Kushiel’s Dart

The lands through which we rode were splendid, though I was hardly minded to appreciate them. The Skaldi seemed not to mind the cold as I did, singing as they rode, breath frosty on the chill air. Hedwig’s cheeks were rosy with cold, her eyes sparkling like a girl’s.

Even Joscelin fared better than I did; I should have guessed it, for Siovale is mountainous, and he was born to it. Like most men, he was happier in action than stillness. Someone had given him a bearskin cloak and he seemed warm enough in it, riding with high-spirited élan. They say there is Bodhistani blood in the torrid lineage of Jasmine House, and I thought of my mother for the first time in many years, wondering as I shivered if this aversion to the cold came through her.

On the eighth day, we reached the meeting-place. It was set in a great bowl of a valley, ringed about with forested mountains, with a lake at the bottom, around which the camp was arrayed.

This, I understood, was Waldemar Selig’s steading, which he had inherited through birth and right of arms, and built into greatness. Indeed, though still crude by our standards, the great hall was thrice the size of Gunter’s, and there were two outbuildings near as big. And all around the lake, throughout the whole of the basin, were pitched encampments, bustling with the activity of varying Skaldi tribemen.

We had been seen before we came within a mile of the steading. The forest had seemed virgin and silent to me; but for the occasional snap of a twig bursting in the cold, but Knud, who had much skill at woodcraft, laid a finger alongside his nose and nodded wisely at Gunter. Still, I think even he was taken by surprise when three Skaldi rose from the snow in front of us, cloaked and hooded in white wolfskin, spears at the ready.

In a flash, Joscelin turned his horse sideways to the Skaldi, making a rolling dismount and fetching up before them on his feet, vambraces crossed, daggers at the ready. It startled them as much as they had us, and they blinked at him, looking momentarily silly beneath the empty white wolf-masks that draped their brows.

Gunter laughed uproariously at the sight, waving his thanes and the rest of us to bide behind him. "So you would defend me, eh, wolf-cub?" he asked. "Well and good, but don’t do it at the cost of the Blessed’s hospitality!" He nodded cheerfully to the blinking Skaldi. "Hail and well met, brothers. I am Gunter Arnlaugson of the Marsi, summoned to the Allthing."

"What is this fighting thing you have brought to our midst, Gunter Arnlaugson?" their leader asked sourly, annoyed at being caught out. "Surely he is no Marsi, unless the maids of your steading have been straying over the border."

Hedwig sniffed loudly, and one of Waldemar’s Skaldi glanced in her direction. Catching sight of me, he dropped his jaw and stared, tugging at his comrade’s sleeve.

"What I have brought, I reveal only to Waldemar Selig himself," Gunter said shrewdly. "But they are loyal to me, eh, wolf-cub?"

Joscelin gave him a bland look, bowing and sheathing his daggers. "I protect and serve, my lord."

"You will answer for them, then," the leader said, and shrugged. "We will lead you down."

"Lead on," Gunter said magnanimously.

So it was that we descended to the meeting-place with our escort, who picked their way carefully while our horses plunged through the snow, sinking chest-deep at times.

If the mass of encampments seemed vast from above, on the valley’s floor they sprawled endlessly. A veritable city of tents had sprung up to host the Allthing, clamoring with innumerable Skaldi. They do not practice heraldry as we do, but I saw subtle differences marking the tribes in their manner of dress; the cut of their garments, the colors of their woolens, how they laced their furs. This tribe wore bronze disks for adornment, that one bears' teeth rattling on bared chests, and so on.

Undeniably, there was tension amid the gathering of Skaldi tribes. I could feel it as we rode down the broad, snow-packed aisles between encampments, passing from one territory to the next. The thanes watched, honing their weapons, and the women, who numbered fewer, eyed us speculatively. Only children and dogs seemed oblivious to the covert menace, racing shrieking or barking from camp to camp in a sort of endless game of chase, the rules of which are known only to children and dogs.

Everywhere, though, murmurs followed us. Joscelin and I had been oddities among the folk of Gunter’s steading, who dwelt a day’s ride from the D’Angeline border. Here, we were as misplaced as a pair of Barquiel L’Envers' desert-bred steeds amid a stable of plowhorses.