The Winter Road Read online

  “You seem to know a bit about what’s coming,” says Orgrif. “Will you help us set?”

  Fuck.

  I look about at this Family. I bet Steid Carlessen barely knows they exist except when his collectors come calling. They’re on their own, something Khiese’s relied on when bringing the Circle clans together against Othbutter.

  I wish for a purse I can hide behind, some orders that deny me a choice. I look at Murin’s son and the other younger duts about. I look at the mothers. They don’t have the look that speaks of a confidence I’ll take their side. Probably think that, being a woman having ruined her body with brews, what could I know about the bond of love for a child? Fuck them. Here’s why I’ll do it. It’s because I get to kill more whiteboys, and Auksen and Seikkerson clan traitors at that. Because I can’t, even after all I suffered at Khiese’s hands, bring myself to leave these people to die, and dying myself’s something I’ve been neighbours with for longer than I can remember.

  “I’ll stay, for what it’s worth. I’ll die with you rather than see you all butchered alone. These whiteboys, they start with burning your plant, killing your animals. They will try not to kill you for a while. The horns will go on for days. There’s nothing we can do until they get too close and make a mistake. It’s likely they’ll leave you without food if there’s enough of them to come in at you and do all that quickly. But they’ll leave then; they’ll just watch you, and retreat if you go out after them, pick you off as you do it. Then when you’ve lost hope and you’re starving, then they’ll come in at you. You want to stay here? I doubt any of us’ll live. I know all about your honour; I hope it keeps you warm when you’re surrounded by your dead.”

  I don’t do myself a favour with them in saying that; they’re all shouting at me, bit of spit sent my way too. They haven’t the sense to see I could kill every last one of them on my own, and I paid out (meaning I had stopped paying the price of taking fightbrews) years ago.

  “Enough!” shouts Orgrif. “We have our dead to bury. This woman is an Amondsen, a Family of the Auksen clan. Good blood. They’ve done us no wrong and she stands with us against what’s to come. She’s right to warn us, but I’m calling arms. We need mixes made; bring your plant and belts to Mell and help her make them up. Annik, Kirvotte, Grigg, bring your spades.” He turns to me then. “Stay at our hearth tonight, our guest.”

  I inventory the horses’ saddles and lead them into a shelter with the theit’s three other horses. They are good enough stock; they’d make these people some good coin in any other run of luck. I find a sword, which is welcome, for these people rely on a smith in the theit that Braidie said the whiteboys come from. I would learn we had no more than four swords between us, though many more spears and some hatchets.

  Their best fletcher was being buried so I ask Braidie to get others I can teach it to. Whole Family don’t have more than fifty or so arrows with their sniffers out.

  I help best I can with the milk churning once I’ve set some of the younger ones off to find us some good wood, and it’s a way to burn off the rest of the amony I took. I have a chance at some unguarded sleep and I don’t want to waste it trying to stone my thoughts back from the dark.

  Mell wakes me late in the evening. Theirs is a larger hut and she sits around the firepit with Orgrif and three young men who are dressed ready for the watch I proposed. They’re nokes but the best archers they have.

  “Goodnight, Teyr? I hope you slept,” says Mell. She’s ladling some broth in a pot over the fire.

  “These boys are on watch with you,” says Orgrif. “Maege, Erlif and Kirvotte. Teyr is your chief tonight. You do as she says.”

  “Can you see out of that eye?” says Erlif. He’s got a cockiness about him, making the most of being a boy, I think, for he isn’t more than thirteen or fourteen years and Maege nudges him to shush him. He’s likely to be tricky and we don’t need that tonight.

  “I can’t too well without this paste I use in it. Can you help me?” I say. Before he has time to say anything I’ve got the leather pouch from my sack and I take out a small stick. The plant in the stick needs to be melted before it’s applied, as it’s sealed in a guira gum mix to keep it fresh. I hand it to him. “You need to warm it till the end starts to run, then you’ll need to run it over my eye. Think you can do it, Erlif? Do you have a steady hand?”

