Speaking Bones, page 16
A second sled crossed, and the ice still held.
Another. Thin cracks appeared in the surface, radiating from the groove cut by Takval’s blade like spiderwebs.
Yet one more. The patch now resembled the back of a turtle shell. As long as no more weight was placed on it, the frosty winds would heal it in time.
But that was not to be. Another sled, this one driven by Tovo himself, screeched over the weakened surface. Tovo had surrounded himself with his strongest, biggest warriors, maximizing his own chances of landing the killing blow against the Agon pékyu.
The ice gave up.
* * *
The loud snap reverberated far across the crystalline sea. The rebels glanced back and cheered.
Théra urged the driver of the lead sled to slow down and turn around so they could get a better look.
“That’s not a good idea,” warned Kitos. “The ice is going to weaken more in the sun. We need to get to Spotted Heifer as quickly as possible.”
“We’ll be careful,” said Théra. “But we need to make sure.”
The drivers slowed their dogs and brought the sleds around in a gentle curve until they were facing the way they had come. Riders got out of the sleds and congregated on the ice, shading their eyes against the glare of the slanting sun.
In the distance, they could see that a giant gash had appeared in the eggshell-like surface, stretching half a mile across. Dozens of Lyucu sleds, unable to pull away in time, had tumbled into the gaping maw. Warriors and dogs were floundering in the heart-stopping, bone-numbing waves. Those who had not fallen in were no longer pursuing the rebels but doing their best to rescue the unfortunate victims.
Théra couldn’t help but let out a yelp of relief and triumph. The gods were with them!
That was when the ice below their feet groaned and cracked, mutating into a spiderweb within which all of them were trapped.
“No sudden movements,” shouted Kitos, his voice trembling. In all his years of living by and on the sea, he had never been placed in such peril.
Théra, terrified, wrapped her arms around Takval and squeezed her eyes shut. “It’s not such a bad fate to die in the arms of someone I love.”
He hugged her back. “Who says we’re going to die?” he whispered. “I promised you we’d all get to Taten in time, didn’t I? I’ve never broken a promise to you, and I’m not about to start now.”
Théra smiled, already feeling calmer. She let go of Takval. Everyone stood still. The ice, though cracked, held.
Takval directed everyone to walk away from the strained patch of ice, one person at a time. “Slow and steady,” he whispered, his tone calm. “We can make it.”
Despite the cold, beads of sweat rolled down the warriors’ faces as they gingerly shuffled to safety on thicker ice. As the number of people over the patch dwindled, those who remained let out sighs of relief. When most of the people had reached the safety of more stable ice, Kitos began to whistle and direct the dogs to pull the sleds away as well. They’d need them if they were to reach Spotted Heifer before nightfall.
Takval waited until everyone else had stepped out of the danger zone. The last few warriors to go left with cheerful smiles, confident that they would escape unscathed. Takval saw the cracks widen and lengthen behind their steps, but he kept up a stream of calm and cheerful patter, as though nothing was happening.
At last, it was his turn. As the rest of the band cheered from the thick ice, he took the first step away from the center of the web of cracks. A second step. A third.
He let out a held breath. He was going to make it.
The ice gave way. Takval disappeared into the sudden hole in the ice.
Théra screamed and tried to run back. Thoryo and Kitos grabbed her and pulled her back.
“You can’t help him if you fall in too!” Kitos screamed into her ear.
Takval floundered to the surface, gasping for air. He tried to pull himself onto the ice, but the weakened edge of the hole wouldn’t support his weight, and more pieces broke off, enlarging the hole. He couldn’t get any purchase. The frigid water was already slowing his movements. He wouldn’t last more than a few minutes.
Kitos dropped onto the ice and rolled toward the edge of the ice hole, bringing with him a sinew rope. But the ice buckled under his weight, and he had to stop dozens of paces away. “I’m too heavy,” cried the old ice tribe chief in despair.
