Winter Song (22 page)

Darkness was drawing in with the terrible swiftness of a cloudy deepening winter afternoon when the moorland ended with guillotined abruptness. 
    Fortunately it had stopped snowing, although they were surrounded by low cloud and they had just enough warning to be able to slow in time. Karl peered into the gloom. The flat path plunged away in front of them. "It goes down to our right," he said.
    Bera's face was white and pinched, and Karl noticed – not for the first time – how tired she looked. The horses' heads drooped as well, and Karl thought, These aren't machines to be ridden until we get to the nearest recharging station. They don't get a flat battery – they die. I need to remember that.
    "Any idea where we are?" he called as Bera led the slow, laborious descent.
    "I'm not sure," she replied. "Now isn't really time to get the maps out."
    "I wasn't suggesting that you should," he said, stung by the implied rebuke; he was tired too. Enhanced he was, but still human, and it had been a long day of sitting tensed in the saddle, trying to watch for animal ambushes in every direction. He took pity on her. "Would you prefer me to lead?" He eased his vision into the infra-red again, peering into the gloom. It might only buy them half a second, but that half-second might make the difference between survival and death.
    "No, it's OK," Bera said. Her voice softened too. "But thanks for the offer." She added, "Ragnar hardly ever came out this far, at least as far as I know, but I think that we're descending to Salturvatn. If so, we drop down about five hundred metres. The good news is that we're still going the right way."
    "Good," Karl said. He'd been gengineered over the generations to have an innate sense of direction, and Bera had the map she'd taken, but maps and designs were one thing, swirling snowstorms and dodging predators something else.
    With as little warning as when they'd reached the edge of the moorland, they descended out of the low cloud. Karl stared.
    Ahead of them was a lake that stretched into the distance. "It is Saltwater," Bera said. "The good news is that we're going the right way."
    "The bad news is?" Karl was a firm believer in the good news–bad news principle.
    "There's a huge herd of havalifugils on the beach. With a little luck their eggs will have hatched already, so they won't be quite so territorial as earlier in the year."
    Resisting the urge to pepper her with questions, instead Karl concentrated on the ride down. Whether Saltwater was a huge lake or an inland sea was academic; it was large enough for the hills on its other side to be only dimly visible in the distance, although how much the clouds were responsible for the lack of visibility, Karl was unsure.
    By the time they were most of the way down, the evening had – paradoxically – brightened as they left the clouds behind, and Karl returned his vision to the usual human range.
    Bera's horse halted and let out a low whinny. She leaned over in her saddle and examined the path down which she rode, slowing to allow Karl on Grainur, and the third horse, Skorri, to catch up. They all picked their way carefully.
    Karl saw that they had reached a fork in the path, the other one of which went up to the cliff. "What's the matter?" he called, keeping his voice low, although it still echoed off the cliff-face.
    "Tracks," Bera said, pointing to marks in the snow on the other path. "I think that there's a cave up there."
    "I take it that that's not a good thing?" The temptation to hole up for the night in the warm was tempting, but Karl thought of the various worlds he knew, and he couldn't think of any world on which things that lurked in caves weren't predatory.
    "I'm not sure," Bera admitted, "but I think that it's snolfurs." She straightened up in the saddle. "Come on, let's keep going, see if we can find a gap in the whalebird colony to camp in."
    They rode down the last part of the path to the stony, boulder-strewn beach in silence.=
    They made slow but steady progress across the rockstrewn beach, weaving in and around the obstructions. After about five minutes, Karl was about to ask where the birds were when one of the boulders moved, and an eye opened.
    The havalifugil uncurled, its head emerging from where it was tucked under the wing, and Karl saw the vicious metre-long beak that ended in a point sharp enough to skewer him. "That thing must be three metres long," he said as it emitted a shrill, rattling cry, feeling his bowels tauten.
    "That's not a big one," Bera said. "Ragnar's told me they get a lot bigger."
    All along the beach boulders were writhing and separating into birds unfurling their heads from where they had huddled together. A clamour echoed along the rocky shore.
    "Uh-oh," Bera said, as one of the havalifugils let out a much louder shriek. One or two of them were stirring, although they didn't actually get up.
    "The body looks more like a seal than a bird," Karl said, as they edged along the beach as close to the cliff as they could get – there seemed to be more whalebirds the closer they were to the water's edge.
    "For Freya's sake!" Bera snapped. "This is no time for a nature study."
     "It stops me being scared, Bera. Should I be scared?"
    "I am!" Bera snapped. She added, more softly, "I've seen pictures of walruses on the Oracle. They're more like them, although they're really Isheimur's equivalent of birds. They live off fish and they're a lot more mobile in the water. OK, can I end the lecture?" Her laugh was a little shrill, but Karl realised that she was trying to make a joke.
    "You'd make a brilliant teacher," he said. "If we get out of this, I'll write you a letter of reference."
    "Ha ha," Bera said. She looked around. "What worries me is how nervous they seem. It looks as if they're still hatching their eggs." She added in a voice that grew higher and more strained with each word, "They've had all summer, I'd have thought the brutes would have been done by now."
    Karl said, realising how close to panic she was, "I'll get between them and you."
