Where are the days we once held So loose in our sure hands? When did these racing streams Carve depthless caves beneath our feet? And how did this scene stagger And shift to make fraught our deft lies In the places where youth will meet, In the lands of our proud dreams? Where, among all you before me, Are the faces I once knew?
Words etched into the wall, K’rul Belfry, Darujhistan
IN THE BATTLE THAT SAW THERADAS BUHN BLOODED, A MERUDE CUTLASS had laid open his right cheek, snapping the bone beneath the eye and cutting through maxilla and the upper half of his mandible. The savage wound had been slow to heal, and the thread that had been used to seal the gaping hole into his mouth had festered the flesh before his comrades could return the warrior to a nearby Hiroth encampment, where a healer had done what she could – driving out the infection, knitting the bones. The result was a long, crooked scar within a seamed concave depression on that side of his face, and a certain flat look to his eyes that hinted of unseen wounds that would never heal.
Trull Sengar sat with the others five paces from the edge of the icefield, watching Theradas as he paced back and forth along the crusted line of ice and snow, the red-tipped fox fur of his cloak flashing in the gusting wind. The Arapay lands were behind them now, and with them the grudging hospitality of that subjugated Edur tribe. The Hiroth warriors were alone, and before them stretched a white, shattered landscape.
It looked lifeless, but the Arapay had spoken of night hunters, strange, fur-shrouded killers who came out of the darkness wielding jagged blades of black iron. They took body parts as trophies, to the point of leaving limbless, headless torsos in their wake. None had ever been captured, and the bodies of those who fell were never left where they lay.
Even so, they tended to prey only upon paired Edur hunters. More formidable groups were generally left alone. The Arapay called them Jheck, which meant, roughly, standing wolves.
‘There are eyes upon us,’ Theradas pronounced in his thick, blunted voice.
Fear Sengar shrugged. ‘The ice wastes are not as lifeless as they appear. Hares, foxes, ground owls, white wolves, bears, aranag-’
‘The Arapay spoke of huge beasts,’ Rhulad cut in. ‘Brown-furred and tusked – we saw the ivory-’
‘Old ivory, Rhulad,’ Fear said. ‘Found in the ice. It is likely such beasts are no more.’
‘The Arapay say otherwise.’
Theradas grunted. ‘And they live in fear of the ice wastes, Rhulad, and so have filled them with nightmare beasts and demons. It is this: we will see what we see. Are you done your repasts? We are losing daylight.’
‘Yes,’ Fear said, rising, ‘we should go on.’
Rhulad and Midik Buhn moved out to the flanks. Both wore bear furs, black and silver-collared. Their hands, within fur-lined gauntlets – Arapay gifts – were wrapped round the long spears they used as walking sticks, testing the packed snow before them with each step. Theradas moved to point, fifteen paces ahead, leaving Trull, Fear and Binadas travelling as the core group, pulling the two sleds packed with leather satchels filled with supplies.
It was said that, farther out in the wastes, there was water beneath the ice, salt-laden remnants from an inland sea, and cavernous pockets hidden beneath thin-skin mantles of snow. Treachery waited underfoot, forcing them to travel slowly.
The wind swept down upon them, biting at exposed skin, and they were forced to lean forward against its gusting, frigid blasts.
Despite the furs enshrouding him, Trull felt the shock of that sudden cold, a force mindless and indifferent, yet eager to steal. Flooding his air passages in a numbing assault. And within that current, a faint smell of death.
The Edur wrapped swaths of wool about their faces, leaving the barest of slits for their eyes. Conversations were quickly abandoned, and they walked in silence, the crunch of their fur-lined moccasins muffled and distant.
The sun’s warmth and turn of season could not win the war in this place. The snow and ice rose on the wind to glitter overhead, mockinp the sun itself with twin mirror images, leading Trull to suspect that the wind held close to the ground, whilst high overhead the suspended ice crystals hovered unmoving, inured to the passing of seasons, of years.
He tilted his head to stare upward for a moment, wondering if that glistening, near-opaque canopy above them held the frozen memories of the past, minute images locked in each crystal, bearing witness to all that had occurred below. A multitude of fates, perhaps reaching back to when there was sea, in place of the ice. Did unknown creatures ply the waters in arcane, dugout canoes all those thousands of years ago? Would they one day become these Jheck?
The Letherii spoke of Holds, that strange pantheon of elements, and among them there was the Hold of Ice. As if winter was born of sorcery, as if ice and snow were instruments of wilful destruction. Something of that notion was present in Edur legends as well. Ice plunging down to steal the land that was soaked in Tiste blood, the brutal theft of hard-won territories committed as an act of vengeance, perhaps the gelid flowering of some curse uttered in a last breath, a final defiance.
The sentiment, then – if one such existed – was of old enmity. Ice was a thief, of life, land and righteous reward. Bound in death and blood, an eternal prison. From all this, it could earn hatred.
They continued through the day, moving slowly but steadily, through jumbled fields of broken, upthrust shards of ice that in the distance seemed simply white, but when neared was revealed to possess countless shades of greens, blues and browns. They crossed flats of wind-sculpted, hard-packed snow that formed rippled patterns as smooth as sand. Strange fault lines where unseen forces had sheered the ice, pushing one side up against the other, grinding opposing paths as if the solid world beneath them jostled in wayward migration.
Towards late afternoon, a muted shout from Theradas halted them. Trull, who had been walking with his eyes on the ground before him, looked up at the muffled sound and saw that Theradas was standing before something, gesturing them forward with a fur-wrapped hand. A few moments later they reached his side.
A broad crevasse cut across their path, the span at least fifteen paces. The sheer walls of ice swept down into darkness, and from its depths rose a strange smell.
‘Salt,’ Binadas said after pulling away his face-covering. ‘Tidal pools.’
