“You have your flint?” Master Hutril asked.
“Yes, Master.”
“Twine, fresh bowstring, extra blanket?”
“Yes, Master.”
Hutril nodded, pausing, his breath steaming in the chilled air. “The Aspect has given me a message for you,” he said after a moment. Vaelin found it odd that Hutril was avoiding his gaze. “He says, as you are likely to be hunted whenever you leave the shelter of the House, you may return with me and be given a pass on this test.”
Vaelin was speechless. The shock of the Aspect’s offer coupled with the fact that this was the first time any of the Masters had referred to his ordeal in the forest left him dumfounded. The tests were not just arbitrary torments, dreamt up over the years by sadistic masters. They were part of the Order, set down by its founder four hundred years ago and never changed since. They were more than a legacy, they were an article of the Faith. He couldn’t help feeling that to avoid a test and still continue in the Order would be more than just dishonest, not to say disrespectful to his friends, it would be blasphemy. Pondering further, another thought came to him: What if this is another test? What if the Aspect wants to see if I will avoid an ordeal my brothers cannot? But as he looked into Master Hutril’s guarded gaze, he saw something that told him the offer was genuine: shame. Hutril thought the offer an insult.
“I fear to contradict the opinion of the Aspect, Master,” he said. “But I think it unlikely an assassin would brave these hills in winter.”
Hutril nodded again, a soft sigh of relief escaping him, a rare, very slight smile on his lips. “Do not range far, listen to the voice of the hills, follow only the freshest tracks.” With that he shouldered his bow and began his long trek back to the cart.
Vaelin watched him go, feeling very hungry despite the hearty breakfast they had all eaten that morning. He was glad he had taken the opportunity to steal some bread from the kitchen before they left.
In accordance with Hutril’s lessons Vaelin began building a shelter immediately. Finding a useful nook between two large rocks to serve as walls, he set about gathering wood for a roof. There were some fallen branches about that he could use but soon had to resort to cutting extra covering from the surrounding trees. He walled off one side by piling up snow, rolling it into thick blocks as he had been taught. His work complete he rewarded himself with a bread roll, forcing himself not to bolt it, despite his hunger, taking small bites and chewing thoroughly before swallowing.
Next he had to light a fire, arranging some small rocks in a circle next to the shelter’s entrance, clearing the snow from the centre and filling it with twigs and small branches he had prepared by stripping away the snow-damp bark to reveal the dry timber beneath. A few sparks from his flint and soon he was warming his hands above a respectably lively fire. Food, shelter and heat, Master Hutril always told them. That’s what keeps a man alive. Everything else is luxury.
His first night in the shelter was restless, beset by howling winds and biting cold against which the blanket he had draped over the entrance was scant protection. He resolved to fashion a more sturdy covering the next day and passed the hours trying to hear voices in the winds. It was said that the winds would carry into the Beyond and the Departed used them to send messages back to the Faithful, some of whom would stand for hours on hillsides straining for words of wisdom or comfort from lost loved ones. Vaelin had never heard a voice on the wind and wondered who it would be if he did. His mother perhaps, although she hadn’t come to him again since his first night in the Order. Mikehl maybe, or the assassins, spitting their hatred into the wind. But tonight there were no voices to hear and he drifted into a fitful, chilled slumber.
The next day saw him gathering thin branches to weave into a door for his shelter. The work was long and tricky, leaving his already numb fingers aching from the effort. He spent the rest of the day on the hunt, arrow notched into his bowstring as he scanned the snow for tracks. He fancied there had been a deer through the gully in the night but the tracks were too faint to follow successfully. He did find fresh goat tracks but they led to a steep rise he had little hope of climbing before nightfall. In the end he had to content himself with bringing down a couple of crows that had mistakenly perched too close to his shelter and setting a few snares for any unwary rabbits that felt the need to venture into the snow.
