"Feranden, thank you for coming to see me off and bringing Yvar. Thank you for the care you've given my crewfolk."

He sniffed. "You hef come to veesit me often inough,"

he replied in the sing-song accent his people gave all the many tongues they learned. "Eet is no matter. End eef you wish to thenk me, stop cutting peepole up with those knives of yours."

She shook her head; Haians were absolute pacifists, whom no amount of experience could shake. Of course, they were protected by the World's Covenant, and would withdraw completely from any land where one of their kind was attacked. Still...

"I'm not going to waste time arguing self-defense with you again-" she began.

"You weel never stop keeling by keeling the keelers,"

he interjected."-but remember that lass, Hacia?"

He nodded. "It ees a shame, she would make a good helper and learns quick, but her family cannot spare her wages, and I cannot pay more than board."

Megan pulled a small pouch out of the pocket inside her cloak. "I was going to have this sent. It's enough for the first year or two, and by then the extra business you can handle should cover it."

He blinked, looked down at the money. She closed his hand over it. "Thenk you," he said, looking up at her again. "Eef you mainlandeers must have peepole telling you what to do, then they should be like you, Migen." A smile, hidden by the scarf but visible in his eyes. "Of course, most of thee lords ere not..."

"We 'insane mainlanders' need every Haian or Haian-trained we can get," she said, smiling, and knelt beside Yvar's sled. "Goodby, Yvar," she said clearly and distinctly. He reached up a slow hand and squeezed her mitten; wasn't speaking well, yet, and he would never be quick again. Not even as quick as most men who had lost both feet below the knee.

"When it's safe, I'll come back for you and take you back to your family in F'talezon. You'll always have a place with the House. "

He nodded, made a sound. Sova looked around Megan, bit her lip, then came up on the other side of the sled. "Here, Yvar," she said, and laid down a huge complex knot. It was a trifle lopsided, and not as neat as he would have made it, but it was a Monkey's Fist knot beyond doubt. "See, I remembered. It's the first one I got to come right, so I thought you should have it."

The muffled sound he made might have been a thank you, or a laugh. Megan whistled and the first sled cracked itself loose and started forward, the hiss ofbone and steel blades like a breeze rising. They turned their faces north. Habiku, I'm coming home.

The frozen river is different, Sova thought. It's like a necklace. A day's travel was only six hours this time of year, so far north, but it had taken them further than sailing would have. The wind pushed, mercifully at their backs, threading stinging fingers through cloth to scratch at their skin. The sun was setting along the western bank, behind black rocks slick with ice, behind green-black pines whose roots curled across their surface like the fingers of an arthritic old man. Grains of ice and powdersnow whipped past, a low, knee-high mist joined by occasional back-gusts from the higher banks.

Breath puffed through the scarves wound around faces, leaving a frozen rime of crystals scraping against cheeks and lips.

It's not really as alive, somehow, as it is in the summer. But it's still there, under my shoes. My legs hurt. Cold really makes me tired. And she was hungry again.

The line of sleds were to her right, further out toward the center, where the wind would help them more; a sail flashed by further east yet, the skeletal form of the iceboat back from scouting. There was a continuous hard creak of ice under feet and hooves and runners, bitter whisper of the wind, a feeling of impending cold that overrode the sweat and effort of the long journey.

Inu trotted up, disdainfully ignoring the sidelong sniffs and occasional barks from the canine midgets toiling in their traces. Shyll was beside him, skating smoothly with a hand resting on the greathound's back.

He was dressed in trousers and jacket of winter wolfskin with the mottled white fur outside, and ice goggles of white northern ivory; the spear moved smoothly in his outer hand with the swing of his stride."Hitch on," he called; he gave her a quick check, and she could see him ticking off the state of her padded jacket, and the woolen facemask that kept her cheeks from frostbite.

Sova leaned, glided over and slipped the weighted wooden bar she'd been carrying into a pocket before painfully digging her fingers into the dog's ruff. Shyll leaned over to look, then took her hand.

"How long have you been carrying those things?" he said.

"Well... all day."

"Was that on orders?" he asked crossly.

"Ah, no. No, sir." She removed the other bar. "Ah, the khyd-hird said do it as much as I could."

Shyll snorted. "Don't call me sir, it makes me feel old. Has she told you about pacing yourself?"

Sova yawned and leaned on Inu, looking down at the dog's feet in their leather pouches with the garsltin bottoms that gave him traction on the smooth surface.

"Yes, sir. Said I should remember that there's a reason for hurting."

He sighed, as if unwillingly reassured. "And you're just at the point where you can ignore pain, and have to make a year's progress in a month."

"S-Shyll, we're going to be in F'talezon in a month."

And you're going to see as little fighting as I can arrange, he surprised himself by thinking. Why do I...oh, Gods of the Dog, she's a good youngker and she tries hard, and she's lost her home and family. Inu likes her.

