Steelflower in Snow Read online

  “Aye.” He wrung the rag with a quick, brutal twist. “Of course I do. But I cannot.”

  Fair enough. There are many things in life a sellsword would turn away from, if she could.

  “What else will I do with my life?” he continued, shaking the poor piece of cloth viciously. “Sellsword until I am too old, then beg upon a street?”

  “I plan on opening an inn.” It was out before I could halt my babbling. “Six rooms, waterclosets to match, hanging linens in the sun and foxing tax collectors.”

  The silence was deafening. Even the noise of a forest—creaking, birdsong, the vast echoing of the sky-roof itself—hushed for a few moments, as if the trees and fauna were likewise drawing breath to laugh at my folly.

  Redfist threw his head back and laughed, too. It was not quite the reaction I had expected, but then, nobody expects to lay one of their cherished dreams before another. Not comfortably, at least. Who wishes to show their own foolishness, even to a drinking-companion, let alone a friend?

  “Lass,” Redfist finally said, chuckles still burbling in his gut, “ye’re the wisest sellsword I ever hae known. I thank my gods ye picked my pocket that night.”

  It was kind of him to say so. He may even have meant it, and I found myself smiling. “Tis not much of a dream.”

  “I like it,” D’ri said, smoothing the other pony’s mane much as I had. His lips had curved and his gaze softened, and it suited him well indeed. “It seems an honest thing, and a gentle one.”

  “I am not sure of either.” I shifted my attention to the horizon, a collection of white linen hoods on marching heads like devotees of Taryina-Ak-Allat during their great ecstatic festivals, threading through spiraling streets and chanting atonal songs of sacrifice. “Tis more likely I shall end with three rooms and a single watercloset, or gut-pierced on a battlefield.”

  “Not while your s’tarei lives, Kaia.” Darik’s words were edged but very soft, G’mai rolling with consonants providing sharp peaks to match those I watched.

  I did not have a chance to reply, for Redfist folded the rag and tucked it in his belt to dry. “I shall nae stand to see that happen, lass. Come, we waste sunlight.” As if he had not been the one to suggest a nooning.

  That night, the first snow fell, and I began to dream.

  We Shall Meet It

  I charged. Not straight for my opponents, though that would have been satisfying, but to the left, where the shadows were deepest. Boots stamping, my legs complaining, ice underfoot, my left knee threatened to buckle again before silence descended upon me. It was not the killing snow-quiet I had discovered after my mother’s death but the white-hot clarity of battlerage. There is a moment, when the body has been pushed past endurance and your enemies are still all about you, when the last reserves inside a sellsword—those crockery jars full of burn-the-mouth, sweetheavy turit jam—are smashed. Muscle may pull from bone, bone itself may break, but the sellsword will not feel either for hours. The Shainakh call it nahrappan, the Hain a term that has to do with a cornered animal, and in G’mai it is called the s’tarei’s last kiss, and it is said that even after an adai’s death a s’tarei may perform one final action, laying waste to his opponents.

  The Skaialan call it berserk, and there are tales of their warriors fighting naked except for crimson chalk-paint, touched by their chieftain-god Kroth’s heavy hand and driven mad by the weight.

  Pain vanished. My dotani clove frozen air with a sweet sound, blurring in a low arc as I turned sideways, skipping from cobble to cobble with no grace but a great deal of speed. The far-left Black Brother had an axe, and all thought left me as it moved, hefted as if it weighed less than a straw. Their soft, collective, invisible grasping burned away; I left the ground and flew, turning at the last moment, my dotani’s arc halting and cutting down, sinking through fur and leather, snap-grinding on bone, and the Black Brother’s mouth opened wet-loose as his arm separated, neatly cloven. The axe, its momentum inescapable, sheared to the side, and since his left hand was the brace for the haft it arced neatly into his next-door compatriot, sinking in with the heavy sound of well-seasoned wood.

  Child-high screams rose, but I was already past and Mother Moon, I longed to turn back. The burning in my veins, the sweet-hot rage, demanded it.

