In the Red Lord's Reach Read online

  It was a stormy time. The snow, once it was well begun, blew hard for days on end and piled deep, so that soon everyone had to wear the awkward, thong-webbed hoops. But the deer could not wear this footgear, and in spite of their own broad hooves, they sank into the drifting whiteness and floundered when they walked. And walk they must, floundering or not, to find enough dead grass to nourish their bodies. When at last the snow grew so deep that they could no longer reach the frozen yellow tufts, the nomads had to take turns scooping it aside with shovels of hard-cured leather. Alaric took his own turn often enough, and he found it heavy work. But the deer had to eat, for in winter, more than any other time, they were the life and livelihood of the band.

  In the warm months, hunting and fishing and gathering of edible plants had been the nomads' main sources of food. With the advent of the winter storms, the plants disappeared beneath the snow, and the hunters came home empty-handed more often than not. Tracks that would have shown well in the whiteness on calm days were quickly filled in by the wind, and the pale coats that so many creatures acquired with the season made them nearly invisible through a veil of blowing flakes. Fishing, too, offered little return, for the rivers were frozen over, and even when the ice was broken and lines could be dropped through the gaps, the fish seemed to hide from the bait. Still, without much game and fish, they ate well enough, for a large buck could feed the entire band for a day or two. The nomads expected to slaughter a goodly number of their deer over the course of the winter.

  As the season wore on, though, it became clear to Alaric that they had not expected to slaughter so many so quickly. In an ordinary winter, there would have been game for the cooking pots fairly often, in spite of white coats and snow. In an ordinary winter, there would have been crisp, windless days, days when the snow left off and the land was silent and sparkling under the heatless sun. But this was no ordinary winter; it was the bad season Kata had predicted; and not merely bad, but the worst in memory.

  In her tent and out of it, with sweetly scented smoke and acrid, with herbs cast upon the wind and strange words shouted into it, Kata worked her weather magic. And sometimes there would be a lull in the storm, and smiling hunters coming home with rabbits or foxes slung over their backs. But more often, she offered her witchcraft to an unheeding Pole Star, and another buck died that the nomads might live.

  It seemed odd—and foolish—to Alaric that the hunters thanked Kata for the few good days but did not curse her for the bad. This was the real test of her power, he thought, this savage season, and she was failing it, even though her people did not appear to see that.

  "A hard winter," the men would say, huddled about the fire in the long night, chewing their venison. "But how much worse it would be if we had no Kata."

  He said nothing, not even to her, but he knew she read the doubt in his eyes, for she left off pleading with him to be her acolyte. She had no more time for teaching anyway, being busy with her charms against the storm. Sometimes, when he came away from serving her, hunters would ask if she were working her weather magic, and he always told them, with complete honesty, that she was. Sometimes, too, a hunter would go into her tent and stay some long time, in hopes of renewing his own personal hunting magic. Alaric never saw that it did much good, though, no matter how long the hunter stayed.

  Quietly, he began to hunt on his own. In the south, where the snows were mild and the game plentiful, he sought the small wild deer, killing as he had always killed, by his special stealth and with his knife. Of all the band's hunters, he was the one who came home most consistently with meat. While he hunted, his venison fed Simir's own circle, and that much more of the tame meat was left for everyone else.

  One night, after eating Alaric's venison and listening to his songs, the high chief went into Kata's tent. At first Alaric supposed that he was renewing his own hunting magic, but shortly he stepped out and beckoned to Alaric to join him.

  Inside, Kata's own small blaze warmed the air enough that his breath did not turn to frost as it left his mouth. She herself bent over the flames, staring into them as if seeking the future in their flickering dance. Though Alaric knelt down beside her, she did not look at him. For a time she did not even speak, nor did Simir, and the tent was so silent that the crackle of the flames seemed loud against the constant background wail of the wind.

  She raised her head at last, her pale eyes red-rimmed with lack of sleep. She had put all her energy into her magic, and Alaric could not help feeling a pang of pity for her at the little return she had won for so much effort.