  “Steadier than this pair,” he says, knocking Kirvotte’s knee. He takes the stick but I grab his wrist as he does. He’s surprised at my strength. “You have to be steady, Erlif, or you’ll blind me.” His smile’s gone and he just nods. He leans over the pit, heats up the stick and then turns back to me. Mell’s behind him, smiling; she knows I’m exaggerating the danger, though it doesn’t much surprise me that Orgrif’s still not twigged.

  “I’m going to hold my eyelids back, Erlif. Go easy, like you’re running your finger over a girl’s lips.”

  “Like he’s ever done that before,” says Maege.

  “Shut your hole.”

  He’s up close now, heel of his hand on my cheek, tongue poking out with concentration as he brings the stick to my eye. I’m glad of the help for the eye’ll get a better soak than I can manage on my own. When I woke from that pit the Oskoro put me in and found these sticks that smelled just like them, something like burned kannab and honey, I knew they must have been for the bark and whatever other wounds they’d healed. They must use this oil on their own bodies.

  I blink back the warm oil off the stick and it eases the eye a bit.

  “Good work, Erlif.” He smiles. We’ve built some trust. It’s how I was taught.

  “Maege’s cricky for you, he told me,” says Erlif.

  “No, I’m not!”

  “He is, keeps talking about how he wants a squeeze of Blackeye’s babs.”

  The boy’s head bows, I can almost feel his face flush. Orgrif laughs loudly and Mell squeezes her mouth tight against the same.

  “If you three are running the watch with me then we do it as soldiers. Reason you’ve got to help each other like Erlif’s done and Maege’s going to do is because you can’t prep for a war alone. You have to get past thinking with your cinch or your cock. Am I clear? Can you be soldiers?”

  They nod, though Kirvotte’s smirked at my mention of both. Orgrif raises his eyebrows.

  “Maege, you can do my spear wound and my arrow wound. There’s bark in them, needs washing with more of the oil comes from warming that stick.” I daren’t tell them it’s Oskoro drudhanry. No saying what they’ll then think, like it’s infectious or something. I pull my tunic off over my head, just a woollen shirt underneath. I turn my back on the boys and lift it.

  “Maege, it can be hotter for these wounds.” The bark’ll drink up that oil. I hear a murmur as he does the bark. They can see the mess I’m in, the scars, the lumps and the knots from all the beatings and brews.

  “Good work, Maege,” I say as I turn back to face him. “I’ll do the front myself.”

  He half smiles and shuffles back to sit with the others on a bench near the firepit.

  “Seen holes like that on pigs I stuck,” says Orgrif, “not ever on someone still living.”

  “In’t many drudhas up to healing this sort of damage. But while you boys have had a go at rubbing my eye and my back, I’m sorry to say it’s my turn to prep you for our watch. You heard of the luta leaf?” None in the tent have.

  “Let’s have our broth. And Mell, do you have a stick they can bite on?”

  That takes the wind out of their sails, and they look at each other nervously now. Once we’re done with the broth I take four luta leaves from a strip of alka-guira that keeps them moist, for they’re thin enough to see through, like the film from a slice of onion, and a fuck lot less pleasant to put in your eyes.

  “Who’s first? Kirvotte? Want to show the other two how it’s done?”

  “What do I have to do?”

  “You’re going to lift up each eyelid, I’m going to slip a leaf under them, onto
your eye, then you’re going to take that stick and bite down on it while you keep your eyes closed for a count of twenty.”

  He looks over at Orgrif, who has a smile appearing on his face.

  “What are you laughing at, Chief?” he says.

  “You’re braver than me.”

  “Ready?” I says.

  “Go on,” says Erlif. “This should be funny.”

  Kirvotte shakes his head, leans in towards me and lifts up his left eyelid. I press the leaf on it.

  “Quick, the other one, keep that eye shut!”

  He lifts the other lid and on goes another leaf. I push the stick in his mouth just as he starts blowing and punching the ground. I put my thumbs on his eyes and with my hands keep his head still till the pain retreats.

  He opens his eyes and instinctively grabs my arm. “On my rope it’s killing me!”

  He looks then at the other two.

  “Fuck a goat, your eyes are all different, they’ve gone a bit like hers,” says Erlif.

