Trail of the Black Wyrm - Chris Pierson

by Dragonlance

  Panak.

  He’d been here before … only a handful of years ago, though it seemed another lifetime. He and his friends had journeyed up north, from his tribe’s summer grazing grounds, to prove themselves men. White Sky, his clan, did this by hunting snow-drakes, dragons who dwelt in the Panak and sometimes came down to prey upon the horses and cattle of the Uigan. He and his friends had found their quarry, a whole pack of the creatures, nested in a snowbound valley among the badlands. They had made the kills they needed, with bow and sword and spear, then taken trophies from the bodies, already boasting of their deeds—tales that grew more preposterous with every telling. But on the way back.…

  No. He would not think about it. Not now, not here. Bad luck. He turned his attention back to the water, to the blue and green hunks of death bobbing there.

  “To the right!” he called then shook his head and corrected himself. “No, starboard. Starboard ten degrees!”

  “Starboard, aye!” shouted Forlo from the helm. With a creaking of timbers, the boat shifted its course, turning toward the shore and swinging around a nasty berg. It swung back again when they were done and carried on its course.

  A presence close to Hult drew his glance. Eldako was quiet. Eldako also knew this place; Hult could tell it. Since they’d passed into the frozen expanses of the northlands, since the weather had turned bitter and the wind grown teeth, the merkitsa had prowled the deck, watching the shore for some sign only he would recognize. Now he stood at the rail, leaning out over the water, his eyes narrow. The cold didn’t seem to bother him at all. His arms were still bare, his face uncovered. Hult tried not to resent that as his teeth chattered miserably.

  “What is it?” Hult asked. “What do you see?”

  Eldako gave no sign of hearing. He leaned out a little farther, so that Hult took half a step toward him, ready to grab him if he toppled over the gunwale. The wild elf raised a hand to shade his eyes, then turned and focused his stare aftward. His braids whipped on the wind; seeing them fly, Hult put a hand to his own head, felt the short hair growing all over. He’d decided not to regrow his braid, the mark of a Uigan warrior. For good or bad, that part of his life was past.

  “Another mile!” Eldako shouted. “It is close.”

  “Where are we?” Hult asked.

  The merkitsa pointed off the bow. “The shores yonder belong to the Ice People. We must seek them out. Any farther, and we are in truly dangerous waters. Killer whales in the sea and snow-apes on the shore … and worse.”

  Hult swallowed, trying to stifle old memories. Evil times. “How do you know?” he asked. “Those rocks on the horizon look no different from the ones here. It’s all just snow.”

  “And the Tamire is all just steppe,” Eldako replied. “And the Dreaming Green all trees. But there are ways of telling, rider of the plains. You know the signs, if you know what to look for. There.” He nodded toward the coast. “On that outcrop. Do you see?”

  Hult looked shoreward. There, on a pinnacle of stone crusted with the dung of seabirds, stood a crude idol. It was made of large rocks, each half the height of a person, one piled on top of another to form the simple likeness of a man, more than twenty feet tall, facing out to sea. Nests bristled on each of its shoulders and between its feet. Its head was featureless, save for a pair of round, painted eyes, white rimmed with black.

  A small, horrified sound escaped Hult’s lips, and he stepped back. Eldako didn’t appear to notice; his eyes remained fixed on the pinnacle. “They call these idols Ningasuk. The Patient Folk. They watch the borders of their land. The Ice People believe their ancestors’ ghosts gather around them to dance on winter nights. I have seen strange lights about them, in my travels beyond … Hult? What is wrong?”

  Hult could only stare, his eyes wide, his face pale. The idol’s eyes seemed to bore right through him. Taking another step back, he stumbled over a coiled rope and fell to one knee. His eyes never left the idol, the Ningasuk, as it slid past them and behind. Another loomed up ahead, just around a bend in the shoreline. Its gaze pierced him too.

  No, he thought. Not here. Not again.

  He remembered the Patient Folk. He had seen them before.

