Raetian Tales 1: A Wind from the South (20 page)

She climbed the pass road for some hours. Afternoon was drawing on toward evening, the shadows of the pines lying across the left side of the pass road as it climbed, with few turns, up Val Medel and past its scraggly rocky alps. The
föhn
had been blowing all day, in the desultory manner of early spring: nothing spectacular, just the endless hot whining wind that wore everyone’s tempers to shreds. That whining was in Mariarta’s ears as she climbed past the hamlets of Pardé and Fuorns to where the road curved eastward.

She stopped there a while to eat, looking past the ford where the Cristallina Rein, running from the glaciers, met the Rein de Medel. Above the peaks the sky had gone apricot-colored, and fans of radiance struck upward from behind clouds on the far side. Those clouds worried her. If the
föhn
decided to blow a sudden fit of bad weather at her, she might have much worse to worry about than ghosts. Hail the size of apples could kill you as dead as fear, and faster.

Mariarta crossed first the small river, then the bigger one, and turned southward. Another hour’s walk brought her under the shadow of fanglike Scopi, the road running close to the steep cliffs at the mountain’s feet. There Mariarta stopped, for the feel of the air had changed. She glanced upwards toward Cuolm Lucmagn, the actual top of the pass. Over it, light shone, the paling radiance of side-reflected sunlight. Everything was still, but the sky was turning that dangerous, too-luminous blue: the silence was only the kind that was gathering itself for a night of terror.

Mariarta went on to the top of the pass. There she stopped, looking down the other side.

Now what in Heaven’s name is
that
doing there—?!

By the side of the road was a hamlet called Pertusio. It had probably started as a group of herder’s huts, and had slowly been made into houses over time—probably by herds who hated leaving their families for the whole summer. What was new there was a small wooden building separated from the others: a building
in
the pass road itself.

Or what remained of a building. It was splinters of wood, now, lying all flattened toward the neck of the pass, like trees after an avalanche.

Mariarta went down, remembering what sound had come to her from Flisch’s mind—wood creaking in a terrible wind.
Not the
föhn
,
  she thought to herself.
This was something different.
 She passed the first of the Pertusio houses, and shouted, but no answer came. “Gone,” she said to herself. Or fled.

The other three houses were empty also: though not completely—pots and pans, dishes, some clothes, were still there, when Mariarta looked in windows that had come unshuttered: but no people.
They had  some warning,
  Mariarta thought.
Took whatever was valuable, anyway. Then got out—

She turned her attention to the broken building in the road. It was no bigger than a cowshed, with doors at either end where the road met it. The building itself was totally smashed—exept the doors. They stood upright in their frames, and they were shut.

Mariarta stood there in the deepening dusk, thinking of Flisch’s scream.
I won’t open it!
   For a long time, she stood staring at the downslope door.

Finally she unlimbered her crossbow, kicked aside some of the smaller fallen roof timbers, and sat on the biggest one. Mariarta took some bolts from their quiver, sticking them ready in the neck-binding of her shirt. She sat a long time, while the dusk turned to night, and the stars and moon came out. The moon was only a half at the moment, but bright enough here to light everything well. The wind kept quiet for the time being, but Mariarta was not fooled by this. She had seen the sky at sunset, the sunbeams too bright, seeming to swim in their own radiance. Rain was in that air, or snow, depending on what the wind did: the wind itself had not made up its mind.

In the middle of the road,
  Mariarta thought, glancing at the fallen timbers.
And it’s quite new.
 The slopes of the Scai and Foppone hills drew close to the road here. And they were rocky—no way over them except by going a long way around. Suddenly something Mariarta’s father had said came back to her.
A toll-house?
  And built where the people staying in the Pertusio houses could keep an eye on it. If they had some connection with whatever bailiff ran this land, they might have made it work for a while, until the next lord over made it an issue.

