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Ingolf lifted Mary out of her arms. Odard and Fred and Mathilda caught Ritva as she started to topple, tended to the horses, half carried her over to the largest shelter and through the low door of blankets and branches. It was warm within-warmer, at least-with rocks heated in the fire and changed as they began to cool. Father Ignatius began to unwrap the bandages around Mary's head; someone helped Ritva pull off her wet gloves and thrust a mug of hot broth into her hands, and she managed to wrap her fingers around it before it spilled. The liquid almost scorched her mouth, but she could feel every drop of it as it made its way down her gullet and into her nearly empty stomach. She'd eaten the deer's liver, raw, but nothing else in the…
"How long?" she asked, through chattering teeth.
Another mug of the broth came, and she was suddenly aware of the salty aroma of the boiled-down jerky and minced squirrel. She forced herself to sip, and help as others got her wet clothes off and herself into her sleeping bag; more of the hot rocks went into that as well, wrapped in her spare clothes. Her mind began to function again as her core temperature rose, enough to be conscious of how weary she was, and even of how the light of the lantern slung from the apex of the shelter jerked and twisted on the anxious faces around her. The pine scent was overwhelmingly strong, like a cool cloth on a fevered brow.
"You've been gone a day past when we expected," Ingolf said. "What the hell happened?"
She described it in short words, ending with: "They're not going to follow us anymore. But the warlock and the lunatic with the badges left a blazed trail to where Mary and I met them. That's only twelve, fourteen miles east. How's Rudi?"
The others remained silent, silent as the blanket-bundled form who lay on his stomach not far away. Father Ignatius said from where he worked:
"He's no worse… well, perhaps not much worse. The antibiotic cream is containing the infection, but the wound in his back in particular doesn't want to heal… of course, the conditions haven't been very good for convalescence."
His breath sucked in as he undid the last of the bandages. Everyone looked; Frederick Thurston winced and looked away almost immediately, but he was the youngest of them.
"I'll have to remove the remains of the eye, cleanse and stitch. The wound is already angry… I wouldn't have expected that, so soon and in cold weather."
Ritva blinked. "I cleaned it and packed it with the powder!"
Ignatius nodded, hands busy. Mary stirred, and gave a stifled shriek as she came aware again, then subsided into a tense shivering quiet.
"Can you hear me?" the warrior-priest said, as he swabbed her face.
Ingolf was on her other side. The cornflower-blue eye swiveled from the cleric to him, then to the rest of them, and to Ritva, and she sighed. Her hand came up, and the Easterner took it.
"I… can hear you. It's seeing you that's a problem! How come there's two of you when I've got only one eye left?" Mary said, and bared her teeth in what might have been a smile.
Ignatius nodded sober approval, took the vial of morphine from the kit, frowned a little as he saw the level, and then began filling a hypodermic. Ritva remembered bargaining for the precious painkiller in Bend, with Mary as the other half of her…
"I can't use too much of this," he said, as someone came in with a kettle of boiling water and poured it into a shallow basin; the shelter was already set up as a sickroom for Rudi. "I'm afraid there will be some pain."
"Alae, duh," Mary said.
Ritva flogged herself into wakefulness while the work went on; her sister's other hand was in hers, and the bones of Ritva's creaked under the pressure of her grip. Ingolf sat at the other. When it was over, he helped wipe away the sweat of agony.
"Feels… like nice… stitching," Mary said, timing the words to her breath to control it. "We never were… good at embroidery."
"I've used some of the numbing oil," Ignatius said. "You should sleep now, my daughter."
"Thanks," she whispered. Then her eyelid fluttered. "Guess… I can live with… one eye."
"No," Ritva said. "You'll have three, sis."
"Five," Ingolf said.
He waited until her breathing grew regular, then tucked the hands inside the sleeping bag.
"How soon can she be moved?" he asked the priest.
"Ideally… not for weeks," Ignatius said, and then shrugged wryly as he tossed the last of the soiled cloths into a bowl. "But moving her will be much less risk than moving Rudi."
Ingolf's battered face closed in like a fist. "We have to. Move 'em both. Twelve miles isn't enough, even with the storm to cover our tracks."
Unexpectedly, Frederick spoke: "I've seen reports on these mountains. From now on, the storms can come one after another for weeks. We could get stuck here. But there are caves farther up this valley. Dad used them for, uh, scouts, back when we were having problems with New Deseret."
Ingolf nodded. "We need to get farther away… a cave would be right. We'll rig two horse-travois."
Ritva let her mind drift away. I don't have anything I have to do right now, she thought. It was enough to make her smile, as the dark flowed up around her like comfort.
WESTERN WYOMING, GRAND TETON MOUNTAINS
Rudi Mackenzie dreamed.
In the dream he rose from his sickbed, looking down for a moment at the thin, wasted form. Edain watched by his side; now and then he poked at the low fire that burned with a canted wall of piled rocks behind it to absorb and throw back the heat. The others were dim shapes in the depth of the cave; Epona looked up and whickered at him, and Garbh bristled a bit and whined until Edain absently stroked her head.
He turned from them and walked out through the gap in the pine branches that blocked the entrance, knocking a little snow down on his bo
But I'm not really cold, somehow, he thought, smiling to hear the moan and creak of the wind's passage.
He walked down the path. An overhung ridge of rock topped with three twisted trees made the trail kink, creating a sheltered nook in the storm. A man stood there, leaning one shoulder against the rock. A brisk fire burned at his feet, throwing smoke up to where the wind caught it above the ridge and tattered it into the blowing whiteness. To one side a tall spear leaned against the cliffside, broader-headed than most horseman's weapons; he thought there were signs graven in the steel. A horse stood some distance off, unsaddled but with several blankets thrown over it and its head down. It was a big beast, but hard to see; the wolflike dog that raised its head as he approached seemed massive as well. Saddle and bedroll and gear lay beside the fire, and a pot steamed over it.
The man was tall too, taller than Rudi but lean. As the Mackenzie came closer he saw that the stranger was old; at least, his shoulder-length hair and cropped beard were iron gray. His dress was that of the Eastern plains and mountains, neckerchief and broad-brimmed hat, sheepskin coat and long thick chaps of the same, homespun pants and fleece-lined leather boots, poncho of crudely woven wool longer at the rear than the front. Closer still, and Rudi could see that the lids of his left eye closed on emptiness; the other was the color of mountain glaciers, and as cold.