  Instead, I put my head down and bolted, braids bouncing and my joints aching with each foot-stamp. Thump-thud, thump-thud, the street familiar now, each shadow turning bright-sharp as my pupils swelled, the taste in my mouth sour copper and katai candy. The Keep loomed ever closer, and if I could reach the end there was a narrow housefront with a door left deliberately unlocked. Once inside, I could be up the stairs and out a high window, onto the roof-road again, up and down while their foulglove net closed on empty air. There was an easy way into the Keep from there, if D’ri had reached it and secured the knotted rope…

  A whistle-crunch. Another high childlike cry behind me as a heavy black-fletched arrow, its curve aimed high and sharp to give it added force as it fell, pierced a pursuer’s skull, shattering it in a spray of bone and grey matter.

  Kaia! Thin and very far away, Darik struggling to reach me through the rage. Kaia, down!

  “Kaia.” A hand at my shoulder, a short sharp shake. My hand flung out as if to ward off a blow—Darik caught my wrist, cold, callused fingers strong but not biting. I had not reached for the knife under the almost-empty bag of fodder serving as my pillow, so I must have known it was him even in unconsciousness.

  Redfist’s snores echoed against the waystation’s walls. D’ri must have been on watch. His grasp gentled and he touched my forehead with his other hand, as if he suspected an adai’s fever had me in its grip. “All is well,” he said, softly. “You were dreaming.”

  “Was I?” The change from bright dream-daylight to the darkness inside a small waystation—the last stone cube meant for travelers on this side of the Pass, Redfist said—threatened to blind me. I could not find enough air, and a touch of sweat along my nape sent a thin finger of chill all down my back.

  “It sounded very much like it.” D’ri crouched, easily, and as my nightvision returned I caught the gleam of his dark eyes under a shelf of blueblack hair. “The one from the ship?”

  I reclaimed my hand, rubbed at the solid sleep crusting my eyelids. At least they were not frozen shut; thin threads of crimson on the banked fire were more a suggestion than actual heat or light. “Again,” I muttered into my palms. “The same thing, all the time.” My Anjalismir accent had grown more pronounced when I spoke to him of late. Sometimes it did not even cause a pang to hear his tender inflection—or my own.

  “Ah.” He glanced at the waystation door, firmly shut and barred. Shuttered arrow-slits piercing the walls were covered with horse-blankets, to muffle the sting of night chill; the ponies moved restlessly and the fragrance of their hides and breath—not to mention other, nastier odors—had vanished from conscious attention, we spent so long breathing them.

  You do not allow your beasts to sleep outside this far north. The white winds can come without warning, and there are stories of livestock frozen stiff near the Pass when the blind storms descend.

  “Will you tell me?” Uncertain, as if he expected me to take offense at the question.

  No. Perhaps. “Tis nothing. Merely dreams.” I used the word for idle thoughts, things best put aside. Now I could see his expression, and a flash of something crossed his face. Was it pain? He nodded, sharply, and would have risen had I not caught at his sleeve. “D’ri…” The words trembled on my tongue. They keep returning, and I think I saw Rikyat die in one of them, but…

  How many years had it been since I turned to anyone for…comfort? Was that what I wanted?

  He waited. A hot, abrupt bite of shame pierced my chest. He was, after all, a very patient s’tarei, even among my kind.

  “They bother me,” I finally admitted, in a whisper. “I think…I think they may be an’farahl’adai.”

  He sank down, no longer crouching but sitti
ng, The black silk and leather of a G’mai princeling was hidden under thick woolens, and if not for the tips of his ears or the severe Dragaemir beauty of his features, he might have been another sellsword, a comrade of convenience along the Road. “Not future-knowing, but otherwise.” Reminding himself what it meant—the ways of Power are many and strange, and only a Yada’Adais can lay claim to knowing most their manifestations.

  Nobody knows all ways but the Moon, as the proverb runs, for she is mistress of all hidden and secret places.

  “I think…there was one, I think I saw how Rikyat died.” My throat was dry, but leaving my sleeping-pad and nest of blankets to fetch a drinking-skin was a daunting proposition, even in woolen night-boots and carrying blankets with me. “And this one, you are in it, and the giant, Janaire and Atyarik too.”

