The Snow Driver/Chapter 15

Y THE fire that Kyrger had built, Thorne found Peter stretched like a stout log in the snow, his arms bound to his side, and a blue bruise swelling in his tangle of red hair. He was still breathing, and Thorne dragged him into the Samoyed's sledge, covering him up with the skin of the white bear to keep him from freezing to death. Joan was gone; so were the dogs and their master, and the reindeer. After a little Kyrger appeared and took in the scene with a comprehensive glance.

As best he could Thorne explained to the attentive hunter that they must follow the dog sleds. All other matters must wait until he had set Joan free from the creature in the leather apron.

“Sinym—sinym thusind,” muttered Kyrger nodding assent, for he saw that the outlander was very angry. “Young sister—the pursuit of blood atonement.”

He lifted his head and called shrilly, and Thorne saw the two reindeer appear from the nearest thicket, munching at the branches as they came. They had been driven off by the shaman or had run away from the dogs. Thorne learned thereafter that dogs and reindeer were hostile as the two tribes that were served by each animal.

Kyrger lost no time in putting the reindeer into the leather traces, tying the guiding thong attached to their off horns to the hand bar of the sledge. Then he beckoned Thorne who discovered that the savage had picked up a pair of the wooden skates dropped by one of the Ostiaks. They were shorter than the Samoyed's and heavier, and Kyrger bound them firmly to Thorne's boots.

Then he led the outlander to the rear of the sledge and made him put his hands on the waist-high bar at the back.

“Thus,” he murmured to himself, “we will go as swiftly as the white pigeon flying before the wind. Be quiet my master! Let your spirit be strong when we meet new enemies who dwell where winged things can not enter and things with bones can not pass. Kai—it will be a long journey, O Thunderer, O Leaner-Against-the-Wind.”

He glided off and picked up the two staffs, which, pointed and bearing sizeable crosspieces a foot from the point, enabled him to push himself along rapidly where the snow surface was level, as if he were poling a light canoe through shallows.

Alone, he would never have started after the wizard, who could make the long journey to the hall of Erlik in the spirit world of the cold, underground region, or invoke ermecin the white bear.

But after the fight on the bark, Kyrger had immense confidence in Thorne. He believed that the armiger as well as the shaman was possessed by a spirit, whether the reindeer, the gull, the bear or the eagle, he did not know. How else had he scattered eleven Ostiaks?

He went ahead of the deer, running at times, but oftener thrusting himself onward a dozen paces with the staffs. Faster he went and faster, squatting on his haunches when the head of a slope was reached and flashing down with the speed of a flying thing.

The reindeer struck into their loose-limbed trot that covered distance amazingly. Thorne for a while had all he could do to hang on and keep his feet. Once the toe of his skis caught in a fallen branch and he was thrown heavily. But he soon learned how to lift himself over obstacles and to keep his feet together.

The gray obscurity of the day merged into the flickering radiance of night with its attendant fires in the northern sky. Kyrger looked like a winged gnome, speeding over the slot in the snow; Peter was no more than a motionless bulk under the fur pelt. Thorne could not stop and make camp for the shipman's sake. Joan, somewhere ahead of them was flying through this wilderness of unmarked snow.

The reindeer no longer seemed to him to be running. They flew through the air, their whitish bodies invisible in the smother of powdered snow, their black-muzzled heads laid back so that the horns rested along their shoulders.

OW long they raced through the night he did not know. They were sliding down a winding gully where a few stunted larches thrust up through the drifts, when Kyrger whirled to a halt and strung his bow. His arrow sped and struck something invisible to Thorne. But the hunter pushed himself to where it lay and brought back a long white hare.

With his knife he stripped the skin off its back and offered it to the outlander. There was no time to stop to make a fire, even if wood had been at hand. The ache of hunger was strong enough for him to suck some of the blood from the hare; but then he handed it back to Kyrger, who ate the raw flesh, still steaming hot, without a qualm.

Meanwhile Thorne satisfied himself that Peter was breathing. From the gully they descended to the level surface of a frozen lake, down which the trail of the dog sleds ran. Here the reindeer, refreshed by the brief halt, made fast time and Thorne peered ahead for a sight of the Ostiak.

For hours they followed the windings of the lake, which grew steadily narrower. Trees appeared on either hand and soon they were moving between the solid walls of a forest of spruce and fir. When the strip of water was no more than a stream, Kyrger slowed down and halted his reindeer which had been running the last few miles with tongues lolling out.

Coming to Thorne's side, the Samoyed pointed above the trees ahead of them and to the right, and after a moment the armiger made out what his companion had seen, a wavering line of smoke rising against the gray sky.

For the first time Kyrger turned aside from the trail, leading his deer into a grove of spruce where they were sheltered from the wind. Then he took up the crossbow that he had placed in the sledge, and the two advanced through the timber in the direction of the smoke, the hunter circling to keep away from the stream.

