Winter Song (25 page)

    "No one knows. That's why it's legendary, and lost."

    "Smart-arse," Bera said. "Don't talk in riddles, Karl. What's your point?"

    "Your people inadvertently Terraformed a world al ready settled. That's one of the few things that all humanity's factions have forbidden."

    "No." Bera shook her head. "No, they wouldn't have done that."

    "The trolls are the Pantropists' descendants," Karl insisted. "And the settlers have been killing them."

    "My people wouldn't commit genocide," Bera said.

    "Not deliberately," Karl said.

    "They're animals, no more." She pulled the blanket away and turning her back to him, went back to sleep.

FOURTEEN

The next morning, dust rose in the air above the trail from Salturvatn, mingling with the snow-shower that was petering out in the face of the arid land ahead. Horses' hooves pounded the ground, the posse only slowing when they reached the fork in the path that Karl and Bera had taken the day before.

    Arnbjorn, who had been riding at the front, wheeled his mount to face Ragnar. "They've taken the desert route, by the look of these tracks."

    Ragnar said to Orn, "You have the maps?"

    Orn produced a sheaf of papers bound in animalhide, and opened them up, flicking through them until he came to the one they were looking for. "The trail that way leads up into the mountains, crossing over Eifelheim. The way they've taken goes through the desert."

    Ragnar peered over Orn's shoulder, then held finger and thumb against the map, measuring distance with his digits.

    "If we follow them, we'll overhaul them," Thorir said.

    "Shut up," Ragnar said, ignoring the set of his sonin-law's jaw.

    "I hate to take his side–" Bjarney said.

    "Then don't."

    "But he has a point. We have spare horses, so we can rotate them. We'll wear them down."

    "But they have the best three horses," Ragnar said.

    "Two now," Bjarney said, referring to the remains of the horse-carcass on the beach. How long it had been dead had sparked a fierce debate amongst the party. "We'll catch them."

    "In time," Ragnar said. "Which we don't have: they had a two-day start on us, and we don't know that they haven't been riding from first light to last thing at night. Sending our casualties onto Valhalla may have cost us another day. They could be three days ahead now, and we'd never overhaul them before they reach Jokullag. No, we'll take the other path." He pointed at the distant mountains, hidden by the sleet.

    "It's more hazardous," Bjarney said. "They didn't name those mountains The Roof of the World for nothing. Avalanches, altitude sickness – come on, Ragnar, why look for trouble?"

    Several of the others joined in the general muttering. Arnbjorn nudged Thorir. "I'd keep silent."

    "I know," Thorir said. "You'd think they'd recognise the danger signs. His darkening complexion, the way his jaw clenches."

    "What about a compromise?" Bjarney said, scratching at the bandage on his arm – the legacy of the snolfur attack. "Why don't half of us go with Ragnar and the others stay on this trail? We might even be able to catch them in a pincer movement."

    "And how," Ragnar drawled, oozing contempt, "do we keep in contact to co-ordinate this pincer movement?" Ragnar snorted, ignoring the flush spreading across Bjarney's face. "Even if I was prepared to divide our stores – and I'm not – which leaves those in the other party without food or bedding, dividing our numbers risks greater attacks from predators. Think how many more might attack if there are fewer of us, according to your logic."

    "I don't like it," Bjarney said.

    "We're not here because you like it," Ragnar grated. "I don't care what you like."

    "We're not your sons, Ragnar, nor your bondsmen," Orn said. "You'd be advised to remember that. Bjarney may accept your lectures, but your tone's offensive."

    Ragnar rode across slowly and stared at Orn silently, until Orn looked away. "Don't ever threaten me again," Ragnar murmured into the other man's ear. They could have been lovers exchanging small talk, but for the spine-cracking tension in their posture.

    "I wasn't threatening you," Orn said, equally quietly.

    "Men have fought duels over less than what you've just said," Ragnar murmured.

    "Men who were liquored up," Orn said. "Are you so obsessed, so bloody psychotic, that anything less than fawning obeisance warrants a duel?"

