* * *
“You’re going,” Iarofina said this quietly, as a statement more than question, her dark eyes on the sword in her mother’s lap.
“Someone must. It should have been me before.” Ysabon stretched, working out the kinks. “You and Irosenna must take the children into the village, I’m sure Dirni would take you in for the night. Ialnor can tell his story to the council. If the garrison hasn’t come by tomorrow, someone else will need to try.”
“So we keep sending people out, while we wait and fear?” Ialnor’s voice was heavy with sleep but strong.
Ysabon turned and gripped her sword. Ialnor’s eyes widened as he saw the newly oiled leather and polished pommel in her hands. “I’m going. I should have gone before. Someone must.”
He licked chapped lips and looked for a moment as though he’d mock her for her earlier fear. But then his chin dropped and he finished up the lacing on his shirt.
“Fine, aunt. I’ll go with you.”
“You’ll…” Not, she started to say but pressed her mouth tight over the words. His eyes still held the ghosts of his fear and failure. Ysabon knew that nothing would ease those shadows save action. “Eat,” she said instead. “We’ll need to leave soon.”
Iarofina followed her into her room and watched with crossed arms as Ysabon changed into her dead brother’s trousers.
“If you don’t return?” she said finally. “What then becomes of us?”
“Irosenna’s husband will return in the spring. And you can run the forge near as well as Ially. You won’t starve.” Ysabon placed her hands on her daughter’s strong shoulders. “If we can’t rouse the garrison, we could all be slaughtered, the bodies rotting until spring. The hunting pack won’t stop until it’s driven off or killed, not with pickings as good as the farms can give them. And how long before they get hungry or bored enough to try Westedge proper?”
Tears brightened Iarofina’s eyes and she sniffed hard, leaning her forehead in to touch her mother’s. “Then let me go in your place. What good is the sword compared with strong, young legs?”
“If we’re caught as Ialnor was before, this sword and an experienced mind might stop them long enough for one of us to escape and warn the garrison.”
Cheek to cheek they stood for a moment, swaying in the doorway. Finally Iarofina straightened up, though Ysabon was loath to let her arms fall away from her warm, solid daughter.
“Then I wish you good luck, mama, and I’ll pray to the gods you have no need of swords this day.”
Irosenna pressed her mouth into a hard line when told the plan but she said nothing and accepted a farewell embrace from both her cousin and her mother. Ysabon and she clung to each other a little longer than they might have another day and Ysabon held back the tears that started to form and freeze on her cheeks in the hard, cold morning light.
She strapped the sword to her waist and pressed out with her skis, letting Ialnor close the gate and catch up. They pulled their furred collars up high and skied in silence. Her muscles warmed and loosened and soon the repetitive motion of press and glide lulled Ysabon into a half-aware state.
Steel grey clouds gathered as morning wore on and by the time they’d reached the crossroads a light snow began to fall. There were no birds out and the world still held its eerie breath. Only her heartbeat, Ialnor’s breathing, and the shush of skis broke the oppressive silence around them.
Ysabon nearly skied right past the dark shape curled against the small copse of birch that marked the crossroads leading off to Belmere and the river. A harsh cough startled her and she cried out to Ialnor, who’d skied a handful of paces ahead.
Her sword was half clear of the scabbard before she realized the shape was a man, and that man, judging by the auburn shock of hair, was Weyth.
Ysabon’s heart leapt into her throat as she maneuvered and dropped down beside him. His pale eyes blinked rapidly and his cracked lips smiled.
“Weyth?” she said, half believing him to be a snow dream. “Are you alive, old friend?”
Weyth tried to speak and grimaced, working his mouth around as though it wouldn’t quite respond how he wanted.
Ialnor dropped down beside her, pulling a flask from a pouch at his waist. They tipped the brandywine to Weyth’s lips and he swallowed two mouthfuls before lifting his arms and pushing the flask away.
“Ialnor,” Weyth said, his voice thin but audible. “The others?”
Ialnor shook his head. “I saw Costric fall, I think.”
“His sons went for him,” Weyth said and struggled to sit upright. “My leg got hit, I can’t feel it anymore. I went as far as I could.”
Ysabon checked his legs as Ialnor helped him sit up. His left thigh had a gash in it that was deep but not bleeding. “You packed it with snow?” she asked, though she could see the wet red evidence of this.
“Thought it might help the bleeding.”
“It saved your life,” she replied. “Can you stand?”
“Maybe with help,” Weyth said. “I got my skis off, they’re somewhere nearby, as is my bow. Buried under the snow by now.”
Ialnor found the skis and bow by checking the lumps in the freshly fallen snow around the crossroads. Blinking thick white flakes out of their eyelashes, she and Ialnor helped the injured man to his feet and got his skis back on. Ialnor slung the bow and quiver over his own shoulders and they moved out.
