“I don’t know exactly,” Kith admitted. “Somewhere to the north and west of here, I should say. The city of Sanction lies on the far side of the range, and if we reach it, we’ll know we’ve gone too far.”
“I never knew that the mountains could be so beautiful, so majestic,” Sithas added, gazing at the awesome heights around them. The sun had long since left their deep valley, yet its fading rays still illumined some of the highest summits in brilliant reflections of white snow and blue ice.
“Forbidding, too.”
They looked toward Arcuballis as the griffon curled up near the fire. His massive bulk loomed like a wall. “Now we’ll have to start searching,” Kith commented. “And that might take us a long time.”
“How big can this range be?” asked Sithas skeptically. “After all, we can fly.”
*
Fly they did, for day after grueling, bone-chilling day. The pleasant autumn of the lowlands swiftly became brutal winter in these heights. They pressed to the highest elevations, and Sithas felt a fierce exultation as they passed among the lofty ridges, a sense of accomplishment that dwarfed anything he had done in the city. When the snow blew into their faces, he relished the heavy cloak pulled tight against his face; when they spent a night in the barren heights, he enjoyed the search for a good campsite.
Kith-Kanan remained quiet, almost brooding, for hours during their aerial search. The guilt of his night with Hermathya gnawed at him, and he cursed his foolish weakness. He longed to confess to Sithas, to ask for his forgiveness, but in his heart, he sensed that this would be a mistake, that his brother would never forgive him. Instead, he bore his pain privately.
Some days the sun shone brightly, and then the white bowls of the valleys became great reflectors. They both learned, the first such day, to leave no skin exposed under these conditions. Their cheeks and foreheads were brutally seared, yet ironically the cold air prevented them from feeling the sunburn until it had reached a painful state.
On other days, gray clouds pressed like a leaden blanket overhead, cloaking the highest summits and casting the vistas in a bleak and forbidding light. Then the snow would fly, and Arcuballis had to seek firm ground until the storm passed. A driving blizzard could toss the griffon about like a leaf in the wind.
Always they pushed through the highest summits of the range, searching each valley for sign of the winged creatures. They swung southward until they reached the borders of the ogrelands of Bloten. The valleys were lower here, but they saw signs of the brutish inhabitants everywhere – forestlands blackened by swath burning, great piles of tailings. Knowing that the griffons would seek a more remote habitat, they turned back to the north, following a snakelike glacier higher and higher into the heart of the range.
Here the weather hit them with the hardest blow yet. A mass of dark clouds appeared with explosive suddenness to the west. The expanse covered the sky and swiftly spread toward them. Arcuballis dove, but the snow swirled so thickly they couldn’t see the valley floor.
‘There – a ledge!” shouted Sithas, pointing over his brother’s shoulder.
“I see it.” Kith-Kanan directed Arcuballis onto a narrow shelf of rock protected by a blunt overhang. Sheer cliffs dropped away below them and climbed over their heads. Winds buffeted them even as the griffon landed, and further flight seemed suicidal. A narrow trail seemed to lead along the cliff face, winding gradually downward from their perch, but they elected to wait out the storm.
“Look – it’s flat and wide here,” announced Sithas, clearing away some loose rubble. “Plenty of space to rest, even for Arcuballis.”
Kith nodded.
They unsaddled the creature and settled in to wait as the winds rose to a howling crescendo and the snow flew past them.
“How long will this last?” asked Sithas.
Kith-Kanan shrugged, and Sithas suddenly felt foolish for the question. They unpacked their bedrolls and huddled together beside the warm flank of the griffon and the cold protection of the cliff wall. Their bows, arrows, and swords they placed within easy reach. Just beyond their feet, the slope of the mountainside plummeted away, a sheer precipice vanishing into the snow-swept distance.
They coped, on their remote ledge, for two solid days as the blizzard raged around them and the temperature dropped. They had no fuel for a fire, so they could only huddle together, taking turns sleeping so that they didn’t both drift into eternal rest, blanketed by a deep winter cold.