“Let me!” said Thoryo. “I’m the lightest.”
Kitos rolled back and handed Thoryo the rope. The young woman rolled all the way to the edge of the hole in the ice. She tried to hand the rope to Takval, but his limbs were too stiff and his fingers too numb to grab on. The churning water subsided. He was drifting away and sinking.
“No!”
Without warning, Thoryo rolled into the water as cries of surprise and terror filled the air.
* * *
The cold was shocking.
Her skin had been ripped away; a thousand needles pierced her at once, throbbing, twisting, worming their way into the weakening flame of life that was her heart. The agony almost made her blank out before her raw nerves mercifully dulled. The light dimmed; the voices of the others faded.
What a useless thing is such beauty. Crushed almost as soon as it’s born.
She knew that she had only seconds before the cold so numbed her muscles that they stopped responding to her will. She would then be doomed along with Takval. Her limbs already felt so heavy, requiring so much effort to move.
What’s the point of trying to save anyone?
The wounded Lyucu warriors at the foot of the ice fort had refused her help, had in fact tried to kill her. Of those who escaped Kiri Valley, so many more had died along the way. Murder-minded Lyucu were chasing after them, but if she managed to save Takval, he would try, in turn, to kill those killers. There was no end, no respite, no escape. She was surrounded by death and the potential of death.
How can Life triumph if Death rules all?
Was the right thing to do to stop struggling, to let go? What if she allowed herself and Takval to drown? Would the world be any the worse for it? Would, perhaps, Takval’s death even lead to fewer people dying?
It was all so confusing.
She remembered her time in the hold of Dissolver of Sorrows, before light and shadows had resolved into shapes, before sound and fury had resolved into syllable and thinking-breath, before she had understood life and death and beauty and wonder and disappointment and heartache. If only she could return to that time, to a time before awareness and confusion.
She looked at Takval. He was on his last breath, his head about to go under. He wasn’t looking at her; he was looking toward the ice shore.
Dimly, she heard Théra’s voice. You promised! Come back to me. You promised!
She saw no fear in Takval’s eyes, only regret and tenderness, only acceptance and love, as deep and eternal as the tides.
She remembered the way Takval and Théra looked at each other, the way they held each other, the way they spoke of their children and parents, the way they told the stories of their peoples. So much beauty; so much wonder; so utterly useless against the ultimate meaninglessness of all existence, the futility of mortality.
Théra spoke of the Flow, of life and death as its two aspects, like the rise and ebb of the tide. What was one life or two, against the endless ocean? What was one woman or one man, against an unfeeling sky of stars?
An image came unbidden to her mind: frozen foam flowers lifting off the tips of waves like dandelion seeds, brilliant crystal sparks in the wind and sun, barely glimpsed before being dashed to pieces on the beach. They huddled together, as though unaware of anything else in the grand universe, as though it was enough to have tinkled together, to have heard the music of one another’s soul for a fraction of a moment.
There is no need for philosophy or religion, no need for appeals to blood or affirmations of the gods. It is enough that we have loved and are loved. There is no meaning in eternity; only now, only here.
The light brightened; the world rushed back in a roar. She gasped and swallowed a mouthful of bitter water before clamping her lips shut. With her last ounce of strength, she looped the rope around herself and Takval. As she cinched the knot, her fingers slipped off, numb, helpless.
* * *
Dogs and men strained until, finally, the pair were pulled out.
Théra wrapped Takval and Thoryo in thick layers of fur. Kitos and the others lit fires and swept the embers into auk and dog skulls. Wrapping the hot skulls in skins, they tucked them into the armpits and around the torsos of the two chilled bodies, infusing them with the heat of life. As the sleds continued north, Théra stripped off her clothes and nestled herself against Takval’s frigid skin, trying to give him as much of her body heat as possible.
Behind them, the Lyucu wailed and cursed.
* * *
At nightfall, the surviving Lyucu made their way back to the abandoned ice fortress, where they kept fires going all night as they attempted to revive as many of the frozen that had been hauled out of the sea as they could.