She moved around among the remains, while a breeze stirred her hair. A blackened spot here—  She kicked at the ashes: the charcoal showed bits of pine bough, not hay.
Definitely not a cowshed...this was brought in from outside.
 Again Flisch’s thought came to her:
...cold. I’ll go in. ... A little fire—

There were no clouds: the moon shone clear. But the wind built, blowing warm from the south even in the middle of the night. Mariarta stood inside the door on the downslope side, facing into the wind.

The door began to rattle in the rising gale, as if someone was trying the latch. The wind blew harder, and Mariarta could hear sounds and voices in it: not the usual way. Horns, she heard, and the barking of dogs, distant. A great tumult was coming toward her on the wind: thundering, crashing sounds growing closer and louder. But the sound was not in the sky. It was in the farside valley, coming toward her. Peering around the side of the door, Mariarta stared all around in the moonlight, but could see nothing.

The sounds came closer. She heard the deep clatter of big wheels over stones and ruts: dogs again, barking, not in distress or in the hunt, but cheerfully, like beasts whose masters are near.  Shouts she heard, wordless like those of herdsmen driving their cows,
hoi!
ayai!
  And horns again, not only deep-voiced ones, but bright horns like the trumpets Mariarta had read about as a child. Hooves she heard on the stones, the quick ones of horses, the slower clop of oxen. But stand there and strain her eyes as she might, Mariarta could see nothing in the road but the dust that the wind blew toward her. And still the roar and clatter of hooves and wheels and voices came closer, until it was surely right before her. Mariarta stood shivering with astonishment, and kept her bow ready.  

Then
CRASH!
came the blow on the door: and Mariarta felt it inside her, as she had felt the blow struck at Flisch’s soul. The door shook in its frame, the timbers bent inward. Mariarta staggered back with the force of the blow, gasping with fear and pain: but she found her footing, knowing that what struck her was a matter of the spirit, not the body, and the pain would pass.
CRASH!
the blow came again, and this time she was readier, but she gasped at it, as much from wonder as from fear.
Why can’t I see anything, what is it—

CRASH!
came the third blow, striking her less painfully still; though the thunder crashed with it, and a flicker of heat-lightning danced about the peak of Scopi. Mariarta sucked in a great breath of the strange warm air, and cried, “
Tuts buns sperts laudan Diu ed jeu e. Igl empren ed il davos plaid ein mes. Tgei maunca a ti e tgei drovas?”

A great deep voice, from right before her face, answered her. “The Frisian folk are here. Once we have knocked, and been refused, that never knocked or were refused before. Open and let us pass!”

Mariarta swallowed. “In God’s name, I will do that,” she shouted over the wind, making her way back to the passward door, which was still on the latch. She undid it, then went back to the door that led downslope. Mariarta slid the bolt back, and with some difficulty hauled the door wide.

The wind blew through. Mariarta stepped back to look through the door, and the breath went out of her in astonishment at the sight of the great crowd of people, more than she had ever seen in her life before, all strung out down the road into the valley, over the next rise and out of sight: a mighty host of men and women, horses and cattle and sheep, wagons and running, barking dogs. In the moonlight upheld spears glittered, banners flapped in the wind, trumpets brayed. Right before Mariarta stood a tall man in armor gleaming like fish-scales, with a tall sharp shining helmet and a spear in his hand; a bearded man in a great fur cloak clasped with a shining spiral brooch. He looked kindly at Mariarta, but not quite at her. Mariarta stepped aside, and bowed to him. The huge man stepped forward and went by, a brief cold breath on the warm wind. She felt something cool against her leg, and was astonished to see the man’s cloak brush, not against her booted calf, but through it.

