Steelflower in Snow Page 4

  The taller one had his sword unlimbered and lifted—the knife had been meant for Redfist—and his mouth was a wide wet O as he yelled. I heard the trailing cry.

  “Ferulaaaaaaine!”

  It meant nothing, because I was where I needed to be now, almost under him. My left fist hit my right shoulder as I prepared the knife-strike, my entire body tensing as I stabbed upward, under his pleated, multicolored skirt. My dotani rang as it I next pitched myself the other way, a weak slash darting for his belly.

  My knife sank into his thigh, angled precisely for the artery; I twisted and wrenched as much as I could before the hilt ripped from my hand. His bellowing turned into something very like a harpy’s scream. I didn’t have much strength behind my dotani strike, but even a weak slash was enough to force him backward. His leg buckled; I scrabbled back on shoulders and heels, move or be crushed, Kaia, and a dark thunderbolt was Darik, leaping to kick. All the force he could gather thudded with his boot in the taller man’s gut, and my s’tarei dropped immediately as it transferred. His boots thudded on either side of my hips, and I had to take care I did not spit him with my own blade. I kept scrabbling back, and Redfist’s roar—better late than never—was accompanied by a great crashing.

  I gained my feet with a muscle-tearing lunge, whirling and bringing my dotani up. The throat-slit giant had taken two faltering steps and toppled sideways, landing upon the edge of another table crowded with empty tankards and surrounded by three sourfaced Skaialan who had been busily trying to drink themselves into the afterworld. As it was, they barely noticed, merely shouting what I took to be abuse at the sudden bump. One shoved the falling body aside to land on the floor instead of disturbing their drinking further. Another, a black-bearded giant with small bones—they looked very much like tiny harpy beaks—tied into his beard and hair, held aloft his grimy tankard and pounded his other fist on the sadly abused table, calling for another drink.

  Not much disturbs a Skaialan who has seriously set himself to ale-deaden his wits.

  There was little danger from that quarter, so I turned back. D’ri regarded the taller giant on the floor, the lake of blood underneath rapidly growing. Bleeding from the thigh’s great Shelt-channel is difficult to stem; I had seen battlefield healers loosen bandages to let a sellsword die quickly instead of seeking to stanch it. There are very few methods for treating such a wound. Perhaps an adai skilled in flesh-mending could do so, but I was not.

  Nor did I wish to be, at that moment.

  The innkeep, a proud-bellied and soft-shouldered mass in a much-bleached apron, wrung his hands at the far end of the commonroom, lowing like a distressed calf. Redfist shoved a spectator who had pushed too close to the brawl, and unless I missed my guess, there were several rounds of betting going on, small counters passed from hand to hand and a number of sausage-fat fingers pointed in my direction. I whipped my dotani to clean it, yanking a bit of rag from my clothpurse to rub the shining blade, checking for chips along the edge.

  Sometimes, bone will bite back.

  There did not appear to be any more danger. Redfist engaged in a volley of their strange language with the innkeep, and I met D’ri’s gaze as he glanced over his shoulder to see if I was well. I nodded, slightly, and he straightened, returning his attention to the rapidly dying meat on the floor.

  The giant’s lips, strangely chalky from the bloodloss, shaped the syllables again. “Ferulaaaine,” he whispered, and sagged against the floor. His bowels released, a sharp stink that sent an excited murmur through the commonroom.

  Oddly enough, I felt more at home. A tavern brawl is much the same in every corner of the world. Except G’maihallan, where such things are all but unknown. No s’tarei will risk the life of an adai in such a fashion, even one not their own.

  I placed the word. Ferulaine. The clan-name of Dunkast, who had sent pale Northern gold to Antai.

  Redfist’s great enemy.

  How very interesting.

  Battlefield Mercy

  “Tis a fine mess.” Redfist folded his arms over his barrel chest, glowering into our sullen-embered fireplace. “The innkeep threatened to throw us into the snows, Kaia.”

  “So I should have let them kill you?” I frowned at my largest knife. The tip was blunted, so I drew it along the whetstone at the proper angle. Our room was a small ship in a tempest, to judge by the noise from downstairs. Would sleep even be possible in such a setting? “I shall remember that, friend Redfist, next time there is fighting to be done.”