  The blizzard blew up out of nothing: one moment, it seemed, the skies were brilliant blue. The next, they crowded with menacing black clouds, and a gale was raging, and the snow came down so thick they could barely see each other. Hult and his friends, men now, drake-slayers, descended from the jubilation of a successful hunt—the necklaces of dragon claws and teeth, freshly cut from their kills, glistening proudly over their coats—into quiet awe at what vengeance the winds of Panak had unleashed upon them. It had been a good hunt, with no troubles, but now the frozen lands seemed determined to collect their due.

  They found the cave as night came on and made a smoky peat fire and roasted strips of dragon flesh over the flames. They laughed and told their exaggerated tales, as their fathers and longfathers had done before them. Their mirth held up for two days of the wind’s relentless howl, the endless rattle of snow against the blankets they’d hung over the cave’s mouth.

  And then a new sound rose, and the mirth died.

  It began as a low groan, the noise a wounded animal might make … or a man. It seemed to come from just outside the cave, only a short distance away. Yamur, the eldest of their group, called out to the noise, mockingly.

  “Whoever cries at our doorstep,” he shouted, “enter or go away! Do not stay and weep when we are resting here!”

  They laughed at that, but their humor had colored, soured: it was now the uncertain laughter of fear. None of them wanted to admit it, but the hunters of White Sky all felt like frightened boys, huddled as the elders told dark tales around the tribe’s speaking-fire. The groaning didn’t stop. If anything, it got louder, more insistent. It was inarticulate, but Hult would have sworn there were words buried deep within the sound—inarticulate words full of pain and suffering … and hate.

  Finally, as the night grew colder, the noise grew into a scream. There was no more mistaking it—whatever was outside the cave was no animal.

  “One of us must go,” said Ushim, Hult’s best friend and the group’s leader. “If someone is in need, we cannot leave him to die.”

  They sat there, in the flickering firelight, for what felt like hours. None of them spoke, nor did they look at one another. Finally, Hult shook his head with a sigh.

  “Let it be me, then,” he said. “I will see.”

  “No,” blustered Yamur. “You are only four-and-ten summers. I will go.”

  And with that, he had stepped out of the cave, letting the flap swing shut behind him. They never saw him again—only heard his scream, and saw the blood when they went to search. Just blood, and a great deal of it: no flesh, no bones. No sign of what had killed Yamur.

  Two more nights they crouched in the cave, listening to the shrieking voices outside their cave. Each wept, when he thought the others were not looking. On the second night, Chag, one of the younger warriors, went out of his mind, drew his shuk, and charged out into the snow. Later they found his arm, torn off and broken … and again, the blood, but nothing more. After that, the rest decided to set out when dawn came, afraid that if they stayed, they would all die, one by one, like the others.

  When they left the cave in the morning, a statue of a man, made of piled stones, was waiting in the snow, its white eyes glaring at them. Either someone had built the idol during the storm, or the snow had been too thick for them to see it when first they came here. Nor was the statue unadorned—two human ears dangled from its arms. Yamur’s and Chag’s.

  They fled from the statue, running south through the blizzard, insane with terror.

  And their foe gave chase.

  Hult never saw what stalked them, except for two pale eyes gleaming through the snow, glimpsed over his shoulder as they fled. The unseen pursuer claimed all but two of the others, lastly Hult’s friend Ushim, who had lagged behind. Hult saw Ushim stumble and f
all, and paused in his flight to help him up, but unseen hands yanked his friend into the murk of the snowfall, and Ushim was gone with a strangled cry that Hult would never forget.

  Finally, after Jijin alone knew how long, the storm broke, leaving no sign of their ghostly pursuer. The three Uigan left alive were all crazed and exhausted. They did not speak of the wraith that had chased them, or their lost friends, or anything else, the rest of the way home—another week of walking, leaving the snowy wastes behind. When they spotted their village again at last, the riders already gathering to see how few of their boys had returned from the disastrous hunt, the survivors each swore a solemn oath, before ancestors and gods alike.

  They would never again return to Panak.

  For Lachar and Kaligai, the other two, the oath was fulfilled: both had been among the warriors lost at the Tiderun, one drowned, the other cut down by Forlo’s men.

  But Hult … Hult had lived. And now he was back again, an oath-breaker … and the Ningasuk were waiting.

