Anderson, Poul - Novel 18

by The Winter of the World (v1. 1)

  Weren’t the Northfolk said to be an aloof people? After a few minutes, Donya returned to practicality and him. But she breathed a little harder, and he was acutely aware of how sweat bedewed her skin and strengthened the fragrance of her flesh. As much for distraction as to quench thirst, he drank from the waterhole. It was a depression among grainy gray rocks, filled by rain, muddy, though doubtless cleaner than any well in Arvanneth. When he was through, he saw that Donya, searching, had chosen one of the chunks, a handy size and shape for a missile.

  Her words crackled: “While I get food, you build a cookfire and cut more grass. Trim it the way you see I have done.”

  He bridled art orders from a woman. Again, however, wits prevailed over impulse. She knew this country, he didn’t. “What shall I use for fuel?” he inquired. “Green stuff is no good. And why the harvest?”

  She kicked at a powdery-white lump. “Gather animal chips like this. Crumble some first, for tinder. As for grass, we need clothes and blankets, against sunburn and flies as well as cold. I can weave them. At that, we’d better walk during the chilliest part of the night, and rest in the height of daywarmth, till we’ve gotten proper gear at a Station... M-m, aye, best I lash together footwear for you also.”

  She set off. “Wait,” he called. “You forgot the knife. And how long might you take?”

  Her mirth drifted back. “If I can’t fetch a meal with a stone before you have a proper bed of coals ready, don’t cast me out for buzzard food. They’d scorn to eat.”

  Alone, Josserek pondered. His blade would be of huge use. A snapperooll from his pocket helped him equally in starting a fire. The rock she had found on an otherwise boulderless sod was a chance fragment of concrete, maybe from an ancient highway, maybe from before the Ice. Luck, in each case. But he suspected she didn’t need luck to survive here.

  True to her word, she soon brought a slain rabbit and several quail eggs. “This land really teems, doesn’t it?” he remarked.

  Cloud-shadow quickly, her mood shifted. She gave him a hard look. “Aye. Because we take care of it. Before all else, we keep our numbers low enough.” Wrath spat: “And the Empire’s maggots would enter? No!”

  “Well,” Josserek ventured, “you have an ally of sorts in me.”

  Her gaze narrowed. “Of sorts,” she repeated. “How far can we trust any ... civilized ... race?”

  “Uh, I swear the Seafolk have no territorial ambitions on Andalin. Think how distant we are. It wouldn’t make sense.” Perforce he switched to Arvannethan to speak thus: not the antique language of the educated, but the argot of traders and dockwallopers.

  She understood nonetheless, and pounced: “Then what is your interest? Why do you care?”

  “I told you—”

  “Thin is the reason you gave. Our meetings on the boat were too hurried for me to chase down truth. But now—If the Seafolk wanted to observe us, they could have sent somebody openly. He could have named himself a—a seeker of knowledge for its own sake ... ah, scientist, yes, as you told me you have many of, that day we wandered through the city. Why take the risks you did unless something else, urgent, drove you?”

  Josserek felt relieved. “Shrewd!” Too shrewd to be believable in a barbarian? wondered an undercurrent. “You win. We aren’t desperate. But thinking men in Oceania are worried by the sulfur matter.”

  “Sulfur?” She knitted her brows. “Oh, aye. The yellow burnable stuff. What we call zhevio."

  “The richest deposits left in the world, that anybody knows of, are along the Dolphin Gulf,” he explained. “We got most of our sulfur from Arvanneth, when it controlled those parts. Today the Empire does, and bans export. Sulfur makes gunpowder. Skeyrad styled himself Overmaster of the Barommian clans; but his grandson the Emperor says Worldmaster.” He shrugged. “I don’t suppose his descendants can ever in fact conquer the whole globe. But you can see why the Seniory and Advisory in Eaching don’t like the way things have gone of late.”

  “Yes. That is sound. We can trust you.” Donya dropped the rabbit and clasped his shoulder. Her smile coruscated. “I’m glad.”

  His temples pounded. He might have grabbed her at once. But she let go, set the eggs down more carefully, and said, “If you will be cook, I will begin on our clothes.”