Rhulad and Midik joined them from the flanks. ‘It seems to stretch to the very horizon,’ Rhulad said.
‘The break looks recent,’ Binadas observed, crouching at the edge. ‘As if the surface is shrinking.’
‘Perhaps summer has managed a modest alteration to these wastes,’ Fear mused. ‘We have passed sealed faults that might be the remnant scars from similar wounds in the past.’
‘How will we cross?’ Midik asked.
‘I could draw shadows from below,’ Binadas said, then shook his head, ‘but the notion makes me uneasy. If there are spirits within, they might well prove unruly. There are layers of sorcery here, woven in the snow and ice, and they do not welcome Emurlahn.’
‘Get out the ropes,’ Fear said.
‘Dusk approaches.’
‘If necessary we will camp below.’
Trull shot Fear a look. ‘What if it closes whilst we are down there?’
‘I do not think that likely,’ Fear said. ‘Besides, we will remain unseen this night, hidden as we will be in the depths. If there are indeed beasts in this land – though we’ve seen no true sign as yet – then I would rather we took every opportunity to avoid them.’
Wet pebbles skidded under his moccasins as Trull alighted, stepping clear of the ropes. He looked around, surprised at the faint green glow suffusing the scene. They were indeed on a seabed. Salt had rotted the ice at the edges, creating vast caverns crowded with glittering pillars. The air was cold, turgid and rank.
Off to one side Midik and Rhulad had drawn bundles of wood out from a pack and were preparing a cookfire. Binadas and Fear were reloading the sleds to keep the food satchels off the wet ground, and Theradas had set off to scout the caverns.
Trull strode to a shallow pool and crouched down at its edge. The saline water swarmed with tiny grey shrimps. Barnacles crowded the waterline.
‘The ice is dying.’
At Fear’s words behind him, Trull rose and faced his brother. ‘Why do you say that?’
‘The salt gnaws its flesh. We are at the lowest region of the ancient seabed, I believe. Where the last of the water gathered, then slowly evaporated. Those columns of salt are all that remains. If the entire basin was like this place, then the canopy of ice would have collapsed-’
‘Perhaps it does just that,’ Binadas suggested, joining them. ‘In cycles over thousands of years. Collapse, then the salt begins its work once again.’
Trull stared into the gloomy reaches. ‘I cannot believe those pillars can hold up all this ice. There must be a cycle of collapse, as Binadas has said.’ His eyes caught movement, then Theradas emerged, and Trull saw that the warrior had his sword out.
‘There is a path,’ Theradas said. ‘And a place of gathering. We are not the first to have come down here.’
Rhulad and Midik joined them. No-one spoke for a time.
Then Fear nodded and asked, ‘How recent are the signs, Theradas?’
‘Days.’
‘Binadas and Trull, go with Theradas to this place of gathering. I will remain here with the Unblooded.’
The path began twenty paces in from the crevasse, a trail cleared of cobbles and detritus that wound between the rough, crystalline columns of salt. Melt water dripped from the rotting ceiling in a steady downpour. Theradas led them onward another thirty paces, where the path ended at the edge of a vast roughly domed expanse devoid of pillars.
Near the centre squatted a low, misshapen altar stone. Votive offerings surrounded it – shells, mostly, among which the odd piece of carved ivory was visible. Yet Trull spared it but a momentary glance, for his gaze had been drawn to the far wall.
A sheer plane of ice a hundred paces or more across, rising in a tilted overhang – a wall in which countless beasts had been caught in mid-stampede, frozen in full flight. Antlers projected from the ice, heads and shoulders – still solid and immobile – and forelegs lifted or stretched forward. Frost-rimed eyes dully reflected the muted blue-green light. Deeper within, the blurred shapes of hundreds more.
Stunned by the vista, Trull slowly walked closer, round the altar, half expecting at any moment to see the charging beasts burst into sudden motion, onrushing, to crush them all beneath countless hoofs.
As he neared, he saw heaped bodies near the base, beasts that had fallen out from the retreating ice, had thawed, eventually collapsing into viscid pools.
Tiny black flies rose in clouds from the decaying flesh and hide, swarmed towards Trull as if determined to defend their feast. He halted, waved his hands until they dispersed and began winging back to the rotting carcasses. The beasts – caribou – had been running on snow, a packed layer knee-deep above the seabed. He could still see the panic in their eyes – and there, smeared behind an arm’s length of ice, the head and shoulders of an enormous wolf, silver-haired and amber-eyed, running alongside a caribou, shoulder to shoulder. The wolf’s head was raised, jaws open, close to the victim’s neck. Canines as long as Trull’s thumb gleamed beneath peeled-back lips.
Nature’s drama, life unheeding of the cataclysm that rushed upon it from behind – or above. The brutal hand of a god as indifferent as the beasts themselves.
Binadas came to his side. ‘This was born of a warren,’ he said.
Trull nodded. Sorcery. Nothing else made sense. ‘A god.’
‘Perhaps, but not necessarily so, brother. Some forces need only be unleashed. A natural momentum then burgeons.’
‘The Hold of Ice,’ Trull said. ‘Such as the Letherii describe in their faith.’
‘The Hand of the Watcher,’ Binadas said, ‘who waited until the war was done before striding forward to unleash his power.’
Trull had thought himself more knowledgeable than most Edur warriors regarding the old legends of their people. With Binadas’s words echoing in his head, however, he felt woefully ignorant. ‘Where have they gone?’ he asked. ‘Those powers of old? Why do we dwell as if… as if alone?’
His brother shrugged, ever reluctant to surrender his reserve, his mindful silence. ‘We remain alone,’ he finally said, ‘to preserve the sanctity of our past.’
Trull considered this, his gaze travelling over the tableau before him, those dark, murky lives that could not out-run their doom, then said, ‘Our cherished truths are vulnerable.’
‘To challenge, yes.’