Sithas was awake at the end of the second day, shaking his head and pinching himself to try to remain alert. His hands and feet felt like blocks of ice, and he alternated his position frequently, trying to warm some part of his body against the bulk of Arcuballis.
He noticed the pace of the griffon’s breathing change slightly. Suddenly the creature raised his head, and Sithas stared with him into the snow-obscured murk.
Was there something there, down the path that they had seen when they landed, the one that seemed to lead away from this ledge? Sithas blinked, certain his eyes deceived him, but it had seemed as if something moved!
In the next instant, he gaped in shock as a huge shape lunged out of the blowing snow. It towered twice as high as an elf, though its shape was vaguely human. It had arms and hands – indeed, one of those clutched a club the size of a small tree trunk. This weapon loomed high above Sithas as the creature charged forward.
“Kith! A giant!” He shouted, kicking his brother to awaken him. At the same time, purely by instinct, he picked up the sword he had laid by his side.
Arcuballis reacted faster than the elf, springing toward the giant with a powerful shriek. Sithas watched in horror as the monster’s club crashed into the griffon’s skull. Soundlessly Arcuballis went limp, disappearing over the side of the ledge like so much discarded garbage.
“No!” Kith-Kanan was awake now and saw the fate of his beloved steed. At the same time, the twins saw additional shapes, two or three more, materializing from the blizzard behind the first giant. Snarling with hatred, the elven warrior grabbed his blade.
The monster’s face, this close, was more grotesque than Sithas had first thought. Its eyes were small, bloodshot, and very close-set while its nose bulged like an outcrop of rock. Its mouth was garishly wide. The giant’s maw gaped open as the beast fought, revealing blood-red gums and stubs of ivory that looked more like tusks than teeth.
A deep and pervasive terror seized Sithas, freezing him in place. He could only stare in horror at the approaching menace. Some distant part of his mind told him that he should react, should fight, but his muscles refused to budge.
His fear paralyzed him.
Kith-Kanan rose into a fighting crouch, menacing the giant with his sword.
Tears streaked Kith’s face, but grief only heightened his rage and his deadly competence. His hand remained steady. Seeing him, Sithas shook his head, finally freeing himself from his immobility.
Sithas leaped to his feet and lunged at the monster, but his foot slipped on the icy rocks, and he fell to the rocks at the very lip of the precipice, slamming the wind from his lungs. The giant loomed over him.
But then he saw his brother, darting forward with incredible agility, raising his blade and thrusting at the giant’s belly. The keen steel struck home, and the creature howled, lurching backward. One of its huge boots slipped from the ice-encrusted ledge, and with a scream, the monster vanished into the gray storm below.
Now they saw that the three other giants approached them, one at a time along the narrow ledge. Each of the massive creatures carried a huge club. The first of these lumbered forward, and Kith-Kanan darted at him. Sithas, recovering his breath, climbed to his feet.
The giant stepped back, then swung a heavy blow at the dodging, weaving elf. Kith danced away, and then struck so quickly that Sithas didn’t see the movement. The tip of the sword cut a shallow opening in the giant’s knee before the elf skipped backward.
But that cut was telling. Sithas watched in astonishment as
the giant’s leg collapsed beneath it. Thrashing in futility with its hamlike hands, the giant slid slowly over the edge, vanishing with a shriek that was quickly lost in the howling of the storm.
While the other two giants gaped in astonishment, Kith-Kanan remained a dervish of motion. He charged the massive creatures, sending them slipping and sliding backward along the ledge to avoid his keen blade, a blade that now glistened with blood.
“Kith, watch out!” Sithas found his voice and urged his brother on. Kith-Kanan appeared to stumble, and one of the giants crashed his heavy club downward. But again the elf moved too quickly, and the club splintered against bare stone. Kith rolled toward this one, rising into a crouch between its stumplike legs. He stabbed upward with all the strength in his powerful arms and shoulders, and then dove out of the way as the mortally wounded giant bellowed its pain.