"Draw your sword," he said for answer. She pushedherself away from Inu an arms length for more room, and reached across herself with her right. The clench on the hilt was painful and light; she nearly dropped it before the point wobbled up to guard, and it was a struggle to resheath it while moving.

"What shape would you be in to fight now if you had to?" he scolded as she sheathed it. "Habiku aside, this is hungry country. Here," He whistled to Inu, and they stopped. Sova lurched, a sudden pain lancing through her legs. "Let me see..." He brought the greathound around to shelter them from the wind, and undid her gloves.

"Ri dung, you've been skating with your hands clenched around those things! Didn't anyone tell you that they'd freeze if they weren't worked regularly? You can thank good gloves there's no frostbite. You're carrying a spare pair of mittens inside your jacket?

Switch to them until we make camp, it's only another half-hour. Wiggle your fingers and put them under your armpits."

Rilla swept by, circled back and braked to a sideways halt that sent ice chips scattering. "Something wrong?"

"Young stoic, driving herself into exhaustion, risking frostbite," he said lightly. She bent to look at Sova's hands.

"Hmmm. Better not try carrying your weights and so forth after today. It's going to get colder." She looked up, her light brown eyes serious over the red scarf.

"Ever been on a long ice journey?" Sova shook her head. "Right," Rilla continued. "Listen to him." She jerked her swaddled chin in Shyll's direction. "He's an old hand at it. It fools you, lets you think, 'Oh, this is easy,' until you fell on your face. Cold leeches you like bone marrow sickness. So, take the next rest spot on the third sled down. Change off with Moshulu, hear?"

"Yes, ma'am." Rilla stopped, took a deliberate secondlook. Shyll broke in.

"She calls me 'sir.' "

"Oh, that must make you feel ancient." She twinkled at him. "Sova, just call me Rilla, all right? You can call him anything you like as long as you-"

"Don't call him late for dinner," he chimed in with her and Sova laughed at the old, old joke; her stomach rumbled.

"Come on," the Zak said. "I'll see you up."

As they sped to catch up with the third sled, he slid up to his place, Inu panting comfortingly beside him.

She's right, he thought. It's going to get a lot colder if I read the signs right. Then: It's not a necessary chore, looking after the youngker. It's... enjoyable. There hadn't been many children in his life, not since he left home, and then he had scarcely been more than a child himself. Since then, they were squalling bundles on their parents' backs, or shouting packs under a window... He snorted, and used the butt spike of his spear to pole himself fester.

Shkai'ra concentrated on the ice under her horse's hooves, trying not to think of another frozen river from a long time ago-eight, nine years ago, she thought.

Then, No, I've laid those ghosts to rest. Although there had been a small, dark witch involved then, as well.

That had been in her homeland... It's just as well to be an exile, went through her. No obligations but the ones you chose yourself, no folk or kindred but the friends you chose along the way. That Zaik-eaten shaman who wanted to eat my heart said my fate would be to dwell with ghosts and witches; damned if he wasn't right.

Megan was handing off her line to Stanver. I don't think that this was what he meant. Shkai'ra smiled behind her scarf as the Zak woman coasted over."Shaping well," Shakai'ra said. "We've made over thirty miles today; I'm surprised there isn't more trade this time of year. It's not comfortable, but it's fast."

Megan pulled the wool scarf down from below her eyes to speak more clearly. "Wait until a blizzard hits.

The snowfall gets lighter as you go north, but the winds don't. They can pin you down for a week or more." She looked up at the sky clear, with a fringe of blue haze about the risen moon. Hard cold tonight. No storms for the next twenty hours, at least "Expensive to keep people or beasts fed in the open, too And wait until we hit a drifted section in a bend, and have to dig our way through. Toward winter's end they can pile up ten times manheight in places."

Their followers waved or saluted as they passed; there were even a few cheers.

"They're in good heart," Shkai'ra said.

Megan shrugged cynically. "It's the first day. They've been telling each other lies about how great their leaders are, to keep up their spirits, and the lies get bigger and easier to believe each time they come round." Someone had been spreading the tale of the Karibal to Rilla's crew and the newcomers, and the challenge in Brahvniki had grown as the tale spread upriver.

"I want to check on Sova," Shkai'ra said. You're still uneasy when people love you, love, she thought. Gods, though, it is a burden, all those expectations. Dreams in their eyes . . . Enough to frighten even a cold heart like me; lucky I am that I'll never have so many want to lay their lives on me. "Most of the others are used to winter journeys, or they've got tentmates who are to watch them." Wish I hadn't been so busy, all day. Left her here... Glitch, godlet of fuck-ups, take it! Oh ... Over there where Shyll and Rilla and the greatpuppy are, Sled Four.ON THE ICE NORTH OF AENIR'SFORD EVENING, TWELFTH IRON CYCLE, THIRTEENTH DAY.