He plucked the crows and kept the feathers for kindling, spitting the birds and roasting them over his fire. The meat was dry and tough, making him appreciate why crow was not considered a delicacy. As night came there was little to do but huddle near his fire until it burned down then settle into his shelter. The door he had made was more use than the blanket but still the cold seemed to settle into his bones. His stomach growled but the wind howled ever louder, and still he heard no voices.
He had better luck in the morning, bringing down a snow hare. He was proud of the kill, the arrow catching the animal as it scampered for its hole. He had it skinned and cleaned within an hour and took a great amount of pleasure in roasting it over the fire, staring with wide eyes at the grease running over the blistering skin. They should call this the Test of Hunger, he decided as his stomach gave voice to another obscenely loud growl. He ate half the meat and stashed the other half in a tree hole he had chosen for a good hiding place. It was a good distance off the ground, he had to climb to reach it, and the tree was too slender to support the weight of a scavenging bear. It was a real effort to resist the urge to gobble all the meat at once but he knew if he did, he might have to face the next day without a meal.
The rest of the day was spent hunting without success, his snares remained frustratingly empty and he had to content himself digging for roots from under the snow. The roots he found were hardly filling, and took a lot of boiling before they were edible, but sufficed to take the edge off his hunger. His one stroke of luck was finding a yallin root, inedible but possessed of a particularly foul-smelling juice that would be useful in protecting his food store and shelter from prowling wolves or bears.
He was trudging back to his shelter after another fruitless hunt when it began to snow in earnest, the wind soon whipping the flakes into a blizzard. He made it back before the snow became too thick for him to see his way and wedged his door of woven branches firmly into the entrance, warming his ice-cold hands in the hare’s pelt he had chosen to use as a muffler. He couldn’t light a fire in the middle of a snowstorm and had no choice but to sit it out, shivering, flexing his hands in the fur to stop the numbness setting in.
The wind was louder than ever, still howling, leaving its voices in the Beyond…What was that? He sat up, holding his breath, ears straining. A voice, a voice on the wind. Faint, plaintive. He sat still and quiet, waiting for it to come again. The shriek of the wind was continuous and infuriating, every change in tone seemed to herald another call of the mystery voice. He waited, breathing softly, but nothing came.
Shaking his head, he lay down again, huddling beneath the blanket, trying to make himself as small as possible…
“…curse you…”
He jerked upright, instantly awake. There was no mistaking it. There was a voice on the wind. It came again, quickly this time, the wind allowing only a few words to reach him. “…you hear me? I curse you!…regret nothing! I…nothing…”
The voice was faint but he could hear the rage in it clearly, this soul had sent a message of hate back across the void. Was it for him? He felt cold dread grip him like a giant fist. The assassins, Brak and the other two. His shivers deepened but not through cold.
“…nothing!” the voice raged. “Nothing…have done has…anything! You hear me?”
Vaelin thought he knew fear, he thought the ordeal in the forest had hardened him, made him in some ways immune to terror. He was wrong. Some of the masters had talked of men pissing themselves when fear overcame them. He had never believed it until now.
“…I’ll carry my hate into the Beyond! If you cursed my life, you’ll curse my death a t
housand times…”
Vaelin’s shivers stopped momentarily. Death? What kind of Departed soul speaks of dying? A very obvious thought occurred to him in a rush of embarrassment he was glad no-one was there to see: someone is outside in the storm whilst I sit here cowering.
He had to dig his way out, the blizzard had piled a drift against his door fully three feet high. After a few moments’ effort, he scrambled out into the fury of the storm. The wind was like a knife cutting through his cloak as if it were made of paper, snow pelted his face like nails, he could see almost nothing.
“Ho there!” he called, feeling the words vanish into the gale as soon as they escaped his lips. He dragged air into his lungs, swallowing snow, and tried again, “HO! WHO’S THERE?”
Something shifted in the blizzard, a vague shape in the wall of white. Gone before he could make sense of it. Drawing another breath, he began to fight his way towards where he thought the shape had been, heaving his legs out of the freezing drifts. He stumbled several times before he found them, two shapes, huddled together, partially covered by the blizzard, one large, one small.