  He did not rise to the bait. “They were Ferulaine.”

  I quelled a needle-prick of irritation that he would address me as if I lacked wit or the will to use it. At least I did not have blood in my hair, though my scalp crawled. I longed for a proper bath. “So I gathered. Somehow related to this Dunkast, perchance?”

  “His is a bastard’s clan, so there is nae blood, but it doesnae make them less kin. No doubt there would be a rich prize if they managed to take my head.” Redfist’s frown was thunderous as he crouched to feed the fire with chunks of the North’s fine black fire-rock, and his club of red hair, newly wrapped, could have been used as a weapon too. “Word will spread I’ve returned, and sooner than I thought. Ye could have looked away, Kaia.”

  “He was already drawing a knife.” Another scraping against the whetstone matched the rasp against my nerves, and I tried not to feel ill-tempered. The bodies had been heaved outside; the large, feral torkascruagh roaming the streets of Karnaugh would take care of them in short order. D’ri lifted one of my braids, tucking it back into the complex arrangement; he even retied the bit of coarse string keeping it confined. He had grown more facile at such things, of late, and it was strange to feel another’s fingers in my hair. Sometimes Kesa at the Swallows Moon had braided it Clau-fashion, in loops over the ears and a rope down the back, but I prefer the crowning styles of my homeland. They cannot be grasped by an enemy, and they cushion a helm wonderfully, though I rarely wear more than an archer’s light leather cap.

  I need to see what I am killing.

  Redfist sighed. “There is only your word for that.”

  My hands halted their familiar motion. Darik’s touch left my hair, and before I could open my mouth, he saved me the trouble.

  “Do you accuse my adai of an untruth, barbarian?” Cold and formal even in tradetongue, and if D’ri did not add a curse or two in G’mai, it was perhaps only because politeness is bred into our kind, and palace training would have doubled the dose. It was an oblique warmth, that he would take issue with such a thing.

  “Of course not.” Redfist’s brow was ferociously knotted, and the barbarian wasn’t even looking at me. He scrubbed his palms against his trouser-knee, ridding them of soot. “I am thinking of how it looked to everyone else in the commonroom.”

  “Ah.” I stared at the knifeblade. “You thought you had time to gather something in secret, friend Redfist, but the game was already given away. Ninefingers no doubt sent word he had found you.”

  “Ye cannot know that.”

  You ignorant piece of lard. I drew the stone up the knifeblade, a ringing scrape. Outside, a wailing white wind had closed over Karnaugh’s red roofs. “Did you not notice their cloaks? They had been tramping for hours. Why do that, here? And both of them reeked of drink, but not enough to make them sloppy. And they recognized you. Why would they, if they had not been warned? He is this tall, and this redhaired, and he will be wearing Southron cloth.” The knifetip was repairable, but not while I was in this mood. I would no doubt cut myself, and deserve it richly for disrespecting a blade. “Mother’s tits, Redfist, do you think I would simply kill them for their looks?”

  “I noticed their cloaks. And aye, I knew neither of their faces.” Redfist stamped to a chair and flung himself into it, slumping. With his brawny arms crossed and his chin dipped, he looked like one of the puppets the R’jiin use to make children laugh. Their tales of the far North are full of shadows and strange noises, and I could well believe one or t
wo of them might have traveled in these lands to bring such things back. “I do not blame ye, Kaia. Ye’re more like a wal’kir than ever, and I a puling child to be making such noises. Forgive me.”

  An honest apology eases tension as few other things can, and I nodded. “Forgiven. What is this voll-kyir?”

  “Shield-maids.” The tip of his nose pinkened.

  “Shieldwives?” I could not quite believe my ears. “That is hardly complimentary.”

  “Maybe nae in your tongue, but in mine tis a high honor. A wal’kir holds a sword, and grants men mercy on the battlefield.”

  “A healer?” Now that was interesting. I had never been called such before. I eyed the highly-patterned woven rug before the fireplace, its rough nap no doubt shaken free of mud between each set of guests. If they did not wash their bodies, did they wash their linens, at least?