  “The leaf’s melted, its juice has soaked into his eye. You need to get outside, Kirvotte, it’s bright enough in here you might do them some damage.”

  He can’t stand up and leave quick enough.

  “Who’s next?” I says.

  They needed a few slaps during the first watch. Luta changes how you see the world in more ways than the obvious. Next night was more work-like; we was in trees about the perimeter of the camp but so’s we could see each other. Luta made it easy to spot even small gestures to say what might be wrong, and I taught them some signs to help tell what they were seeing while we waited. Fear give them some discipline for sure.

  My days was helping Braidie, Mell and the others with plant, and also caulking their boat for an escape, stashing a bit of food and coin in it to take off downriver, though there’d be no more room than for eight or so in it.

  Third night out the horns start their screeching and soon enough the camp’s out. Turns out some of the women are better archers than the men, and it takes some cussing and argument to ensure they get the mixes they need to do good work during an attack.

  I tell my boys in the trees to drop their brews. They are mild enough they won’t make mince out of their brains, but should at least give them a clean rise. A short while later and Kirvotte’s signing that there’s two below him. I sign him to keep his place and keep signing back what he’s seeing.

  I thought the luta might have an effect on the eye that the Oskoro changed when they healed it, but I discover it is already more potent than anything the luta can give. I see the two whiteboys passing through the trees, past Kirvotte and blowing their horns as they then come near Maege. I’d given the boys sporebags. I’d seen them used over in Farlsgrad, belet and plant heads harvested when they were heavy with spores and cut and dried inside eggshells that were gummed whole again.

  Of course, it makes no difference what instructions I’d given Annik and the others at the theit; they show themselves, shouting back at the woods and giving away their numbers and arms and readiness. Idiots.

  I watch the boys and they watch me as the night wears on. Then, there’s movement enough it’s easy for all of us to pick up on. Below Kirvotte I can see twelve whiteboys, their heads almost glowing against the more drab greens and olives that the luta turns the world into.

  He’s signing their presence and numbers to me. Then they pause among the trees at the edge of the treeline and I see one sparking up a torch, which gets passed around for each of them to put to arrows. They move out of the treeline to prepare their shots. I sign for Kirvotte to throw his eggs at them. His timing is good; they’re raising their bows to shoot, and the eggs, hitting the grass, make barely a noise. One of the whiteboys coughs and lets an arrow go, but he loses the full draw and it flies flat and hits the grass harmlessly some way from the first of the huts. A horn then goes up in the camp as they’ve seen the fire arrows lit. Maege then signs, and I see below his tree a number of whiteboys come running through. Whatever routine they’d worked was now blown off course by seeing the bowmen coughing and choking and scrambling for their masks. I sign for Maege to hold his own attack. The whiteboys run out into the clearing around the theit, waving spears and swords and shouting as they head for the fences and the runs of plant this Family would be hard pressed to lose. Annik and about five of the other men move out to face them, and about them Femke and two of the other women start loosing arrows. The whiteboys read the range well and are quick on whatever brew they’ve had. The whiteboys run in to hurl a couple of spears. Annik then gives a shout and, clearly heartened by the sight of those on their knees choking and useless, thinks this is it. I feel straight away it’s wrong, it’s too obvious. I’m on the verge of whistling them to stay back at the huts when I hear below me a twig snap. I was caught up too much in what is before me, but now I refocus, there are forty-odd whiteboys snaking their way through the trees. This is a complete fucking slaughter, and I’m dead if I make a move. I look over at my boys still in the trees and give them commands and a sign to hold.

  Sure enough, the forty below me start running across the clearing aiming to kill off what they knew would be most of the able fighting men and women of the theit. I give them about twenty yards and sign for my boys to drop out of the trees and start shooting at the whiteboys who lured out Annik and his men.

