The snow kept falling across the north, and gave no sign whatsoever of intending to stop before spring.
"It's not so bad," he remarked to nobody, his breath curling away in wisps of vapour. Measured against the bitter cold that had greeted him on the day of his arrival, this gentle flurry was little more than a dusting, the sort of weather the men here described as pleasant without a trace of irony in their snow-streaked beard.
The wolf pelt kept him warm, which was the whole of the difference.
When he first came to this country the cold had been unbearable, for he had never in his life met anything like it. Worse, he had worn no fur at all, since by northern custom only a man might wear a pelt, and no matter how he shouted or demanded or invoked his father's name, not one hair of one hide had been given to him.
He still remembered the look on their faces when he came back from a scouting expedition beyond the Bane with a wolf across his shoulders.
Above all, he remembered the smile that Elenoir had given him.
Lord Harold , warden of the Bane, had seen that smile too, and had merely chuckled into his cup, giving no sign at all of being troubled by his daughter's choice of company. Maesinius understood well enough that this had nothing to do with his rank.
They had all but spat on the ale and pissed on his fire, when he tried to play his card. So he knew Harold half-baked permission did not come from his rank.
Though being a prince, he had to admit, was a small flower on the branch.
Even a dusting is a dusting. By the time he reached the inner fort he had collected enough of it, his boots sinking into the soft fall with each step, and he hauled open the great wooden door and shouldered his way into the hall.
The wind stopped hissing in his ears the moment the door shut behind him. He shook himself like a dog, scattering snow across the flagstones.
A hearty cheer went up to greet him, with the clinking of tankards and the laughter of men behind it.
Svenn, master at arms of Grash, raised his ale in salute, his grizzled face creasing into a weathered grin. He was past fifty, and the soldiers called him Grandpa Snow, which he permitted because he had beaten every man who had ever said it to him, he had been the one to train the garrison of the place, which many a time departed from Grash to join the defence of the Bane or his sorroundings.
"The high prince blesses us with his presence! Break the caskets and sound the damn honrs! Svenn boomed, his voice filling the hall from one end to the other.
Maesinius still cringed to hear that title in that mouth.
He remembered the day he had earned it, at his first training session out in the snow. He had gripped a wooden blade in both hands and squared up against Svenn, his breath steaming, entirely certain of how the next few minutes would go.
The first blow had taken him in the stomach and driven every scrap of air out of him. He had not even seen it leave.
It was a humbling experience, and no training master in all the South would have dared deliver it.
"How dare you!" he had protested from the ground, his pride hurting a good deal worse than his gut.
Svenn had only chuckled, his eyes twinkling. "In the South, perhaps nobody would have dared," he agreed, his voice gruff with the northern accent. "But this is not so, m'prince. Here we have snow aplenty and pride in short supply, and the first lesson a man learns is which of the two keeps him warm, which is none. Shout it to the four winds , see if they blow less hard."
"I am a prince! I am meant to be proud of my blood! Mine is the one of conquerors and heroes."
Svenn's answer had come back quick as the blow had.
"Aye. And your fall shall be a hard one, standing as high as you do."
After that he had fought back, it was futile defiance, Svenn had been relentless, his blows coming down with patience and yet strength. Now he realised the lesson he was trying to impart him. He had missed that, though he had learned something else, no less sweeter.
By the end of it Maesinius lay battered in the churned snow, his body decorated with angry purple welts from shoulder to hip.
He had not been able to lift his arms the next morning.
He had gone out to the yard anyway, and that, he understood much later, was the only part of the whole afternoon that Svenn had ever cared about and that made him actually respect him, even though it hardly seemed so.
Maesinius leaned against the worn wooden table, his expression caught somewhere between amusement and irritation.
"Still that bloody nickname," he muttered, rolling his eyes and cracking his neck.
Svenn chuckled, the deep lines of his face folding with it. "Aye, it's a good one. The sooner you make your peace with it, the easier your life becomes. I know somebody named short peg, and he is still unmarried. You can be called words. That holds for most things up here."
"Easy enough for you to say," Maesinius retorted with a smirk. "Grandpa Snow suits you down to the ground. Shall we trade?"
Svenn raised an eyebrow, his grin widening. "Over my dead body, m'prince."
"Very well. End of the year it is."
The laughter rolled around the stone walls of the great hall as the soldiers took up the jest, and Svenn made a gesture at the lot of them that suggested he was not nearly so old as they hoped.
Then the mirth went out of Maesinius's face.
"Did the scouts come back?"
Svenn's smile vanished too, and what replaced it was grim. "Aye. Same tale as the last lot. The savages' village stood empty. Not a soul in it, not a dog, not a chicken."
Maesinius frowned, a furrow digging in between his brows. "A fight, do you think?"
Svenn spat onto the stone floor, his features darkening. "No chance. No bodies, no burning, no sign of a struggle anywhere. They left under their own feet, and they left in good order. Either they wanted to go, or something larger than them persuaded them to."
Strange country, this. Seeing savages had always brought on a headache.
Seeing none at all brought on something considerably worse.
What moved them? the prince wondered. Did the game thin out? Did the river shift? Or have they gone and folded themselves into a bigger tribe?
Whichever it was, nothing good had ever started with an empty village.
"Then we scout further," Maesinius said.
Svenn nodded, grave. "Aye. Though we'd best put that to the Lord first. We already moved days out from the Bane" He drained his ale and set the cup down, ''Anymore deeper in the snow and we'll feed the games there.''
As Maesinius settled back into his seat to work out what came next, the heavy door swung open with a long complaining creak, letting in a knife of cold air. A man stepped through bearing the emblem of North's Bane, a sword upon a brown field.
"Rosk, shut the bloody door!" Svenn barked, reaching for a cup that was already empty.
Rosk, Svenn's own son, obeyed quick enough, shouldered the door closed, and crossed to the prince. He dropped to one knee. Everyone look strangely at that, until they saw the letter.
"News from the south, my prince."
Maesinius took it hesitantly and upon looking at the emblem all of his good mood went down the drain.
He recognised the emblem of his own house pressed into the wax.
"Seems your father's finally remembered he has a son worth keeping close," Svenn called, loud enough for the hall.
That old fucker would see me rot up here first, Maesinius thought, and smirked as he broke the seal. And even if he were told to come south, he'd sooner put his head below the snow.
He unfolded the parchment and began to read.
The smirk lasted four lines.
Svenn watched it go, and watched what came after it, and set his cup down slowly without making any sound at all. The hall did not notice. The hall was still laughing about something at the far end.
Maesinius read the letter twice. He was aware of his own heartbeat, which struck him as absurd.
Then he folded it along its crease, carefully, as though the care still mattered, and looked up at the old master at arms.
"I'll go fetch Lord Harold," he said. "And tell the men to stop drinking. Gods know when we'll get enough grain for beer and barley for ale. We'll need to start rationing once more."
By the time the door opened again, the south had already crossed the Bane and come to the North's doorstep, and nobody in that hall but him and no doubt the lord knew him.