Videssos Cycle, Volume 2 (56 page)

Tolui, though, operated with an entirely different set of assumptions. Mollified by Gorgidas’ explanation, he said, “I will tell you. We Arshaum were the first race of men. The only reason there are Khamorth is that one of our men, many lives ago, was without a woman too long and futtered a goat. The Khamorth were the get of that union; that is why they are so disgustingly shaggy.”

“I see.” Gorgidas suddenly regretted his whiskers. He wrote Tolui’s fable down; it was an interesting bit of lore, if nothing else. And Hippokrates was not doing so well here; he wrote that steppe nomads were stocky or plump, hairless, and of a ruddy complexion. The Khamorth met only the first criterion, the Arshaum the second, and neither people the third.

The Greek rubbed his earlobe between thumb and forefinger. “Tell me more about this goat.”

Viridovix peered down into the valley of the Shaum through swirling snow. “Well, where’s the other side o’ the fool stream, now?” he said indignantly, as if Batbaian had hidden it on purpose.

“Oh, it’s there,” the Khamorth said. “All we have to do is get to it—and then persuade the devils across the river not to kill us on sight.” He spoke with morbid anticipation; Viridovix’ notion of begging help from the Arshaum had horrified him, fey though he was. Next to them, Avshar was a new terror; tales of the Arshaum frightened naughty children into behaving.

The Gaul pretended not to notice his gloom. “One thing at a time. Once we’re after crossing the river, then we think on the folk as live there.” He did not give Batbaian a chance to argue, but clucked to his horse and trotted toward the Shaum. Shaking his head, Batbaian followed.

Had Viridovix been a more experienced horseman, he would have known better than to set a fast pace downhill through snowdrifts that hid the ground below. His pony whinnied in terror as a forefoot came down in some unseen hole. It stumbled and fell, throwing the Gaul. He was lucky; he had the wind knocked out of him as he hit the ground, but the thick blanket of snow cushioned him from worse damage.

But he had heard the horse’s legbone snap. As he was struggling to his feet, Batbaian dismounted and put the animal out of its pain. Blood steamed in the snow. Batbaian turned to the Gaul. “Help me butcher it,” he said. “We’ll take as much as we can carry.” Viridovix pulled out his dagger. He did not care for the thick, gluey taste of horse, but it was better than an empty belly.

When the gory task was done, Batbaian said only, “We’ll take turns on the beast that’s left. It’ll make a path for the man on foot.” He did not waste time railing at the Gaul; Viridovix knew what his carelessness had cost them. They would be at walking pace from here on, and their one remaining animal, the Celt thought, would have to carry their gear all the time.

Once they reached the riverbank, though, Viridovix wondered if they would go any farther at all. The Shaum did not flow swiftly; it iced over in winter. But it was so wide that a stretch of a couple of hundred yards still ran free in the center of the stream, with pieces of ice crashing against each other in the current as they bobbed their way south.

The Gaul shivered, looking out toward the frigid black water. “I wouldna try to swim it,” he said to Batbaian. “Three strokes and you’d be another icicle.”

“Look there, though,” the plainsman said, pointing downstream. A broad cake of drift ice had run against the farther edge of the ice, and a couple of smaller ones against it. Water splashed over them, but they made a bridge of sorts.

“We’d not get the pony across that,” Viridovix protested.

“No, but then we wouldn’t anyhow. He’d crash through where a man can crawl on his belly and spread his weight on the ice. Are you still set on this mad scheme of yours?”

“I am that.”

“Well, then.” Batbaian slid down from the saddle, went up to touch his horse’s nose. Before Viridovix knew what he was doing, he slit the beast’s throat. It gave a reproachful, dreadfully human cough as its legs buckled and it went down.

“Are you witstruck?” the Gaul cried.

“No. Think through it,” Batbaian said, sounding like a Roman. “If he can’t cross with us, he’s more use dead than alive. Don’t stand there gaping—give me a hand getting the hide off.” His knife was already busy; Viridovix helped mechanically, wondering if the nomad really had lost his wits.

Batbaian had not. After another rough job of worrying chunks from the horse’s flank and hock, he used the hides as a sack to hold the meat, their knocked-down tent, and his pack. “Give me yours, too,” he told the
Celt, who undid it from his back. Batbaian lashed the hide closed, hefted it. “Weighs less than a man,” he said, satisfied. He added another length of rope. “You see? We’ll haul it behind us, far enough away so it won’t put extra strain on the ice.”

