The Messenger

17

A massive crack spidered its way across the Ice Wall, beginning at the spot where Grimtruth Bane’s blood soaked into the dam of frost. The sounds of fissuring ice split the air like staccato bursts of thunder. The Snow Sea surged against the multiplying cracks.

A huge slab of ice broke free from the crest of the wall to tumble down the sheer face. Other pieces were jarred free as the huge chunk crashed and shattered. More great sections tumbled. Finally the first real crevice appeared, and the Sturmfrost burst through with a shriek of gale force, an eruption of furious wind and snow.

That initial finger of storm tore at the gap, widened it until other pieces of the Ice Wall spun away. The whole vast surface quivered and expanded, additional fissures opening everywhere, gouts of storm erupting. Sounds of crashing ice made a roar to shake the world, as a thousand geysers of blizzard simultaneously exploded and cascaded.

At last the Ice Wall fell away along its entire length. The Sturmfrost hurled away mountainous pieces of the dam. Many crashed far away into the White Bear Sea, raising huge spumes of water. As the wind whipped past the water, they froze into fountains of ice, picked up again and hurled farther, rocketing through the sky with monstrous force. Winds screamed with hurricane power. The black waves billowed and surged with frigid violence.

As the storm spilled out of the Snow Sea, it spread, fanlike, to the east and west as well as covering the north. In the blackness of the Icereach night an even blacker face churned on its path, shaped and driven by the cold and vicious wind. The front was a mile high and utterly lightless, full of destructive energy, large enough to swallow anything and everything in its path.

“This is really boring.”

Coraltop Netfisher slumped on the roof of the cabin, chin resting in his hands. “No wind, no waves, nothing. I hate to complain, but at least when I was rowing it was more fun.”

Kerrick bit his tongue and didn’t break his rhythm of gentle oarstrokes. Back and forth he plied the single-bladed paddle, propelling Cutter slowly toward land. Listening to his shipmate’s complaints, he was tempted to invite the kender to take a swim. Coraltop’s attempt at rowing had involved turning a wide dizzying circle in the placid waters, and Kerrick was still trying to make up for the lost time.

They were far out at sea, in the middle of a still, starry night, and the weather was preternaturally calm. There was not even a whisper of wind. No ripple marred the mirror-still surface of the water.

“How far do you think it is, back to that steam cave?” Coraltop Netfisher wondered.

“I don’t know … maybe a mile, maybe less,” the elf replied. Because of the faint glow of starlight, he could make out the the strait, he thought, but he wasn’t sure how far away it was. He was startled to see, low in the west, a green star sparkling above the place where he remembered that cove to be.

“Hey, there’s Zivilyn Greentree,” he said. “Once again, right over my bearing.”

“Who’s Zivilyn Greentree?” asked Coraltop.

The kender listened and nodded as the elf explained about the god of his family tree. “It can be a good thing to trust in your god,” Coraltop observed.

A breeze stirred the air. Ripples marked the slick water, and the sail puffed and fluttered, filling slightly.

“It’s a bit of north wind,” Kerrick noted, perplexed. “It ought to be coming from the south.”

“Should we try for the ocean again?” Coraltop said, sauntering to the mast, ready to pay out the line. “Like my Grandmother Annatree used to say, ‘If you’re going to ride a horse, you should already be sitting in the saddle when it starts to run.’ ”

Kerrick was torn. He had decided to head back for temporary shelter with Moreen and her people. This fresh wind was coming from the wrong direction. Should he head back or sail on? Curious, he glanced to the south. What he saw filled him with foreboding.

A wall of darkness loomed, blocking out the stars along the horizon, rising higher as it approached. The monstrous seething thing extended across the whole southern horizon. Now he understood the light breeze from the north. He had encountered the same phenomenon with a few other ocean storms. Before the weather struck, it moved through a swath of low pressure, actually sucking air, water, and boats toward the front.

This was a storm like none he had ever experienced before.

“That looks kind of interesting,” the kender allowed, noticing the wall of Sturmfrost as it churned closer. “How far away is it?”

“Too close!” Ten miles or twenty, and the gap would certainly narrow in the next few minutes. “Raise the topsail!” he shouted.

He took the tiller and turned toward the faint firelight and the little cove, catching the gathering wind to push them along. Whether he sensed the urgency or was just glad to have something to do, Coraltop efficiently deployed the topsail and jib, and the sailboat began to cut through the fast rippling water with surprising speed.

When Kerrick next looked to the south, it seemed as though the dark wall had grown to block the sky. Tendrils of cloud reached from the mass, stretching, grasping, embracing, snuffing out all starlight. Now he heard it: more like a battle than a storm. The keening of wind was a supernatural noise, a constant violent wail mingled with a cacophony of crashing and banging.