‘And the salt gnaws at the ice beneath us, until our world grows perilously thin beneath our feet.’
‘Until what was frozen… thaws.’
Trull took a step closer to the one of the charging caribou. ‘What thaws in turn collapses and falls to the ground. And rots, Binadas. The past is covered in flies.’
His brother walked towards the altar, and said, ‘The ones who kneel before this shrine were here only a few days ago.’
‘They did not come the way we did.’
‘No doubt there are other paths into this underworld.’
Trull glanced over at Theradas, only now recalling his presence. The warrior stood at the threshold, his breath pluming in the air.
‘We should return to the others,’ Binadas said. ‘We have far to walk tomorrow.’
The night passed, damp, cold, the melt water ceaselessly whispering. Each Edur stood watch in turn, wrapped in furs and weapons at the ready. But there was nothing to see in the dull, faintly luminescent light. Ice, water and stone, death, hungry motion and impermeable bones, a blind triumvirate ruling a gelid realm.
Just before dawn the company rose, ate a quick meal, then Rhulad clambered up the ropes, trusting to the spikes driven into the ice far overhead, about two-thirds of the way, where the fissure narrowed in one place sufficient to permit a cross-over to the north wall. Beyond that point, Rhulad began hammering new spikes into the ice. Splinters and shards rained down on the waiters below for a time, then there came a distant shout from Rhulad. Midik went to the ropes and began climbing, while Trull and Fear bound the food packs to braided leather lines. The sleds would be pulled up last.
‘Today,’ Binadas said, ‘we will have to be careful. They will know we were here, that we found their shrine.’
Trull glanced over. ‘But we did not desecrate it.’
‘Perhaps our presence alone was sufficient outrage, brother.’
The sun was above the horizon by the time the Edur warriors were assembled on the other side of the crevasse, the sleds loaded and ready. The sky was clear and there was no wind, yet the air was bitter cold. The sun’s fiery ball was flanked on either side by smaller versions – sharper and brighter than last time, as if in the course of the night just past the world above them had completed its transformation from the one they knew to something strange and forbidding, inimical to life.
Theradas in the lead once more, they set out.
Ice crunching underfoot, the hiss and clatter of the antler-rimmed sled runners, and a hissing sound both close and distant, as if silence had itself grown audible, a sound that Trull finally understood was the rush of his own blood, woven in and around the rhythm of his breath, the drum of his heart. The glare burned his eyes. His lungs stung with every rush of air.
The Edur did not belong in this landscape. The Hold of Ice. Feared by the Letherii. Stealer of life – why has Hannan Mosag sent us here?
Theradas halted and turned about. ‘Wolf tracks,’ he said, ‘heavy enough to break through the crust of snow.’
They reached him, stopped the sleds. Trull drew the harness from his aching shoulders.
The tracks cut across their route, heading west. They were huge.
‘These belong to a creature such as the one we saw in the ice last night,’ Binadas said. ‘What do they hunt? We’ve seen nothing.’
Fear grunted, then said, ‘That does not mean much, brother. We are not quiet travellers, with these sleds.’
‘Even so,’ Binadas replied, ‘herds leave sign. We should have come upon something, by now.’
They resumed the journey.
Shortly past midday Fear called a halt for another meal. The plain of ice stretched out flat and featureless on all sides.
‘There’s nothing to worry about out here,’ Rhulad said, sitting on one of the sleds. ‘We can see anyone coming… or anything, for that matter. Tell us, Fear, how much farther will we go? Where is this gift that Hannan Mosag wants us to find?’
‘Another day to the north,’ Fear replied.
‘If it is indeed a gift,’ Trull asked, ‘who is offering it?’
‘I do not know.’
No-one spoke for a time.
Trull studied the hard-packed snow at his feet, his unease deepening. Something ominous hung in the still, frigid air. Their solitude suddenly seemed threatening, absence a promise of unknown danger. Yet he was among blood kin, among Hiroth warriors. Thus.
Still, why does this gift stink of death?
Another night. The tents were raised, a meal cooked, then the watches were set. Trull’s was first. He walked the perimeter of their camp, spear in hand, in a continuous circuit in order to keep awake. The food in his stomach made him drowsy, and the sheer emptiness of the ice wastes seemed to project a force that dulled concentration. Overhead the sky was alive with strange, shifting hues that rose and fell in disconnected patterns. He had seen such things before, in the deepest winter in Hiroth lands, but never as sharp, never as flush, voicing a strange hissing song as of broken glass crunching underfoot.
When it was time, he awoke Theradas. The warrior emerged from his tent and rose, adjusting his fur cloak until it wrapped him tightly, then drawing his sword. He glared at the lively night sky, but said nothing.
Trull crawled into the tent. The air within was damp. Ice had formed on the tent walls, etching maps of unknown worlds on the stretched, waxy fabric. From outside came the steady footsteps of Theradas as he walked his rounds. The sound followed Trull into sleep.
Disjointed dreams followed. He saw Mayen, naked in the forest, settling down atop a man, then writhing with hungry lust. He stumbled closer, ever seeking to see that man’s face, to discover who it was – and instead he found himself lost, the forest unreadable, unrecognizable, a sensation he had never experienced before, and it left him terrified. Trembling on his knees in the wet loam, while from somewhere beyond he could hear her cries of pleasure, bestial and rhythmic.
And desire rose within him. Not for Mayen, but for what she had found, in her wild release, closing down into the moment, into the present, future and past without meaning. A moment unmindful of consequences. His hunger became a pain within him, lodged like a broken knife-tip in his chest, cutting with each ragged breath, and in his dream he cried out, as if answering Mayen’s own voice, and he heard her laugh with recognition. A laugh inviting him to join her world.
Mayen, his brother’s betrothed. A detached part of his mind remained cool and objective, almost sardonic in its self-regard. Understanding the nature of this web, this sideways envy and his own burgeoning appetites.
