During a brief lull, as his combatants went into a war council about possible strategies to overthrow him, Menders looked up toward the road to see if Lucen was coming back.
He was, at a desperate pace. He bypassed the drive entirely, hell bent for the stable, shouting something inaudible.
A sudden howling wind hit Menders and nearly knocked him down. It swirled the snow up from the ground in a thick white curtain.
The White Beast had turned on them with sudden, savage fury. A northern Mordanian blizzard was something few people outside of the area had experienced. Those caught out in one rarely lived to tell tales.
Menders grabbed Katrin’s hand and Hemmett’s jacket, struggling up the steps to where Franz had the door open. Menders started back down to locate and help Lucen. Within seconds Lucen came running into view, waving a fistful of mail and laughing a bit at his predicament.
“Just beat it home,” he panted in the entryway where he and Menders shed their snowy outer garments. “Engine driver told me that he’s been trying to outrun this storm all day long. He hopes to make Erdstrom ahead of it. It’s a monster. From the halt I could see that the sky was completely black to the west.”
Another massive gust hit the house, rattling the windows violently. Katrin and Hemmett were at the first landing window, laughing and pointing at the swirling snow and blackened sky. Menders climbed the stairs to them and picked Katrin up.
“Neither one of you is to go outside for any reason,” he told them seriously. “In a storm like this you could be lost very quickly. Do you understand?”
Katrin nodded. “Yes,” Hemmett answered solemnly.
“Now, we’ll be indoors for a while,” Menders went on. “What would you children like to do?”
“Read my book,” Katrin said proudly. Menders smiled. Katrin was indeed able to read. She had learned by listening and looking at the text when he read to her and was now engaged in reading a small children’s book. It was slow going at times, as there were many unfamiliar words, but she loved it and read every day.
“Faw! Not for me, sitting around reading a book!” Hemmett announced, springing onto his father’s back from the landing. “Giddap, horse!” he shouted and Lucen obligingly trotted away with him. It was a typical Hemmett reaction. He was having a hard time learning his letters and was intimidated by Katrin’s prowess. Menders had exhausted several ways to teach the boy the alphabet but for some reason he could not connect the written letters with their names.
Menders and Katrin repaired to the armchair in his office and he handed her the book. She had not been content with a primer comprised of repeated words and phrases and wanted to read a more advanced story. She was doing well enough with it that he doubted any harm was done by not subjecting her to the tedium of “See the dog. See the dog run. Run, run, run.”
As Katrin started on the adventures of a particular green bird, Menders thought about the weather that had just surprised them.
Their previous winters at The Shadows had been long but mild, what the local people called “Open Winter” - snowfalls were fairly predictable and of short duration with fair weather in between. This made travel by sledge possible for visiting and social events.
“Closed Winter” was a situation dreaded by the locals. Those seasons were typified by relentless snowfalls and blizzards that sometimes lasted for days, with such massive accumulations of snow and ice that even movement between farms on the estate was nearly impossible. There were fearsome stories of men who had been lost and frozen to death within a few feet of their own front doors or of entire families who had gone winter mad after being cooped up together for months with resulting murder and suicide. Such “Closed Winters” were presaged by sudden violent blizzards, like the one howling outside - the White Beast of Thrun legend.
“Menders?” Katrin piped forlornly. He realized that she hadn’t been reading aloud for several minutes, while he’d sat there ruminating.
“What, Snowflower?” he asked.
“This one.” She pointed to the word ‘flew’ and he pronounced it for her, showing her the sound for each letter. She nodded, finished the sentence and then closed the book.
“Menders, why are you sad?” she asked, craning around to look at him. He turned her so she was more comfortable.
“I’m not really sad. I’m concerned about this big storm.”
“The house is very strong. It’s been here a long time, you said,” Katrin assured him.
“It is indeed,” Menders smiled. “What concerns me is getting around, to the stable, or the henhouse. We’ll have to work out a way so that nobody gets lost in a blizzard like this.”
“If you got lost, what would happen?” she asked, her blue eyes riveted on his.
Menders didn’t hesitate. Both children lived in a place that could be fatally harsh and they needed to know the truth.
“If you got lost in a storm like that one, you would probably die of the cold,” Menders said. “In such a storm it’s impossible to see and the wind comes from all directions, so it’s easy to lose your way. This is why I told you and Hemmett that you must not go outside until I give you leave. That won’t be until this storm is over.”
“We’d better tell everyone else,” Katrin said with some urgency. “What if someone decides to go out and ends up dead?”
“I think all the grownups know not to go out but you could go and remind everyone,” he told her, setting her on the floor. “And then you and Hemmett could go around and make sure all the windows are shut tight.” That would be some harmless occupation that would make the little ones feel as if they were doing something important.
“Faw! That’ll be fun!” she cried, running away into Franz’s office to lecture him about the dangers of going outside, which the well-padded doctor, very fond of his creature comforts, was not about to contemplate. Franz rose to the occasion and listened to the various dire consequences that could come from going outside, adding phrases like ‘human icicle’ to Katrin’s vocabulary. Finished with Franz, Menders heard her running down the hall to Cook to begin her warning speech again.