“And aren’t you the cleverest little chappie, now?” Viridovix said admiringly. In his Gallic forests he might have done as good a job of improvising, but here on the plains it took the Khamorth to see what to do with what they had.

Batbaian shrugged the praise away; it meant nothing to him. He dragged the hide downstream along the bank until he was even with the ice jam in the Shaum. Viridovix followed. At the very edge of the river the Khamorth handed him the rope. “You take this. I’ll go first and scrape the snow away so we can tell how the ice is.”

“And why not me for that?” the Gaul said, wanting to do something, at least, of importance.

But Batbaian replied, “Because I’m lighter,” which was unanswerable. He stepped onto the ice. It held his weight, but he walked slowly and very carefully, planting each foot before he raised the other. “Wouldn’t do to slip,” he said with forced lightness.

“You’re right there,” Viridovix said. He moved as cautiously as the Khamorth.

From behind them came an excited baying and yapping, then snarls as a band of wolves fell on the Gaul’s dead horse. He looked back, but they were lost in the blowing snow. He heard bones crunch. “Might you step it up a bit, Batbaian dear?”

“No.” The plainsman did not turn his head. “Going through the ice is the bigger risk. They won’t be after us, not with two horses to keep them happy.”

“Sure and I hope you’re right. If I’m eaten I’ll not forgive it.” The Celt made sure his blade was loose in its scabbard. The idea of facing wolves on the treacherous ice chilled him worse than the biting north wind.

He scowled when one of the beasts, driven away from the first carcass, found the second one. More came running to gorge themselves; the noise of their feasting seemed almost at his elbow. Now he could see them, back by the riverbank. He cursed and half drew his blade when
one of them trotted onto the frozen river, but its feet flew out from under it, and it sprawled on its belly. With a startled yip, it fled back to land. “Ha! You like it no better here than I,” Viridovix said.

“Shut up,” said Batbaian. “This is getting tricky.” They were almost to midstream. The Khamorth picked his way with even greater care now, for there were patches where the Shaum’s water showed dark through the ice. He skirted them as long as he could, staying with the ice that was thick enough still to be white. At last, he sighed, defeated. “No help for it now,” he said, and went down on his belly to wriggle forward.

Viridovix’ thick coat kept the worst of the cold from him, but his knees burned to the ice’s kiss. Memory floated into him, of sliding on a frozen pond in Gaul one winter when he was very small, of the squeals of glee from the other children and the sight of bare-branched trees all around. No trees here, not for miles. He squirmed faster to catch up with Batbaian.

They were side by side when they came to the edge of the ice pack. Seen close up, the tumbled slabs of ice ahead were far less promising as a way across than they had looked from the bank. Batbaian waved the Celt to a halt while he considered. “As fast as we can,” he decided. “I don’t know how long this first one will hold us.”

“But what if we break it free?”

The Khamorth shrugged. “Then we have a raft. Maybe we can steer it to the far side.”

“Honh!” Viridovix said, but Batbaian was already gathering himself for the rush. He scrambled from the pack onto the chunk of ice ahead. It groaned under his weight. With a final, frantic slither, he rolled onto the next slab.

As soon as the plainsman was off the first piece of ice, Viridovix clambered onto it, the horsehide sack bumping after him. It rocked alarmingly. The sudden, queasy motion reminded the Gaul of a pitching boat. “None o’ that now,” he said to himself, wrestling with his weak stomach. Freezing water soaked his trousers. He yelped and tried to move faster.

The thin ice crackled beneath him; a network of cracks appeared, spreading fast. “Hurry!” Batbaian yelled. With a last desperate lunge, the Celt tumbled onto the next block, hauled their gear after him. Widening
lines of inky-black water showed as the last chunk of ice shifted and started to break up.

Batbaian gave a sarcastic dip of his head. “I hope you didn’t forget anything back there.”

“Only my anvil.” Viridovix managed a winded grin; the Khamorth bared his teeth in what might have been a smile. He inched ahead. This chunk of ice was thicker than the last one, but more precariously placed. It teetered and swayed as the two men crawled across it. Batbaian grunted in relief as he swarmed onto the last frozen cake. He helped pull Viridovix up after him. “My thanks,” the Gaul said. “One of my hands is fair frozen.”

“If the tinder isn’t soaked, we’ll have a fire as soon as we get to the other side,” Batbaian promised. For the first time he sounded as if he thought they would make it.

