Wheel of the Winds

by M J Engh

  The Warden hesitated only long enough to hear him say that these ghostly forms were his friends, whom it would be better not to annoy. The tether rope still joined them, and Lethgro yanked at it hard with one hand while he drew his knife with the other. The Exile, jerked sprawling, cried out in pain; and at that, Broz and the Captain threw themselves forward. But the Captain's knee failed her, so that she too went down with a cry. The pallid shapes were all in motion, the raised arms lashing downward. Broz, like a shadow condensed to black solidity, had flung himself upon one of them, and Lethgro saw that at least two others had sprung to join that battle, strangely quiet except for Broz, who raged with throaty noises as he fought. By this time Lethgro himself was crouched over the Exile, with his knife at the Exile's neck. “Call off your friends,” he ordered.

  But the Exile answered painfully that he was sorry he did not know how to do that.

  Repnomar had heaved her way into the melee around Broz, hacking grimly with her knife. White forms were surging toward them from all sides. “Halt!” the Warden bellowed. Something cracked against his head.

  21

  White

  When Lethgro began to think again, his thoughts were all regretful ones. He wished earnestly that the Sollet shippers had never delivered the Exile to him, or that he himself had never given the Exile those extra blankets with which he had made his first sail, or that Repnomar had never turned the Mouse's prow to the open Soll, or that neither of them had ever allowed the Exile to touch any of his devices. Through the ache and the throbbing (for his head hurt mercilessly) he could hear murmurs of low talk, and with great effort he opened one eye a little.

  He thought at first that the blow to his head had blinded him; for though he heard voices that seemed to come from straight before him and nearby, he saw only a whitish blur. It was as if there were light of a sort, though not the clear light of the torchbeam, but nothing to see. Nevertheless, by squinting painfully, he began to make out pale shapes in the whiteness; and after a little further thought he concluded that what he saw was not altogether bad. “For,” he reflected, closing his eye again, “White People are a feeble-looking lot; and they must live close to the Sollet.”

  He lay more on his side than on his back, dumped awkwardly against something cold and solid. So far as he could tell without moving (for he did not want to attract anyone's attention) he was not bound. In front of him, almost close enough to reach if he had cared to risk it, two people sat in conversation.

  It was no wonder the Warden had called them White People in his thoughts, for they brought back to his memory the clumsy raft that had drifted down the Sollet one flood season with a crew of just such pallid folk huddled in their white furs. He had tried hard to talk to them, but without success; for though they had muttered and gabbled among themselves, they had refused to speak to anyone else and shown no interest in learning any other tongue. Two of them had died at Sollet Castle; and the others had seemed so pitiful, being both feeble and uncivilized, that in the end he had had them transported under guard back to the headwaters of the Sollet and there released. Repnomar, when she learned of it, had called him a fool for not finding out where they came from and how they lived and what they talked of in their strange tongue; but he had answered, “They only went where the river took them. Why should I plague and pester them?”

  Now Lethgro remembered all this and wondered if these were indeed folk of the same sort, and if White People were not so feeble as he had thought, or if these were unhuman creatures from beyond the clouds. On the next attempt he opened both eyes, very gingerly, and saw better. They were not, as he had supposed, in a snow cave like those of the Quicksilver People—or if they were, the snow was hidden under a covering, for the whiteness of the walls and floor and roof was the whiteness of fur. It was as if they were tucked into the armpit of some giant snow-white beast. The two people before him were clad in the same fur, which seemed to be garments rather than their own pelts; but their faces had hardly more color, so that, though their features were human enough, they were eerie to look at. He knew by the voices that there were others here whom he could not see, and that the Exile was one of them. The language they spoke was a soft squawking, meaningless to the Warden's ears. He moved his head, slowly and tenderly, in hopes of getting a glimpse of Repnomar or Broz; but that slight motion was enough both to send his senses reeling again and to attract the eyes of the White People. One of them stood up, lifting something that swung like a heavy fruit in a net, and the Warden's head twinged at the sight of it.

  But the Exile came hurriedly forward and stooped beside the Warden, begging him to lie still and not distress himself, and then turned back to the others with a mouthful of gabble.

  “Where's the Captain?” the Warden asked gruffly, and put a careful hand to his head. There was a large lump there, sticky with blood and painful to be touched.

  The Exile squatted like a frog at his side, eyeing the White People with signs of uneasiness, and explained that he thought the Captain was well enough, though he was not so sure about Broz. At this, the Warden began to heave himself up, despite the Exile's protests, and two more White People came into his range of sight. Both carried objects that looked unpleasantly like weapons, and their pallid faces did not strike the Warden as friendly. He got no further than to his knees, and knelt there dizzily for a while, holding to the Exile's right arm (for he had long since noticed that the Exile did everything by preference with his right hand and was clumsy as a baby with the left). It was not likely he could have stood upright in any case. The White People, though not as stumpy as the Exile, were nowhere near the Warden's height, and their white-furred roof hung low over his head.