    Ragnar took a deep breath. Orn was half-right, he realised. Ragnar had to convince them, this time. Moreover, Orn had had the sense to keep his mouth shut while Ragnar worked it out for himself. He took another deep breath, and another, felt the tautness of his body ease a fraction. The other man even had the sense to look impassive, and not smile or give any expression that Ragnar might misconstrue.

    Ragnar took one last rasping inhalation, looked around at the others and shouted, "Right lads, we'll make this easy." He drew a line to the right of the furthest man. "Those of you want to go home, step across this line. Bear in mind that this utlander has abused our hospitality, stolen property and endangered our community. I'd declare him outlaw, but for the added humiliation that announcing it through the Oracle would bring on us. So, those of you who want to go home, take a horse each and ride for your lives. You can survive a few days without food, and there's loads of water in the brooks once you get past Salturvatn."

    No one moved.

    "None of us want to go home, Gothi," Bjarney said. "We're all agreed that they've put us at risk, and they must face justice. But that doesn't mean that we should behave like madmen."

    Ragnar said, "So it's that decision that's the problem?"

    Bjarney nodded.

    Ragnar said, "The next time a snolfur attacks you, should I take a vote about how we kill it?"

    Bjarney's laugh was an indignant grunt. "That's not the same!"

    "Isn't it?" Ragnar said, studying each man in turn. "At what point must I say, 'OK lads, you elected me leader, but it's a big decision, so let's put it to a vote,' eh? You either trust my judgement or you don't." He walked to the other side of the men away from the first line, and drew another, parallel to the first. "Who actually wants to follow me in bringing these fugitives to justice?"

    To Ragnar's surprise, Thorir was the first to step across. Ragnar nodded, and clapped his son-in-law's shoulder. "Thank you, son." Thorir looked like the farm cat after it had been at the cream, and Ragnar wondered why Thorir was so keen. What do you want, apart from buttering me up?

    One by one, the others followed suit.

    "Good," Ragnar said, all smiles again. "Then it's the mountains."

    The group resumed their journey.

    Ragnar drew alongside Orn's horse, "We're in the equivalent of a battle situation, friend. Those among his men who refuse to follow the commander in a battle are called mutineers. Remember what every army does with mutineers. So I wouldn't go upsetting me while we're up there beneath the vault of heaven; altitude always makes me crab-assed. Understand?"

    "Oh, I understand you, Ragnar," Orn said. "Better than you think."

Ahead of them, along the path not taken, Karl and Bera rode steadily into the high desert. All around them the world was still, like an animal waiting for something to happen. Looking around him at the gritty surface, Karl realised how arid an environment it was – they seemed to have almost slid into it, it had changed so slowly and gradually. It's like a sponge, he thought. No matter how many snowflakes fall, the ground just seems to suck the moisture in. He cleared his throat. "Do we have anything with which we can line a pit?"

    Bera had said little all morning, answering direct questions with a nod or a shake of the head. But she said with a similar throat-clearing noise, "We should have something. Why?"

    "Good. We might be able to use it to distil water overnight." This was the first morning that they hadn't seen anything – a stream, a pond or a brook – from which they could refill the half-dozen plastic bottles which they'd taken during Bera's lightning raid on the pantry at Skorradalur.

    Thank cosmos she did, Karl thought. 'Cause I'd never have thought of it.

    The streams had allowed them to refill until now. There had been no water last night, but he'd been so distracted with lighting a fire that he'd missed the significance of it until now.

    "Will water from a still be enough?" Bera said.

    "I don't know." Probably not, though for a time he could use the nanophytes to synthesise water from whatever else he could ingest. But the long-term damage to them – and therefore to him – would be even greater than it already was from the continual reconfiguring that he was forcing on them. Even from the limited changes he'd made – but more significantly from the recent loss of the nanophytes he'd extruded the night before – he felt light-headed, despite the hazy sunshine that occasionally peeked through.

