“Here — ” She handed Kaari some strips of willowbark to chew. “It's bitter but it will do the same thing.”
Kaari made a face, but took the bark — really the inner bark of the tree, that carried the pain-killing properties — and began chewing it. Annukka chewed her own bitter-tasting bark until there was nothing more to taste, then spit the wad of pulp out.
“Do you want to sit up first, or shall I?” Kaari asked, doing the same.
Well the answer obviously was, I would like you to, but Kaari was not at all used to riding, ever, and at least Annukka had some practice in it, so she was probably the least sore of the two of them. “I will take first watch,” she said, and tried not to sigh as Kaari wrapped herself up in blankets and rolled under the bush. A moment later, the sound of her even breathing told Annukka that despite frantic worry over Veikko, anger at the villagers and fear of what was ahead of them, exhaustion and pain had taken their toll, and she had succumbed to both.
Now the question for Annukka was, what should their course be?
Go straight to the last place I know Veikko was, I suppose. I can get the Moon to show me, I expect.
She could, if she wanted to draw attention to herself by working a Great Magic.
Drat.
There was always a price to be paid for doing magic, and in this case, the price would be exposing herself and Kaari to possible discovery by the Snow Queen. That was not an option. Not now. She rubbed her aching thighs as she considered other courses of action. If she didn't ask the Moon to show her — well, she needed to be clever, then. She knew that Veikko and his Master had gone looking for the Icehart. She could go to the village where Lemminkal lived, and do the simplest thing, which was to find where Veikko and Lemminkal had gone from there and keep listening for tales of the Icehart. Find the Icehart, and the Snow Queen was probably not far away. That, at least, would not draw as much attention. One definite advantage they had was that the Snow Queen would probably not expect two women to come after the men.
So far, the loving-cup still retained that sliver of silver, which meant that Veikko was not dead. While that remained, there was hope. And until she and Kaari could find out exactly what had happened to Veikko and his Master, all either of them could do was to hang on to hope.
Meanwhile, although they had gotten away with as much as she could manage, they were still not as prepared as she liked for this journey. Food, at least, they had in plenty, all things that were light — dried fish and meat, dried cheese, dried fruit, barley. The only fresh food she had packed were things that they would eat before they spoiled. They did have all of her herbal medicines, all of the things she used for healing. They had bedrolls. They did not have a tent. They had her bird bow, arrows, knives. They did not have bigger bows. They had Winter clothing, and thank heavens, she had finished the cloak for Kaari. They had a fire-starter and a cooking pot and an ax. They did not have a big enough ax to actually cut anything large, and she would have to use her cooking-knife to butcher things. They did not have fishing gear — and probably there were a great many other things that one needed for camping that they simply did not have. They were going to have to trade for things along the way…fortunately that, for a Wise Woman, was not an issue.
She slipped out from under cover of the brush to gather the long, flexible stems of dried sweetgrass, keeping a careful eye on the road as she did so, and ducked back under the concealment as soon as she had enough. Once there, she deftly began weaving it into tiny charms. The fragrant dried grasses mingled their scent with the Autumnal tang of fallen leaves. The sun was warm on her back now, and if it had not been for the ache in her legs, and the circumstances that brought them here, she could have been supremely content. And, on the other hand, with Veikko in peril, she could have been frantic. But a Wise Woman learns how to put her own woes aside when the need calls.
With each charm she wove, she softly sang a spell as she worked, binding the magic into the weaving. A little goat for luck, a six-pointed star for health, a four-armed cross with the seed-heads at the end of each arm for prosperity, a forge hammer for protection — she refused to make love-charms unless she knew the person asking for them, but these four symbols were always in demand. Once, her husband had spent long Winter hours carving little trifles for her to put such spells on; she hadn't had the heart to tell him that they weren't as effective when she didn't make them herself, so she had compromised by weaving grass cords to string them on and wove the spells into those.
When she had a dozen, the sun was halfway up the sky; she woke Kaari, and told her to wake her when it had reached the zenith. By then she was so tired, she could scarcely keep her eyes open.
And it seemed as if she had barely closed them when Kaari was shaking her awake again. As she moved, it also seemed as if every muscle stretched and strained by that long night ride had stiffened, and now she hurt twice as much as she had when she had gone to sleep. But she wasn't going to set a bad example to Kaari by complaining; instead, she built a very tiny fire with almost no smoke; they made willow-bark tea to share and toasted some cheese and barley bread. Then they packed, harnessed the deer and resumed the journey.
Now that it was light and they could see, the deer quickened their pace to the ground-eating lope they used when migrating. They had eaten well while the humans slept; now they were ready to move. They were very different in temper and nature from the horses that some folk like the traders used, but the traders only traveled in the snowless months. Annukka was just glad now that she had spent as much time on having them for riding as she had. But until she and Kaari were more used to it, Annukka had no intention of spending an entire day in the saddle. She planned to stop about sunset; if they were lucky, there would be a village where she could barter for supplies, or if there was a Wise Woman in reside once, actually get some help. Ideally, it would be better if they could overnight as much as possible among other people and within four walls. That way, they could save their supplies for when they were in the wilderness with no other choice but to camp. She regretted now that her own small travels had never taken her in this direction. She knew nothing of the lay of the land, nor who was living out this way. She only knew that Veikko had stayed on the road the whole way to finding his Master because he had told her so in letters. And that was another thing she needed to barter for — a map.
Some things, however, were possible. You could tell if there was a village nearby by looking for smoke rising above the trees. Even in Summer, there would be cookfires, baking ovens, pottery kilns. As sunset neared, she scanned the horizon for such signs, and perhaps she spent a little too much of her attention on the horizon and not enough on her surroundings —
Because Kaari gasped, she pulled her attention back to the road and saw a half-dozen rough-looking men blocking their way.
Fear sharpened her vision; they were ragged, dirty, with hair and beards tangled and greasy. Their ill-fitting clothing was stained and torn in places. They were, however, well-armed.
She heard a laugh behind her, and knew without looking that there were at least that many more to the rear.
The reindeer snorted in alarm, and stood there quivering, threatening to bolt. Annukka could feel hers trembling under her legs.