In front of them lay a belt of white that might have been a kilometer wide, extending over the rise two or three kilometers ahead. Four hundred meters in front of them it bent, curving northward just enough to miss them. As Baver stared, the sunlight broke through onto the opposite slope and swept their way, bathing them with light. The broad river of hailstones gleamed in the brightness and began to steam.
Baver walked to it. Ice lay more than knee deep, though less at the edge, the irregular stones indeed as big as Nils’s fists, but some were frozen together into
83
lumpy masses three times as large. He stopped several paces off, feeling the cold from the mass of ice before him.
And turned away, chilled by more than hailstones.
Six of the seven horses had pulled their picket pins. The seventh and the foal lay killed by lightning. Three of the six had disappeared. All that Baver could think was that they’d panicked and fled, running with their slow, awkward, hobbled gate into the path of the storm; they’d be somewhere under the ice, hammered to death. Trampled to death.
He stared at Nils. The Northman had done it, he had no doubt, had somehow diverted the overwhelming assault of hailstones, and saved their lives.
A drying fire was out of the question; all potential fuel I was soaked. But the sun was intense, though the air was cool, and by the time they’d gathered the surviving
horses, the clothes were drying on their backs. Of the three horses left to them, two were the packhorses. Achikh’s they left as a packhorse; Nils’s would have to be
ridden, bareback. Nils abandoned his helmet and heavy hauberk, and they transferred the rest of its burden to Achikh’s horse.
They set off then, Hans and Nils afoot, leading off at an easy lope. They headed more or less eastward, bypassing the wide swath of ice, and atop the next rise stopped again. There they took advantage of some low shrubs to spread their cloaks and sleeping robes, and Baver’s light bag. Then, while these steamed in the sun, the travelers ate strips from one of yesterday’s marmots, dried the night before above the fire.
“What did you do back there?” Baver asked. “To make the hailstorm turn.” And felt foolish before he’d finished. When put into words, the question seemed absurd.
Nils’s glass eyes seemed to fix the ethnologist, “There was a being in the storm, as Achikh said. I could feel it there. It had been formed from—” He groped. “From spirit stuff, the spirit stuff of storms, and commanded to ; find us. To hunt us down and Ml us.”
84
Baver stared alarmed that Nils had said such a patently foolish thing. He missed entirely that it was no more outrageous than his question.
Nils went on. “But such a being, if it has enough intelligence to hunt and find, need not do as commanded. Thus I met him within the cloud. We mingled in the spirit, and he swerved, sparing us.”
“You told the hail to miss us and it did?” Baver couldn’t keep the disbelief from his voice.
“I told it nothing. To mingle in the spirit creates a— together-feeling that is stronger than commands. If it had refused, or if it hadn’t been strong-willed enough to reject the command its shaper had given it … But we were fortunate; we live.”
Nils turned his face away then, and bit off another mouthful of dried marmot.
When they’d eaten, they sat around on their haunches, letting their things dry further. Meanwhile Nils’s statement stayed on Baver’s mind. That and his own question; he could hardly believe he’d asked it.
Storms, he rationalized, are unpredictable. It could have changed course for probably several reasons. Being in shock, I couldn’t think clearly: I asked what I did only by default. But Nils … He made claims!
If he believes what he said, he’s not entirely sane. I’ve never heard any of his people mention spirits or “spirit stuff”—the spirit stuff of storms!—so the belief can t be cultural. It’s idiosyncratic with him. Or was he lying to me, seeing if I’d believe?