Shirley Meier & S. M. Stirling - Fifth Millenium 04

Snowbrother

S.M. Stirling

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional,

and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

A shorter and substantially different version of this novel was published in 1985.

form.

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises P.O. Box 1403 Riverdale, N.Y.

ISBN: 0-671-72119-4 Cover art by Larry Elmore

Map by Eleanor Kostyk First printing, May

Distributed by SIMON & SCHUSTER 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, N.Y.

Printed in the United States of America

to Jan

PROLOGUE:

Long ago, in the Before, we were as the gods are, riding thunderbirds of metal, wielding

Break-the-Sky medicine, smashing whole cities at a single blow. Then, all the lands were one

realm, from the bitterwater of the east to the sea beyond the Westwall mountains. In

fortresses beneath the earth, or aloft beyond the world of air our Ancestors ruled, the chosen

warriors of the gods. Weak and sinful, many turned from the honorable path of war, all but

the faithful few, and the ahKomman were angered. So the Godwar came, and the year

Without Sun; the Ztrateke ahkomman walked no more with humans, and the world was

broken and changed. But we are warriors still.

Kommanz folktale

quoted in the Book of Journeys

of Anyamarah the Far-Traveled

preserved in the libraries of the Rose Temple, Senlaw

775 th Year of the Maleficence

(4720 A.D.)

STONEFORT KEEP

KOMMANZ OF GRANFOR

AUTUMN, 4962 A.D.

"It is good," one of the councilors said, hawking and spitting in the dirt. The gobbet of

phlegm landed near the outland merchant's boot, but his diplomatic smile never

wavered.

Zhy'da Mek Kermak grunted and looked down at the plow below the low earth dais

where the ruling kin and their wisefolk waited. The Senior of Stonefort Keep was a tall

rawboned woman in her early fifties, still ropily muscular; except for those knocked out

in fights, she still had all her teeth, strong and yellow as she grinned.

"Maybe too good," she rasped, taking another pull at the leather cup of beer. The plow

had a wooden frame, but the share and moldboard were of dark-shining durcret; that

was a southron thing, almost as strong as metal but far cheaper. In the demonstration

two horses had drawn it easily through tough prairie sod, while six oxen struggled and

heaved at the clumsy Kommanz breaking-plow.

It was a hot day, even though the first night frosts had come; no sign of a thunderstorm

in the cloudless sky, which was a good omen. Mustering Fair, bright noon sun through a

harvest-haze of dust, air heavy with the smells of sweat and dung and smoke. The

angular stone ramparts and towers of the Keep bulked at their backs, and the

close-cropped pasture of the Home Field stretched for kilometers on either side over land

flat as a tabletop. Today it was crowded. Warriors drilling, the village contingents come

in to show that their skills had not rusted. Wagonloads of tribute from the dependent

territories, piles of yellow grain, potatoes, whole-cowskin sacks of sunflower oil, bolts of

cloth, milling herds. And everyone with something to sell, everyone who could be spared

in the lands about Stonefort. It was a relief after the tension and fear of harvest season,

when folk took turn and turn-about reaping and riding guard against nomad raiders or

bandits. The grain and flax and oilseeds were safely cut and carted; potatoes and roots

were still to be brought in, but those were safely unburnable.

This was the best time of year; plenty to eat, good hunting—the fall bison herds would

be through soon—and usually no more fighting than the soul required. Mostly

skirmishing with other Keeps, fighting within the Bans for ransoms and herds. The fair

was the beginning of it.

The ruling kinfast had spent the morning handing out judgments; fines and

compounding for blood feuds and killings, a few floggings and ear-croppings and

nose-slittings for serious crimes like horse theft or blasphemy, one straw-haired head

sending rivulets of blood down a pole. That one had killed outside the Bans, cutting

down a pregnant freewoman; even someone mad-drunk or ahrappan should remember

what was peaceholy.

"You, merchants," she said, rising. "Go, over there."