There was one dreadful moment when Viridovix thrust his left arm through the ice into the frigid Shaum up to the elbow. He waited for the pack to split and drop him into the river, but it held; the weak spot proved no bigger than a man’s head. He wriggled his arm out of his sleeve and pressed it against his body to try to put some tiny warmth back in it.

Then Batbaian was shouting ahead of him—there was sand and dirt under the snow, not ice. Viridovix lurched onto the land and lay gasping like a fish cast up by the stream. The Khamorth fought the horsehide sack; it had frozen nearly hard. He used the lead pommel of his dagger to hammer tent pegs an inch or two into the iron-hard ground. Viridovix gave what one-handed help he could in spreading the felt fabric of the tent over its framework of sticks. They scrambled into it together, groaning with relief to be out of the ceaseless, piercing wind.

Clumsy in his thick mittens but careful all the same, Batbaian opened the bone box that held bark and dry leaves. He looked inside. “Ah,” he said. He rummaged in his kit for flint and steel. He pushed the snow to one side, found a few flat stones so he would not have to set the tinder on damp ground. After several tries he got a small fire going. He scraped fat from the inside of the roughly butchered horsehide, cut more strips from the hunks of horsemeat. The fat ran as it melted and stank foully, but it burned. “What I wouldn’t give for a few handfuls of dry horsedung,” Batbaian said.

Viridovix huddled close to the fire. He held his left arm over it, trying to chafe back feeling. “Hack off a couple of gobbets there and set ’em up to roast,” he said through chattering teeth. “E’en horsemeat’ll be good in my belly. And if you’re keen to be dreaming of turds, why go ahead, and may you ha’ joy of ’em. As of me, I’ll think on mulled wine, and thank you just the same.”

On the eastern bank of the Shaum, a wolf lifted its head in suspicion. A low growl rumbled deep in its throat; the hair stood up on its shoulders and ridged along its back. The oncoming rider did not falter. The growl turned to whine. The wolf slunk out of the horseman’s path; the pack scattered before him as he trotted down to the very edge of the frozen stream.

He dismounted. His white robes, swirling in the wind, might almost have been blowing snow themselves. Hands on hips, he stared across the river. Even he could not see the tent on the far shore, but he knew it was there. This once his great size and the weight of mail on his shoulders worked against him; for one of his bulk, there was no crossing the Shaum. He felt of the ice in his mind and knew it would not hold him.

He cursed, first in the guttural Khamorth speech, then in archaic Videssian, slow and full of hate. “Winter, then, shall my work complete,” he said in the same language. “Skotos will aid his servant thus, I trow.” He swung himself back into the saddle, wheeled his horse, and rode east.

The wolves were a long time returning.

Tied together so they would not lose each other in the storm, Batbaian and Viridovix slogged west. Shaumkhiil was as featureless as the Pardrayan plain, but there was no danger of wandering in circles. As long as they kept the wind blowing against their right sides, they knew they could not be far wrong.

They had yet to see an Arshaum, which left Viridovix angry and frustrated and Batbaian, as far as the Gaul could tell, secretly relieved; down deep he still seemed to believe they were ten feet tall and armed with fangs.

Maybe the Arshaum ate sheep at a gulp and spat out the bones, but eat sheep they did. The Gaul and Khamorth came on a dozen or so that must have strayed from their main herd. Viridovix ate mutton until he missed the horsemeat he had had to make himself choke down. Batbaian, a skillful jackleg tailor, sewed scraped sheepskins together into cloaks the two wanderers wore over their greatcoats.

They needed the extra layer of warmth; the weather was the worst Batbaian had seen. To Viridovix it was appalling beyond belief: snow, ice, ravening wind, endless days without glimpse of sun or stars through thick black clouds. The storms on the Videssian plateau had been bitter, but they were storms, each with beginning and end. This went on and on, as if summer left the world for good.

“It’s dogging us, I’m thinking,” Viridovix shouted through the screaming gale.

“What’s that?” Batbaian yelled back. He was only a yard in front of the Celt, but the wind flung words away.

“I say the blizzard’s after dogging us, to pounce when it’s worn us down.” Viridovix had meant it as a figure of speech, but suddenly wondered if it were not truth. Batbaian turned round and mouthed a name. The Gaul could not hear it, but he knew what it was. His shudder, for once, had nothing to do with cold. He thought again about throwing away his sword, this time more seriously than he had before.