Chapter 583 - 582: The Other Way

Chapter 583: Chapter 582: The Other Way

Location:Stonefall Crossing — The Northern Escort Route, below the Middle Ford

Date/Time:TC1858.01.25 – TC1858.01.26

From the near bank at first light, the crossing looked as if somebody had started a road across the river from both sides and given up a third of the way over.

Ice came out from each bank in shelves, gray-white and ridged where the water had risen under it and dropped again, and between the two shelves the river ran black and fast and did not freeze at all. The stones were under that. You could see them if you knew to look, flat backs a shade paler than the water, set in a line from shelf to shelf, and the Corps had been walking that line since the autumn in boots that were never going to be dry again.

Two fires, one on each bank, each with a lean-to of poles and hide behind it. Smoke went straight up from both because there was no wind yet. Five people at each fire. Ten.

Sera Vahn counted them twice from the door of the near hut, by name, the way she counted the camp every morning. Then she looked at the sheet.

She’d nailed it to the hut door herself when they came in the evening before, because a sheet in a pocket was a sheet nobody else could read. Her own hand, square and small, the ink gone faintly brown where the cold had got into it on the ride down. Two names at the top, in the order they had stood in the tent line.

Linnet Fallow. Peder Rushton.

This is the rule they did not have.

Under that: front, side, head, second front, and a fifth who faces the other way.

Linnet had been the watcher. She’d been facing the head of nothing when it came up the bank behind her. There was a patch on the ice, not quite gone under the new snow, where somebody had knelt afterward for a long time. Sera Vahn didn’t know who. She hadn’t asked. It seemed to belong to whoever it was.

Kelder Lowry came out of the hut behind her with his coat buttoned and his right sleeve pinned across his chest so the arm wouldn’t swing. He had been the front of the first four when Linnet Fallow died. The bite had gone through his forearm, the hand had been warm to the touch by the next morning, and it had answered nothing from the elbow down since. He carried it the way he’d carry any piece of equipment that had stopped working but wasn’t his to throw away.

"You’re staring at it," he said.

"I wrote it."

"That’s why you’re staring at it." He looked past her to the far bank, where Edda Sowden was stamping a trench for her feet in the snow ten paces behind the others, her face to the tree line. "She’s got it. Look. She isn’t looking at them at all."

"She’s been told not to."

"Being told doesn’t do it." He squinted against the glare off the ice. "Six days, and I still want to turn around every time something moves behind me."

He had asked for the post the evening they rode in, before she’d finished nailing the sheet to the door. Sera Vahn had said no. He’d pointed out, reasonably, that it was the only position on the page that didn’t need two hands, that every other position did, and that she didn’t have a spare pair of hands anywhere between the crossing and the mountain. She had not been able to find a fault in the arithmetic. She’d looked for one most of the night.

Edda Sowden had asked on the road. Not in the Hall and not in front of anybody. On the second evening, at the fire, while she picked ice out of one bootlace with her thumbnail.

"I’ll take the far one."

"Why?" Sera Vahn asked.

"Because I was next to her." Edda didn’t look up from the lace. Her hair was cropped short enough that the cold got at her ears, and the tips had gone a hard, shiny red. "Tent line. I’ve slept next to Linnet Fallow since we came over. I heard she was facing the wrong way when it happened, and I’d like to be the one facing the right way."

She worked the lace free and started on the knot.

"And I think it’s the worst post on the sheet, if you want to know."

"Tell me why."

"You stand with your back to your friends, and you listen to them fight, and you don’t turn around. Somebody has to be able to do that." She pulled the boot on. "I’ve got a bad temper. I’m not good at a lot of things. I’m good at not turning around."

Sera Vahn had written it down that night: Edda Sowden, fifth, far bank, asked. Anybody who went north went on the return by name, and she had decided a while ago that when a person gave a reason out loud, the reason belonged next to the name.

The night book had gone to Hesper Ashby the night before they rode, and not the following morning, because that was the condition and Sera Vahn had written it. Hesper Ashby had the Medicine Hall’s night rota now, and the chair by the door that had been Aldis Stell’s. She’d taken the book in both hands and written the handover on the front page in the order Sera Vahn gave it: keeper gone south to Stonefall crossing; book handed over the same night. Then she’d asked whether there was anything else she ought to know. Sera Vahn had given her Aldis Stell’s sentence, because it was the only instruction the book had ever needed.

***

The water was the loudest thing at the crossing, and after a day of it you stopped hearing it, which was the problem.

By the time the light started to go, she had stopped hearing it twice and caught herself both times. She stood at the near fire with her hands jammed in her armpits and her spear leaning on the lean-to pole where she could reach it. She wasn’t in the form. A commander stood where she could see both banks, and the sheet said nothing about her at all. She’d left it that way on purpose.

Across the river, the far five had the fire at their backs, which she’d have argued with in daylight, and which in the dusk meant she could see all of them: front and side and head in a loose line along the top of the shelf, the second front a pace behind, and Edda in her trench, a dark shape facing the trees.

