Binabik nodded. “Of course I am remembering. And also what the great Sitha lady Amerasu told you—that you were perhaps one closer to the Road of Dreams than others. Has it changed in the years we have been apart?”
Simon shook his head. “Not truly. Sometimes it is less, but in the weeks before our son John Josua got ill, I dreamed of Pryrates every night. Miri can tell you.”
“No, I can’t. I don’t want to remember.” Sometimes it seemed like that terrible loss was everywhere around her, barely hidden, and to poke at anything, no matter how seemingly innocuous, was to risk revealing it. A moment before, she had been thinking of a thousand other things, but now it was back, the pain nearly as fresh as the moment they had lost their only child. “But yes,” she said when she had composed herself, “Simon had terrible dreams in those days. Terrible.”
“Once I dreamed that Pryrates was a cat, and that John Josua was a mouse, but he didn’t know . . .”
“Enough!” said Miriamele, far more harshly than she had intended. When the two of them looked at her in surprise, she could only wave her hand. “I’m sorry, but I can’t bear to hear it again.”
Binabik frowned in sympathy. “I do not think the whole story must be told again, but I do have more questions for asking. Should I take your husband somewhere else to speak with him?”
“No. I’m well. If it’s important I want to know too. Go ahead.” She was a queen, she reminded herself—the queen. She would not hide from mere emotion, no matter how terrible its source or painful its visitation.
“Was it during a single night that this stopping happened, Simon?” Binabik asked him. “Or is it something that only later came to your notice?”
He thought about it. “When did I tell you about it? The night Sludig and his wife came, wasn’t it? What saints’ day was that?” He frowned and pulled on his beard. “Saint Vultinia, wasn’t it?”
Binabik smiled. “I fear I do not know the Aedonite saints so well, except that they are many and their statue faces are mostly frowning.”
“Can’t blame them for that, with what happened to most of ’em,” Simon said. “Lillia had a book her other grandfather gave her. Vultinia, yes, that was it—that one stuck with me. The Imperator’s soldiers cut off all her fingers but she said she could still feel God’s presence—isn’t that right, Miri?”
Miriamele shuddered. “If you say so. It’s a horrid book to give a child. Why are you asking about such a thing?”
“So I can know what day it was that I noticed about my dreams. St. Vultinia’s Day is the third day of Avrel.” He turned back to Binabik. “That means it must have been the end of Marris when I last had a dream I can remember. I went to bed late one night—the night of Isgrimnur’s funeral, I guess it was—and had a very strange one. There was a black horse in a field, and it was foaling. But the foal wouldn’t come out, and it was struggling, almost as though it was fighting not to be born. I don’t know what it could signify.” He shook his head, remembering. “And the black mare was screaming, screaming, and it was so terrible I woke up in a sweat. Do you remember, Miri?”
She shrugged. “I did not sleep well the night of Isgrimnur’s funeral, either. That’s all I remember.”
“In any case,” Simon said, “when I laid my head down again, I fell at once back into sleep, but it was like falling down a dark hole. Dark, dark, dark—but no dreams. And I swear I haven’t dreamed since.”
This sort of talk made Miriamele anxious. “Perhaps as you said, you simply don’t remember them, Simon. Sometimes I don’t remember my dreams either until someone mentions something that reminds me.”
He shook his head emphatically. “No. This is different.”
Binabik reached into his tunic and brought out a leather bag. “The last night of Marris-month. You call that Fools’ Night, do you not?”
“That’s right.” Simon smiled. “I remember thinking during the funeral that good old Isgrimnur would have enjoyed a proper All Fools’ celebration better, with drunken priests and masks and whatnot.”
“Isgrimnur was indeed a man for merrymaking and loud singing. But I think Fools’ Night is for more than merriment.” Binabik was pouring the contents of the leather bag into his hands, a pile of small, polished bones. “In the mountains we are having something much like it at the leaving of winter, a moment of changing fortune. My master Ookekuq called it so-hiq nammu ya—a ‘night of thin ice’. When the walls between this world and others are more easily crossed.”
