Anderson, Poul - Novel 18 Read online

  “No, hardly,” was the serene response. “I’m older, and I’m married. Nobody can know men well till she’s lived with some of them, year after year in closeness. Yon poor child will never have aught but passing affairs. Unless she turns wholly to women for love, as many do in a Station.”

  “You don’t care if I—?—But honestly, I’d rather have you.”

  Donya padded over and kissed him. “Gallant you are. Yet we’ve a long trek after we leave here. Meanwhile I really should use this chance to think.” She paused. “Aye, you abide through tomorrow, get well rested, enjoy your lass and whoever else may seek you.”

  “What will you do?”

  “Borrow a horse.”

  Well, he reflected, hunters get scant privacy of the skin, unless they go walkabout. How, then, do they develop such privacy of the heart? Resentment flickered. And what makes her suppose I have no thoughts in need of marshalling?

  Subsequently they each chose two sets of clothing from a stock kept on hand—undergarments, soft boots, leather trousers whose fringes were a supply of thongs, coarse cloth shirts and bandanas, wide-brimmed felt hats, windbreakers, rain ponchos—plus weapons, tools, bedding, horses. Nobody seemed officially in charge. Errody took over while her associates drifted back to their jobs, apart from the girl who had eyes for Josserek. That one said hers could wait. Her name was Koray.

  Errody used a steel pen to write a list of items bought and their agreed-on value, which Donya signed. “How does this document operate?” Josserek inquired.

  “It’s an imak—” Donya groped after words. She must spend a few minutes clarifying the idea for him, simple though it was.

  A Station was set of independent businesses, run by single women and by those rare men who, for miscellaneous reasons, didn’t fit into normal Rogaviki life. (Koray later pointed out that the blacksmith was lame. Of his fellows, she imagined the first had left home because of a quarrel in his family, though he didn’t say, while the second was a cheerful ne’er-do-well who preferred labor for hire to the rigors and responsibilities outside.) They hailed from everywhere, irrespective of kith origins. Josserek guessed that that was why they could accept the abandonment of this place to the invaders. They had no strong emotional ties to it.

  They did have material losses to suffer, of course. A Station sold goods and services which, mostly, required a group sedentary the year around. It was hostel, mart, and specialist factories for an immense area. Travelers in particular—Rogaviki did a lot of individual traveling— could here find what they required en route. A major activity was the swapping of jaded ponies for fresh. Any difference in bargained-out values, or the cost of any outright purchase, might be met with cash; some Imperial and Arvannethan coins circulated. Or it might be paid in kind. Or it might be settled by a note such as Donya had signed, essentially a bill of exchange. Her household would redeem it upon presentation. Probably it would pass through many hands before it reached that goal.

  “What if it never does?” Josserek wondered.

  “We count not things as narrowly in the Northlands as folk do elsewhere,” Errody replied. “We live in too much abundance for a load of goods, either way, to make a difference.”

  “This Sidfr would take from us,” Donya hissed.

  Koray tugged Josserek’s elbow. She had promised to show him around.

  For a start, proudly, she led him into her print shop. A flatbed press turned out well-composed pages of flowing alphabet and intricate illustrations. “We can bind books too,” she said, “but buyers oftenest do that themselves, in winter.”

  “Where does the paper come from?” he inquired.

  “Most from the South. Happens this is Rogavikian. They’ve built a mill at Whitewater Station, on the Wilderwoods edge.”

  This alone, as well as what else he saw that afternoon, told Josserek of a broadly spread and vigorous commerce. Households, self-sufficient as far as their necessities went, bought ample finely made things. Many wares flowed northward in exchange for metal salvaged from ancient ruins; but many, and ever more, were entirely domestic. They were innovative, too. Koray chattered of a newly designed portable loom, or a repeating crossbow which a visitor from the Tantian Hills had described. The pamphlet she was currently printing concerned astronomical observations by a man at Eagles Gather who, besides a Rahfdian telescope, owned a Killimaraichan navigator’s clock which had somehow found its way to him. Josserek saw a brisk market for the latter item ... except that the bloody Empire would establish a monopoly.