  “Well, I am hungry,” he confessed. Both hunkered to their tasks. Her fingers sped, fastening stems together.

  “Where should we go from here?” he asked. “Or to start with, where is here?”

  “West of the Jugular and north of the Crabapple River that enters it, by a day’s steaming. I watched our progress. The nearest Station is thus at Bullgore, two days’ journey afoot. No, I forgot your feet are tender.

  Maybe four days. Have a care when you flay yon hopper; he’ll be a moccasin. Uncured hide soon stinks and cracks, but should last till we get there. Thence—horses, and home to bear warning.”

  “Your home is afar, am I right? Do you know the whole Rogaviki territory so closely?”

  The fair head nodded. “Stations, wintergarths, and other fixed abodes, yes, of course. From maps if I’ve never visited them in person. They aren’t very many.” His eyes drank immensity. “But how can you find anything? I don’t see a single proper landmark.” “Direction from sun and stars, since we have no compass. Distance from heeding how fast we walk, for how long at a stretch. And every Station has a smoky fire throughout the day. In clear, calm weather, you can spot that above the horizon, thirty or forth miles off.” She translated the measurement into Arvannethan units. A scowl: “This the keepers must quench if Imperials move toward them, till we have burned those locusts.”

  Chill touched him through the mild air. I consider myself tough, I’ve killed men and lost no sleep afterward, but her tone, her look—Are the Imperials really vermin to her, pests for extermination, no shared humanity whatsoever? How can that square with her society starting no wars and doing no plundering, throughout its history?

  He busied his hands while he gathered resolution. Finally he plunged. “Donya?”

  She glanced from her work.

  “Donya ... why did you run wild last night? Didn’t we agree we’d spy, collect information, at least to Fuld?”

  She dropped the fabric. Her mouth tightened till the thews jumped forth in her neck. He heard a low mewing.

  “Forgive me,” he whispered, appalled.

  She breathed deeply, forced easiness back on herself inch by inch, color back to face and bosom. Her speech remained a croak: “I had to kill Sidfr. I failed, the Powers shrivel me. Next time, let me scoop him empty.”

  “But, but you ... and he—You told me you like him, sort of—”

  “That was before he came north. When he thrust into Yair and Leno, I felt—I no longer awaited, I felt—the earliest piercing of Hervar. Had he brought me thither— But he told me first ... if we’ll not wear his Emperor’s collar . .. he will slaughter the game—Can’t you understand?” Donya yelled. “If I push you off a cliff, what can you do but fall? What could I do but go for his throat?”

  She screeched, leaped up, and fled.

  Josserek held back. He had seen this before, among certain warlike savages: fury of such typhoon force that she must run it out of her body or else attack him, or an animal, or a house, anything that could be destroyed.

  Through the high grass she bounded, howling, arms aloft as if to pull down the sun.

  Then the Rogaviki are what the Southrons claim, the man from Killimaraich decided shakenly. At best, barbarians. They’ve learned a few tricks, but not reason or patience, forethought or self-control. He wondered why that should sadden him. Disappointment? They’d be valueless as allies—dangerous, even, until they were conquered or wiped out as their weaknesses doomed them to be. No ... I didn’t expect much from them, politically or militarily. Donya herself, then. She acted so intelligent, aware, knowing, realistic, interested; I’d never met a woman like that before. And it’s all ripples on the surface. Her real life is all beneath: more Shark in
her than Dolphin.

  He attended to his galley chores. He still needed her help. On the way, he’d continue observing, for whatever that was worth. But as soon as could be, he’d make for a Rahfdian west coast port, get passage home, and tell Mulwen Roa that here was no hope for the Seafolk.

  Donya ran a three-mile circle. Returning to camp, she flopped down and gasped. Sweat darkened and plastered her hair, dripped off her cheeks, runneled between her breasts. Its odor had a sharpness that’ gave place quite slowly to the pure scent of woman. But sanity was back in her eyes.

  “Do you feel better?” Josserek dared ask.

  She nodded. “Yes,” she panted. “Much. They— won’t—kill—the—herds. No, they are what will die.”

  Presently: “Ung-ng-ng, smells good.” Her fit had left no trace in her cheer.

