“There is a stream down there.” Annukka pointed to a place where the road was cut by a foaming brook. It was shallow enough to ford, but more than deep enough to support fish.
“We can stop there, rest and eat.”
“And sleep?” Kaari begged.
“Taking it in turns.” She cursed herself now for not thinking of getting a dog. But in the village she hadn't needed one, neither as a guard nor as part of a sled-dog team, for she had always had a riding reindeer or reindeer trained to harness. If she had “kidnapped” one on the way out, not only would that be wrong, it would only have run home again. But she surely wished for one now. If they'd had a dog, they could both have slept. The half-wolf sled dogs of the Sammi were loyal, as vigilant as their wild cousins and could be counted on in a fight.
But then again, the deer would have been understandably skittish around a dog like that, for it would remind them too much of wolves. That was one reason why those who had dog teams did not usually bother with reindeer. Trappers and hunters used dogs, mostly, and herders used the deer.
Bah, my mind is wandering.
First things first. Get down the hill and get a camp set up. Not just any camp, either, a relatively hidden camp.
Dismounting was a bit of an ordeal, actually. Kaari tried to be stoic, but a whimper escaped her, and as they went about the chores, they were both hobbling stiffly. Annukka's thigh muscles screamed at her as she moved; she knew that Kaari could not be in a much better state, her youth notwithstanding. The only good thing about the pain was that it took both their minds off their worry about Veikko. They watered the deer at the stream, which poured over its rocks with great enthusiasm, then tethered the deer in a thicket that would hide them enough that they would look like a wild group, but still give them enough browse within reach that they would be contented there. Then they found another spot, close to the deer but just out of reach of the tethers, where they could tuck their bedrolls under a bush and be invisible from the road. The nearness of the stream was both an advantage and a disadvantage. Any sounds someone might make sneaking up on them would be covered — but so would any noises that they might make. Annukka was not going to chance a fire; the sun would warm them enough while they slept the morning through. At the moment, she was most concerned about others traveling on the road. There could be bandits very easily, and not everyone that traveled openly was going to be safe.
“No tea?” Kaari said wistfully as Annukka laid out some cold food for both of them, barley bread, dried blueberries and water. “Willow-bark tea would be welcome right now.”
“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?
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
