The flakes began to whisper down out of the sky shortly after dusk, at first just one or two, seeming to crystallize rather than fall. Then bigger flakes, and bigger, and a wind rising out of the north to drive them on. Around midnight the two sentries, seeing the snow starting to drift around and over the humped sleeping bags on the bare ground, decided to wake people up and make them shake themselves clear. The camp turned into a slow shuffle of exhausted men and women struggling out into the cold air, shaking their bags down, moving to a new spot, lying down, feeling the hard ground beneath them turn to slush under their own escaped body heat. They began to shuffle unconsciously to get into the lee of each other, the camp moving slowly piece by piece downwind.
Some time before dawn Shef, realizing what was happening, made a line of backpacks and raked snow over them to create a makeshift wall, putting the party behind that in ranks, the weakest in the middle and the strongest on the edges. Few people slept much for all that. Dawn broke on people tired, hungry, and still fireless.
There was no moving till the snow stopped, as it did after a few hours. They looked out then on a featureless white plain, the sun hidden behind clouds. Shef felt a momentary stab of doubt. During the night he had lost all sense of direction. With the sun hidden… He had heard that there was a kind of clear rock that so concentrated the rays that you could see the sun even through cloud, but there was none of it in this group.
He controlled his fear. Which way they went was no longer material. They had to find wood and shelter, and any way that led to that was good. Salvaging the skis from under the snow, he told Thorvin and Ceolwulf, their only skilled users, to go in different directions as far as was visible, to look for a break in the plateau.
Only after they had left did he think to count heads. They were one short. The missing woman was Godsibb, a fair, silent, sad girl, who had trudged along without complaint ever since they had taken her from Drottningsholm. Even Karli had not bothered to try his luck with her. She had never responded even to his good cheer. They found her body, a hump in the snow surprisingly far away, showing how much they had moved in the night.
“What did she die of?” asked Shef after they had swept the snow off the body with their hands.
“Cold. Exhaustion. Hunger,” said Hund. “People have different levels of resistance. She was a thin girl. Maybe her bag got damp. Nobody noticed her in the night and she fell into the snow-sleep. It is a peaceful way to go—better than the fate Queen Asa would have given her,” he added, trying to deflect Shef’s self-criticism.
Shef looked at the worn face, too tired for a young girl’s. “She came a long way to die here,” he said.
And in dying she had caused him a problem, too. Impossible to bury her in the frozen ground. Could they leave her in the snow, under the snow? It would look all right as they marched away, but no-one could avoid thinking of what would happen when the snow melted and left her exposed.
Hund touched Shef’s arm and pointed silently. On a knoll a hundred yards away, a four-legged shape looked at them, then sat down to wait, tongue lolling. Others drifted up behind it, took in the situation, and sat or lay down.
There were different views about wolves. Some of the English were quite used to them, said they were hardly dangerous at all. Brand had contradicted that with his usual finality. “They’ll pull you down,” he said. “Not frightened of people at all. Of course they won’t attack a score of you, armed and together. Two men off in the forest, that’s another story.”
The wolves meant they could not possibly leave Godsibb, not till they could find earth to lay her in, fire to soften it, and stones to pile on her grave. Carrying her would just weaken the carriers further. If they ended up with another corpse to carry, and another…