Spiritwalker 3: Cold Steel (32 page)

Looking at his bare hands on the oars made me want to weep. Cold had dug its claws
all the way to my heart. Strangely, the bitter air and cold spray off the sea had
no effect on him. If anything, he seemed invigorated. “I c-c-can try, but I haven’t
before.”

“Then not in these conditions, love.”

The rocking and tipping of the rowboat was beginning to make me feel queasy. “Can’t
you make a wind to blow us?”

“You don’t want wind out on the open water in a rowboat. Anyway, it’s not like that.
Wind can’t be confined or channeled. I can shift masses of air and freeze rain in
the clouds so it falls as sleet or hail…” He glanced past me, eyes widening.

More wedges of ice shook free from the ice shelf. Mist sprayed. The sound of their
crashing fall rolled over the channel. A swell rose under us, then a second and a
third. He swore in a low voice. I huddled in the wet coat. It would be easier just
to go to sleep.

“I didn’t mean that to happen, and I’m not sure what just did.” He
frowned at me as if I had said something to offend him. “Talk to me, Catherine. Tell
me about your father.”

Fury shook me awake. “I never want to speak of him again!”

“I don’t mean the one who sired you. I meant your father. Daniel Hassi Barahal. The
one whose portrait is in your locket. Did you see your father on the beach?”

My father
.

Words emerged, although I scarcely knew what I meant to say. “They had just come down
from the ice shelf. They were fighting wolves. There was a dead man all bloody. I
think his name was Gaius. The Baltic Ice Expedition ended in disaster. Most of the
explorers died on the ice, but some survived. Most of the other attempts to explore
the ice have ended with the expeditions vanishing forever. I wonder if they accidentally
cross into the spirit world and get eaten there. Probably it was just wolves who caught
them.”

“Are you suggesting this boat is left over from the Baltic Ice Expedition?” he asked
in the calmest voice imaginable, although he looked annoyed and stern in that way
he had when he was overcome by a strong emotion. “Tell me about that, Catherine. Keep
talking.”

If there was one thing I was good at, it was talking. So I kept talking, even if I
stumbled and lost my train of thought. He persisted in asking questions, prodded and
poked in a verbal sort of way since obviously because he was rowing the entire time
he could not actually poke and prod me, although I had a vague memory that I ought
to wish he ought to be able to, but that was a long time ago and anyway it was so
very cold and my body ached so much and I was so very tired that eventually I lapsed
into silence.

We bumped up on a shore in the lee of a tiny inlet. Ice rimed the shallow water where
a stream burbled through a tumble of rocks. A blanket of snow carpeted the hollows,
but the wind had swept most of the land clean. There were no trees and little vegetation,
only lichen and moss. In the sheltered lee of forgotten boulders and clefts in the
earth, waxy-leafed plants spread, laced with frost. Nothing stirred, not even birds
a-wing.

Pull up the boat. Turn it over and stow the oars. Fill the bottles with stream water.
Walk. Walk. Walk.

I did what he told me to do, as a goblin’s automaton obeys. Was
that how the coachman functioned? Was the coachman truly of a goblin’s making, or
was that just a story he had told me? Would I ever find out?

There was no wood or we would have stopped to make a fire, even though Vai would have
had to leave me. By following the stream, he found an animal trail that he tracked
like a hunter.

We rounded a boulder to find ourselves face-to-face with a huge woolly rhinoceros.
Its twinned horns dipped as it gave a growling snort. A muzzy instinct woke in the
pit of my stomach that the creature could trample and gore us. Vai placed himself
between me and the animal. He spoke words I did not know in a cadence whose rhythms
sailed past, as if he was politely greeting the beast. It snorted as in answer. As
Vai eased us past, it silently watched us go.

For an eternity we walked. Once we ran across a fire pit ringed with stone, sheltered
on the lee side of a slope, but there was nothing to burn except straggling patches
of gorse, so he decided we should go on.

It was just so hard to put one foot in front of the other because I kept staggering
off the path and catching myself at the last moment on the point of my cane. An idea
grew in my head, a very compelling idea that I ought to have thought of long before.

“I would be warmer if I took off these wet clothes,” I said.

