ahead of her team for a few paces until she suddenly stepped off into snow that rose to her hips. The team watched her curiously as she wallowed and fought her way back up onto the ridge. ‘And a ramp down,’ she said drily.
‘You’re mad. You’re absolutely mad, woman. You still think to force this wagon through? There, she nods! I call the gods to witness that she nods!’
Ki ignored him. She moved back, hatchet in hand, and began to kick and stomp the loose snow away from the front of the wheels. On the box, Vandien was speaking softly in a tongue she did not recognize, but the flavor of the curses still came through. She paused to admire his fluency and then went on doggedly with her task.
The hatchet bit into the ice, but not deeply. The size of the chips made Ki at first despair, and then increase her speed. She heard Vandien climb off the wagon. She ventured a look at him. He glared at her ferociously, and then bent over to begin sweeping snow and ice away. They did not discuss the arrangement, but tacitly began to take turns with the hatchet. Ki chopped with it for a while, then passed it to Vandien while she cleared her chips away. While she waited for him to pass it back, she scanned the chill blue skies.
The sun was overhead when Ki hooked the team to the wagon again. The ramps they had cut were steep. The team hunched down and all but crawled on their knees as they tried to get the tall wheels started up the incline. Ki was at their heads, tugging and encouraging. Vandien went around to the rear of the wagon to add his puny strength to that of the grays. The team pulled, eyes rolling, nostrils flaring, heaving against the harness. Then Ki halted them, petting and gentling them down, and had them try again. She had lost count of their efforts when, suddenly, incredibly, the wagon moved forward. She didn’t dare let them relax, but urged them on swiftly, building up momentum so that the rear wheels stuck for only a second before they, too, came sliding and turning up the ramp. Ki halted the blowing team.
‘We’re up!’ she called. She ran to the back of the wagon to be sure it was safely up on the ridge. Vandien stood in the deep snow they had just emerged from. His arms were folded on his chest. He looked triumphant and challenging. Behind him in the snow were three sacks of salt and the remaining load of grain sacks. Ki spun, unbelieving, to stare at the back of her empty wagon. Now she understood why the last effort had seemed so easy.
‘My freight!’ she hissed, advancing on him.
‘Would be better off in your pocket. Why risk your life for this masquerade? I left two sacks of grain in the bottom of the wagon, and the firewood. It should be enough to get us through the pass. Alive.’ Vandien’s dark eyes met her angry ones squarely. Ki saw a glint of humor vying with the challenge in them. She tried to keep her eyes from flickering back to her wagon. Vandien fought a grin, lost the battle.
‘It’s still there. If I had wanted to steal it, I could have done so long ago. And I certainly wouldn’t be telling you about it now. I’ve told you before, I am not by nature a thief. But go check it, if you wish. I shan’t be offended.’
Still Ki looked at him. Damn the man!
‘I’ve no objections to pretensions until they endanger a life. And when it is my life they endanger, then I become a man of action.’ He cocked his head at her, raising his eyebrows appealingly. Ki met his look without a smile.
‘Put one more sack of grain back in. When it comes to my team, I like a large measure of safety. Shorting them would be another way to endanger your life.’ She turned on her heel.
She was already at work chipping out a down ramp when Vandien came forward again. The still-blanketed horses watched the Humans who had gouged a steep ramp in the ice. They both turned wary eyes up to the sky frequently. Vandien scowled at the passage of the sun, but Ki looked cautiously grateful for the emptiness she found overhead.
When at last the ramp was ready, Ki led the team down in just a few steps. She set the brake on the wagon, and Vandien on the seat fought to keep it on as the wagon lurched and skidded down the ramp. The snow beyond the ridge was deep, and the team floundered frantically ahead to keep from being run down by the wagon. Ki winced at the beating her team and wagon were taking. Safely down, she halted the horses to make a brief check of the wheels and axles. It was difficult to see much; the snow rose nearly to the bottom of the wagon.
Ki took the blankets off the team, and she and Vandien remounted the wagon. She shook the reins. The shadows of the team were blue on the snow. They leaned into the harness without spirit, and the wagon began to scrape forward again. With a lifting of heart, Ki found that a slight breeze stirred against her face. She prayed it was the wind rising again. She preferred heaped and drifted snow to a single Harpy sliding down the sky.
For a time, all went well. The team hugged the cliff face, where the snow seemed shallowest. By the edge of the trail the snow was heaped high, a wall that blocked Ki’s view of the drop-off. Mercifully, it cut the wind as well.
They drew closer to the Sisters, until at last the wagon was creeping past them. Ki craned her neck back, looking up at them. The cliff was too vertical and the sun was in her eyes. She could not see the top of the Sisters’ heads, let alone the top of the cliff. At a lower level, she could look up at the stone the Sisters were made from. Shiny and black, it took no reflections of light from the snow. Its smooth glisten reminded Ki of a finely polished piece of wood. She felt she could look into the depths of that shining stone.
The reins jerked in her hands, brought her mind back to her driving. Sigurd half-reared, bringing Sigmund to a forced halt. Sigurd was crowded back in the harness, his hindquarters cramped almost against the wagon. Ki looked across to Vandien. His mouth was folded tightly. He seemed to be making an effort not to speak. Ki dropped down off the wagon again to wade forward through the snow. But she did not sink as she had expected. Instead, she found herself standing nearly on a level with the bed of the wagon. What she had taken to be a higher drift of snow by the edge of the trail was actually an overlay of snow on a ridge of ice. She walked along it to where it swayed suddenly in front of Sigurd. Ki looked ahead. The ridge dominated the center of the trail now. It had channeled her team closer and closer to the cliff face, until now there was no longer a wide enough trail for the wagon to pass.
‘The serpent,’ Vandien began instructively, ‘evidently traveled down the outer edge of the path this far. But at this point, for reasons unknown to us, he decided to make his way down the center of the trail instead. If I stand on the seat’ – which he proceeded to do – ‘I can see that the hump of ice the serpent created by his passage now extends down the center of this trail as far as my eyes can see. Which isn’t far, in this fading light. One could note, in passing, that the area left to either side of the hump of ice is too narrow for a wagon. A wagon cannot get through this pass now. But a man, or a woman, on horseback could. As someone said to someone else, some days ago.’
‘Shut up!’ Ki said with savage fury. The horses jerked in surprise at the venom in her voice. She kept her back to Vandien and the team and looked wordlessly down the ruined trail. She stood on a giant hummock of ice that, as Vandien had said, writhed down the center of the trail. The wind wandered past her, stirring her garments slightly as it went. She wondered if it would rise enough to keep a Harpy out of the sky.
‘A rising wind may sweep even more snow upon us,’ Vandien said, as if he could read her thoughts. ‘The skies may be clear, but the wind will lift snow from higher areas to deposit it on us.’
‘Shut up,’ Ki repeated, but with less energy. Suddenly, she was tired, weariness clogging her brain. The shadows loomed ever darker, the Sisters more awesome. She looked at the drooping heads of her horses. She could ask no more of them today.
‘Make camp,’ Ki conceded. In the night, she would think of something. Right now, they all needed rest. She tromped back to the wagon, tugged at the horses’ blankets. Vandien remained seated on them. He looked down at her with eyes that were bleak in his white face.
‘Ki,’ he said softly, almost pleadingly. ‘We cannot camp here. We are in the shadow of the Sisters. Even pausing this long invites their displeasure. Every loremaster on the other side of the mountains has tales about this place. I told you the legends. I swear to you they are true. To stay