Snowbrother (3 page)

Or she might find death. She had no wish to die, but all Kommanza were sword-born; better to go with iron in your gut than in bed of fever or a bad birthing. And she had done enough, made sacrifice enough, to warrant reincarnation as a Kommanza…

Yes, with luck (she made a curious gesture with her sword hand) this could be the beginning of…

A giggle from the ground brought her thoughts back to the present. The spellsmith glanced slyly up out of eyes no longer filmed with trance.

"The thought in your mind, Chiefkin," he tittered. "Be careful; for what you desire, the gods may grant." She jerked a thumb over her shoulder; the shaman nodded and slipped the cord tight with a snap.

"Released, unbound," he said ceremoniously. "The veil I take from their eyes, the felt from their ears, the cord from their tongues." He trotted to the rear where his pony waited. What came next would be for the blade and the bow.

Shkai'ra squinted at the sky. "Time?" she said.

Eh'rik nodded.

"The Circle turns, the Circle turns,

—
bird and beast, tree and flower

Brings Harmony to all we see,

—
birth and death each in its turn"

Maihu Jonnah's-kin let her mind wander, freed by the gentle familiarity of the Litany.

The words blended with the soft flow of the morning lantern, smells of beeswax polish and oatmeal steaming under goatsmilk and honey, warmth of her kinmates' hands in hers. Briefly, her consciousness touched theirs; the butterfly fidgeting of the neighbor's children, a kaleidoscope of thought and sense impressions from the adults. It was the fabric of a winter morning. For a moment, she frowned. There was a sense of…

constraint? No, a blankness, out beyond the edge of perception. She shrugged it off; in a new settlement like this the Otherworld would be wary, and the folk had not had time to gain that totality of knowledge of their surroundings that would warn of any impending wrongness.

A cheerful clatter and babble broke out as they sat; Minztans were carefree folk by choice. Maihu sipped thoughtfully at her herb tea, mapping out the day. Winter was busy for a highsmith: the usual assortment of broken tools, a half-dozen projects waiting in the forge to add to the kinfasts' store of trade-barter… and also other duties, she remembered with a sigh.

"Dennai," she said.

He looked up, spoon in hand. "Mai'?" he said. "Something on your mind?"

"Doa," she affirmed. "The stockade. We really should get the rest of the upright timbers cut and stacked while the hard snow lasts." It would be difficult to move them after thaw, and everyone would be busy clearing and planting then.

"Doa. And the other kinfasts would be less uneasy if you did the rites."

She sighed again. Even among the New Way radicals who had founded Newstead, it was difficult to arouse much urgency about the details of defense. And of course no Minztan would fell a tree without the proper ceremonies of explanation and apology; such heedlessness had brought the fire down on the Old Ones. The Way of the Circle bred no priesthood, but Maihu was known as one whose meditation had brought her closer to the Harmony than most.

"I'd be happier if the stockade was already finished," she said grimly. "Remember Annelu."

Dennai winced: they had found her hanging head down and gutted over a game trail last fall, with Kommanz runes carved in her forehead.

"Well," he said, "we've surely little to worry about until campaigning season."

She shrugged; Newstead was just a little too far from the steppe for raiders whose horses must carry their own fodder.

"Kinmate, I've lived thirty turnings of the Wheel here in the borderlands; you were born in the deep forest. This is less than two hundred
kaelm
from the grasslands, and our defense plan depends on the palisade as a base—or so the lakelander expert the Seeker hired said."

Dennai's reply froze unuttered. He was no Adept,
but he knew that wide, sightless stare; it was the Inner Eye. To use it so here, now, without ritual or preparation, was reckless; it bespoke a terrible urgency.

Maihu had been probing at the constraining barrier without conscious thought. When it vanished there was a moment of mental staggering, as if a solid wall had vanished under her hand. Her awareness flooded outward, driven by unspoken need; she made no attempt to stop it. An Initiate learned to trust intuition. Swiftly, she withdrew from the flow of sensory data, shutting down the upper levels of her mind. She became mind-not-mind, one with the Harmony; into her flowed the manifold life of plant and insect, bird and beast, meshing. And there… the touch of… horses, far too many. She raised her perceptions up past the level of instinct, a shadowy awareness of her own reasoning mind returning; an invitation to the danger of backlash, without the patterning rituals. A wrongness, blaring, shrilling, hatred and despair and killing-lust, a coiled-snake readiness to spring. Maihu came to herself with a snap. Training pushed away the savage throb of pain in her temples; there would be time to pay the price later.

