Above the Snowline (29 page)

Authors: Steph Swainston

Tags: #Fantasy

BOOK: Above the Snowline

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I finished my letter, sealed it in an envelope and arranged with Ouzel for one of the Eyrie village traders to carry it post-haste to the Castle. I shook twenty, fifty, one hundred, two hundred pounds in fresh coins from my wallet and pressed them into her hand. ‘The best horse they can find. No expenses spared.’

‘I understand.’

Now I had to return to Dellin. What she was saying to the hunters had been preying on my mind all this time. I dropped Ouzel’s pen in my pocket and looked out. Dellin was standing in the middle of the room, with the Rhydanne sitting around the walls listening intently. The Awian card players, with worried expressions, kept glancing through the gap between the hearth and its hood. Dellin was facing me, one graceful hand raised, and the orange flames seemed to cast a halo around her head, shining on her loosed hair, which flowed down almost to her waist. I could see the shadows of her long lashes on her upper cheeks. ‘My heart feels like bursting,’ she said. ‘This is our land. Listen to me and I will guide you. The Awians have more food and belongings than they can carry. We will take what we need.’

A huntress interrupted her. ‘I’m not starving. The featherbacks skinned forty wolves in the last few days and left the carcasses in the forest. I can show you where.’

‘Are you scavenging, Miagail?’ Dellin asked.

The beautiful huntress, kneeling on the rug with one leg tucked under her, blinked slowly like a self-satisfied leopard. ‘Of course,’ she said with liquid smoothness.

‘Are Awians so wasteful they leave a feast of carrion?’

‘Certainly. Feocullan and I have seen them.’

‘So what will happen when they have killed every ibex, every wolf? At this rate none will be left to breed and Carnich will be empty. Then what will you do, Miagail Dara? The Awians hurl their kitchen scraps down the cliff. Will you scavenge those?’

Miagail, who was wearing several heavy necklaces of silver and fox teeth, snarled and settled back. Dellin spread her arms again and addressed the room. ‘Listen,
daimh
, I love Carnich and its animals and will not part with them. I don’t want to move to the high plateaux. I want my children to live in this abundant valley as I do. We were born here, where there were no enclosures, where the wind blows free, and every huntress breathes freely and wanders where she will. Now the Awians have taken our country. They saw down the trees and slaughter the beasts. They think the very land belongs to them!’ She paused, but there was silence and blank faces all round.

‘The land?’ said Miagail eventually.

‘The Awians think they can take it as their property.’

‘That’s ridiculous. It can’t belong to anyone.’

‘Of course not. But we must think like Awians, tell them the land is ours and we want it back. This is why we feel degraded, without understanding the reason, although we were all happy before. They have been stealing from us without replacing the goods they take.’

At this a hubbub broke out, since every hunter knew the danger of pilfering from stores.

‘We must protect ourselves,’ she continued. ‘How? By fighting. Fighting will save Carnich! Do not accept their trade goods!’ The Rhydanne looked at each other. Some muttered and a few tried to shout her down, but Dellin raised her voice above them. ‘When we accept their clothes and steel the Awians assume we agree their goods are superior to our own.’

‘Some of their things
are
better,’ said Miagail.

‘No! They believe their goods are superior and so they conclude that they
themselves
are superior to us. So they think it natural we will cede Carnich to them. Just as we take the lives of animals, so they are justified in taking ours. Just as a swift hunter raids a slow herder, so they think us weak-willed. We should sew our own leather tents and knap our own points, because if we don’t, in time we will forget how to. Our knowledge will be gone, and when we need it, we will be forced to rely on the Awians instead. Look at Lainnir!’

The hunters sitting on the floor looked round. Blind Lainnir had woken up and was leaning on the bar. His windburnt face was amazingly lined, his opaque eyes recessed in dark hollows. He was very old, as much as fifty years, a relic like those which melt out of the edges of glaciers.

‘The Carnich drink destroyed his liver. You know their goods are shoddy and dangerous. They have no respect for us; they are laughing at us, thinking they can swindle us. We must not let them!’

Behind me Ouzel said, ‘Attagirl!’

I glanced at her indignantly. ‘Surely you don’t want them to fight?’

‘I’ve never seen this before, ha ha. I’ve never seen them standing up for themselves.’

‘San sent me to do that. She’ll wreck everything!’

‘She’s suffered, Jant. Let her blow off steam.’

Lainnir aimed his voice in Dellin’s direction: ‘The Awians brought us wealth. They made us what we are - better than the hunters in Stravaig.’

Dellin spat, ‘You’ve picked up their dangerous ideas as well as their sluggishness! “Better”? Through owning many possessions? Whoever heard such a thing! How can you be better when they made you blind!’

‘Age blinded me, Shira.’

‘It was the gin and you know it! You Rhydanne—’ she pointed at one or two who were wearing garish odds and ends of lowlands clothing ‘—who hang around their fortress are making fools of yourselves. Your ridiculous swaggering makes Awians laugh. You’re wearing so many bangles you can hardly run! You traded them, not made them, so they mean nothing! You, why are you wearing a metal hat?’

‘It’s a helmet,’ a young hunter said proudly, pulling it down until his hair stuck out in bristles.

‘What did you pay for it?’

‘The furs of one week’s chase.’