  “At least they are safe in the city.” A vertical line appeared between his eyebrows, and he made no further move to retreat. “If it is your Power breaking free, you may have visions. Like Janaire.”

  “I hope not.” A shudder worked through me—before the battle with the Hamashaiiken, Janaire had seen. She did not speak much of it, but any G’mai child knows such a ‘gift’ is a burden and a weight upon the soul.

  “It could be a temporary symptom.” His palm against my cheek, warm though his fingers were cool. “I cannot guess, I am no Yada’Adais.”

  “Nor am I.” I have left my Teacher behind. Janaire’s cooking would have been welcome on our path, and Atyarik’s help with ponies and the work of making camp. I did not precisely miss them—or did I? It was a comfort to think of them warm and snug in the Antai residence, bundled against a cold ameliorated by the breath of the Lan’ai.

  Darik’s thumb feathered over my cheekbone. “Fear not, adai’mi. However the Power moves, we shall meet it.”

  Too fine for me by far, my s’tarei. The weight lifted from my shoulders, and I would have taken the rest of his watch, but he tucked me into my nest afresh and pressed his lips to my forehead, and I let him. If I dreamed again that night, I did not remember it.

  The Eater

  The Pass has a lovely name—Armara-karnha. The sound is pleasing and balanced, but the meaning is altogether different. Like any place that had ever heard of the Pensari, whiteness along the northern mountains of the Rim is suspect at best and murderous at worst, and the name means the White Eater. The crags are knifelike, massive teeth of some worldbreaking beast; wind constantly sliding along their edges in a low moaning rising to a shriek as clouds from the south freeze and fall. There are pillars of ice in the higher reaches that have never melted since the world’s creation, and stories tell of wind-spirits trapped in those long cloudy daggers, endlessly suffocating.

  “Get down!” Darik barked, and I did not hesitate, throwing myself full-length into a snowbank. Something whistled near my hair, its buffeting blew stinging snow and freezing over me; I rolled, floundering in a sea of cold white wet.

  None know why harpies screech as they do, and their faces, gnarled into an expression of suffering, only add to the effect. Twin swellings on their feathered chests are full of venom, and their claws drip with it as they work, aching to drive into prey. They love meat, and will feast upon whatever they find, either freshly envenomed into quiescence or frozen carrion. Their sharp-feathered wings are broad, and powerful enough to knock a strong man down with their noisome breath. I have heard they can strip a brace of oxen to bone and offal in bare heartbeats, and I believe it very near the truth.

  The thing shrieked as a finely fletched arrow buried itself just under the juncture of its left wing. Bright hot blood spattered, already half-frozen by the time it hit the snow around me. I flicked a boot up, smacking the thing’s hindquarter to drive it aside as it fell, and its claws snapped a bare fingerwidth from my thigh.

  “Kaia!” Redfist bellowed, and there was a glitter as a flung axe buried itself in the harpy’s side just under the arrow. He almost clove the thing in half, and now I understood why he insisted one of us should always keep a watch overhead. It had come out of nowhere, and if not for my s’tarei I might have been reduced to mincemeat in a few moments.

  Two more banked overhead, turning in great circles, their cries threadbare on the rising wind. Darik tore his arrow free of the corpse—the harpy was longer than I was, how could such a thing fly? My s’tarei offered a hand, I took it gladly, and he dragged me from the snow’s wet clutching. The ponies rolled their eyes and cried out in fear, but fortunately did not bolt.

  Perhaps they were intelligent enough to know there was no safety in fleeing down the Pass. Not in this weather.

  Redfist did not seem to feel the cold; likely his ruddy fur trapped the warmth next to his pale skin. D’ri and I both had the warming-breath now, but had Janaire not insisted upon training me, I might have frozen to death the night before we crested the Eater’s throat and began sliding down the other side. It was upon that high spine the harpy finally decided I looked like easy prey, being the smallest creature braving the icy passage.

  They would not have been able to lift either of my companions from the ground.