The southlanders bowed slightly and withdrew. They were from the Pentapolis, the

League of Ten Cities three weeks' journey to the southeast; odd-looking, in their tight

trews and jewel-buttoned silk jackets, with long rapiers at their sides and dart pistols

bolstered at their hips. They had brought a strong escort down the trade-trail this season,

mercenary knights, and armored foot-fighters with pikes and crossbows. Zhy'da did not

fear them for that, or for the train of two dozen huge six-wheeled wagons with their

ceramic flamethrowers. The merchants were careful to stay within the area marked out

by the demon-headed poles; that was peaceholy too, although only with the second Ban.

On the other side of the dais tribute accounts were being handed in, and a tallyman was

droning: "—and it is said that the Thorut's-kin are yeoman-freeholders of Tunbak village.

And their clan is Mad Bear and their lords are the Kallak's-kin. And it is said they hold

seventy hectares in free of the village and fifty from their lords and grazing right in

commons. And it is said their service in peace is the labor of one for one day in every

week and two for one day in mainharvest and hayharvest weeks with plow and team

and scythe and cartage, and of grain ten horseloads, and one colt in ten and one beast in

ten and the wool of fifteen sheep. And it is said their war-service is five lancers fully

trained with gear and remounts—"

No, Zhy'da thought. I fear the southrons' arts of peace, not their weapons.

"If we buy their plows, we need them to plow at all," she said. "So we must sell more to

them, every year."

Her wombchild Zte'vf laughed. "Or take."

She swung an arm without bothering to look around, backhanding him across the

mouth.

"Drunk before sundown? Twenty lashes tomorrow." The beginning of a protest; she

struck him again. "Shut up, before I remember the dumb donkey I must have fucked to

throw a stupid colt like you," she said. "Make obeisance and go, bring your kinsib

Shkai'ra to me."

One of the warmasters sighed. "Time was when we raided south to the Great River itself,

and the Ten Cities paid us tribute," he said.

Zhy'da shrugged. "Time was when the southrons weren't so many and their cities so

strong," she said. Even the rural knights in the south had mostly replaced their

brick-and-timber forts with castles of glassfiber-reinforced concrete, and the cities had

walls like cliffs and murder-machines to guard them. Too many Kommanz warbands

had been caught on their way home, slowed by loot.

"We can beat their war-hosts and kill their peasants, but we can't spare strength to really

harm them, not with the Sky-Blue at our backs."

Several of the Kommanza spat off the dais at the mention of the Sky-Blue Wolves of the

High Steppe, the cannibal nomads of the short-grass plains to the west.

"A long time since they tried to break the border," the warmaster observed. Nothing this

summer but the usual raids; the Kommanz had smashed several, taking prisoners for

sale and sending the survivors wailing back to their tents.

Zhy'da nodded; that was the point. Fifty winters ago drought had struck, and half the

tribes between the Scarp and the Westwall tried to push east into the tall grass country.

The three southeastern realms, the Kommanz of Granfor and Ihwaz and Maintab, had

called out their levies to meet them: twenty thousand lances. Every second adult in three

of the six Kommanz realms had died that year, and the slaughter of nomads in battle

and pursuit had left windrows of bones. You still found them here and there, hidden in

the long grass and crunching under hooves. Since then both sides in the ancient conflict

had had time to breed back their strength.

"With the southron tools…" the warmaster continued, shrugging.

Many others grunted agreement; the plow was impressive, but the horse-drawn

harvesting machine even more so. Every Keep maintained five-score or so of full-time

fighters with no trade but war, and the village chiefs each had their retainers, but the

core of a Kommanz warhost was the yeomen. Few of the freeholder kinfasts had more

than a slave or so, many none at all; it was not safe to keep many more unfree about, in

a land so wild and thinly peopled. Yeomen must train to war and work their fields and

flocks as well, and the new machines would spare many hours for drill and fighting. Yet

perhaps they were unwise, or unlucky. It was always dangerous to break with custom,

an opening for evil witchcraft and bad luck.

