Across the Face of the World (42 page)

'Get his clothes off!' Leader shouted. 'Quickly!' As Wira fumbled to obey, the Fodhram leader set off up the slope to get the others. 'We need a fire! And warm clothes, and a blanket!'

By this time the others had arrived. Scar-face fished the fur bale out of the pool.

Waterproofed, it had suffered no harm. Brisk hands dried the naked youth and reclothed him, while others started a fire.

'Keep rubbing his arms and legs,' Leader said. 'He'll be in pain when the feeling returns.'

'We'll go no further today,' Kurr said, and the Fodhram leader nodded.

'Just as well you noticed him missing,' Shabby said. 'Wouldn't have lasted much longer.

Funny thing though, sometimes they last longer in the water than out of it. Kind of slows them down, if you know what I mean. We found old Toothless once at the bottom of a lake.

Been missing for an hour or more. Cold and dead he was! But we heated him up just the same, and he came back to life. With a bit more grumblin' and complainin' than this lad, mind you!' He laughed at his recollections.

As the preparations for the evening meal went on around him, Leith gradually came to himself. Words spoken to him came to his mind: 'Before tomorrow is through you will be soaked to the skin,' the Hermit had said. 'Only you; none of the others. 1 feel sorry for you -

you'll get very cold.' The first sign. There was another to come - what had been said? He could not make his sluggish brain remember. It didn't matter. Leith was already a believer.

Within an hour of rising the next morning, the Company came to the Kljufa River, near its headwaters hardly any larger than the many streams that drained into it. Taller stared across the frozen water. 'We're in luck. Last night's wind seems to have blown the snow off the river ice. Makes for easier travelling.'

Carefully they guided the sleds out on to the ice. The frigid floor stretched away ahead of them, bright and clean in the morning sun, a smooth platform framed by tree-lined hills. 'It's not really a river, either,' Leader added. 'The Fodhram say that Withwestwa is so beautiful a land that the rivers themselves rush from beauty to beauty, lingering there; thus creating strings of lakes connected by rapids.'

And so it proved. Lake followed lake, long and narrow, fed by rapids that in late winter were crumpled ice over rock. Only the largest of them made any noise, murmuring quietly as water flowed deep under the ice. Their journey was a succession of swift marches across lake ice, interspersed with slow clambering around rapids and ice-bound waterfalls; and as the coastlanders walked through the snowgrey lands a transformation took place within them.

Their senses were sharpened; as one who is imprisoned in darkness learns to hear and smell and touch afresh, and then eventually even to see, so the Firanese began to look past the sameness of the forest and to hear and smell and touch the beauty of Withwestwa Wood. By day's end they were entranced, none more so than Farr.

'So that's the tamarack, and there's a jack pine - no, two -three jack pines. And over there a hillside of white spruce.' Farr shook his head in wonder. 'So much more variety than we have back home!'

'There are many trees you have yet to see,' the Fodhram leader said, pleased with his pupil.

'Come back here in the autumn and you'll see the paper birch and the aspen, their leaves golden in the sun. Stay until the spring and smell the muskeg, watch the marigold flower and the juneberry bloom, and hear the loon's cry over the lakes, the thrush and the nuthatch in the trees. And, if you're fortunate and favoured by the forest, you might meet the beaver or the bear.'

'This wood is light somehow, still and clear and timeless. Our forests are nothing like this,'

Farr said. 'They are all dark and heavy.'

'Perhaps you have not seen them with the eyes of love,' Leader responded.

'1 belong here,' the Vinkullen man said with certainty. 'I wish to be a man of these woods.'

Wira came up behind him. 'Don't forget your revenge, my brother,' he whispered mockingly.

'How are you feeling, boy?' The old farmer walked beside Leith, both of them shouldering a bale easily with the aid of a tumpline. It was the same gruff voice, Leith reflected, but the farmer was not the man who had left Loulea, bowed with age and broken with grief. Far from draining him, the long trek from the North Marches of Firanes had somehow infused the old farmer with strength. His stick had been abandoned weeks ago, somewhere between Vale and vidda. Leith no longer feared him.

'I'm well, thank you,' Leith answered politely.