  “No, lass.” He stretched his long legs, and at least here in his country there was space for such a maneuver. “Mercy with a blade, when the body is too shattered for mending.”

  “Ah.” Tis a job no sellsword likes. To draw the Reaper’s straw, the Shainakh call it, and those who perform it are given double rations of hanta to ease the task, and the conscience afterward.

  “There are stories of them riding with the gods of battle, as the blackwing birds do. Sometimes, when a lass dies in childbirth, she becomes one.” Redfist’s cheeks had gone pale. “We see them in battle, when Kroth is unusually interested in the outcome or the blood.”

  “I see. The Danhai had something similar.” When the women of the grass seas mourned—usually after losing their children to invaders’ swords—they sometimes cut their hair, paint their faces with ash, and become terrors of night and wind, able to hide behind a single blade of grass and put an arrow through a faraway coney’s eye. You could not take an ash-ghost prisoner. I had seen one bite through her own tongue and bleed to death while clapped in chains.

  I did not blame her. Danhai women in Shainakh army camps are few, and they do not survive long.

  The longer I was on the plains, the more I blamed the fat, greedy Shainakh Emperor Azkillian for all the death, despair, and hideousness than any tribefolk or my fellow sellswords. I had joined the irregulars to escape other troubles, and wondered ever since if I had been too honorable for my own good. Or—and this was the troublesome part—not as honorable as I thought I was.

  As I wished to be, as I had decided to be when I left G’maihallan so many seasons ago.

  “Do they now.” Redfist loosened enough to stroke at his beard, thoughtfully. He was removing the beads from its flow, one or two at a time. Perhaps he was shedding the South now that he was home. Had he considered the Rim as barbaric as I considered this hellish place?

  Darik settled on a tall three-legged stool near my chair and began checking his own knives, perhaps merely to keep his hands busy. His silence was not uncomfortable, but it was watchful, and I had known him long enough, finally, to tell the difference.

  “What is your next move?” I did not sound very curious, only weary. Gods knew I felt the distance from civilization like a heavy weight in all my joints, and the cold nipped at my ear-tips, fingers, and toes.

  Redfist considered me, but his gaze had turned inward, traveling upon memory-roads. “Well now, perhaps resting a bit would be wise. But I never was that. Kalburn is our goal. Further north, and traders will be traveling between now and deepwinter. Best place to wait out the treecrack.”

  Treecrack? That does not sound amusing at all. “Defensible?” I set knife and sheathe on the table, and longed for chai. For pirin sauce, and some pungent baia. Not to mention flatbread, and…

  Gods, I was growing querulous in my age. Soon I would be an old sellsword complaining of her bowels and shirking what duties I could.

  “Not so much.” Redfist’s smile, for once, was not cheerful at all. More like a grimace, but that managed to hearten me a little. “But once I reach the Standing Stones, I may call the clans.”

  That sounds promising. “Very well, then.” I scrubbed at my face with both hands though no bloodmist had landed upon my cheeks. At least the rest of our troupe was safe in Antai, perhaps looking through the same windows I had thought to watch the rains from. “I hope we may sleep before we leave.”

  A Tricksome Business

  That night the white wind descended from the North, striking the mountains behind Karnaugh with furious screams, but the Skaialan are a hardy people. In the gray chill of morning we ventured forth to find passage.

  There were caravans leaving—Antai is not the only part of the world where profit strikes the cadence all dance to—and one was happy enough to hire Redfist as an outrider, that sellsword insurance against bandits. D’ri and I, as foreigners, were added by dint of Redfist arguing vociferously that his companions were better protection than a few Skaialan giants. Salden the caravan master, in tradetongue liberally spattered with Skaialan obscenities, called me a cheap courtesan one too many times, and I bloodied his nose despite having to leap to reach it. He went down hard, and I added a few more blows for good measure until Redfist lifted me off by my belt and shoulder. The caravan-master’s fellows, mostly shorter than Redfist but not by much, roared with laughter, and Darik took his hand away from his dotanii hilts before they glimpsed his readiness.

