Wheel of the Winds

by M J Engh

  “And there are good things about the cold,” Repnomar said cheerfully. “We don't have to crouch on our bellies to lap up water.” And she twisted her head and took a bite out of the wall behind them.

  For by now they had concluded that the shelter where they lay, or rather squatted, was a cave scooped into the side of the snowbank they had seen earlier. At least it was floored and walled and roofed with snow, and this not tightly packed, for now and then their motions dislodged showers of it. The Warden kept his eyes fixed on the opening, meaning to know which way to crawl if the whole bank collapsed upon them. The faint torchlight still hung there, unmoving now, as if whoever carried it had settled to sleep (or perhaps to guard duty) or laid it aside. This, too, interested the Warden, for he thought that if they did somehow contrive an escape, they would need that torch afterward.

  And if an escape was to be contrived, this seemed as likely a time as any. Crouched here together in the dark, they had, it appeared, all leisure to work at the knots that bound them and to talk between themselves. The heat of their own bodies—capped and held in here by thick walls of fleecy snow—slowly thawed their numbed hands and faces and made a pool of pleasant warmth (or what seemed like warmth after their long freezing); so that Broz stopped shivering and fell asleep with a blissful sigh, and their fingers could once more feel out the knots and pick at them.

  “I think I'm getting the hang of it,” the Captain murmured. And the Warden answered, “Best loosen them one by one before you cast off any. Remember they can see.”

  Working thus with all the care they could manage and shielding each other's busy hands from the sight of the Quicksilver People (or so they hoped), they might at last have managed the untying of those knots—though whether they could have gotten further is another question. But the warmth and the quiet and the food in their bellies closed in upon their weary bodies and minds as powerfully as the working of any poisoned dart; and in a little while they were slumbering as peacefully as Broz, leaned together like half-empty sacks and all three snoring gently.

  16

  Of the Nature of Exiles

  When the light burst in on them and the nooses pulled at their necks, they were so unready that they all jerked like wet sticks tossed into a blaze, and the Warden let out a grunt of pain (for his throat was sore inside and out). The torch, they saw (once they had their wits about them) rode in a little net hung from the neck of one of the Quicksilvers; and it was strange to see its beam bobbing sometimes straight into the creature's face without rousing so much as a blink—so that, “They may see in the dark,” the Captain said, “but they're blind to the light.”

  “I wish they were blind in the light,” the Warden said morosely; for he felt he could undertake to get hold of that torch somehow, if only it would be a weapon in his hand once he had it. “And we missed our chance with the knots. Rep.”

  “It's not all so bad,” the Captain answered, with what struck Lethgro as unseemly good cheer. “Likely we wouldn't have gotten far, as tired as we were then. And now we know we can do it. I've got one knot so loose I can cast it off in half a minute.”

  This was somewhat optimistically spoken, seeing that in fact she was no more than halfway through the intricacies of that knot; but the warm sleep had heartened the Captain mightily, though she would have been gladder still if they had been given time to eat again. But before she could get what was left of their food out of her pocket, they were led out into the open once more—an uncomfortable process enough, for their backs and limbs were sadly strained and sore from the four-footed walking. Once the beam of the torch caught the Warden full, and Repnomar, seeing him, could not withhold a great guffaw of laughter. “There may be strange beasts in this country, Lethgro,” she said, “but I've seen none stranger than you, with your tail in the air and your back humped like a wharf rat.”

  This the Warden felt to be unfair, since they were both in the same pickle, and one no lovelier than the other. But he said nothing, to save his sore throat, and hobbled on with what dignity he might.

  But he did not hobble far, for they were stopped again at a place of trampled snow in front of the cave. Here the swing of the torchbeam picked out range after range of quicksilver, so that the whole troop seemed to be gathered here, and all in motion. “What are they doing?” Repnomar muttered. And the Warden croaked (having no more of a voice left to him), “They've been hunting.”