Tovo survived.
Not all of him, to be sure. Prolonged exposure to the sea in Nalyufin’s Pasture would ultimately cost him his left arm as well as four blackened toes that shriveled and then fell off. Nonetheless, that made him far luckier than many of the thanes and warriors under his charge, who would never return from this expedition to the far north at all.
It took two weeks for Tovo to recover enough of his wits to contemplate the next step. The dogsled drivers assured him that by now the sea was rock solid. Still, Tovo had learned his lesson. Gingerly, he scattered his sleds widely apart, with scouts running far ahead to find and mark safe paths with waybones. Whenever the ice shifted or buckled and the loud snaps ripped through the silence, the Lyucu froze in place, as though expecting to be thrown into the deadly maw of the ocean again.
By the time they reached Spotted Heifer, the first island to the north, all traces of the rebels had been erased by intervening storms. Tovo looked to the north at the other distant islands, peeking out of the deserted landscape like bleached skeletons in the salt flats, and shivered uncontrollably. The idea of pursuing the rebels into this no-man’s-land seemed the very definition of madness.
“They’re already dead,” said the leader of the conscripted ice flea drivers, her voice trembling. “They can’t hunt; they can’t fish. There’s nothing to eat. Most likely, they’re at the bottom of some crevasse.”
Rather than slap her for offering an opinion that wasn’t solicited, Tovo nodded with approval. After all, the ice fleas lived here year-round and knew the land well. If even they thought the rebels couldn’t survive in this cursed wasteland, who was he to argue?
He immediately ordered a retreat. The other thanes were only too glad to obey, and when the ragged warriors, half-frozen, missing fingers and toes and limbs, finally limped back to the mainland, they couldn’t wait to return to the warmth and comforts of Taten, secure in the knowledge that their enemies were turning into pillars of ice in the desolate north.
* * *
The optimism of the Lyucu wasn’t unwarranted.
After crossing the sea, the rebels found shelter in an ice cave on the western edge of Spotted Heifer. They had no clear plans except to stay out of the view of their pursuers.
And while Thoryo recovered from her ordeal in the icy sea, Takval was much less fortunate. He remained in a coma as a high fever raged throughout his body. Théra remained by his side at all hours, wiping down his scalding skin with ice chips.
As the days passed, the fever did not abate.
“We have only a week’s worth of food left for people,” reported Kitos.
“Reduce everyone’s rations,” said Théra, “except Adyulek, Tipo, and her baby. Give the order for all to bundle up and sleep as much as possible. You told me that the star-snout bears of the north sleep and don’t eat all winter, didn’t you? We can follow their example. And we don’t even have to wait all winter, only until the Lyucu retreat, and then we can make our way back to the mainland.”
“I’m afraid you haven’t understood me completely,” said Kitos. “I spoke of food for people, but we must also think of the dogs. If they starve, we’ll have no hope of getting out of here alive.”
Théra gritted her teeth. She had seen how much the large dogs, descendants of the horrid wolves, ate to maintain their strength. “How long can the food last if we starve people and feed the dogs?”
“Maybe three days.”
“Is there really no way to get food in this land?”
Kitos looked at her with pity. “If it were that easy to survive in Nalyufin’s Pasture, don’t you think we would have settled here? No, there’s no food that we can get to.”
Going back to the mainland now, when the Lyucu were most likely still waiting for them, would be suicide. “Feed the dogs,” said Théra. “We’ll worry about people later.”
Takval remained in his feverish coma, muttering incomprehensibly from time to time. Théra pried open his jaws to pour in water, and she chewed up small pieces of the tough jerky until they softened, which she then stuffed into his mouth until he swallowed, without waking.
Even with careful rationing, food ran out on the fifth day of the vigil. Several of the warriors who had accompanied them this far had died from a combination of their wounds, the cold, and lack of nourishment. Kitos believed that the band had to start back toward the mainland if they were to have a chance at all. But a storm was rampaging across the island, and it was impossible to find their way in the blinding snow and ice.