Staggering, she fell against the wall, threw open the double-paned window and carved sash. Cold poured into the room, cold and a sound carrying faint but clear. Echoing, a harsh, deep-toned baying snarl.

Dennai had heard it before, and the memory sent the tiny hairs along his spine crawling and struggling to rise. Kommanz Warhorns, the horns of the giant wild cattle of the prairie marshes, tipped with walrus ivory. A child whimpered, terrified by her kinparents' fear. Maihu's eyes swept her companions, printing the loved faces on her mind. Nausea welled in a lump of cold sickness under her heart.

"Shennu," she said huskily. "Get the children over
to the Smoot-kin's hail."
Thank the
Circle we didn't bring the youngest
. Many of the Newstead settlers had left their infants with relatives until the village was completed.

Her voice ground on: "Dennai, fetch the weapons. The rest of you, remember the plan; if we're pushed back from the barricade or the walls, we hold the hall and the lanes." A drum began to thud, and she heard the shouts of the villagers. Anger awoke as she saw the white faces of her kinmates.

"We are the Seekers of the New Way," she said quietly and firmly. A part of her was surprised at the lack of tremor in her voice. "We do not seek war. War has come to us.

Now we fight!"

"Forest rats didn't think we could come this deep in winter," Shkai'ra mused, and spat. It froze with a crackle before it hit the ground, hard as the pooled blood of the sentry.

Angled in her hand, a mirror caught the light of the sun as it rose above the trees and flashed it across the clearing. Somebody loosed a volley of soft curses when a lance tipped a branchload of soft snow on her helmet. No Kommanza liked the shut-in feeling of wooded country, and the eleven-foot shafts were awkward among the trees.

The signal was answered from the opposite side of the opening, where the other troop of the warband waited:
blink
! then blink
blink
, command code for "proceeding as ordered."

From the woods opposite came the sudden weird daunting snarl of the warhoms, an endless bellowing roar that clamored through the trees, across four hundred meters of field to shiver in teeth and bone. The decoys walked their horses slowly out of the woods and paused to dress ranks. An alarm drum began to thud and the Minztans poured out of their homes, sleep-fuddled and half armed but ready to defend their village and moving to some sort of plan. Some dragged logs fitted with spiked stakes, and others overturned wagons and sleds to make an improvised wall across the open end of the palisade. Edged metal glinted behind it, ramming forward from ranks thick and dark.

Binoculars brought them close; they were armed with long spears, or bills and halberds—heavy cutting polearms, with points for stabbing and hooks for dragging a rider down. Most of them seemed to have laminated wooden shields, and many had some sort of body armor; squares of boiled leather or bone on their jackets, or outfits of wooden splints; she saw iron-strapped leather helms, even a few all-steel types.

"Two hundreds of them, maybe two hundreds and two tens," she said. "They're better equipped than I awaited."

Eh'rik nodded, pursing his lips; the enemy were coming a little farther forward than optimum, tactically. Safer to barricade the laneways and force the battle to close quarters; discipline and archery and the terrible shock power of massed lancers would all be lessened among walls and narrowness. The Minztans would still lose, of course, but they would kill more of the Kommanz before they went down. Even forcing the raiders to kill was a victory of sorts; the Kommanza were here for loot and an easy blooding of their youngsters, not slaughter. He smiled coldly; a dead Minztan was dead meat, and beef was much cheaper. Alive, each prisoner was twenty half-fingerweight silver coins stamped with the five stars of the Pentapolis, packed by the hundreds in little oaken kegs… coins that would buy strength for Stonefort.

Shkai'ra nodded. "We'll have to storm that barricade," she said. There were possibilities: fire-arrows for the houses… the picture was satisfying, Minztans
screaming in the flames, running out with their hair and clothes burning to meet the arrows.
No. We
cannot destroy what we came to take
.