  Indeed there were strange beasts in this country. Some of the Quicksilvers were busy around the bodies (dead or stunned) of several creatures almost the size of sheep but with splayed feet and great scoop-shaped underjaws like shovels. Others were coiling lengths of what looked like rope. ("Landkelp,” said the Captain.

  “But I think they've stripped the jaws off it.") They could make out no more certainly, for the light was too fitful, swinging for the most part upward into the dark beneath the clouds; but they caught glimpses of Quicksilvers filling their little nets with what might be smaller game, or busily stowing gear. A sharp breeze gusted around them, veering and lulling and starting up again. Broz sniffed hungrily.

  “And it's kind of them,” the Captain observed, watching the torchbeam swing across the sky, “to do our signaling for us.”

  It was true that the other crow might still be following them, or that the first might be returning, with or without a message from the Exile, or even (for hope could make anything seem possible) that the Exile himself might be flying somewhere in the dark above, searching for them; but it seemed at least as likely to the Warden that other beasts, or other people, might see that beacon and attack the Quicksilvers unawares. Which, he reflected, might be bad and might be good, if only to give them a chance of slipping their nooses in the confusion. Though, for that matter, they might as easily find themselves dragged both ways by their two keepers, and so strangled to death.

  Thinking these things, and following the sway of the torchbeam with his eyes in hope of glimpsing his knife or his bowstrings, he was startled by the grip of paws, and a rope drawn across his chest and over his shoulder. At the same time the Captain jerked out an oath, and Broz a strangled growl. But when it was done, and the Captain muttering surlily that she had never thought to carry baggage like a packtrain sheep, Lethgro found a laugh of sorts rasping through his battered throat; for there was little else he could do, and surely it was droll enough for the Warden of Sollet Castle to be loaded with bloody chunks of some dead and outlandish beast, and led by the neck like an unreliable dog, all by a pack of little furry things that saw in the dark.

  Baggage beasts they clearly were now, all three of them. The Warden had a moment of dismay when he thought his quiver was being taken from him; but instead, it was only stuffed full of something and dropped back to its place on his shoulder—balanced now by a butchered beast's ham slung at his other shoulder. Broz and the Captain each had a share; and after the first resentment, not one of them was altogether sorry, for the loads were not too heavy and the warm meat gave them, for the time, some help against the cold. Only it was hard for Broz to bear the smell of so much juicy eating tied to his own back, and he not able to get a tooth into it.

  Repnomar was indignant over this, saying that the Quicksilver People were beasts indeed if they lacked the decency to throw a scrap of meat to a hungry dog. But once he was loaded, they did exactly that, giving him (it seemed) the leavings of their butchering, though these were scant enough, and offering the Captain and the Warden bits of raw hide to gnaw on. “I don't suppose they mean it as an insult,” the Captain observed philosophically. “And it's something to work the jaws with.” But presently they began to travel again, and something else drew her attention.

  “Have I lost my bearings in the dark, Lethgro?” she asked thoughtfully. “Or are we going back the way we came?”

  Certainly it was hard, with no light and no wind (except the occasional veering and unsteady breeze) to manage even an inkling of direction. The bouncing torch picked out few landmarks, and those not good
ones—a snowdrift, a stretch of rock. The Warden found nothing to go by but the ground underfoot (or underhand) and some sense of which ways they had been turned and herded since they left the snow cave; but all in all, he agreed with the Captain. He would have been hard put to say whether he was glad or sorry. It was true that they were likely moving away from the Exile and whatever help he might offer; and though that hope was slender enough, it was a thread worth clutching in this extremity. But it was also true that every mile farther into darkness was a mile farther away from light, and the Warden felt to the innermost marrow of his bones that light was their only safety; for in this waste of frozen darkness they were like drops of water on a hot pan in the fire, that live for a little by skittering this way and that, consuming their own substance, and then disappear, so that it was better, in a way, to be heading toward the light again. “But not,” the Warden added to himself, “if the next stop is the slaughterhouse.” For the thought had forced itself upon him that when they put down their burdens they themselves might well be converted into the same form.

