“A giant wyrmoth,” Chelda said.
“It was as big around as your saber shrew was.” Gallarael came up out of nowhere. She seemed a little excited and breathless, as if she’d been running. “Maybe fifty times as long, and white as the snow.”
“You saw it?” Xavian asked.
Gallarael nodded. “It moved like one of those little furry butterfly worms you see in the garden.”
“That’s what it is,” Chelda told her. “But after it cocoons, it turns into a great moth, not a butterfly. They live way up high in the ice caves around the frozen falls.”
“Then why was it down here?” Brody asked.
“She meant the moths. It turns into a moth and then lives up in the ice caves,” Xavian explained to him, “and I can tell you exactly where something like that wyrmoth lives.”
“And where is that?” Brody asked.
“Wherever it wants,” Vanx said, spoiling Xavian’s jest.
Chelda snorted out a laugh.
“Tie this rope off to each other, so we don’t get separated in this.” Vanx gestured to the heavy flurrying snow but stared hard at Gallarael until she cast her eyes away. “Not only do I not want to have to go looking for anyone in this mess, but I don’t want to worry anymore over it.”
She looked up and then mouthed the word “sorry” to him.
“How much farther?” Xavian asked.
“To where?” Chelda snorted out another chuckle. “We’re still two days from the first of my people’s settlements but probably a full week from Rimehold.”
“I meant how much longer until we stop for the day,” Xavian shot back. “And if you keep acting as if we are all just stupid city folks, I’ll make your hair fall out.”
She glared at him but eased up a bit. “It’s not that you act like stupid city folk, Xavian, it’s that you act like doll-hugging, teat-suckling maidens.”
Brody couldn’t help but laugh, even though she had been including him in her comparison. She gestured at the vast mountain range ahead of them. “People have lived and worked and hunted the peaks for thousands of years. You act like it’s some desolate, uninhabitable place. It’s not even winter, and you act like it’s so cold your parts will freeze and fall off.”
“It’s not my fault your people weren’t smart enough to pick a relatively normal climate to live in,” Xavian argued. “I’m cold, but more than that, my feet are sore. I know we’ve got a long way to go, but I’m not used to traipsing around out here in the deep snow.” He threw up his hands in exasperation. “These fargin boots are fargin new and rubbing my fargin blisters raw, and that fargin pack I’m carrying weighs more than I do.”
Chelda shook her head, but it was clear she felt for him. “We will go another mile or so, until we top this ridge and put some of this wind behind us. Then we’ll stop for the night.”
Chelda took the end of the rope Vanx handed her and tied it around her waist.
Xavian, still angry and tired, and apparently mollified, found the loop in the line a few yards behind hers and cinched it around his waist like the others were doing.
“Think about this as we continue, mighty wizard,” Chelda said over her shoulder as she started them back into the blizzarding snow. “Our Lady Gallarael hasn’t made a single complaint. At least, not since we left the haulkats behind. And she was castle-born and raised. This snow is deeper than poor Sir Poopsalot is tall, and he is still managing it. The boys of my people have to spend their entire thirteenth year out in the wild, alone, with naught but an elk-hide coat and a dagger. They have to—”
Vanx lost her voice in the weather as the rope pulled taut, and he found he was glad for it. Her and Xavian’s bickering was getting worse with every passing day, but he knew from experience that it would work itself out.
He let it go and concentrated on keeping Poops in sight, wondering if he should go back on his promise and hook the dog to the line with the others. As if he felt Vanx’s worry, Poops managed to stay close, and before long, Vanx noticed that they had topped the rise, and the grade of their passage began to tilt downward. It was steeper than the last they’d gone over but not dangerously so.
He wondered what Darbon was doing at the moment. He’d left all but a handful of the gold the saber shrew had brought them, with instructions for him to visit all the smiths in Orendyn to see if he could invest in one of them. Darbon was an apprentice and had been on his way to Parydon Isle to take up with a master and finish his training.