“Get up!” Vaelin shouted, prodding the largest shape. It groaned, rolling over, snow falling away from a frost-encrusted face, two pale blue eyes staring out from the mask of ice. Vaelin drew back slightly. He had never seen a gaze so intense. Not even Master Sollis’s stare could pierce a soul like this. Unconsciously his hand closed over the knife beneath his cloak. “If you stay here, you’ll freeze to death in minutes,” he shouted. “I have shelter.” He waved back the way he had come. “Can you walk?”
The eyes kept staring, the frost face immobile. My luck holds true, Vaelin thought ruefully. Only I could find a madman in the middle of a snowstorm.
“I can walk.” The man’s voice was a growl. He jerked his head at the smaller shape next to him. “I’ll need help with this one.”
Vaelin moved to the small shape, dragging it to its feet, drawing a pained gasp. As he pulled the figure upright a hood fell away to reveal a pale, elfin face and a shock of auburn hair. The girl remained standing for only an instant before collapsing against him.
“Here,” the man grunted, taking one of her arms and laying it across his shoulders. Vaelin took the other arm and together they struggled back to the shelter. It seemed to take an age; incredibly the storm was growing in intensity and Vaelin knew that if they stopped for even a second, death would follow soon after. Reaching the shelter, he scraped the already regrown drift away from the entrance and pushed the girl in first, gesturing for the man to follow. He shook his head. “You first, boy.”
Vaelin noted the adamant tone in his growl and knew lingering to argue would be pointless, and possibly deadly. He crawled into the shelter, pushing the girl’s body deeper as he did so, cramming them both in as tightly as he could. The man followed them in quickly, his bulk leaving little remaining space, and jammed Vaelin’s door into the entrance.
They lay together, mingled breath clouding the confines of the shelter, Vaelin’s lungs burned from the effort of struggling through the snow and his hands trembled uncontrollably. He put them inside his cloak, hoping to stave off frostbite. An irresistible tiredness began to creep over him, clouding his vision as he slid towards unconsciousness. He had a final glimpse of the man next to him, peering out at the storm through a gap in the door. Before exhaustion overtook him completely Vaelin heard the man mutter, “A little longer then. Just a little longer.”
He surfaced with a splitting headache, a thin beam of sunlight lancing through the roof directly into his eye provoking a painful yelp. Next to him the girl shifted in her sleep, one of her boots leaving a bruise on his shin. The man wasn’t in the shelter and a strong, distinctly appetising aroma was wafting through the entrance. Vaelin decided he would rather be outside.
He found the man cooking oat cakes over his campfire on an iron skillet, the smell provoking an excruciating surge of hunger. Free of the mask of ice, his features were lean though deeply lined. The rage that had clouded his eyes in the storm was gone, replaced with a bright friendliness Vaelin found disconcerting. He put the man’s age in the mid-thirties but it was difficult to tell for sure, there was a depth to the face, a gravity in his stare that spoke of a wide breadth of experience. Vaelin kept his distance, worried he would grab at the cakes if he got too close.
“Went back for our gear,” the man said, nodding at the two snow-dusted packs nearby. “We had to drop them last night a few miles back. Too much weight.” He took the cakes off the heat and offered the skillet to Vaelin.
Vaelin, mouth flooded with drool, shook his head. “I can’t.”
“Order boy, eh?”
Vaelin nodded, dumb with longing.
“Why else would a boy be living out here?” He shook his head sadly. “Still, if you weren’t, Sella and I would be lying under the snow.” He got up, approaching to offer his hand. “My thanks, young sir.”
Vaelin took the hand, feeling the hard callus that covered the palm. A warrior? Looking the man over, Vaelin doubted it. The masters all had a certain way of moving and talking that marked them out. This man was different. He had the strength but not the look.
“Erlin Ilnis,” the man introduced himself.
“Vaelin Al Sorna.”
The man raised an eyebrow. “The name of the Battle Lord’s family.”
“Yes, I’ve heard.”