  Apparently all trade, like all manufacturing, was private. No guilds or governments existed to control it, no laws forbade anything—Wait. “Your folk sell furs to the Southrons,” he said. “But I hear they never sell meat or hides from big game. Do you exchange those among yourselves?”

  “Why, yes,” Koray said. “A Mend gives a Mend a bison robe or a boar ham or, oh, whatever.”

  “I don’t mean gifts. I mean a regular trade. Suppose I offered your horsedealer a hundred bronco hides for a live, well-broken animal.”

  She stepped back. Her eyes widened. “Nobody would.”

  “Why not?”

  “It would be ... wrong, wrong. We live by the game beasts.”

  “I see. I’m sorry. Forgive a foreigner’s ignorance.” Josserek patted her. She relaxed and snuggled.

  He was interested in everything he saw, but examined the power systems with most care. The windmill was a conventional skeleton and sails. Alcohol was fuel for blowtorches and a couple of small machine tools. It was distilled on the premises from fermented wild grains and fruits. (Brandymaking was a separate operation.) The main energy source was the solar collector, whose black waterpipes led to a subterranean tank of fired clay. There, under pressure, temperatures rose well above normal boiling point. Simple exchangers tapped the heat for warmth and cookery.

  Horses, hounds, and hawks were the only domestic animals, no different from their wild cousins. When Koray cuddled a litter of puppies, and the big lean mother snarled if Josserek got close, he remembered an absence. “Have you no children here?” he asked.

  Did she flinch? At least, kneeling over the straw, she turned her face aside, and he could barely hear her. “No. Not on a Station. Nobody marries ... that I ever heard of.”

  “But, uh, men do come by and—”

  “It would be wrong to, to raise fatherless children. The wives bring forth enough.”

  “What I mean is—”

  “I understand. Did you not know? Many Rogaviki women can will that they not conceive.”

  Surprised, he thought, Possible. Psychosomatics; the mind ordering hormonal changes. But what discipline is involved? Our psychologists would certainly like to know. “Does that always work?”

  “No. Then there are other ways.” He expected mention of mechanical or chemical contraceptives, however unlikely they seemed in these parts. Instead, as though thrusting wistfulness aside, Koray lifted her gaze to his. “Fear not on my account, Josserek. Unions between us and outsiders ... seldom bring anything about.”

  She left the puppies and came to him.

  That evening, by lantern light, the company dined well. Mostly it was off assorted meats. Man can stay hale on a carnivorous diet if he eats the whole animal; and, in various preparations, the Northfolk did. But they added fish, fowl, eggs, breads, mare’s milk and cheese, fruits, herb teas, beer, wine, mead, liquor, till Josserek’s head tolled. Conversation was animated, laced with humor despite the woe moving up the Jugular. Yet it struck him strange, being so much more objective than he was used to. Elsewhere, a strange guest would have gotten at least some leading questions about his experiences, habits, beliefs, prejudices, opinions, hopes, and received similar information about his hosts. At Bullgore they told him of their land, past history, happenings which were common local knowledge; and they left it to him to volunteer what he chose.

  Nevertheless, for his entertainment three girls performed a harp dance that began wildly and ended in a way whic
h sent most watchers soon to bed, two by two.

  Those were the brackets of the evening. For hours in between, everyone listened avidly to his stories from the Mother Ocean. Queries flew thick and sharp as arrow barrages.

  Two additional guests were present, a man and a woman, postal couriers on different routes who had stopped off for the night. From what they told him, Josserek learned that this too was a service performed for gain by individuals, who had no central organization. Evidently it covered the whole domain of the kiths, swiftly and reliably.

  —Agile, inventive, Koray proved a joy to him, if not the splendor that Donya was. But long after she slept in the curve of his arm, he lay awake, staring into darkness, trying and failing to understand her people. They weren’t barbarians after all—maybe—But then what in the Great Abyss were they?

  CHAPTER 11

  At the head of navigation, a few miles south of the mighty but treacherous Bison River inflow, lay Fuld, northernmost of the Arvannethan trading posts. Beyond, the Jugular was too heavily gravelled, stones which the Ice gouged forth in its winter advance and washed southward in its summer retreat. Standing on the factor’s verandah, Sidir could make out a green and white violence where currents broke on bars. Shallow or not, that was no place for an army few of whose men could swim.

