As fire forges steel
So pain brings wisdom forth;
Not lightly won, but with blood
All the God suffers is known
By His chosen ones From: The Song of Bear and Raven
Attributed to Fiorbhinn Mackenzie, 1st century CY
I bind your eyes, your nose, your ears, brother deer, Ritva Havel thought, turning her will into a dart. By the Hunter and the Huntress, come to meet your fate!
Then she withdrew her mind, becoming one with the musty scent of damp decaying leaves and wet earth and pine sap from the twigs that studded the loops set on her war cloak, the feel of water soaking through the knee of her pants from the damp earth where she knelt, with the gray light through the misty rain. The mule deer was a second-year buck, his rack of antlers still a modest affair. He was plump with autumn though, his ruddy-brown coat glossy, working his way down from the heights where the snow season had already started.
Here it was just cold, the drizzle slanting down through open forest of tall slender lodgepole pine and short squat limbers, knocking more of the faded old-gold foliage of the quaking aspens and narrow-leaf cottonwoods to flutter down and make the earth beneath slippery with wet duff. The brush ahead of her and to either side was viburnum, scarlet in this season; the withered red berries were still dense on the spindly stems, and the deer was working its way along the edge of the tongue of woodland, nibbling at the fruit while its tall ears swiveled like a jackrabbit's and the black-tipped white tail quivered over the snowy patch on its rump. Mountain bluebirds called as they flitted from branch to branch, feeding on the same bounty.
Closer, and she could hear the slight mushy tock as the deer's hooves cleared the ground. Her own breath scarcely moved the gauze mask, but her stomach abruptly cramped-they'd been hungry, and Rudi needed better food if he was to heal. Fifty yards, forty, thirty… you looked at the spot where you wanted the arrow to go… twenty. ..
I am the bow and the arrow, the hunter and the prey…
The bow came up as she drew to the ear in a single smooth motion, and the cloak fell away from her arms. A slight creaking came from it as her arms and shoulders and gut levered against the force of the recurve's stave, stretching the sinew on the back, compressing the laminated horn on the belly and bending the slice of yew between them. The string lifted from the final curve at the tips, the bow bent into a deep C, and the arrow slid back through the cutout in the riser. The deer began its stiff-legged leap even as the string rolled off her fingertips.
Snap. The string lashed the hard leather bracer on her forearm, and there was a quarter second's blurring streak through the air. Thunk.
That was the distinctive wet sound of a broadhead striking flesh. The quick-release toggle of the war cloak snapped under her fist and she cleared the viburnum in a single raking stride, ready to chase or shoot again. Starlings rose in a chittering flock from the trees around her as she moved, hundreds wheeling in perfect unison and coasting downward to new perches. She reached for a new arrow; an injured animal had to be run down and given the mercy stroke or a hunter would lose all luck, and you couldn't always count on a quick kill. This time the deer took three staggering steps and collapsed, its limbs kicking for a moment; then it stretched out its neck and went limp.
"Good!" Ritva said, wiping off her bow and sliding it into the case against the wet.
She stopped and gathered up her cloak, slid her sword through the buckled frog on her belt and slipped her buckler onto the spring-loaded clip on the sheath. The deer's eyes were blank by the time she arrived, beaded with drops of the rain that pooled like tears. Her arrow had sunk to the fletching behind the ribs on the left side, angling sharply forward and either striking the heart or severing the big veins next to it as the razor-sharp triangular head punched in. The death had been very quick; a single moment of surprise and pain, and then the dark.
"I'm sorry, brother," she murmured, glad of that.
She bent and passed a hand over the deer's eyes, and then her own; touched a finger to the blood and then to her forehead.
"Thank you for your gift of life. Speak well of me to the Guardians. Go now and play beneath the forever trees on the mountainsides of the Undying Land, where no evil comes, until you are reborn."
To the forest: "Thank you, Horned Lord, Master of the Beasts! Bring this my brother's spirit home to Her who is Mother-of-All. Witness that I take from Your bounty in need, not wantonness, knowing that for me also the Hour of the Hunter shall come, soon or late. Earth must be fed."
Then she bent and caught the deer above the hocks, heaving backwards and pumping her legs to keep it moving, and wheezing a little too; the carcass weighed as much as she did, and she wasn't a small woman. You needed a tree to gralloch a deer properly. Hanging it up by the hind legs made it drain thoroughly and it also made it easier to gut and quarter.
