It was high summer when Woodcarver's army left for the north. The preparations had been frantic, with Vendacious driving himself and everyone else to the point of exhaustion. There had been cannons to make — Scrupilo cast seventy tubes before getting thirty that would fire reliably. There had been cannoneers to train — and safe methods of firing to discover. There had been wagons to build and kherhogs to buy.
Surely word of the preparations had long ago filtered north. Woodcarvers was a port city; they could not close down the commerce that moved through it. Vendacious warned them of this in more than one inner council meeting: Steel knew they were coming. The trick was in keeping the Flenserists uncertain as to numbers and timing and exact purpose. "We have one great advantage over the enemy," he said. "We have agents in his highest councils. We know what he knows of us." They couldn't disguise the obvious from the spies, but the details were a different matter.
The army departed along inland routes, a dozen wagons here, a few squads there. In all there were a thousand packs in the expedition, but they would never be together till they reached deep forest. It would have been easier to take the first part of the trip by sea, but the Flenserists had spotters hidden high in the fjordlands. Any ship movement — even deep in Woodcarver territory — would be known in the north. So they traveled on forest paths, through areas that Vendacious had cleared of enemy agents.
At first the going was very easy, at least for those with the wagons. Johanna rode in one of the rear ones with Woodcarver and Dataset. Even I'm beginning to treat the thing like an oracle, thought Johanna. Too bad it couldn't really predict the future.
The weather was as beautiful as Johanna had ever seen it on Tines world, an endless afternoon. It was strange that such unending fairness should make her so nervous, but she couldn't help it. This was so much like her first time on this world, when everything had… gone wrong.
During the first dayarounds of the journey, while they were still in home territory, Woodcarver pointed out every peak that came into view and tried to translate its name into Samnorsk for her. After six hundred years the Queen knew her land well. Even the patches of snow — the ones that lasted all through the summer — were known to her. She showed Johanna a sketchbook she had brought along. Each page was from a different year, and showed her special snowpatches as they had appeared on the same day of the summer. Riffling through the leaves, it was almost like a crude piece of animation. Johanna could see the patches moving, growing over a period of decades, then retreating. "Most packs don't live long enough to feel it," said Woodcarver, "but to me, the patches that last all summer are like living things. See how they move? They are like wolves, held off from our lands by our fire that is the sun. They circle about, grow. Sometimes they link together and a new glacier starts toward the sea."
Johanna had laughed a little nervously. "Are they winning?"
"For the last four centuries, no. The summers have often been hot and windy. In the long run? I don't know. And it doesn't matter quite so much to me anymore." She rocked her two little puppies for a moment and laughed gently. "Peregrine's little ones are not even thinking yet, and I'm already losing my long view!"
Johanna reached out to stroke her neck. "But they are your puppies too."
"I know. Most of my pups have been with other packs, but these are the first that I have kept to be me." Her blind one nuzzled at one of the puppies. It wriggled and made a sound that warbled at the top of Johanna's hearing. Johanna held the other on her lap. Tine pups looked more like baby sea'mals than dogs. Their necks were so long compared to their bodies. And they seemed to develop much more slowly than the puppy she and Jefri had raised. Even now they seemed to have trouble focusing. She moved her fingers slowly back and forth in front of one puppy's head; its efforts to track were comical.
And after sixty days, Woodcarver's pups couldn't really walk. The Queen wore two special jackets with carrying pouches on the sides. Most of the waking day, her little ones stayed there, suckling through the fur on her tummy. In some ways, Woodcarver treated her offspring as a human would. She was very nervous when they were taken from her sight. She liked to cuddle them and play little games of coordination with them. Often she would lay both of them on their backs and pat their paws in a sequence of eight, then abruptly tap the one or the other on the belly. The two wriggled furiously at the attack, their little legs waving in all directions. "I nibble the one whose paw was last touched. Peregrine is worthy of me. These two are already thinking a little. See?" She pointed to the puppy that had convulsed into a ball, avoiding most of her surprise tickle.