"How will we pay?" Zhy'da said, glancing around to the caravanmaster, manager of the

Keep's trading interests. The man shrugged, rattling handfuls of tally-sticks.

"We can't send much more south," he said. Slaves were a Kommanz export, mostly

nomads, but those were too fierce and flighty to fetch good prices. Then there were wool

and leather, dried meat, horses, hides, metals, and pelts traded or taken from the forest

peoples north and east. And a trickle of goods brought all the way through the Zekz

Kommanz, the Six Realms that surrounded the northern end of the plains of Almerkun

like a horseshoe; silk from the lands across the Westwall, along the Mother Ocean;

sea-otter furs, walrus ivory, spices, sandalwood, jade.

"Not much more unless we let them build a railroad north, so we could ship bulk grains."

More grunts, this time of derision. Horses could pull enormous loads on durcret rails, but

nobody in Stonefort, in the whole of Granfor, was going to let the southrons thrust such

a spear into the belly of the Kommanz lands. Not since the Maleficent's day had a

southlander army marched into the Realms and lived. That was because the Kommanz

would scorch the earth before it and harry its flanks and rear until it weakened and

despaired from hunger, and they could overrun and slaughter. A railroad could supply

troops through such manmade desert, and the Kommanz Keeps and village walls were

built to keep out the wild nomads, not a cityfolk siege-train that could throw ton-weight

blocks half a kilometer or more.

"We could send more hired fighters south," one of her kinmates said. Kommanz

mercenary cavalry were always in demand.

Zhy'da shook her head. "Too many don't come back. We need those riders. And if we

spend more time growing and making goods to sell, that weakens us too. And the

southron have reasons of their own to offer such things, when they never have before.

Perhaps just gain-hunting, perhaps not. The Kommand'ahan in Granfor-the-town has to

speak on this, at MidWinter Gathering, but until then we need a way to get wealth that

doesn't weaken our warstrength."

The Kommand'ahan was sacred, but in secular matters must listen to the Keepholder

clans, and Stonefort was among the mightiest of those. She looked up at the sun; in a few

hours her children would be back.

"Here's one answer—"

What duty? Shkai'ra Mek Kermak's-kin thought. It could only be an assignment, when

the kinmother sent her sib to fetch her from overseeing drill. His words had been few and

rough, but she scorned to ask more; they hated each other more than was common,

being the youngest of their generation and rivals for succession. A trickle of

apprehension stiffened her spine, colder than the sweat that soaked the padding under

her armor. Zhy'da Mek Kermak's-kin believed in testing the offspring, sometimes to

destruction. Zte'vfs lip was swollen and there was dried blood in his cropped yellow

beard. That might have happened in a number of ways, but a kinparent's fist was most

likely.

His fault, not mine; if they're angered, it's with him, she reminded herself.

"Take over, Eh'rik," she said to the war-master beside her. He could handle the inspection

as well as she; this was training for her as much as the village levy they were drilling-He

nodded silently. Two of the Stonefort household troopers fell in behind the Mek Kermaks

as they left, lances slung and wheelbows in their hands with arrows nocked. That was

prudent, although she was full-armed and her sib bore saber and wheelbow. Bandits or

outlaws might be about, or skulkers from the high steppe, infiltrating through the broad

strips of unbroken grassland between villages. This close to home the steppe was almost

tame; she could see herds of longhorns and beefalo and sheep with their herders, and

there were patches where the bluestem had been grazed down to knee height. Mostly it

was chest-high on a tall horse, a wavering sea of bronze and wine-russet stalks starred

with deep purple-blue downy gentians, running to the horizon all around. When they

skirted a swampy vale, ducks and geese lifted in clouds huge enough to hide the

westering sun. The air was cooling toward sundown, smelling of dry grass and wild rose

and horse.

The Kommanza rode at wolf-pace, walk-trot-canter-trot-walk. Soon enough they saw

patrols, then the outlying fields of Stonefort's home village, stubble alternating with

blocks of potatoes and beets and alfalfa. They passed wagons and pack trains headed in

to the Mustering Fair. Dust hazed the eastern horizon, and their lances threw long

slender shadows as they rode into the close-cropped area about the castle itself.