Vanx hoped the boy didn’t get taken advantage of. He decided that Lem, Fannie and Salma wouldn’t allow anything like that to happen, though. In truth, he doubted that Darbon and Salma had even left the bed, since they had the room completely to themselves now.
Another truth Vanx contemplated, but didn’t dare voice, was the fact he was glad for Xavian’s outburst. He, too, was beginning to feel the toll of the heavy pack he was carrying. How Gallarael was managing her load without complaint was beyond him.
Vanx found this as surprising as anything. He expected her to whine like Darbon did about the cold. Instead, she was content to move along with the others, keeping her thoughts to herself and asking few, if any, annoying questions.
Where Chelda stopped them, there was no warm cave and no trees to block the wind, but after their three tents were set up around the new iron fire-bowl, and the fire had been lit, their camp took on a safe, homey feel.
When the smell of Brody’s cooking found their noses, it became even more comfortable. The fare was hot beans and jerked venison with flatbread that was bordering on stale. It was good, and once they washed it down with the brew of Vanx’s kaffee beans, the lot of them lost the edge to their interaction.
“A pot of that stuff around midday would go a long way towards keeping my shoulders from complaining too soon,” Brody observed. “One mug of it, and I feel as spry as a young bull, for a while anyway.”
“Yup,” Vanx agreed. “It does have that effect, doesn’t it?”
“We should have gotten thrice as much as we did,” said Xavian. “Our bag is half empty now.”
“Or half full,” Gallarael offered, “depending on how you look at it. Maybe I won’t take it in the evenings anymore. I was tired enough to go straight to sleep just a while ago; now I can’t sit still.”
“Pull out your lute,” Chelda told Vanx.
“I bet you say that to all the guys,” he shot back with a grin.
“Girls too,” Xavian added, causing Chelda’s face to blush through her scowl.
“Play us a song, Vanx,” Gallarael joined in. “Play that funny one, about the fat lord of onions, or the Ballad of Troll Heart. I like that one, too.”
“You’d think you’ve had enough wood trolls,” Xavian commented, referring to the rock trolls that attacked her, Vanx and Darbon just outside of Highlake. He’d heard the story just the other day as they rode along on their haulkattens.
“One,” Vanx held up a finger, “it’s not a lute, it’s a xuitar. A lute has seven strings, mine has only six. Two, my fingers are far too cold to play a long, slow ballad about heartbroken trolls; and three, if I do play a song, Chelda, you have to promise not to snore all night long.”
Xavian and Brody burst out laughing. Gallarael hid her face, but it was plain that she was laughing, too. Even Poops joined in, yipping and barking and dancing a circle.
Chapter Seventeen
Across the land he flew,
on a brilliant flaming steed.
Brandishing old Ornspike,
in the kingdom’s time of need.
-- The Ballad of Ornspike
Another long day of travel brought them to a deep ravine. It was about twenty paces across. The snow had relented enough so that visibility was much better. The flakes that fell now were small and wispy. The drifts, which they’d had to sometimes wade through, weren’t nearly as deep here. The mood of the group was lighter than the day before, and none of them, save for Xavian, were worn out.
“Once we cro
ss, we’re in gargan territory,” Chelda informed them. “If we are met and challenged, you must remain calm. We will accept the challenge, fight, and win our way through.”
“What sort of challenge?” Vanx asked.
“A rabbler against one of us.” She shrugged, as if it were no big deal. “Brody against someone from a gargan patrol, most likely,” she clarified.
“I’ll be the one handling that part of any such conflict.” Vanx’s voice was firm but not cocky.
“You?” Chelda snorted out. “You’re just the brains of this expedition. Can you even fight?”
Gallarael laughed this time. “It should be me,” she said. “But I’m sure Vanx can handle himself just fine.”
“What sort of challenge?” Xavian was clearly curious. “Hand to hand? Swords? To the death?”
Chelda ignored the mage and spoke to Gallarael. “Don’t let them see you changing, Gal; they’ll leave us all looking like porcupines, make no mistake about that.”
Gallarael smirked.