Also she wanted to get out of the open meadow; they hadn't seen any sign of pursuit for a while, but these alien mountains weren't the friendly confines of Mithrilwood, or even the further Cascades, where you could kindle a little fire and eat the liver fresh as was ancient hunter's right. Spit ran into her mouth at the thought; there was nothing like liver or kidneys right out of the beast, grilled on a hot twig fire with no relish but a little salt.
"If you could get a fire going in this misery," she muttered to herself.
A trickle of skin-rippling cold rain ran down inside her collar. The rest of her clothes were just damp, but they'd be wet soon if this went on. You got used to that if you spent a lot of time outdoors, but that didn't make it any fun. And it leached the heat out of your body, which meant you had to eat more.
Then her head came up beneath the shadow of the lodgepole she'd selected, and she frowned as she blew on her fingers to keep them supple; you didn't want your grip to slip when you were using a skinning knife.
What's the matter? she thought. Is it the weather?
The low clouds hid the peaks eastward, and even the glacier-polished granite upper slopes of this broad valley. And yes, it smelled like it was going to get a lot colder; maybe snow, maybe heavy snow. They were well above five thousand feet here, and it could be dangerous, even though she wasn't all that far from camp. But it wasn't that which made the skin between her shoulder blades itch.
As if absently, she whistled softly as she cut a branch for a spacer, trimmed it to points on both sides, ran those between hock and tendon, tied a rope to it and hoisted it up. There was no reply from Mary…
Uh-oh. Something is wrong!
Her senses flared out, but the rain was stronger now, a white curtain of noise, blurring sight and drowning scent. Four trees big enough to hide a man stood close by.
It was the smell that warned her, even in the damp; a sudden shift in the wind brought the scent of woodsmoke soaked into fur and leather, and the distinctive taint of wool cloth full of old dried sweat wet again with the rain. She'd just started her whirl and lunge when arms long and cable strong clamped around her from behind. The man whipped her sideways, and her wrist struck the tree trunk painfully. The knife skittered off, pinwheeling into the mass of dead leaves and fallen needles.
Ritva hunched her shoulders and threw her weight downward, but the arms gripped harder and lifted her off the ground-the man was strong as a bear, and tall as one too, and knew what he was doing. A half-dozen thin red braids wound with eagle feathers and bits of turquoise on the ends swirled around her face as they struggled. She whipped her heel backwards, and heard a grunt as the boot connected with a knee.
"Keep still, woman!" a voice grunted in her ear, harshly accented and smelling of stale breath and unscrubbed teeth. "I win badges for wrestling!"
Ritva did keep still for an instant-and then whipped her right foot back up over her own shoulder as she felt him adjust his grip. You had to be very limber to do that, but it took him a little by surprise. The toe of the boot didn't crack into his face; he'd pulled his head aside. But it did graze along his jaw, and that made the arms slacken a bit. Not enough to wrench free; they were so bear tight she was having trouble breathing, but enough so that she could get her left hand down along her sword sheath.
No point in trying to draw it, she thought. But…
Her fingers closed on the grip of her buckler. She stripped it out of the clip, swayed her hips to one side, and did her best to smash the hard, hard edge into her unknown assailant's groin. Again he was too fast, but the edge hit his hip bone instead, and even without much leverage the thump was enough to paralyze him with pain for an instant. In that instant she stamped down on the instep of one foot, and felt something yield. She was wearing laced boots, and he apparently had some sort of soft moccasin on instead.
A grunt of pain and bad breath by her face, and she wrenched herself free. The motion turned into a whirling circle-in-place, but as she turned her hand snapped down on the hilt of her sword and swept it out. The steel swung in a blurring arch of silver in the gray rain as she turned, but the man suddenly wasn't there; he'd flung himself back and pivoted in the air above the waist-high swing of the longsword, then backflipped again, hands down and then snapping upright. His tomahawk and long knife flicked into his hands.
"Ieston esgerad gweth lin!" she snarled in baffled fury that tasted like vinegar at the back of her mouth. "And then I'll stuff them down your throat!"