He was striding up a slope amid winter-whitened grasses and hardy sedge. The thought
of trudging after him up such a brutal incline made my legs congeal, so I stopped
moving and fumbled at the coat.

He ran back to me. “No! Absolutely not, Catherine.” He kept talking as he dragged
me along. “Do you see the prints? There have been hunters or trappers here. The track
leads to a place people go. There’s likely a sheltered spot where they camp.”

He broke off as we reached the top of the slope. I really wanted to find a small hole
to crawl into. Instead I looked up.

The land ended at a flat shoreline. Beyond it silver waters spread like a mirror.
The distant haze of the far shore melted into the encroaching dusk. Maybe there were
trees on the other side, but I couldn’t be sure. The near shore was dusted with snow,
so the whole land radiated a white sheen. A wide stream was crackled over with a skin
of ice. Someone had built a crude wooden pier where the stream flowed into the wide
water. Just inland from the pier stood a shed, and next to it
huddled a small log house with a sod roof. A rowboat had been tipped onto its side
under the low eaves of the hut.

He thought it was a good idea to go down. I slogged along, steered by his grip. My
sword flared as he shaped bulbs of cold fire. A door gave way to a narrow entry hall
with a stall for animals, where he dumped our gear. Inside a second door lay a bench
and table and a bed tucked into an alcove with cupboards built in beneath. The hearth
was empty but for a large kettle and roasting spit. The room was cold, windowless,
and dark, with barely enough room to turn around in.

While he explored, I drifted, reflexively setting my cane and the basket on the table.
Hadn’t I been carrying a pack before? I couldn’t remember how he had come to have
it. Fortunately I was no longer cold. His exclamation roused me. He was pulling skins
and furs from the cupboards beneath the bed.

“This is a hunters’ refuge. A place men can take shelter if they’re caught out in
bad weather. There’s bound to be a village within a few days’ travel. My village keeps
the same sort of shelters.” He glanced at me. “Catherine, now you must take off your
wet clothes.”

My fingers were too numb to unfasten buttons.

He undressed me, dried me roughly, and wrapped me up on the bed in the furs. Then
he went outside with the kettle, brought it back full, and laid wood onto the hearth
although obviously he could not light it. Our wet clothes and gear he spread over
the table and bench.

He stripped and got in with me. His skin was so warm that after a while I began to
hurt all over. Chafing my hands, my cheeks, my legs, he talked a stream of words that
I did not fully understand except that I loved to hear him speak. I began to shiver,
and at length the shivering subsided as a frail glow of warmth took root in my frozen
heart.

Blessed Tanit! We had escaped the spirit world! We were going to live!

As I relaxed, so did he, and I slid into a sleep without dreams.

I opened my eyes to darkness. A night breeze whistled in the chimney, but nothing
else stirred. The air was wintry cold except where we were bundled warmly together,
skin to skin. I lay for a while, wondering about him. He had rowed and tramped for
miles in wet clothes after being half drowned in the icy sea, just as I had. In all
the time I’d known him he had never seemed particularly affected by cold. Hadn’t he
once told me that magic fed him? I had thought it a figure of speech but now I wondered
if it was true in a strange and secret way.

He shifted but did not wake as his hand settled on my hip.
I had him back
.

My spirit exulted, and I was surprised at how amorous I felt. However, my throat was
raw, my mouth tasted like a stew of brine and bile, and I wanted a bath. I was ravenously
hungry and still tired, and well aware of how desperately we needed drink, food, and
dry clothes. And then?

Then I must have fallen asleep, because I woke up as he moved, rubbing his head.

“I feel I’ve been hit by a hammer,” he muttered hoarsely. “My muscles ache, and I’m
a little dizzy.”

He swung out of the bed. The shutters were closed, but I knew it must be day because
my sword was a cane. As he shaped a globe of cold fire, the sword flared to life.
I admired his backside as he stretched and then walked to the table to touch the clothes.

He winced. “Ah! Cold and clammy!”

“You’re a lot of trouble, Vai. I could have had a fire roaring all night.”

“I’ll keep you as warm as you could ever hope to be,” he said with a provocative look.
“But not right now, love. I’m sure this headache comes from thirst and hunger. You
must be starving.”

