Her eyes met Mary?s single one, and they nodded slightly. The man curled in the shadow of the rock was unmoving, and snow had collected on his thin sparse beard. Edain came in from the other direction, and waved them forward. ?Garbh found his back track,? he said.?Only one, and hours old. Blood spoor, too.? He looked down at the corpse and pointed a toe. ?Arrow,? he said succinctly.
The fletching had broken off, and a stub of it stood from the body?s ribs, two hands down from the left armpit and a third of the way in towards his spine.
Ritva nodded.?Someone got him while he ran. And he kept going longer than I?d have expected, with that in him.?
People did, sometimes, when great need or a very strong will drove them. She and Mary dragged the man into the light. The body was slight, less than their own weight; a very young man, just old enough to raise a brown peach fuzz of beard, and long in the legs. Even beneath the winter gear his gawky coltishness was obvious. The open eyes were hazel. Ritva paused to close them, before she continued her examination.
Poor lad, she thought, with the slightly abstract pity you felt towards an unlucky stranger. You didn?t get many years, did you? But Earth must be fed, soon or late. Dread Lord, be kind; Lady Mother-of-All, comfort him. Return him from the Halls of Mandos to a better fate. ?He?s been here a while, but he only died a little while ago,? she said.?See, he?s not very stiff yet. Blood on his face and under this leather armor-?
Ritva rubbed some between thumb and finger, before she scrubbed with snow and put her glove back on: ?Some has dried, but some of it?s still tacky. The arrow nicked a lung, I?d say.?
Asgerd spoke, alarmed:?That?s a war sark of the kind they make at Kalksthorpe! He?s a Norrheimer, but not a Bjorning. He must be one of Kalk?s folk. But I?ve never seen an arrow like that. It?s some sort of cane, not ash or cedar.? ?The unfortunate fellow was headed out of Kalksthorpe, and kept going as long as he could though he must have known he was dying, the sorrow and black pity of it,? Edain said thoughtfully.
Asgerd pointed north and west.?There?s a steading that way. About ten miles. We didn?t go near it but anyone coming inland without supplies would head there first. Or if he bore a word of war for others to spread.? ?Rudi needs to know about this,? Ritva said with conviction. ?Now.? ?Yes, yes, I?m ready,? Heidhveig said.?But-?
Rudi looked at her with concern; the journey had been hard on her, despite taking it by easy stages and the well-made sled, and her getting the indoor bed when they stopped at some lonely farmstead. Her wrinkled face was a little gray, though she?d made no complaints.
Sure, and I?ve gotten well used to traveling only with those young and very strong, he thought. Even armies would have trouble matching the pace we?ve often set. And I need her to talk to this Kalk. ?But it?s odd… someone should have met us by now,? she went on.?There are always hunters out, and winter is the best time for traveling.?
His glance turned keen, but she shrugged beneath the bearskin rug. ?No, no, nothing definite. Just a feeling.?
Thorlind paused:?She doesn?t just have feelings!? ?My thoughts exactly, good lady,? Rudi said.
She?s a fussbudget, is Thorlind, he thought silently, while most of his mind mulled distances and numbers. But a fussbudget of considerable wit. And no mean worker of her craft, either.
Thorlind pulled a precious pre-Change thermos out of a box beneath the driver?s seat of the sled and poured steaming hot rosehip tea into a cup. Heidhveig took it meekly, which made him a little more worried about the old Norrheimer seeress, but there was a prickle down his spine that hinted at more immediate problems.
I haven?t seen my unfriend Graber of late, nor the red-robe. Too much to hope for that they both drowned when the ice broke. I don?t see how they could know where I was heading, much less get there first
… but then, they?ve done things I don?t understand before.
Rudi?s head went up and down the trail of sleds. The little portable stove on one was smoking beneath a cauldron. The Bjornings made endless pots of stew in early winter, boiling it thick and then freezing it in blocks to store in their cold pantries. The travelers had brought a good many of those bricks along from Ericksgarth; it meant a great saving in time and effort since you need only throw in some snow for extra water and put the pot over the fire until it was hot enough to be served.
Virginia oversaw the distribution of the results today. Rudi accepted a bowl, a spoon and a slab of rye bread, stale but with some sharp hard yellow cheese melted onto it. The stew was ground moosemeat again, with potatoes and peas and onions and carrots and turnip in it too, plain food but good fuel for the furnace. He?d put far worse things past his lips at need. ?I?ll be glad to get out of these trees,? the woman from Wyoming said, and looked around with a slight shiver.?Gol-durn, but it?s bleak country here!?
Rudi nodded gravely, though he had a flash of what it had been like in the Valley of the Sun amidst the Tetons last winter. It would be worse out on the High Plains, in the Powder River country where the Skywater Ranch of the Kane family had been before the armies of the Prophet overran them. There a wind could travel a thousand miles without a wood to break the hard teeth of it; they called that a lazy wind, too idle to go around a man-so it went right through like a spear instead. Riding after herds in a blizzard there… the very thought was enough to make a man?s stones ache and his nose feel frostbite. Not to mention that the commonest fuel in those parts was dried cowpats.
It?s all where you?re raised, I suppose, he thought. I don?t think it?s the cold that oppresses you, Virginia, but the strangeness.
Then he looked around at dark pines, pale snow, leafless maple and birch, low clouds the color of frosted lead. And remembered blossoming orchards below Mt. Hood, with drifts of cherry pink and apple-blossom white flying free amid a scent to make a man drunk; or lying in a clover mead near Dun Juniper with the bees humming beneath a sky of cloudless blue so deep a man could lose his soul in it and the High Cascades hovering on the horizon like banners of green topped with silver; or riding across the Horse Heaven Hills with the sun on his back and mustang herds running with the wind in their manes…
No doubt this place had its own loveliness; even now there was a stern majesty to it. He?d never seen it in the short bright nights of its summertime, or the quick flowering spring, or the gold and scarlet beauty of its fall plumage. Still and all?I?m tired of this,? Mathilda said quietly from beside him.?I want to go home. I want to be home. I want to be at a garden masque in Castle Todenangst and bored out of my mind.?
Rudi?s mouth quirked.?And it?s precisely my thought you?ve just given voice,? he said.?Though I might call it sitting in judgment at Dun Juniper, listening to a pair of stubborn crofters quarreling over a cow until I yearned to smack their thick skulls together. Yet then again, a chuisle mo chroi, darling treasure of my heart, where you are, home is. For there my heart dwells.?
A brilliant smile rewarded him, the smile that turned her strong face beautiful for an instant.
Heidhveig gave a slight snort, and Rudi pulled out a map Bjarni Eriksson had given him and spread it before her, a new one on fine white calfskin parchment, but based on an ancient guide for wayfarers called Rand Mc-Nally. He thought the blue and scarlet and golden border of writhing dragons and curl-tusked trolls was probably modern work, along with the bearded faces puffing wind from the corners. The trail they were following came down from a lake-frozen now-and debouched onto the shore where Kalksthorpe stood, its little harbor sheltered by a nook of land. ?Robbinston,? he murmured, reading the other name in brackets below Kalksthorpe.
Heidhveig nodded, revived by the drink and hot food.?That was the name before Kalk?s folk came… myself among them. Right after the Change; we knew we had to leave Houlton. All my family and friends I?d talked into coming east, and Kalk?s followers, and a bunch of others who thought we knew what we were doing. There was this barge full of canned goods-?