They took their first break in the same little valley where he had met Jalon the minstrel, many months before, although now the countryside was strangely changed by the snow and the spectral light. This far from the shore bears were unlikely, because bears ate seals in preference to people.
Rap dug out a canteen from under a grain sack on Dancer, whose body heat had kept it unfrozen.
“Careful with this,” he warned as he passed it to Andor. “It will freeze to your lips if you let it.” He felt an unworthy twinge of pride in his superior knowledge, the jotunn guiding the imp.
They chewed pemmican and spilled some oats on the snow for the ponies. Rap muttered over their gashed ankles, he scraped the packed snow out of their shoes and carefully picked the icicles from their nostrils. He was almost laughing aloud with excitement, exhilarated by adventure and a sense of escape. Krasnegar had been a jail for him—he had broken out into freedom. He made a promise to himself: this journey would be the start of his manhood. If the air had not been so cold, he would have been tempted to sing.
They made camp in a peat cutting under the glorious canopy of stars. If there was some way to pitch a tent when the ground was iron, then Rap did not know it. They finally used their tent as a giant sleeping bag, putting the bedrolls inside it and then wriggling into them.
“This,” Rap said firmly, “is fun!”
“Great Gods!” Andor muttered. “He’s mad.” After a minute he added, “But it’s different, I’ll grant you.”
After another minute Rap whispered, “Andor? Have you ever had an adventure like this?”
“I’m not sure. I’ll tell you afterward; this one may be different.”
“How?”
“Because the others, I survived.”
About two hours before noon, a faint glow appeared in the south and gradually spread into a vague twilight, then a dim and foggy daylight. For a few minutes an edge of the sun showed. Soon it was gone and the day faded as slowly as it had come.
The moorlands were difficult, the rough ground heavily laced with drifts, the best trail winding and twisting like a tangled cord. But now Rap’s head did not ache at all, and he could choose the firmest route without even having to think.
Once that day they saw wolves far off, or at least Rap did, but they slunk away into blurry distance without any signs that they might be contemplating attack.
If the weather held… and the weather did. On the third day, while Krasnegar would be feasting and celebrating Winterfest, the moors dipped away and the first stunted trees stood as sentries for the great taiga ahead. Here ended the realm of the king of Krasnegar. Ahead lay a land that neither he nor the imperor could claim with conviction. Yet it was not no-man’s land. Trees were shelter from even the worst that a blizzard could do, but they were shelter for other men, also, and those could be more deadly than any blizzard.
Seven days into the forest, they were still alive.
For two rank beginners, Rap thought, they were doing well. True, Andor was an experienced traveler, but he was a man of the south. Rap was a native, but a city dweller. Only trappers, seal hunters, and prospectors left Krasnegar in winter. All that he had known of life in the wastelands had been gleaned from conversations with men such as those, and there was much that must be learned the hard way.
But Rap and Andor learned, They learned not to build fires under branches laden with snow; they learned to take their boots into their bedrolls with them at night; they learned to stay in the densest forest, where the undergrowth and snow cover were least. In that primeval gloom there were game trails and mysterious paths along which Rap led the horses unerringly with the aid of his supernatural vision.
So far they had seen no signs of the dreaded goblins. Even animal tracks were scarce and neither of the men could read what stories they might have had to tell. Only once was there obviously wolf spoor, and for two hours thereafter Rap’s ghostly farseeing was stretched to its limit as he nervously scanned the forest.
Andor grumbled that he would never eat pemmican or pancakes again, but Rap seemed to thrive on the monotonous diet. The horses were doing less well, and he hated to drive the poor creatures so hard. Their ribs showed like sapling groves. They staggered often. They spent the hours of rest pawing at the snow in search of the meager forest grass below.
And the human food supplies were dwindling fast. The self-taught pioneers would have to learn hunting soon or face starvation, but they agreed that they should press on southward as far as they could, as fast as they could, as long as the weather allowed. Some days they endured a bitter wind and light snow, but the trees gave shelter and no real killer storm had come seeking them.
Rap had seen trees before. There were a few twisted specimens in the castle gardens, and he had accompanied a search party southward two summers earlier, pursuing Firedragon and his herd. Yet he had never conceived that there could be as many trees in the world as he saw now in a single day; mostly spruce, black in their winter coats, silent and unfriendly. He had expected the taiga to be endless and featureless and unchanging, but it did change. It rolled up and down, it broke sometimes into open clearings, old firebreaks, which were tangled and hard going, and it had rivers and game trails and frozen marshes peppered with tiny, stunted spruce. He had never seen rivers before and he tried vainly to imagine how they would look with water in them instead of solid ice.
Some people never get lost, Sagorn had said, and Rap’s sense of direction was unfailing. In the darkest dark or the whitest ice fog, he could always face to the south and he could always find his way back to the wagon trail whose general course they were following. The trail itself, however, was often plugged with drifts, and for men and horses, the trees made easier going.
On the seventh day they were still alive.
4
“Rap! Let’s camp!” Andor’s voice was a croak. There was no moonlight now, and the endless blindman’s bluff was emotionally exhausting for him, as well as for the horses. Rap had become so expert that even in daylight he sometimes walked with his eyes closed, if the low sun shone in them.
Now the sun had just set, and Rap would have been willing to go on for longer. But he was secretly becoming concerned by Andor’s weakness—imps did not fare well in winter. Rap had jotunn blood in him and was enduring much better.
“Good idea,” he said. “I was just about to suggest it.”
They found a campsite in a small clearing and set to work building a fire. Soon the light from the flames danced over snow and the encircling woods, and Andor had his eyes back. He rummaged for the food, while Rap set to work cutting more firewood and spruce boughs to build a lean-to. They were becoming efficient and they had long since discarded the tent as useless baggage.
Rap had moved into the trees, some yards from the flickering firelight. His attention must have wandered, for it was a sense of alarm in the ponies that alerted him first, and his farsight confirmed the danger a moment later. He plunged back through the snow to the camp and said: “Andor! Visitors!”
Andor looked up from where he was kneeling by the fire. His black impish stubble was caked with ice. His face was darkly filthy, and only a glint of firelight in his eyes showed from inside the shadow of his fur hood. “How many?”
Rap counted. “Twenty or so. They’re moving around, making a circle.” His hands were beginning to shake, and he was astonished to hear Andor utter a low chuckle.