Théra reluctantly gave the order to slaughter some of the dogs to be used as food. She knew this was a choice that only deferred the date of death. Without dogs, they would have no hope of making their way off this icebound island, but without eating the dogs, all of them would die.
She fasted and prayed to the gods of Dara and to the gods of Gondé. She stretched her mind into the icy void. There seemed nothing else she could do.
Once again, she found herself on that vast plain under a vaster sky, surrounded by the liquid air that crackled with the energy of lightning and thunder. Storms danced around her.
She felt at peace. They were not going to make it, but that was all right. She was going to die next to someone she loved, and that was a better fate than most.
A voice spoke to her out of the dancing storms.
We have only a week’s worth of food left for people.
She laughed to herself. Kitos spoke in such peculiar ways. It had taken her longer than Takval to adjust to Kitos’s topolect, and even though now she could understand his speech, there were still patterns in the way he phrased things that sometimes tripped her up. Maybe he just assumed that she would know things that she didn’t, like the fact that dogs had to be fed before people.
No, there’s no food that we can get to.
Her eyes snapped open. “He didn’t say there was no food at all,” she muttered to herself.
“Kitos!” she called. “We must speak immediately.”
* * *
“Is there food that we can’t get to?” asked Théra, her heart hanging in her throat.
Kitos nodded.
“Where is this food?” Théra spoke slowly and deliberately, not daring to let hope inch too far out along the thin ice above despair.
Kitos closed his eyes and looked deep in thought.
She fully expected him to say something like “back on the mainland.” It would be literally true and completely useless.
Kitos opened his eyes. “About half a day’s journey by dogsled. We passed it on the way here.”
Théra wanted to hug the man and thrash him at the same time.
“What. Do. You. Mean?”
Kitos explained.
* * *
The ocean around Nalyufin’s Pasture was so cold and dark that most of the time the water was an empty abyss.
But during the brief summers, the sea exploded with activity and life. Majestic whales and seacows drifted through, filtering mouthfuls of tiny shrimp with their baleen bristles. Seadogs playfully dove for blockhead mackerel, surfacing to sneeze and to bark for mates. Toddling auks, with their sharp beaks and flipper-like swimming wings, dashed through the water for beaked needlefish and small fry, simultaneously evading the sharp claws and teeth of opportunistic seadogs. Star-snout bears, the exalted sovereigns of these northern lands, prowled the islands and the brine, eating anything and everything to fatten up for the long, dark winter.
A few animals, however, chose to make these waters home year-round.
One of these rare finny permanent residents of Nalyufin’s Pasture was the ice shark. Slow-moving and filled with blood barely warmer than the surrounding water, these giant predators relied on stealth and camouflage more than speed and ferocity. They preyed on unwary toddling auks, careless seadogs who mistook the massive drifting fish for reefs, and even the occasional seacow or juvenile whale too stunned or inexperienced to get out of the way of their languid but nonetheless deadly jaws.
The lethargic sharks were easy prey for bands of nimble human hunters, and the ice tribes would have devoted all their summer hunts to this fish except for one problem: The flesh of the ice shark was toxic. Even a small quantity, if consumed right after the fish was caught, would render an adult unconscious and could kill a child.
Legend had it that the ice sharks were Nalyufin’s special creations, helping her maintain the frozen pasture much as sheepdogs aided the people of the scrublands with their flocks.
The harsh conditions this far north meant that no potential source of nourishment could be overlooked. After generations of experimentation, the ice tribes developed a method to render the ice shark’s flesh safe for consumption. The process involved digging a shallow trench in the ground, placing the dressed carcass inside, stuffing the internal cavity with a pungent mixture derived from animal fat and a tongue-numbing seaweed, and then covering the ice shark with layers of gravel, sand, and rocks.
