Over the Darkened Landscape (21 page)

The weather stays fair, and we are back at Grandpa’s camp by twilight. The two of them ease their sleds up alongside the cabin, and I slowly stand up, unsure now of what I’m seeing. Their cabin is there, but overlapping it is mine, slightly smaller, door in a different position.

I turn to look, but already Mike, my great-grandfather, is fading from view, bending down to unleash now-invisible dogs. I turn to Grandpa, see that he is flickering from sight as well.

Tears in my eyes, I go and stand in front of him, look at his face as he concentrates on loosing his dogs.

“I’m sorry, Grandpa,” I say. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there. I loved . . . I love you very much.”

He stops, stands and whistles at his dogs, then turns and looks me right in the eye.

“I know,” he says with a grin, then fades from view.

I stand and look out on the lake for a long while, then enter my cabin to start up a fire and get something to eat.

Cold Ground

T
hree days ago Robert had shot his horse.

Early in the foothills it had come up lame. He had spent a panicked half-hour or so cutting away strips of horseflesh, hanging the strips from the back of his pack and over his shoulders, hoping the early winter sun would dry them before they rotted. It had worked, mostly. But the horse meat was gone now, eaten during his frantic hike south towards the border.

Now he sat on the cold hard ground, hiding in the bushes in a small ravine and watching a small snare that sat at the base of a willow, thirty paces away. The snare held a hare, its neck snapped and dried blood crusted around its nose. His stomach growled at the thought of fresh meat, of any food at all. But he couldn’t approach the snare; it was still active, ready to lash out if he got too close.

He had stumbled across it earlier in the day, and in his near-delirious hunger he had approached the dead animal without a second thought. Somehow though, his talisman had been in his right hand. He didn’t remember having pulled the pouch out from under his shirt, but quite obviously he had. It had warned him in its own fashion, first sending a shooting pain up his other arm, and when that didn’t stop him, briefly paralyzing his right leg. He had fallen to his face on the frozen ground, cheek resting on a light skiff of snow and frozen earth, and watched as the snare had flailed briefly about, having sensed his presence.

He had lain there for some minutes, drool freezing on his skin, grunting as he fought to get the feeling back in his arm and leg. When he was able he dragged himself back, away from the trap, and when his leg and arm felt better he had cleaned up any sign of his being there. Then he hid himself, and waited.

The sun had disappeared over the edge of the gully when the trapper arrived. Métis. A tall, dark, angry-looking man with a wiry black beard stained with brown streaks of tobacco. He wore a fur hat and gloves, a flannel jacket, and tall moccasins, and carried an ancient rifle in the crook of his right elbow, with a leather bag thrown over his opposite shoulder.

He walked to the trap, set down his rifle and his bag, pulled a knife from its sheath on his thigh. Stitched on the side of the bag was the battle flag Robert had come to hate and fear. White on a blue background, upraised hand and wolf’s head accompanied by the words
maisons . . . autels . . . Surtout Liberté
. The English translation was
In the house . . . At the altar . . . Above All Freedom
.

And death. Robert threw his knife just as the Métis seemed to sense his presence. It buried deep in the man’s neck, and he died without a sound, the snare now deactivated and safe to approach.

He had spent a few years in India with the 13th Hussars, and word had come down that they were preparing to send him to Afghanistan. He enjoyed the Far East; liked the people he served with, enjoyed seeing the far reaches of the Empire. But he was a servant of Her Majesty, did his duty no matter what, no matter where.

Before he could be officially notified of his transfer, the young Canadian government had come to Her Majesty’s Loyal Government with a request; Riel was back in Canada, and had brought with him a source of power that they were afraid they may not be able to counter. Was there a military sorcerer that they could employ to help put down the rebellion?

And so Robert Baden-Powell had been shipped to this God-forsaken flat piece of frozen dirt on the far side of the world. He had often complained about the oppressive heat during the early years of his service in India, but there he had at least lived like a gentleman. And his tracking and fighting skills had greatly improved while there, while his studies with the company’s chief sorcerer had proved fruitful.