Nobody had a right to be that fast, except her and her sister. Well, perhaps Aunt Astrid, and Rudi, and by reputation Grand Constable d'Ath. And nobody whatsoever had any right to be able to sneak up on her that way. Nobody had, not for years.
The man grinned at her and circled; she turned on her heel, keeping the sword and the buckler up. He was tall, as tall as Rudi; lanky rather than leopard-graceful, but the crushing power of those long arms was a dreadful memory. He'd known what he was doing, too; if he hadn't been trying to subdue rather than kill she'd be dead or crippled or at least unconscious already.
Just a trace of a limp. And he doesn't look like there's any armor there, she thought.
He was wearing fringed leggings of mottled buckskin and a long woolen shirt covered in rondels of cloth sewn with images-a bow, a canoe, a horse, more-and a bearskin tunic over that. If he had a backpack or supplies, he'd cached them elsewhere.
"You are not like the women of the Prophet's men," he said.
The fighting-ax and bowie made precise, lazy circles to draw her eyes; she kept them on his, instead, and let the focus blur a little so that peripheral vision would be sharper. The white plumes of their breath puffed out into the chilly falling drizzle, slowing as they controlled the impulse to pant.
"They are sheep," he went on. "You are a she-wolf, like our Scout women, worthy of badges of merit of your own; I have followed you many days, and seen your skill. I will take you back to the Morrowlander camps northward, and you will bear strong cubs. The Prophet can go find comfort with his wooly ewes."
"Alae, nago nin, hwest yrch!" she said. "Oh, bite me, orc-breath!"
She was used to male admiration, but this was ridiculous. To herself she added: He didn't notice that there were two of us? Where is Mary?
"And-" the man began.
He attacked as his lips began to move, sweeping the hammer of his tomahawk towards her temple and flipping the bowie into a reverse grip so that the foot-long blade lay along his forearm, ready to block a cut.
Clung-tung!
Steel rang on steel as she swept the buckler around and up to knock the tomahawk aside. The impact nearly tore the little steel shield from her hand, and did send a jag of pain through her wrist and forearm, making her grit her teeth and work the fingers against the wooden grip to get the numbness out. The sheer strength was shocking, but Ritva was used to male warriors who were stronger than she was; men her height often had twenty pounds more muscle on their arms and shoulders. She wasn't used to fighting men that fast. She had to duck, because the deflection barely sent it over her head.
Ouch! she thought, and lunged, her right foot throwing up a ruck of forest duff as she extended.
The Scout was used to fighting with men who used shetes, point-heavy slashing blades with the balance thrown well forward of the hilt. He leapt backwards and landed with a grimace of surprise. A spreading red spot showed where she'd touched him, on the front of his wool shirt just above the solar plexus. She could see his eyes widen a little as he took in her sword and what it implied, thirty inches of double-edged steel starting at two thumbs' width and tapering to a murderous fang.
The shete hit hard, but once a blow was parried or missed its weight pinned the wielder's arm for an instant, and there was enough time for an agile man to get inside with shorter weapons. The Western longsword in Ritva's hand moved like light on sparkling water; it could drive at him like a spear, and cut anywhere along either side as quick as the flick of a beetle's wings.
Now he would fight to kill, for survival's sake.
"Lacho Calad!" she shrieked, and attacked. "Drego Morn!"
"Akela!" he shouted back, grinning.
Ting! The sword skidded off the blade of the bowie, and she jerked her torso back just enough that the tip of the knife scored the green leather over her mail-vest. Tack, and the return cut at the side of his leg was caught by the tough rawhide-bound ashwood shaft of the tomahawk; he tried to twist the sword out of her hand by turning the notched blade of the hand-ax against it. She leapt backwards, launching a frantic stop-thrust as her foot came down on a root…
In the end it came down to who slipped first. He skipped aside from a rush as she came in foot and hand behind the point of her sword, and the narrow head of the tomahawk came down on her left shoulder. It didn't cut through the light mail, or break the bone beneath-not quite. She gave a hiss as cold fire washed through that side of her body and the buckler slipped out of her fingers. Pivot, lunge -
Wet leaves skidded out from beneath one of the Scout's moccasins. He still fell backwards, but the point drove into his shoulder until it scored bone; she could feel the ugly jarring sensation up the blade and through the hilt. The fine steel bent and then came free again as she recovered. He threw the tomahawk, and won a few seconds when the top punched her ribs and she grunted with the impact. Then she lunged again, and the point sank four inches into his thigh.