Traveling on the ice of the upper Brezhan is easy for a day. Day after day becomes a hazy dream of whispering blades and wind and the ice is everywhere: underfoot, in your clothing, against your face, hanging on your lashes and tips of your hair, in the air you breathe. It becomes a personal enemy. The whole body is never warm, not hunched over a fire behind a windscreen, not tumbled together with ten others in a tent, under furs and blankets and all but your outer winterwear. The wind sucks heat, pushing through the glazing of even the best leather, down around the cracks of your facemask and up the tight-bound connection between gloves and sleeves.

Work is unending misery, a dragging at the limbs that doubles and redoubles the effort needed for the simplest task. Sweat is a mortal danger, for the layers of air trapped between dry garments are the best protection a traveller has. A wet foot means a stop, lighting a fire, drying skin and boot and changing the wrappings next the skin. Every breath leaches water into air dryer than the hottest desert, and there is no water except what you melt. Nose and throat and lungs are always tight and sore; lips crack and bleed and freeze and crack again. Survival means unending alertness when a single neglected detail can kill, but the cold numbs the mind first of all. The wood and leather and metal of tools turn brittle and lose strength. The body burns as much fuel as it can digest simply maintaining its warmth; effort draws down the last reserve against extremity.

Even for the most experienced and best-equipped, every day beyond the first is danger. The Zak say winter is the Dark Lord's breath; the fire of life offends it. Each sunset means more weakness. In the end, it will kill.

"What killed him?" Shkai'ra muttered to herself.The rising wind fluttered the dead bandit's clothes, multiple layers of rag and felt and hide, good furs and thin burlap; she knew the stink would have been killing if it had not been so cold. It was cold, a lowering noon when it seemed the only colors in the world were dun-white and black. She shivered; a week of hard effort in this had drained even her reserves of strength.

Her face had gone a little gaunter, bringing out the foundation of strong bones as the body struggled to keep the internal fires warm enough, and not even three heavy meals a day were enough. Fishhook mewed in her ear. The kitten was cuddled in under her jacket, tail wrapped around the back of her neck.

She bent again to examine the figure, feeling a stiffness in her bones that was a foretaste of age.

Little showed of the corpse's face apart from the crude birchwood snow-goggles and beard peeling with frostburn. He was hidden from the river below the low bluff by a cunning screen of snow and woven withes, and one dead hand gripped a woodchopper's axe; there was a hide bucket of javelins across his back, a long knife thrust sheathless through his scrap belt. The dead lips were pulled back from the lips, a stick of frozen jerky protruding in an eternal mid-chew.

Shkai'ra rose and shivered again. I thought I'd seen the Black Crone all his faces, she thought. But there's one always ready to surprise you with afresh ugliness.

She turned, scrubbing at the breath-rime that threatened to block the slits of her snow-goggles, and took a slow careful breath through the icicle-fringed woolen mask. A too-quick gasp in weather like this could damage your wind with ice in your lungs, too many and you were courting lungfever and death.

Below the low rise, the river turned east for a space; a giant drift had formed across the way, three times the height of the tallest among them. The sleds were halted in a row before it, and the doll-sized figures of men andwomen and horses toiled at breaking a path through a wall of snow thirty feet from edge to edge. Even across a quarter-mile she could sense the heart-deep weariness of them. The wind was from the northeast, blowing a long sheet-plume from the knife-edge of the drift, dipping like quick smoke down onto the workers below and settling into the fog their shovels raised.

She pulled the mask down and shouted, a long echoing call: "Meeeeeggggaaaaann!"

A knot of figures had been gathered around one of the fires, drinking their hot, honey-sweetened milk as they took their turn at rest. Four turned, saw her jerk both hands skyward in the "come here" signal, began to toil across the snow-packed ice, around the half-sunk boulders at the river's edge, up the slope. Shkai'ra stood with her hands thrust under her armpits; she was out of the wind. While motionless a thin layer of slightly warmer air formed around your skin, within the layers of your clothes. Her only movement was fingers and toes twitching, in thick gloves and boots.

Shyll was the first over the edge, using his spear as a prop up the steep path of scree and bush and treacherous patches of ice beneath snow. He was breathing with careful slowness, and the hooded mask of his face turned alertly as he walked toward her.

That is a hardy man, she thought ungrudgingly, and she had been bred by a land as bitter as this. I've softened a little, living in the southlands these last years. Keeping up with him pushes me.

She heard Megan curse and scramble below as a brush crumbled in her hand, then push herself over the lip; Sova followed, with Rilla behind her boosting.