So fruitful that he now feared for his life.

Robert had begun running and then riding and then running again for his life six days before, on the day they had hanged Riel. It had seemed that the magic of the Métis and the Indians had not been enough to hold off the combined armed might of the North West Mounted Police and the Canadian military, and that a man of Robert’s talents might not be necessary.

Even with the errors made by fools like Crozier and Otter, the NWMP had managed to put down the bulk of the rebellion. They had required only some minor spell-casting by Robert, background work mostly done to counter whatever weak spells the rebels were weaving.

After the defeat Dumont had fled to the United States and Riel had been captured, his magics seemingly nullified. Robert had barely broken a sweat, and it then looked as if he could go back home very soon. Perhaps even South Africa, if the rumours were correct.

The hanging had come on November 16, in Regina at the jail. Robert had been there, ostensibly as official sorcerer for Her Majesty’s government in Canada. Unofficially, several officers of the NWMP had sternly told him he was to stay in the background, that they still didn’t need “his kind” there. His tenure in Canada had so far proved both uneventful and woefully unpopular with all involved, including himself. Even those who didn’t believe he was aligned with the devil nonetheless usually mistrusted and feared him.

Riel had been marched out and led up to the gallows, hands tied behind his back and fingers also tied together to prevent any casting of spells, leg irons keeping him to a waddling pace. It was the government’s intention, Robert knew, to prove that Riel could die, thus breaking the back of this rebellion once and for all.

It didn’t work.

After getting out of the jail in the Hell that broke loose, and after escaping from the town with the flood of refugees, Robert had had time to think about what he had seen, and what he had sensed. Blood magic had been used, but the sense and smell of the blood had been foreign, alien to Robert, even while at the same time it had a strange familiarity about it. Something hot, moist, huge and angry.

It had been the blood that saved Riel from a snapped neck. He had dropped with only the most minor of flinches, and then hung there, smiling and dangling, before his eyes had settled on the jail’s warden. It seemed to Robert then that a giant beast had emerged from Riel’s head, huge, lumbering, ghostly, hard to focus on. It headed straight for the warden, who had given a strangled cry and then collapsed, skull slowly being crushed and blood almost gushing from his eyes and nose and ears and mouth, mingling with the strange blood that Riel was somehow using to keep himself alive. And then Métis and Cree had come storming over the walls, through the suddenly open gates, cutting Riel’s rope to let him down and slaughtering startled guards and constables and soldiers and civilians without discrimination.

Robert had grabbed at the red silk pouch that contained his Talisman of Mars and held on for his life as he ran straight out the open gates, counting on the power of the inscribed iron medallion to hide him from the invaders, at least momentarily. It had, although he had been forced to duck and then lash out as one Cree had swung at him with a knife, more likely than not responding to something like a fearful blur appearing in thin air rather than swinging at a clearly-perceived enemy.

The town’s white citizens had started their flight almost immediately, allowed to leave by the new provisional government, Riel no longer their leader but rather their Messiah. Robert had joined in with a group of three families, near enough to them to look as if he belonged. The charade had lasted only a few miles, when a Cree shaman had ridden by and sensed the magics that Robert was carrying.

He had stopped and dismounted, walking over to their group, which had stopped their travel when he had arrived. His eyes had wandered over each of them, stopping to rest on Robert for one uncomfortable moment too long. He stepped forward, and Robert had leapt on him, knife flashing as it plunged deep into the Indian’s chest. The first but not the last time he had been forced to use physical violence since coming to this cold land.

Then, without a word to or from his obviously horrified travelling companions, he climbed on the shaman’s horse and rode south, hoping to make the border before he was caught.

There was food in the trapper’s bag. Some biscuits, venison, a canteen of water. And the real surprise; a Hand of Glory and several small tallow candles. He grabbed these and tucked them in his pack, hoping he wouldn’t have to use them but unwilling to leave them behind. The thought of where it had come from repulsed him.

