Rebel Ice (4 page)

The snow around their feet turned to pink, then red slush.

Teulon walked past them and nudged the cat aside long enough to retrieve his dagger. He flipped the blood from the blade before it could freeze on the alloy, wiped it clean on the dead man's outfurs, and slid it back into his forearm sheath.

"Hasal." Teulon walked toward the temporary shelter that had been erected for his use.

Inside the Iisleg hunting tent, the heatarc's coils glowed amber through their distribution mesh. Hasal removed his gloves to warm his thin hands. "Ice eaters. They become bolder by the day."

Teulon used a piece of cloth to clean the faint traces of blood still clinging to his blade. Iisleg blood was very thick and tenacious. "Desperation."

"The most dangerous of men are. And these easterners—I know their kind." Hasal crouched to scoop clean ice into a melt pot and placed it on the cookmesh. "Even the ones who believe in the rebellion would rather kiss Kangal ass than fight. The Tos' bounty on your head has gone from extravagant to extreme."

Teulon watched his second prepare a strong, dark infusion of tea plant and idleberry grown in skim-city greenhouses. The Iisleg were addicted to the drink, which was also their only source of certain vitamins, without which they suffered a form of scurvy. The ingredients were among the many foodstuffs he had taught them to grow over the last year in the abandoned amory trenches, now transformed into hydroponies labs, to supplement what could be produced from the synthesizers. "Deprivation consumes honor."

"As you say, Raktar." Hasal filled a transparent server carved from clear airstone so as to resemble a "Are they ready?"

Hasal nodded. "You have but to give the word." He tugged back his hood and fingered a tuft of pale hair over his right ear. There was a tiny, brittle snap, and he plucked a crushed insect from one strand and showed it to Teulon. "This is the soul of an eastern tribe, Raktar." He flicked the dead insect into the heatarc, where it was instantly vaporized. "Lice, all of them."

Teulon drank some of the tea. Idleberry gave the infusion a fruit scent and a faint sweet taste, but not enough had been added to mask the intense bitterness of the tea plant. The Iisleg deliberately brewed it that way, Hasal had told him once, not to save the idleberry, but to remind themselves of the nature of life.

The tea, like the outlander tribes, was an unpleasant necessity. He watched the light from the heatarc refract through the convoluted airstone, where it created the distorted image of a face trapped in glass. The mouth of the face yawned as if trying to gulp down the dark steaming liquid of the tea. "We need them."

"We shall be blessed if they do not first barter us off to the Kangal." Hasal started to say something else before he dragged in more air and thought about it. "It is said that they make half their women skela in order to collect more worgald."

Teulon had heard little but bad jokes and expressions of disgust toward the dead handlers. Iisleg collectively regarded them as little more than excrement with limbs. He personally had no use for them. "I do not want their women."

"What if these men betray us?" Hasal asked.

Teulon's fist contracted, and the airstone server shattered.

One hundred miles to the east, Rasakt Deves Navn, headman of Iiskar Navn, listened as his most experienced tracker relayed the details of his latest excursion.

"I saw no caravans for ten kim," the scout said. He had shed his outfurs, and was still using thermopacks to warm his red, snowbitten hands. "No sled trails in the air. We know Skjonn has not descended for weeks."

The two men were the only occupants of the rasakt's shelter. Amber light from the heatarc made their faces ruddy and kept the cold pinned to the layers of stretched skins and salvaged alloy panels that formed the thick, flexible walls. Above their heads, trickles of icy air that had slipped in through tiny cracks in the wall seams and around the top of the rolled hide of the smoke flue danced with the rising heat.

"What of his forces?" Like other Iisleg, Navn did not speak the name of the Raktar out loud. To do so was considered equal to shouting for the gods to visit death upon the camp.

"The army is but four suns' journey from us, moving east," the scout said. He was a man of middle years, a veteran of crossing the ice, and bore the scars of countless skirmishes with man and beast on his skin. No emotion showed in his flat eyes. "Perhaps as many as ten thousand men surround him. Reserve battalions flanking them on all sides, ready to supply replacements."

