“What did she see them doing?” Havec asked, eyes on his mother.
“Feeding it. Stealing from their own people and sacrificing to it. Sheep, cattle, foodstuffs. Lieutenant Pannus thought they were trying to gain the ear of a being that doesn’t usually treat with humans.”
There was a period while they all struggled to come to terms with the revelation that the guides they had mostly ignored might be considerably better-informed than the rest of them. It was Farait who recovered first. “If we knew this was coming…!”
The boy bowed his head, unable to respond.
“You didn’t know?” Smooth Guy demanded, the accusation clear.
“I’m the chaplain,” Hot Priest retorted, “I’m not exactly ‘need to know.’”
“So the uniform’s just a costume to you?”
“Funny you’re so keen to brag about your service, since you quit,” Havec snarled back.
“Gentlemen.” Qanath stepped in and raised her hands. “If we could shelve the bickering and get back to the murderous god that just walked through our camp?”
Anger remained heavy on the air, but that shut them up and they glowered at the fire as they wondered what to do. It was Havec who broke the quiet, glancing at Farait. “You’re our expert. What would a god be doing walking about in our world?”
The priest grimaced. “It’s in their nature to want to become more powerful, to expand their reach or gain new followers. They don’t really have any goal other than to be what they are, except more.”
“Then why aren’t they always at war?”
“Because there is no afterlife for them.”
Another silence descended as they all considered that. It was an unsettling thought, that the supernatural beings woven through the fabric of their world only failed to rend that fabric regularly out of rational self-interest. It left open the possibility that, at any time, one of them might decide to say screw it and go with their gut.
The girl dropped to the earth before the fire as if her knees had given out, and that shook him from his daze. Going to her, he grabbed her by the upper arms and pulled her right back to her feet. “We can’t stay here,” he told her, shooting her an apologetic frown. “We need to get down out of the mountains now. If Winter is walking the heights in Moritia, there’ll be a blizzard on its heels.”
***
They were still walking by the time the sky in the east began to go gray. Havec had said they needed to get down out of the mountains, and it wasn’t so much that Qanath questioned his reasoning: she was beginning to wonder if there was a place in Moritia that qualified. The temperature kept dropping, and they could see the massive banks of clouds piling in. There was going to be a storm, and none of them wanted to be out in it.
The hike was an agony that only grew worse as the hours wore on. The icy wind seemed to slice the exposed skin of her cheeks, piercing straight through her clothes to breathe across the naked flesh beneath. Her breath clawed raggedly in her lungs as they traversed ground that was never flat, but only up or down. Havec made them dismount more than once and walk, to warm them up and give the horses a break. Their mounts walked with their heads bowed, exhausted, and Qanath began to wonder if they would survive; these looked like southern creatures, without a thick coat to protect them from the chill. It hadn’t begun to snow, but the last snow had yet to melt and slowed their feet. When they broke free occasionally from the trees, the wind threw the snow across the sky in shimmering clouds as if it meant to claim the world. It did, Qanath remembered every time she saw this, shivering from more than the chill.
They were doing another spell of walking when dawn arrived. Havec had ordered them down again; while everyone else faltered, he kept on like he had no need for sleep. Qanath walked with her head down, hunched into herself, feet catching on unseen obstructions with every other step. She didn’t want to dwell on it, but it was hard to think of anything but the burning of her breath, the hot ache in her muscles. The numbness fading into pain in her fingers and toes.
By the time she realized she could actually see her own plodding feet, she was quite sure she had never been more tired in her life. She’d stayed up as long in school, cramming for a test, but she had never before had to walk for hours along the way. She hadn’t spent a period in the middle of it watching a duel with evil witches, terrified for her own life and her friends.
“Do you smell that?”
She looked up, too tired to be surprised that Amril was walking at her side. She didn’t need to ask what he meant: one sniff and her nose was filled with the smell of smoke. It was faint but shocking against the austere, wintry odors of pine resin and ice. She stifled a sob, thinking that she’d never been so grateful for anything in her life.