  Trudging thus painfully on all fours, and thinking of the light as of a thing like childhood, gone forever and half forgotten, he was ill prepared when in an instant all the scene around was lit up as brightly as if he stood on the highest terrace of Sollet Castle. In his surprise he stumbled and half fell, bringing the nooses tight around his throat, and for a moment he half imagined that it was death that had burst so dazzlingly upon him. Yet in another minute he was plodding onward, his eyes easy now with the light, and nothing changed, it seemed, except that now all was visible. For the first time he saw the Captain shuffling on hands and knees beside him, a great side of meat, with the hide still on, lashed to her back. The Captain's drawn face was radiant with growing comprehension, and she met his eye with a silent and conspiratorial grimace.

  For it was plain that the Quicksilver People noticed nothing. Now that they could see them clearly, it was stranger than ever to be among these small busy persons. Under the brightness of that light, their movements flowed like quicksilver indeed—ripples and shudders of brilliance, long gleams of racing gray. They moved seemingly without order, some dashing helter-skelter for a time, and again sitting pensively while others passed them, some pattering sedately at a steady pace, some moving together like schooling fish, turn for turn and leap for leap. Twos and threes of them would suddenly confront each other, in play or consultation, and then break apart, while others went always sunk in some private thought or trance, with pursed mouths and great ears canted forward, as if they harkened intently to their own silent whistling. Most of them wore nets on back or shoulder, variously loaded with game or gear, and the thick fur behind their heads bristled with what the Warden made out at last to be blowpipes and the tips of darts. Young ones (to judge from their size and their merriment) skittered and danced among their elders, or rode their backs, and now and then—a thing surprising enough at first sight—a grown beast would tuck a little one into its chest, as lightly as pocketing a piece of string. “Look at that, Lethgro,” the Captain said admiringly. “They can open a flap of skin—two flaps, it is—to make a place for their nestlings.”

  The Warden had noticed another use for those flaps, though he did not understand its meaning; for two Quicksilvers, facing each other at a little distance, had risen high on their hind legs and opened their chests like humans baring their bosoms in prayer. But he said nothing, thinking it frivolous of the Captain to be thus attending to minor matters when their lives balanced on a knife edge.

  Their place in all this churning and quiet hubbub was the very center. Their keepers trotted beside them, the ends of their leash ropes gripped sometimes in a furry paw, sometimes between firm little teeth. This duty, it seemed, was not popular—that, or else too popular altogether. Again and again one of the leash-holders would hand a rope to a passerby and dash away, kicking up heels and wriggling sides and shoulders till silver seemed to fly like water drops, while the new keeper settled promptly into the steady jog of a jailor, and all so smoothly done that (the Warden realized) these trades might well have been going on without his notice through all their journeying. There were not always two keepers for each prisoner, either; for sometimes a single Quicksilver, running between Captain and Warden, held a leash on each side.

  Nevertheless, the keepers watched their charges keenly; and it came to Repnomar with a prickling of uneasiness that they were watching now more closely from moment to moment, as if they saw and wondered at some change. “Try to look blind, Lethgro,” she said urgently. “They may not see the light themselves, but they can't help seeing that something's given sight to us.” And the Warden nodded grimly, thinking to himself that it would have to give them more than sight if they were to get any good from it. He had been praying earnestly (in case it was some god that had shed this light upon them) that the nooses would fall away from their necks, for he could think of no lesser gift that would be of much help to them.

  All this time, the light kept pace with them. It was a broad circle that spanned the whole Quicksilver troop, and seemed meant to do so, for it widened and shrank as their dashings and interlacings spread them apart or drew them together. Where the light came from was hard to say, especially for persons walking doubled over and with two nooses each around their necks, who were furthermore trying to appear blind; but the Captain concluded that it must come from overhead, and “If it's not the Exile's doing,” she asked rhetorically, “whose is it?”