Sithas raced toward his brother, recognizing Kith’s danger. He saw his twin slip as he tried to hug the cliff wall between the dying giant and its sole remaining comrade.
The latter swung his club with strength born of desperate terror. The loglike beam, nearly a foot thick at its head, crashed into Kith-Kanan’s chest and crushed his body against the rough stone wall behind him. Sithas saw his brother’s head snap back and blood explode from his skull. Slowly the elf sank to the ledge.
The wounded giant collapsed, and Sithas sent it toppling from the brink. The last of the brutes looked at the charging elf, the twin of the warrior he had just felled, and turned away. He bounded along the narrow ledge, descending across the face of the mountain, away from the niche that had sheltered the twins. In seconds, he disappeared into the distance.
Sithas paid no further attention to the monster. He knelt at Kith’s side, appalled at the blood that gushed from his brother’s mouth and nose, staining and matting his long blond hair.
“Kith, don’t die! Please!” He didn’t realize that he was sobbing.
Gingerly he lifted his brother, surprised at Kith’s frailty – or perhaps at his own desperate strength. He carried him to their niche. Every cloak, every blanket and tunic that they carried, he used to cushion and wrap Kith-Kanan. His brother’s eyes were closed. A very faint motion, a rising and falling of his chest, gave the only sign that Kith lived.
Now night fell with abruptness, and the wind seemed to pick up. The snow stung Sithas’s face as sharply as did his own tears. He took Kith’s cold hand in his and sat beside his brother, not expecting either of them to be alive to greet the dawn.
12
DAWN
SOMEHOW SITHAS MUST HAVE DOZED OFF, FOR HE SUDDENLY noticed that the wind, the snow – indeed, the entire storm – had vanished. The air, now still, had become icy cold, with an absolute clarity that only comes in the highest mountains during the deepest winter frosts.
The sun hadn’t risen yet, but the Speaker could see that all around him towered summits of unimaginable heights, plumed with great collars of snow. Gray and impassive, like stone-face giants with thick beards of frost, they regarded him from their aloof vantages.
The brothers’ ledge perched along one of the two steep sides of the valley. To the south, on Sithas’s left as he looked outward, the valley stretched and twisted toward the low, forested country from which they had come. To the right, it appeared to end in a cirque of steep-walled peaks. At one place, he saw a saddle that, while still high above him, seemed to offer a lone, treacherous path into the next section of the mountain range.
Kith-Kanan lay motionless beside him. His skin had the paleness of death, and Sithas had to struggle against a resurgence of despair. He couldn’t allow himself to abandon hope; he was their only chance for survival. The quest for the griffons, the excitement and adventure of the journey he had known before, were all forgotten now, overwhelmed by the simple and basic wish to continue living.
The valley below him, he saw, was not as deep as they had guessed when the storm struck. Their shelf was a bare hundred feet above level ground. He leaned out to look over the edge, but all he saw was a vast drift of snow piled against the cliff. If the bodies of the giants or of gallant, fallen Arcuballis remained down there somewhere, he had no way to know it. No trees grew in this high valley, nor did he see any signs of animal life. In fact, the only objects that met his eyes, in any direction, were the bedrock of the mountain range and the snowy blanket that covered it.
With a groan, he slumped back against the cliff. They were doomed! He could see no possibility of any fate other than death in this remote valley. His throat ached, and tears welled in his eyes. What good was his court training in a situation like this?
“Kith!” he moaned. “Wake up! Please!”
When his brother made no response, Sithas collapsed facedown on his cloak. A part of him wished that he was as unconscious of their fate as Kith-Kanan.
For the whole long day, he lay as if in a trance. He pulled their cloaks about them as night fell, certain that they would freeze to death. Kith-Kanan hadn’t moved – indeed, he barely breathed. Broken by his own anguish, the speaker finally tumbled into restless sleep.
It was not until the next morning that he regained some sense of purpose. What did they need? Warmth, but there was no firewood in sight. Water, but their skins of the liquid had frozen solid, and without fire, they couldn’t melt snow. Food, of which they had several strips of dried venison and some bread. But how could he feed Kith-Kanan while his brother remained unconscious?
