Then it let itself be seen, and the bow dropped from her fingers. A hand fumbled at swordhilt, but it was strengthless, Distantly, she was aware of how her sphincter loosened and fouled her. A dim mewing came from her lips. Then there was nothing.
Maihu woke early and eased herself out from under Shkai'ra's arm. It was hours before the tardy winter dawn; snow hissed at the covering of the sled, driven by winds strong enough to set it swaying on its springs of horn and wood. But she recalled what the Kommanza had told her of the rule for commanders: last to bed and first to rise. The travel sled was her own, as long and broad-bodied as a three-horse hitch could draw; trade and travel went more briskly in winter, when the crops were in and snow made smooth roads of tracks that would be bone-breaking ruts and bottomless mud in the warm season. The roof was leather stretched across wooden hoops, thickly padded to keep out the cold and lined with bright rugs. The floor held blankets, pillows, and furs; heat came from a tiny ceramic stove, light from an alcohol lantern hung from the center hoop; the ends were laced tight against the chill. It was an oasis of warmth and light in the vast white-black emptiness around them; Shkai'ra had been quite taken with it, for her people had no such luxury.
The stove could cook as well as heat. She crawled over to it and fed in more charcoal, fuming up the air intake. Water and milled grain had been heating slowly on top overnight; she added maple syrup and nuts to the wheat porridge as it bubbled. She sliced strips of bacon off a slab and set them to grill, then split a small, only slightly stale loaf of bread and hung it above to toast. The smells began to fill the sled. Work done, she sank back against the curved wall of the sled and watched Shkai'ra as she slept. As usual, the Kommanza lay on her face; the fur had slipped back to her waist, and Dh'ingun was curled up on the small of her back, just above the smooth hard curve of the buttocks. Sleeping, her face lost the trace of cold wariness that never left it waking, even at the height of pleasure. The relaxation took years off her age; her mouth had opened slightly, and she nuzzled her cheek into the long soft wool of the blanket.
Gray eyes flickered open; Maihu felt Shkai'ra's mind spiraling up from the long slow rhythms of sleep. Even with shields clamped down, to one who had the Inner Eye there was a spillover, when you spent so much time in a person's company. Shkai'ra reached out to touch the hilt of her saber, then pushed the cat off her back. They both yawned and stretched, so much alike that Maihu was surprised into a laugh. Shkai'ra looked, saw the resemblance, and let warmth trickle into her eyes. She stretched, arching her back and curling fingers and toes with pleasure.
The cat stalked over and rumbled, patting at Maihu's knee for emphasis. The Minztan poured him a cup of the milk; he crouched, sniffed dubiously, and began to lap, purring absentmindedly as she scratched behind the nightblack ears.
"We are alike, Dh'ingun and I," Shkai'ra said, stretching out a long arm for a bowl of the same milk. She sipped, then looked up in surprise. "What did you put in this stuff?" she asked.
"Sugar, vanilla, a little cinnamon."
"Not bad," Shkai'ra said, tossing off the rest of the heated drink. She propped her shoulders against the side of the sled. "Glitch! I could've sworn we were settling in for a stretch of clear cold when I turned in…"
She looked sidelong at the Minztan. "Shaman says your folk are dogging our track, that they've got a
weatherworker with them, bringing the snow down on us."
"The porridge is ready, Chiefkin," Maihu said, tensing.
She spooned out a bowl, then flipped the backbacon onto the buttered bread, added some pickled tomatoes, and closed it to make a sandwich. Shkai'ra ate with noisy relish, belched, wiped her mouth on the back of her hand and her hands on the blanket.
"
Nia
," she said easily. "That wizard, she'll learn it takes more than a little bad weather to stop a Granfor warband on its way home."
Maihu relaxed, and winced at the grease stains on the wool. This would all be easier, she thought, if only they weren't
so filthy
.
"Feed yourself when I've gone," the Kommanza said. "It'll be another hour before we break trail, and I wouldn't want you to go into a decline for want of eating, not when it turns out you can
cook
along with everything else."
She braced the soles of her feet together, pressed the knees down on the furs, and touched her chin to her heels.
