Across the Face of the World (32 page)

'My fear for you is that you will not survive long on the vidda. These moors are no place for underworlders. They are too big for small souls like yours. The snow will eat you within three days.'

Kurr glanced at the Haufuth, and spoke softly out of the corner of his mouth. 'He's right, you know.'

'The snow will also eat your enemies. You could choose to go back to your homes, knowing that they have perished in the qali snow of the vidda. But because your people are their prisoners, you will continue on to your deaths. No matter. How strangers fare on the vidda is not normally the concern of the Fenni.

'But these men, your enemies, they have killed Fenni. They have captured Fenni. They have dared to assault a Fenni outpost on the edge of their winter homeland. We wish to look upon the dead bodies of our enemies. Then the spirits of our dead will be able to rest in peace.

'And there is the matter of the stars. It is beyond the wisdom of the Fenni to know what the stars are saying, for it is not to us they speak. But we would not be responsible for thwarting their plans by failing to give you aid.

'So we suggest a bargain between us. Give us your horses. They will be an encumbrance to you on the snows, and cannot be ridden hard until springmelt. Horses are highly prized among the Fenni. We will become the only Fenni outpost south of Myrvidda to have horses.

'In return, we will give you an urus, aurochs in your tongue. This beast can travel even in winter, and will bear a greater burden than all of your horses together could. We will give snowshoes to each of you, and as I have said, we have supplied you with enough provisions to get to the Rotten Lands beyond the mountains, should you need to go that far.

'One further thing we would ask. We wish one of our men to travel with you. Let him look upon the dead faces of those who dared to kill Fenni. Then let him return home with the news that will ease our hearts. He will be your guide across the vidda. Look after him well, for without him you are lost. Now, what is your response?'

Kurr and the Haufuth turned to each other with broad smiles wreathing their faces. 'It's everything we could have hoped for,' the Haufuth stated.

'So the enemy is undone by his own violence,' Kurr responded. 'Without their assault on the Fenni, we could not have crossed Breidhan Moor.'

Farr spoke, anger rippling through his voice. 'I don't like it. Vinkullen men at the mercy of some Fenni guide? We need no guide! Take their aurochs, take their food, take their snowshoes by all means, but do not suffer being led by such as them!'

'That settles it, then,' Kurr hissed. 'If you force me to choose between you and the Fenni, then I choose the Fenni, notwith¬standing your valiant defence of the Company in the Valley of Respite. We accept their offer or we return home unavenged. What is it to be?'

'We accept,' said the Haufuth. The others concurred, even Wira, who was favoured by a venomous glance from his older brother.

The Haufuth stood up. 'Let the enemies of the Bhrudwan riders join together in their pursuit!'

he declared. When this was trans¬lated, the clan chief smiled, then lifted his staff into the air in acknowledgement of the agreement.

Perdu grinned his relief. 'I am to be your guide,' he said. 'I will go with you as far as the mountains if necessary, though I doubt we will need to travel that far to find these murderers.'

At this Wira relaxed visibly, as did his brother. 'Oh,' he said, 'you are to be our guide? Why didn't you tell us?' But Perdu did not answer.

'What about your family?' Stella asked. 'Are you still banished? Will they come with us?'

'They cannot come with us,' Perdu replied. 'My boys are not old enough to face the vidda yet without the protection of the clan. And I am still outcast, for a year and a day or until I return with the cloak and sword of one of our enemies, whichever comes the soonest. The priest will look after my family while I am gone. He is a good man. Nothing will happen to them.'

Perdu's voice carried more hope than certainty, and his eyes were rimmed with sadness.

The aurochs was presented to the Company with a small cere-mony. From what Leith could understand, they were being accorded a great honour. Never before, Perdu said, had the pride of the Fenni been given to underworlders. Leith looked in awe at the beast. A grey-brown colour, it stood at least six feet high at the shoulder, with forward-pointing horns that gave it a fearsome aspect. It lowered its head and swished its tail upon hearing that it had new owners.

'His name is Wisent,' Perdu told them, unable to keep the wonder out of his voice. 'He is the clan chiefs own urus, the strongest and most cunning of his breed. His value is beyond guessing. But the clan chief loved Ostval, one of the dead, like a son. Thus he favours you.'