  Darik brushed snow from my fur-lined cloak as Redfist tore his axe free from the steaming corpse, its eyes now filmed and its feathers scattered. There was a certain beauty to its gray and white plumage, and I could see how the marks on its bony cheeks and proud, vicious beak only resembled human features.

  I had never thought I would see a harpy in the flesh. Especially so close.

  We half stumbled, half slid down the slope, but the two circling overhead did not dive until we were well away. They settled on the body of their former comrade, and the clacking, whistling sounds of pleasure they made were enough to feature in many a nightmare.

  “Tis a good thing our foster-son is safe,” Darik muttered, while Redfist and I brushed the snow from his shoulders as well. My hood almost hid my face, and the tips of my ears were numb despite the warming-breath. “Those things could carry him aloft.”

  “No worse than wingwyrms.” My heart pounded in my chest, and a thin trickle of melting ice slid down my neck. “I would kill for a hot bath right now.”

  “Better than a bath to be had, lass.” The corners of Redfist’s blue eyes crinkled merrily. His beard hung with ice, and every so often he would shake crackling bits of it free. “But not until Karnagh.”

  There was a rending of bone and a squabbling up the hill. I suppressed a flinch, squinting against snowglare. “Thank you, D’ri.”

  He nodded, pressed his lips to my forehead quickly. Redfist watched with a great deal of amusement, and clucked at the ponies, soothing them.

  That night, we sheltered in a small cave, burrowing like animals. In the middle of my watch—I took the first—there was a rumbling in the heights; it shook both Redfist and D’ri awake.

  “Kroth guard us all.” The barbarian’s tone was hushed, and he pushed himself up on one elbow from a small mount of furs and blankets next to the ponies, who were probably glad of his warmth. “The mountains are hungry tonight.”

  I shut my eyes, imagining ice, snow, rock tumbling down the side of those sheer slopes, gathering speed and weight, a wall of white death. “Avalanche,” I said, quietly, in G’mai.

  “I thought as much,” D’ri answered. “Are they common here too, then?”

  “Anywhere there are mountains, I suppose.” I switched to tradespeak, pulling my cloak tighter around me. “He wishes to know if they are common,” I translated politely, for Redfist’s benefit. He could not seem to fit G’mai in his mouth.

  It is a difficult language for those not born to it, not like trade-pidgin or Shainakh.

  “Worst in spring, when the melt comes.” Redfist flopped back down with a groan. The ponies stirred restlessly, one whickering to express his unease. “But aye, common enough.”

  “Luck.” I made the avert sign with my left hand. “Go back to sleep, I will wake you when your watch draws nigh.”

  A fiveday later, we reached Karnagh.

>   The Death Gate

  The city holding the key to the Pass is a collection of stone with red-tiled, sharply slanted roofs ready to slough snow. And noise. Not to mention smell. Karnagh’s size is shocking even against the mountains; the buildings are stolid and massive under their peaked dull-crimson caps. I barely reached Redfist’s chest, D’ri his shoulder, and the barbarian’s countrymen are of like stature. Giants indeed, and all their structures are built to their scale.

  They dress strangely, as well—the men in woven, full-sleeved shirts and long sheets of material folded a certain way to provide cover and freedom of movement without the aid of trousers, the women in longer skirts and furs. Their bearded men disdain the cold; their hairy calves are on display above thick boots and much-folded stockings held in place with a buckle even in the worst of freezes. Outside the borders of their country, they walk. Inside, however, their steeds are…different. I had thought we would find Skaialan draft horses, and never understood why Redfist laughed each time I mentioned them. They breed the horses for export, and for the races they bet furiously upon, but when a giant of the North rides to war or to travel, he does so upon a torkascraugh, a creature I hesitate to describe, for even a bard might not believe me.

  Torkascruagh appear squat only because their legs are columns of muscle, and their hooves are cloven. Their faces are long, and even the females sport two giant teeth, one on either side of a moist, flat muzzle. Their ears are tasseled, and they are shaggy enough to withstand even the white winds from the mountains.

  In short, they appear as…well, giant pigs. Or, more precisely, boar, but even the Hain would not ride to hunt those tusked monstrosities.