  "I warned them it would be a hard winter," she said.

  "All winters are hard," said Simir, his voice low.

  "They should have prepared themselves better. They should have dried fish and game and stored roots. I warned them."

  "We had eightscore mouths to feed, Kata." There was uneasiness in his tone. "We had no excess to put away."

  "You should have found some."

  Simir glanced at Alaric. "In all my time in the north, there has never been a winter like this. Always, we've been able to hunt in the snow. Always."

  "Fool," said Kata.

  Alaric looked from Simir's face to hers. "But there are still plenty of deer in the herd. And the storms will surely stop sometime and allow good hunting."

  "Will they?" said Kata.

  Simir shook his head. "We must face the possibility that the hunting will remain poor. Perhaps for the rest of the winter. We have deer now, but the time may come when we must begin to slaughter the breeding stock." He frowned into the flames. "It is a bad winter, but if we eat all our deer and live through it, what will we eat in the worst of next year? Snow?" He clenched his big fists. "Kata is right, as always. This is my fault. I should have pushed them harder; I should have driven them. It meant our lives." Then he looked full at Alaric. "But if the high chief has failed his people, their witch has not. Her magic will save us."

  Alaric tried not to let his doubts show on his face, though he didn't think he was very successful at it. "How?"

  "It has brought you to us."

  Alaric glanced sidelong at Kata and stifled the impulse to say, Has it?

  "Long ago," said Kata, "when I knew the winter would be hard, I asked the Pole Star to help us. He has never failed his people. And you are his answer."

  Alaric shook his head. "I'm a good hunter, in my way, but I can't feed a hundred and sixty mouths day after day. The deer of the south are small, and they hide well, even for one with my skills—"

  "For one, "said Kata, sharply. "But not for a dozen."

  "A dozen?"

  "You carried five people and their goods far across the ice. Why not a dozen hunters to the south, to hunt the game that lives there, and bring back meat to keep all our bellies full?"

  Alaric stared at her for a moment and then, very slowly, as her notion blossomed in his imagination, he smiled. To carry hunters to the southern forest—it was a possibility that had never occurred to him. In the south, where witches were feared, he had rarely dared to use his power to transport other human beings. But in the north, where magic was welcome, he could fly them to the hunt, as giant eagles had done for the heroes of legend in half a dozen songs.

  "I am a fool, lady," he said at last, "but you, as always, are wisdom itself. Command me, and we begin tomorrow."

  Kata nodded. "I command you."

  ****

  WISE AS IT was, Kata's plan contained a flaw. Though the dozen men Simir selected were eager to travel by magic to a land of plentiful game, they were accustomed to the rolling, treeless plains of the north; they found themselves confused and uneasy in the forests of the south, their hunting skills a poor match to the new landscape. Time and again, their stealthy footsteps were given away by dead twigs crackling underfoot, or their arrows were deflected in flight by low-hanging branches. Only occasionally would one rise above his deficiencies and kill a rabbit, a raccoon, or a fox.

  It was Alaric who caught the real game—the whiteta
il deer, the wild pigs, and even a young bear, once. While his hunters crept cautiously through the southern forest, he flitted from tree to tree like a ghost, barely appearing in one place before he vanished again. In stepless silence, he visited springs and creeks, and thickets where the last berries of autumn still clung to leafless branches, and copses where the tender tips of twiglets drooped within reach of hungry deer. Yet, even with his power, the hunt was never easy. The afternoons were longer in the south, but still Alaric found himself using every scrap of daylight they offered. When he made a kill he carried it to that day's camp, then returned to meet his hunters at their rendezvous. If any of them had game, he took that north and then came back for the men. And after leaving them with their families, he often returned to the forest during the southern twilight, to stalk again in his own special way, for eightscore mouths made short shrift of rabbits, raccoons, and the small deer of the south.

