In the Shadow of the Gods (31 page)

T
he looks the merra'd given her hadn't bothered her—Rora didn't give two shits about anything a merra might think. It hadn't been her glaring that'd made Rora give back the white cloak that was big enough to swallow her up—but she
had
given it back, and she was starting to regret it now as she lay on her belly at the top of an icy ridge, peeking out over the edge.

She didn't know if it'd started as a pit, but it sure was one now, a huge hole dug down into the snow and ice and stone, with what looked to be a hundred blond-haired men moving around below among the sounds of chipping stone. A hundred was the biggest number she knew of, and there were more Northman than she could count up to, so a hundred seemed as good a guess as any.

There were fresh holes dug down into the ice, new-made piles of stones reaching almost hip-high. Looked like the Northmen had been hard at work, digging down the floor of the pit deeper. “You people sure move fast,” she murmured.

Scal grunted, but didn't do much more for a reply. Joros'd
sent them up together, not wanting Scal to go alone in case anything bad happened, or maybe because he didn't trust the Northman. Rora guessed he'd picked her because he didn't think any of the others were much use, and really, she couldn't say she disagreed. The witch had been so silly with excitement that Joros'd had to thump him on the head, and Joros and the merra weren't on any kind of good terms. And Rora knew her brother, so it wasn't hard to guess that Joros'd already pegged him as pretty useless. That left Rora, the best of all the people Joros didn't trust.

The others were all back a ways, back where Anddyr'd fallen off Rora's horse, hunkered down against the cold while they waited for her and Scal. The wind was loud enough and blowing the right way, so it seemed like Anddyr's laughing hadn't reached this far. Though Rora didn't like thinking about how close they'd all come to stumbling right into the pit and all the Northmen.

There was no telling what they were digging for, but they didn't look to have much idea of where it was either. Wide and deep, the pit was, and getting wider and deeper by the minute, with shovels and picks and hammers swinging.

“Any ideas?” she asked. She didn't know how much he knew about the North, but he had to have a better view of it all than she did.

He just shook his head, though. “There is no knowing. This deep North, it is all a mystery to me.”

“You're a Northman, aren't you?”

He shook his head a little. “I do not know all of the North. I know the snows . . . but this is a place of ice.” A pause, and she watched his face go hard as he stared into the pit. He said
a word, hardly more'n a whisper, a word she didn't know.
“Iveran.”
His hand went up to his chest, like he was grabbing at something under his tunic. “I will go find out what they search for.”

Rora eyed him up. Obviously he could pass for a Northman, he was one after all. But that was part of what made her nervous. Everyone knew you couldn't trust a Northman, they were all animals in men's skins, bound to turn on you as fast as you could draw a blade. But Joros seemed to trust him, more'n he trusted any of the others—which wasn't saying much. Still, Rora'd gathered that the witch'd been around longer than Scal and didn't have near that amount of trust. That made sense, though you couldn't trust a madman, and there was no denying Anddyr was that. Northmen were said to be worse than madmen. “Joros won't like that,” she said, “not without us reporting to him first. He said to come straight back.”

She couldn't tell if he hadn't heard her or just chose to ignore her. “I will wait here until dark. You go back.”

She'd tell Joros to have them move camp somewhere else. If Scal was like everyone said a Northman would be, and led all his brethren to come kill them in the night, Rora didn't plan on sitting around and waiting for him to do it. If he was worth the little bit of trust Joros gave him, well, then that was good for him, and he was hardy enough that some time wandering in the snow to find their new camp wouldn't do him much harm. If he wanted to stay up here and freeze, he was welcome to it. Rora started to shimmy backward, away from the edge of the pit.

“Rora.” His voice stopped her. He was fidgeting at his throat, and finally pulled away the thick white cloak, letting
let it slide across the ground to her. She raised her eyebrows, burying her fingers in the warm fur, and he shrugged. “It will mark me.”