  Lethgro only blinked his eyes, for he feared sadly the answer to that question. It seemed likely to him that there were many possibilities, few of them good. In the meantime, however, he was gathering himself to fight, thinking that after all he was as big as four or five of these people put together, and that if the nooses were the root of his captivity, it behooved him to take the nooses off. He thought that by quickness, and a willingness to endure a little more throat-pinching, he should be able to get his fingers under the nooses before they tightened too much; and after that it would be a question of brute force and persistence and getting clear before the darts took effect—for without doubt he would be a pincushion within minutes. Of success he had no hope worth mentioning; but whether the light was friend or enemy, it called for action.

  One stroke of luck came to him, great or small, for just then a stout-set little Quicksilver, running between his righthand keeper and the Captain's lefthand one, took the leash from each. The Warden waited only till the relieved guards had danced away out of easy reach. Then he ducked his head and reached for his neck, at the same time plunging to the left.

  So, too, did the Captain, a second later. In that second, Lethgro had got the fingers of one hand under his righthand noose and the fingers of the other under both, and was ripping with all his strength, while he charged in a furious hobble toward the guard on his left. Sudden uproar swirled through the troop, as a silvery whirlpool might form in river shallows. Like a hurt beast, Lethgro lunged and snarled, and Broz on his left answered with a roar of barking that was cut off short. The air seethed with whistling that seemed to cut and twist the ear. Somehow Repnomar by main force had reached and clutched the guard who held the two leashes, dragging the other behind her; but there she fell. Lethgro felt the one noose go slack, and tore it off. He had the other over his chin (taking some of his beard with it), though the lefthand guard still pranced beyond his reach, when suddenly the Quicksilvers were struck by a new trouble, and the whistles shrilled beyond hearing.

  To the Captain—the knuckles of her right hand buried in her own throat by the pinch of a noose, and her left clenched in a death grip on her keeper's fuzzy arm—it was as if the world reeled for an instant, like a ship turning through the eye of the wind, and stood away on a new tack. The arm in her grasp (so small that she had pinned wrist to upper arm in a single handful) jerked and stiffened, the creature's head hunched, both nooses slacked at once; she drew breath in a tearing gasp and ripped one of them loose, getting thus her right arm fr
ee again—expecting all the while (for the moment seemed to stretch without end) the prickle of darts or the yank of the second noose. But the darts did not come. All around her the Quicksilver People stumbled and cowered, some racing into the darkness like rabbits into their holes, some milling blindly, some crouching with paws to eyes. As for the second noose, she had that off before she had well thought about it, and clearly before the keeper she grasped had thought to pull it tight. Then it was what to do next, while everything called for action. Already some of the Quicksilvers had brought blowguns to their mouths, though they seemed still to stagger in uncertainty, not sure which way to shoot. Lethgro was rising, like some outraged sea beast shaking off a wave thick with seaweed, from under three or four of the troop that had somehow tangled with him. But poor Broz twitched voicelessly between two taut ropes, as his keepers pulled opposite ways, and it was toward him that Repnomar flung herself with a wild yell.

  That yell was perhaps a mistake, for it gave the blowguns a target, though not a steady one. On the other hand, one of Broz's keepers bolted in panic, letting that rope fall slack, so that Broz got his feet under him with a scramble and his breath back in a harsh gasp. But before the Captain had reached him, or any clear current broken free from that whirlpool of confusion, a blast of wind struck them that scattered Quicksilvers like dry sticks and brought Captain and Warden alike to their knees.

  “Climb!” the Warden sang out above the wind—an order that made little sense at the moment to Repnomar, who, suddenly finding that she still carried her keeper by the arm like a child's doll, let go at last and somehow tumbled herself forward to snatch the ropes from Broz's neck. But Lethgro meant what he said, for as it happened he had been looking up when the first buffet of the wind struck, and had seen the shapes descending.