The pillar and the cliff bracketing the entrance to the cove materialized before them. The temperature was dropping rapidly. Already the dampness on the deck had frozen into slick ice, and each breath they took solidified into droplets.

“There-that’s the signpost rock!” the kender shouted excitedly.

The wind whirled chaotically. Kerrick fiercely maneuvered the boom and the tiller as the sails alternately puffed and sagged. He tried to head toward shore, toward the remembered patch of warm water. “Bring in the sails!” he cried, and the kender leaped to obey.

Something heavy fell into the sea, raising a wave that sent the boat careening wildly. Kerrick saw a great slab of ice, shining slickly, and was stunned to realize that it had dropped right out of the sky.

The wind struck like a hammer. Coraltop had barely stored the jib and topsail when the main sheet ripped away and swirled into the darkness. The ocean heaved, and a wave hoisted Cutter and held her, poised in the air, seemingly for minutes, as if ready to hurl its brittle hull against the unforgiving rock.

Garta’s hand had been chopped off by a thanoi battle axe, and Moreen was certain the woman would bleed to death before they could reach the foot of the mountain. Despite the fact that she feared tusker pursuit, the chiefwoman stopped to rig a tourniquet.

“The rest of you-keep going!” she insisted. “I’ll bring Garta down.”

“Not by yourself, you won’t,” Bruni said. The big woman’s deerskin dress was soaked with blood, her long hair was tangled across her shoulders and down her back. With her face locked into a frown and the big hammer resting easily in her hands, she planted her feet and looked up the path toward Brackenrock.

“Well, we’re not leaving the two of you here alone,” Tildey said. “I still have a few arrows left. I’d like to see one of those tuskers come into range.”

Moreen sighed. In the dark night the walrus-men would be right on top of them before the archer could launch any arrow. Still, she was warmed by the loyalty of her companions and griefstricken over the brave Arktos they had left behind.

“Dinekki will be able to patch this up for you when we get back,” she said with forced confidence, not even sure Garta could hear her. The matron was white-faced, shivering. Her lips were pale, and her eyes, although they were open, did not focus. The chiefwoman lashed a strip of leather around the stump of the wounded woman’s wrist, and when she cinched it tight miraculously the wound stopped bleeding.

“Can you stand up?” Moreen asked. “We’ll help you.”

Garta lay on the rocky ground, her breath coming in short gasps. She made no sign that she understood or even heard the question.

“I’ll carry her,” Bruni said. She handed the heavy hammer to Moreen and lifted up the injured woman as though she was a babe. “Let’s get down to the cave, now.”

Moreen and Tildey brought up the rear, imagining thanoi lurking in every shadow, behind every boulder on the mountainside.

“How many did we lose?” the archer asked, too softly for her voice to reach the others.

“I saw Nangrid fall, and Marin … and Carann and Anka were surrounded on the stairs. I don’t think they got out.” Moreen tried to speak dispassionately, but each name caught in her throat and tears burned her eyes. “I don’t know how many more!”

“Maybe some escaped,” Tildey said. “You kept us together and led us to the gate. Otherwise we never would have made it.”

“Why did I lead us in there with no idea what we were going up against? Dinekki’s spell-she saw the place and said there were no dragons there! But she never said … I never asked … about tuskers! Why?” Sobs choked her words. She couldn’t blame the shaman, couldn’t blame anyone but herself. She made the decision, and at least four brave and good tribemates had paid for her mistake with their lives.

So immersed was she in self-pity that she almost bumped into Bruni who, still cradling the semiconscious Garta, had halted in the midst of the steep trail.

“Listen,” asked the big woman. “Do you hear that?”

The moaning sound reached them first on a primal level, as something they felt in their bellies, through the soles of their feet. The rumbling permeated the air, the ground, the whole world. The import of what they heard was clear to Moreen, to all the Arktos, in a flash.

“The Sturmfrost!”

“Yes … it has been unleashed.”

“Go! All of you, hurry!” cried the chiefwoman, as the ragged file of weary Arktos hurried as much as they could in the darkness, on the steep and rocky pathway.

How much farther to the bottom of the mountain, to the cave where the rest of the tribe was waiting? Moreen didn’t know. They were lost in darkness on the trail. Tildey tripped over a rock, cursing as she went down in a tangle, then bounced right back to her feet and jogging along. The wailing of the storm grew louder, a roar that shook the air and sent tremors rippling through the ground. A glance to the south showed that the sky was blacked out and the storm was surging hungrily north toward them.