  “Hult. Can you hear me?”

  He blinked, shaking his head as the memories flowed away. The faces of his dead friends would haunt his dreams tonight, he was sure. He hoped that was all that would haunt the night.

  Shedara crouched over him, a hand resting on his forehead. He was sitting down, his back against the gunwale. Forlo and Eldako were elsewhere; he glanced down the deck and saw the two working the rigging, bringing down the sails. The boat had stopped. They were moored. Time to go ashore.

  “What’s wrong?” Shedara asked, leaning in to peer into his eyes. He started to look away, but she grabbed his chin and held his head still while she looked him over. She held up her hand before his eyes. “You went down like someone cut your legs out from under you. Look at my fingers—are they blurry? Do you hear bells?”

  “No,” he said, shrugging her off. “I am well. Only … bad memories.”

  “About the last time you were up here?” she asked. He’d told them the tale—all but the part where he’d been as frightened as a child, the whole time the snow wraith stalked them. They’d probably guessed that, anyway. “You were looking at the Ningasuk when you collapsed. It made you remember, didn’t it?”

  He made a face, grabbing the rail to pull himself back to his feet. She was clever, the elf. Those clear green eyes could see right into his mind. He scowled, turning to gaze out across the water. “It is not the first one I have seen.”

  They had dropped anchor in shallow water, just south of a little peninsula that made a sheltered bay and kept the worst of the icebergs away. The cliffs were forbidding, but there were ways up them; he spotted three that even Forlo could climb. At the top, of course, was one of the idols, with its staring white eyes. The idol seemed to be looking straight at Hult, and he felt his knees begin to buckle again. He leaned against the gunwale to bear himself up. Shedara put a steadying hand on his shoulder, and he jerked away, throwing it off.

  “I am well!” he snapped.

  She left him without another word, going to help the others with the sails. Hult stared down at his hands, what was left of them. His mangled left hand still looked strange. The missing fingers itched. He made an angry face. Among the Uigan riders, missing fingers and toes were common—some of the fiercest warriors were short hands, or parts of arms. It came with living by the sword—but it hurt no less. His people were gone, his home and lord. Now he was losing bits of himself.

  He chuckled ruefully at the thought. What shall I leave in Panak when we are done? he wondered. A thumb? A foot?

  My soul?

  The thought came unbidden, and drew his eyes up to the Ningasuk again. He swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry, and turned to assist the others. Soon they had finished with the sails and were readying a little rowboat to go ashore. They would leave the vessel here, trusting the weather and the natives not to harm it. There wasn’t much else to do about it.

  The dinghy bumped down into the water. Eldako let down a rope ladder while Forlo and Shedara gathered their gear and threw it down. They had food and water and more furs for sleeping. They had rope and arrows. They had their blades. Hult checked his own, a straight-edged weapon the elves had let him have. Forlo wore its twin. The sword was good, well balanced and not too heavy, but no less strange a weapon to hold, after so long wielding his shuk.

  “It looks like snow,” said Eldako, peering north and west. “A storm is coming. I do not think it will be too bad, though.”

  “The one I was caught in didn’t look bad either,” Hult said. He let the words lie there.

  No one spoke for a while. Then Shedara laughed. “Well, we’re a cheery bunch, aren’t we? We’ll have to keep an eye on the storm—but weathering it out here on the water doesn’t seem any more promising than doing it on land, does it?”

  They shook their heads.

  “All right, then,” she went on, throwing a leg over the railing and hooking it around the rope ladder. She clambered down out of sight.

  Eldako followed, casting a last glance at the dark clouds massed over the ocean. Then Forlo, his armor rattling; one of the Silvanaes had managed to recover his mail, somehow, during the flight from Kristophan.

  When they were gone, Hult stood alone on the deck, his gaze drifting back up to the Ningasuk. The stone statue loomed atop its perch, its eyes seeming to peer both into the distance and directly through him at the same time. Among the creaking wood and lapping waves, he heard his friends’ death-cries echo in the distance. Yamur, Chag, Ushim, and the rest calling out to him, warning him.

  Stay away. Turn back. Do not break your oath, Brother.

