Videssos Cycle, Volume 2 (57 page)

The storm blew harder, as though it acknowledged Avshar as its parent. The wind hurled stinging snow into Viridovix’ eyes. He shielded them with his hands as best he could, stumbling ahead all but blind. The icy blast fought his every forward step; it was like trying to walk through ocean waves.

A savage gust stopped him and Batbaian in their tracks. “The tent!” the plainsman shouted. “This will kill us if we stay in it!” Viridovix cursed as he tried to drive the pegs; the ground had frozen so hard it did not want to take them. Somehow he and Batbaian forced the felt over its framework. Like animals darting into a nest, they scrambled for shelter.

The raging wind seemed to scream louder once they were out of it. Viridovix rubbed at his legs, stamped his feet; his boots were thick and lined with several layers of felt, but his toes turned to ice each day regardless.
“Sure and I understand the now why you were mooning over horseapples back there,” he said. “A sheepshit fire’s better than none.”

“This is the last of it, worse luck,” Batbaian said. Fat caught more easily, but once alight the uncured dung burned longer and, to the Celt’s surprise, cleaner than the drippings the Khamorth always caught from his meat. Viridovix had hesitated almost a day over eating anything cooked on a dung fire, but hunger broke down his qualms.

He sighed in relief as the fire began to give off a little warmth. The snow and ice clinging to his mustaches started melting; he wiped his face on his cloak. The wool was rank and greasy, but he did not mind. “Mutton again,” he grumbled.

“We’re almost to the end of that, too,” Batbaian said. “You’ll like it better than empty, I’d bet.”

“Truth that.” Viridovix skewered a hunk on his dagger, held it over the flames. His belly rumbled at the smell. “Sure and my insides think so.”

A poorly planted tent peg tore out of its hole. The wind smacked it against the side of the tent like a flung stone. Batbaian’s head came up in alarm. “We’ve got to set that again,” he exclaimed, “before—” The second peg came loose as he was scrambling to his feet. The gale roared in under the bottom of the tent, lifted the felt free of its framework. Viridovix clutched it for a moment. Then, with what sounded like mocking laughter, the storm ripped it from his hands and sent it flapping away over the steppe.

“After it!” Batbaian screamed. “We won’t last a day without it!” He flung the last words over his shoulder as he vanished into the blowing snow.

Viridovix plunged after him. He had not gone twenty paces when he knew he was in trouble. Ahead, Batbaian might have been snatched from the face of the earth. The fire was lost behind him. He cried the Khamorth’s name again and again, howled out Gallic war cries. If there was any answer, the wind blew it away.

Still shouting, he ran with the wind at his back for a while. In the blizzard, Batbaian could have been almost at his elbow, and would not have known it. He stopped, irresolute. If Batbaian had caught the runaway tent fabric, what would he do with it? Stay and wait for Viridovix or
try to bring it back to what was left of the frame? “Och, a murrain take it,” the Celt muttered. “Whichever way I guess’ll turn out wrong.”

He dug in his pouch and found the square Haloga coin he had won. He tossed it in the air, caught it with both hands. When he uncovered it, a dragon leered at him. “To the tent, then.” He turned to face the bitter wind. It stung like fire against his face; he was glad of his new beard, and wished it were heavier.

He tried to follow his own footprints back, but the storm was already blowing snow over them. They grew fainter as he watched. He thought he was getting close when they finally gave out altogether. He fought panic. There had to be some way—the wind! If it had held steady, he could use it to steer his way back.

It must have shifted. After a while he knew he had gone too far. He cast about blindly then, hoping luck would serve where wit had failed. It did not. He stood shivering, pounding his hands together and wondering what to do next. No food, no fire, no shelter—he could feel the heat draining from his body and knew Batbaian had been right; the storm could kill quickly.

“If only the cursed snow’d stop so a body could use the eyes of him,” he said, shaking his head like a baffled bear. It seemed ready to snow forever, though, thick gusts of white powder blowing by almost horizontally.