  That settled matters, and we were added to the caravan as well. Our ponies were left in the care of a livery, and I made certain they understood the beasts were to be treated well until I returned.

  I did not think it prudent to admit, even to myself, that I might not.

  So, we set out for Kalburn, and the Standing Stones.

  Skaialan caravans are made of slow-moving, high-roofed waggons, pulled not by oxen but by torkascruagh, their tusk-teeth painted with ochre like the Hain dye their plow-oxen’s horns. The conveyances creak and roll along roads cunningly laid to be swept clean by wind or shielded from the worst drifts; sometimes curious structures are erected to channel the force of the weather and keep a passage clear. Strung out upon a road, a caravan creaks and rattles, and the outriders either crowd close or spread into the snow atop their stamping, snorting, shaggy steeds. A torkascruagh’s saddle is a high-cantled affair, meant to keep one in its grasp even during a full gallop. The creatures are capable of short bursts of amazing speed, but their real usefulness lies in their patient, indefatigable plodding. They can walk all day, and all night, as long as they are given enough forage. Their stomachs are not fussy, either—they can, and will, eat almost anything. There are many proverbs in the North about their capacity to consume, and after any battle the creatures eat well of the fallen.

  I have witnessed as much with my own eyes.

  The first night, D’ri and I bedded down in one of the shell-like tents, upon a fragrant bed of stacked poila branches with their heavy green needles. One of the waggon-hands blundered against the side of the tent, mead-soaked and mumbling something that did not sound at all polite, and Darik nearly killed him. I heard an argument, and peered out to see Redfist shaking the big, blond, malodorous man by the front of his fur-lined cloak-coat, snarling in their language. It took a few moments before I understood.

  There were no women with the caravan. Like the Pesh, they keep daughters, wives, and mothers homefast; if a woman travels the North she must have a protector or be extremely handy with a blade and keep watch even while sleeping. It is not so different from some places on the Rim, but there are not even female sellswords in Redfist’s homeland.

  They have songs about warrior women, of course, and songs about women stabbing a faithless lover or protecting their homes with their carving-knives. There is even a brand of witchery many Skaialan women practice, and one adept at it may eventually, after her childbearing years are done, become what they call a morigwyn, a wise-woman, something very close to a Yada’Adais. The black-winged mother of their god Kroth looks upon morigwyni with favor and strikes those who insult them with boils, but until they are rolled in black fabric and o
ld age women do not travel alone.

  We made friends with our torkascruagh, D’ri and I. When you are riding a wall of shaggy meat with a mouth that can take your head off, it is very good to be friendly. He named his beast Atlara, a word that could have meant one-tooth or moving sharpness, used to describe the shape of certain mountains in G’maihallan. It had two tusks, but the joke had driven me to a fit of coughing mirth the first night he used it, so it became a name. My own I called Guilnor, a Skaialan child-word for a midden-heap. The creatures slept between our shell-tent and a waggon with its “skirts” dropped; they alerted us once or twice to trouble with their restlessness. The other outriders—three, not including Redfist—had perhaps thought to mock the foreigners by giving us the most ill-tempered of the brood, but after making my s’tarei’s acquaintance, they became docile as our left-behind ponies.

  I did not dream—there was no time for it. The waggons may become bogged, there is game to be hunted even in the white wastes, and there are wild torkascruagh to be reckoned with as well, ever alert for something to eat. A large one in a fury can crack a waggon in half.

  Then, there were the bandits.

  There is a god with a grasp as tight as profit, and its name is desperation. Listening at the nightly fire, as a cauldron of thick, pungent stew bubbled over a flame I had more than once coaxed into being without a sparkstone—the first time I performed that trick they all fell silent, like large children, and Redfist murmured that they had best be careful of my temper—I heard a familiar tale as my grasp of their language firmed, of men driven into the wilderness by heavy debt or vengeance, roaming without clan or chieftain. The harvest had been fine this year, especially in the black-soiled valleys, but the man in the North had taken a great deal as toll and tax.

  I thought your kind had no kings, I said once, to Redfist, who looked pained.