Edur males were slow to such things. It was the reason betrothal and marriage followed at least a decade – often two – of full adulthood Edur women arrived at their womanly hungers far earlier in their lives It was whispered, among the men, that they often made use of the Letherii slaves, but Trull doubted the truth of that. It seemed inconceivable.
The detached self was amused by that, as if derisive of Trull’s own naivete.
He awoke chilled, weak with doubts and confusion, and lay for a time in the pale half-light that preceded dawn, watching his breath plume in the close air of the tent.
Something gnawed at him, but it was a long time before he realized what it was. No footsteps.
Trull scrambled from the tent, stumbling on the snow and ice, and straightened.
It was Rhulad’s watch. Near the dead fire, the hunched, bundled form of his brother, seated with hooded head bowed.
Trull strode up to stand behind Rhulad. Sudden rage took him with the realization that his brother slept. He lifted his spear into both hands, then swung the butt end in a snapping motion that connected with the side of Rhulad’s head.
A muffled crack that sent his brother pitching to one side. Rhulad loosed a piercing shriek as he sprawled on the hard-packed snow, then rolled onto his back, scrabbling for his sword.
Trull’s spear-point was at his brother’s neck. ‘You slept on your watch!’ he hissed.
‘I did not!’
‘I saw you sleeping! I walked right up to you!’
‘I did not!’ Rhulad scrambled to his feet, one hand held against the side of his head.
The others were emerging now from their tents. Fear stared at Trull and Rhulad for a moment, then turned to the packs.
Trull was trembling, drawing deep, frigid breaths. For a moment, it struck him how disproportionate his anger was, then the magnitude of the risk flooded through him yet again.
‘We have had visitors,’ Fear announced, rising and scanning the frozen ground. ‘They left no tracks-’
‘How do you know, then?’ Rhulad demanded.
‘Because all our food is gone, Rhulad. It seems we shall grow hungry for a time.’
Theradas swore and began a wider circuit, seeking a trail.
They were among us. The Jheck. They could have killed us all where we slept. All because Rhulad will not grasp what it is to be a warrior. There was nothing more to be said, and all knew it.
Except for Rhulad. ‘I wasn’t sleeping! I swear it! Fear, you have to believe me! I simply sat down for a moment to rest my legs. I saw no-one!’
‘Behind closed lids,’ Theradas growled, ‘that’s not surprising.’
‘You think I’m lying, but I’m not! I’m telling the truth, I swear it!’
‘Never mind,’ Fear said. ‘It is done. From now on, we will double the watch.’
Rhulad walked towards Midik. ‘You believe me, don’t you?’
Midik Buhn turned away. ‘It was a battle just waking you for your watch, Rhulad,’ he said, his tone both sad and weary.
Rhulad stood as if in shock, the pain of what he saw as betrayal clear and deep-struck on his face. His lips thinned, jaw muscles bunching, and he slowly turned away.
The bastards were in our camp. Hannan Mosag’s faith in us…
‘Let us strike the tents,’ Fear said, ‘and be on our way.’
Trull found himself scanning the horizon in an endless sweep, his sense of vulnerability at times near overwhelming. They were being watched, tracked. The emptiness of the landscape was a lie, somehow. Possibly there was sorcery at work, although this did not – could not – excuse Rhulad’s failing.
Trust was gone, and Trull well knew that Rhulad’s future would now be dominated by the effort to regain it. A lapse, and the young man’s future path awaited him, deep-rutted and inevitable. A private journey beset by battle, each step resisted by a host of doubts, real and imagined – the distinction made no difference any more. Rhulad would see in his brothers and friends an unbroken succession of recriminations. Every gesture, every word, every glance. And, the tragedy was, he would not be far from the truth.
This would not be kept from the village. Sengar shame or not, the tale would come out, sung with quiet glee among rivals and the spiteful – and, given the opportunity, there were plenty of those to be found. A stain that claimed them all, the entire Sengar line.
They moved on. Northward, through the empty day.
Late in the afternoon, Theradas caught sight of something ahead, and moments later the others saw it as well. A glimmer of reflected sunlight, tall and narrow and angular, rising from the flat waste. Difficult to judge its size, but Trull sensed that the projection was substantial, and unnatural.
‘That is the place,’ Fear said. ‘Hannan Mosag’s dreams were true. We shall find the gift there.’
‘Then let us be about it,’ Theradas said, setting off.
The spar grew steadily before them. Cracks appeared in the snow and ice underfoot, the surface sloping upward the closer they approached. The shard had risen up from the deep, cataclysmically, a sudden upthrust that had sent wagon-sized chunks of ice into the air, to crash and tumble down the sides. Angular boulders of mud, now frozen and rimed, had rolled across the snow and ringed the area in a rough circle.
Prismatic planes caught and split the sunlight within the spar. The ice in that towering shard was pure and clear.
At the base of the fissured up-welling – still thirty or more paces from the spar – the group halted. Trull slipped out from the sled harness, Binadas following suit.
‘Theradas, Midik, stay here and guard the sleds,’ Fear said. ‘Trull, draw your spear from its sling. Binadas, Rhulad, to our flanks. Let’s go.’
They climbed the slope, winding their way between masses of ice and mud.
A foul smell filled the air, of old rot and brine.
Binadas hissed warningly, then said, ‘The spirit Hannan Mosag called up from the ocean deep has been here, beneath the ice. This is its handiwork, and the sorcery lingers.’
‘Emurlahn?’ Trull asked.
‘No.’
They came to the base of the spar. Its girth surpassed that of thousand-year-old Blackwood trees. Countless planes rose in twisted confusion, a mass of sharp, sheered surfaces in which the setting sun’s red light flowed thick as blood.
Fear pointed. ‘There. The gift.’
And now Trull saw it. Faint and murky, the smudged form of a two-handed sword, bell-hilted, its blade strangely fractured and mottled – although perhaps that effect was created by the intervening thickness of ice.
