Rhavas told him, finishing, "No theologian I know of has ever pondered this. Do sorcerers know more of it than priests?"
Koubatzes' eyes narrowed. His features sharpened. When he thought hard, his face was no longer ordinary. Wit shone from it like light from a lamp. More ptarmigan, frightened by the horsemen, rose into the air. Koubatzes' gaze followed the snowy birds till they came to earth again and disappeared.
"Well, well," the sorcerer said thoughtfully. His gaze swung back to Rhavas. "Isn't that interesting? No, very holy sir, I can't tell you how or why animals turn the color of snow when winter comes."
"Not all of them do." Rhavas pointed to the Anazarbos River, near whose southern bank the Videssians rode. The river hadn't yet frozen from bank to bank, as it would later in the winter. Some ducks floated on the icy water. Their plumage was duller than it would have been in summertime, but they hadn't gone white. Squirrels that gnawed on fir cones through the winter stayed red. Badgers and bears kept their color, too.
"Isn't that interesting?" Koubatzes said again, giving the ducks the same close attention he'd lavished on the ptarmigan. "The ducks are out on the water, mind you, while the ptarmigan live in the snow. A brown bird on a snowdrift wouldn't last long. That seems plain enough."
"What of ravens?" Rhavas asked, and the wizard winced. Rhavas went on, "Besides, you and I can see that changing color would might be to a bird's advantage, but how does the bird itself know that?"
"Beats me," Koubatzes admitted. "About the most I can tell you is that birds that turn white might—and I say it again: might—be likelier to live to breed. If the darker ones got eaten before they laid eggs . . ." He shrugged. "Take it for what you think it's worth, if you think it's worth anything."
"I don't know," Rhavas said. "Wouldn't turning white do a raven or a squirrel as much good as a ptarmigan? But ravens stay black and squirrels stay red."
"I told you I didn't have the answer," Koubatzes said, his breath smoking with every exhalation. "I just threw out an idea to see what you made of it. It's not likely to be true."
The horses plodded on. Their breath smoked, too. The day was bright and clear, but far below freezing. Even so far north, mild winter days were known, but this wasn't one of them. Birches and poplars and maples stood bare-branched and skeletal. Fir and pine and spruce stayed green the year around, but carried so much snow that they looked as if they were trying to turn white like the ptarmigan. Pleased with the conceit, Rhavas mentioned it to Koubatzes.
"Ah? Intriguing." The mage raised an eyebrow. "Now if you could get the trees to go white in winter without snow on them, very holy sir, you'd really have something."
"Mmp." Rhavas felt obscurely punctured.
He slept that night in a felt tent heated only by a charcoal-burning brazier. He wrapped himself in blankets and a fur robe and slept in all of his clothes, but remained cold and uncomfortable. He'd slept on the deck of the ship that brought him to Skopentzana—it was sleep on the deck or do without sleep. Since then, though, he'd lain in a bed every night. He would have complained more about the arrangements if the wizards and the guards weren't sleeping on the ground bundled in whatever they had, too.
Hot barley porridge sweetened with honey helped resign him to being out in the wilderness the next morning. So did hot mulled wine. Off in the distance, smoke rose from a peasant's hut. In this part of the Empire, peasants who couldn't keep a fire burning through the winter often didn't live to see spring.
Rhavas' thighs let out an unhappy twinge as he clambered up onto his horse. Some of the wizards groaned, too. Again, that made the prelate feel better. Yes, misery did love company.
"How long before we come across the nomads?" Rhavas asked the chief guardsman, a dour man named Ingeros whose gray eyes and light brown hair said he carried a good deal of Haloga blood.
Ingeros had grown up in Skopentzana, though, and was wholly Videssian in everything but looks. His shrug was a small masterpiece of its kind. It would have drawn admiration in Videssos the city. Here in this frozen wilderness, it struck Rhavas as being beyond praise. "We'll come across them when we do, very holy sir," he answered. "Or, if no band is making for Skopentzana, we won't. In that case, we go home."
That no band of Khamorth might head for Skopentzana hadn't occurred to Rhavas. The mere idea made him angry. How dare they ignore my city? went through his mind. He laughed at himself. He hadn't realized he'd become such a part of Skopentzana, or it of him. I'm not just an exile from the capital, not anymore.
A snowy owl slid silently across the sky. The big white birds flew mostly by daylight. Rhavas had had to get used to that on coming to the north country; down in Videssos the city and most of the Empire, seeing an owl by daylight was reckoned the worst of bad luck. It wasn't daylight here, not yet, but morning twilight said the sun was nearing the southeastern horizon.
Koubatzes saw the owl, too. Pointing, he said, "It's white all the time. What do you make of that?"
"We wouldn't call it a snowy owl if it were the color of mud," Rhavas answered gravely.
"Well—no." The wizard asked no more questions about animals after that, which suited Rhavas: he'd got more for his idle comment than he'd expected.
They rode west along the riverbank. In due course, the sun did come up behind them and pushed long shadows out ahead. Those shadows did not grow a great deal shorter as the brief daylight wore along. At this season of the year, the sun never rose high enough to cast short shadows.
More ducks bobbed in the Anazarbos. Rhavas also wondered how they could sit there all day without freezing: he wouldn't have lasted long in that frigid water. This time, though, he kept quiet about his curiosity.
The wizards and the guards and the prelate rode up to the top of a low rise. Ingeros was in the lead. He suddenly reined in and threw up a hand to halt the others. "What is it?" a sorcerer called.
"Sheep," Ingeros answered.
Never had Rhavas heard such an innocent word sound so sinister. "Khamorth sheep?" he asked.
"Sure looks that way to me," Ingeros said, and then, "Ha! Yes, there's one of the whoresons on his cursed pony."
Rhavas sketched the sun-circle over his heart. The plainsmen had traveled better than half as fast as the news of their coming. Their mobility had always plagued the Videssians, who'd had to defend a long frontier against them. Two or three times, imperial armies had come to grief going out onto the steppe in pursuit of the elusive Khamorth. From the time of Stavrakios to that of Stylianos, no Videssian army had tried it. But the rebellious general had won victories. Not enough of them, Rhavas thought.
Now Videssos' painfully perfect border bastions lay abandoned. The barbarians were inside the Empire—inside it on a vast front, in fact. Would they prove as hard to drive back as they had to contain on the plains? Rhavas spat in the snow, as if rejecting Skotos, in hopes of turning aside the evil omen.
Ingeros rode back to the men he shepherded. "Stay here," he told them. "Don't go over the rise and show yourself to the stinking nomads. Have you got that, sorcerous sirs?"
Koubatzes and the other mages nodded. Rhavas decided he had better do the same. One of the wizards asked, "What's to keep the Khamorth from coming over the rise themselves and finding us?"