Realizing he had to shield himself from the ravening gale, he knelt and began pushing up a heap of snow as a windbreak. The storm swept it away about as fast as he piled it up, but at last he had a waist-high wall that blocked the worst of the wind. He crouched behind it, knowing his makeshift would do no good if the storm did not blow itself out soon.

The numbness came insidiously; he hardly noticed when he could no longer feel his nose, his feet, his forearms. In a way it was a relief, for they did not hurt any more. His mind grew numb, too, slipping into a frigid lassitude in which he knew he was dying but lacked the will to care. He had always thought he would fight death to the end, but the irresistible cold stripped his defenses one by one and left him nothing to strike back at. He did not notice closing his eyes; what was there to see, in any case?

He slept.

“Bloody ghastly,” Goudeles shouted over the shrieking wind.

“What are you complaining about, Pikridios?” Skylitzes said beside him. “With your blubber you’re likely warmer than any of us.” The officer rode hunched over the right side of his pony’s neck to gain a little protection from the blizzard.

The brute power of the plains winter chilled Gorgidas’ heart as much as it did his body. A child of the sunny Mediterranean, he was ill-equipped to face miles of snow and ice; they daunted him worse than sudden death on the battlefield. No wonder the Videssians gave Skotos a frozen lair, he thought.

He turned to Arghun, asking, “Is it always so fierce?”

The khagan’s face, like his own, was smeared so thick with grease that it glistened even in this murky light. “I have seen storms as bad as this, a few,” he answered, “but never one that lasted so long. And it grows worse as we ride east, which is strange. Usually the fouler weather stays to the west.” A gust kicked snow into his face. He coughed and bundled his robe of long-haired goatskin tighter around him. Since his poisoning he felt the cold more than his followers, and the Greek could only guess the hardship he was enduring. No complaint passed his lips, though, nor a suggestion that the Arshaum army slow its advance.

A pair of scouts came riding back through the nomads toward the khagan, one a few yards ahead of the other. The leader bobbed his head in salute, spoke with faint distaste: “We found a Hairy, sir, freezing in the snow, and some other foreigner with him.”

Arghun’s brows shot up. “A Khamorth? On our side of the river?”

“Outlaw?” Skylitzes rapped.

“That or a madman, or maybe both. No horse, and he’s lost an eye sometime not long ago—not pretty. Just an idiot Khamorth, rolled in felt.”

“Oh, a pox on him,” the second scout burst out as he came abreast of his companion. He was younger than the other man, with lively, humorous eyes. “Tell them about the fire-demon.”

The first picket made a rude noise. “You and your fire-demons. If he is one, this storm’s put him out for good. Even money he’s frozen dead by now—he didn’t look to be far from it, and I shouldn’t wonder, either, lying in the snow in only his coat.”

“Well, I still say he’s no natural breed of man,” the younger Arshaum
insisted. “Or will you tell me you’ve seen his like before, with hair and whiskers and great long mustache the color of polished bronze?”

Gorgidas, Skylitzes, and Goudeles shouted together. The scout started; Arghun’s horse shied at the outcry. “Our this friend is,” Gorgidas said to the khagan, losing grammar in his excitement.

Skylitzes nodded. “That could only be one man.”

Gorgidas swung round on the scouts. “You left him there to freeze, you idiots?”

“And up your arse, too,” the leader of the two retorted. “What do we want with foreigners on Arshaum land?” That included the Greek, his glare said.

But Arghun roared, “Hold your tongue, you! These foreigners here are our allies, and this one saved my life. If their friend dies in the snow, you’ll wish you had, too.” The khagan’s temper was usually mild; the plainsmen quailed at his outburst.

“Take me to him,” Gorgidas said. The outriders obeyed without a word. “Gallop, damn you!” the Greek shouted. The three spurred their horses forward, snow flying. Goudeles and Skylitzes in their wake, they pounded through and then past the Arshaum army.

Gorgidas wondered how the nomads knew just where to ride in this howling white wilderness. Steering by the wind, no doubt, and by landmarks they recognized but which meant nothing to his untrained eyes. His own eyes stung and watered from the headlong pace, and his nose, despite the coating of fat that covered it, felt like an icicle in the center of his face. These flat-featured nomads were better suited than he to life in a steppe winter.