"Truth."

Shkai'ra heeled her horse and the troop behind her walked their mounts into the clearing and began to trot toward the center; four Banners, a hundred and twenty warriors. The Minztans yelled defiance, a deep sound with an edge of fear in it. The Kommanz riders waited in disciplined silence, grinning like wolves. Their commander dipped her lance, brought it around in a circle and jabbed the point toward the barricade.

A snarling blat of horn-call signaled acknowledgment from the other troop. They left their lances in rest and formed in a staggered column of twos, bringing out their wheelbows. Officers' whistles trilled, and they rocked forward into a gallop, nocking arrows. Shkai'ra leaned forward eagerly; now she could tell the reach and number of the Minztan bows. At three hundred meters from the enemy the column turned right and the warriors fired, high arching shots to drop their shafts behind the barricade. Four hundred meters was extreme range for a wheelbow; under one hundred it would punch through even first-quality armor. The Minztans answered with their crossbows and recurves, hunting weapons turned to war. A few Kommanza went down, and more horses; the survivors were scooped up by their comrades, riding pillion as the attacking column bent itself into a circle and then dropping down again when they were out of range.

Shkai'ra drew her lance in a precise arc. Whistles shrilled in the attacking force and it drew back, forming into a single double line facing the village. Her own force drew up before them; she put her own bone whistle in her teeth and trilled coded signals. Two Banners remained mounted; the rest of the force swung to the ground, stacking their lances while they swung extra quivers up to their fellows. Then they formed in three ranks; the first line drew sabers and formed in a shieldwall, while the rear two held lances two-handed like pikes, a row of bristling points.

"Bring in the rest?" Eh'rik asked. There were two more Banners on the other side of the clearing, still in the woods.

"
Nia
," Shkai'ra decided: no. "When they break, too many could get through or over the palisade and run for the woods." They could never catch fugitives on foot among the timber. "Messenger, have them come out when we close: scale the palisade, fire from the top." There would be a parapet there, and attackers could use it as easily as defenders.

She blew a long descant on the whistle, and the whole force moved forward. Those on foot tramped steadily, slamming their weapons against the hard leather of their shields in an earthquake
wham-wham-wham
that echoed back from the walls and trees. The mounted ranks behind followed with an arrow on the string, reins knotted on the horses'

necks. At three hundred meters the mounted archers stopped, raising their weapons. The foot-fighters stepped up their pace to a trot; the sun rose over the pines, ruddy fire on edged steel and the garish lacquer of the armor. Shkai'ra raised her arm and chopped it down, and the archers drew and loosed together. The air filled with the shrill whistle of arrows, and two more flights were in the air before the first landed. Hands stripped arrows out of the quivers at a speed that would empty the forty shafts in minutes… but the raiders' attack would cover the beaten ground before they reached the barricade.

Few of the Minztans dared rise to return the fire, and many were left writhing on the ground or pinned
to the barricade by the meter-length shafts. The raiders charged, screeching as they ran. When they struck the barricade there was a sudden huge noise, thump and bang and rattle. Wood and steel on leather, on wood, skirling off steel or thudding dully into meat; shouts from the Minztans, screams born of sudden agony greater than flesh was made to bear. Over it all the ululating howl of the Kommanz warriors, wailing upward into the insane trilling of the blood squeal. Hands ripped at the barricade as the foresters thrust and hacked desperately to stop them; the attackers stood shield to shield and blocked the metal, striking back with sword and warhammer. Logs and wagons tumbled back, and the plains warriors surged through and over; moments later the defense burst back like glass struck by a sledgehammer. The attackers had better armor, weapons, above all the training since babyhood that made them warriors born.

Shkai'ra grunted as the fight moved back from the barricade. Mounted squads threw lariats over the obstacles and snubbed the braided leather ropes to the pommels of their saddles, dragging them aside as they might a steer. Behind there was a multiple creak and rattle as reins and lances were readied, shields un-slung, and arms thrust through the grips.

"Now!" she barked; horns gave a rasping snarl.

The heartbeat was loud in her ears, and she felt the familiar quasisexual tingling up her spine, drawing tight the skin on shoulders and breasts before settling under the rib cage.