If he wanted to freeze even faster, that was his own business, too. She crept back, holding on to the cloak, and when she was far enough away to stand, she wrapped it gratefully around herself. She almost hoped he didn't die, or betray them, though either one was more likely than neither. He was a good enough sort, even if he was a Northman.

She was guided back to camp by a dull glow, and she felt a fire rising up in her to match it. She stomped into the camp, built in the shadow of the five most pathetic trees she'd ever seen, and then stomped on the sad little fire they'd built. Aro and Joros swore at her, the merra spit at her, and Anddyr cowered. “Just over that ridge,” she growled, glaring at all of them in turn, “are a hundred fecking Northmen. No fire.”

“But I'm cold,” Aro said, snot dribbling from his nose over his upper lip like he was a kid again, “and hungry.”

“No fire,” she repeated.

“‘The accursed shall fear the righteous flames,'” the merra quoted at her.

“Pathetic flames, more like,” Rora snapped. “A mouse wouldn't've feared them.”

A hand pawed at her leg. “I'm sorry,” Anddyr whimpered, and looked up at her with the same puppy eyes as Aro.

“Tell me what you saw,” Joros demanded.

“Whole bunch of Northmen digging into the ground. No sign of what they're looking for, but they're looking hard.”

“Where's Scal?” the merra suddenly demanded.

Rora thought about not answering her, just because of all
the spitting, but Joros's face creased in a frown, and she could see the question in his eyes, too. “He stayed back. Said he was gonna find out what they're looking for.” She spoke just to Joros then, trying to let her eyes do more of the talking than her words. “We should probably move camp. Just in case someone saw that fire.”

Joros's eyes narrowed at her, and she knew she was being sized up just the same way she'd done to Scal. Finally he said, “She's right. Horses, everyone. We'll circle wide around the Northmen.”

It wasn't pride that filled Rora, just the same sort of feeling she got from Tare or Garim or the Dogshead, the feeling of knowing you'd done right and been approved of. She still didn't much like Joros, but he was a man who knew what he was doing, there was no question of that.

So they rode dead east for a while, away from where Scal was probably still hunkered down, where all the other Northmen were digging for Parents only knew what. They turned north again when Rora suggested it, because Anddyr was in the middle of another one of his fits, and with Scal gone and Joros looking like he'd got lost in his thoughts, there wasn't really anyone else to play guide. So after a while she told them to stay put and ranged carefully out, making sure there wasn't any sign of Northmen nearby, and then they set up another cold camp, curling into miserable balls. Scal's fur cloak was big enough to cover her and Aro both, and they sat huddled together. Anddyr passed around hunks of near-frozen meat, but didn't keep any for himself.

Joros was still silent, hadn't said a word since they'd moved camp. Rora cleared her throat to get his attention and said,
“You know what they're looking for, don't you? All those Northmen.”

“I may,” he said, still seeming pretty distracted. “Anddyr. How long since we left?”

The witch glanced to the side, his lips moving like he was talking, but it was nothing Rora could hear. He looked back and said, “Forty-seven days.”

It couldn't've been more than two weeks since she and Aro'd joined up with them, so they'd been on the road a while before that. Joros was nodding, talking to himself just like Anddyr did, and that almost made Rora smile. “They must have left directly, could have stayed on the main roads and moved much faster . . .”

“Who's they?” Aro demanded.

Joros gave him a withering look, but for once he seemed to be in a question-answering mood. “Some of my former compatriots. I don't know who. A number were sent out to find the . . . items Anddyr was able to track down.”

“Former compatriots?” the merra repeated. “You renounced the mountain?”

“I did.”

Her eyes narrowed, like she didn't quite believe it. “Why?” she demanded, but Joros waved her words away like they were smoke.

“What mountain?” Aro asked, but Rora touched his arm to hush him and ask a question of her own.

“This is the place where you figure out if we're useful or not, isn't it?”

“It is.”

“Then you'd best tell us what we need to know.”

The merra added, “Tell us all of it.”