  He saw (once the spinning in his head had slowed) that he was near one end of an oblong shelter—or cave, or room; he did not know how to think of it. Farther down its length a lamp was burning, making a still light in the whiteness. It would have been dizzying enough, the Warden thought, even without a broken head; for the featureless soft white, above, around, below, gave the eye nothing to grasp, and the white-clad White People moved like transparent fish in water, so that his gaze came back to the Exile in search of steadiness, and he asked again and more fiercely where the Captain was and what had happened to her.

  But as the Exile was twisting up his mouth to answer, a door opened in the whiteness close beside them, and the Captain herself entered, stooped almost double to negotiate that low passage. “High time you were awake, Lethgro,” she greeted him. “That head of yours seems to get tenderer every time it takes a knock. And you might as well let go of his arm; he's as much a prisoner as we are.”

  Indeed the Captain had been sorely worried over Lethgro's tender head, for she thought that at this rate he would not survive many more sharp knocks; but she had had more urgent worries. She herself had not been sure of surviving the fight, and had come out of it with a wrenched and broken arm to balance her damaged knee on the other side. The weapons of the White People were stones, variously tethered with thongs and nets and bags of leather, so that they could be hurled or swung and retrieved. It was one of these devices—two stones joined by a thong—that had wrapped itself around Repnomar's lifted forearm so violently that the bone had snapped, and others that had brought Broz down. She herself had not been able to do much damage, for the thick furs of the Whites had shielded them against her knife. But Broz had done better. By the time he was put out of the fight, choking and gagging with a cluster of stones around his neck, two Whites lay dead.

  That, it appeared, was the problem. The White People—so the Captain optimistically believed—were not so savage as to slaughter travelers without reason. But they had hauled Broz down to the stream and thrust his head into the icy water, and only the violent yells and struggles of the Captain (whom half a dozen Whites barely sufficed to hold back) and the pleadings of the Exile in their own language had deterred them for a time. Broz now lay tightly bound in another shelter nearby, and the White People, so the Exile sai
d, were preparing to consider his case judicially, for they had strong laws against murder. Having settled that much, the Exile had come to this shelter to see to the Warden, and after a time the Captain had been allowed to follow.

  When the Warden asked how the Exile had come to know these people and to speak their language, he answered frankly that it was they, or rather another party of them, who had received him from a roaming band of Quicksilvers in the dark and brought him to the edge of the light, where his memory first began to return to him; and that he must have spent many watches with them, for he found that he understood them passably well.

  “And the good of that,” Repnomar added, “is that we'll have an interpreter at the trial.” For Broz, it appeared, was to be tried in a court of law, or what passed for such among these savages.

  Now certain of the White People began to crowd around them with signs of impatience, and the Exile said apologetically that it was time for the trial to begin. So Lethgro, with some help from the Captain, got himself to his feet, and they went out. And though the Warden, after stooping to get through the low door, straightened himself very carefully, he staggered nevertheless and jostled the Captain's wounded arm so roughly that she bit her lip to hold back a curse. They were in poor shape for fighting, she thought, if it should come to that.

  They stood here (so the Warden concluded slowly, as his head steadied and he gazed around) in a city of the White People. The light was still very dim, and yet he saw well enough, for that dim light was everywhere reflected from whiteness: a sweep of level snow (for they seemed here to be in a tranquil valley, protected from the wind) and the white walls of the low buildings—furred outside, it seemed, as well as in. The Warden shivered in the chill air (it had been much warmer inside) and let himself be guided to another of the furry houses. White People were crowding into its door from every direction, gabbling excitedly, but they made room for the Warden and the Captain (though they jostled the Exile without compunction). The Captain's face was tight with grimness and with pain. “Come on, Lethgro,” she said, and ducked her head to enter.

  This house was even longer than the one in which Lethgro had awakened, though no wider, and lit here and there down its length by the little white-flamed lamps, so that it was like a tunnel of fur. There seemed to be a door in the other end as well, and from both ends the place was filling up fast with more white fur, as people shoved and elbowed their way in. The Captain and the Warden, who could only keep their heads from rubbing the ceiling pelts by stooping, had a better view than anyone else, and could see where Broz lay like a pool of blackness midway down the room. Repnomar plowed her way through the crowd like a ship cutting through rough water, and Lethgro followed in her wake with the Exile bobbing behind him.

  But when she reached the front rank, the Captain found herself blocked by a solid cordon of armed Whites, who lifted their netted stones and weighted thongs menacingly. It went against the Captain's grain to be commanded by force; but she thought it prudent for Broz's sake to make no disturbance, and stopped with as much show of docility as she could manage.

  The hall was now so crowded that (the Warden guessed) there must have been more than fifty people squeezed into it, and most of the lamps were now put out—to lessen the danger of fire, the Exile said. Broz lay motionless; but his eyes were wild, and a growl rose over and over again in his throat. The Captain spoke to him, but her voice was sunk and lost in the hubbub of talk. Yet even with such a crowd, all of them yammering and excited, and packed into that low-roofed space, there was an unnatural softness to all sounds, that were as if wrapped and muffled in furry whiteness.

  Now certain White People stood forward into the open space that had so far been left around Broz, and the hubbub died away. The Exile slipped under Repnomar's arm and put himself also forward, saying something in the White tongue.