  On the ground now, I step out from the treeline and drop an egg into the pouch of a sling that Mell had given me. The whiteboys have not seen properly what happened to the archers, and with their shouting I manage to get at least three eggs away, two hitting shoulders to give them cause to stop where the eggs broke. They shout then for masks as the spores get in them. My bow’s out and I start bringing them down, one by one. I’m spotted of course but with the engagement ahead of them they’re caught in two minds. One of them barks orders—it’s in their own tongue, I don’t get—it, and about ten of them turn and run back at me. Two have shields out and move to the front. I turn and run for the huts, bringing them in range of Femke and the other archers. The luta helps me pick out the divots and roots and stones that could, in this darkness, trip me. A couple of them fall and so prove their own sight mix isn’t up to much, and it gives me some small hope that their drudha won’t have prepped them much for the poison we made up.

  The women start shooting arrows past me, one at least a bit too close, but I drop a shoulder as I see it thread a wave in the air a moment before it’s gone and has hit one of those chasing me.

  In the clearing, despite our efforts, there’s twenty or more whiteboys running at Annik’s handful. I can only hope Kirvotte and the others did as they was told and was running back through the trees on the far side of the settlement to make the numbers up among the huts. The screaming starts as axes and spears find their marks. I leap a fence into an empty pen, throw my bow and remaining arrows over towards a nearby hut, and turn and wait for them to come at me. I’m breathing too hard, but the sword feels good, the doubt’s gone and I’m squaring up to these traitors when Braidie shouts at me, starts screaming my name. The first of the whiteboys leaps clean over the fence, wild delight in his eyes, drool hanging in strings off his chin. His brew’s been badly measured and he’s gritching out, pure and ravenous for murder. I manage to get the lean on his spear and stick him in the gut. My mistake is not pushing through to finish him because two more are up on the fence and coming at me. As I knock his spear to the ground he comes forward again bare-handed. I’m meeting another spear with my sword so he’s on me in a moment. I’ve got a knife out, turn side on to slide the second spear past me as it comes in, and I kick out. As the first man gets his hands on my throat I bring the knife up through his jaw. The two with spears reposition as they’re blocked by their kin from a straight thrust, so I pull him back with me using the knife in his head, his rotten breath and hot fingers still squeezing my throat. I can’t breathe, and this fucker isn’t dying, he’s grinning. There’s a shout to my right, sounds like my boys, and they’re sh
ooting at the others who have come after me. Someone lands from the fence behind me and I’m a heartbeat from pulling the knife out of this whiteboy’s head and thrusting it behind me when Femke the archer runs past me with axe and a shield, the woman’s howling like a wolf in the Frenzy. My head begins to pound. It feels like I’m retreating from my body under his fierce grip and I find myself backed up against the opposite fence in this pen. I’ve got no choice, moments from another death, so I go for a pouch on my belt, my last eggshell full of spores. He’s opened his jaw with hoarse, watery laughter, forcing it down the knife’s blade, so I crush the egg in his mouth and pull out the knife. The spores explode around us. He’s got the worst of it and the paralysis is almost instant. I fall to my knees, coughing and retching as much from being strangled as with the spores that are finding their way through the alka-soaked rags I’m wearing for a mask. My skin’s itching and my eyes, even with the luta, are swelling.

  “Teyr!” It’s Braidie shouting at me, somewhere behind me. I reach for the fence and feel my way up and over it towards her.

  “Braidie, help me, I’m blinded. River moss with an arnica, bistort or labror tincture!”

  I’m moving towards the sound of her running, the hand that takes mine is cold and wet.

  “I have some river moss in our hut, but I’ve got Ydka and our children and there’s a bowman over the river, I can’t get these duts to the boat.” She’d read the end of this settlement as soon and as clearly as I had. “Those duts’ll only live if you go with them, you can’t die here.” My eyes feel like they’re frying now. Braidie fusses about in the bag of plant she’s carrying. For a moment my black eye trembles, I have this strange thought that it is responding to something I smell a moment later. Braidie opens my eyelids, one eye at a time, I can hear her chewing and she spits onto my eyeballs whatever mix it is I smell, the scent of labror in there a welcome hint I might see again shortly. I hear footsteps running up behind her, a child out of breath.

  “Na Braidie!” says a boy. “Someone’s shooting at us down by the boat. I can’t find Crettie, Na, I can’t find her!”