‘Binadas, weave Emurlahn into Trull’s spear. As much as you can – this will take many, many shadows.’
Their brother frowned. ‘Take? In what way?’
‘Shattering the ice will destroy them. Annihilation is demanded, to free the gift. And remember, do not close your unguarded hand about the grip, once the weapon comes free. And keep the wraiths from attempting the same, for attempt it they will. With desperate resolve.’
‘What manner of sword is this?’ Trull whispered.
Fear did not answer.
‘If we are to shatter this spar,’ Binadas said after a moment, ‘all of you should stand well clear of myself and Trull.’
‘We shall not be harmed,’ Fear said. ‘Hannan Mosag’s vision was clear on this.’
‘And how far did that vision go, brother?’ Trull asked. ‘Did he see our return journey?’
Fear shook his head. ‘To the shattering, to the fall of the last fragment of ice. No further.’
‘I wonder why?’
‘This is not a time for doubt, Trull,’ Fear said.
‘Isn’t it? It would seem that this is precisely the time for doubt.’
His brothers faced him.
Trull looked away. ‘This feels wrong.’
‘Have you lost your courage?’ Rhulad snapped. ‘We have walked all this way, and now you voice your doubts?’
‘What sort of weapon is this gift? Who fashioned it? We know nothing of what we are about to release.’
‘Our Warlock King has commanded us,’ Fear said, his expression darkening. ‘What would you have us do, Trull?’
‘I don’t know.’ He turned to Binadas. ‘Is there no means of prying the secrets loose?’
‘I will know more, I think, when we have freed the sword.’
Fear grunted. ‘Then begin, Binadas.’
They were interrupted by a shout from Theradas. ‘A wolf!’ he cried, pointing to the south.
The beast was barely visible, white-furred against the snow, standing motionless a thousand or more paces distant, watching them.
‘Waste no more time,’ Fear said to Binadas.
Shadows spun from where Binadas was standing, blue stains crawling out across the snow, coiling up the shaft of the Blackwood spear in Trull’s hands, where they seemed to sink into the glossy wood. The weapon felt no different through the thick fur of his gauntlets, but Trull thought he could hear something new, a keening sound that seemed to reverberate in his bones. It felt like terror.
‘No more,’ Binadas gasped.
Trull glanced at his brother, saw the pallor of his face, the glistening sweat on his brow. ‘They are resisting this?’
Binadas nodded. ‘They know they are about to die.’
‘How can wraiths die?’ Rhulad demanded. ‘Are they not already ghosts? The spirits of our ancestors?’
‘Not ours,’ Binadas replied, but did not elaborate, gesturing instead towards Trull. ‘Strike at the ice, brother.’
Trull hesitated. He looked round over his left shoulder, searched until he found the distant wolf. It had lowered its head, legs gathering under it. ‘Daughter Dusk,’ he whispered, ‘it’s about to charge.’ Below, Theradas and Midik were readying their spears.
‘Now, Trull!’
Fear’s bellow startled him, so that he almost dropped the spear. Jaw clenching, he faced the spar once more, then slashed the iron spear-head against the ice.
Even as the weapon whipped forward, Trull’s peripheral vision caught motion on all sides, as figures seemed to rise from the very snow itself.
Then the spar exploded into blinding, white mist.
Sudden shouts.
Trull felt a savage wrench on the spear in his hands, the Blackwood ringing like iron as countless wraiths were torn free. Their death-cries filled his skull. Stumbling, he tightened his grip, striving to see through the cloud.
Weapons clashed.
An antler clawed for his face, each tine carved into a barbed point tipped with quartzite. Trull reeled back, flinging the spear shaft into the antler’s path. Trapping it. He twisted the spear round, reversing grip, and succeeded in forcing the attacker into releasing the antler. It spun away to one side. An upward slash with the spear, and Trull felt the iron blade tear through hide and flesh, clattering along ribs before momentarily springing free, to connect hard against the underside of a jaw.
The scene around him was becoming more visible. They were beset by savages, small and bestial, wearing white-skinned hides, faces hidden behind flat white masks. Wielding claw-like antler weapons and short stabbing spears with glittering stone points, the Jheck swarmed on all sides.
Fear was holding three at bay, and behind him stood the sword, upright and freed from the ice, its point jammed into the frozen ground. It seemed the Jheck were desperate to claim it.
Trull struck at the closest of Fear’s opponents, iron tip punching deep into the savage’s neck. Blood sprayed, jetted down the spear-shaft. He tore the weapon loose, in time to see the last of the Jheck in front of Fear wheel away, mortally wounded by a sword-thrust.
Spinning round, Trull saw Binadas go down beneath a mass of Jheck. Shadows then enveloped the writhing figures.
Rhulad was nowhere to be seen.
Down below, Theradas and Midik had met the wolf’s charge, and the huge beast was on its side, skewered by spears, legs kicking even as Theradas stepped in with his broad-bladed cutlass. Two more wolves were closing in, alongside them a half-dozen Jheck.
Another score of the savages were ascending the slope.
Trull readied his weapon.
Nearby, Binadas was climbing free of a mound of corpses. He was sheathed in blood, favouring his right side.
‘Behind us, Binadas,’ Fear commanded. ‘Trull, get on my left. Quickly.’
‘Where is Rhulad?’
Fear shook his head.
As Trull moved to his brother’s left he scanned the bodies sprawled on the snow. But they were all Jheck. Even so, the belief struck him hard as a blow to his chest. They were going to die here. They were going to fail.
The savages on the slope charged.
Antlers flew from their hands, dagger-sharp tines flashing as the deadly weapons spun end over end.
Trull shouted, warding with his spear as he ducked beneath the whirling onslaught. One flew past his guard, a tine clipping his left knee. He gasped at the pain and felt the sudden spurt of blood beneath his leggings, but his leg held his weight and he remained upright.