That was enough. She recovered and retreated, right foot shuffling back to left and left moving back in turn, her mouth open as she brought her breathing back under control. Suddenly she was stiff and her legs wobbled, and she leaned forward a little to take the air in; her sight dimmed for an instant as the diamond clarity of life or death passed. Her enemy had a hand clamped to the leg wound, but blood welled around it, and the shoulder was bleeding too, and that arm was useless for now.
I'm not getting near him, he's too dangerous, she thought; her own left arm was still weak, and the shoulder was starting to really hurt where the ax had smashed flesh against bone. I'll wait until he bleeds out some more and weakens, then finish him.
The man saw it in her eyes, and nodded respect. Ritva raised her sword in salute.
"You fought well," she said, and in English. "Speak no ill of me to the Guardians; I'll make it quick."
He grinned, showing his strong yellow teeth; the face beneath the braids was turning a little gray.
"You let me live, I tell you about your sister," he said. "I give my word-honor of a Scout-I will not fight you or your people again. I go to place deep in woods, heal up."
Painfully, he brought three fingers to his brow in some sort of ritual gesture. She looked into the pain-glazed eyes and nodded.
"You're the one who's been dogging our tracks?" she said.
"You're good tracker, but I'm better!" he said, proudly boastful even then. "A Scout of thirty badges! I track you for the Prophet's men, with a priest."
"A priest?" she said.
"War-priest out of Corwin. High Seeker, they say." He spat aside. "Warlock, evil. We split up this morning when you two do-capture one, make her talk, he says. We know you all stop, make camp, hunt for food."
"Are the Cutters behind us?"
"Many days. Lost their horses, had to find more, not too many and not too good, pushed 'em too hard. Not used to nursing bad horses. We leave sign for them to follow. Go to your sister. Go now."
Ritva gave one crisp nod, toed the bowie knife over to where the man lay-he could cut bandages with that, enough to staunch the bleeding so he could get to wherever his gear was stowed-and ran.
Closer, she slowed, ghosting from tree to tree. If Mary was still up the tree watching, she'd…
Then she heard the scream. It came from the right place, and she slowed still further. Her left arm was still weak, too weak to use her bow.
Move swiftly, but don't dart; it draws the eye.
The rain had tapered off to a falling mist, but that cut visibility, too. A snort from a horse as it caught her familiar scent; their dappled Arabs were tied up to a line strung between two trees, but there was a third there-a strong nondescript brown beast, looking worn down as if by long hard riding. She ghosted closer…
Mary screamed again; she was up against the hundred-foot pine she'd been using as a blind, and a man in a robe the color of dried blood was holding her by the throat. Holding her off the ground, and squeezing, and her face was a mass of blood. The Dunedain longsword lay on the ground nearby, and a shete; they were both red, the sticky liquid turning thin and dripping away as rain washed the steel.
"Look… at… me," the man-the priest-in the robe said. "I-see-you."
His other arm ended short of a hand, and it had a rawhide tourniquet bound around it; even then Ritva found a fractional instant to be astonished. An injury like that would leave a man flat on his back with shock for days, at a minimum! And the hand was lying not far off.
"Look… at… me," he said again. "Tell… me…"
The words sounded dark. Not just deep or gravelly; as if they had more weight than words could bear, as if they were suffused somehow, like a man's face when he strained at a heavy load, like a weight that dimpled the surface of the world as a heavy footstep would a sheet of taut canvas. Suddenly the cold wet sapped at Ritva's strength with a feeling of dreary hopelessness. A wrongness that only flight could cure, enough space between her and this thing that she wouldn't have to think about it anymore. She couldn't walk towards that.
Instead she ran to him. "Try looking at me! " she screamed, gathering her will.
The sword flashed down as he turned and released her sister; he batted at the gray-silver streak with his injured arm, but the blade raked across his chest. The wound wasn't instantly deadly, but she could see the skin split and blood well out… and then stop.
And he smiled. He smiled at her.
"I-see-you," he said.
Lord of Blades, be with me! she thought desperately; and the fear blew out of her. Maiden of the sword, aid me!