"Twenty thousand he has, then." Sizable, but not enough to challenge the Toskald forces. Cold made "More than twenty, Rasakt," the scout cautioned. "I counted the reserves at four to one, and more arrive with each passing sun."

Fifty thousand men
. Rasakt Navn forgot about his personal discomfort and regarded the map of the eastern territories. On it were red marks indicating the reported sightings of the central rebel army, but there were so many now, the map skin appeared riddled by pox. "Where do they go?"

"
I
cannot tell you." The scout's eyes changed, and his voice went low with shame. "They vanish from their camps before dawn, and they leave no track. It is as if they conjure a path from one place to the next." He made a protective sign over himself.

Navn restrained a sigh. The rebels were obviously using some manner of surface transport vessels, which were regarded as magical creatures by the outland tribes. Only a few headmen like Navn were educated enough to know that the flying ships did not actually devour men and belch flame.

This is not for them to know
, Navn's father, the former headman of the iiskar, had instructed him.
Most ignorance is unnecessary, but some serves as a means of control and rule
.

Using surface-to-space transport on Akkabarr had never been possible. The only ships that came to the surface were flown by the Toskald pilots, the only ones who knew the secret to successfully navigating through the mile-wide, vicious kvinka currents of the upper atmosphere. Once, a tribe had captured a ship, intending to force the pilot to take them to the skim city, but the ship had mysteriously exploded before it ever left the ice, killing everyone on board. The remainder of the tribe was denied supplies and slowly starved to death.

Navn did not know how the Toskald had convinced so many worlds within the Tryg Quadrant to use Akkabarr as a storage depot and central armory, but that trust had never been betrayed. Shipwrecks of those who tried to raid the planet provided the Iisleg with the bulk of their tithe wealth. Since offworlders constantly tried to get at the billions of weapons stored in subsurface armory trenches, crashes were frequent.

Not that the crashes would do them any good now with this rebellion brewing.

Among the eastern tribes, Iiskar Navn held a superior position. It was the largest and oldest of the tribes. Some thought that Deves would imitate his father's warlike ways, but the younger Navn learned that no one could eliminate every enemy, and to die covered in glory still meant one was dead.

When Navn had taken over as headman, he had demanded moderation and reason instead of battles and glory. His warriors became competent hunters, and his salvagers kept the tribe's tithes modest but regular. Some of the older Iisleg had been scathing and even whispered Navn the Younger was a coward, but time was on Deves's side. His tribe grew, as did his stores. In time Kangal Orjakis had selected his men to serve as caravanners to transport and present the worgald and tribute from this region to Skjonn.

Navn did not want rebellion, not after all those years of careful work. Yet unless he chose sides, he and his tribe would end as victims of both.

Shouts surrounded the headman's tent, and the scout automatically drew his bow and went to the flap.

Navn had no time for females, visiting or his own. It was the odd look on his scout's face that drew him to the flap to glance outside.

His men had formed a protective barrier before his tent, but beyond their shoulders he saw a small, stick-like figure with tattered, rotting furs hanging from her body.

The female appeared as human as the Iisleg, but she was not a native. Her hair had been grown as long as a man's. He had never seen a woman so thin, either, not even during the Famine of Disobedience. She did not speak, but tottered about, reaching skeletal hands toward his men, who moved out of reach.

If she had been a man, they would have helped her, but women held little value for the Iisleg. They earned a small bride-price for their fathers when they were of age to be purchased for marriage, but that was their only real worth. The gods had created women without souls so that they would be content to provide care and warmth for men. Wives could be trusted with simple, menial tasks, like cooking, weaving, and purifying water. Until she married, a female shared her mother's work, or sorted in the gjenvin tents. A few who were unsuitable for marriage for various reasons were permitted to serve as ahayag and provide physical relief to the unmarried men of the tribe.

Navn did not care about the woman, or her pitiful state. It was the twisted symbol, still visible on the breast of her ragged undergarment, that struck him to the core.