I tested the puffy, tender bruise where I’d bitten myself. “I’m so worried about Bee
and Rory. We’ve got to get to Havery. The family won’t protect her from mages, princes,
or generals, not if they’re offered an advantageous agreement in exchange for her
person. Bee thinks she can scold powerful men into obeying her but that only makes
them want her more… Noble Ba’al, Vai!”

I told him about Amadou Barry.

He whistled, shivering as he dressed in the damp clothes. “Washed away in the tide!
What a fool! Anyway, we can’t go on until we’ve dried our clothes. You must light
a fire. I’m going to see what’s in the shed. Maybe there’s something I can use to
snare a rabbit or catch a fish.”

“You could stun some poor unsuspecting beast with your magic, couldn’t you?”

He kissed me on the forehead. “I already have.”

Clearly I hadn’t yet recovered from yesterday’s travail, because my mind had barely
managed to trudge past several bland retorts before he returned to inform me that
he was headed out to hunt and there was meanwhile a treasure-house of provisions in
the shed. Then he was gone.

I gasped as I set my feet on the packed earth floor. The cold seared right through
my skin. I ached all over, but I knew that would fade. With a blanket sewn of lusciously
soft beaver pelts wrapped around me, I got the fire going and the kettle heating.
The bench shoved right up against the brick of the hearth helped the clothes dry more
quickly. Wool steamed, its scent rising. The worn cotton cloth I had stolen on Salt
Island fluttered as the fire roared.

Shivering in wet wool, I ventured out of the hut and ransacked the shed. Right inside
the door I found a large tin tub and a pair of wooden buckets. From the evidence of
the frames and troughs, I supposed the hut and shed to be a haven where winter trappers
and hunters could deal with their kills. Since the winter pelts of animals were thickest,
it made sense that winter was the best time to hunt and trap for furs, and if villagers
came there every winter, they likely stocked it late in
the autumn. Crocks and baskets sat on frames out of the reach of rats. Parsnips! Barley!
Lentils and broad beans! Nuts in the shell, already dried! Withered bunches of dried
nettle and hoarhound hung from the central beams. Dried vetch for animal fodder was
bundled in sheaves. When I discovered a stoppered jar of linseed oil, I almost wept.

Would the villagers who used this hut consider us thieves? It didn’t matter. Our canoe
had hit the sand. We simply could go no farther right now.

Quite some time later I had barleynut-cakes baking on the bricks, a pottage of parsnips,
lentils, and barley simmering, and a pleasing tisane of nettle and hoarhound at brew.
I made a place for the cacica’s skull at the back of the table, against the wall,
and set before her a slice of parsnip garnished with a drop of the tisane. After this
offering, I drank the first infusion of the tisane to soothe my raw throat and gobbled
down two bowls of soup.

Eating and drinking improved my mood and constitution immeasurably. I sorted out all
our gear to repair later. It seemed prudent to carefully test the sheaths to make
sure they hadn’t cracked from the cold, and to rub them with a little oil; if one
was careful, perhaps they could be reused. I pinned up my braid and bathed using the
lavender soap we had taken from our old home. Afterward, I washed out my filthy clothes,
dumped the dirty water, and combed out my hair. The cotton from Expedition dried quickly,
so I dressed in my bodice and a wrapped skirt. The tub was half filled with steaming
water for Vai, and more was heating.

I was contemplating a rock-hard slab of dried whitefish when the fire flickered. With
a disgruntled sigh the flames went out on a puff of ash.

I pulled on my boots and dashed outside. It took me a moment to spot him trudging
along the shoreline with three dead grouse slung on a line. He was farther away than
I would have expected, until I saw what trailed behind him.

A mage House troop of turbaned riders pursued him. They wore gray wool winter coats
cut for riding, and their heads were wrapped in bright green turbans. The horses picked
their way over the uneven ground. My heart pounded as I cursed under my breath, rage
and frustration exploding. How had the mansa found us so quickly?

I counted forty men before I noticed Vai glance over his shoulder to measure the distance
between them and him. A lance that had been nothing more than a long spear with a
wicked steel point unfurled a banner marked with the four phases of the moon, the
sigil of Four Moons House.