Erlin Ilnis nodded and let the subject drop. “How many days to go?”
“Four. If I don’t starve before then.”
“Then accept my apologies for intruding on your test. I hope it won’t spoil your chances of passing.”
“As long as you don’t help me it shouldn’t matter.”
The man squatted down to eat his breakfast, cutting the cakes into portions with a thin-bladed knife and lifting them to his mouth. Unable to bear it any longer Vaelin rushed off to collect his stash of hare meat from the tree hole. He had to dig through a thick covering of snow but was soon back at the camp with his prize.
“Haven’t seen a storm like that for many a year,” Erlin commented softly as Vaelin began roasting his meat. “Used to think it an omen when the weather turned bad. Always seemed like a war or a plague would follow soon after. Now I just think it means the weather turned bad.”
Vaelin felt compelled to talk, it took his mind off the endless growl of his stomach. “Plague? The Red Hand you mean. You couldn’t be old enough to have seen it.”
The man gave a faint smile. “I am…widely travelled. Plague comes to many lands, in many forms.”
“How many?” Vaelin pressed. “How many lands have you seen?”
Erlin stroked his stubble-grey chin as he pondered the question. “I honestly couldn’t say. I’ve seen the glories of the Alpiran Empire and the ruins of the Leandren temples. I’ve walked the dark paths of the Great Northern Forest and trod the endless steppes where the Eorhil Sil hunt the great elk. I’ve seen cities and islands and mountains aplenty. But always, without fail, everywhere I go, I find myself in a storm.”
“You are not from the Realm?” Vaelin was puzzled. The man’s accent was odd, possessed of vowels that jarred on the ear, but still clearly Asraelin.
“Oh, I was born here. There’s a village a few miles south of Varinshold, so small it doesn’t even have a name. You’ll find my kin there.”
“Why did you leave? Why travel to so many places?”
The man shrugged. “I had a lot of time on my hands and I couldn’t think of anything else to do.”
“Why were you so angry?”
Erlin turned to him sharply. “What?”
“I heard you. I thought it was a voice on the wind, one of the Departed. You were angry, I could hear it. It’s how I found you.”
Erlin’s face took on an expression of deep, almost frightening sadness. Such was the depth of his sorrow that Vaelin wondered again if he hadn’t rescued a madman.
“When a man faces death he says many foolish things,” Erlin said.
“When they make you a full brother I’m sure you’ll hear dying men say the most ridiculous nonsense.”
The girl emerged from the shelter, blinking dazedly in the sunlight, a shawl clutched about her shoulders. Seeing her clearly for the first time, Vaelin found it hard not to stare. Her face was a flawless pale oval framed by light auburn curls. She was older than he by a couple of years and an inch or two taller. He realised he hadn’t even seen a girl for a long time and felt uncomfortably out of his depth.
“Sella,” Erlin greeted her. “More cakes in my pack if you’re hungry.”
She smiled tightly, casting a wary glance at Vaelin.
“This is Vaelin Al Sorna,” Erlin told her. “A novice brother of the Sixth Order. We owe him our thanks.”
She hid it well but Vaelin saw her tense when Erlin mentioned the Order. She turned to Vaelin and moved her hands in a series of intricate, fluid movements, an empty smile fixed on her face. Mute, he realised.
“She said we are fortunate to find such a brave soul in the midst of the wilderness,” Erlin related.
In fact she had said: Tell him I said thank you, and let’s go. Vaelin decided it would be better if he kept his knowledge of sign language to himself. “You’re welcome,” he said. She inclined her head and moved to the packs.
Vaelin began to eat, shovelling the food down with dirty fingers and not caring that Master Hutril would have been appalled at such a spectacle. Erlin and Sella conversed in sign language whilst he ate. The shapes they made were practised and formed with a fluency which shamed his own clumsy attempts to mimic Master Smentil. But despite the fluency of their communication Vaelin marked the sharp, nervous movements of her hands and the more restrained, calming shapes made by Erlin.
Does he know who we are? she asked him.