‘See! You look like a clown. How will a metal hat stop your ears getting cold? What’s this chequered cloth? And a pendant made from a spoon! First, put your proper clothes back on and have some self-respect! Stop hanging around their fort! Second, stop hunting to excess, just to pay for jewellery. Have you forgotten we only kill animals we need? If we need a jacket, it’s a simple matter to spear a snow leopard. But now you’re hunting to give furs away! You’re learning the Awians’ greed! It’s terrible to see . . .

‘The Awians are a sick people, because no matter how much they have it’s never enough. They accumulate goods until it drives them mad. Eventually they collect mountains of polished rock and metal and live inside them. I have seen these hills of stone all crammed together - they made me feel trapped. The Awians also feel trapped; I can sense their sadness and frustration. They will trap you too, at last. They’ll kill you, drive you away or send you as mad as they are. Greed saturates their lives; they overeat at every meal. They need so much grain they have to grow it. They proliferate, with more people in each family than everyone in this room. They never kill newborns. How can such a people live except by theft?’

Dellin gestured towards me and all the Rhydanne looked. She continued: ‘Lowlanders have lost the skill of making their own clothes. If you also forget how to sew hides and find food you will have to rely on them - as Jant did - or you will die.’

Suddenly finding myself with an audience I strode forward to Dellin’s side, introduced myself and said, ‘Don’t listen to her! You can trade with Ouzel, the way you always have. She isn’t the same as the other featherbacks. The silver man says you should stay away from the keep altogether - until I tell you it’s safe.’

There was general agreement at this, but Dellin clawed her hand. ‘We’ve already spoken to Raven! He is treacherous; he considers us less than goats and our language no better than bleating. Do not make deals with the settlers. They are bound to cheat us. Do not learn the idea of money from them; money leads to greed. Every autumn the leaves turn a thousand shades of gold - that is all the gold we need. Every evening we see silver in the moon and in running water - that is all the silver we need. Be satisfied with your original life, a simple life, and you will be happy.’

She darted over to the card players. They had been staring at her throughout although they couldn’t understand a word she said. One man was bristle-chinned, the other woolly-hatted, and their cards lay face down on the scored table. She batted the cards about until they flew all over the place, then leaned and yelled directly into bristle-chin’s face, ‘Greedy Awian!’

The Rhydanne fell about laughing - this was their sort of humour.

Into woolly-hat’s astonished face she said, ‘Slow Awian! You have taken our hunting ground and my heart revolts. I will never rest until I have driven you back to the lowlands where you belong!’

She flitted towards me and into the square of Rhydanne around the walls.

Instead of standing in full oratorical glory, she sat down in the middle, cross-legged, upright, and continued in a conspiratorial whisper, ‘We meet here tomorrow night to defeat the Awians. I will show you how!’

I went to sit beside Dellin. I tried to make her recant but she wouldn’t take back her words. She fell to conversing with Miagail, not the usual directions to find prey but about the location of prospectors’ shacks. I couldn’t stop her and I certainly couldn’t use force after our journey through the snow. The trust between us when we were roped together had disappeared and she was independent again. I was so torn I gave up arguing, because the more I stayed near her, the more I enjoyed doing so. Her energy and enthusiasm shone from her, and even without touching her I could feel the latent power of her hard body. Her quicksilver potential for movement tingled over her even now. I sat for hours listening to her, the most talkative and the most eloquent Rhydanne I had ever met. Meanwhile in the background the Awians quietly resumed their game of whist and the Rhydanne baby chased a spider running across the floor, pounced on it and gleefully pulled all its legs off.

Dellin’s powerful words rang in my ears. They multiplied like echoes and resounded through my mind. When Ouzel brought me a lantern, showed me my room, and I lay between the furs in a pallet bed on the floor, I was still wondering at her speech, and I thought of her all night.

RAVEN

In the window seat, I made good use of the light to go through the ledger and check my accounts. Our furs had earned an excellent profit, even more than I had estimated. I could have afforded more fighting men than the hundred I was mustering and the five hundred Francolin was sending. No matter, they would suffice.

Below me, Snipe occupied the table with his back to the fireplace, weighing silver nuggets on a scale and slipping them into cloth bags. Click, click, rustle. He placed the small weights on the plate, paused, then his pen scratched as he recorded the values. The clicking must have been going on some time, but once it registered on my consciousness it seemed interminable and annoyed me intensely.

I put the ledger down. Snipe, feeling my attention on him, scribbled a note on his blotting paper, peered up and smiled sheepishly. He was not a man blessed by nature with good looks. His forehead was high and his chin was long, but all his other features were squashed together in the middle of his face, leaving forehead and chin empty expanses. He looked like a human being reflected in a tap.

‘My lord?’

‘Have you seen Jant this morning?’

‘No, my lord.’

‘Hmm.’ I was beginning to worry he may have sneaked in. It would be his style to question my staff without my knowledge - or worse, the Rhydanne porters. ‘Has any servant seen him?’

‘No. The bad weather could have stalled him, my lord. Or one look at Ouzel’s spit-and-sawdust shack and he fled back to the Castle?’

‘No, that’s not like him. Trust me; I know.’

Snipe nodded, hunched his shoulders and fell silent. I scanned the snow-heavy sky.

Snipe came to life again. ‘My lord, how old is Jant?’

‘Ninety-five, or thereabouts.’

‘Uck! He looks in his early twenties.’

‘He is. He always will be. The Emperor freezes time for him.’

‘Because he can fly? That’s not fair.’

‘Snipe, how in this life can you possibly have imagined that anything was going to be
fair
?’