He untied the snare and tied the dead rabbit to the back of his pack, hoping it didn’t smell too much of the Métis magic. It was a chance he felt he had to take, though. He was weak from hunger, and the supplies in the bag would not last long enough.

He choked down two biscuits, one piece of venison, washed it all down with water, swallowing until he was forced to take a breath. Then, saying a few quick words and inscribing in the frozen dirt to hopefully keep the dead man’s spirit from latching onto him, he cautiously left the ravine.

The Métis had come from the west. He hated the thought of more confrontation, but he doubted he could survive without a horse to get him to safety; he was a damn good scout, but his knowledge of cold-weather survival was less than he might have hoped after the time he had spent here. Keeping low to the ground, Robert followed the scent of magic backwards, towards whatever camp he had come from. Four snares had been laid and reset along the way, easy to recognize now that he had the experience. There were no ley lines here like there were back in England, but the signs of power were now subtly obvious, and the traps were on a path that followed those signs.

The land here was mostly short grass, with the odd copse of trees hugging the flat, distant horizon. Towns, even farms were rare in this region. Normally the wind was fierce on the prairies this time of year, but tonight the breeze was intermittent at best, non-existent at most times.

Finally, in the distance he could make out the flickering of a campfire, the sky beyond it now a dark blue deepening to black. Overhead, stars began to fade into existence, twinkling through the frozen air.

Robert squatted on the ground and pulled off his pack, opened it to inspect his belongings in the failing light. The talisman had saved him twice this past week, but he was afraid the cold iron would stink with the effort of so much magic. If he tried to use it now he could be sure it would light up the night sky, alerting any sensitive quarry to his presence.

He thought about his cards, given to him by Paul Christian himself years ago in Paris before he’d gone on to India, but ruled out any overt use of them so close to the camp. Instead, he quickly separated the conventional cards from the Clavicles, dealt off the four aces and tucked them in his jacket pocket. For use if he needed to hide himself later.

Finally, and more than hesitantly, he pulled the Métis Hand of Glory from the pack. It was a little larger than his own hand, a dried and pickled hand cut from the body of some poor unfortunate hanged soul. He rested it on his lap and laid a candle beside it, then struck a lucifer from his pocket, careful to hide the flare with his body. He then lit the candle afire and dripped some wax into the space between two fingers, then embedded the candle; a slight breeze blew up for a second, then died away and everything was still. The flame stayed lit.
 

The less chances he took, the better off he’d be. This would hopefully guarantee the men at the fire would stay asleep or be stupefied if awake.

There were three horses standing off to the right side from where he approached, tethered to stakes in the ground. Robert carefully steered clear and downwind of them, not wanting them spooked and spoiling his cover. There were two men at the campfire, one asleep in a bedroll, the other sitting up and staring into the flames. Robert sneaked up behind the awake one, raising his blade.

The flame on the Hand sputtered and died. The man at the fire turned and rolled at the same time, Robert’s knife swinging through empty air. The other man, the sleeping one, sat up in his bedroll with a start, reaching for a rifle lying on the ground beside him. Robert flung his knife in desperation; it found its mark, embedding in the man’s left eye. He collapsed with a grunt.

There was a blinding flash of pain, and then things went black.

When he came back to, the sun was up again, low in the east. The fire had been reduced to red and black coals, casting almost no heat to make up for the cold earth pressing into Robert’s cheek. He tried to sit up, groaned as pain shot through the back of his skull, then groaned again when he tried to put his hands to it and discovered they were tied together.

He was lifted from behind and roughly set in a sitting position. “You should not try to use a Hand of Glory on the person who made it, my friend.” And then his captor stepped round into his view. Robert gasped.

“Ah, you recognize me,” said the man, his accent thick behind the heavy beard, balding forehead, large nose and buckskin jacket that helped identify him. Gabriel Dumont.

“Coming back from your coward’s flight?” Robert winced at this; even talking hurt his head.

Dumont grinned. “I ran in May, against my better judgement, because Louis asked me to.”