    The nearest bird let out another cry, sounding fiercer than ever, and wriggled from side to side where it sat. A smaller head peeked out from the dark, closely-set feathers. It may have been smaller, but the wickedlooking beak looked every bit as sharp as its mother's.
    "Thanks," Bera said, "but this isn't the time for chivalry. You're no safer than I am."
    The horses snickered, and Bera made clucking noises to soothe Teitur, and rubbed him behind the ears. Karl followed suit, scratching Grainur's head. "It's all right, girl," he said, hoping that it was, but with the noise of the birds and the skittishness of the horses, he felt his skin crawl with fear. His mouth was dry, but his hands clammy.
    Karl was straining to hear anything that might account for the birds' nervousness or he might never have heard the rattle behind him. He looked around, and swallowed. "Bera," he said. "There's something behind us."
    "Don't look around," Bera hissed. "It's another bloody dragon."
    Karl tried to look out of the corner of his eye. "Is it an adult?" The body looked to be about three metres long.
    "It's an adolescent," Bera said. "It's probably not big enough to eat us, but I don't want to even be a possibility." She sighed. "I guess that that's what was in the cave. Good job we didn't go into it."
    The dragon stomped down the path, its head moving from side to side. Karl pushed his vision back up into the infra-red and was staggered by how much heat its body was generating.
    Bera said, "We really, really need to get moving, but if we suddenly burst into a gallop, it might panic them, and we don't want that."
    Karl resisted the urge to ask why and instead concentrated on following Bera's example. She was slowly easing Teitur into the curious trotting gait. He glanced behind, and saw that the dragon was still tromping purposefully down the path; Bera was right – it didn't seem to be interested in them.
    But the havalifugil were. Their shrieks grew shriller and louder, as if the ones nearest Karl and Bera were setting off a chain reaction. Several birds backed away, but a couple stepped toward them, while one or two began bobbing up and down.
    "Shit, shit, shit!" Bera sounded close to tears. She reached across and grabbed Skorri's reins from Karl. In any event the little horse was huddling as close to Bera as possible, like a child looking to the nearest surrogate mother figure for comfort. "Duck down, so that Grainur's head shields your face," she said, "And get ready to ride for your life."
    Again, Karl didn't ask why, but instead, now he was free of Skorri's drag, eased slightly ahead of her.
    Many of the whalebirds were now bobbing up and down, and Karl urged Grainur onward; the little grey horse's eyes were wide with fear, but her temperament held and she eased – rather than exploded – into a gallop. Karl glanced over his shoulder and saw the nearest whalebird lunge at the dragon.
    The dragon coughed, and a greenish fireball billowed out – not quite a cloud, for it travelled further and faster, and held its shape, but it was so thin it was translucent. Karl ignored the mix of screams and roars, and concentrated on staying on as Grainur shied away from a rearing havalifugil without even slowing.
    They rode headlong through the colony with Karl peering over Grainur's mane. The remaining birds grew increasingly agitated; whether the horses and riders were frightening them or they were infected by the panic of the birds nearer the dragon, Karl couldn't tell – and didn't really care.
    But they had almost passed the edge of the huge colony when disaster struck.
    One of the whalebirds bobbed like the others, but then straightened and vomited a dark purple stream containing what looked like fish-heads and bits of crustaceans.
    Fortunately it passed behind Karl, but the scream that followed made Karl look round. Skorri's skin on the colony side was blistering, and his teeth were bared in a rictus. "Ride!" Bera screamed, and dug her heels in.
    As the beach opened out ahead of them Karl and Bera rode full pelt away from more gobs of havalifugil vomit, until they passed what Karl prayed was the last boulder-like bird. Skorri followed them, but his screams were becoming steadily more piteous even as they grew fainter, and Karl felt a lump form in his throat.
    They kept riding pell-mell for another two or three minutes until the beach opened out and the cliffs no longer reared above them. Then they stopped.
    "Are… you OK?" Karl said. "Stupid… question. I mean, are you hurt?"
    "No," Bera said, drawing deep breaths. "None of it caught me." Tears left snail-tracks down her cheeks. Bera dismounted and took her rifle from her saddlebag. She stroked the shaking, whimpering Skorri, whose skin was peeling away on his left side, leaving the flesh blistered and bubbling and whose eyes rolled as he let out piteous whimpers. "I'm sorry, old friend," Bera said and kissed Skorri's forehead.
    She put the gun to his head, and fired.
    "He…" Karl cleared his throat and tried again. "He couldn't be saved?"
    Bera shook her head and manoeuvred the saddlebags off the dead horse onto her own. "Maybe if we were at Skorradalur, but not here." She re-mounted.
    They rode on, until the light again faded, when they camped beside the lake. Bera spread the blankets and huddled beneath them. Karl said nothing, feeling superfluous to her grief, but when her shaking gave way to quiet sobs, he slowly, gingerly reached for her.
    She tensed. "Please," he said.
    "No funny business," she said, voice clotted with snot and tears.
    "No funny business." Karl was aware of being watched from within. He sent a thought at the lurking figure: Not all contact is for sex.
    She eased into his arm, and dissolved into uncontrollable sobbing.