'Good! For a while yesterday I thought we'd lost you. Whatever possessed you to take a swim at this time of the year?'

Leith opened his mouth to reply, then remembered what he had been thinking about when he had tripped over the tree root. Stella and Wira, Wira and his drinking problem. On top of this came the memory of the words of the Hermit: 'Within two days you will have the opportunity to tell someone your secret.'

'The rest of you were walking so fast I got hot and tired,' he replied. 'I forgot to take my bale off before I dived in.' Leith decided to make the prophecy work for its fulfilment. Why should he blurt out his secret just because he had been told he would?

'Is that so?' Kurr laughed. There was something in this boy, something out of the ordinary, something worthwhile that waited to emerge. But there was some blockage that kept it in and kept others out. If only 1 were young again, Kurr sighed, training the Watchers like 1 used to.

I could do something with this lad.

'Tell me,' Kurr said, 'have you noticed anything strange about the Storrsen brothers?'

Oh no, thought Leith. 'Strange? Like what?'

'I'm not sure. But there's something going on between them, of that there can be little doubt.'

'Perhaps Farr is jealous of Wira and Stella,' Leith said ingenu¬ously.

'Maybe that's it. Certainly Farr is worried about his brother. Let me know if you find anything out, won't you.'

'Of course.'

It wasn't until Kurr had left him that Leith thought more care¬fully about what the Hermit had said. You fool, he thought. He didn't say you would actually tell someone; only that you would get the opportunity to tell someone. He shook his head.

'All right,' he said aloud. 'You win.'

Their path wound slowly just north of eastward, following a maze of lakes, streams and rapids. Without their guides, the Company would never have found their way through the hills and valleys, bluffs and dead ends that made up the vast Withwestwa Wood. Even with their guides and the best of the late winter weather, they made slow progress.

'Faster than the Bhrudwans, at least,' Kurr reassured them. 'That far south, the thaw will have begun.'

Spring was indeed painting the southern margins of Withwestwa Wood with rich hues. Snow turned to slush as the sun regained her power and banished Qali to the northern marches. Ice rotted in the lakes, dripped down from waterfalls, fell in shards from trees and cracked disconcertingly underfoot. Snow dropped from trees in huge clumps. As it fell on lower branches, many great limbs collapsed under the weight. Trails turned to mud as the world melted. The woodsmen and their families, long experienced in this most difficult time of the year, kept to their huts and waited for the thaw to conclude.

But the Bhrudwans could not wait. They had made good progress along the Westway, finding ample food and shelter in the abun¬dance offered by Withwestwa Wood. This came to an abrupt end when the thaw came. Their untrained eyes, more used to the desert than the wood, did not read the danger signs: the thinning of the ice along the riverbanks, the melting and refreezing of the snow cover, the warmer winds and, above all else, the return of sound to the silent forest.

Mahnum noticed the change. Even in their desperate plight he was heartened by the turn of the season, as though the spring brought new hope. He felt less alone as the birds started singing and the streams began to babble in the forest. Occasionally during those wearisome days he had taken the chance to whisper a few words of encouragement to Indrett, words snatched as they came together during the day or when he dared during the long, dark nights.

Invariably she would nod and smile wanly; she was nearing the end of her strength. The flesh had fallen from her, eaten away by the rigours of the road and the privations forced on them by their captors. Mahnum wept to see it. How he wished the Bhrudwans did not keep them apart. How he wished he had something, anything, he could tell them about this 'Right Hand'.

He would have done anything to halt the slow, lingering decline of his dear Indrett. He suspected that the Bhrudwans realised this, and withheld food from her in order to make him talk. But he remained silent, not knowing what they wanted him to say.

The forest around them was no longer silent. While the humans retreated indoors, the animals emerged. Mahnum saw moose, deer and many smaller creatures. All struggled in the bog-like condi¬tions.

Previously they had made fifteen or twenty miles a day; now their progress could sometimes be measured in yards. On two occa¬sions Mahnum was sure they did not move out of sight of their previous night's camp during a whole day's travel. The mud was terrible. It bit at their ankles and clung to their legs. Any straying from the trail only made matters worse, as the forest was full of quagmires into which the unwary would sink to their knees or their waist. It took half an hour to free the Bhrudwan leader one afternoon, after frustration had led him to try his luck away from the flooded trail. None of this improved his temper, and he regu¬larly struck his captives, but Mahnum could no longer be hurt by their blows.