    
You're not a superman
, Loki reminded Karl. Yo
u have
greater strength than her, and you can adapt by cannibalising
your future. But I have no desire to see you die and leave me
trapped – or worse: I assume that if you die, I die.

    Probably, Karl sub-vocalised. He said aloud, "Anyway, it may not come to that. There's probably a stream just over the next hill." He was unsure who he was trying to convince the most, Loki or Bera – or himself.

    They rode on in companionable silence.

    
Loki suggested, I have no way of verifying your claim that
there's water ahead. All my information is based on the plan
etography available at the time the project started.

    
Since then, the Formers would have slammed a rain of
comets harvested from the outer system into Isheimur's surface,
raising decades-long dust clouds to trap the world's warmth,
to generate carbon dioxide, and with the water freed from the
comets to irrigate the specialised plants they had seeded to oxy
genate the atmosphere.

    Karl muttered to Loki, I'm unsure whether we're doing the right thing now, given what we can infer from the troll. If the W
inter Song
does turn out to be in working condition, given the current tension between Pantropists and Terraformers, activating its beacon will either bring Pantropists – who may ethnically cleanse the planet of Bera's people – or Terraformers who might consider hiding the evidence as the least worst option, and eradicate the trolls.

    Karl wished that he had could be sure that he wasn't weaving together a tapestry of theory based on little more than watching two snawks feed and a string of coincidences.

    They rode on and about an hour later, Karl noticed a dust-cloud about a kilometre away to their right. It paced them but came no closer, and after a few minutes vanished behind a pillar of rocks.

    Karl looked up and saw the black shadows above the dust-cloud, even as he heard Bera's hiss of in-drawn breath.

    Karl would have liked to have asked what they were, but sensed that now was not the time. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Bera sat forlorn on Teitur, shoulders hunched.

    It suddenly struck Karl how young she was. Women on Avalon could look equally girlish yet be old enough to be her mother. He kept forgetting that the women here had no Rejuve. She's little more than a child.

    "Bera," Karl said. She didn't answer, and he called again. When she looked up, she stared at him as if he was a stranger. All his sympathetic words sounded incredibly patronising, and turned to dust on his tongue. She didn't speak. Her look said "What?" eloquently enough.

    "Tell me about dragons," Karl said instead, changing his mind about asking for information – it seemed better than offering what she might consider fake sympathy. He ignored the roll of her eyes. "Was that what that dust-cloud was?"

    "Dunno," Bera said.

    "Why the sharp intake of breath," Karl said, "when you saw those black shadows in the sky?"

    "Dauskalas," Bera said.

    Loki added:
Death harvesters in Anglish.

    "They're bad?"

    "They're unlucky," Bera said. "They live off carrion. We don't often see them; they're supposed to be the harbinger of ill-omen."

    Karl nodded. At least he had got her talking, even if it was no easier than quarrying stone by hand. "What about the dragons?" he said. "I haven't seen any more since the one we saw down by the lake yesterday." He was happy to play dumb if it kept her talking.

    "That's because I wouldn't have expected one to be there anyway." Bera's tone carried a whole saddlebag full of attitude. "You'd normally only expect to find them at higher altitude, so why that brute down at Salturvatn was where he was – I dunno."

    "Oh," Karl said. He thought again of the heat-signature of the dragon they had encountered. "Are they hot-blooded?"

    Bera nodded. Karl could sense her frustration; he guessed that she wanted to talk to him, but not about dragons. But he wasn't sure if he was right, he couldn't be certain whether he'd correctly deduced the subject, and even if his assumptions were justified, he was unsure of how to broach it; he had to leave it to her. For the first time it struck him how little experience he had in dealing with women so much younger than his group. Get used to it, he thought. If the baby's a girl, then this is what she'll be like in a couple of decades. The thought was incredibly wearying.

    "They're warm-blooded, unlike lizards," Bera said again, wearily. "You obviously want a lecture – want me to be your companion." She flushed. "I mean the human version of this companion you've talked about."