The Haufuth bowed to the clan chief, who returned the gesture with a nod.

Equipped with snowshoes and fully laden with provisions, the Company was ready to travel.

As they were about to leave, the young woman Leith recognised as the wife of Perdu came running down into the valley, tears in her eyes. She was followed by two small boys, upset because their mother was crying. The woman embraced her husband, then stood before him, head bowed. Perdu said something to her, but she was not consoled.

She approached the Company with a jar full of a black substance, then smeared some on the face of Perdu, making a black mark under each of his eyes. Then she made to do the same for the Haufuth, but stopped, puzzled, when he drew back.

Perdu laughed. 'Have you never seen mot? The Fenni wear it whenever they make a long journey in the snow. It protects your eyes from the blindness of Qali.'

'What blindness is this?' Wira asked.

'You have been on the moors a few days now,' Perdu replied. 'Do any of you have pain in your eyes?'

One after another the Company nodded.

'That is the blindness of Qali. The longer you stay on the vidda, the worse it gets. Fenni who do not wear the mot end up blind. Please, let Haldemar put mot on your faces.' So, one by one, the Company allowed the woman to spread the sticky black lotion under their eyes. Only Farr resisted, backing away and waving his hand in angry refusal.

'So be it,' Perdu sighed. 'I hope the days are cloudy, for your sake.'

All was now ready for their departure. Perdu gave Wisent a slap on the rump and the huge beast ambled slowly off, his wife hoofs making hardly a dent in the icy snow. The Company followed Perdu and the aurochs, walking along the defile, away from the white-robed figure of the clan chief and his red-garbed priest. Haldemar and her children walked with them for a while, then stopped and bade them farewell.

They turned a corner, climbed a slope and made their way up to the brow of a low hill, covering in a few minutes the same distance that the previous day had taken them a whole morning. Farr looked ahead at Perdu, who obviously struggled with leaving his family, then whispered to his brother: 'I hope he turns out better than our last guide!' Stella, who with the Haufuth brought up the rear of the Company, marvelled at the two brothers. How can the one be so hateful, and the other be so - so interesting?

From the crest of the hill Breidhan Moor extended in every direction, a featureless expanse of snow-covered rolling hills. Even The Brethren, the mountains that the Company had seen on the previous day, were nowhere to be seen. Again the sky was cloud¬less, the day numbingly cold, the snow offensively bright. Leith was glad of the mot, though he was unsure how it would protect him. Was it just a superstition, like all that talk about the stars? I'll soon know, he thought grimly. Surely the Bhrudwans cannot be far ahead!

MAELSTROM

THE TRAVELLERS SOON NOTICED that Perdu was not leading them in a straight line.

Instead, they zig-zagged every few hundred yards, as though they were looking for something. 'I am trying to find the tracks of the Bhrudwans,' their guide explained. 'The clan chief believes they went this way after they attacked— ah, here they are!' he cried. 'Now we have them. Let us ask Qali to with¬hold his snow for a few days!'

It was a simple matter for the travellers to follow the raised tracks. Even Leith could have done so unaided. What was much more difficult was trying to work out where they were heading. For everyone except Perdu, who knew the secrets of the moor¬lands, the sun was their only guide. Apparently they were headed east, approximating the path of the Westway buried under feet of snow. During the afternoon huge clouds built up to their left and threatened them for a while, but they were blown away by a warm wind that sprang up from the south.

'I hope this wind does not last,' Perdu muttered. 'The Snoweater will render travel impossible.

It is a spring wind; it should not be on the moors at this time of year.'

And soon after, as if in answer to his petition, the wind died down. By nightfall the air was calm and the sky cloudless.

'Right, we are going to have this out here and now,' the Haufuth declared. 'I will not lead a divided Company. Either you cousins patch up your differences, or I will be forced to send one of you away.'

'And I know which one it should be,' Kurr whispered to no one, but loud enough for everyone to hear.

The Company sat around a small fire, set in front of a surpris¬ingly large tent that had been an unexpected gift from the Fenni clan chief. Perdu and Farr sat on opposite sides of the flames, staring at each other with anger in their eyes. The Haufuth stood near Farr, arms folded across his chest.