  “You know law, Lethgro,” the Captain said anxiously. “What can we do?” But the Warden only grunted, being still unconvinced that any folk so uncivilized as these could have law worth mentioning.

  The Whites who had stepped forward began to gabble and yammer one after the other, waving their arms and turning back and forth to address both ends of the room; and Broz, alarmed by this hullabaloo so close to him, began to struggle and rage. This in turn alarmed the speakers and the Whites of the first rows, so that some cringed backward away from him, and others raised their weapons and threatened him with cries. Things might have gone badly then and there, but the Captain by shouts and whistles was able to quiet Broz, and the Exile by much gabbling to reassure the Whites, and the proceedings continued.

  These proceedings were such as to confirm the Warden in his opinion, for there seemed to be no rule of order except that whoever shouted loudest would be heard. Many of the Whites took it in turn to shove their way forward and shake their weapons over Broz, who could not be restrained from growling and snapping. The Captain stood stony, only speaking now and then to calm Broz; and this somewhat relieved Lethgro, who had feared she might precipitate a battle.

  Such a suspicion was unfair, for the Captain was prepared to endure any barbarous folderol if it would get Broz free. But seeing the Whites wax hotter and hotter against Broz, and considering that she had as good a right to shout as any of them, she called out for silence in her most captainly tones, to such effect that the whole white turmoil was quiet in an instant, and Broz turned his eyes up to her hopefully.

  “Tell them,” the Captain directed the Exile, “they can listen to our side of it now.” And she began (pausing from time to time for the Exile to interpret her remarks) to explain very reasonably that Broz had only defended himself and his friends when they were set upon by strangers in their sleep, a thing any decent dog or human would do, unless lacking means or courage; and that furthermore he could not be held fully responsible in a human law court (for she thought it wise to flatter the Whites a little here), being only a dumb animal and ignorant of law.

  These arguments seemed to baffle the White People for a little, and the Captain began to take heart. But after some muttered conversation the Exile reported that the Whites did not understand why she mentioned these things, which in their opinion had no bearing on the case. Broz had killed two of their people; how and why did not matter. Human, animal, or rock, he must die. And since he had killed twice, he must die twice.

  At this point the Exile excused himself, saying that he was a poor interpreter, since he knew one language little and the other less, but that he truly believed he had translated correctly, and the Whites indeed meant to execute Broz not once but twice. To which the Captain replied hotly that once might be harder than they thought; and the Warden suggested in some haste that instead of translating this remark, the Exile should call for a recess.

  This took some time to explain, first to the Exile and then (through him) to the White People. But this was lucky, for during the explanations the Warden had time to think of reasons for his request (which had been at first only a desperate try at postponing disaster); and the Captain, quickly seeing a new hope, joined in with vigor. The Warden asserted that it would be contrary to all law, decency, and common sense to execute a prisoner in the very place of judgement, and that the interested parties had a right to confer and to prepare a statement before final sentence was pronounced, let alone executed; while the Captain claimed her right to commune with her dog one last time—and, as she insisted, “without all this fur in our noses.” For she felt that if they could get outside into the open air, they might find some chance of escape. Neither of them mentioned the impossibility of executing Broz twice, thinking that once would be more than sufficient. And when the Exile had conveyed these arguments at considerable length, some of the Whites began to move, opening a path through their ranks toward the far door. The Captain scooped up Broz with her one good arm and strode grim-mouthed down this narrow lane, limping badly but wasting no time. The Warden put his hand firmly on the Exile's shoulder and steered him after her; for he was determined tha
t if he came home alive from this journey, he would come home with the Exile as his prisoner.

  The outside air struck them like a plunge into river water, for it had been warm in that furred and populous hall, and even in this sheltered valley the wind was up. They had come out at the opposite end from where they went in, and the Captain stared about her eagerly, hopeful for some kind of cover. She had been feeling out Broz's bonds as she carried him, and had her fingers already into one of the knots.

  This, clearly, was the edge of the little fur city. The valley opened before them, a level paleness between the bulks of the mountainsides. For a moment Repnomar thought that she was watching snow stirring in the wind; then she realized that the moving whiteness before them was alive. As far as she could see in the dimness, white forms milled like seething surf viewed through a haze. Low sounds came from them.

  Some of the White People who had followed the prisoners out or gone ahead were massing around them now, swinging their stones suggestively. But the Captain's step never faltered (except for her limp); she took three unhesitating strides to a little rise behind the door, and put Broz down on its far side, telling him to be still. Lethgro hustled the Exile forward, and they all crouched over Broz like doctors around a patient. “What are those things?” the Captain demanded, jerking her head toward the field of moving forms.

  “Sheep, maybe,” the Warden hazarded. “Whatever they get their furs from.” And the Exile confirmed this, saying he did not know whether they could be called sheep, but that the White People reared them for food and fur; and he added that the creatures were fierce and difficult to handle, so that Whites were sometimes injured or even killed in the milking or tending of them. Every city of the Whites, he believed, had a great flock of hundreds of such beasts, penned behind fences that were made of the bones of their own kind.