She and Leesil had dressed in heavy sheepskin coats with fur on the inside, and hoods and gloves as well, but she felt the bitter cold on her face. If it got any colder, it might be a problem for Chap, especially at night.
Magiere looked to the cluster of weatherworn, shabby buildings. The few people in sight were dressed in clothes made of thickly furred animal hides.
“What now?” Leesil asked, still appearing queasy. “Tell me this is the end of the line by sea.”
Magiere shook her head. “I don’t know. I’d thought we might hire a Northlander vessel wherever we ended up. But the captain said the coastal waters will soon freeze, and even these longboats have trouble with that.”
“No more boats, ships, or even a raft!” Leesil insisted. “And certainly no horses here, thank the dead gods.”
Chap snorted as Magiere frowned, waiting for Leesil to hit the hard realization—and then he looked about again.
“We’ll not make it far on foot with all this gear,” he said quietly, “and we’ll need even more if we’re heading inland.”
Uncertain what to do, Magiere sighed this time. The largest structure in White Hut had a painted plank over the door, but she couldn’t read it. Black smoke rose from its haphazard chimney. The building was a dome of sod, as if dug into, or made into, a large hillock.
“That’s the biggest one,” she said. “We’ll try there.”
Hauling and dragging their belongings, they walked into the trading post settlement. When they passed under the unreadable plank of that largest structure, they entered a smoky room filled with rough tables and stools spread around the dirt floor. Maybe a dozen people, mostly men all dressed in furs or thick hides, were seated or standing about. More than half sucked on pipes or sipped something steaming in clay and wooden bowls or cups. Many wore their hair long, most looked somewhat greasy, and all had darkly tanned skin.
Following some slightly rancid odor beneath the smoky haze, Magiere spotted a large iron pot. It hung on a hook over a fire in the makeshift hearth at the room’s rear. She could feel everyone’s eyes on her.
These weren’t villagers who stared openly. They took brief or indirect glances with no expression at what they saw. It was like being studied by a predator feigning disinterest while it tried to figure out whether what it saw was another predator ... or prey.
Leesil was far too silent. Magiere almost felt him turn instantly on guard as he glanced around, as detached as those in the dim room.
A long, faded counter made of battered planks on crates and barrels stretched across the left of the room. Crude shelves behind it were loaded with canvas bags, tins, folded furs and wool cloth, rope, and other sundry supplies and equipment, some of which Magiere didn’t recognize. Beneath those burdened shelves, a row of barrels stretched down the floor behind the counter.
There was no one tending the counter, so whoever ran this place must have been among those about the room. This had to be the heart of the so-called trading post, and Magiere had her first hint of how bad things could get.
She’d never been inside a place quite like this, but she recognized the feel of it, what it suggested about the land. Only the strong survived, if not thrived, here. This was a land where the weak died easily, suddenly, through ignorance or arrogance—or both. It showed in every face in the dim room.
Magiere hadn’t told Leesil or Chap about the captain’s mention of a sled and dogs. That was likely their only option now. It didn’t matter how much they’d been through in their years together. They were in a land they knew nothing about.
They were the weak in these Wastes.
“We’re looking for a guide,” she said in Numanese and hoped someone understood. “To take us north and inland.”
No one spoke until a large man in what appeared to be a wolf-skin cloak took the stem of a clay pipe out of his mouth and looked right at her.
“Why do you want to go into the white?” he asked in clear Numanese.
It took Magiere a breath to catch his meaning; he was likely referring to the deeper region of the Wastes. That was exactly where she, Chap, and Leesil had decided to go. Someplace so far from the civilized world that no one would ever find what they’d hide there.
The man frowned at her silence and returned to biting his pipe stem. He wasn’t wearing gloves. His hands, as well as a patch below his right cheekbone, were marred with small black spots. Magiere approached his table but didn’t sit on any of its empty stools.
“That’s my business,” she finally answered. “If this is your place, we need a sled, dogs, a guide, and supplies. Where do we find such?”
Leesil closed on her right and Chap on her left. She had no time for their arguments and didn’t look at either of them. They still had coins left from when Leesil had sold a valuable necklace belonging to a vampire that they’d killed back in their homeland. That money had gone a long way, but they had to make it last longer. And would foreign coins be any good here?
“Depends,” the man said, “on how far you’re going.”
Fewer eyes turned her way, as most in the room went back to their own thoughts, cups, and pipes. Magiere sat down, and Leesil joined her, though Chap kept shifting nervously about nearby.
“We’re not sure how far,” she said. “A moon, maybe more.”
The man didn’t even blink; he simply nodded. His nose was almost flat, and his pupils looked black in the dim room. At a guess, he wasn’t Numanese, and certainly not a Northlander, from what she’d seen of those people. Perhaps he had a mixed heritage of some kind.
“I am Ti’kwäg,” he said. “This is not my place, but I have dogs and a sound sled. I know the white ... the part of the Wastes that you seek.”
And after Magiere made her own introductions, the bartering began.
In the end she was relieved that he wanted to be paid in coins, though it left her puzzled. She didn’t see how money, especially foreign, had much use up here except in this place called White Hut. Maybe it was a way for him to deal directly with Northlanders and Numan ships bringing in goods rather than buy such through the trading post. Either way, she didn’t care. Precious metal wouldn’t be much use where they were going.
Ti’kwäg finally nodded and told her to stock up on small and light luxuries such as tobacco, tea, herbs, and especially sugar. He said these could be used to trade with his mother’s people for fresh meat and oil made from animal fat. This advice alone assured her that it was worth having met him, and confirmed he was half-blooded. His mother had to be one of the ... whatever the captain had called them, other than Wastelanders.
Before she verbally agreed to hire Ti’kwäg, she spotted Chap staring hard at the man. Had Chap caught something in the guide’s surfacing memories? She waited for him to call up any of her own memories and indicate either concern or agreement that she should proceed.
Chap finally looked up at her and huffed once for yes. Either he trusted what he’d seen in Ti’kwäg or at least thought the man competent.
Magiere, Leesil, and Chap spent the evening preparing for a long journey. They managed to pay for lodging, though here that amounted to a tent on the outskirts. They got little sleep their first night in this frigid land without a ship’s wooden walls to shield them, and Magiere spent the night full of uncertainties regarding what was to come.
Could they find a safe place to hide the orb? And if not ... what then?
At dawn Ti’kwäg met them in front of the same shabby main building, with a long sled pulled by a team of eight muscular, overfurred dogs. He packed and lashed their gear himself, and frowned when Magiere insisted that he fasten the heavy travel chest onto the sled as well. He did so, and the next stretch of their journey began as they headed northeast and inland.