“I almost wonder if something went wrong.”
She glanced at him because she had no idea what he was talking about and was too tired to ask.
“The boy said they’ve been plotting with this god. But when the queen realized the god walked the world, she seemed upset. She blamed it on your friend, but if the plan was that he be a long way away from here when they did what they meant to do, how could any of it be laid at his door? It makes me think…”
“Things aren’t going according to plan,” she supplied. He seemed to have a point, but she was too weary to discern whether it was meaningful, let alone what to do about it. Tucking a bookmark in the thought, she shelved it and went back to watching the lethargic trudging of her feet.
They emerged moments later from amidst the dense press of evergreens into a field. Beneath the trees, the snow lingered, but here most of it had melted off. It was light enough that she could see the grass had already begun to turn green in anticipation of the spring it wasn’t getting.
On the far side of the broad open expanse sloping west to east stood a house. A modest house and a much bigger barn, the latter shuttered tight, the former spilling light and smoke into the last remnants of the night. She heard Havec let loose a quiet laugh, and although the sound was whipped away instantly by the wind, he sounded pleased.
He made right for the house, and none of them hung back. Qanath wasn’t sure whether they were following more because they trusted him or because questioning him would take energy. He tossed himself down and knocked on the door almost eagerly, as if he had no doubt what reception was awaiting them.
The man who came in answer was middle-aged and rotund. He had a knife in hand, a huge, heavy knife with a rectangular blade such as one used to do butchering. That wasn’t why Qanath couldn’t stop staring at him: his hair was the startling orange of flame. Her immediate reaction was to assume it was done with dyes, but his fly-away eyebrows and his lashes were orange too. His beard was a darker color but distinctly ruddy.
For the length of time it took a heart to beat twice, he simply stared at her friend. Then Qanath saw the tumblers of recognition fall into place, and like a switch had been tripped, his face lit up. Letting out a glad bellow, he seized his prince around the neck and dragged him into a crushing embrace. He still had that fearsome knife in hand, but that wasn’t something Havec would be bothered by.
When he released her friend, it was to take him by the shoulders. By the look on his face, he was about to demand to know where he had been and why he hadn’t told anyone he wasn’t dead, but then his eyes found the Queen. His face grew still, and the question he addressed to her friend was as worried as it was brief. What have you done? she gathered, or maybe, What is going on?
Havec grimaced, gesturing through the open doorway. It surprised her when he spoke in Tabbaqeran: “Can I explain indoors? I swear I haven’t brought trouble down on you, Master Wilbrect.”
The man’s eyes lingered dubiously on his queen, then he hitched up his belt and shouted over his shoulder, “Wil! Al! Bec! Havec! Get your arses out here!”
He took a step back from the door, and the people who emerged in response to his shouting did so with such alacrity that they must have been just out of sight all the while. Four teenage boys, who must be his sons, because they all had the same bright orange hair. Two sets of twins, she realized, and even in the midst of her fatigue Qanath found herself imagining what that must have been like. They gathered the horses up, and her party was finally free to stagger in out of the bitter cold.
Their host led them into a large sitting room where a fire had just been started in the hearth. There were only two armchairs, but the rug on the floor was broad and thick and piled high with pillows. A woman appeared at this point, a Moritian as comfortably-padded and red-haired as her man. Qanath had the impression that, unlike her husband, she hadn’t known Havec and was being introduced. She dropped him a curtsy and turned the most shocking shade of pink before quitting the room as if it were a relief.
They were still settling themselves onto his rug and taking off their coats when their host dropped into his chair. Leaning forward in a business-like manner, he switched back into Tabbaqeran. “You say you’ve not brought trouble to my door, my prince, but here you are keeping company with a band of foreign witches.”
Havec made a face, and she would have said he was abashed. “There is trouble, Master Wilbrect, but it’s not my doing, it’s hers.”
“They tell you that? They’re foreigners.”
“Not to me,” the younger man said quietly.