  He felt squeamish about embryos from the eggs, which she crunched with pleasure. The rabbit was palatable, given an appetite grown large, but he missed salt as well as spices. “Always drink the blood,” Donya advised when he mentioned that. “We’ll eat better while we travel.”

  “Can we kill a grazer?” he wondered skeptically.

  “I can, if we wish; or we can take a youngling. Not worth our trouble, though, when we have haste. I’ll make a sling for the birds; and there’s no lack of small warmbeasts every kind, besides crayfish, mussels, frogs, snakes, snails, herbs, roots, mushrooms.... I told you this is a generous land. Soon you will know.”

  She rose from her meal. Still seated, his gaze climbing the heights, he saw her crowned by radiance, and remembered that “Rogaviki” meant “Children of the Sky.” She stretched limb by limb, and laughed into the distances that had wrought her. “Today, we prepare,” she said, low and happily, as altogether in this moment as were the dandelions at her feet. “That’s no great toil. We will rest as well. And before everything, Josserek, make ourselves one.”

  She beckoned. Barbarism be damned! He came to her on a torrent.

  CHAPTER 10

  Five miles out, they met a member of Bullgore Station. Riding a piebald mustang—to inspect a line of wildfowl snares, she related—on spying the strangers she changed course to meet them and accompanied them in.

  She was middle-aged, tall and wiry like most Northfolk, her hair in gray braids, her single garment a pair of leather breeches. Brass bracelets, a necklace of bear claws, a pheasant’s tail stuck in a headband, and gaudily swirled skin paint were ornaments. Though the saddle on the horse was little better than a pad with stirrup loops, the bridle was intricate. Otherwise her equipment was a bedroll and a knife, the latter clearly meant for tool, not weapon. “Ah-hai!” she cried, reining in. “Welcome, wayfarers. I hight Errody, from yonder.”

  “And I Donya of Hervar, from Owlhaunt by the Stallion River,” said the woman afoot. “My companion has fared farther, Josserek Derrain of a land named Killimaraich, across the Glimmerwater.”

  “Then thrice welcome,” said the rider. “Are you tired? Would either of you borrow my steed?”

  Josserek noticed how formal her courtesy was, how slight an outward reaction she showed after that first, surely ritual shout. Not that she was hostile or indifferent; Donya had told him he would fascinate everybody he met. But she held herself back, watchful, cat-private. It fitted the character given her race by every account he knew.

  Only it does not fit Donya. Never had he had or heard of a paramour like her. Once, in a moment between kisses, beneath the moon, the night cold forgotten, he had told her this. “I held back with Sidfr,” she whispered. “Oh, glory to take a friend!” Her hand reached to rumple his hair. It traveled on from there.

  Knowledge struck: She told me hardly a thing else. I said all the self-revealing words. Always, whatever we do, her soul keeps aside.

  If she had a soul, wonderings, yearnings, love that reached beyond the love of life. If she was not simply a healthy animal. No, Josserek denied, she has to be more. When could we have found time for deep talk? We marched, gathered food, camped, ate, played, slept, played, marched. Fear on behalf of her people is hounding her on, and wished that that might be truth.

  He heard her decline the offer of a mount. For pride’s sake he did too—in the teeth of my sore feet, he tried to jape. Given proper shoes, he could still not have kept her normal pace, His strength and endurance were of a different kind.

  After a few trivial exchanges, Errody rode silent. Josserek murmured in Arvannethan, “Isn’t she curious about our news?”

  “Aye, a-seethe,” Donya answered. “The whole Station will be. Why make us repeat?” He considered that, and the fact that a lone woman, unarmed, set casually forth across uninhabited miles, and the lack of a routine phrase for thanks in Rogavikian. It suggested a people who took patience, peace, and helpfulness for granted. How reconcile the individualism, hard-bargaining acqusitiveness, and sharply defined property rights which Southrons described, or the inmost mind kept secluded which he had observed ... except when killing rage overwhelmed it? He shook his puzzled head and trudged on through the prairie grass.