Behind the flung weapons, the Jheck arrived in a rush.
A dozen heartbeats on the defensive, then the Edur warriors found openings for counter-attacks almost simultaneously. Sword and spear bit flesh, and two of the Jheck were down.
A shriek from behind Trull and Fear, and the savages recoiled, then in unison darted to their right-
– as Rhulad leapt into their midst, the long, bell-hilted sword in his hands.
A wild slash, and a Jheck head pitched away from shoulders to bounce and roll down the slope.
Another chop, a gush of blood.
Both Fear and Trull rushed to close with the combatants-
– even as stabbing spears found their way into Rhulad from all sides. He shrieked, blood-slick blade wavering over his head. Then he sagged. A shove toppled him onto his back, the sword still in his hands.
The surrounding Jheck darted away, then ran down the slope, weapons dropping or flung aside in sudden panic.
Trull arrived, skidding on the blood-slick ice, the wound in his leg forgotten as he knelt at Rhulad’s side.
‘They’re withdrawing,’ Fear said between harshly drawn breaths, moving to stand guard before Trull and Rhulad.
Numbed, Trull tore off a gauntlet and set his hand against Rhulad’s neck, seeking a pulse.
Binadas staggered over, settling down opposite Trull. ‘How does he fare, brother?’
Trull looked up, stared until Binadas glanced up and locked gazes.
‘Rhulad is dead,’ Trull said, dropping his eyes and seeing now, for the first time, the massive impaling wounds punched into his brother’s torso, the smear of already freezing blood on the furs, smelling bitter urine and pungent faeces.
‘Theradas and Midik are coming,’ Fear said. ‘The Jheck have fled.’ He then set off, round towards the back of the rise.
But that makes no sense. They had us. There were too many of them. None of this makes sense. Rhulad. He’s dead. Our brother is dead.
A short time later, Fear returned, crouched down beside him, and tenderly reached out… to take the sword. Trull watched Fear’s hands close about Rhulad’s where they still clutched the leather-wrapped grip. Watched, as Fear sought to pry those dead fingers loose.
And could not.
Trull studied that fell weapon. The blade was indeed mottled, seemingly forged of polished iron and black shards of some harder, glassier material, the surface of both cracked and uneven. Splashes of blood were freezing black here and there, like a fast-spreading rot.
Fear sought to wrench the sword free.
But Rhulad would not release it.
‘Hannan Mosag warned us,’ Binadas said, ‘did he not? Do not allow your flesh to touch the gift.’
‘But he’s dead,’ Trull whispered.
Dusk was swiftly closing round them, the chill in the air deepening.
Theradas and Midik arrived. Both were wounded, but neither seriously so. They were silent as they stared down on Rhulad.
Fear leaned back, having reached some sort of decision. He was silent a moment longer, slowly pulling on his gauntlets. Then he straightened. ‘Carry him – sword and all – down to the sleds. We will wrap body and blade together. Releasing the gift from our brother’s hands is for Hannan Mosag to manage, now.’
No-one else spoke.
Fear studied each of them in turn, then said, ‘We travel through this night. I want us out of these wastes as soon as possible.’ He looked down on Rhulad once more. ‘Our brother is blooded. He died a warrior of the Hiroth. His shall be a hero’s funeral, one that all the Hiroth shall remember.’
In the wake of numbness came… other things. Questions. But what was the point of those? Any answers that could be found were no better than suppositions, born of uncertainties vulnerable to countless poisons – that host of doubts even now besieging Trull’s thoughts. Where had Rhulad disappeared to? What had he sought to achieve by charging into that knot of Jheck savages? And he had well understood the prohibition against taking up the gift, yet he had done so none the less.
So much of what happened seemed… senseless.
Even in his final act of extremity, Rhulad answers not the loss of trust under which he laboured. No clean gesture, this messy end. Fear called him a hero, but Trull suspected the motivation behind that claim. A son of Tomad Sengar had failed in his duties on night watch. And now was dead, the sacrifice itself marred with incomprehensible intentions.
The questions led Trull nowhere, and faded to a new wave, one that sickened him, clenching at his gut with spasms of anguish. There had been bravery in that last act. If nothing else. Surprising bravery, when Trull had, of his brother Rhulad, begun to suspect… otherwise. I doubted him. In every way, I doubted him.
Into his heart whispered… guilt, a ghost and a ghost’s voice, growing monstrous with taloned hands tightening, ever tightening, until his soul began to scream. A piercing cry only Trull could hear, yet a sound that threatened to drive him mad.
And through it all, a more pervasive sense, a hollowness deep within him. The loss of a brother. The face that would never again smile, the voice that Trull would never again hear. There seemed no end to the layers of loss settling dire and heavy upon him.
He helped Fear wrap Rhulad and the sword in a waxed canvas groundsheet, hearing Midik’s weeping as if from a great distance, listening to Binadas talk as he bound wounds and drew upon Emurlahn to quicken healing. As the stiff folds closed over Rhulad’s face, Trull’s breath caught in a ragged gasp, and he flinched back as Fear tightened the covering with leather straps.
‘It is done,’ Fear murmured. ‘Death cannot be struggled against, brother. It ever arrives, defiant of every hiding place, of every frantic attempt to escape. Death is every mortal’s shadow, his true shadow, and time is its servant, spinning that shadow slowly round, until what stretched behind one now stretches before him.’
‘You called him a hero.’
‘I did, and it was not an empty claim. He went to the other side of the rise, which is why we did not see him, and discovered Jheck seeking the sword by subterfuge.’
Trull looked up.
‘I needed answers of my own, brother. He killed two on that side of the hill, yet lost his weapon doing so. Others were coming, I imagine, and so Rhulad must have concluded he had no choice. The Jheck wanted the sword. They would have to kill him to get it. Trull, it is done. He died, blooded and brave. I myself came upon the corpses beyond the rise, before I came back to you and Binadas.’