  The house occupied the top of a high bluff on the left bank. It was built of wood and brick shipped up from the Southland, in Southern style, a square enclosing a patio. Peaked shingle roofs, necessary to shed heavier snow than the city ever got, looked grotesque on this; the cloister garden was a poor thing; the rooms, however spacious, were chill and gloomy. Sidir had wondered why the makers did not imitate native winter-houses, which visitors reported were snug. Then he let the landscape reach his full consciousness, and felt that probably they wanted every reminder of home they could have.

  Below him, along the dock, clustered warehouses, barracks, a tavern. There Weyrin was tied. His last barges and their tugs were anchored in the great brown stream. On the far shore, a ferry terminal served Rogaviki who brought goods from the west—had brought goods, until him. A mile outside the settlement, his banners, pickets, dome tents, wagons, corrals, cannon drew diagrams upon wilderness. Those men, whom he had led the entire distance and would lead further, were his crack troops, Barommian cavalry, elite Rahf- dian infantry, gunners and engineers whose skill was unsurpassed in the world.

  Yet they seemed lost in this country. It had changed as he fared, from level to rolling, from long grass to short, from treelessness to scattered coppices. Somehow that deepened distances and alienness. Today was chill, shadowless, wanhued. Black rags of cloud flew beneath a steely overcast. The wind skirled and flung single raindrops. When they hit, they stung.

  Inil en-Gula, the factor, pointed. “Yes,” he said, “you guess aright, the river does form a boundary. East is the Ulgani kith, west the Hervar.”

  Hervar. Donya. Sidir locked his teeth together.

  “That is exceptional,” Inil went on. He was a wrinkled little yellow man, bookish, frankly dismayed at the war, nonetheless unable not to talk with a person fresh from civilization. “As a rule, kith territories have no fixed frontiers.”

  Surprise jarred through Sidfr’s rememberings. He had studied what he could about the Northfolk, and asked

  Donya about them at length, but always something slipped from him, always he found he had had a wrong idea. And so he was never sure if the idea that replaced it was right. “Why, I thought the tribes were fanatical where their lands are concerned,” he said.

  “They are, they are, Captain General. Which is why the Empire is making a terrible mistake.”

  Sidfr chopped an impatient gesture. “Fanatics are like dry sticks. They don’t bend, but they break, and then they can’t spring back.”

  “The Rogaviki are different. They have no leaders whom you can force to persuade them to make peace.” “I know. The better for us. Isolated individuals lack the mutual support—the web of duty and sanction, the fear of being shamed as coward or punished as traitor— that makes organized groups resist.” Sidfr recalled incidents downstream, told him by swift-riding messengers while he traveled: bush-whackings, murders by stealth, concealed pits with sharp stakes at the bottom, plugged wells, a clay vessel full of rattlesnakes catapulted into a camp.... “I don’t deny they’re dangerous, treacherous enemies. But dangerous mainly when they get a chance to practice the treachery. I wish they’d be foolish and try some pitched battles. If not, we’ll take them piecemeal. We’ll make examples that should quell the rest. Meanwhile, Fuld will be adequately guarded.”

  “I hope you are right, Captain General,” Inil sighed. “For both our sakes. But, if you will pardon my rudeness, you show no comprehension of their character.” Sidfr forged a smile. “I appreciate rudeness, Guilds- man. Lies and flattery are worse than useless.” Did Donya lie, or could I simply not grasp what she tried to tell me? Did her lovemaking flatter me, or did she simply enjoy me for what I was?

  Surely, when she turned on me, it was not in calculated betrayal but in desperation. What did I do that was wrong. Donya?

  “Explain, then,” he requested. “You were saying— How do tribes define their territories?”

  “First, Captain General, they are not tribes,” Inil answered. “Nor clans. Our word ‘kith’ is a poor approximation of ‘rorskay.’ Some claim a common descent, but as a legend, of no special significance. Families within one do tend to intermarry, but that’s not invariable; it’s just the effect of propinquity. In cross-kith weddings, the husband joins the wife’s—no initiation ceremonies, perhaps no deep feelings about the change, though God knows what feelings the Rogaviki have about whatever is important to them. After twenty-five years in the trade, I can’t tell.”