“What sort of combat?” Brody asked this time.
“Blades or fists,” Chelda answered. “Just until one of the two yields or can’t fight anymore. It really doesn’t matter who wins. It’s the quality of the fight that my people respect.” She gave Xavian, then Vanx, a serious look in turn. “Bravado is praised, and cowardice is seen as weakness. The weak will not be allowed passage, I assure you.”
Xavian gave Vanx a worried look. “You should have told us about this before now, Chel.”
“Would it have mattered?”
“No,” Vanx said. He had been trained in all forms of combat by Zythian masters for more than four decades. “Nor does it matter.” His voice was even and calm, which caused both Xavian and Chelda to raise an eyebrow. “But I don’t want to kill one of your people just to pass through.”
“I don’t think it’ll come to that.” Chelda smiled at his confidence. “We need to cross yon gulch before dark. I’ll go this way, and one of you go that way. Maybe there is a place where we could get over the river.”
“I’ll go.” Brody started off to the left, which looked to be downstream.
Chelda went to the right.
“That is no river,” Xavian said. He’d edged close to the ravine to venture a look down.
Vanx joined him.
A forty-foot sheer cut through hard, gray stone ended in a rough, boulder-pocked floor.
“There’s no river down there,” Xavian observed.
“There’s water flowing under the ice,” Vanx said. “I read about it. There are lakes, even seas, under some of the frozen surfaces out here. The flow of ice and water, over time, is what made this ravine, if you can believe such a thing.”
“I can, but it doesn’t seem likely,” Xavian mused. “The flowing of water does wear a surface down. It would take eons to wear down through rock like this, though.”
“I’m sure it had eons to do its thing.”
“That it has.”
“Down here is a crossable place,” Brody called. “It will take some doing, but we can make it.”
“I’ll go get Chelda.” Gallarael started upstream.
Vanx, Poops and Xavian made their way down to where Brody stood. A huge slab of the ravine’s rocky face had fallen down and wedged across the ice flow to make a crude, steep bridge over to the other side.
“We’ll need a rope secured once one of us gets across; that way we can pull the packs up and have a firm handhold,” said Brody. “Now it’s up to you, wizard. Levitate across with one end of the rope and tie it to a tree.”
Xavian gave him a dark look and shook his head. “Shoot an arrow across with your great-bow. You’re the master archer.”
“What would you have me shoot into, the ice?” Brody returned. “Did you see any trees near the edge?”
“No, but there are trees,” Vanx said.
Not all that far back from the opposite lip of the ravine was the darkened tree line of a fairly dense forest.
“Give me the rope. I’ll—” Vanx stopped.
With a yip, Poops started down and across. Before Vanx could stop the dog, he was slipping and sliding, and then scrabbling up the slab of rock to the top of the opposite side. What was even more surprising was that Poops took a deliberate path along the edge of the gulch to where Chelda and Gallarael were walking toward them and laughing.
“Go back up a good little clip and there is an ice bridge,” Gallarael called over to them. “The span across is so narrow you can just jump it.”
“But I wanted to watch them struggle across here,” Chelda said.
“It would take too long.”
*
They camped in the forest that night, and Vanx realized that he’d missed the comforting feeling of the woods around him. The rustle of branches and cracking of deadfall under foot, the strong piney scent that filled his nose, along with the proximity and comfort the trees brought, all worked to relax him to a point he hadn’t enjoyed in months.
He even slept well, with no horrible nightmares of ghastly death and bloody detail. When he woke, he felt as good as he could ever remember feeling. This worked to his advantage, because before they stopped for the midday break, a lone gargan stepped from the forest and blocked their path.
He stood almost a full head taller than Vanx and was wearing nothing but an elk-hide vest and britches over otherwise bare, pale skin. With smug confidence, he folded his muscled arms across his chest.
“I assume this is one of your people?” Vanx said to Chelda, as he stepped forward and gave a quick, stiff bow. It was a rhetorical question.
The big man’s eyes were sapphire blue and his hair pure white. There was no doubt he was a gargan.