Again the feeling of hopelessness seized him. If only Arcuballis were here! If only Kith could walk! If only the giants … He snarled at himself in anger, realizing the idiocy of his ramblings.
Instead, he pushed himself to his feet, suddenly aware of a terrible stiffness in his own body. He studied the route along the narrow ledge that twisted its way from their niche to the valley floor. It looked negotiable – barely. But what could he do if he was lucky enough to reach the ground?
He noted, for the first time, a dark patch on the snow at the edge of the flat expanse. The sun had crested the eastern peaks by now, and Sithas squinted into the brightness.
What caused the change of coloration in the otherwise immaculate surface of snow? Then it dawned on him – water! Somewhere beneath that snow, water still flowed! It soaked into the powder above, turning it to slush and causing it to settle.
With a clear goal now, Sithas began to act. He took his own nearly empty waterskin, since Kith’s contained a block of ice that would be impossible to remove. As he turned away from the sun, however, he had another idea. He set Kith’s waterskin in the sunlight, on a flat stone. He found several other dark boulders and placed them beside the skin, taking care that they didn’t block the sunlight.
Then he started down the treacherous ledge. In many places, the narrow path was piled with snow, and he used his sword to sweep these drifts away, carefully probing so that he did not step off the cliff.
Finally he reached a spot where he was able to drop into the soft snow below.
He pushed his way through the deep fluff, leaving a trench behind him as he worked his way toward the dark patch of slush. The going was difficult, and he had to rest many times, but finally he reached his goal.
Pausing again, he heard a faint trill of sound from beneath the snow, the gurgling of water as it babbled along a buried stream. He poked and pressed with his sword, and the surface of snow dropped away, revealing a flowage about six inches deep.
But that was enough. Sithas suspended his skin from the tip of his sword and let it soak in the stream. Though it only filled halfway, it was more water than they had tasted in two days, and he greedily drained the waterskin. Then he refilled it, as much as possible with his awkward rig, and turned back to the cliff. It took him more than an hour to carry it back up to Kith-Kanan, but the hour of toil seemed to warm and vitalize him.
His brother showed no change. Sithas dribbled some water into Kith’s mouth, just enough to wet his tongue and throat. He also washed away the blood that had caked on the elf
’s frostbitten face. There was even some water left over, since Kith’s frozen waterskin had begun to melt from the heat of the sun.
“What now, Kith?” Sithas asked softly.
He heard a sound from somewhere and looked anxiously around. Again came the noise, which sounded like rocks falling down a rough slope.
Then he saw a distinct movement across the valley. White shapes leaped and sprang along the sheer face, and for a moment, he thought they flew, so effectively did they defy gravity. More rocks broke free, crashing and sliding downward. He saw that these nimble creatures moved upon hooves.
He had heard about the great mountain sheep that dwelled in the high places, but never had he observed them before. One, obviously the ram, paused and looked around, raising his proud head high. Sithas glimpsed his immense horns, swirling from the creature’s forehead.
For a moment, he wondered at the presence of these great beasts as he watched them press downward. They reached the foot of the cliff, and then the ram bounded through the powder, plowing a trail for the others.
“The water!” Sithas spoke aloud to himself. The sheep needed the water, too!
Indeed, the ram was nearing the shallow stream. Alert, he looked carefully around the valley, and Sithas, though he was out of sight, remained very still.
Finally the proud creature lowered his head to drink. He stopped frequently to look around, but he drank for a long time before he finally stepped away from the small hole in the snow.
Then, one by one, the females came to the water. The ram stood protectively beside them, his proud head and keen eyes shifting back and forth.
The group of mountain sheep spent perhaps an hour beside the water hole, each of the creatures slaking its thirst. Finally, with the ram still in the lead, they turned back along the tracks and reclimbed the mountain wall.
Sithas watched them until they disappeared from view. The magnificent creatures moved with grace and skill up the steep face of rock. They looked right at home here – so very different from himself!
The Kinslayer Wars Page 13