Simon was staring at the troll’s knuckle bones with a mixture of fascination and concern. “I haven’t seen those in a long time. I thought maybe you’d stopped using them.”
“Stopped casting the bones? No. I have been teaching their use to Little Snenneq of late, though, and I do not like to tire them.”
Miriamele almost smiled at the idea of tiring out a little pile of bones. “I always wondered about those,” she admitted, “ever since I first met you in the forest. Whose bones are they?”
Binabik gave her a stern look. “Mine, of course.” He turned to Simon. “Do you mind if I am casting them for you? Losing your way to the Road of Dreams is seeming strange to me, and on such a night of thin ice, even more.”
Simon shook his head. “No. Of course not.”
Binabik rolled the clicking bones in his hand and chanted quietly to himself, then crouched and spilled them from his palm onto the stone flags. He stared at them for long moments, then scooped them up and threw again. After he had thrown and considered for a third time, he looked up. “It is a strange casting, that is all I can say now, without much thought. First it was Black Crevice, then Slippery Snow. Now for the last I see Unexpected Visitor, which we also call No Shadow. All are signs of deceit and confusion.”
“What does that mean?” Simon asked.
“Who can be saying without thought?” Binabik carefully picked up the tiny, yellowed shapes and returned them to the leather sack. He spoke a few more whispered words over it, then tucked it into his tunic. “I must consider. I will think of all that my wise master Ookekuq taught me. Unexpected Visitor I have not been seeing for many, many years. It is puzzling to me.” He stood, levering himself up with a grunt and a brief grimace. Miri, who could remember when the troll had been as swift and spry as a squirrel—when they all had been so nimble—felt a moment’s sadness. “I will also be at considering if there is something useful to be done for this not-dreaming that afflicts you, friend Simon.”
“I’m not sure it’s a kindness to give him back his bad dreams,” Miri said.
“But in the days of the Storm King’s War, there were things we could have been learning from Simon’s dreams,” Binabik told her. “Important things. Can we afford being ignorant now?”
“Not if ignorance is a risk to our people,” Simon said. “They are what matters.”
Binabik reached up and squeezed Miri’s hand. “I was teasing you before,” he said. “Just a small teasing. The knucklebones belong to me, but they are not from a person. They are the ankle bones of sheep.” He showed her his familiar yellow smile. “Do you forgive my joking, queen and friend Miriamele?”
“Oh, without doubt,” she told him, but the talk of Simon’s bad dreams had not made a disturbing day any less so.
17
White Hand
Lord, I beseech You, make my arm strong and my aim true that I may smite Your enemies.
He killed the first one easily enough, putting his arrow through the Hikeda’ya’s throat from a hundred paces downwind. By the time the white-clad figure crumpled to the snow Jarnulf was already gliding toward his second spot, keeping the wind in his face. He knew there would be a second scout, and a trained Sacrifice would be calculating the direction of the arrow even before reaching his comrade’s body.
Jarnulf had already planned the site for his next shot and reached it in a few swift steps. The second of the No
rns appeared below him, moving close to the uneven, white-drifted ground, eyes little more than black lines as he scanned the spot Jarnulf had just left. Thirty feet further up the rise, Jarnulf stood behind a row of aspens and drew his bow again. Even that tiny movement caught the Hikeda’ya’s eye; Jarnulf had to hurry his shot because his target was already nocking an arrow. His shaft flew a little lower than he’d planned and caught his target in the belly, which might well kill him, but not quickly. The Norn spun and fell to his knees, then found the strength to scramble behind a mound of snow. From there he would only have a short distance to get into the cover of the forest.
Jarnulf cursed his clumsiness, then immediately regretted taking the Ransomer’s name in vain even in the midst of peril. He knew he could not wait to see if the second scout was badly injured: if the creature had the strength to escape, he might make his way back to a larger body of Hikeda’ya, then Jarnulf himself would become the hunted one. But neither could he go straight after the wounded Sacrifice soldier, because if he lost the wind his victim would scent him coming and the wounded one still had a bow. Even badly wounded, the Hikeda’ya would only need one shot to end Jarnulf’s career of vengeance against the immortals.