"That's easier than it would have been if I'd been under the stars in a skinbag," she said, beginning a series of exercises. Dh'ingun flopped down beside her, waiting patiently for her to finish before rolling onto his back. She began rubbing him absently.
"Cat's the only creature under sky that can look dignified while having its stomach scratched," she said, and sighed. "It's a pity I'll have to give this up once we're back home; it makes a winter journey a real pleasure. But the killers would think me soft and useless did I keep it. Perhaps one of the Valley traders will give a price for it, and then a bag in the open will have to content me."
"Well, I hadn't noticed it made me less hardy, Chiefkin," Maihu said. "And I slept out often enough on hunting trips without feeling weakened."
"Yes, but who owns who?" Shkai'ra replied, beginning to pull on her clothes.
"Why do you Kommanza cultivate hardship, though?" the Minztan asked with genuine curiosity. She doubted that they did it to improve their souls by ordeal, as some Enlightened Ones of her own people did.
Shkai'ra opened her mouth to answer, thought, frowned, and paused. "Saaaaa… I don't really know," she answered at length. "It's the custom." That would have been enough for most of her folk; still she continued: "The Sayings of the Ancestors tell that it makes us brave and fearless, but"
—
she licked her fingers clean
—
"slaves and nomads live even rougher, and I don't notice it helps them. I think it's
.
.
.
indirect. We haven't the skills of hand and eye that you forest-dwellers do, but we'd have to waste time better spent on training for war to gain them; better to do without."
Now that, Maihu thought, is almost perceptive in a perverse sort of way. Concentrate on war, so you can take what you cannot make, because you concentrate on war, so you can… A stubborn sense of justice made her add: but they do need to fight more often than we, with the other enemies they have. Or is it just that they make enemies of anyone they can reach?
Shkai'ra pulled her tunic on, and mused through the wool: "It just seized me that learning about the way your folk think gives me a new way to look at my own people."
She frowned: the thought was not altogether welcome. Knowledge was power, and power was always good. The Words of the Gods and the Ancestors were
clear on that.
But something gave her a feeling of vague disquiet, as if the ground were moving under her feet. "Come, give me a hand with the armor. You've a better touch than that cowhanded stripling."
A little later: "No, that lacing has to be
tight
. Use both hands and brace yourself with your feet. Good, smithing's given you a fine set of arm muscles."
Smearing fresh protective grease over her face, she loosened the lacings on the front flap and looked out. A blast of icy wind swirling with granular crystalline snow flooded in.
"Black as Glitch's arse," she muttered. "Zoweitz take it, how're we going to make speed through this?" She glanced back. Maihu had wrapped herself, in a blanket patterned in blue and yellow, against the cold. Suddenly, Shkai'ra put an arm around her neck, pulled her close, and kissed her on the mouth; it was firm and possessive but without desire.
For a moment their faces were close. "Now, I wonder why I did that?" Shkai'ra muttered in Kommanzanu. She pulled away and shook her head in puzzlement as she rolled out of the sled to join the waiting officers.
Maihu closed the flap and knelt for a moment in silence.
I
wonder too
, she thought.
The commanders crouched in the lee of the sled, helmets almost touching and voices loud to carry over the wind. In the dim light, Shkai'ra looked around the circle of faces and felt an interior chill that had nothing to do with the gusts driving fingers of cold through the joints of her armor. There was no open show of emotion; that would take a disaster of monumental proportions. There was merely an additional coldness, a remote, detached withdrawal from the moment, more ominous than shouts or tears might have been among other folk.
"Zaik with you," she said. "Report. What's wrong? Enemy action?"
"Yes, Chiefkin. That is, one of my scouts disappeared from the mesh last night." The officer glanced aside, flakes driving in to lie almost invisible against the ash blond of his brows before they melted slowly. False dawn was making the eastern sky a blur against the darkness. "About two hours ago, just before this accursed-of-Zaik storm started up again."
"Disappeared?" Shkai'ra said, her voice soft and
dangerous. "How does a scout
'disappear' from the middle of a mesh?"
"Chiefkin," the Bannerleader began helplessly, "she—I got a short-signal that there was a gap in the relay, then cross-connected through the inner link and called for a close-in.
We swept—"
He offered a helmet. The straps had burst, and the noseguard was hanging loose by one rivet. It had been ripped away, and the padding inside was slick with hard-frozen blood.