Stopping had broken Ysabon’s rhythm and her legs started to stiffen. The going was far slower with the injured man propped between them shortening the pressing off strokes of the skis and Ysabon’s thighs and knees protested the strain. But Weyth wouldn’t survive another night in the cold and she was damned if she would leave him behind.
The snow mercifully stopped falling but the day grew late before they came upon the last set of low hills before the land dropped away to the river again where it widened at the ford. The day was dying and Ysabon’s strength was going with it. She nearly dropped Weyth as they hit the downhill slope to the ford, only Ialnor’s quick and strong grip keeping them all upright.
“We’ll have to remove our skis to cross,” she said, eyeing the boulders rimed with frost crystals. The river here was wide but no more than ankle deep and the worst of the stones had been cleared out in a path for horses long ago. Debris from the storm clogged the edges, slippery logs and branches outlined with thick clear ice. It was a relief to lean on a rock near the edge for a moment as she removed her skis.
“I’ll carry you across, Weyth,” Ialnor said. His face was pale with exhaustion as well and the grim determination in his eyes mirrored her own thoughts.
Weyth only nodded and sat heavily on a flattish chunk of river stone. Blood had started to seep from his leg again and Ysabon shoved her gloved hands into the snow, grabbing up handfuls to repack the wound.
A high keening cry broke the hurried silence of the afternoon. Clicking followed and Weyth stiffened beneath Ysabon’s hands as Ialnor cried out in fear.
“Widowhulks,” Ysabon said, half question, half fear.
“They must’ve found our trail on the other side of the hill.”
“Hurry, aunt, we’ve got to cross the ford before they get here.” Ialnor stepped forward and grabbed her arm.
She looked into Weyth’s eyes and understanding passed between them. He was injured, she exhausted. Only one had to make it through to warn the garrison.
“Give Weyth the bow, Ially,” she said, turning to him and laying her hand over his. “We’ll stay and keep them off your trail for as long as we can.”
“What? No, come now.” He shook his head, his dark eyes flicking between her and Weyth and then up to the white hill beyond.
She pulled the bow off his shoulder and slowly he let her take the quiver as well. Ysabon passed them to Weyth and then pushed Ialnor back a couple steps into the freezing river. She picked up his skis and shoved them at him. “Go, warn the garrison.”
His eyes were wide with fear and pain
but he slowly nodded and gripped his skis, backing away. “Fare you well, aunt,” he whispered before turning and picking his way as best he could across the river.
“Good bye, Ially,” she murmured back, her words drowned out by the rippling water.
Another long keening shriek cut through the air and Ysabon turned away. She kicked aside the other skis and drew her sword.
“We could try to cross,” Weyth said, “let them have to come through rocks and water.”
“Then we’d be fighting half in the river and on rougher ground.” The other side of the ford had a steeper bank and more rocks than the few scattered boulders that decorated the near side. “Best to keep the river at our back and open ground before.”
Weyth nodded and shifted to a more solid seat on his stone. He gripped his bow and adjusted the quiver to within easy reach.
Ysabon shifted herself, moving so she was nearly even with Weyth but had good footing in front with a couple of larger stones to her left. There was only one avenue to get to her this way, with her right protected by Weyth and his bow. She could hold for a little while if only one widowhulk could reach her at a time. A thought struck her and she found herself laughing, almost hysterical mirth bubbling up from her belly and into her throat.
“Sharing the joke?” Weyth asked, his eyes on the hills.
Behind them Ysabon heard Ialnor splash his way up the bank and she turned for one last glance at her nephew. He turned, no more than a silhouette in the slowly dying daylight, and she raised her sword in salute. Ialnor’s hand lifted and then he bent, tying on his skis. For a moment he watched the pair on the other side, and then he pushed off and was gone, a dark shape over gleaming snow.
Ysabon lowered her sword and fixed her eyes back on the hill.
“When I left to join Hartiga’s Eagles and be a mercenary, my mother told me it was a one way journey. She was convinced I’d be like grandmother and never return.” The clicking and chuffing sounds started again, echoing across the snow, and it sounded closer now. “I did return, so I always told her it was a two-way journey in the end. But I was wrong, it seems.”
“You both were,” Weyth said and she could hear his smile in the words. “This is the third leg.”
“Yes,” she said, “there are worse ways to die than fighting.” Ysabon took a deep, icy breath and let the tension drain from her shoulders. Her mother had died sick and hairless in her bed, bitter to the end. I won’t die useless and helpless and old. Peace slipped over her at the thought, peace and a strange, biting joy.
“I wish you a good journey, Ysabon,” Weyth said through gritted teeth as he knocked an arrow and raised his bow. The first widowhulk crested the rise and charged. Weyth’s arrow thunked into its thick, striped hide and the creature screamed.
“You as well, old friend.” Ysabon said softly. Another beast appeared, brown and huge against the grey skies and white snow. The old battle fire sang in her blood and her heart beat death’s tattoo against her chest as she stepped forward and brought up her sword.
* * * * *