It was Farr who stood and took up the challenge. 'Very well, then. I've made my feelings clear on the subject of the losian, yet no one seems to listen. But it's not just my own personal feelings that are important here. We're chasing four Bhrudwans across the moors, and what are Bhrudwans if they are not enemies of true Falthans and of the Most High? Is not what we are doing a mission from the Most High Himself? And if it is, we must keep ourselves pure, uncontaminated by those who turned their backs on the Most High in the Vale! My fear is that if we associate with the losian, or with those who have been in contact with them, we will lose our purity and will no longer be of use to the Most High. Can you not see it? Am I the only true believer amongst us? I say that my cousin needs to repent of his life with the losian, to reject his half-breed family and consecrate himself a First Man once again. Or, if he will not, he should leave us and return to his losian friends.'

'What sort of religion is that?' Perdu cried, standing and staring at his cousin across the fire.

'Not the sort of religion we were taught as children! Yes, we are the First Men. Yes, we have suppos¬edly been chosen by the Most High as His special people. But what of forgiveness?

What of tolerance?'

'Yes, what of it?' Farr shouted back. 'Would you have preached tolerance to the Falthans enslaved by the Destroyer during the Bhrudwan occupation a thousand years ago? Would you have begged the First Men to forgive their oppressors? If you had, you would have been executed as a traitor, and rightly so!'

'Since when have you been religious, anyway?' Perdu countered.

'You never used the name of the Most High as a child, except to blaspheme. Are you sure your religion is not just a cloak for your own petty hatred and fear?'

'Fear? I fear no man! The enemies of the Most High are my enemies also, and my brother and I will hunt them down. And if the blessing and the mandate of the Most High is written in the stars, then I will take that mandate and hunt down all the enemies of the Most High, whether they live in huts or caves or even tents, and I will destroy them!' The threat could not have been more obvious and Farr leapt to his feet, readying himself for a fight.

Suddenly, without seeming to move quickly, Hal stood in their midst. 'Close your eyes for a moment,' he said, addressing the Company. 'Imagine that you are back in the tent of the Fenni clan chief. Take a look around you. There's a mother with her child suckling at her breast.

Beside her a young man readies a spear for tomorrow's hunt. A man and a woman clear away food. The clan chief looks around the tent, his heart filled with happiness and pride at the competence of his people. Look closely. What do you see? Do you see animals - or do you see people?' The intensity of his gaze forced each of the travellers to consider the imaginary scene he had painted for them.

'Animals or people?' Hal repeated, drawing the travellers back into his gaze.

'People,' said the Haufuth, eager to settle things down.

'People,' agreed Stella.

'They are people,' Leith stated.

One by one the others agreed, except for Farr, who would not look directly at the crippled youth.

'Then treat them as kinsmen, just as they have treated you,' Hal said. 'Otherwise, by your conduct, you acknowledge them as more human than you are, and all discussions about the First Men and the losian are moot.'

Perdu looked gratefully at the crippled youth. 'What is your name?' he asked. Hal told him.

'Are your parents in the hands of the Bhrudwans?' Hal nodded.

'Then I have another reason to desire success in our pursuit.'

The Fenni man smiled warmly. 'If they are as true-hearted as their son, they will be well worth rescuing.'

The following days were a severe strain on the Company. Though they were well clad, certainly wearing much thicker clothing than their hardy guide, they felt warm only in the evenings when they huddled together around the fire. Their feet ached, their eyes ached and their hearts began to ache as day followed day and the tracks continued ahead of them, with no sign of their foe. The weather held fine and clear, and the Company walked in the stillness of a world that seemed empty of life save their own. Not a single animal could be seen: no birds, no deer, no life on four feet or two feet. Just the pale blue sky, the blinding snow, and the endless tracks.

'Does nothing live on the moor?' the Haufuth asked Perdu after a midday meal. 'Surely some animal must live here in the summer? Where do they go when the snows come?'

Perdu answered the headman by leading him over to a nearby bush, actually a stunted fir which had grown no higher than his knee. 'Look,' he said, pointing to a hole in the snow.