When he reached the next high place with a downward view, Jarnulf saw with relief that the injured Sacrifice was still crouching behind the sheltering hummock. Blood from his stomach wound was staining the snow around him . . . but not fast enough. The angle for a shot was bad, so instead of taking it and perhaps driving his enemy to cover, Jarnulf began a stealthy approach down the steep hillside. The rocks were slippery and there were points where he was completely exposed to a shot from below, but no shot came.
At the last, still some ten cubits above the valley floor, Jarnulf spotted the wounded one’s legs behind the hummock. He could continue to circle down, but with the wind shifting direction he would spend long moments upwind and exposed, his scent blowing straight toward his enemy; it would simply be a matter of which of them got off the best shot. Jarnulf did not like the idea of trading arrows with even a wounded Hikeda’ya soldier. Instead, he moved to the edge of a stone outcropping, then dropped to the snowy ground below, only a short distance from the wounded Norn.
The snow was softer and deeper than he’d expected; instead of being able to land and leap forward, Jarnulf found himself floundering in a thigh-deep drift. He used his bow to help himself clamber out, but the scout had already heard him and turned, blood flecking his mouth and chin, red splashed over white like some kind of crude mask. Jarnulf didn’t dare give the enemy time to lift his bow, but flung himself forward without even trying to draw his sword, instead pulling his long dagger as he half ran, half stumbled across slippery, snow-covered rocks to throw himself on his enemy.
For a moment it seemed he had succeeded: he struck the injured Hikeda’ya with his shoulder and his enemy’s bow and nocked arrow danced uselessly away. But the Sacrifice was well trained and fast despite his wounds, and he had a blade of his own.
For long, near-silent moments they rolled across the snow, locked in an embrace as tight as any lovers’, until Jarnulf managed to drive his blade up under his enemy’s ribs close to the arrow wound. The stab did not kill the creature outright, but the blow was deep; now it was only a matter of time. His enemy’s grip grew weaker. As he defended himself from Jarnulf’s thrusts, his movements grew slower, heavier. At last, with blood spattered for several arm-spans on all sides, the Hikeda’ya scout slipped into a kind of moving half-sleep. Jarnulf wrestled him onto his back and thrust the long, thin blade through his eye and into his brain.
For a while he could only lay atop his enemy’s body, gasping. Struggling hand-to-hand with even a wounded Sacrifice was like wrestling a large serpent, and all Jarnulf’s muscles were trembling. He took deep breaths, fighting to get air back into his lungs, and if he had not heard a noise behind him between inhalation and exhalation, he would have died.
He only had time to roll to one side as the third Sacrifice leaped toward him; the spear-thrust meant to kill him went instead into the lifeless body of the dead Sacrifice. In a fury of self-disgust at having assumed there were only two soldiers on this wide patrol, Jarnulf grabbed at the spear and held on so it could not be withdrawn for another thrust. The Hikeda’ya leaned back, trying to pull the spear free, which gave Jarnulf an instant of safety. His enemy was too far back for him to strike at a vital organ, but close enough that he could stab down through the Sacrifice’s booted foot. In the split-instant that the pale creature gasped (but did not scream—the Hikeda’ya were controlled even in agony) Jarnulf managed to reach the dead scout’s bow. He swung it as hard as he could and shattered it across his attacker’s face. As the white-clad soldier tried to shield his head from another blow, Jarnulf threw himself at him, pieces of the broken bow clutched in each hand, the bowstring still attached.
He managed to loop the bowstring over the Hikeda’ya’s head, then let his momentum carry him past; a moment later he was behind his enemy, tightening the cord with all the strength he could muster, shoving his knee into the Hikeda’ya’s back to keep the clawing fingers away from his head. The creature bloodied the backs of Jarnulf’s hands with his nails as he struggled, but the bowstring had been made in Nakkiga and was nearly unbreakable, and Jarnulf outweighed his enemy. Despite the Hikeda’ya’s probably greater strength, all Jarnulf had to do now was hold on.
