Late in the day, we came to a stretch of jagged low hills stretching north and east. Between the failing light and the low clouds, I couldn’t see much of them except the ghostly gray of bare rock. Here the northers set up camp, cold and windy, and fed us from our own provisions. They filled our cooking pot with water and horse grain to soak overnight. It would probably be their breakfast, and ours too if we were lucky. The horses they tethered to graze with their own ponies.
I sat cross-legged, hands still bound, chewing on a piece of salt-mutton. A norther stood behind me, the big one with the fancy spear. The point now hovered a half-inch from the back of my neck. The fire they built to cook their porridge or whatever it was they ate had long since blown out in the gusty, ice-edged wind.
I couldn’t see Terris or Etch, although I knew where they were, across the camp. At last light they’d looked all right. Cold, but all right. A couple of times earlier, Terris had opened his mouth to say something and got a knife blade shoved in his face. He handled himself well through it all, and if he was as scared as the night those two goons jumped us, he didn’t show it. When I glanced over at him, sitting easily on the sorrel gelding, he looked...strange, tense of course, but something more — as if he’d seen in a dreamsmoke vision that all of this was going to happen.
Etch too looked my way as we rode. Wait, I thought, and prayed he wouldn’t get some dumbshit notion to play hero. He was no fighter, but I remembered the way he went into action with the gray mare. That took a cool head and a different kind of courage than what you need to hack away at people who are jumping at you, screaming. Whatever kind of courage it was, I hope he’d keep it in his pocket. It occurred to me now, when there wasn’t a damned thing I could do about it, that I was the one who’d gotten herself thwapped over the skull and he might just as well have been looking over to see if I was all right. The thought surprised me.
As for the northers, Mother knew what they were like among themselves, but somehow I didn’t think they’d be this quiet. All through setting up camp, getting us fed and guarded — especially me, they didn’t trust me further than they could dangle me by my toes — they hardly ever talked to each other. The most I heard was a whispered discussion on how to guard me while I used the latrine pit. Finally the leader, looking disgusted with the whole mess — You batbrains can’t even handle a woman who needs to pee! — pulled my boots off himself, put a slip-noose around my neck, and shoved me, hands still tied, in the right direction. All without a word.
I wriggled into my bedroll — carefully searched first, no hidden weapons, but no ice-scorpions lured out of hibernation by my body heat. The tent was my own, rigged by the northers in a way I’d never seen before, low to let the wind stream over it. One of them, the little one with straw-colored hair who’d got half flattened by his pony, sat stoically outside in the wind. I hoped his leg hurt him plenty.
I kept telling myself, If they’d wanted us dead, we’d be dead.
Like a maggot eating its way through a palm-cactus fruit, trailing rot, the thought gnawed at me — maybe they have Avi. Maybe they were taking us wherever they took her. Maybe they wanted something from us — information, hostages, I didn’t know what — and that was why we were alive. Why they wouldn’t talk in front of us...
It was death to think these things. To have such hope. I would find something else at the end. Something desperate, something hard. I would need to act, clear-headed, with no poison of disappointment running through me.
I shifted into a more comfortable position on the hard ground, not an easy task with my wrists tied. My belt was still snug around my waist. It would be simple to cut through the ropes, but as they weren’t tight enough to cut off the circulation in my hands, it seemed hardly worth it. I’d save the buckle knife for when I really needed it.
I wavered in and out of consciousness, wandering half in the past, half in dreams. Sometimes I thought I was back in the ragged country bordering the steppe, my body throbbing with fatigue and bruises, other times at Brassaford, snatching a few minutes’ sleep. I’d reach out for Avi, who should be sleeping beside me, and the sudden jerk on my wrists would snap me awake.
By now, my body heat had warmed the blankets and my muscles began to relax. Let the bastard outside sit in the cold all night. I was going to get some sleep.
o0o
On the third morning of travel, when I was no longer dizzy all the time, we reached the lake. Like a stone of flat, deep blue, it stretched westward from the hills and snowmelt rivers that fed into it. Scattered conifers grew right down to the edge. The air was cold and damp and tangy with their scent. On the rocky island in the center of the lake, I made out two or three log buildings, an open fire pit sending up curls of blue-tinted smoke, people in elkskin jackets and breeches. They saw us and all started running in different directions.
