His breath sucked in as he undid the last of the bandages. Everyone looked; Frederick Thurston winced and looked away almost immediately, but he was the youngest of them.
"I'll have to remove the remains of the eye, cleanse and stitch. The wound is already angry… I wouldn't have expected that, so soon and in cold weather."
Ritva blinked. "I cleaned it and packed it with the powder!"
Ignatius nodded, hands busy. Mary stirred, and gave a stifled shriek as she came aware again, then subsided into a tense shivering quiet.
"Can you hear me?" the warrior-priest said, as he swabbed her face.
Ingolf was on her other side. The cornflower-blue eye swiveled from the cleric to him, then to the rest of them, and to Ritva, and she sighed. Her hand came up, and the Easterner took it.
"I… can hear you. It's seeing you that's a problem! How come there's two of you when I've got only one eye left?" Mary said, and bared her teeth in what might have been a smile.
Ignatius nodded sober approval, took the vial of morphine from the kit, frowned a little as he saw the level, and then began filling a hypodermic. Ritva remembered bargaining for the precious painkiller in Bend, with Mary as the other half of her…
"I can't use too much of this," he said, as someone came in with a kettle of boiling water and poured it into a shallow basin; the shelter was already set up as a sickroom for Rudi. "I'm afraid there will be some pain."
"Alae, duh," Mary said.
Ritva flogged herself into wakefulness while the work went on; her sister's other hand was in hers, and the bones of Ritva's creaked under the pressure of her grip. Ingolf sat at the other. When it was over, he helped wipe away the sweat of agony.
"Feels… like nice… stitching," Mary said, timing the words to her breath to control it. "We never were… good at embroidery."
"I've used some of the numbing oil," Ignatius said. "You should sleep now, my daughter."
"Thanks," she whispered. Then her eyelid fluttered. "Guess… I can live with… one eye."
"No," Ritva said. "You'll have three, sis."
"Five," Ingolf said.
He waited until her breathing grew regular, then tucked the hands inside the sleeping bag.
"How soon can she be moved?" he asked the priest.
"Ideally… not for weeks," Ignatius said, and then shrugged wryly as he tossed the last of the soiled cloths into a bowl. "But moving her will be much less risk than moving Rudi."
Ingolf's battered face closed in like a fist. "We have to. Move 'em both. Twelve miles isn't enough, even with the storm to cover our tracks."
Unexpectedly, Frederick spoke: "I've seen reports on these mountains. From now on, the storms can come one after another for weeks. We could get stuck here. But there are caves farther up this valley. Dad used them for, uh, scouts, back when we were having problems with New Deseret."
Ingolf nodded. "We need to get farther away… a cave would be right. We'll rig two horse-travois."
Ritva let her mind drift away. I don't have anything I have to do right now, she thought. It was enough to make her smile, as the dark flowed up around her like comfort.
WESTERN WYOMING, GRAND TETON MOUNTAINS
Rudi Mackenzie dreamed.
In the dream he rose from his sickbed, looking down for a moment at the thin, wasted form. Edain watched by his side; now and then he poked at the low fire that burned with a canted wall of piled rocks behind it to absorb and throw back the heat. The others were dim shapes in the depth of the cave; Epona looked up and whickered at him, and Garbh bristled a bit and whined until Edain absently stroked her head.
He turned from them and walked out through the gap in the pine branches that blocked the entrance, knocking a little snow down on his bonnet. He was whole, and free of pain; looking down he saw that he was dressed in his kilt and jacket and plaid, knee-hose and shoes. His senses were keen, but the blizzard outside was only bracing; he could hear the wind whistle in the Ponderosa pines, and feel the sting of driven snow on his face, smell the dry, mealy smell of it as branches tossed in the thick woods above and below.
But I'm not really cold, somehow, he thought, smiling to hear the moan and creak of the wind's passage.
He walked down the path. An overhung ridge of rock topped with three twisted trees made the trail kink, creating a sheltered nook in the storm. A man stood there, leaning one shoulder against the rock. A brisk fire burned at his feet, throwing smoke up to where the wind caught it above the ridge and tattered it into the blowing whiteness. To one side a tall spear leaned against the cliffside, broader-headed than most horseman's weapons; he thought there were signs graven in the steel. A horse stood some distance off, unsaddled but with several blankets thrown over it and its head down. It was a big beast, but hard to see; the wolflike dog that raised its head as he approached seemed massive as well. Saddle and bedroll and gear lay beside the fire, and a pot steamed over it.
The man was tall too, taller than Rudi but lean. As the Mackenzie came closer he saw that the stranger was old; at least, his shoulder-length hair and cropped beard were iron gray. His dress was that of the Eastern plains and mountains, neckerchief and broad-brimmed hat, sheepskin coat and long thick chaps of the same, homespun pants and fleece-lined leather boots, poncho of crudely woven wool longer at the rear than the front. Closer still, and Rudi could see that the lids of his left eye closed on emptiness; the other was the color of mountain glaciers, and as cold.
"You're welcome to share my fire," the man said, making a gesture towards the pot.
His voice rolled deep, cutting through the muted wind-howl. Rudi nodded, swallowing a prickling sensation as he bent and poured himself a cup-thus making himself a guest. Not everyone felt that to be as sacred as Mackenzies did, but most folk would think three times before falling on someone they'd invited to share their food. The liquid was chicory-what most in the far interior called coffee -hot and strong and bitter, but this somehow also tasted of honey and flowers and a little of hot tar.
The dog growled at him a little, one great paw across a meaty elk thigh bone…
No, Rudi thought suddenly. It's a wolf, not a dog.
The gray man nudged the beast, ruffling its ears as he bent to pour himself a cup from the battered pot of enameled metal.
"Quiet, greedyguts," he said. He glanced up; a raven sat on a branch that jutted over the rock, cocking a thoughtful eye at the wolf's meal, and another sat beside it with head beneath wing. "And you two remember what happened the last time, and think twice."
Then he leaned back against the rock again, blowing on his chicory and waiting, relaxed as the wolf at his feet.
"I'm called Rudi Mackenzie," the young clansman said slowly, as he straightened and met the other's eye; strength flowed into him with the hot drink, easing a weakness he hadn't sensed until that moment. "But I'm thinking the now that I know your name… lord."
The older man's features were jut-boned, bold of chin and nose, scored by age but still strong, as were the long-fingered hands that gripped his own cup.
"Call me Wanderer," he said. He smiled a little. "And I know your father."
"Sir Nigel?" Rudi asked.
"Him too. But I was thinking of your blood-father. You might say he bought a ticket to the table I set out; him and many of his kin, from out of deep time."
Rudi finished the cup and set it aside; the last of his discomfort seemed to vanish with it. He raised his head and met the Other's gaze.
The eye speared him. For a moment he seemed to be looking beyond it, as if the pupil were a window; to a place where everything that was, was smaller than that span across the eye. Then a flash, a searing that was more than light or heat, while being itself flexed and shattered and re-formed in a wild tangle of energies; then a wilderness of empty dark where stars lit, like campfires blossoming. .. and then guttering out as they fled apart, until there was another darkness, one where the stuff of his body itself decayed into nothingness. And in that nothingness, a light that looked at him.