On the near side, Kelder Lowry stood twelve paces up the bank in snow to his shins, with his back to everybody he knew.

"Bank."

He didn’t shout it. He called it the way the head is called, flat and loud enough and one word, and the near five came around on it like a door on a hinge. Front and side and second front turned in the order they had drilled that morning on the ice, and the head was already fixed on the thing coming down between the trunks, and the shield was up.

It came low. They always did now. The plated underside skimmed the snow, and the long body stayed folded under it, and the head did the thing the sheets described, and nothing prepared you for, turning on the neck further than anything with bones in it ought to turn, hunting for the side position while the front was still in its way.

"Left," the head said. "Left, left—"

The side went in behind the plate as it came around, and the blade went into the joint behind the head-plate, where it had gone every time since somebody first passed that word down a board road in the dark. The animal kicked once, hard enough to throw the side man flat in the snow, and then lay down in a way that looked almost careful, and did not get up.

One.

The fifth had seen it and called it, and it had gone exactly the way she’d written it on the hut door. Sera Vahn let out a breath that burned coming out.

Kelder Lowry hadn’t moved. He was still facing the trees.

She heard the far bank before she saw anything. The far head calling front, three times, fast, and the scrape and grunt of a shield taking weight. Three came out of the dusk on the route side, straight at the far five, the shape she had read on a Corps sheet days ago in the Hall. The far five held. The front took the first one on the shield and gave a pace and no more, and the far side went in behind the plate while its head was busy with the shield, and it dropped.

Two.

The second front was ready at his shoulder. Ten paces back, Edda Sowden stood in her trench and did not turn around.

And two more walked down off the far shelf into the river.

They didn’t go for anybody. That was what she would remember afterward and not know where to put on a page. They stepped off the edge of the ice into black water that came up to the plate, and stood on the stones. The crossing itself. Side by side, facing the near bank, with the current breaking white around their legs and the folded limbs held up out of it, and they didn’t move.

At Stonefall, the second four had come across and held and killed. It was on the sheet in her own hand. Nobody in the first four would have lived without it.

The near front looked at the water, then at her, shield still dripping from the first one. He didn’t ask for anything. The Corps had one word and everybody on the mountain knew what it was.

"Go," he said.

"Fifth stays."

Up the bank, Kelder Lowry lifted his good hand and did not turn around.

The rest of the near five went down onto the ice at a run, and Sera Vahn grabbed the spear and went with them. It was not a decision so much as arithmetic. Whoever went into the water would have nobody behind them, and she was the one body left on that side of the river who wasn’t already facing the trees.

The cold took her at the knees and then at the waist, and her lungs stopped. It wasn’t a feeling. It was a fact about the body, a clamp that shut every breath off halfway, and she dragged the next one in through her teeth and found a stone with her foot, and it rolled.

She put her back to the others and faced the way they had come.

That was the fifth’s job. She had written it. The fifth watches everything the team cannot see because it is facing the animal. From the middle of the river the near bank was a slope of blue snow with the dead animal on it and the fire behind, and Kelder Lowry twelve paces up with his pinned sleeve, a straight dark line against the trees.

Behind her the water exploded.

She didn’t turn. She heard it: the head calling, the shield going under and coming up, a man’s shout cut off by a mouthful of river. Something swept past her hip in the current, hard as a beam, one of the folded limbs fishing low the way the sheets said they fished off planking, and it hooked the near side man’s thigh and opened it. She smelled it before she saw it, blood over the flat mineral stink of the river, and then she saw it, a dark bloom going downstream past her knees and thinning to nothing.

"Neck!" The head, hoarse. "Neck, it’s up, now—"

A heavy wet sound. One of the two in the water went over sideways, and the current took the weight of it against her legs, and she braced on the rolling stone and held.

Three.

On the near bank, Kelder Lowry took one step back from the trees.

"Bank," he called. "Bank—"

It came out of the trunks right in front of him. It had been there. She understood that at once and completely, standing in the river facing exactly the right way. It had been there the whole time, behind the first one, watching the first one die to a call, and it had waited until the four were in the water and the fifth was a man alone with one arm who did not strike. He’d called it anyway. The fifth calls it the way the head is called. He’d got the word out twice.

It hit him high and turned its head the impossible distance and bit, and he went down in the snow without a sound she could hear over the river.

She was twenty paces away, facing him, with water to her waist.

"Behind!" She’d never shouted like that in her life. "Behind, near bank, it’s coming down—"

It came down the bank toward the ice. It didn’t stop at Kelder Lowry. It came for the river, for the people in the water with their backs to it, and there was nobody between it and them except a Corps commander who had written the fifth into existence days ago and had never once stood in the position.

The ice shelf held under it. That was the only luck anybody had all night. It came out onto the shelf with its head already turning to find the side, and the side was hurt and half under in the current, and their head was twisting around too late.