Shkai'ra kept her eyes ahead as befitted a noble while she rode through the Mustering

Fair, although it was an effort; her concession to curiosity was to clip her helmet to her

belt. Noise beat at her. Nothing but a hall-feast or a battle was as loud as a fair; there

must be a ten of hundreds of people here. Keep servants and warmasters were setting up

the balks and targets for tomorrow's games; mounted archery and lance-work while

riding obstacle courses, and there would be unarmed combat and target shooting, too.

Booths and tents with wonderful things; shining tools of ceramic or metal, colored

cloth—some of real cotton or silk—fine weapons and tooled saddles, things your hands

itched to touch. Hawkers dodged near, holding up delicacies; skewers of grilled

buffalo-hump and onion, lamb ribs, southland wine or coffee, then dropped back when

they were ignored.

The crowds parted before her and her kinsib, like prairie grass before their horses. She

swung a fist up in salute and ducked her head as she passed one of her kinfathers buying

stock from a dealer. Slaves this time, six fine females and an equal number of strong

young males, for the Great Sacrifice at the end of the fair: human, horse, cattle and dog.

Then they drew near the dais and its circle of space.

Shkai'ra reached back for the lance in its holster behind her right thigh, pulled it free and

stabbed the point into the dirt in token of respect. Zte'vf and she vaulted to the ground

together, went to their knees, and pressed their foreheads to the ground between their

palms.

"Obedience to you, givers of our blood," the young nobles said.

Zhy'da grunted. "Up, puppies," she said. "Closer."

They knee-walked to the edge of the mound. Four of the ruling generation of Mek

Kermak's-kin were there, a few of their senior advisors, and the great shaman

Walks-With-Demons. He tapped at the drums slung to his belt, and the circle of

emptiness around the dais grew larger.

"I have a task for one of you, punishment and reward," Zhy'da said; the shaman giggled

slightly, and she frowned sidelong at him. "The Keep needs new wealth. Wealth that we

can use to fee the southron traders for new goods. At least five tens of fingerweights of

silver-value, in goods a caravan could take south."

Shkai'ra felt her breath catch behind the impassive mask of her face. War, she thought.

That was the only way to get goods of great value and low weight quickly.

"Plan a raid to the east, to be carried out before next spring," she said. "Both of you,

separately, a plan. You have a week; a raid taking two tens and a ten of warriors, with

gear suitable, but no more than one ten of our household fighters. Consult who you will,

but if any word of this goes abroad, you both spend another week naked in the

stonebox."

Both the younger Mek Kermaks clenched their teeth slightly; that was not a light

punishment.

"A good plan, mind; daring but not reckless. Objective, means, supply, tactics,

withdrawal, minimal risk. The maker of the best plan commands the raid, reward. The

begetter of the worst stays here for their week in the stonebox, punishment."

Or more than that, Shkai'ra knew. It was nearly time for the next generation of the Mek

Kermak kinfast to many and pass on the sacred godborn blood. Lake most folk,

Kommanza forbade sibs of the same gender to wed, fearing weak offspring. Customs

differed; in most lands some or all of the next generation's sisters married together, and

then sought out male mates; among others, it was the brothers who wed. Among

Kommanza of the ofzar class the elders chose, by appointing one child senior.

She looked sidelong at her sib; their glances met, out of the corners of their eyes. He was

blue-eyed to her gray, and the ponytail and braids that marked him a warrior adult

were butter-yellow to her red-blond; otherwise they were alike enough to be twins. Might

well be of the same dam and sire; it was rare to know who your seedfather was. Zhy'da

was probably wombmother to them both, but children were swaddled at birth and often

passed among whoever of the kinmothers was nursing…

Zte'vf frowned. "Bemedjaka is peaceholy until second snowfall—" he began, then shut

his mouth with a snap.

Shkai'ra's face might have been carved from wood, but her mind grinned like a wolf. He

thinks quickly, but too straight, she chuckled to herself.