  Sidfr rubbed his chin. “And yet that same husband will defend his adopted soil to the death.”

  “Yes. Basically, a kith is a set of families who, by tradition, share a certain hunting ground. A huge ground, to be sure. There are less than a hundred kiths in the entire Northlands, and I believe none has more than two or three thousand members. The herds they follow define the regions sufficiently well, being territorial creatures.” Was that why Donya went mad? Because, in her savage way of seeing the world, the herds are her home? Her gods, her ancestral ghosts?

  “Individuals and partner groups travel freely,” Inil continued. “They are welcome guests, for the news and variety they bring. Nobody minds their hunting as they go. But serious encroachment, by a large band on another’s preserve, is unheard of. I suspect it is unthinkable.”

  “Even in bad years?”

  “They have no bad years. The Rogaviki keep their population low enough that, no matter how far animal numbers drop—say during a particularly severe winter— they always find plenty.”

  And that isn’t natural either. It’s the mark of an effete and dying people, as in Arvanneth. The strong breed to capacity, and beyond. That is why the Empire will take the Northlands.

  But is Donya, then, weak?

  “I suppose their religion taboos incursions,” Sidfr guessed. “And a deal else.”

  “I am not sure if they have anything we would understand as a religion,” Inil said.

  “What?”

  “Oh, I have heard some ideas described, that some of them pursue in a kind of career. But it sounds to me more like a philosophy than a faith.”

  No wars to discipline them. No leaders to guide them. No belief to sustain them. How have they survived?

  Inil hunched in his robe. “Captain General, it’s abominably cold,” he complained. “Shall we go inside?”

  “Go if you wish, Guildsman,” the Barommian answered. “I’d like to ... breathe a while longer. I’ll join you shortly.”

  “The Ice has already touched you, has it?” Inil muttered, and departed.

  Sidfr stared after him. What the Nine Devils had that meant?

  He swung his attention back outward. There was so much, too much he must do.
Foremost, if not quite first in time, was the gathering of knowledge. Without native guides—some natives had always joined the conquerors!— until now—his scouts must make their own discoveries and draw their own maps, across vastnesses where every rock might hide a sniper, every grove a deadfall. They could, his lads; they would; somewhere they would at last find Donya’s home, to keep for a hostage or sack for a lesson. But he must spur them toward getting well secured soon. The summer was brief in this haunted land.

  She haunted it.

  Why?

  He struggled for bluntness. Good-looking. Exotic. A superb lay. A manlike intelligence and nerve. Most of all, maybe, mystery, the wondering what really dwelt behind her eyes. None of this explains why the loss of her bleeds in me.

  Or why I imagine any mystery. Likeliest she was merely heedless and conscienceless, as ready to let that stoker tumble her as me or anybody, unable to keep up her trickery very long before a chance quarrel set her wits afire. It’s not the real Donya I can’t forget, it’s a dream.

  Why should I have the dream?

  They call the Rogaviki women witches.

  Beneath his Rahfdian reason, an old barbarian stirred. He felt the wind’s bite, shivered, and followed the factor inside.

  CHAPTER 12

  Donya and Josserek traveled for several days, northbound to join her household in Hervar, before they first met a hunter band. He kept no count. In these man- empty reaches, time and space melted together and there were only events—rainsquall, rainbow, chasing down an antelope for food, escaping a houndpack, gaudy sunset through the translucent wings of bats above a lake, hillcock rocketing from berrythicket, butterfly swarm, crossing a knife-cold river, laughter at the antics of fox pups seen from concealment, raid on a beehive in a hollow stump, love made wildly by moonlight, then tenderly again at dawn and once, crazily, while heaven blazed, roared, cataracted with thunderstorm—events like single waves on a endless rhythm of miles. He did observe how the country slowly changed. Low hills and dales became commoner. Trees and mossy meadows appeared oftener; later, heaths did. Nights were colder.