It was brutal, agonizing work; not quick, without easy victory. Hundreds of Elves died to kill a pack of less than three-score Coldwarg.
When the last white-furred body lay dead upon the snow, Jermayan made a broad circle to look for the talldeer and the horses.
He came upon a slaughter.
The talldeer, fleeing from the Coldwarg, had blundered directly into the following serpentmarae. The talldeer that were running free had been able to make their escape, but those yoked to the sledges had been easy prey.
Terrible as it was, the beasts' sacrifice had bought the fleeing Elves time, for the serpentmarae had lingered over their kills, and lingered longer to feed. Now they wandered slowly in the direction of the convoy, but almost certainly would trail the convoy without attacking until hunger or superior numbers made the thought of attacking attractive once again.
Jermayan returned to the convoy to replenish his supply of arrows and give what aid he could to the wounded.
* * * * *
HE was able to report what he had seen to Chalaseniel and Magarabeleniel, who made the decision to try to recover the sledges and round up what talldeer and remounts could be gathered quickly.
Only twenty of the sledges had usable harness. Salvaging what harness they could, and rounding up the herd animals, took precious hours they did not have. But there was no choice. The supplies and the remounts were as precious as sleep. Or water.
There was no room to carry their dead with them. They could lay them out decorously in the clean snow before they left. That was all.
* * * * *
IT took twice as long as they had expected to reach the Gatekeeper a full sennight. As Tanarakiel had foreseen, on the fourth day out from the Winter City, the weather had failed, bringing heavy snow.
It was that, paradoxically, that had saved their lives. The Coldwarg and the serpentmarae had harried them across the plains though the Deathwings had not returned after Jermayan's first decisive victory over them winnowing their numbers slowly but inexorably.
The hellbeasts had been no more bitter an enemy than the cold. The Lerkalpoldarans said it was cold enough to freeze fire, though Jermayan did not put the local saying to the test. It was the cold that made leather brittle and delicate, no matter how lavishly it was greased, and when enough pieces of a harness broke, the sledge its talldeer were pulling had to be abandoned.
Night and day, they did not stop. Every hour, every mile, was precious. They made camp only to brew tea, to allow the animals with them to eat and drink, before moving on. True children of the Plains, the Elves slept in their saddles and wagons. For food, they butchered the animals that dropped from exhaustion on the long march. When they had left Lerkelpoldara, they had packed little food for themselves, knowing this was what they would do. Nearly all the space they could spare in the sledges was packed with fodder for the animals. But even so, they drove the talldeer onward in nearly starving condition; a mark of their true desperation.
When the snow came the harsh cold lessened, the temperature rising nearly to freezing. The serpentmarae fled for shelter and even the Coldwarg dropped back out of sight.
It had taken them five days to reach the foothills, when it should have, by Chalaseniel's estimation, have taken three. But they had reached them at last, and there was wood to burn and shelter from the wind and the snow.
In summer this would be the foot of the trail that led over the mountain, and the trail would be clearly visible. Now, in the middle of a winter snowstorm, with their horses floundering through snow to their withers, to believe that there was a path here at all required an act of faith.
Jermayan did what he could to clear it. His spellcasting against the Deathwings had tired him, and that strength had not been easily regained, here in the High Cold. But it was enough to ease their way.
They had paused in the foothills long enough to eat, and to make a final disposition of the nine sledges that still remained, and to rest a few hours.
Then they had begun the ascent to the Gatekeeper itself.
The combination of the storm and the air-currents near the mountain wall were such that scout-flying was now impossible for Ancaladar and Jermayan, and would have been even if Jermayan had possessed the full resources of an Elven Mage to wield. They could wait behind, or wait ahead, but they could do nothing else. In any event, they would not be able to see the Lerkalpoldarans through the trees and the blinding snow. Jermayan left them Coldfire to light their way, and he and Ancaladar went on ahead.
If he had not, none of them would have reached the summit.
* * * * *
"I smell something," Ancaladar said.