  He had never used his power so much—never carried so many objects or traveled so many times in so short a period. He found himself tired at the end of the day, so tired that sometimes, as darkness descended on the south, he wanted to lie down in the forest and sleep, except that he knew folk were waiting for him at the nomad camp. Often, when he returned, he was too exhausted to eat the very game he had killed. Zavia complained that he no longer had any time for her, but he just shook his head to that. He had put her aside necessarily, as he had put his lute aside. Hunting was more important now; he could see it in Simir's eyes, in Kata's, in the eyes of his hunters. With their failure, he knew it was he, the minstrel from the south, who stood between Simir's band and death.

  "Perhaps it would be simpler," he said one night at the high chief's fire, when the wind roared and the snow whipped downward, making the flames sputter, "if I just took you all to better lands in the south."

  The gathered nomads' only answer was a silence so profound that he did not attempt to bring the matter up again.

  Truth to tell, tired as he was and hard-worked as he was, some part of him was glad that the other hunters failed so often. Some part of him was proud to be the lifeline of the band. No one had every truly depended on him before, not for more than an evening's music.

  Perhaps it was his pride that made him push himself to his limits. Perhaps it was his pride that blinded him to his fatigue. No matter how weary he was, he had no trouble hunting, no trouble carrying his quarry and the hunters back to the north, and no trouble returning for another brief hunt almost every evening. But one night, as the southern sky purpled and the first stars rose opposite the sunset, when the shadows were deep and each tree seemed a many-armed sentinel standing guard over the forest, he spied what seemed to be a small bear crouching beside a boulder. He had killed a very young bear once before, and as he watched this one, all he could think was how many stomachs it would fill—juicy bear meat, still heavy with last summer's store of fat, roasting on a spit above Simir's fire. Knife in hand, he flitted to it to strike before it saw him. But when he struck, it reared up suddenly to a great height, roaring—not a young bear by any means, but a full-grown male, much taller than any man, and heavy as six or seven of the nomad hunters. Before Alaric could recover from his astonishment, before his exhausted mind could even think, the wounded beast batted him aside with the back of a huge paw.

  The blow was like a log striking him square across his chest. It knocked him a dozen paces and drove the breath from his lungs. Darkness spun sickeningly about him, blotting out the twilit sky and the sentinel trees. He clutched at the ground, at the dead leaves of summer under their crisp snow cover, but could not force the wild dance of blackness to stop. He tried to breathe, but there was a terrible pain in his chest that kept the air from sliding down his throat. In the silence of unbreathing, he could hear the pounding of blood like a great mallet inside his skull. And above that, the growl of the bear as it shuffled toward him. The beast, the darkness—they seemed almost one to him, one vast living thing that was reaching out to crush and swallow him.

  Where? he thought, struggling to see but failing. Failing to breathe, failing to move, as if his body no longer belonged to him. And with all his failures, another darkness began to grow inside him, as if bursting from his very heart, and greedily rushed to join the darkness outside. Where? he thought frantically, his mind drowning in black and icy water. Where ?

  And then the bear's claws raked him, and not knowing the answer, he leaped to escape that burning, freezing agony.

  ****

  WHEN THE DARKNESS finally loosed its grip on him, the first thing he noticed was the smell. It was sweet, pungent, smoky, familiar, though he could not think of where he might have smelled it before. Sometime later, he realized that his eyes were open, and that light flickered and danced before them—flamelight, he thought, from its softness, though he could not bring the flames into focus. Later still, a cup was placed against his lips, and an oily liquid, faintly sweet, seeped into his mouth. Like the smell, it also seemed familiar, though he could not place it. A low, soothing voice bade him swallow, and he obeyed.

  He slept then. He knew he slept, because he found himself playing the lute while falling snow spangled its strings, and he knew that he must be dreaming because he would never allow such a thing to happen in waking life. And when he woke, the scent and the light and the oily liquid were with him once more.

  "Drink," said the voice, and he drank.

  "Sleep," said the voice, and he slept.