She set both hands on the hilt of her longsword as he came towards her.
He's like the guy Rudi fought. He doesn't feel pain, her mind thought dispassionately. Or shock. And so he won't faint or go wobbly. Maybe he won't die right away if I stick him through the heart. No point in thrusting. And if he can get that hand on me, I'm dead. Damn slippery wet ground! But he's got to reach for me first.
He did, moving in a jerky series of motions, as if he were being operated by a puppeteer, and not a very skilled one. But the grab nearly caught her arm; he was fast.
Ritva whirled away, and she cut. The tip of his thumb caught against the point of her sword. The man looked down at it, flexing the rest of the hand, then bringing it to his mouth to bite off the mangled bit and swallow it. Then he grinned at her as red ran down his lips, mixing with the rainwater.
"Clever," he said. "You-are-too-clerver. All-of-you."
"Thiach uanui a naneth lin le hamma," she spat, and began a lunge. "You're ugly and your momma dresses you funny."
It was a feint, and the man betrayed himself with a snatch at her sword wrist, ignoring the glittering menace of the point. She cut backhanded…
It became like a fight in a nightmare; cut and back, cut and back, against a figure that would not fall, no matter what she did, that stumbled after her even when she landed a drawing slash on the belly. Once three fingers closed on her left wrist, and the shocking strength in them made the bones creak. She leapt up and drove both her feet against the man's chest and heard bone snap as she tore free and rolled away in three full back summersaults. He was there, raising a foot to stamp the life out of her; she cut at his leg, kicked again and again to pull herself free.
He tried to crawl after her even then, but the leg was hanging by a thread. His body stiffened, and he made a sudden sound-a croaking scream, and life came back into the flat stare, as if the man had been poured back into himself and was suddenly alone in his skull once more, naked before the pain of what had been done to his body. Then he went limp.
Ritva put the point of her sword into the soil, kneeling and holding on to the quillions, breath whooping in and out as she struggled not to vomit or give way. Her vision narrowed in to a dim tunnel that was muddy colored at the edges. When she could stand she went to Mary and knelt beside her. Her twin was lying curled around herself, hands across her face, making small sounds through her clenched teeth.
"Let me see it," Ritva said, pulling at her hands. "Let me see it!"
"I killed him. Then he hit me," she mumbled, and let her twin pull the hands away.
The face turned up to the rain was her own… or it had been. Now there was a slash running down from just above the nose to the left cheek, and the clear matter of the eye was mixed with the blood.
"I'll get the kit," Ritva said, swallowing.
They had some morphine left, though not much. She tried to stand and nearly collapsed herself as she put her weight on her left arm.
The bloodied hands caught at her. "I killed him. Then he hit me."
A dog barked, a wooorugh of greeting and of alarm at the scents of pain and injury. Ritva forced her eyes open, and saw Garbh dancing before her horse, fur bristling.
"Mother of God, what happened to Mary?" Ingolf's rough voice asked.
The sound took a minute to penetrate the fog of cold and exhaustion that wrapped Ritva's mind more thickly than the building snow-storm did the forest around. The Richlander caught at the bridle of her horse; Ritva swayed in the saddle, automatically tightening her grip on her sister who rode before her. The other twin's face was a mass of bandages-that helped keep her warm, too, along with the cocoon of blankets she'd rigged, and Ritva's own body heat, though she was shaking with a chill that seemed to go straight to her gut and spine and into her head.
Their campsite was hidden in a hollow, a set of dome-shaped shelters of tight-woven pine branches; the snow was starting to catch on them, turning them into white curves, and flakes hissed as they were blown sideways under the hood of the same construction that covered their fire. More slanted down out of darkness, like ribbons of white between the tall slim mountain pines. Everyone else came boiling up; some asking questions, Edain grimly silent and moving like a windup toy in the old stories. He silently unslung the quartered deer from the led horse and took it over to the hearth and set to his share of the other chores.
Ingolf lifted Mary out of her arms. Odard and Fred and Mathilda caught Ritva as she started to topple, tended to the horses, half carried her over to the largest shelter and through the low door of blankets and branches. It was warm within-warmer, at least-with rocks heated in the fire and changed as they began to cool. Father Ignatius began to unwrap the bandages around Mary's head; someone helped Ritva pull off her wet gloves and thrust a mug of hot broth into her hands, and she managed to wrap her fingers around it before it spilled. The liquid almost scorched her mouth, but she could feel every drop of it as it made its way down her gullet and into her nearly empty stomach. She'd eaten the deer's liver, raw, but nothing else in the…
"How long?" she asked, through chattering teeth.