On the southern edge of the lake sat a hut, also of conifer logs with the bark left on. Long, narrow paddle boats bobbed alongside the stone and log dock. A few scrawny, cow-hocked ponies stood head-to-tail in the nearest split-rail paddock, swishing flies off each other. Other enclosures held brush-sheep or shaggy-coated elk, many with calves. Beyond the pens, hard to make out from here, I thought I saw norther trail tents mixed with more souther styles and what might even be a jort.
A jort, here?
If I didn’t know better, I’d say this was a trading post. Before I got a closer look, my eyes were drawn to the yard of bare earth, where maybe twenty people had gathered. I heard excited voices but not words. Their clothing, like the tents, mixed styles, some of them familiar. The knot of spectators broke apart, part of them trotting over for a better look at us, and I caught a glimpse of what they were watching. Two youths in elkskin, pale gold braids flying, were sparring with spears. A low sweep for the knees, a lightning jump, instant reverse, like a knife form with the longer weapon, all flow and balance and timing —
Mother, those two are women.
We’d come to a halt now and I sat on the gray mare, staring outright. In all the times I’d fought northers, there had never been a woman among them. Derron said — everyone thought — the northers didn’t let their women fight. What did we know of them, really? Trail camps, hothead kids raiding, desperate fighting through the Brassa Hills? If any Ranger had gotten this far into their territory and come back alive, I’d never heard about it.
I’ve fought these people from Brassaford to the Ridge, I reminded myself. I know how they fight. They don’t train women and they don’t trade with anyone. Whatever’s going on here —
The norther leader jerked his chin at me. I stashed whatever I was thinking and jumped down from the gray mare before he pulled me off. He jabbed a spear point toward the boats. I climbed into the one he indicated, praying to whatever god who might be listening that he’d think my clumsiness was because my hands were still tied.
The lake, which looked so blue from a distance, now seemed gray and bottomless. Probably colder than hell. The boat shifted under my weight and my stomach shifted the other way. In front of me, Terris lowered himself into one of them as easily as I’d swing up on a horse.
I bet he can swim, too. I felt dizzy all over again.
One of the northers reached out from the dock, steadied the boat and jumped in without a bobble. Older than the others, he did his best to look dangerous. He had white-ginger braids and deep lines in his face, around his eyes and from the curve of his nose down beside his chin. He drew the dagger from his belt, making sure I got a good look at it, then put it back and drew it again, double-quick, and held the point to my throat. Eyes unblinking into mine and the whole damned circus. He thought he was tough, that this little demonstration would convince me not to try anything while we were in the boat.
I did my best to look properly nervous. It wasn’t difficult under the circumstances. If I was stupid enough to jump him, where would I go?
The norther put away his knife a second time and picked up the paddle lying along the floor of the boat. Within a few seconds we were moving swiftly toward the island.
o0o
We slid — if that was the right word to use with boats — into the dock on the island with my norther guard again holding the point of his dagger to my throat and trying to look dangerous. I moved very slowly getting out. Then two more northers, all stone-calm faces and scars, took me one by each arm, and before I had much of a chance to study the buildings, marched me into one of them.
Here I was now, the loop around my wrists tied to a rope from one of the crossbeams. My hands stretched over my head, the rope just long enough to let me rest on my toes. I didn’t know where Terris and Etch had gone. If the demon god of chance owed them anything at all, they weren’t where I was, Etch in particular. I hadn’t been able to get close to him, but he’d held himself in the saddle like a man near the end of his strength.
I tried to take a deep breath, but with so much weight hanging from my arms, my ribs were bound up and the most I could manage was a slower pant. After a while, the muscles of my feet and calves were going to ache, and then to burn, and then to give out, at which point breathing would become optional. Until then, I could curse myself for not acting while I had the chance. Or I could take a look around.
The room was small, with no outside windows, surprisingly bright from the light filtering in from above the crossbeams. I stood in a stone hollow like a fire pit, and I wondered for a moment if it was indeed a fire pit, except there was no obvious channel for the smoke. Swiveling, I spotted two doors, one open and the other guarded by one of my escorts.
