“Rictus—”
“Do as I say.”
Rictus gathered up perhaps a hundred men, and these he led forward into the caterwauling fury of the Qaf. They advanced step by step, spears out on all sides, stabbing like men possessed at the monsters that towered over them. One of the Qaf launched itself into their midst, its great weight bowling half a dozen men through the air. The men of the inner ranks drew their knives and swords and fell upon it like vultures, hacking the beast to pieces even as it struggled to regain its feet again.
The Qaf fell back. Across the gutted wreck of the camp, other formations of Macht were following Rictus’s example, and moving forward to engage the largest crowds of the enemy. The Macht made of themselves bigger monsters than those they faced, monsters with a hundred heads and a hundred keen spearpoints all in a body, all moving as one. As the Qaf split up, so they became easier to kill, one by one, until some kind of tipping point was reached. A collective howl went up from the beasts. They backed away from the thick formations of spearmen, roaring and spitting hatred. The Macht were able to look up and see them streaming back up the mountainsides, scrabbling up the rock-strewn heights at incredible speed, quadrupeds now, their long arms hauling them forward.
They took the storm with them, it seemed. As the last of them disappeared into the folds and rock-fields of the summits above, so the wind fell, and soon after the snow drifted down in a heavy silence, the thick flakes intent now, it seemed, on burying the dead.
“It’s quiet,” Jason said. “Am I dead, then?”
“If you are, you’re in bad company,” Rictus told him.
Jason opened his eyes. Tiryn, as always, Rictus, and Mynon—all looking at him as though he were some form of freak. He was warm. He could smell woodsmoke, feel the heat of flames. He had almost forgotten what it was like.
Then the pain came, flooding his extremities, an exquisite rush of returning sensation. His lips drew back from his teeth. “I heard tell hell was a warm place,” he said.
“We’ll get you to it, soon enough,” Mynon said, grinning.
“You look old, Mynon. Is that grey I see in your beard?”
“No more than is in your own, Jason.”
“What happened?” The pictures trickled back into place now. He was alive—he was alive. And the wind had dropped.
“I thought it was time we got out of these mountains,” Rictus said. “We’re on the road again, making good time, or as good as you can get in this fucking place.”
“Ah, Rictus, wake me up when we get to where there are grapes on the vine and apples on the tree.”
“I will, Jason, you have my word on that. And it will not be so long now.” Rictus tried to smile, but the gesture did not take. He had dried blood on his face, a great brown splash of it. His eyes seemed to look beyond Jason, into some unseeable distance. Mynon’s eyes were the same.
When they left, Tiryn propped Jason up beside the fire so that he could look upon its wondrous heat and beyond it, the blinding white mantle of the world, dotted with the black, insignificant dots of moving men, pasangs away.
“What are they up to, so far from camp?” he asked Tiryn irritably.
“They’re scouting a way out of the mountains. When the snow lifted, some of those furthest up the hills swore they could see green lands beyond, out to the west.”
“How bad was it, Tiryn?”
“I thought you were dead,” she said, touching his face.
“No, no, damn it—the army.”
“Bad. I saw men weep. The sick, the wounded, they were all slaughtered, and hundreds more died in their blankets, or unarmed. Rictus brought them together. They stood with him and fought the Qaf to a standstill.”
“So, another victory, I take it,” Jason said, his mouth a bitter line.
“Another cairn. They built it yesterday, and then Rictus moved us on, up the valley. It’s warmer—can’t you feel it? Even here, spring has come, Jason. I can smell it. In the lowlands, it is full summer. When we leave these mountains, it will not be long before you have your grapes and your apples. I too promise you that.”
“I love you,” Jason said, not looking at her.
“What?”
“Help me up; don’t just stare at me like a pole-axed calf. I want to stand up, to smell this new air of yours.”
He was stronger—he felt it in his bones. He was over the worst of it now. His breathing would never be what it was, but he was alive. And he had this woman standing beside him, this fine woman who was not even human. And he did not care a damn.
“When we get clear of the mountains we’ll find somewhere, you and I,” he said to Tiryn. “Somewhere there is no snow, and there are no armies. A quiet place.”