Cold Magic

“I know how to use my sword,” I said, addressing him. “You dropped the net on me.”

“You are a knowledgeable person,” he agreed. “Still, we are seven, and you are one.”

The elder spoke up, his common speech thick enough that I had trouble understanding him. “No wise hunter makes a killing after sunset on Hallows Night,” he observed. “Especially not with cold steel.”

How did he recognize cold steel?

Two men folded the netting into a neat bundle that the stripling settled over his shoulders. They set out with the stripling, who coddled a hand drum hanging by a leather loop from his neck. Behind came another pair of men single file with a stout stick braced on their shoulders and a dead animal dangling down, tied by its legs. At first I took it for a tundra antelope, for the edge of the Barren Lands lay perhaps ten days’ walk north of here, and animals might stray. Then I saw that it possessed three horns; two sprang up from just above its pale ears, and the third, in the center of its quiescent brow, was knit with a silver glamor.

The tall man and the elder waited.

“Are you a woman of this world, or a spirit creature that followed us out of the bush in the form of a woman?” the tall man asked, not kindly but not angrily, either. He was just asking.

When had my breathing become so unsteady? I hadn’t been running, but so many shocks tossed into my path one after the next made me dizzy. Ahead, the stripling began tapping out a pattern on the drum as if it were a protective shield.

“Peace to you,” I said, in the greeting of the countryside, which I’d read about in Daniel Hassi Barahal’s journals. “Do you have peace, friend?”

The old man chuckled. “I have peace, thanks to my mother who raised me. And you?”

“And me, I am fine, thanks to—ah—my power as a woman.” Although at the moment it was difficult to know what power that could be. “And the people of your household, they also?”

“There is no trouble. And your people?”

This could go on for a while, and the night was advancing, and I was standing in one place rather than putting miles between me and those who wanted to kill me. Despite knowing there were certain forms, I could not bring myself to lie about “my people” even for the sake of courtesy, so I chanced rudeness. “Forgive my hasty words, but we are out late on an ill-omened night. I am called Catherine. Have you a name to share?”

“In my house, I am called Father,” replied the old man with a grin that made me smile. “As for a stranger met on the road, you may call me Mamadi.”

The tall man spoke with more impatience. “In my house, I am called Duvai. We are hunters, going home much later than we meant to. Hallows Night is no night to wander the forest.”

At least they weren’t answering questions with questions!

A howl rose, but neither reacted; I wasn’t sure they heard. Maybe the sound had reached me on a wind blowing between the worlds, although the branches here did not stir.

“Best to keep moving,” said the old man, setting off after the taper, now almost out of sight among the trees, and the faint patter of the drummer. The tall man nodded at me politely and followed his elder.

As they walked away, I wondered what horn had summoned the eru and the coachman. Who were their masters? The cold sank deeper and the night grew darker. There was a taste on the air that truly frightened me; the breath of wolves warmed my neck. I sheathed my sword and followed, wishing my fur cloak was a spirit mantle in truth, if it would keep me warmer. They did not slow their pace or offer any comment as we trekked at a brisk stride through the forest, catching up with the others. The charms and amulets woven onto their clothing clattered quietly.

Once again there rose on the wind a howl, and this time the hunters reacted; they spoke bantering words between their party, joking, it seemed, at the expense of the nervous stripling. They spoke a manner of half-breed language that took some part from the common bastard Latin known throughout the north but that was otherwise a tartan of Celtic and Mande. I could not specifically understand them, and certainly could not speak in their way, but I could follow parts of it, because I heard similar dialects spoken between pupils at the academy. It seemed this was the lad’s first expedition into the bush, shepherded by experienced men, and because he had survived it under their supervision, naturally they were teasing him.

I said to the tall man’s back, “When you say you hunted in the bush, do you mean you actually crossed into the spirit world, went hunting, and came back? I thought no mortal men could do that.”