  How much time had passed before he finally came to himself, he could not guess, not even how many times he had drunk and slept. But at last he woke and knew that he lay in Kata's tent, that the flamelight was hers, that the drink was the Elixir of Life.

  "So," she said, bending over him with the cup. "You've said no to death at last."

  He drank again. There was another cup for him afterward, of venison broth, rich and meaty. Its flavor drove away the pungent taste of the Elixir. "Have I been dead, then?" His own voice startled him, so weak and hoarse did it sound.

  "Near enough."

  He tried to shift his body under the furs that covered him, and he caught his breath sharply at the sudden pain that lanced through his chest.

  "Lie still," she said. "You've more cracked ribs than you'd want to think about, and you're half-flayed about the back. You'll carry the marks of those claws to your grave, I think."

  Gingerly, he curled his hands to his middle and felt the broad leather bands that wrapped him from armpit to hip. "I came back," he whispered.

  "And brought a fat bear paw with you, sliced clean off his body. He was a big one."

  "Yes."

  "You were foolish to try to take him."

  "Yes."

  She smiled just a little. "But brave."

  "No," he whispered. "Just foolish." He closed his eyes again, for keeping them open seemed suddenly more effort than he could manage. "How long before I can hunt again?"

  He felt her hand on his forehead, firm and cool. "Don't think of hunting now, my Alaric. You have a long rest ahead of you."

  "But I must," he said, and the words were barely audible, even to his own ears.

  "You must sleep. Think of nothing else. Just sleep."

  When he woke again, he was being laid on a litter lashed between two deer. Above him, the sky was gray and lowering, and snowflakes danced in the air. Kata and Grem, their clothing well dusted with whiteness, were wrapping him in furs and winding thongs about him to secure him to the litter.

  He tried to rise on one elbow, but the pain in his chest was too much. "Have we moved while I slept?"

  Kata nodded. "And will again."

  He sighed, and it was deep enough to hurt his ribs. Since childhood, he had always known exactly where he was. His mental map stretched back unbroken along his travels, with every mile, every step of the way, engraved in his deepest memory. Now there would be a blank—these miles of sleeping movement would be lost to him. But there was no help for it; this was the nomad life, and he had no rig
ht to ask that it be altered for his convenience. He sighed again, and could not keep from groaning with the pain, and then Kata gave him another draft of Elixir, and he slept.

  ****

  THERE WAS A change in the nomads' routine while Alaric lay wounded. Instead of traveling every morning and camping every noon, they traveled through the whole brief day and camped for all the next, and sometimes for the one after that as well. Simir had suggested it, as a way to let the hunters roam farther across the snowy plain. It meant that his people were exhausted at the end of each long struggle against the wind and snow, so exhausted that they had no strength left to cook and were forced to eat half-frozen venison left from the previous day's meals. But it also meant that they had time to recover, time to huddle in their tents and be warm and send out the hardiest to hunt.

  Simir brought Alaric the news of their hunting success.

  "They say you challenged them," he said, kneeling by the pallet in Kata's tent. "But I think you shamed them into trying harder where they know the land."

  "I never meant to shame them," Alaric whispered.

  "Yet it was the right thing, in the end. Now they fight for their pride."

  Kata nodded. "They must show they have no need of your magic."

  "Perhaps there's just more game where we are now," Alaric said. "I know we've turned south."

  Simir shrugged. "Whatever the reason, we're slaughtering fewer deer."

  Alaric looked at Kata. "It's your magic, lady. That's the real reason."

  She gave him gaze for gaze. "Of course," she said.

  When Simir had gone, she brought her star-scattered box out, and at first he thought she was going to dose him with more Elixir, but no. She wanted to talk to him about the dancing points of power in the Great Waste.

  He held his hand up before a dozen words had escaped her lips. "Lady, I am too weak for this. It is a deep mystery, not for the muzzy-minded."

  "Yet these are good days for your schooling, my Alaric. You must stay in my tent till I call you well enough to ride, and what better time to begin your apprenticeship?"