That, he had seen before. It was the same as the mark on the garment of an ensleg female the gjenvin had brought back from a crash site. A woman with a terrible head wound, who had been covered in blood and dying.

But it could not be her. That female was dead. Had been dead for two years now.

"It is a walking shade," his scout whispered, raising his bow to dispatch it.

"No." Navn covered the bow sight with his hand and stared hard at the manacle around one of the female's bony wrists. That, too, was familiar to his eyes. "I will see her."

The scout appeared astounded by this, but moved to one side. Navn secured his skull wrap before stepping out. As he moved through his men, they parted as new snow before the storm.

"How does she live?" one of Navn's hunters asked no one in particular. "She carries no furs, no food, no weapons."

"The demons protect her." Another raised his bow.

Navn stepped between the bow and the woman. "No."

The female, evidently exhausted, stopped and sank to her knees in the snow. Her fingers were ghostly sticks, colored and stiffened to gray claws by snowbite. Navn reached and caught her by a length of her snarled dark hair before she toppled. Her eyes rolled up into her head for a moment before she focused on his face. Her lips moved to shape something, but it was not a word he understood.

Navn thought of the ensleg female who had come two years ago. Who had worn the same symbol. Who had been dragged into his tent by the chief gjenvin, who had claimed the skela could not kill her. Unlike this one, her face had been caked in frozen blood and gore. He could not tell from the features if this woman was the same one.

No, that one who came before is dead
. Navn, who had lost his faith when he had become headman, made a sign of protection over himself.
I myself watched the jlorra drag her out of camp. They must have devoured her. They would not permit a dying thing to live. She was nothing but food to them

.

He seized her arm and brought it up to examine the manacle around her wrist. The alloy cuff was of off-world making and had slots where chains could be attached. The other ensleg female had been wearing two manacles identical to this one, with broken lengths of chain hanging from them.

This is not the same one. It cannot be
. "Who are you?"

She did not answer him, or rouse at the shake he gave her.

There were legends about the vral, faceless spirit beings made flesh that could not be killed. The gods sent such things to prove a man worthy. Navn had never believed in such tales. Everything died.

He stared down at the unconscious female. She was flesh. She possessed a face. But if he tried to kill her now, and she would not die…

Navn released her and gestured for two of the women hovering at the edge of the group of hunters to come forward. "Carry her to the visitors' tent," he told them. "Have Hurgot examine her." After a momentary hesitation he added, "If she can be saved, she may live."

No one looked directly at him—one did not make eye contact with the rasakt—but his instructions sent a wave of shock through those present. An ensleg could come to Akkabarr only from a crashed ship. The subzero conditions on the planet usually killed any survivors. The Iisleg did not rescue ensleg; alive they had no value to the tribe.

Navn was never happier in his rank. As rasakt, he was not required to explain himself. He did not have to inform his tribe that the woman wore the mark of an ensleg healer. Nor did he have to share the decision as to whether to send tithe to Skjonn, the skim city of Kangal Orjakis, whose taste for ensleg females was notorious.

"Rasakt, shall we send the gjenvin to look for her… for a ship?" one of the hunters was brave enough to ask.

"No." Things would only grow worse when they did not find one. The rasakt turned his back on the unconscious female. "Take her."

Chapter Two

Encrypted File 092002573

Her quarters are far from my own, but I have not planted any recording drones to watch her. Close proximity and remote surveillance have never been necessary—I have been aware of her from the first, and the connection between us grows stronger each day. She is unaware of it, or deliberately ignores it.

I cannot. She is always with me now.

Duncan Reever stared at the words he had recorded during his last year serving as linguist for the multi-species colony on Kevarzangia Two. The year he had met a Terran surgeon, Cherijo Gray Veil, who had saved his life, and had given him many reasons to live again.

But she was no longer with him. Cherijo was gone, taken from him two years ago—

Go.

Find her. Hurry.

Those four words had sustained him through the long, frantic months of searching for his missing wife.