Stonefort lay west of the Red River. The Kommanz of Granfor of which it was a part

stretched eastward beyond the stream to the beginnings of the Great Woods, two

hundred kilometers eastward. Beyond that was Minztannis, the forest-folk country,

although few dwelt too near the edge of the grassland; the woodsrunners were no great

warriors, and preferred to stay out of reach of raiders from the steppes. But they were

rich in metals and great craftsfolk and makers, almost as craft-wise as the southron

city-dwellers. Bemedjaka was the nearest large settlement of them. Minztans lived even

more scattered than Kommanza; Bemedjaka was almost a city, two thousand or more,

not counting the woodsrunners living around it. A great prize, too great to loot; there

was a treaty, the Minztans of Bemedjaka traded metals and tools and the services of their

smiths for grain, meat, wool, and flax.

The Kommand'ahan would never let us sack Bemedjaka, she thought; that was a cow

better milked than slaughtered. There must be a new village within raiding-reach. But the

treaty applies— ah, until second snowfall.

1

WINTER, 4962 A.D.

It was quiet under the great pines. The cold cut like crystal, through fur and leather and

the quilted padding under armor. Woodsmoke drifted on the air and mingled with the

clean musky smell of horses and resin tang from the forest, yet each scent was leached to

a ghost by the unmerciful chill of predawn. Yesterday's powder snow hung feathery

from branch and trunk, blue-white on black, drinking every sound of wind and wood,

muffling the clatter and stamp of sixty riders.

The Kommanz warriors sat their horses in stolid silence, long used to worse in the driving

blizzards of their native prairie far to the west. All were plains-bred: tall, fair-skinned

under tan and windburn, mostly hawk-faced and high in the cheekbones. Long, light

hair was braided under helms; pale eyes were slitted in the perpetual half-squint of

plainsdwellers. With combat to await, they had shed bison-pelt cloaks for the western

battle panoply: round shields of layered bullhide, blunt, conical steel helmets,

long-skirted hauberks built up of fiberglass, lacquered leather, and silk cord. Their

weapons were lance, wheelbow, curved sword, dagger, and lariat; many added strings of

scalps, and all had jagged gaudy designs swirling over shield and breastplate, showing

kinfast and Keep.

One outlander was among them: a Minztan forester, sitting his horse with no trace of the

westerners' ingrained skill. The marks of fire and blade showed on his body and bound

hands. He was the last of the dozen they had captured; the scalps of the others dangled

fresh from saddlehoms and belts.

Shkai'ra Mek Kermak's-kin reached across and gripped him by the hair.

"Newstead here?" she asked. Like many of her folk she had learned the forest speech,

enough for trade and war.

The Minztan nodded blearily, shuddering with the cold. Shkai'ra released him and

raised a hand. One of the troopers behind him tossed her lance up to the overhand grip

and reversed it, planting the bone butt knob between his shoulders. She pushed, and the

Minztan tumbled to the snow with a grunt of pain.

He floundered to his feet, shivering and drawing back from the figure that crouched

before the horses. Alone of the Kommanza that one was unarmored and unarmed,

carrying no trace of metal. Blue eyes stared sightlessly from a face made unreadable by

looping ovals and tines of scar tissue, scars that had been rubbed with soot while they

healed to leave their patterns ink-black against his flesh. On his head was a covering of

hide and feathers and bison horns, and the fingers of his left hand tapped ceaselessly at

the drum slung to his belt; on one side of it was the sigil of the spirit called Blood Drinker,

on the other Flesh Eater. Before him was a knotted cord spread in a circle; within it was a

dried eagle's claw, an ear cut from the Minztan with a flint Knife, a scattering of objects

Shkai'ra could not have named.

"Well?" she barked, using the superior-to-subject inflection.

