped? Startled at such ignorance.
The Shrike named Paul looked up at him. "We stopped, because we're here."
"Here..."
The Shrike pointed with his thumb. "Boston — nine WT miles that way."
"Ah..." Baj thought of avoiding the next question, which would cost him respect for at least the day — then remembered he'd been a prince, and asked it. "How do you know?" There was certainly no sign of habitation... no buildings to be seen anywhere in that direction.
Satisfied smiles around the circle at that. "We smell it," Paul-Shrike said. "The city breathes, farts, as a man breathes and farts. It smells on the wind."
Baj found that closeness oddly shocking to hear — snow travel, and for nearly three weeks, did not lend itself to arrivals. Even less, to this arrival.
He went back to the others with the news. "I thought so," Patience said, and Richard nodded. They had all thought so — from wind-carried odor apparently — except of course for Errol, who neither knew nor cared.
Nancy took Baj gently by the nose. "Sunrisers are poor smellers."
"The Shrikes knew."
"The Shrikes are savages," she said, and leaned up to kiss the nose she'd pinched.
"But no houses... no structures at all."
>
"Boston, Baj," Patience said, "is in the ice, and of the ice."
"Yes, I knew it was, but... all of it?"
"All of it," Nancy said, and tried to pinch his nose again, so had to be parried, then hugged.... And doing so, Baj thought of the women waiting in Boston-town. They, so soon to be slaughtered, would feel much as Nancy felt in his arms, sturdy, small, and soft over slender bones. His heart began a familiar tattoo. It sounded in his chest as if it had concerns of its own, of fear, and preparation for action.
"Baj..." Golden eyes, that saw into him as the Shrikes' javelins had entered the bear. "Baj — when we go into the city, I will kill the women for you. Richard and I, and Patience and the Shrikes will kill them. You stand guard for us against the Constables coming."
"Yes," Richard said, his breath smoking in morning cold.
"No. I'll do what must be done."
"And be changed," Patience said, "— from Who-was-a prince?"
"Or not," Baj said. "How many innocents died under the yataghans of my First-father's tumans? How many under the sabers of my Second-father's cavalry? Though neither might have wished it so." He tried a smile. "Who am I, to deny my heritage?"
Breezes, that had brought the odors of the city to the camp, slowly began to strengthen as the night's storm wind — reversing its track — now began to sweep back from a dark horizon. Small swirls of snow were spinning across the glacier's frozen prairie.
* * *
The Shrikes, having considered, had risen as one to travel through blowing snow. A semicircular route, a day-long curve at first to the north .. . then, by night, around east to settle at last where blizzards had driven their burdens into great snow-dunes, only three Warm-time miles from Boston's north gate.
Baj, trotting beside laboring caribou, had time enough to think of other things than necessary murders.... He imagined one-eyed Howell Voss, certainly now the King — a man in his fifties, thoughtful, merciless — and with a Queen his equal. Many spoiling heads, all those friends of New England, of the Coopers, would be grinning from Island's battlements. That King, that Queen, and the old ferret, Lauder, would have hunted them down.
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