***
Menders woke to find he had pulled his covers up over his head. His room was frigid.
Something moved against the small of his back. He smiled and looked under the covers.
“I think someone must have given me a dog in the night,” he teased, looking down at Katrin nestled in the warm recesses of the covers, her eyes sleepy. She made little barking noises and giggled.
“Stay there, sweetheart, it’s like ice out here,” he told her, reaching for his dressing gown, glad for the heavy felted nightshirts that were vital to comfort in this part of Mordania. “Let me build the fire up.”
With a quick raking of embers, a few hearty blasts with the bellows and several small seasoned logs, the fire burst back into life. Menders shivered, his breath visible on the air. He went to the window and looked out.
The snow was up to the bottom of his window – and his room was on the second floor. Twelve feet of snow.
“Grahl’s Teeth!” Menders gasped. The air was thick with huge, solid clumps of snow falling from an iron grey sky.
“What’s wrong?” Katrin asked from the bed. She jumped down from her perch, squealing as her feet touched the cold floor.
Menders picked her up, carrying her to the window. She was gratifyingly astonished at the snow covering the entire ground floor. Menders deposited her back in his bed and drew the covers up over her.
“You stay there now until the room warms and I’ll get the fire going in your room so you can dress,” he told her. Excited by the unusual situation, she grinned and snuggled down in the blankets.
Menders went to her room and got the fire roaring. As he braved the icy hallway again he saw Lucen coming toward him, breathing steam like a fairy-tale dragon.
“Nice morning!” Lucen grinned. “I’ll get the ranges stoked in the kitchen while you see to the Princess. Cook’s coughing like a sick seal an
d Zelia’s trying to convince her to stay in bed.”
“I’ll come with you, Katrin’s all snugged up in my room,” Menders answered. “Better see if we can get outside at all.”
“Doubt it. We’ll have to get out the first floor windows and shovel away from the doors.”
“Will the doors hold up to the weight of snow?” Menders asked.
“They’d stand a battering ram, those doors. And the storm shutters were all closed on the downstairs windows, so those are safe too.”
“It’ll be a thankless task, trying to clear the doors,” Menders warned him. “It’s still coming down and the sky toward the west is black. Lots more where this came from.”
Between them they had the kitchen ranges blazing in minutes. All the ground floor windows were thickly coated with a layer of ice on the inside. Those in the kitchen began to drip as they thawed.
With the exception of the small store of wood kept inside to be convenient to the fireplaces and ranges, the rest of the fuel was outside, under tons of snow. More wood was going to be necessary, and soon. A worrying situation, with someone in the house already ill.
Menders went upstairs to Cook’s room. Franz was already there, seeing to her.
She looked bad but was sitting up, preparatory to getting out of bed. Then she coughed – not a deep cough, but a rough one.
“No young lady, do not get out of that bed,” Menders said heartily, going to the fire and putting two more small logs on, depositing the rest of the wood in the hod and picking up the poker.
“There, you see?” Franz admonished Cook. “That’s exactly what I’ve been telling her, Menders.”
“Listen to the doctor. You have to get over this quickly because we’re going to be snowed in for a while.”
“You poor men, having to get through that snow to the woodpiles,” she rasped. Getting to the woodpiles wasn’t such a problem, it was digging down to them that was going to be tricky, but Menders didn’t worry her with those details.
“Don’t bother about that.” He sat on the edge of her bed and then tucked his feet up, glad to get them off the chilly floor. It was cutting through the bottoms of his slippers. “Now, tell me what you had planned for the day and we’ll see to it.”
“There’s porridge on the back of the range, as always, one pot of stew and one of soup,” Cook croaked, reaching for her glass of water on the bedside table. Franz handed it to her along with a small paper cone filled with white powder. “There’s a roast of venison ready to go into the oven about mid-afternoon. Zelia knows how I do it. We’ve bread for a couple of days, plenty of baked things around. I always have food ahead, just in case.”
“You do indeed. A woman after my own heart,” Menders grinned.
“After your bottomless pit of a stomach, you mean,” Franz added.
“Marry me and cook for me the rest of my days,” Menders teased, ignoring the doctor’s jibe.
“Anyone who had to cook for you would be dead of overwork in a week,” she teased back. “Anyway, I’m about to marry Mister Ordstrom.”
Menders laughed and then looked at her.
“Really?” he asked. He exchanged a surprised glance with Franz. They knew the retired farmer, who now lived in one of the crofter’s cottages. He was one of Cook’s best customers but there’d been no sign of romance.
“Yes indeed. You’ve been moping so much lately that you haven’t noticed, but I am. I won him over with my hot venison pies.”
Menders leaned over to kiss her in congratulation but she held him back. “Not only should you not be kissing engaged women in their beds but you don’t want to catch this cough and carry it to Katrin,” she said quickly.
“As always, you make good sense,” Menders told her, checking to be sure the fire was burning well. “Anything else?”
“If Zelia would make up a bit of honey and lemon I wouldn’t complain,” Cook said. “Now off you go to start coping with the situation, my boy.”
He gave her a pained expression that only made her laugh.