  The day was bright and windy. Clouds scudded white-sailed, a hawk surfed on the blast, when he came to open fields he saw how crows on the ground flattened their wings and wavelets wandered in battalions on rainpuddles. Hedgerows rustled; trees, hazel, apple, sugar maple, beech, soughed around the buildings. Four young women were out weeding; places like this planted several acres in grain and garden truck, for use and trade. When they saw the newcomers, they quit, and followed the party. Their comrades inside did likewise.

  Donya had remarked that a typical Station resembled a typical wintergarth on a larger scale. A partly sunken house filled the east side of a court, glazed windows visible between vegetable beds and steep sod roof. Stables, sheds, workshops defined the rest of the quadrangle. Construction was in timber, locally made brick, and flowering sod, plain and sturdy. A rather lavish use of wood, on this fflain where nature sowed hardly any, showed Josserek that the Northfolk must maintain a considerable traffic with the forest dwellers beyond their own lands. Big wagons and sledges, glimpsed through a shed door, suggested the means. A windmill to pump water stood at the middle of the brick-paved yard, a solar energy collector at the south end of the house, both Southern-made, crude by Eaching standards but ample here. Today there was no point in the main chimney giving off its smoke beacon; but a red banner snapped atop a very high, guyed staff. Upon this, at eye level, was fastened the skull of a moonhom bull, elaborately enamel-inlaid, monument to whatever incident had given the site a name.

  Personnel numbered about thirty. Three were men, burlier than common, who did the heaviest manual labor. The majority were women, aged from sixteen or seventeen onward. They wore a wild variety of garb, or none; society did not prescribe dress. (Josserek wondered if it prescribed anything.) They didn’t crowd or chatter, but they drew close around, gave greetings, tendered help. No matter how extravagantly well Donya treated him, the sight of so many lithe bodies was arousing. A young redhead caught his glance, grinned, and curved him an unmistakable invitation.

  Donya saw, grinned back at the girl, and asked Josserek in Arvannethan, “Would you like to bed her? She looks good.”

  “Uh, you?” he replied, taken aback.

  “Nobody here for me. Those men have plenty to do. And I’d not mind a quiet spell for thinking.”

  Errody, who had dismounted, slipped to Donya’s other side and took her arm in a tentative fashion. Donya returned a slight, amicable headshake. Errody let go, quirked lips, and gave a subtle shrug, as if to say, Well, no harm in finding out if you wanted, was there, dear?

  Inside, the house differed from travelers’ descriptions of family homes. It held a big common chamber, where trestle tables were set forth at mealtimes, handsomely wainscoted and bedraped but with little in the way of personal items. Those were in the individual rooms of residents. Elsewhere, aside from utility sections, it was divided into cubicles for guests. Errody led the way to a built-in bench. Her associates sat
on cushions or sprawled across a carpet of sewn-together houndskins. Chairs were not used by the Rogaviki. The red-head settled at Josserek’s feet, not at all docilely but staking her claim.

  Donya grew grave. “This evening my friend can tell about far lands and grand adventures,” she said. “Now I must give you my tidings.”

  “That the Southrons are coming again?” Errody made a spitting noise. “We know that.”

  “Aye, you would. But know you they mean to build bases the length of the Jugular, and thence harry the countryside?”

  “I thought they might.”

  “They’ll find Bullgore sooner or later. Sooner, I expect. I’ve watched their horsemen on maneuvers.”

  “We’re readying to leave on short notice. Enough families, within the Yurik kith alone, have already promised they’ll take two or three of us in, that everyone is sure of shelter.” Errody’s speech was stoical, and the whole group calm—resigned—confident of eventual victory—whatever they were. Josserek noticed, however, that Donya refrained from describing the enemy’s ultimate strategy.

  She did briefly recount how he and she came to be here. The hall buzzed; eyes shone through dimness, limbs shifted, heads jutted forward. The Rogaviki had a normal share of curiosity and of relish for a yam.

  “You will need steeds and gear,” Errody said.

  “First a wash,” Donya smiled.

  “No, first a drink. We boast of our mead.”

  The bath proved to be a roomful of showers. Fixtures were metal, hot water abundant. Squinting at Donya through steam, Josserek said, “That is an attractive wench you bespoke. But I don’t believe she could match you.”