Sera Vahn came up out of the water onto the edge of the shelf on her knees because her legs wouldn’t do anything else, and put the spear up under the head-plate, into the joint, with her whole weight on the shaft.

It went in. It kept going in. The animal’s weight came down the shaft into her shoulders and pushed her flat against the ice, and she felt her own collarbone make a noise, and she held on. The limbs raked the shelf on either side of her. One of them went through her sleeve and out again and took nothing but cloth. Then the second front was beside her with his blade in the same place, and the thing folded down on top of both of them, heavy and cooling, smelling of cold iron and something sweet and wrong underneath it.

Four.

She got out from under it. She couldn’t feel her feet. She looked across the river.

The far five weren’t five anymore.

The front was down on the shelf, holding his forearm against his chest with his other hand, where the bite had gone in. The second front had stepped in as written and then gone down too, doubled over and trying to breathe around something broken. The head and the side stood alone against two animals, with nobody left to step into the front.

And Edda Sowden turned around.

Nothing had come from behind her. Nothing was coming. She had stood ten paces back in the trench she stamped that morning with her back to her friends and listened, and she’d been good at not turning around for as long as there were enough of them. Then there weren’t.

She crossed the ten paces in about three strides and went into the gap where the second front had been, and Sera Vahn saw her blade go into the joint of the nearer animal as its head came around for the side. Clean. Exactly where it went. The animal dropped.

Five.

The other one had already turned. It had its head the whole way around before Edda had her blade clear, and it took her from the side, the place she had just filled, and she went down onto the ice and did not move again.

Sera Vahn was in the river again before she decided to be. The others were ahead of her now, the side man hauled between two of them with his thigh wrapped in somebody’s coat, and the last animal in the water had turned to face them and was fishing low and hard, and their head called it and called it, and the front took it on the shield and the second front went in under the plate.

Six.

They came up onto the far shelf in a clump, all wrong, no shape to them at all. The last one stood over Edda Sowden and the fallen front with its head turning between the far side man and the near front, deciding. It didn’t get to. There were too many people on the shelf for one head to watch, and when it looked away from the far side man, he went in.

Seven.

Up in the trees on the far bank something moved, pale for a moment against the dark trunks, standing side-on. It had been standing there through all of it. When the seventh died, it turned and went back up the route road without hurry, the way the one at Stonefall had gone, the way one always went. Nobody went after it.

***

The river smelled different after. Blood and smoke and the cold mineral flatness of the water, and over all of it the sweetish reek of the animals, which got into wool and stayed there for days. She would smell it on her coat on the road home and think, each time, that she’d walked into a butcher’s yard.

The far head did the stitching. Mira was on the mountain, he had the steadiest hands left, and the near side man would bleed out waiting for anybody better. Sera Vahn held the lamp. Her right arm wouldn’t lift past her chest, and she held it in her left and didn’t mention the collarbone to anybody, because there were three people in the hut worse off than she was.

The far front, bitten through the forearm. By morning the hand would be warm and answer nothing. He lay on his back on the hides watching the roof and flexing fingers that were still moving and wouldn’t be by dawn.

The far second front, three ribs at least, breathing in shallow sips.

The near side man, the thigh opened to the bone and closed again with Corps thread, gray-lipped and furious about it, which was a good sign.

Three hurt.

Eight animals. Seven dead on the ice or in the water, one gone up the road undamaged, unpursued.

Eleven of them had stood at the crossing when the light went. Two dead.

She went out when the stitching was done and stood on the far shelf by the fire. They’d brought Edda Sowden up off the ice and laid her by the lean-to with her boots toward the flames, the way you’d put anybody’s boots to dry. The laces were still wet. There was a line of ice in the one she’d picked out on the road.

Somebody had gone back across the stones to Kelder Lowry. He lay where he’d gone down on the near bank. Nobody had turned him over. Sera Vahn waded the crossing a third time to look, because there wasn’t anything else she knew how to do, and found him lying on his side in the trampled snow with his head uphill.

Still facing the trees.

She stood over him without deciding anything. Then she went back to the hut door, and she did not take the sheet down, and she did not write anything underneath it. It could wait for the morning. There would be the names, in tent order, at the top of the next one. She knew what the line under them would say. She’d known it standing in the river, facing the right way, twenty paces off.

The Stonefall animals had died because the second four came across. So this time nobody had been let across. That was all. They hadn’t needed to break the five, because the five had worked. They’d broken the thing she had been using the five to protect.

She didn’t write that either. There was nowhere to put it tonight that anyone could read it except her.

The near fire had burned down to a red bed with nobody to feed it. She built it up one-handed, badly, and then she walked up the bank past Kelder Lowry, and found the trench he’d stood in all day, and stepped down into it.

There were nine people left at Stonefall crossing and nobody facing the other way. So she faced it.

Her back to the fire. Her back to the river and the hut and the three hurt and the two dead. In front of her the trees stood dark against a darker sky, and the river talked on behind her until she stopped hearing it, and then caught herself, and started listening again.

She stood there until it was light.