The weather, already hot and parched, grew hotter. Some waterholes were dry, and water became a problem. When they went afoot to rest the horses, they walked instead of running, that they wouldn’t sweat as much, and this slowed them. Achikh suggested they steal some horses so that everyone would have a remount, but Nils declined. They were making decent progress, and if they stole horses, they could easily pay with their lives.
For several days they saw not even a cloud. Then one morning they did see clouds, a few, and the air felt less dry then it had. Ahead of them a rain cloud began to form and build with remarkable speed. After a little they stopped on a hilltop, sitting their horses almost knee to knee to watch it. In the eerie speed of its development, it reminded Baver of time-lapse photography he d seen in college, of the birth and growth of a thunderhead. His scalp crawled watching it.
Before long it was complete, with an anvil top beginning to form in the stratospheric wind. It was closer now, and black rain curtains joined it to the ground.
“A spirit cloud,” Achikh muttered in his own language. “We’d better get off this hill.”
Baver caught all of what he said, word and meaning; he was doing better. They rode down into a broad basin, each of them keeping an eye on the approaching storm. At the bottom they hobbled their horses, then Achikh picketed his as well, warning the others to do the same. He must expect the storm to frighten them, Baver thought. Even a hobbled horse, he’d discovered, can make itself hard to catch.
They staked them well apart, so a single lightning strike wouldn’t kill more than one. Then the horses secured, they stood watching the storm approach. Lightning darted from its skirts; more was no doubt hidden by the rain curtain. Baver glanced at Achikh. The horse barbarian had donned his long leather raincape, his face looking conspicuously unhappy. The others donned theirs too, and Baver put his poncho on. The storm was near enough now that they heard its thunders muttering. Then, as it moved toward them, its top cut off the sun, and the muttering became rumbling, then a constant rolling boom that grew louder. Achikh threw himself on the ground and covered his head with his cape. A wall of rain raced toward them. Cold wind struck. Dust blew, and sand. Random raindrops spattered, large and cold, and bangs punctuated the booming.
BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!!! Baver too pulled his head inside his poncho, and flattened himself. He’d been in thunderstorms before, but somehow this felt different. The raindrops quickened, thickened, splatting the poncho he hid beneath. A thunderclap slammed so near, his heart nearly stopped. Then, through the booming and banging, he heard a sound like all the horses in the universe stampeding, and peeked out in alarm from beneath his poncho.
Hans was also on the ground; Baver found that somehow reassuring. Nils sat on his heels watching, and that was reassuring too. Then he looked where Nils looked, saw what made the noise, and his reassurance fled. Crossing the steppe was a wall of hail, less than a kilometer away and rushing toward them, preceded by bouncing white hailstones that, to be individually visible at that distance, had to be bigger than the Northman’s fists. They were the million hooves! Now the sound changed to a loud and swelling growl. Baver’s poncho threatened to whip free of his hands. He gripped it more tightly and hid his face again.
The growl became a grinding deafening roar that seemed to overwhelm even the thunder. The wind became a gale, and the rain a furious beating. Baver saw no way they could survive the bombardment that charged down on them, but held tight to his poncho nonetheless. The grinding roar went on, and on . . . and after a long minute he peered out again.
The hail was passing them to one side. Struck dumb, he watched it, the edge no more than sixty meters off. Nils still squatted; if he was watching in his uncanny, eyeless way, he did not trouble facing it. After more long minutes the hail was past, its roar changing back to a growl, the growl diminishing. The wind still swirled, the rain still slashed. Icy water soaked Baver’s exposed legs; though they were on a mild slope, he lay in an unending shallow flow of it, for the ground couldn’t soak it up fast enough.
Soon the downpour slacked too, became merely a hard rain that continued. At length Baver sat up, and Hans. They could get no wetter. Only Achikh still lay prostrate; he stayed on the ground till the rain was only sprinkles and the thunder distant rumbling.
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 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 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 kill us.”
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?
He didn’t know which possibility was the most unsettling.
They’d made good progress since the storm, considering they’d taken time to spread things to dry at every break. They’d traveled till after sundown.
Hans lay on his back, staring at the stars. At an intellectual level he knew that the star man, Baver, had come from one of them, but at an emotional level it was hard to accept. Star Folk should be—wonderful: wise, handsome, fearless, in all ways impressive. Baver couldn’t even start a fire, not even with dry weeds, and hadn’t tried to learn. He let others do for him.
Actually none of the star folk had impressed him. The things they had impressed him, but not the people. But the others, Matts and Nikko, were at least not foolish and bumbling. He supposed they were able enough at Star Folk things.
His sharp young ears listened now for breathing. Only Nils was near enough, less than an armspan away.
“Nils!” he whispered.
“Ja-ha?”
Hans spoke in their own language. “You said the storm-being was formed from spirit stuff. And commanded. Who formed and commanded it?”
Nils’s chuckle was hardly a breath. “I met them once, at the end of spring. They were looking at me through a—The spirit world is beside ours but separate. These others are in our world, far east of here. That much I am sure of. They know how to look through the spirit world to see places where they are not. Though perhaps not clearly, and seemingly without knowing where they look. That’s as much as I know of them. It is they I go to find.”
Hans shivered in his robe. “Sending the storm as they did, they are not friendly.”
“True.”
“Do they know where we are right now?” Hans was thinking that something else might come upon them while they slept.
“It seems improbable. The storm-being had been searching for days.”
“Why do you go to find them?”
“I’ll know when I get there.”
“Will you fight them?”
“Perhaps.”
“Then I will fight them with you!”
“I’ll be glad to have you with me.”
“Do you suppose Achikh will fight too? He does well at drill. I can think of warriors who’d be hard pressed to beat him.”
“I agree. And if he is still with us, he might.”
Hans said nothing more for a minute or longer. Then: “What do you think about before you fall asleep?”
“Often I fall asleep at once. Other times I lie still and leave.”
“Leave?” Hans felt alarm at that.
“My body is still here, but I leave. I cease to be in this world. I enter another,”
There was another minute’s lapse. “What is it like?”
“It is very peaceful. Now, though, I am simply going to sleep. You may wish to also.”
Baver lay listening, but the two Neovikings said no more. Leave! Enter another world! And they were going to find the one—the someones—whom Nils imagined sent the storm! Nils was crazy!
But despite himself, Baver half believed, and was afraid. For his sanity if nothing else.