They stood within the pass itself. Bare rock it might have been a sennight before, but it was already filling with snow that would soon pack down to ice. Fortunately the constant winds at this altitude blew most of it away. The Gatekeeper would remain passable for some days yet.
Without Ancaladar, Jermayan would have frozen where he stood, but the dragon's body radiated heat like a furnace. Jermayan stood beside him, within the shelter of one half-spread wing. It was, he reflected, the first time he'd been truly warm since they'd left Lerkalpoldara.
"It cannot be good," Jermayan said uneasily.
"Magarabeleniel said the city's scouts thought there was an ice-drake somewhere on the plains, did she not? And indeed, I thought I smelled one as we landed."
"It is true that they suspected the presence of one, though they were not certain."
"It is not on the plains not anymore," Ancaladar said with certainty. "I believe we should find it before it finds her people."
Wearily, Jermayan mounted once more. Ancaladar folded his wings tightly against his body and trotted down out of the pass, until there was space to launch himself into the air.
The Lerkalpoldarans were still in the trees below, invisible. The ice-drake's lair would probably be above the tree-line, where it was colder. But it would be quickly drawn to the heat of prey.
Even if he were at the height of his powers, no spell Jermayan knew had any effect upon an ice-drake, and Ancaladar had barely defeated the last one they had encountered.
But we do not need to kill this one, Jermayan realized. We only need to keep it from killing the Lerkalpoldarans.
* * * * *
"THERE," Ancaladar said at last, indicating a cave in the ice below. Even without his Bonded's heightened sense of smell, Jermayan would have known that something laired there, for the path to the entrance was polished smooth by the passage of a long heavy body. "I would never be so slovenly in leaving a path to my lair," the dragon said disparagingly.
"It is not as if anyone wishes to seek out ice-drakes," Jermayan answered soothingly. "There is no reason for it to hide as you were forced to. But now we must draw it out."
"That is a simple matter, simply done," Ancaladar said. He landed on the slope below the cave, and waited.
They were only on the ground for a few moments before the ice-drake appeared. A wave of bone-numbing cold preceded it, and at that warning, Ancaladar flung himself into the air not a moment too soon, for the long ice-white serpentine body whipped out from its hole with stunning speed, a fog of poison breathing from the ice-drake's jaws as the creature swung its head about, looking for its prey.
Ancaladar landed again, farther down the slope, luting his enemy onward, and the ice-drake obligingly rushed forward. This time, the black dragon barely made it into the air in time to evade the creature's attack. It rose up on its coils, exhaling a thick fog of poison.
Ancaladar wheeled around and struck the ice-drake from above and behind, seizing it, as he had the other he had fought, just behind the head.
This time he did not waste time in trying to kill it, nor did Jermayan spend any of his own energy on anything but Healing spells to save his friend from the worst of the monster's cold-damage. This time Ancaladar simply flew as high and as far as he could, doing his best to keep the wildly-thrashing serpent from striking his wings, or from coiling itself around his body.
"I see a lake," Ancaladar gasped, when they were well across the valley.
"Yes," Jermayan said, understanding what was in his Bondmate's mind.
With a groan of relief, Ancaladar released the ice-drake.
It plummeted through the air, thrashing helplessly, and Ancaladar spiraled down after it to watch its fall. They flew beneath the low clouds, to where they could see the dark star of water in the center of the frozen lake where its impact had shattered the thick sheet of ice.
But the lake was already freezing again this time from within, frozen by the ice-drake's radiant cold. The ice-drake's head appeared above the surface as it churned the freezing slurry in its frantic attempts to escape, but though it thrashed madly, it could only get a small portion of its length near the surface, and was unable to pull itself out onto the unbroken ice. Jermayan and Ancaladar could see that the lake was obviously freezing faster than the creature could pull itself free of the water, and in a few moments it would be held fast beyond all escape.
The lake itself would entomb the creature until it melted in the spring if a solid block of ice with an ice-drake at its heart ever would melt when the very warmth that had liberated the ice-drake might do what magic could not. Assuming of course that the ice-drake did not starve before then.