“Oh, you live for it, lad,” she said. “A catastrophe like this snow is a tonic for you. Get yourself out of here!”
Outside Cook’s room, Menders and Franz paused as a blast of wind actually shook the house, rattling the upstairs windows viciously. It came in wild gusts, battering the building. Moaning, mournful notes, like those of a deeply resonant organ, rose from the open chimneys, as though the old house protested the wind’s treatment. The Shadows was a massive construction of heavy wooden timbers and beams, some thicker than a man’s waist, set into a deep stone foundation. The men exchanged worried glances as they felt the mammoth building shudder.
“We’re going to be all right, aren’t we?” Franz asked quietly.
“Yes,” Menders said firmly. “One way or another, I’ll see to it and get us through.” Franz smiled with relief.
After breakfast, Menders, Franz and Lucen spent the day clearing access to the woodpiles. They worked until it was too dark to see. By then all three men were at the point of collapse but Menders was able to relax, knowing they now had sufficient wood in the house. Even if the well in the cellar ran dry, there was more than enough snow for water. And more snow kept falling. Now Menders realized why the centre roof beam of the house rivaled a bridge beam in size. The snow on the roof was six feet thick in places and the great ridgepole creaked under the weight.
He began to go out before dinner to re-shovel the hard-won ramps under lamplight but ended up standing exhaustedly in the doorway, unable to force himself out into the cold one more time.
“Leave it,” Franz said abruptly behind him, reaching around him to close the door. “It will be there tomorrow. We’ll shovel out again if need be. I’m in agony, so you’re probably not much better.”
Menders didn’t argue.
***
It snowed.
It snowed for days and then it snowed some more. When it wasn’t snowing, it was threatening to snow. The wind never stopped, great hammering blows rattling the house, shaking the storm shutters in their mountings. The incessant moaning from the chimneys raised hackles and quickened tempers.
Sometimes the wind scoured away some of the accumulated snow. When this happened, it was possible to go outside for short distances. Menders would go to the stable, to check on the stablemaster and the animals. Demon was not happy. Every time Menders thought he could trust the snow to hold off for a few hours, he would tear up and down on the maddened little farlin, raising a shimmering rooster tail of dusted snow from the hard frozen road.
“That isn’t an animal, it’s a leather bag full of piss and fire,” the stablemaster said one day after Menders had run Demon around for two hours and was still kicked and bitten when he tried to put him in his stall.
“He isn’t particularly happy,” Menders groaned, rubbing his shin.
“No, doesn’t care for this snow at all,” the stablemaster agreed. “Myself, I’m more than glad to rest and read. It’s definitely a Closed Winter.”
It was indeed. The snowstorms blew up in minutes. The furthest Menders went was to Spaltz’s farm to get news of the other families on the estate. He was nearly lost trying to get back home. Snow started flying thick and heavy, the wind swirled in circles and tore at him and he couldn’t see a thing. He finally gave Demon his head, praying the little farlin would find his own way home.
The made it to the stable half frozen. Menders still had to reach the house, setting out with a rope tied to the stable door so he could find his way back if necessary. He struggled along, berating himself for not having laid a chain line out to the stable as he had to the woodpiles.
With the temperature dropping rapidly and the wind cutting through his greatcoat as if it was a silk shirt, Menders slipped and fell on the icy path. The rope ran out before he reached his goal, and he was terrified to find he couldn’t even see the house, though he must be very close. Just as he was sure he was lost, and was going to return to the stable, he bumbled into th
e house’s west wall. He groped his way to the door. As he tried to turn the handle, the door opened. He fell forward into the blessed warmth.
Someone pulled the frozen coat off him. Franz raked his hair back from his eyes and helped him retrieve his glasses, which he’d tucked into his shirt pocket for safekeeping. Menders’ hands were numbed to the point where he could not grasp anything.
He could see that Lucen was holding Katrin, who was sobbing. Lucen made her turn around.
“Look who’s here,” he said gently. “See? He’s all right, he was just a little late.”
Menders held his arms out and took her. He could feel someone pushing him into a chair and unlacing his shoes.
“Feet are all right,” Franz said quietly, shaking his head. “Still warm. You’re lucky.”
“Lucen, would you take a rifle outside and fire it into the air, please?” Menders said. “The stablemaster is waiting to hear it. Don’t stir a step away from the door. It’s impossible out there.”
“Here now, Snowflower,” he smiled at Katrin as Franz chafed his feet into a semblance of warmth. “I got back all right, no need to keep on crying.”
“I thought you were gone forever,” she sobbed. “I thought you would be frozen under the snow like an icicle and you’d break apart if we hit you with a hammer!”
He couldn’t help laughing at the image and Franz did as well, making Katrin look up and forget about her misery. Outside Lucen fired the rifle. A moment later, a distant shot was heard.
“Now then,” Franz said heartily, lifting Katrin onto her feet, “everyone is safe and it’s time for us to have some dinner. Why don’t you put the cutlery on the table? Hemmett, would you help her please?” He set Katrin on the floor, wiped her face with a clean handkerchief and then sent her on her way to the kitchen.
Weaving Man: Book One of The Prophecy Series Page 19