They heard voices, distinct in the thin air, and crawled warily to the summit of a ridge. Here they crouched, motionless. Below them within stone's throw were three large dog sledges and a half dozen Ostiaks. Seated on a log beside the embers of a fire, Master Cornelius Durforth and Joan Andrews were talking. Squatting on a white horse skin near his two dog teams was the wizard they had pursued from the Ice Sea.

OAN had been freed of her bonds by Durforth, who sent the shaman away from the maiden, and prepared food for her, with hot, spiced wine. Refreshed, she gazed curiously at the man who sat by her in his coat of black foxskin with an ermine collar. Joan knew the value of such things.

She saw, too, that the powerful fingers of his left hand played with the links of a gold chain at his throat; that his strong teeth glimmered through the tangle of his jutting beard. His brown eyes, utterly without expression, moved restlessly as if instinct made him uneasy. A sudden foreboding gripped Joan, who was as sensitive as a child, and fear burned in her veins more fiercely than when the shaman had thrown her into his sled.

She had seen that gold chain before, and the face that reminded her of a wolf. Too few events had come into the life of the daughter of John Andrews that she should forget one of them. Two years before at Yuletide, when the candles were lighted in the windows of Cairness—a ship driving into the haven for refuge—a stranger sitting in the tavern, listening to the tales of John Andrews of gold to be found by one who could pass south of the Ice Sea.

“Oh,” she cried, “you are the master of the black pinnace!”

Cornelius Durforth did not take his eyes from the fire.

“I have had many ships to my command.”

“The black pinnace with the dragon's head, that was manned by Burgundians.”

“Ah. Then you—” he looked at her—“would be John Andrews' daughter.”

“Aye, so. And so was my father slain by your churls.”

“How?”

“Your pinnace entered the haven of Wardhouse—” Joan faltered, but passionate anger, long pent up, was rife in her—“and your knaves looted it over the body of John Andrews, who once gave you shelter.”

“Did they so? By the Three Dead Men of Cologne, they were not my knaves. The boat once carried my flag and was made a prize by pirates out of Danemarke.”

His lips drew back in a soundless laugh.

“They paid in good coin for their frolic; I saw the boat with their bodies hanging like ripe fruit, drifting down the coast.”

His words carried conviction but the girl drew back from his face.

“Who are you?” she barely whispered.

“Cornelius Durforth, the Burgundian. What, wench, have you never heard of the merchant of Ghent?”

Her mind flitted among questions. What was Durforth doing on the Ice Sea? How had he escaped alone from the stricken ships of the English? Why had the Ostiak brought her to him?

He thrust out his hand to take her chin and study her face.

“Nay, wench, you wear your heart upon your sleeve. You are fair as a golden eaglet, but, on my faith, only a hooded falcon may sit on perch at its master's table. Weigh well your answer to this question: Do you trust me? Are you friend or unfriend?”

Whereat she sighed and dropped her gaze to the chain of gold about his neck.

“Good my master, who am I to stand against your will? Take me with you out of this forest to Christian folk, and I will thank you on my knees. But let us set out at once!”

In silence Durforth considered her, until a flush mantled her cheeks and his beard bristled in a wide smile.

“So! I am no wizard like Shatong the shaman—” he nodded at the Ostiak who was tapping on a drum between his knees, upon a white horsehide—“yet can I read your mind. You fear me, you have no faith in me. A witless boy follows the track of your sled through the wilderness, and it is your thought that if he rushes in upon us here he will be slain, which, indeed is most true.

“Under a cloak of meekness you would have us set out so that he will see our following and learn caution, which is a thing he never will learn. In another hour or so your armiger will be wolf meat.”

She drew away from the man, hands pressed against her cheeks.

“Would you slay him shamefully in this pagan land?”

“That will I, and he would do no less for me. By the eyes of you should know no land is wide enough to hold us twain. He serves his king, who is shent—aye, who lieth under sod ere now. Hath a man allegiance to the dead?”

“Aye, so,” the girl responded promptly.

“Then is he a traitor. For—and here is a merry matter—the lord prince who laid command upon me to voyage hither is now your squire's lord.”

“That may not be,” she cried passionately, “I think you are liegeman to Satan, prince of darkness.”

“Some do call him that. And, by the Three Dead Men, if Mephistophele [sic] were annointed monarch on this earth, he would not lack for followers, being both sagacious, courteous and untainted by remorse. Yet I serve Philip, son of the Emperor Charles, the mightiest lord in Christiandom. And this same Philip will sit presently upon the throne of England.”

While he spoke he had been studying the maiden, marking the tawny hair held back by the hood, the slight, firm lips and the pulse that beat in a white throat. Such beauty would command its price, and Durforth knew the very barons who would lighten their purses of a hundred gold crowns to possess her.

Yet he was embarked upon a delicate mission, and it was necessary that her tongue should be silent as to what she had seen on the Ice Sea, and what she would presently behold. He considered permitting Shatong to cut out her tongue; but she might be able to write.

