She helped Urho heave himself onto his feet, and the entire group wearily staggered to where they had left the sledge and the other two reindeer. The deer were unmolested, greedily grazing on the sweet tips of young birch saplings. Urho volunteered to drag in wood, and since he was clearly feeling a bit better, Aleksia allowed him to do so. After all, he could bring in far more than they could, with far less effort.
Meanwhile the three who had put the most effort out in the fight, Ilmari, Annukka and Lemminkal, were made to sit on the sledge while she and Kaari made camp. It was a very crude camp, and it was a good thing that no storms were threatening, because Aleksia very much doubted that the camp would have stood up to a storm. Neither of them could manage to get the hide tents up. But there was another reason why Aleksia wanted the others to allow her and Kaari to deal with making camp. She was, after all, a Godmother. And there was potential here for trouble…and potential for something other than trouble. So long as she set things up carefully.
So, she kept Kaari away from the men…and made sure that Lemminkal talked to Annukka. By the time they all rolled into their blankets, with the fire on one side, and the huge bulk of Urho providing warmth on the other, things were progressing to Aleksia's satisfaction.
15
In the morning, everything looked better. The sun was shining, and although the frozen forest was still encased in ice, it was beautiful. The air, while still bitterly cold, was not laden with the deathly chill of the Icehart's presence. Urho had been wonderful to sleep up against.
On the other hand, as soon as Aleksia moved, she wished she had not. The exposed skin on her face hurt. She had bruises where she would rather not think about. If this was being a Hero, she envied the stamina of those who did it all the time.
On the other hand, they had slept the night through undisturbed; Urho went out as soon as all the humans were awake and came back with four fish from a frozen stream. Aleksia would have felt very guilty had he returned with a rabbit or some other animal, knowing that it was still alive under that ice, and had been totally helpless, but she felt no sympathy for fish. Although she could not help with the cooking — the honest truth was that she was totally helpless when it came to that skill — she was at least able to create a subtle warming spell to make them all comfortable in the cold until the fire built up again. While the fish were grilling over the fire, Annukka declared that they were all going to be looked over and tended to.
It turned out they were all injured in some way or other. For one thing, all of them were frost-burned — like a sunburn, but caused by the Icehart's freezing breath. The skin on their faces was sensitive at the least, painful at worst. In fact, the two men were lucky that they had escaped frostbite. Had it not been for their thick hair and beards, both Lemminkal and Ilmari might well have lost the tips of their ears. And in fact, Lemminkal did lose the bottom half of his long beard, for the hair had been frozen so stiff it had, to his chagrin, actually snapped off in the cold. As it was, Annukka treated them all with salves to their tender faces, and warned them that the burned skin would slough off in a few days, and that they must be careful about further burns. Aleksia's tender forehead and nose gave her problems every time she did something that moved the skin, although she knew from past experience that once she shifted forms a time or two, that would mend itself. That was another benefit of shifting; by doing so, one could heal oneself.
Urho, of course, had his head wound, which Annukka cleaned and treated again, this time getting most of the blood out of his fur and putting an herbal plaster over the gash. Both men had dozens of small cuts on face and neck from flying shards of ice, and both moved in a way that suggested they had more than a few bruises, and that they were a lot more painful than Aleksia's. Honestly, they were all lucky that no one had broken bones, something that could be attributed only to the men's skill as fighters. Annukka set up the hide tent and ordered them in, one at a time, with a bottle. Both came out smelling like pine-sap liniment.
By then, the fish was grilled, and they divided the fillets up, with the lion's share going to the men, and Aleksia taking only as much as would satisfy her immediate hunger. She had ways of feeding herself that the others obviously didn't. As they all picked the last bits of fish from the bones and surveyed the chaos of their camp, Aleksia finally spoke up, and began explaining herself.
“Well,” she said, dryly, looking about at all four of them. “You have probably gathered that I am not the ordinary sort of traveler.”
Ilmari snorted. “We are waiting patiently to hear just what sort of traveler you are.”
She nodded, and launched into her part of this tale. Or rather, she explained as much of herself as she felt comfortable revealing. The Sammi did not have Godmothers; Ilmari and Lemminkal might have heard of them, Annukka and Kari probably had not. She had announced herself as “Godmother Aleksia” and gotten no recognition from any of them, so she elected to leave that out. Knowledge of The Tradition, Traditional magic and Traditional paths was anything but common, and it was acknowledged among the Godmothers that it was probably best not to spread that sort of information too widely. Aleksia didn't see any reason why this should change. Such information would do them no good, and might cause them to second-guess themselves at a moment when that was the last thing they all needed. So she glossed over the business of being a Godmother, leaving it as vague as she possibly could. And if she left them with the impression that she was merely a sort of sentry mounting a simple watch over the North, that was just fine. They gathered that she was considered a powerful and important Sorceress among her own folk, and that would certainly do.
“And you keep watch, why?” Lemminkal asked.
“To report troubles to those better able to deal with them,” she said easily, because that was certainly true. “Various Orders of Champions, for instance.” That was also true. “I supply them with information they cannot otherwise obtain.” She didn't want the Sammi to get the impression that she was some sort of guardian who could be counted on to come to the rescue if any little thing went wrong. That was not what Godmothers did. And it wasn't as if she didn't have quite enough on her plate as it was without starting that. Fixing things was the job of Champions and Heroes. Trying to make sure they wouldn't need fixing — that was for the Godmothers.
“Bah. Champions.” Lemminkal snorted, but his eyes were twinkling. “Everyone knows that a true Hero goes up against incredible odds all on his own!”
“Perhaps that is true for the Sammi, but it is not so elsewhere,” she temporized, and went on.
However, when it got to specifics — well, she was quite willing to be specific.
“Mirror-magic,” she told them. “That is my specialty, really. I can watch through mirrors, or any reflective surface. I can talk to people at a distance that way, if they are magicians or have a magic mirror, and sometimes I can work other magic through the mirrors. That was how I learned about the one you are calling the Snow Witch, how she had taken my name and even the look of my Palace. The harm she was causing! That was when I knew I must become involved.”
She was adept at reading body language, and when it came down to it, the two men were surprisingly simple souls. They trusted her now, and would continue to do so unless she betrayed them — the fatal Traditional