“There’s the fire!” someone cried, and Moreen saw flames at the base of the cliff, the dark outline of the cave mouth just beyond. Now the noise of the wind had risen to a pitch, and they felt it swirl around them, blasting their exposed skin with needles of ice and snow. The signal fire vanished, swallowed up by the storm. Chunks of ice flew, splintering rocks free from the mountainside, bruisingly bouncing off flesh.

Moreen heard a loud smash and a scream. Stumbling blindly forward she tripped over a body, bent down to see Banrik, a young woman of seventeen years. The back of her skull, where a boulder-sized piece of ice had slammed her, was a crushed, gory mass. Her eyes were open but she was mercifully dead.

With a desperate shout, Moreen pushed ahead toward the remembered shelter. She was vaguely aware of Tildey and Bruni close to her, other women too moving through the chaos of the Sturmfrost. Her skin seemed frozen, and she was surrounded by deafening noise. She followed the downhill slope, felt the level ground at the bottom of the cliff. Finally, the cave walls were around them, and they could find refuge from the wind, slipping inside to stand near a raging fire that Dinekki and the others were tending, several bends past the cave mouth. The storm roared and wailed as they escaped it but the wind couldn’t reach them here.

Moreen slumped defeatedly against the wall, sinking down to sit on the floor.

“Where’s Little Mouse?” asked Garta, suddenly opening her eyes and sitting up. They looked around in panic until the youth, his cheeks pale and his hair caked with frost, stumbled in from the cave mouth. He was shouting and gesturing.

“No, stay here!” cried the chiefwoman, too exhausted and discouraged to care what he said. The lad shook his head, as if he hadn’t heard.

“It’s that elf and his sailboat!” he announced. “They were almost to shore when the Sturmfrost hit. Now I think they’re going to be smashed to death on the rocks!”

Cutter heaved and pitched, riding high on the waves crashing against shore, as Kerrick let out an involuntary sob of despair.

“Hey-look sharp there!” Coraltop Netfisher was on the deck near the bow waving the long oar. Feet braced against the safety line, he wielded the long shaft of wood so that, somehow, just as it seemed the boat would hurl itself against the rock and splinter to bits, the kender shoved it away.

Cutter bobbed back out to sea, carried by an eddy twisting into a curl. Again the storm roared and the waves surged, and Kerrick knew that the kender’s desperate maneuver wouldn’t save them twice.

Something crashed against the deck, and he saw a chunk of ice bigger than his head shoot past, shattering in the well of the cockpit. Another piece, as big as a house, plunged into the water next to the boar, drenching him with freezing spray. Fortunately, the berg had splashed down between the boat and the shore and raised a wave that tossed Cutter farther from the jagged rocks.

All the wetness froze instantly. Kerrick felt as if he were wearing plates of heavy armor. His hands, though he wore two layers of gloves, were numb. The sails trailed in tatters from the mast. Once more he wore the ring from his father-he had donned it once the storm hit-but even magical strength seemed a pale contrast to the fury of this storm. He could barely hold the lurching tiller.

Again, however, he spotted the rock and point of land he had dubbed the Signpost. The beach was a hundred yards away, although in this storm it might as well be a hundred miles.

The storm eddied again, and the boat whirled dizzyingly. More chunks of ice crashed down, hail the size of small boulders. The wind, trapped amid this bowl of cliff, moaned like a suffering thing.

“Hey! I’m going to try to rope the rock!” Coraltop Netfisher stood at the bow, a ridiculous grin on his face. He wore nothing over his favorite green shirt. He must be freezing, thought Kerrick. The kender, who had the anchor rope coiled about his shoulders, pointed gleefully at the signpost rock. “Watch this!”

“Zivilyn protect you!” Kerrick prayed, the words a rasping whisper vanishing instantly into the heart of the storm.

The bow rose on another wave, and Cutter leaped through spray and snow and icy water. Still holding the anchor rope, the kender sprang or was catapulted toward the rocks at the base of the pillar of stone. More waves rolled in, spray whipping in the wind, yanking the boat away, before Kerrick could yell or do anything. The kender was gone.

“Coraltop!” shouted the elf, scrambling forward, skidding on the icy deck. He saw the rope trailing from a deep pool of roiling water. There was no sign of his shipmate.

Hoping that the kender might still be holding on to the other end of the anchor line, Kerrick seized the rope and pulled. At the same time, another crest of water surged beneath the boat, lifting the deck, twisting him around, sending the elf over the rail headfirst into the surf.

The rope was still in his numbed hands as he kicked to the surface and gasped a lungful of cold air. Some part of his mind registered the odd fact that the water wasn’t cold. Something smashed his hip, and he knew the rocks were right beside him. As the wave lifted him higher he kicked and clawed, somehow forced himself into a safe area between the coastal boulders.