All my doubts… the poisons of suspicion, in all their foul flavours – Daughter Dusk take me – but I have drunk deep.
‘Trull, we need you and your skills with that spear in our wake,’ Fear said. ‘Both Binadas and Rhulad here will have to be pulled on the sleds and for this Theradas and I will be needed. Midik takes point.’
Trull blinked confusedly. ‘Binadas cannot walk?’
‘His hip is broken, and he has not the strength left to heal it.’
Trull straightened. ‘Do you think they will pursue?’
‘Yes,’ Fear said.
Their flight began. Darkness swept down upon them, and a wind began blowing, lifting high the fine-grained snow until the sky itself was grey-white and lowering. The temperature dropped still further, as if with vicious intent, until even the furs they wore began to fail them.
Favouring his wounded leg, Trull jogged twenty paces behind the sleds – they were barely visible through the wind-whipped snow. The blood-frosted spear was in his grip, a detail he confirmed every few moments since his fingers had gone numb, but this did little to encourage him. The enemy might well be all around him, just beyond the range of his vision, padding through the darkness, only moments from rushing in.
He would have no time to react, and whatever shout of warning he managed would be torn away by the wind, and his companions would hear nothing. Nor would they return for his body. The gift must be delivered.
Trull ran on, constantly scanning to either side, occasionally twisting round to look behind, seeing nothing but faint white. The rhythmic stab of pain in his knee cut through a growing, deadly lassitude, the seep of exhaustion slowing his shivering beneath the furs, dragging at his limbs.
Dawn’s arrival was announced by a dull, reluctant surrender of the pervasive gloom – there was no break in the blizzard’s onslaught, no rise in temperature. Trull had given up his vigil. He simply ran on, one foot in front of the other, his ice-clad moccasins the entire extent of his vision. His hands had grown strangely warm beneath the gauntlets, a remote warmth, pooled somewhere beyond his wrists. Something about that vaguely disturbed him.
Hunger had faded, as had the pain in his knee.
A tingling unease, and Trull looked up.
The sleds were nowhere in sight. He gasped bitter air, slowed his steps, blinking in an effort to see through the ice crystals on his lashes. The muted daylight was fading. He had run through the day, mindless as a millstone, and another night was fast approaching. And he was lost.
Trull dropped the spear. He cried out in pain as he wheeled his arms, seeking to pump more blood into his cold, stiff muscles. He drew his fingers into fists within the gauntlets, and was horrified by nearly failing at so simple a task. The warmth grew warmer, then hot, then searing as if his fingers were on fire. He fought through the agony, pounding his fists on his thighs, flexing against the waves of burning pain.
He was surrounded in white, as if the physical world had been scrubbed away, eroded into oblivion by the snow and wind. Terror whispered into his mind, for he sensed that he was not alone.
Trull retrieved the spear. He studied the blowing snow on all sides. One direction seemed slightly darker than any other – the east – and he determined that he had been running due west. Following the unseen sun. And now, he needed to turn southerly.
Until his pursuers tired of their game.
He set out.
A hundred paces, and he glanced behind him, to see two wolves emerge from the blowing snow. Trull halted and spun round. The beasts vanished once more.
Heart thundering, Trull drew out his longsword and jammed it point-first into the hard-packed snow. Then he strode six paces back along his trail and readied his spear.
They came again, this time at a charge.
He had time to plant his spear and drop to one knee before the first beast was upon him. The spear shaft bowed as the iron point slammed dead-centre into the wolf’s sternum. Bone and Blackwood shattered simultaneously, then it was as if a boulder hammered into Trull, throwing him back in the air. He landed on his left shoulder, to skid and roll in a spray of snow. As he tumbled, he caught sight of his left forearm, blood whipping out from the black splinters jutting from it. Then he came to a stop, up against the longsword.
Trull tugged it loose and half rose as he turned about.
A mass of white fur, black-gummed jaws stretched wide.
Bellowing, Trull slashed horizontally with the sword, falling in the wake of the desperate swing.
Iron edge sheared through bones, one set, then another.
The wolf fell onto him, its forelimbs severed halfway down and spraying blood.
Teeth closed down on the blade of his sword in a snapping frenzy.
Trull kicked himself clear, tearing his sword free of the wolf’s jaws. Tumbling blood, a mass of tongue slapping onto the crusty ice in front of his face, the muscle twitching like a thing still alive. He scrambled into a crouch, then lunged towards the thrashing beast. Thrusting the sword-point into its neck.
The wolf coughed, kicking as if seeking to escape, then slumped motionless on the red snow.
Trull reeled back. He saw the first beast, lying where the spear had stolen its life before breaking. Beyond it stood three Jheck hunters – who melted back into the whiteness.
Blood was streaming down Trull’s left forearm, gathering in his gauntlet. He lifted the arm and tucked it close against his stomach. Pulling the splinters would have to wait. Gasping, he set his sword down and worked his left forearm through his spear harness. Then, retrieving the sword, he set out once more.
Oblivion on all sides. In which nightmares could flower, sudden and unimpeded, rushing upon him, as fast as his terror-filled mind could conjure them into being, one after another, the succession endless, until death took him – until the whiteness slipped behind his eyes.
He stumbled on, wondering if the fight had actually occurred, unwilling to look down to confirm the wounds on his arm – fearing that he would see nothing. He could not have killed two wolves. He could not have simply chosen to face in one direction and not another, to find himself meeting that charge head-on. He could not have thrust his sword into the ground the precise number of paces behind him, as if knowing how far he would be thrown by the impact. No, he had conjured the entire battle from his own imagination. No other explanation made sense.
And so he looked down.