I pushed myself farther up on my toes and wrapped my fingers around the ropes just above my wrists. Slowly, so as not to attract any undue attention, I tightened my muscles and took just enough weight off my feet so that I hung. I knew I couldn’t hold the position for very long, but light-headed as I still was, I hadn’t been sure I could do it at all. Furtively I gauged the distance to the guard at the door. If I could curl myself up, get my body swinging, lash out with both feet — could I reach him, knock him out? Down wouldn’t be good enough, it would take more than a second to get to my buckle knife and if he came to while I was wrestling with it —
The second guard came back with a woman who was dressed, like the two in the yard, as a warrior. Her straw-colored hair was divided into several braids like a man’s, but tied together at the ends with dark wool. Her quilted vest looked plain but that could have been because, I now saw, she was very young. Her eyes were dark like the lake water.
She said in a flat-toned voice, “I must search you now,” and began with my hair. Her hands had calluses right where they should for spear work. They trembled a little, checking every seam, every pocket of my Ranger’s vest. She came to my belt, paused as if unsure, then began to unbuckle it.
“Hey,” I protested, trying to sound casual, “my pants’ll fall down!”
She gave me a look of pure terror, handed the belt to the second guard and kept searching. Carefully, missing nothing, rechecking the empty slot in my boot top, perhaps considering whether I might have something hidden in the heel. Finally she pulled off my boots and left the room. About ten minutes later she stuck her head in, signaled to the guards, and one of them cut me down.
By this time my shoulder joints were alternating serious threats of future agony with my calf muscles. With relief I sank to the floor. My wrists were still tied, but it felt wonderful to have them down where they belonged. Then, one big guard on each elbow as before, we marched through the inner door.
The long, narrow room ran the whole length of the building, its roof open to the sky in a wide section midway down each slanted side. We entered it about half way down, and as we made our way to the eastern end, I took a look around and did my best to pull myself together.
The long hall might be rough-cut conifer on the outside, but these inside walls were lined with tapestries, intricately woven or stitched of matched-shade elkskin, shelves with glass and pottery and carved horn, bunches of fragrant herbs and sheaves of quick-rye braided into figures and symbols. Thick woven rugs cushioned my feet. In their muted patterns, in the wall hangings and the dried sheaves, again and again I saw the symbols of the Mother, and something that might be the father-god. I couldn’t be sure; I never questioned those particular laws. Beside them I noted a pattern of one shape flowing into its opposite, both making a whole, circles enclosing a single dot, as well as other things I had no time to look closely at.
At the end of the hall, Terris stood, his back to me, held as I was between two muscle men. He was talking to — rather, being questioned by — a norther seated on what looked like a drum of carved wood, dark with oil and age, covered on one side with sheepskin, the other with elk, hair left on but rubbed shiny along the edges. Two more northers stood nearby, holding spears and daggers, looking as if they’d as soon skewer me as look at me.
The norther who sat on the drum stool wore elkskins and a quilted vest just as the others, plainer than some. He appeared ordinary enough, plaited hair the color of the sand that blew across the steppe. Yet I felt a difference in him, a stillness. Not like a panther waiting to strike but worse, much worse — like the hush when a baby takes his first breath. Men might die for a leader with a panther spirit, but they would stay alive for one like this.
From this angle I couldn’t see his eyes. A trick of the light cast a shadow across them as it brought into bitter relief the triangular scar across one cheekbone.
He took his time with Terris, studying him, weighing whatever answer he’d given before I was brought in. He felt my presence, even as I felt his. In that way, we understood each other already. He knew I was that crazy Ranger who’d leapt halfway across a frozen clearing at him and given him that scar.
And I in turn remembered who he was.
The breaker.
Seven years ago he was the unspoken leader of a bunch of hotheads. Now he was the heart of this fort or trading post or whatever it was. In ten years he would be the soul of the north, even as Pateros was of the south.
I could end the norther menace with a single stroke. I could become Montborne’s assassin. If I had a knife in my hands, no one here could stop me.