Another mug of the broth came, and she was suddenly aware of the salty aroma of the boiled-down jerky and minced squirrel. She forced herself to sip, and help as others got her wet clothes off and herself into her sleeping bag; more of the hot rocks went into that as well, wrapped in her spare clothes. Her mind began to function again as her core temperature rose, enough to be conscious of how weary she was, and even of how the light of the lantern slung from the apex of the shelter jerked and twisted on the anxious faces around her. The pine scent was overwhelmingly strong, like a cool cloth on a fevered brow.
"You've been gone a day past when we expected," Ingolf said. "What the hell happened?"
She described it in short words, ending with: "They're not going to follow us anymore. But the warlock and the lunatic with the badges left a blazed trail to where Mary and I met them. That's only twelve, fourteen miles east. How's Rudi?"
The others remained silent, silent as the blanket-bundled form who lay on his stomach not far away. Father Ignatius said from where he worked:
"He's no worse… well, perhaps not much worse. The antibiotic cream is containing the infection, but the wound in his back in particular doesn't want to heal… of course, the conditions haven't been very good for convalescence."
His breath sucked in as he undid the last of the bandages. Everyone looked; Frederick Thurston winced and looked away almost immediately, but he was the youngest of them.
"I'll have to remove the remains of the eye, cleanse and stitch. The wound is already angry… I wouldn't have expected that, so soon and in cold weather."
Ritva blinked. "I cleaned it and packed it with the powder!"
Ignatius nodded, hands busy. Mary stirred, and gave a stifled shriek as she came aware again, then subsided into a tense shivering quiet.
"Can you hear me?" the warrior-priest said, as he swabbed her face.
Ingolf was on her other side. The cornflower-blue eye swiveled from the cleric to him, then to the rest of them, and to Ritva, and she sighed. Her hand came up, and the Easterner took it.
"I… can hear you. It's seeing you that's a problem! How come there's two of you when I've got only one eye left?" Mary said, and bared her teeth in what might have been a smile.
Ignatius nodded sober approval, took the vial of morphine from the kit, frowned a little as he saw the level, and then began filling a hypodermic. Ritva remembered bargaining for the precious painkiller in Bend, with Mary as the other half of her…
"I can't use too much of this," he said, as someone came in with a kettle of boiling water and poured it into a shallow basin; the shelter was already set up as a sickroom for Rudi. "I'm afraid there will be some pain."
"Alae, duh," Mary said.
Ritva flogged herself into wakefulness while the work went on; her sister's other hand was in hers, and the bones of Ritva's creaked under the pressure of her grip. Ingolf sat at the other. When it was over, he helped wipe away the sweat of agony.
"Feels… like nice… stitching," Mary said, timing the words to her breath to control it. "We never were… good at embroidery."
"I've used some of the numbing oil," Ignatius said. "You should sleep now, my daughter."
"Thanks," she whispered. Then her eyelid fluttered. "Guess… I can live with… one eye."
"No," Ritva said. "You'll have three, sis."
"Five," Ingolf said.
He waited until her breathing grew regular, then tucked the hands inside the sleeping bag.
"How soon can she be moved?" he asked the priest.
"Ideally… not for weeks," Ignatius said, and then shrugged wryly as he tossed the last of the soiled cloths into a bowl. "But moving her will be much less risk than moving Rudi."
Ingolf's battered face closed in like a fist. "We have to. Move 'em both. Twelve miles isn't enough, even with the storm to cover our tracks."
Unexpectedly, Frederick spoke: "I've seen reports on these mountains. From now on, the storms can come one after another for weeks. We could get stuck here. But there are caves farther up this valley. Dad used them for, uh, scouts, back when we were having problems with New Deseret."
Ingolf nodded. "We need to get farther away… a cave would be right. We'll rig two horse-travois."
Ritva let her mind drift away. I don't have anything I have to do right now, she thought. It was enough to make her smile, as the dark flowed up around her like comfort.