A mass of splinters rising like crooked spines from his forearm. A blackening sword in his right hand, tufts of white fur caught in the clotted blood near the hilt. His spear was gone.
I am fevered. The will of my thoughts has seeped out from my eyes, twisting the truth of all that I see. Even the ache in my shoulder is but an illusion.
A rush of footsteps behind him.
With a roar, Trull whipped around, sword hissing.
Blade chopping into the side of a savage’s head, just above the ear. Bone buckling, blood spurting from eye and ear on that side. Figure toppling.
Another, darting in low from his right. Trull leapt back, stop-thrusting. He watched, the motion seeming appallingly slow, as the Jheck turned his stabbing spear to parry. Watched as the sword dipped under the block, then extended once more, to slide point-first beneath the man’s left collarbone.
A third attacker on his left, slashing a spear-point at Trull’s eyes. He leaned back, then spun full circle, pivoting on his right foot, and brought his sword’s edge smoothly across the savage’s throat. A red flood down the Jheck’s chest.
Trull completed his spin and resumed his jog, the snow stinging his eyes.
Nothing but nightmares.
He was lying motionless, the snow slowly covering him, whilst his mind ran on and on, fleeing this lie, this empty world that was not empty, this thick whiteness that exploded into motion and colour again and again.
Attackers, appearing out of the darkness and blowing snow. Moments of frenzied fighting, sparks and the hiss of iron and the bite of wood and stone. A succession of ambushes that seemed without end, convincing Trull that he was indeed within a nightmare, ever folding in on itself. Each time, the Jheck appeared in threes, never more, and the Hiroth warrior began to believe that they were the same three, dying only to rise once again – and so it would continue, until they finally succeeded, until they killed him.
Yet he fought on, leaving blood and bodies in his wake.
Running, snow crunching underfoot.
And then the wind fell off, sudden like a spent breath.
Patches of dark ground ahead. An unseen barrier burst across, the lurid glare of a setting sun to his right, the languid flow of cool, damp air, the smell of mud.
And shouts. Figures off to his left, half a thousand paces distant. Brothers of the hearth, the dead welcoming his arrival.
Gladness welling in his heart, Trull staggered towards them. He was not to be a ghost wandering for ever alone, then. There would be kin at his side. Fear, and Binadas. And Rhulad.
Midik Buhn, and Theradas, rushing towards him.
Brothers, all of them. My brothers-
The sun’s light wavered, rippled like water, then darkness rose up in a devouring flood.
The sleds were off to one side, their runners buried in mud. On one was a wrapped figure, around which jagged slabs of ice had been packed and strapped in place. Binadas was propped up on the other sled, his eyes closed, his face deeply lined with pain.
Trull slowly sat up, feeling light-headed and strangely awkward. Furs tumbled from him as he clambered to his feet and stood, wavering, and dazedly looked around. To the west shimmered a lake, flat grey beneath the overcast sky. The faint wind was warm and humid.
A fire had been lit, and over it was spit a scrawny hare, tended to bv Midik Buhn. Off to one side stood Fear and Theradas, facing the distant ice-fields to the east as they spoke in quiet tones.
The smell of the roasting meat drew Trull to the fire. Midik Buhn glanced up at him, then looked quickly away, as if shamed bv something.
Trull’s fingers were fiercely itching, and he lifted them into view. Red, the skin peeling, but at least he had not lost them to the cold. Indeed he seemed intact, although his leather armour was split and cut all across his chest and shoulders, and he could see that the quilted under-padding bore slices, here and there stained dark red, and beneath them was the sting of shallow wounds on his body.
Not a nightmare, then, those countless attacks. He checked for his sword and found he was not wearing the belted scabbard. A moment later he spied his weapon, leaning against a pack. It was barely recognizable. The blade was twisted, the edge so battered as to make the sword little more than a club.
Footsteps, and Trull turned.
Fear laid a hand upon his shoulder. ‘Trull Sengar, we did not expect to see you again. Leading the Jheck away from our path was a bold tactic, and it saved our lives.’ He nodded towards the sword. ‘Your weapon tells the tale. Do you know how many you defeated?’
Trull shook his head. ‘No. Fear, I did not intentionally lead them away from you. I became lost in the storm.’
His brother smiled and said nothing.
Trull glanced over at Theradas. ‘I became lost, Theradas Buhn.’
‘It matters not,’ Theradas replied in a growl.
‘I believed I was dead.’ Trull looked away, rubbed at his face. ‘I saw you, and thought I was joining you in death. I’d expected…’ He shook his head. ‘Rhulad…’
‘He was a true warrior, Trull,’ Fear said. ‘It is done, and now we must move on. There are Arapay on the way – Binadas managed to awaken their shamans to our plight. They will hasten our journey home.’
Trull nodded distractedly. He stared at the distant field of ice. Remembering the feel and sound beneath his moccasins, the blast of the wind, the enervating cold. The horrifying Jheck, silent hunters who claimed a frozen world as their own. They had wanted the sword. Why?
How many Jheck could those ice-fields sustain? How many had they killed? How many wives and children were left to grieve? To starve?
There should have been five hundred of us. Then they would have left us alone.
‘Over there!’
At Midik’s shout Trull swung round, then faced in the direction Midik was pointing. Northward, where a dozen huge beasts strode, coming down from the ice, four-legged and brown-furred, each bearing long, curved tusks to either side of a thick, sinuous snout.
Ponderous, majestic, the enormous creatures walked towards the lake.
This is not our world.
A sword waited in the unyielding grip of a corpse, sheathed in waxed cloth, bound with ice. A weapon familiar with cold’s implacable embrace. It did not belong in Hannan Mosag’s hands.
Unless the Warlock King had changed.
And perhaps he has.
‘Come and eat, Trull Sengar,’ his brother called behind him.
Sisters have mercy on us, in the way we simply go on, and on. Would that we had all died, back there on the ice. Would that we had failed.