It was a dumb thing to ask, and Rora saw the same contempt on Joros's face. The head never told his pack
everything
. He did tell them some, though, enough to keep them from asking too many questions. Joros spoke straight to Rora and Aro, and though she knew he hated sharing any words, still he kept talking: “I would imagine you know of the Bound Gods.” Aro snorted, but Rora's hand on his arm kept him from interrupting. “There is a group, the Fallen, dedicated to freeing the Twins and restoring them to power. I
was
”—and his eyes darted darkly over to Vatri—“a member of that group. Their purposes no longer suit me. They are, however, at a point in time where they may be very close to achieving their goal.”

The merra laughed, the sound cutting through the snow and wind and words. “You're more a fool than I thought. The Twins can never be freed. They're destroyed, and buried.”

“Buried, yes. But not destroyed. Gods cannot be killed, even by other gods.”

“Their powers are gone,” the merra went on, still laughing. “They're trapped for all of eternity. Doomed to watch the world they hate carry on while they dwindle.”

“You're wrong,” Joros said evenly, “about so much. You priests always are. There is a way to free them, and restore them. It can be done, and it will. The Fallen need only find them.”

Vatri laughed again, eyes bright with mirth. She looked more horrible that way than she did frowning like she usually was. “Oh, I'm shaking. There's nothing more terrifying than a god with no limbs.”

“You,” Joros said, “are a fool. So sure of your invulnerability
. I would almost”—and he gave a hard smile, the kind that didn't even touch his eyes, the kind of smile that made Rora hear
to the ends of the earth
—“be content to sit here and let happen what will, if only to see you proved wrong.”

The merra smiled right back, as much a threat as his was. “I would gladly sit and wait with you for as long as it takes. My corpse will keep watch on the sun, even after all memory of the Twins has faded from the world.”

“Perhaps it will.”

“Enough,” Rora said tiredly. She'd broken up enough pissing contents between Aro and the other boys in Dogshead Pack.

“I'll say nothing more,” the merra said, turning away with a smirk. “I have no more words for a traitor.”

Rora rubbed her hands over her eyes. It'd been too long since she'd gotten a good amount of sleep. “So what's the plan?” she asked Joros.

“We'll have to see what, if anything, Scal finds—”

“You think the Twins are buried there, do you?” Vatri interrupted.

Joros gave her a level look. “They just may be.”

Again the merra laughed, long and loud.

Without a word, Joros pulled at the pouch on his belt, the one Anddyr always did his magic on, and tossed it to Vatri. She caught it clumsily, the flap falling open, and showing a flash of black. She pulled it out, a black chunk almost too big to fit in one hand. Rora couldn't figure out what it was, and the merra looked like she was having trouble, too. Then, all of a sudden, she started screaming, the black thing falling from her hands to roll in the snow.

Anddyr and Joros moved in the same moment. The witch to scoop up the black thing, Joros to clap a hand over the merra's mouth and cut off her screaming. She twisted away from him, disgust plain on her face, mixed in with raw horror.
“Don't touch me,”
she snarled, scrambling backward away from him. She looked like a cornered cat, hissing and desperate and ready to kill.

Aro stood up and grabbed the black thing from Anddyr, turning it back and forth in front of his face. She saw the moment he recognized what it was. His eyes went big as they could, face going white as the snow, and he dropped the black thing in shock.

It landed in front of Rora's feet, a big black chunk amid all the white snow, and she had to tilt her head back and forth a few times till she could figure out what it was. A knuckle, a nail, a little piece of sawed-off bone sticking out. A toe that was bigger'n her hand. Her stomach turned.

“Evil,” the merra gasped, her face still twisted. “Abomination. Evil.”

“What the hells is it?” Aro demanded. “Where'd it come from?”

Joros scooped the toe up off the ground, put it back into the pouch, and tucked it securely away. “It's a piece of a god, and it—and I—are the only things that can keep the Twins bound.”