"This was all we found. No body. The horse had bolted. Just this and her bow and one arrow in a tree."
Shkai'ra glanced up from beneath lowered brows.
"No tracks?" she asked.
"Just the mount. It threw her and then ran. Fast and far, from the trace. No human tracks around the blood, except the scout's."
"
Animal
tracks, then?"
The officer let his eyes slide away from his commander's once more. "Yes… it might have been bear, Chiefkin, but—"
Shkai'ra held up the helmet. "A
bear
did this?" she said. Her voice was normal, even easy, but the Bannerleader went rigid. "And at this time of year?"
The shaman stirred. Shkai'ra quelled him with a single savage jerk of her head that sent him back to his patient crouch. She leaned across to the officer and spread her fingers at eye level, then drew them down into a fist.
"Your Ancestors are ashamed!" she said coldly.
The officer went chalk-pale, then bowed his head and grunted: "The Chiefkin wishes." It was a deadly insult, but there was no excuse for failure. And a commander was always responsible for subordinates.
"Your Banner does double duty from now on, watch-and-watch, until I say otherwise.
Perhaps they can learn to be more alert. Dismissed! Zailo shield you," she added formally.
"Zaik lead you, Chiefkin," came the reply.
"Not you, Warmaster. Stay. You too, spook-pusher."
Turning, she spent a full minute staring out over the camp, into swirling blackness that lifted now and then as gusts blew spaces in the storm. And she saw it clearly, with the eyes of the mind. They had halted out on the ice in the middle of the river, to put the most distance between them and the threatening forest. A circle of sleds marked the center, with the slaves penned within. Around it were grouped the off-duty Banners, their fires in neat rows on log frameworks that kept them clear of the ice; each squad had its own, marked by a wigwam of stacked lances. The troopers slept around their fires, feet to the flames and weapons to hand. Most slept in their armor; it was warmer, and they could jackknife their way out of the bags ready to fight in an instant. Their favorite horses were staked out nearby, without the saddles that served the riders as pillows, but with their saddleblankets on.
The fires showed as dim red glows through the snow. She could imagine them moving about; they would be waking now, the squadleaders would see to that. Rolling their gear and heaving saddles onto their mounts' backs, gulping a quick breakfast. The air was very cold, and smelled of pine and smoke, of dung, and of blood sausage grilling over the fires. Shouts and stampings were growing louder through the long surging roar of the wind in the branches. The remount herd milled about, the Minztan cattle lowed for their feed and barns, the slaves were rousing to kicks and curses and blows from the buckle ends of belts. Everything was normal. Shkai'ra felt the creeping-spine sensation of worry, a tension she knew would stay and grow. A gloss of unreality covered the homelike scene.
"No bear did this," she said, tapping the helmet.
The nasal bar was a broad strip of steel, ridged below, and flat where it swept down flush with the surface of the helm from crest to rim, serrated like a saw-edge on the sides. Four rivets held it in place, hammered home red-hot and then plunged in cold water to shrink on and hold the metal almost as strongly as a weld. From the state of the padding and the chinstraps she would have thought that…
something
had gripped the noseguard in its… hand and torn the helmet loose. Most of the luckless warrior's face and scalp had come with it. She would have thought that, if it had been possible. A tiger or bear would have enough strength, but they had no
hands
.
"No human
wh'uaitzin
one of our killers that fast, without wounding, then got away so quickly. And carrying the body, Chiefkin," Eh'rik said.
"
Ahi-a
, the woodsrats are good at skulking."
"Chiefkin,
nothing
is that good. Nothing natural." He shivered.
"
Zaik-uz
, don't talk like that!" she snapped.
He was the steadiest of them. This was going to wreak havoc with morale.
Zoweitzhum,
it's affecting
my
morale already
! She watched the youths harnessing the sled teams, and having trouble with them as the drafthorses backed and snorted at having their muzzles faced into the snow-laden sting of the wind.
She turned to the spellsinger and bared her teeth. "You're supposed to guard us from witchy peril." The fingers of her gauntlet scraped clotted snow from her scarf. "And you can't even stop the woods wizard from dumping this shit on us!"