It still took a long time—a horribly long time—but at last the white-skinned creature stopped struggling. Even so, Jarnulf held the cord tight until he could no longer keep his arms up, then let go and collapsed onto the snow beside the corpse. If there was a fourth Sacrifice nearby, Jarnulf knew he would soon be a dead man.
But there was no fourth member of the scouting party. Aching, scraped, wearier than he had been in weeks, Jarnulf staggered onto his feet to finish his sacred task, of which killing was only the first act. Corpses by themselves were meaningless. The fear—the fear was what mattered.
He dragged the three bodies to the trunk of a pine tree and set them against it. Next he took a palm full of blood from the gut-stabbed Norn, put his other hand down against the snow, and blew on the blood until it flew in spatters over his spread fingers. When he lifted it again, the clear outline of a white hand lay on the snow, limned in red blood, then he kneeled to pray.
“I dedicate the bodies of our enemies to you, O God. May they learn to fear Your wrath.”
But unlike in earlier days, when he had finished he did not feel exultant or even satisfied. The sight of the dead Sacrifice scouts unsettled him in a way it hadn’t before, the emptiness of their dark, dead eyes seeming to mirror his own hollowness. How could he simply go on doing what he had done for so many years when the corpse-giant’s words had changed everything? If Queen Utuk’ku was awake and the Hikeda’ya were preparing for war, they were nothing like the spent force he had imagined and all his killing had accomplished nothing. Nothing but death and more death.
Jarnulf knew he could not linger near the bodies. He found his bow and retrieved his arrows. He cleaned his boots of blood so as not to make tracking too easy for any enemies that might be nearby, then climbed on shaking legs back up into the trees that crowned the hill. When he was well hidden from the spot where the dead Sacrifices lay motionless beneath the cold sky, Jarnulf fell to his knees, pressed together hands still tinctured with the blood of so-called immortals, and sent up another prayer, this one silent.
Father, my dear Father, wherever you are, in Heaven with the saints or a captive suffering in the enemy’s dark stronghold, help me see my way.
And Almighty God, my other and truest Father, in the name of Your blessed Son Usires Aedon, my Ransomer, tell me what You would have your servant do. What good to punish mere slaves when their mistress the White Witch of Nakkiga still lives? I fear I have lost my way. Tell me what You require of me. Let Your servant know Your will.
He stood, but kept his head bowed
for long moments.
I ask only this—send me a sign, O Lord. Send me a sign.
“You, Blackbird.” Makho wiped a smear of grease from his chin and pointed to the white hares lying on the ground like a pile of blood-flecked snow. “Give those that remain to the giant.”
Nezeru took up a brace in each hand. She counted herself lucky that she had been allowed a few handfuls of cooked meat herself, and wondered if Makho would have fed her at all if he did not think she was growing a child inside her. She was becoming used to the lowly role the Hand Chieftain had given her, not that she had any choice: it was clear Makho would have much rather left her at Bitter Moon Castle.
But it is better to be patient than to be noticed, Nezeru reminded herself. It was one of her father Viyeki’s favorite sayings, although he himself was not always as retiring as he liked to pretend. But just now, when she was shamed, outranked, and with leagues between her and her family and clan, it seemed like good advice.
She crunched across the uneven snow toward the spot where the off-white bulk of the giant sat like a small mountain. As always, she stopped out of the creature’s reach, then tossed the two strings of hares so that they landed near him. The great gray and white head lifted, and Nezeru froze in place despite herself. The wide nostrils flared.
“Ah.” The giant’s voice rumbled like a tunnel collapse in deep Nakkiga. “So Goh Gam Gar will not starve tonight.” A leathery hand so brown it was nearly black reached out and enveloped the hares as though they were furry pea pods. “Sit and talk as I eat,” he growled. His voice made her bones quiver. “Or are you feared of old Gar?”