The shaman grinned at her with filed and rotten teeth. "Yes, oh, yes," he said in a soft,

even voice. He nodded through the screen of trees toward the clearing two kilometers

ahead. "I hold, hold their minds within mine." His hand darted out over the circle of

cord; he gasped, yelped, chanted words. "Strong witches, much power within those

walls. Soon they know I hold them: better you kill, yes. I will eat their hearts, brew magic

from their blood, gain their power."

From a pouch he pulled a piece of dried fungus and chewed with bitter pleasure. Then he

turned, hand snaking out to touch the Minztan on the throat. The forester stilled, only

his chest moving as he breathed, and the frantic motion of his eyes hunted for escape.

The shaman drew a stone knife from under his jacket and slashed twice under the angle

of the Minztan's jaw. Blood spurted, and still the victim stood, motionless except for

shivering. The shaman's head darted forward, mouth fastening on the rivulet of blood,

slurping noisily; when he withdrew the body dropped like an emptied sack.

He leaped into the middle of his cord circle, beating again on his belt-drum. Turning

swiftly he spat a fine spray of blood to the north, south, east, west.

"Now," he gasped, then began a shuffling dance, chanting:

"Hey-ya-ye-ye-ye-KIAKIA-yipye-he-he-he-ya—"

Shkai'ra turned and gave a clenched-fist salute to the warband. No few grinned back,

raising lances in salute; the free yeoman-farmers of Stonefort had an easy, unservile

respect for their chiefs. Familiar faces from hunts and childhood training were shadowed

to a gleam of eyes and teeth under the low brims of the helmets. Many had painted their

faces for war, slashing designs of scarlet and black and green in the patterns of their

clans; her own Red Hawks from the villages near the Keep, lesser numbers of Gold Dogs,

Real Tigers, Running Bison. Shkai'ra wore only the Eagle on her forehead and the

thunderbolts on her cheeks, her right as a scion of the ofzar class; the mark of Zaik

Godlord, Begetter of Victoiy, Mother of Death.

She felt the band's coiled eagerness as she turned back to her officers. They were mostly

older than her nineteen summers, sent along to steady a troop of unblooded youths. My

first raid.

"No other sentries," she said. That brought a snort of incredulous contempt from the

Kommanz officers; hard to believe even Minztan tree rabbits were that careless. "The

shaman did his work well. Nothing left now but fighting; well be in their village and

looting, drinking and fucking before Sun Retreat. Dismiss."

The village in the clearing ahead was not large as Minztan steadings went: a dozen long

log kinhalls with their barns, smokehouses, forges, saunas, enough for two hundred

adults and as many children. There was a stockade of pointed logs, half-finished; more

attention had been paid to clearing the fields. Other clearings would have been made

hereabouts, wherever the thin glacial soil would yield oats and potatoes, or hay along the

streams.

The Minztans had not come this close to the edge of the steppe for farming; there was

plenty of forest farther east, in the huge empty wastes that swept north from the

city-lands through swamp, lake, and wood to the tundra. Trapping and hunting were

good here too, but they would likely have planted near ore worth mining. Metals were

rare everywhere and always precious; the Ancients had taken so much. Travelers' tales

told of great circular lakes five kilometers across that marked the sites of their

plundering. But Minztans were expert at finding old leavings, or ores too lean for the

Ancestors to have bothered with.

"Should be easy," Shkai'ra said to the man beside her. "Here, take the farlookers." She

handed him a pair of binoculars from a case clipped to her saddlebow.

"We're not here to butcher sheep," he replied dryly. Thirty years of raid and ambush had

left Warmaster Eh'rik Davzin-kin with a wealth of sour pessimism and no illusions at all.

Methodically he ran through a final check of the lacings on his armor and the positions

of sword, dagger, bow, and lance. Taking the glasses for a careful sweep, he pushed his

helmet back by the nasal to reveal a saturnine, seamed face with a tuft of grizzled

chinbeard: balding, he had chosen a shaved skull rather than warrior braids.

"Old croaker," Shkai'ra said affectionately. "Even sheep with horns make mutton."

Shirley Meier & S. M. Stirling - Fifth Millenium 04 - Snowbrother

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