T
here was little difference in night and day this far north, among the constant snows. Scal had not expected that. It was a strange thing, to be moving constantly through a swirl of gray. Worst when the winds blew whistling by. Screaming their rage. He was not sure, really, where was north. South. Up or down.

There was little wind, now. Enough to tug at his clothing. To whirl the snow into his eyes. No worse than he had ever dealt with.

Strangely, he missed the cloak he had given Rora. Not for heat. For the weight of it on his shoulders. The familiarity of it. One of the few things that had made it through more than one life.

Alone atop the ridge, he watched. Counted carefully. Twenty men, perhaps, at a time. He saw how they worked in shifts. Half of the workers leaving their places to go wake men who slept on hides in a sheltered space. The woken men would go to take the places of the men who now took the hide
beds they had left. For a full shift he watched. Four hours, if he counted it right. Watched until the men who had been working as long as he had been watching woke the sleepers, calling them back to work.

Scal unbound his hair and scraped it down over the right side of his face. To hide the convict's cross that showed through his beard, that would mark him. There were beads, still, wound into his hair, and little bones. He had torn them out, long ago, after the first village where the men had pelted him with stones. The folk living in the northern reaches of Fiatera did not trust the Northmen. Scal had retrieved the beads and bones, though, where he had thrown them. It was not so easy to throw away the memories of a life. He had woven them back in, once he had grown big enough that men gave more thought to fighting him. When he could use his sword well enough to make any man who did not think carefully enough regret it. It was not so easy to be anything other than what life had made of him.

He knew he looked a Northman. It was the point, after all. Wagoneers and merchants would hire him because a Northman would strike fear in any contemplating the value of stolen wagons or goods. If he did not look the part he was meant to play, there would be no part for him.

In the blowing snow and gray light, Scal slipped away from the ridge.

He walked carefully. Circling wide. He could take his time. He had some hours. The noise came to him over the ice, soft, distant. Picks and axes chipping at ice and stone.

When he judged it was right, he turned, following the sounds of digging. Down the slanting, gentle slope that led into
one side of the pit. More sound now, voices raised in tired jest. Speaking words he had not heard in years. The snow and the wind and the walls of the pit did strange things to the sounds. Bouncing and echoing and fading. Sounding one moment as if there was a man standing right next to him. The next as if that same man were shouting from miles and miles away. In that disorientation, Scal nearly tripped over a sleeping Northman.

It was the snow, the sound and the light. Impossible to get one's bearings. Scal beat a quick retreat. Circled wider, to make sure it would not happen again. When he drew close to the camp again, it was at a safe distance. At the edge of the sleeping place, but not close enough that the workers could see him either. There was a mound of snow, blown into shape by the unpredictable winds, and Scal sat behind it to wait. He could feel the cold. The icy ground could have been against his bare skin for all the difference his breeches made, but it hardly touched him. He could see, now, that some of the Northmen slept without furs, directly on the ice. It was the way of their people. The way of the North. Scal knew who he was, knew what blood ran through his veins. It was a thing he had accepted.

He counted the time so that he would not sleep. It had been a long time since he had slept much, but this, too, was a thing he had accepted. A man, truly, did not need so much sleep. A man alone, looking for work, sleeping in forests and fields, learned to sleep lightly or not at all. There were animals roaming at night, and brigands. So Scal counted, and he was only two counts off when the workers set down their tools and began to trudge to the sleeping place. When the sleepers rose and trudged the other way, Scal rose, too. Melted through
the swirling snow to join their ranks. Just another Northman. Another blond face among all the others. He picked up a hammer, and began to pound through the snow and ice.

Little was spoken. It was hard work, this, and breath could be better spent. No one spoke to Scal. No one looked at Scal. Just another face. Just another worker.

“I can feel it, brothers. We are close.”

His fingers slipped, suddenly loose around the haft of the hammer. It came free on the downswing, flying from his fingers to crash against the face of stone on which he was working. The eyes turned to him, he could feel them all on his back. He kept his face down, mumbled an apology as he retrieved the hammer. There was a snort, a suppressed laugh. No more.