Poops was bristling at Vanx’s side but restraining himself enough to keep from barking out. His insistent growling, though, was low and mean.
A few more huge gargan men stepped out of the wintry shadows. They were similarly dressed, though some of them wore sleeved shirts of tanned leather under their fur vests. They were armed with fully drawn bows but appeared to be sure of themselves and completely unruffled.
Chelda spoke before anyone else had a chance to.
The words were spoken in the common tongue, the language used throughout the Bitterlands, but none of the others could understand more than every other word due to a strong, clipped accent they’d not heard Chelda use before.
The big gargan with his arms crossed smiled broadly at her words and responded in an even less understandable garble. A conversation ensued.
Vanx caught some words: weapons, pleasure, and maybe saber shrew, but could make no sense of what was being said between the two. The talk was coming too fast. He could tell that what little tension there might have been around them was evaporating with every word. As his own anxiety eased, so did Poops’s threatening growls.
“We will follow them now to an open glade,” Chelda said with a hint of excitement forming in her voice. “You and Rammaton Tytak will battle there. He’s offered you the choice of weapons: axe, sword, or knife.”
“Rammaton means?” Vanx queried, as they fell in step behind the gargans.
“Captain, or the leader of the herd,” she explained. “Rammatee is the second in command. The group is called a ramma rabble. They are all here patrolling the borders and trying to make a name for themselves with their deeds.”
“They’ve named themselves after mountain sheep?” Gallarael laughed.
“In its own territory, on the sheer mountainside, the ramma is the most formidable of creatures,” Chelda said. It was obvious by the way she spoke that she was a bit taken by Rammaton Tytak and his ramma rabble. She didn’t seem to know them personally, but her tone, and the reverent way she interacted with the gargan men spoke volumes about how much she admired and respected them. “A ramma can run across an open cliff face and battle an encroaching ramma with speed and dexterity. And after one of them is beaten into submission by the powerful head-butting horns of its opponent, it
will still not fall to its death.” Chelda made an elaborate openhanded gesture, only wincing at her healing arm as she did so. “I’m talking about cliff faces that even the greatest climbers would have trouble scaling. I’m talking heights that are unthinkable.”
“The problem with the ramma,” Vanx said quietly to Chelda, “is that they are sometimes too hardheaded and proud to know when to submit.” Vanx’s voice was troubled, but full of determination. “Like I said, Chel, I don’t want to have to kill someone just to cross through these parts, but if it comes down to my life or his, I will survive. He will not.” The conviction in his voice was chilling, even to him, and a line of worry crossed Chelda’s brow.
“If you get the better of him, he will submit,” she said, but the surety in her voice was gone. “What will you fight with?”
“I have no axe, and he’s no doubt bigger and stronger than me, so grappling with short blades would lend greatly to his advantage.” Vanx shrugged. “Swords is my choice.”
“Do you even have a sword?” Chelda asked. “You can use mine, if you need it.” She indicated the ancient Trigon weapon belted around her coat.
“I have a sword,” Vanx said. “And it makes that one you wear seem newly forged.”
Vanx’s sword was wrapped in an oilcloth and hidden in his instrument case under his xuitar. It had been given to him by his mother’s father a few years before they both died of the same wasting disease on the Isle of Zyth. It was a long blade of chromatic spell-forged steel that had been passed down for generations upon generations, and for the long-lived Zythians a single generation could be up to three or four centuries. Vanx used to carry the weapon openly, but after losing it for a short while to the Duke of Highlake, he’d since decided it was wiser to keep the gold-chased, moderately jeweled weapon out of sight unless it was needed. Otherwise, it drew the attention of too many of the wrong sort of people.
When they finally got to the clearing, Vanx shed his pack and his heavy shrew-skin coat. He overheard one of the gargan men commenting on the garment in an awed, respectful sort of way, and it made him smile. His smile faded when he saw Rammaton Tytak’s huge blade. It was as big as Vanx was tall and as wide as his open hand.
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