Shkai'ra removed a hand to wave at her, feeling a little glow of pride as the slight, dog-weary form straightened. The girl was showing what was in her on this trip; going to her limit and beyond, despite the constant draining misery. It was when the world testedyou that you learned what you were made of; much trained-in weakness was melting off Sova with the puppyfat, revealing a core of pride that sustained her when many tougher reared would have broken.

"Look what our scouts didn't find, " Shkai'ra said.

Shyll bent over the dead bandit, grunted. "Graukalm ," he said.

ONE DAY'S TRAVEL SOUTH.

Cold. Hotblood kill. Taste screaming. Good. Redcoat.

Run. Run. Coldwind. Open mouth, bare fangs. Hate.

Hatewhistle. Sharp black claws dug into a snowdrift in a tangle of dead trees. Lie waiting. Wait now. Run in snow coming. Redcoat near. Nofear near. Hotblood kill .

Megan nodded as she examined the corpse. "

Graukalm, grievouswind," she said, moving to stand near Shkai'ra and looking eastward, into the twisted wood of dwarf hemlocks. "It's rare, thank Koru, akribhan. It comes out of the east, out of Zibr, usually in a storm or with it. No warning, except a sudden stilling of the wind, then it drops on you, out of the upper air, weatherwitches say. It can freeze you in five heartbeats or less, no amount of clothing is any good.

Freezes even white bear in their tracks; it only lasts a few seconds, but unless you're under some cover that's enough."

She looked at the man again. They were in debated lands, neither F'talezonian nor Aenir nor Thane. These harsh uplands had never been densely peopled, the soil thin and rocky even by northern standards; the original Zak inhabitants had been a thin scatter of woodsdwellers, living mainly by the hunt. Long ago war had passed over the marches hereabouts. Some had died, others had moved away, or intermarried with thetrickle of strangers who wandered in, ready to endure the bitter earth for the sake of space and a home under no law. Now the folk were like the land, of no particular nationality and with an evil reputation for murder by stealth and longshore piracy.

"Shyll, check further along, will you? No, Sovee, I think you should go back and tell Annike that the ambush she and Shkai'ra were expecting isn't likely to happen." As many goods and beasts and vehicles as were with her was a standing temptation, and the wild folk would not know hers for a caravan of fighters.

She turned and looked northeast. The noon sun was a pale white glow through the overcast, and the wind was coming in fitful gusts; she sucked on the pebble under her tongue to moisten her mouth and slitted her eyes. Are the clouds heavier there? she asked herself.

"Rilla, " she said. "Cerwyn's weatherwise, isn't he?"

Her cousin nodded; she had pulled a dart from the quiver on her shoulder and rapped sharply on the corpse's arm. There was a crack, and the fist gripping the axe broke off like an icicle; the iron head struck rock at the unmoving feet, and shattered like glass.

"He is... Coz, this happened fairly recently. Not more than two hours, and we've been here one at least.

Longer, and the cold would have leached."

Shyll came back, tension in the set of his shoulders.

"Twenty of them, " he said huskily. "They had a covered fire and they were sitting around it. Like this, all around it, sitting there frozen in mid-motion."

"Come on," Megan said. "I feel itchy about this and we'd be better if we were together."

They made their way down the bank, careful to touch the earth as little as they could. The crews were working in shifts, half an hour at the drifts and halfbehind the leather windscreens strung out from the sleds; the cooks had the log platforms for the fires set up and the small, hot blazes were flickering beneath the ceramic pots in their beds of clay and sand. Shkai'ra passed one, took a cup and noticed sap freezing on the end of a stick as it melted and dripped out from the central portion that burned in orange-gold coals.

"Cerwyn!" Rilla called. There was a delay as the man came back from his place on the snow-face; his dark wool and bearskins were dusty white with the talc-fine crystals, and his steps dragged. No matter how fit, even a short spell of physical labor in this weather exhausted as a day spent breaking rock in summer would not.

"Yes, Captain?" he said to Rilla. They had all become adept at reading the set of shoulders beneath a hood and mask; his showed dull apathy kept moving only by will.

Slow, Rilla thought. We're all slow. It was as if thought were an oil, like the tallow used to grease machinery, that turned cold and thick and viscous and made the wheels grind more and more slowly, until all you wanted was to lie down and sleep...

"We found the ambush Annike and Megan's akribhan were expecting," she said.

"Good," he said. His home was not many days northwest of here. "Too many 'breed woodsrunners around this bend. They look at the bins and smokehouses and know they wont make it to first harvest..."

"They were dead. Better than twenty, outlaws by their looks. Local folk, who knew the winter, they had full gear and a covered fire. Grievouswind. Tap the weather, Cerwyn."

"Vilist, Teik," he said, with the slightly antique courtesy of backcountry village-Zak. He leaned thelong-handled wooden shovel against a sled and turned in a slow circle with his hands outstretched and his face turned upward to the sky.