And the voice from his last life went on, “Only a little longer. Then we will go home.”

Scal paused in his work, feigned wiping at sweat that was not there. Turning his face to his sleeve, he looked over his shoulder.

There stood Iveran. Dressed all in white, as ever. Nearly hidden in the blowing snow. Shorter than Scal remembered. Though Iveran had always been short for a Northman, and Scal was much taller now. There was white streaked through his hair and beard, but little else had changed. There was still a white cloak hung from his shoulders, another snowbear that had given its life for the chieftain. The snowbear's head pulled up over Iveran's, bloody muzzle snarling. The same fearless feral grin mirrored below, teeth bared against the world.

Scal felt a child again. Lost, with no place or name that was his own. A boy on the verge of being a man. Blood of the North, gods of the south. A voice calling him little lad, another
ijka
. A Northern sword in his hand, and a knife in his boot with a chieftain's death promised to it. The bodies of a dead priest and a dead friend, the bodies of a stillborn child and the closest thing he had had to a mother. No clear answers. Only gray, swirling snow.

The hammer swung. Stone shattered.

A man must atone,
Parro Kerrus had said,
for all the deeds in his life.

The hammer swung. The hours passed. A hand touched his shoulder, briefly. Words of encouragement murmured against the wind. “Almost there. Dig deeper. Soon. Soon.” Men faded into the snow to sleep. Apparitions appeared to take their places. Hammers fell. Picks clanged. Shovels dug. Axes screeched. “Just a little longer. My bones feel it. Home, soon. Dig a little longer.”

“Iveran!”

The cry rang, pure and clean, echoes spiraling up and down through the rift. Heads turned, eyes seeking. Iveran hurried through the snow, legs taking him over scattered blocks of ice and stone to the man who stood leaning on his shovel, eyes bright. They spoke, and Iveran took the man's shovel, and he hurried off. “Dig!” Iveran barked to the rest of them, and they dug.

There came, at length, a woman. Stepping gingerly upon the ice, holding tightly to one of the two men who flanked her as her feet slid. They stood out sharply, those three dressed all in black, against the whirling snow. The woman more so, for the fiery hair on her head. She went to Iveran, and they spoke, and their smiles shone off the ice.

“Uisbure,” Iveran called out. “Kettar. Isto. To me. The rest of you, go take your sleep. You have earned it.”

There was no cheering, as Scal might have expected. He had forgotten, in some things, the way of the North. Tools were merely laid on the ground, and the Northmen turned to the sleeping place. Save for three. Two of them Scal knew, older versions of the men who had welcomed him roughly but honestly in his last life. He watched them, for a time, until standing would draw too much notice. He followed the others to sleep, but in the drifting snow he faded away and looped back. He would have liked to say he did it for Joros. That he did it to learn what he could, to earn the cets he had been paid. But Joros was far away in his mind. He was a child again, a boy not yet a man, and there was a space in his chest that had been empty for years. A need he could not name.

He could only get so close. There were few places to hide well in the dug-out pit. He drew as close as he could, concealed behind a block of stone and snow. They dug, the four Northmen. Iveran and Kettar and Uisbure, and the fourth whom he did not know. A man hardly older than Scal, white fur draped across his shoulders. They dug as the woman watched with her black-robed attendants. There was a hungry look their faces all shared.

He could not have said how long it took. He lost track of the minutes and hours, lost his count among the memories and the aching in his chest. It felt so open that he was surprised, each time, when his hand came away clean after touching the place over his heart. Time passed, shovels and axes chipping away at the stone and ice. The snowbear claw dug into Scal's palm, but he could not make his hand release it.

A good memory,
Kerrus once had told him,
is a curse as often as it's a blessing. Pray, boy, that Metherra is kind enough to grant you short sight.

Silence. Loud and ringing to his ears, that had become so used to the constant noise. A silence, split then by laughter. Words Scal could not hear, the woman pointing. Axes and shovels dropped to the ice, rumbling that was low and angry. The Northmen, turning.