Instead he thought about what he had seen at the bridge in the mountains. With their swords and their bare hands, fuelled by white-hot rage at the death of their fellow warrior, they had dismantled the arch over the Kljufa River. Watching the power of their anger destroying the old stone landmark, he could not imagine anything hurting these efficient killing machines.

Yet one of them had vanished, having met with a mishap somewhere near the Maelstrom.

The bridge destroyed, they had waited in the shadows. To his astonishment, figures unmistakable to his eye had come into view across the river. Surely that was the fool of a headman! And here came Kurr! Then he shouted with joy. There were his sons, Hal and Leith. Both alive, both well. Hope rose again in the Trader's breast.

Beside him Indrett had begun to sob with joy. They had thought their boys dead, burned in the fire started by the Bhrudwans. Mahnum put his finger to his lips; best not to give the Bhrudwans any idea that their sons were still alive. Indrett nodded, but a fire had been lit in her eyes.

So there was rescue on the way. If only they came before Indrett gave out! How much longer could she survive this treatment? At least they were travelling slowly now. Perhaps she would recover.

It was now well into the fourth week since they had left the Hermit's cave, and still the Company made slow but steady progress. Their path had turned due east and was now at its northernmost point, but even here the signs of the approaching thaw were visible to the trained eye. They had to be careful when they ventured out on the ice, which had worn thin in places. The Fodhram expertly avoided the rotten ice, invisible to the coastlanders but deadly should they blunder across it. As the ice and snow melted, the Fodhram drove forward with increased urgency.

Shabby pointed to the riverbank, where a telltale black line spoke of thinning ice. In places the ice had broken away and tilted high in the air. 'We have a few days at the most,' he said.

'Perhaps we will have to travel at night.' But that night there was no moon, and a warm breeze blew from the south.

'How far is Midrun?' Kurr asked as they sat around the fire. 'Will we make it in time?'

The plan was to get to Midrun, a small shelter beside a lake at the halfway point of the Southern Run, before the thaw reached its peak. There they could wait out the worst of the conditions and, when the rivers cleared of ice, they could launch the birch bark canoes stored there and make quick time downriver. Leader estimated that the run would take about three weeks from Midrun to Vindstrop House.

'We need to make Midrun tomorrow or it could take us a week. The thaw is hovering just over the horizon, waiting to pounce.'

Kurr grunted in reply.

The next day they climbed up a steep ridge and reached a high plateau devoid of trees. This was the watershed between the Kljufa River system and the Mossbank River, known to locals as the Fenbeck, itself a tributary of the Sagon, the river which drained much of northern Treika. Here on the watershed the south wind did not penetrate, and the snow was still firm.

All morning the Company pressed forward, manhandling the sleds over the ice and crusty snow, with two or even three pushing each sled in spite of the bales on their backs.

Just before midday they reached the far end of the high plateau, and looked out over the northern reaches of Withwestwa Wood. Ahead the ground sloped down to more snow'shrouded trees, with icy lakes glinting in the sun. But to the south the trees were green and the snow absent. The thaw was upon them.

They dared not pause for the noon meal, instead hustling down the side of the hill, trying to beat the sun. The world changed all about them; where previously the greys of winter had dominated, now splashes of green and yellow challenged the grip of Qali. Cinnamon ferns unfolded, spotted amongst the gentle blue of hare¬bells and the fiery russet of dogwood. Here and there pussy willows glinted with silver. The unrelenting south wind, the Snoweater, seemed to strip the trees of their white cloak, and beneath their feet the trail turned to water.

All afternoon the travellers battled the thaw. The bales came off the sleds and were distributed on to the backs of the Company, as the runners bit into the slush and mud. All around them spring hummed and sang, but the travellers sweated and groaned as they made their way down past streams that had shaken off their icy shackles. As the waters celebrated by chattering to each other, they came up against ice that had not yet melted and banked up, spreading out behind the temporary dams and flooding low-lying areas. A precious hour was wasted as the Company tried to find a way past one such lake.