He still had the anchor rope, but Cutter had surged past the promontory now. She was heading toward the cove, pushed inexorably toward the beach. Kerrick almost sobbed in frustration as the rope slipped through his hands, bearing his treasure, his pride, his very life, toward certain doom. Even the ring, magic pulsing through his flesh, was not enough to help him brace against the storm’s relentless power.

He felt strong arms wrapping him in an embrace, and he was certain his mind had snapped. Someone … two hands … not his own, grasping the anchor rope, slowing the sailboat’s course toward doom. He grabbed the line again, feeling hope.

“Bruni!” He looked up into her round face, her lips compressed in a determined frown. Desperately his feet clawed at the slick rocks, as the big woman leaned into the rope with all her might. Still Cutter was pulling away away toward the rocks.

Somehow Bruni lodged the anchor in between two stones on the shore, and the line, stretched as taut as a bowstring, held. The wind roared with implacable force, trying to pull the boat away from the Signpost, trying unsuccessfully. For now, she would hold in deep water.

“Coraltop!” shouted the elf. “He’s out here somewhere-we’ve got to find him!”

Another wave crashed over the two of them, and Kerrick’s knees buckled. He lay, shivering helplessly on the ground until Bruni hoisted him over her shoulder.

“Your friend is lost,” she said bluntly. “You will be too, if we don’t get you inside.”

The Sturmfrost churned across the vast concourse of the White Bear Sea. The surface of the sea froze quickly, often in the shape of grotesque waves, storm-tossed swells, and hardened spires. Cyclones of lethal snow swept down the mountainsides, moving across the landscape with brute force. Many creatures, whales, birds, and seals, had long since departed for temperate climes. Any animals that remained here cowered in snug dens, secure against the wind and snow if not from the deadly cold

Those people who survived had also taken shelter in dens. So it was with the Highlanders in their cities and castles, the ogres in the great fortress of Winterheim, the thanoi in their Citadel of Whitefish, the place the humans called Brackenrock. So, too, with the surviving Arktos and a lone elf, who cowered from the storm in the depths of a large, seaside cave.

“We will survive!” Moreen declared with renewed pride. “We have enough food here to last for half the winter. By that time, the Sturmfrost will have waned, and seals will come onto the ice. We’ll be able to hunt again.”

“This cave, in truth, is better than any hut I’ve ever seen,” Dinekki observed optimistically. “Where else could we gather like this, all together even while the Sturmfrost rages?”

The chiefwoman nodded. She looked around at the tribe, all seventy of them gathered in this great vault. A low fire, mere coals really, shed enough light to brighten each hopeful face. Nearby loomed an immense woodpile, timber gathered by Little Mouse and the younger children from the nearby grove.

Using charcoal, the shaman had sketched the image of Chislev, the bird’s head and wings upon the fishtail body, along one wall of the cave. She had just led the tribe in the rite of thanks, traditional among the Arktos when they faced another Sturmfrost with shelter, food, and companionship.

In stark contrast to the dark hair, bronzed skin, and rounded faces of the Arktos, Kerrick Fallabrine’s visage stood out in the firelight. He had combed his golden hair over his damaged ear, and his narrow face and large, almond eyes seemed to glow an almost supernaturally. He had lain, unconscious, for two full days after Bruni had carried him into the cave. Now he had awakened, though his eyes were haunted, his cheeks gaunt and hollowed. Little Mouse had helped him to sit up against the cave wall, and he had watched the thanksgiving impassively. Moreen thought she understood why.

“Bruni tells me that your companion’s bravery might have saved your boat,” she said, going to his side, kneeling next to the pallet upon which he sat.

His expression was desperate, and he clutched her arm with fingers that tried to tighten, then fell limply away. “He saved me as well as the boat,” he said softly. “I don’t think he even understood the danger. It was madness! But, yes, because he got the anchor ashore, Cutter stayed in the water. I don’t know for how long, though. I’ve never seen a storm like that. If the cove freezes, the hull will be crushed.”

“Well, you’re safe, at least,” Moreen said in irritation. “Five women of my tribe were slain in that same time!”

The elf looked stricken. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Yes, I am safe. And my boat is unimportant compared to lives.”

“I am sorry about your friend,” said the chiefwoman. She felt very tired and no longer angry.

“What can I do to help now? Anything?” Kerrick asked. He tried to push himself upright, but his strength failed, and he collapsed against the cave wall.

“Yes. You can rest until you get your strength back. After that, you can come to the mouth of the cave. We’re going to build a wall of ice blocks, closing off all but a narrow doorway. If the tuskers come for us, we’re going to give them a fight.”

“Fight,” he said numbly. His head slumped to the side, and only the weak rattle of his breath told her that he still lived.