Scal dropped low to the ground, huddling behind the shield of the rock. He prayed, silently but with feeling, to the Father that the Northmen would pass on the other side. Patharro was listening, or luck was with Scal. Uisbure passed first, swearing under his breath, followed by a scowling Kettar. Iveran and the other, Isto, walked together. Iveran's face was blank, betraying nothing. The younger man was full of fury, red points on his cheeks, fists clenched. The white on his shoulders, Scal could see now that he was closer, was a strip of snowbear fur. One enormous black-clawed paw dangling onto the man's chest. Scal's hand clenched. Around his snowbear claw, around his flamedisk.

They passed, and they did not see him.

The woman still stood over the place where they had been digging. Her men, now, had taken up the tools, struggling against the ice.

There was a pouch tied at Scal's belt, full of golden coins, more money than he had known there was in the world. It told him he should go closer. See what they were digging at, kill them if need be. Bring the knowing to Joros, who had brought him here just for this, perhaps.

The coins were quiet, though, near silent against the gaping in his chest.

He gave a brief glance to the two digging men. No more. Then he rose, shielded by the snow and the strange things it
did to sound, and he followed the four men back toward a life he thought he had left behind.

Things were different, in the North. In Fiatera, the leader of a group such as this would have his own tent, guards posted to keep him safe, keep any from bothering him. That was not the way of the North. Iveran had a pallet, nothing more. No better than any of his men. He sat near a fire some of the others were beginning to build, Kettar and the man Isto to his sides.

The aching in Scal's chest drove him forward, the two pendants bouncing against the hole in him. Fire and snow, the two lives he had left behind. Belonging, truly belonging to neither, yet belonging more than he ever could in the life he lived now. So much had been taken from him. Some had been given back, and then taken again. It was a boy's hurt. A hurt that had never left him.

Scal reached out, fingers touching the white fur cloak. The man turned, eyebrows raised. No recognition, until Scal brushed back the hair from his right cheek. The convict's cross, the white scarred flesh standing ridged through his beard. Eyes widening, too many emotions flickering to follow or name. Mouth opening, shaping a single word.
Ijka
.

Softly, into the falling snows and crackling flames, Scal said, “I have
vasrista
to claim, Iveran.”

Things moved quickly from there. A space was stomped out in the snow, a circle wide as two men laid heels to head. “You have grown,
ijka,
” Iveran said with a roughness in his voice as Kettar took the sword from Scal's back. The sword he himself had given to Scal. “You look well. Strong.” Scal could not look at the man he had loved and hated both, his eyes fixed into the snows.

“I will fight for you,” the man Isto said to Iveran, eyes glaring.

There was a laugh, a sound that did not belong. The same laugh, once, had echoed through the blood and the ruins of Aardanel. “If there is to be a fight”—there was a question in the words, one meant for Scal, one he could give no answer to—“then I will do my own fighting. Perhaps I have
vasrista
of my own to claim.”

There were words, words that should be said. Words that had bounced hollowly within Scal for all the years since the snows. Perhaps since the first snows, even. He had said some of those words, though, a claim for
vasrista,
and they had silenced all the other words within him. There was nothing more to be said, now. Words, lost among the snows and the ice.

“The weapon is yours to choose,” Kettar said to Iveran. It was his right, as the one challenged. Hands were most common, for a simple challenge of honor. The blades were saved for the deeper challenges. One weapon with which to fight the other man. When the blades came out, only one of the men would walk from the ring.

The eyes were on Iveran, all of them. One pair only, fixed on Scal. Softly the chieftain said, “It will be swords, I think.”

There was some outcry, some cheering. Little enough to matter. Mostly, there was silence. A waiting, a breath held. Kettar gave Scal his sword, for the second time.

“Must this be how we end,
ijka
?”

Scal had grown since Valastaastad, grown taller than Iveran. He could look clear over the other man's head. He found words, not the ones that should have been spoken, yet ones that needed to be: “It must.”