Many more passed the same way: how many, Mariarta never knew. All came through the one door and went out the other: many more warriors, dressed as their leader had been—some more roughly, in skins of bulls or deer; some in the finest linen. Their weapons and armor were beautiful, some helmets winged with ravens’ or eagles’ wings or ornamented with little brazen horns, the hilts of their swords carven silver, the gleam of polished steel everywhere, the horse-furniture as fine as the men’s clothing when the handsome steeds came through. Huge wagons passed, with hooped roofs or canopies of cloth; women drove them, and young girls and children looked out from under the canopies, laughing, shouting in a strange language: the dogs followed, barking, keeping the cattle in order. Thousands of fine cows were driven past Mariarta, many herds of sheep and goats, and then came more wagons and more warriors. It was a whole people on the move; it seemed to go on forever. Every time Mariarta thought to look up, the stars had wheeled into some new pattern, and still the slow stream of people went by her, blown through the doors on the wind.

No wonder poor Flisch came back as he did,
  Mariarta thought, shivering—she was not cold, but the strangeness wore at her.
Rooted to the spot by his fear, or by some ill magic that came of his not opening to these people— No wonder he was so stricken. Well, if this opening cures him....

She yawned, and saw suddenly that the stars were leaning toward dawn, the blackness of the sky paling. For once, the doorway before her was no longer full. Far up in the neck of the pass, in the light of the westering moon, she saw the glitter of a last company of spears. She turned to look through the downslope door at the now-empty road, dusty white in the last of the moonlight, the dead-black shadows of the peaks beginning to encroach upon it.

One last figure was approaching slowly: a rider, huge, on a huge horse. He seemed to be dressed as many of the other men had been, in shaggy skins with armor underneath, over quilted clothes; though Mariarta could see no sword or shield or spear about him.

She waited, holding her bow, watching him come. Slowly he rode, as if he or his beast was weary. The big grey horse that bore him stepped strongly enough, though its gait seemed odd. Sometimes it seemed to have more legs that it should have: but the moonlight was dimming, after all—

The rider paused at the doorway, looking at Mariarta oddly. She stared too, for this man was the first to have seen her. He was even bigger than she had thought, with a great mane of hair that might have been red, in daylight, and a beard to match. An odd glimmer lived in his eyes, and pale light clung about him without the moon being involved.

“Do you see me, maiden?” he said, in a big gruff voice.

“I do,” Mariarta said, now far beyond reciting formulas, “and that you see me is a wonder, for almost none of the others have.”

The man laughed, and some of the belongings hung about his horse shifted. Mariarta heard a crackle, smelled something like the smell after lightning. Her attention was attracted by a big square hammer of stone hanging from the man’s saddle. The odd light that clung about him, like heat-lightning made lasting, seemed to burn dimly in the stone hammerhead.

“They don’t see much,” the man said. He spoke the Romansch of the over-the-mountain people, who spoke it vilely and usually had to explain every third word. But Mariarta had no trouble understanding him. “It’s a long time since they first came this way.”

“Who are they?”

“They came from the north,” the man said. “It was a beautiful country in those days, but there were too many of them: and there were floods and disasters. So their king sacrificed to the gods, and the gods told him to send one man of every ten, with his family and goods, to the far south to live. That they did; this is one of the roads they found. They settled, and cleared the forests, and farmed, and died, and their children married the people there.”

The man sighed. “But you know how it is: you get homesick. Even in their graves, they longed for the sound of the cold grey sea they were born by. So they rise and ride back the way they came, until they see the sea again. Then they’re satisfied; they fade away into their graves, and lie quiet a while longer. Never
much
longer,” the rider said, with an air of affectionate annoyance. “And up they get and do it again, when the wind blows right.”

“But you’re not one of them,” Mariarta said softly, looking at that hammer again.

“No,” the rider said. “Yet I can’t rest either, for I came with them. When they wake, they wake me too, calling me to follow. They have the right to.” He smiled sadly. “It’s a pity; all my other kin rest, some of them hereabouts, since the Cry went up.”

“The Cry?”

“That great Pan was dead,” said the rider. The horse stamped its feet, and Mariarta saw that it definitely had feet to spare. “The other gods,” the rider said, “according to their power, they made delves for themselves and went to ground, waiting to come back; it was written that they could, in various ways. They lie there, with their pleasures and memories, waiting their time. But I never could.”