Ta-se-ho smoked constantly. But he would not let them give in to fatigue, and when they had turned the corner on the endless swamps and soft snow of the N’gara peninsula, he led them along the edge of the inland sea, where for two days they made rapid time, all but running on the ice.
Until the ice broke and Nita Qwan went in.
They were close to shore, near the end of a day of cutting across a big bay, so far from land that they had passed terrifyingly close to the ice edge and the water. And late in the day, safe, apparently, Nita Qwan had turned aside to piss in the virgin snow, taken a few steps off the beaten snow where their toboggans had passed…
He felt the ice give, saw the snow darken, and then-faster than he’d have thought possible-he was in, all the way in, the black water closing over his head.
He had never been so cold. The water, when he went in, gave a new definition to what cold might be. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t see. He panicked instantly.
And then he was out again.
Gas-a-ho pulled him out with one mighty heave on his blanket roll, which was buoyant and high on his shoulders. Gas-a-ho had run to him, thrown himself full length on the snow, and grabbed the pack. Ta-se-ho had his feet.
The ice on which he lay made noise, a low grumble like the rage of a living thing, and Ta-se-ho pulled them both back, and back again, and then they were all crunching through the swift-breaking ice over shallow water that did not immediately promise death.
Ashore and exposed to the wind, drowning seemed kinder. And now Ta-se-ho was like a madman, driving them on, making them run, walk, and run again, over and over, along the exposed shore. To their left, the inland sea went on, apparently forever, in an unbroken snowfield. To their right, atop bluffs that lowered over them, were snow-covered trees and naked black spruce that went on to the horizon, a wilderness of trees that seemed to cover all the earth.
When Nita Qwan thought he must be near death, the old man stopped them in a cove that offered some protection from the wind and pulled the cover off his own sled. He took the pot from his sled and carried it to an exposed rock at the base of the tall sand and stone bluffs and placed it gently there.
Almost instantly, it began to give more heat. Nita Qwan fell to his knees.
“Strip him,” Ta-se-ho said gruffly.
“My hands are still warm!” said Gas-a-ho in wonder.
“The greatest gift the Lady could give.” Ta-se-ho did not smile. “He’s far gone. He went all the way in.”
Nita Qwan heard them only from a distance.
He merely knelt and worshipped the warmth.
The wind rose, and icy rain began to fall. They stripped him and only then did the two Outwallers begin to collect materials for a shelter.
Unbelievably, as soon as Nita Qwan was naked, he was warmer-much warmer. He began to wake up.
Ta-se-ho was tying gut to a stake. He looked over. “Did you see the spirit world?” he asked.
Nita Qwan was having trouble speaking. But he nodded.
Ta-se-ho shook his head. “I dreamed all this. You do not die.”
Nita Qwan looked at the old man. “Do you?” he asked.
The old man looked away.
But by sunset, all three of them were warm enough, and dry. A roaring fire lit the edge of the coast and the bluffs behind them, and they made a chimney of hides and the fire came up through it, drying Nita Qwan’s clothes and moccasins.
The next day they killed a deer. Ta-se-ho tracked the buck, and Nita Qwan put an arrow into him at a good distance, earning him much praise from the other two. The old hunter nodded.
“In this snow, I couldn’t run down any of the deer’s children,” he said. He walked with a spear in his hand, but he never seemed to use it as anything but a walking staff. It was a fine spear, made far away by a skilled smith, and the old man had taken it as a war prize in his youth.
Like the spear, the deer was thin, but the meat was delicious, and they ate and ate and ate.
“How much farther to the People?” Gas-a-ho asked.
Ta-se-ho frowned. “Everything depends on the weather,” he said. “If it is cold tonight, we will risk the inland sea again. We must. This is not just for us, brothers. Think of all the people coming back this way. Every day matters.”
Morning saw them rise in full darkness. It was snowing, and coyotes bayed at the distant moon. Tapio had provided them with three beautiful crystal lights, and with the lights they were able to pack well and quickly, but even with light, there were numb fingers and badly tied knots. Each morning was a little worse-each morning, the damp and cold seeped into furs and blankets a little further. Nita Qwan’s joints ached and he was hungry as soon as he rose.
He looked at Ta-se-ho, who bent over, touching his toes-and cursing.
“I am too old for this,” he said with a bitter smile. Then his eyes went out to the hard surface of the inland sea. “Pray to Tar that the ice holds,” he added.
Nita Qwan watched the ice while he ate some strips of dried venison and drank a cup of hot water laced with maple sugar.
“Let’s go,” muttered Gas-a-ho.
Ta-se-ho stood smoking his small stone pipe. He smoked slowly and carefully and watched the lake and the sky, letting the younger men collect the last camp items and pack the toboggan and tying down the hide cover.
“Ready,” Gas-a-ho said, sounding tired already.
Ta-se-ho nodded. He threw tobacco to all four compass points, and the other two men sang wordlessly. Nita Qwan went onto the ice carefully.
But the ice held all day. The clouds were high and solid grey, and snow fell for most of the morning, and then the wind came in great gusts towards evening. They camped in the spruce hedge along the shore, a cold, miserable camp made habitable only by Tapio’s pot. There wasn’t enough wood to make a fire big enough to warm a man. But the pot warmed them, and warmed their water and their venison, and they slept.
They woke to fog. It was deep and bleak, and very cold. Despite the freezing fog, Ta-se-ho led them out onto the ice and again they walked, and walked, heads bowed, backs bent against the strain of towing the toboggans at the ends, walking as swiftly as the snow and ice under their feet would allow them. The fog was thick and somehow malevolent.
Twice that day, the ice cracked audibly, and Nita Qwan flinched, but in both cases Ta-se-ho seemed to commune with it and then led them on. He was aiming for a distant bluff that towered above the lake, visible when the wind shifted the fog, then lost again as the fog came back and covered the sun.
The old man made the other two men uneasy by taking the shortest route, which was across the great north bay of the inland sea. They walked almost thirty miles, the hardest day so far. With the intermittent fog and the flat surface of the inland sea, the day took on a mythical tinge, as though they were travelling across one of the frozen hells that most of the Outwallers feared. The presence of the lake under their feet, the groaning of the ice, the odd sounds in the fog…
From time to time the old man would stop, and turn around. Once he stopped and smoked.
To Nita Qwan, the day seemed endless and the fear increased all day-fear of drowning, fear of being lost. When the fog covered them they had no path and no landmarks, and yet the old man kept walking, barely visible a few yards in front.
Ta-se-ho stopped for the fifth or sixth time.
“Is this a break?” asked Gas-a-ho. He began to drop his pack.
“Silence,” Ta-se-ho said.
They were perfectly still.
The ice groaned, a long, low crunching sound that came from everywhere and nowhere in the frozen, fog-bound hell into which they’d stumbled.