Error: I'm afraid this is the first I've heard of a "comments" flavoured Blosxom. Try dropping the "/+comments" bit from the end of the URL.
21 (II) - Into the snow
We already knew this was a bad winter, and now our valiant heroes are experiencing it first-hand. Only the children from Rizenay think it isn’t really cold yet.
What I also know is that it was Raith who caused this winter to be both cold and wet by messing with weather patterns a lot— good thing she doesn’t know, or she’d be even more worried than she already is.
Now that we had a cart it was clear that the Ishey could handle animals all right, but they didn’t know what to do with carts. Fortunately we had Jeran, who knew how to get our mule between the things sticking out at the front, and get her to move and pull it. Mazao sat next to him to learn what he did so he’d be able to do it too. “My father would never let me do this at home!” Jeran said. “But I can!” And yes, he could, and got better at it as we went on. Rava said that we could take the horses too if we wanted, but the Ishey were against that, “horses eat such a lot! And we can walk, we don’t need to ride.”
So we walked, everybody who could — Tao and Amre and me and Athal and Imri. Jeran, of course, was driving the cart. We came through both of the other villages, and people came out to wave at us and give us things, a lot of food, blankets, clothes, tools, bales of straw to line the cart with. Veh was wearing one of Rava’s horse-blankets, I noticed, because they’d burnt his own blanket at the castle. He was in two minds: he wanted to go to the Plains and become a man there, but he also wanted to come with us! “Well, can’t you do one first and then the other? What’s the hurry?” Mazao asked, and Veh said he’d at least come as far as Lenay. The little girls walked when they were well and rode when they weren’t, but they got tired quickly.
We had few days in hilly country, going higher with every hill, and sometimes it was hard for the mule and we had to help push the cart up a slope. Then one day something cold and white rained out of the sky, and when it touched anything it turned to water. “Snow!” Jeran said. “But this isn’t real snow yet, when it’s real it stays on the ground.” He didn’t think it at all cold yet, and neither did Athal, they came from a very cold place.
One day we came round a corner and there was a huge deer standing in the
middle of the road, looking at us! Immediately it got several sling-stones on
its head, I don’t know who hit and who missed, but Tao said that I’d hit it and
it was my turn to learn to slaughter a kill. So he showed me to cut it open like
Amre had the little goat, and we had lots of meat and a large deerskin and the
antlers. “Is that what you make the needles from, those horns?” I asked, but Tao
said it was from the ribs and he wasn’t going to bother making more now. That
evening we found a very small house on the side of the road, too small for a
grown person to lie down in, all scorched on the inside as if there’d been a
fire in it. And across the road there was a hole in the hillside that people had
lived in: there was a broken table and some things that they’d obviously left
behind when they moved away. We used the table for firewood and had a splendid
meal of roast deer venison (that’s what Jeran said deer meat is
called where he comes from).
After we came out of the hills, there were the mountains! The tops where completely white, with snow, Jeran said, and the paths were steep and slippery. We had to make fires at night and keep watch, because Mazao and Tao were afraid that wolves would come— they eat everything, especially mules and people, Mazao said. There was one evening that we couldn’t find a place to make camp at all, on one side there was a steep slope up and on the other side a steep slope down. Even the road was sloped, so we had to put blocks of wood under the wheels to keep the cart from falling down the mountain. “Let’s make a fire on either side,” I said, “and have two people keep watch so we can see everything.” The others thought that was a good idea, so that was what we did. But something like a very large dog came down the steep slope above us! That was a wolf, with big teeth and glittering eyes. Mazao saw it first and wanted to go and catch it, and forgot that his legs wouldn’t carry him, so he fell and the wolf bit him in the shoulder. Then two more wolves came to stand next to the first one, and two more behind them! Amre was keeping watch, she took a flaming stick from the fire to hit them with, and she hit one on the nose and it whined like a dog and drew back, and that made the others hesitate so we could kill them with our slings. Jeran hit one on the ear and it turned and ran away, and the other one at the back ran away with it.
Eventually there were three dead wolves lying in the snow —there was really some snow on the ground, about as high as our ankles— and Mazao’s shoulder was bleeding like anything. It was such a nasty wound that we couldn’t stitch it, so we tried to clean it as best we could and stick it together a bit and bandage it up really tightly.
After that the weather became only worse. No more wolves, fortunately, but we got very cold and wet and had to huddle together in the cart. Now we were glad of the bales of straw, because they kept out some of the cold at night. Jeran and Athal still didn’t think it was really cold, but they did show us how to wear our clothes so we stayed warmest, wrap up anything that could catch a chill like necks and ears.
Then there was a village! Nobody was living there, but there were houses, mostly broken but one large house with a courtyard looked almost whole. We didn’t dare stay inside the house because the roof looked as if could fall down, but Tao and Amre and I did go in to explore. First there was something that must have been a kitchen, behind that a room where the ceiling looked all right but the floor would probably fall in the moment someone stepped on it. In that room there was a big fireplace with two spears and two swords hanging on the wall above it. “Wow, iron weapons!” Tao said, and we edged round near the walls and I stood on Tao’s shoulders and got the spears and handed them to Amre, but the swords hung too high for me to reach. Those spears would work well to keep a wolf away, they were longer than we were tall and had a big sharp iron point.
Now there wasn’t only snow, but fog as well, and we didn’t dare go any further. We made a really comfortable camp in the courtyard, with a fire in the gateway so any wolves would be chased away, and roasted some more venison to eat. The next day there was still fog— Jeran and Tao cared for the mule’s poor cold feet, and Amre and I cared for Mazao’s shoulder, and Veh stretched his leg and side, and Imri played teacher and practiced letters with us— she was actually the best at letters of all of us, even better than Jeran. Then it occurred to me that I could see whether there were people around, and people were what we needed now, a village where someone lived! Amre was there to help me —she always makes me stronger— and the boys protected us with a warm Ishey mind-blanket, and I sent out my mind in the same direction as we’d been travelling and found someone there. A woman, sort of in the Guild of Anshen, very surprised to see us. “Yes, we can come and get you, but we have to wait until this fog lifts. Tomorrow or the day after. How many?” “Five young people and five children,” I said. Well, that was a lot better than not knowing at all how long we’d be stuck here!
It was another whole day until we could see the other side of the courtyard, but when the fog lifted the air was completely clear and smelt almost like iron. We packed and went up the ridge, and before we were on the highest point a lot of people came towards us, about twenty, led by a large woman I could recognise by her mind. “Ah, there you are.” Her name was Hinla, and she wrinkled her nose at our travel-smell, “never mind, we have a hot spring.” That was the best news of all: what I wanted most at this moment was a warm bath.
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