“There,” the younger scout said, pointing ahead through the swirling snow. The Greek spied the ponies first, then the dismounted Arshaum beside them—no, he saw as he drew near, one of the squatting figures had to be a Khamorth, from its heavy beard. He dismissed the man from Pardraya from his thoughts. If the fellow was well enough to move around like that, he was not going to freeze in the next few minutes.

“Out of my way!” Gorgidas shouted, leaping down from his horse. The three Arshaum huddled round the shape in the snow jumped to their feet, reaching for swords. The scouts who had fetched the Greek were shouting, too, explaining to their comrades who he was.

He paid them no attention, bending down over Viridovix’ prone form. When he pulled him over onto his back, he thought the Celt was dead. His flesh was pale and cold; his head rolled limply on his neck. He did not seem to be breathing.

The Greek cradled Viridovix’ face in his hands. Just so had he held Quintus Glabrio when an arrow killed his lover, helpless for all his skill. And now another one dear to him—true, in a different and lesser way—he could not save. Futile rage and frustration tore at him; would he never be of any use?

Then he jumped—was that a pulse in the Gaul’s throat? It came again, so slow and faint he hardly dared believe he felt it.

Afterwards, he never remembered thinking what to do next. His dogged rationality had been Nepos’ despair when the priest-mage tried to teach him the Videssian healing art. “Never mind how or why,” Nepos had shouted once. “Know that you must—and you will.” But for the Greek that was worse than no explanation, and he never did succeed.

His lover’s wound could have been the trigger to free him from the grip of reasoned thought and let the healing gift burst forth, but Glabrio had died before he hit the ground. Not even the Videssian art could raise the dead. And so Gorgidas had turned his back on it in his anguish over the failure—for good, he thought.

Now, though, desperation lifted him outside himself, stripped away everything but the need to save his friend. Seeing him suddenly stiffen above Viridovix, Goudeles pushed aside an Arshaum who was about to take him by the shoulder. The nomad spun round in anger. “Shaman,” the bureaucrat said, pointing to the Greek. “Let him be.” The Arshaum’s slanted eyes went wide. He nodded and stepped back.

Gorgidas, staring down at the Celt’s white face, never noticed the byplay. He felt his will gather into a single hard point, like the sun’s rays focused by a burning glass. This was where he had always fallen short, trying to force that focused will outward. But it leaped forward before he consciously tried to project it.

A conduit, a channel—he sensed Viridovix’ failing body as if it were his own; sensed the ravages of cold and exposure that froze fingers and cheeks, reached deep into entrails; sensed the chilled blood in its thick, sluggish motion through the Gaul’s veins.

In that first dizzying rush of perception the Greek was almost swept away, almost lost himself in the Celt’s distress. But his stubborn reason would not let him be submerged; he
knew
who he truly was, no matter what sense impressions his mind was receiving. And the conduit ran both ways—in the same instant he felt Viridovix flood in on him, he was also reaching out to reverse, repair, revive.

Quicken the heart; send warmth surging into belly, streaming into arms and legs. Strengthen lungs, and speed them, too—they had barely been sipping the frigid air. More delicate work: feel the damage of frost in fingers, toes, cheeks, ears, eyelids—melt it gently, gradually, let the new flow of blood work with his power. The poor makeshift words for what he did came later. In the crisis they meant nothing. The healing went on at a level far below words.

The Celt stirred under his hands like a restless sleeper, muttered some drowsy protest in his own musical speech. His eyes, green as the Gallic forests, came open, and there was intelligence in them. Then Gorgidas truly realized what he had accomplished. Joy leaped in him, joy and as crushing a weariness as he had ever known: the price of the healer’s art.

Viridovix had not thought he would wake again, surely not with this new hot tide of strength flowing through him. As he stretched and—oh, miracle!—felt all his limbs answer him, he thought for a moment he had passed to the afterworld; he could not imagine feeling so well in this one. The hands gently touching his face, then, might belong to some immortal maid, to make him glad through eternity.