  Watch over me, Jijin, he prayed. Then he climbed over the gunwale and started down the ladder.

  The first snowflakes started falling when they were halfway up the cliff. It was as easy a climb as Hult had guessed. Centuries of ice and seawater had left the rock pitted and cracked, and for him and the elves it was almost as easy to scale as it was to walk on level ground. Forlo had a harder time of it, and his progress slowed them down some. But Hult had to admire his determination. The man could have been a Uigan himself.

  The wind picked up, began to roar. The snow turned hard, sleety, hissing against the cliffs. Waves rose and burst against the rocks, drenching them with frigid spray. They kept climbing, faster now, heedless of the danger of slipping. All of them had seen enough winters to know that weather like this might leave the rocks sheeted with ice—and quickly, too.

  When Eldako reached the top, ahead of the rest, the sky was nearly black, the sleet driving so hard it hurt to look anywhere but in the same direction the wind was blowing. Forlo slipped, and Shedara and Hult—both climbing behind him—had to grab him to keep him from falling. He hung there a moment, breathing hard and muttering minotaur curses, then hauled himself up. Eldako dragged him over the edge, then did the same for the other two.

  Lightning lit the clouds. Thunder boomed a heartbeat later. They all flinched. “It may be worse than I thought,” Eldako allowed.

  “Do you think so?” Shedara asked, her mouth a lipless slash.

  Forlo rolled his eyes. “What do we do now?”

  For a moment, none of them answered, looking around, trying to see through the gathering gloom. Then Shedara caught her breath and froze, looking inland, away from the storm.

  “Maybe we should ask them,” she said.

  Hult turned to look—then drew his sword. Beside him, Forlo did the same, letting his packs fall to the rocky ground. Shedara produced a throwing knife out of nowhere and held it poised. Only Eldako kept his hands empty, raising them slowly away from his body.

  They were outnumbered, by a great margin. More than twenty shapes, indistinct in the gathering darkness, stood at the top of a snow-capped rise, gazing down at them. They were men, but covered in so many skins and furs that they seemed more ogrish than human. Scarves covered the lower halves of their faces, bone masks wrapped the upper, and thick felt hats adorned the tops of their heads. Most gripped long spears with bar
bed heads, ready for hurling. A couple had bows. One, in the middle, had a cudgel of stone, and a headdress made from a white wolf’s pelt, the snarling head covering his own.

  Ice People.

  Hult’s sword wavered in his hand; he didn’t want to raise it, but with that many harpoons pointed at him, he couldn’t bring himself to put it down either. Not yet.

  “Eldako?” he murmured.

  “Lower your blades,” the wild elf replied, his own voice barely audible above the wind. He nodded toward the club-wielder in his headdress. “These are Amaruik, the clan of the Spirit Wolf. They are friendly.”

  “Really?” Forlo asked. “Those spears don’t look very welcoming.”

  “We are in their lands, my friend,” Eldako said evenly. “How would you like it if strangers suddenly appeared in your home, bearing arms?”

  Shedara made her knife disappear as easily as she’d produced it in the first place. She held out her hands like Eldako. “Tell them we’re friendly too,” she said. “Say that we seek shelter from the storm.”

  Eldako did so, raising his voice so all could hear. Hult was surprised: the jade amulet made the Ice People’s tongue as clear as any other. He listened as Eldako explained that they’d sailed north, seeking aid, and had come ashore to escape the blizzard. He named each of them, himself last of all. He did not mention the Wyrm-namer.

  When he was done, the Ice People remained still, as if he’d said nothing. The wind gusted and howled, picking up with startling swiftness. Plumes of snow swept up, streaming away behind the spearmen. Finally, the leader of the Ice People reached up and pulled down his scarf, revealing half of a plump, nut-brown face with a wispy black beard. He smiled, baring yellow teeth.

  “We know who you are, son of Tho-ket!” he called. “Though you have not walked among us since the time of our fathers’ fathers. Our memories are long, though. We remember He-Who-Shoots-the-Pale-Worm. You were our friend then, and remain so. I, Angusuk Wolf-slayer, say so. But your companions must be rid of their long-knives, if we are to trust them as we do you.”