Women he knew were like hawks. Tamed and hooded, fed and wing-clipped, they would be content under the hand of a master for a while—until he could be paid his price for the maiden. To tame her, she must first learn to fear him.

Unclasping his cloak, he took from the breast of his doublet two papers, folded and sealed. These he held near the fire, for the light was dim under the trees, so that she could see the imperial signet on the seals. When he saw that she had recognised it, he put the letters back very carefully in a silk pouch attached to the end of his gold chain.

“These letters missive,” he said, “are from Charles of Spain to Ivan the Terrible, emperor of Muscovy, and they are my charge.”

“Sir Hugh's letters”

Durforth's head went back and he laughed from an open throat, a roaring laugh that reached to the ears of Thorne and the hunter who crouched behind the ridge, waiting until darkness could cover their approach to the fire. Yet they heard not the words of the agent of Philip.

“Death of my life, wench, Sir Hugh's letters are ashes long since. Sir Hugh gallant fool! Sir Hugh, lack-wit leader! Why, he ventured blindly into the Ice Sea. He sailed in circles when he lost company with Chancellor, and he proposed to winter in an open bay without fuel or food.”

Shivering, she looked up at him, and he took a savage pleasure in heightening the horror in her eyes.

“I had ventured to the northern coast before this, and had talked with the Easterlings. I knew the peril of the khylden and the cold that stiffens a man's sinews and soul. So I haled me from the fleet, to the southeast where the tribe of Ostiaks had their dwelling. Before we could return to the ships the storms had snuffed out the Englishmen.

“My pinnace had fallen foul of the Laps, and the lads that manned it were drying in the wind. I had sent it to the Warehouse so that I might sail in it to the inland sea, and thither into Muscovy. But it fell out otherwise.

“So was I set afoot. And by mischance that murdering wight Thorne, who hath crossed my path twice before now, was journeying along. the coast. My Ostiaks sighted your fire on Christmas night, and I sent Shatong with ten others to the ships to greet your comrades while I conveyed the goods I had taken from the Confidentia hither and awaited the coming of the savages.”

Again he laughed, for Durforth could enjoy a jest.

“Body of Thorne played in luck there. The Ostiaks had never heard a gun roar. But Shatong is a match for your wildling squire. Aye, that long haired imp is a familiar of the powers of darkness.”

“God grant,” cried Joan, “that Master Chancellor meets with you.”

“If you wish the pilot well, pray otherwise,” responded Durforth grimly, “I know where he must lie, if he lives, and it should go hard but I bring the Easterling pack upon his back.”

Into Joan's whirling thoughts came memories of childhood tales, of werewolves that took the form and semblance of men by day and turned to beasts at nightfall, of beasts that ran to join the unhallowed company of the witches' sabbath.

“How did you gain this power over the savages?” she whispered, fearful of hearing what was in her mind.

Durforth's face seemed to change, and the fire in his brown eyes died down.

“Power?” He waxed thoughtful. “Why, I can speak with them. Power springs always from wealth, because it feeds the desire of men. I promised Shatong riches incalculable if he would guard me with his men to the Town of Wooden Walls which is the door to Russia, or Muscovy. I promised to show him the mystery of gunpowder.”

He was gazing at her now, narrowly.

“My hold on them is slight. Remember that. And now say if you will cast your lot with me?”

“I will not. For-by you have said that you sent the pinnace that wrought evil to my father.”

Durforth shook his head slowly.

“Here is irony. 'Tis true the men and the ship were mine, but I did order them to conduct themselves straitly and do no harm, for fear of a broil with the English rovers. They fell a-plundering.”

It amused him that he, who had been forced to lie without cessation, should not gain credit for the one truth.

“I see,” he added, “you will have none of me. May the foul fiend take you, slut, did'st think an empire is built out of billing and cooing and tying of breast-knots? Shatong, then, shall have you.”

Glancing into her stricken face, he moved impatiently.

“My pretty vixen, I put no value on your beauty, nor does Shatong. He will e'en have a use for you.”

Durforth laughed again in amusement at her obvious signs of fear.

OW as he beckoned to the shaman who had been peering at them and at the ridges about the camp, through the tangle of his long hair, Durforth's eyes began to glow. His tongue touched his lips and a certain eagerness was apparent as he signed for the Ostiak to lead away the maiden.

“Khada ulan obokhod,” the wizard muttered. “The dead souls that dwell in the mountains and high places have spoken to me. They say the man who is your enemy is near this place. I can bring him to the fire.”

Durforth looked at the old savage curiously. He was more than a little superstitious, and he had seen the shaman do unaccountable things.

“Before the last of the light is gone, I will bring him.'” Shatong's thin hand closed on Joan's arm. “But I must take the maiden for this work.”

The man nodded, and Shatong led Joan to a stone on the other side of the fire, and went to his horsehide. Striking on the drum slowly he began a song, the copper bells and the iron trinkets on his leather apron keeping a rude sort of time.