Balor nodded his agreement. The small Thule were a strange and reclusive people but friendly when they chose to approach the few Utgardr, or southern people, who managed to travel so far north. The Eislanders on the other hand were the exact opposite. Fair of skin and hair, they were a huge and aggressive people, rivaling Toron in size and strength. The only thing that distinguished them from the dark-haired barbarians further to the south and east was a fair sophistication in ship and weapon manufacturing.
Eislanders originally hailed from a series of rocky and inhospitable islands to the far north and hundreds of miles west of Valeria. However, in the past hundred years or so, they established a few large settlements four or five hundred miles to the south of where they were now, near the coastline.
They made occasional raids to the south as far as North Haven in the past, but the city had grown too large and the southerners’ ships too advanced for their pirating to be profitable. Most of their raids these days were limited to their barbarian neighbors and northern island nations closer to their ancestral homelands. At least those that still plied the seas.
A few large groups had moved farther inland, which created tensions between them and the scattered Akkadian barbarian tribes. The name Akkadian was a term used by the elves as a reference for all of the human barbarians of the northern great forest since the Akkadians themselves have no name for their people other than that used for individual tribes.
The Akkadians could be dealt with fairly as long as you were invited into their territory. The few people who made the long and arduous journey far enough north to trade steel for raw gold or the occasional gems often had to camp for days just outside the nearest tribe’s territory. There they waited until one of the tribal representatives came to examine their goods and decide if they were desirable enough to allow them farther into their territory where established a temporary trade camp miles from the nearest Akkadian village.
Zeb seriously doubted that any Akkadian band had ventured so far from their bountiful home ranges, but it was only slightly more unlikely than it being Eislanders. The only thing that Zeb could think of was that perhaps an Eislander or Akkadian had learned the value of the pristine white furs of the far northern animals and had struck out to bring such rare treasures home.
If that were the case, then there should be little cause for conflict. Neither party would claim this remote land as a personal hunting ground. Eislanders may choose to raid them if they thought they had the numbers and the spoils were worth the potential losses. Akkadians were not above using bows in both hunting or warfare, but Eislanders used missile weapons purely for hunting, disdaining their use in combat as a coward’s weapon, which gave the sailors a slight advantage if it came to blows.
***
As the two sailors pondered the significance of the campfire, several pairs of blue eyes watched the ship’s lanterns from the shoreline, their heavy white and grey furs rendering them nearly invisible to anyone more than a few feet away. Large, calloused hands twisted on the smooth wooden hafts of the battleaxes they carried.
“What do you make of the Utgardr ship, Magni?” one of the powerfully built Eislanders asked. “Do you think they are the ones responsible and followed us north to continue their evil black magics?”
“I do not know, Modi,” Magni replied through his thick, blond, braided beard, “but if they have, we will find out soon enough. Then we will spill so much of their blood that the snows will melt and the rivers will run red. By Djev’s radiant axe, I swear it!”
***
There were no further signs of human life for the rest of the night nor was there in the morning as the sailors loaded up their longboats with the gear each party would need for their hunting forays. Zeb and Toron’s party required the most equipment despite being one of the smaller groups. One longboat was sufficient to ferry every man in the party to shore, but three more were required to haul their gear.
Balor led two longboats carrying two score of men that would go in search of seals out on the ice flows and perhaps a few small whales. The long spiraled tusks of the unicorn whale were especially desirable, and the meat, blubber, and oil were all prized on the southern markets as well.
Another group of men in two longboats dropped nets near the mouth of the river and spent much of their days fishing for salmon, ensuring that the ship did not run into any trouble, and providing a rescue force if either of the other groups did not return at their scheduled time.
Derran was also part of Zeb and Toron’s crew, his sharp eyes invaluable when it came to spotting prey. They and the nine burly rowers set about unloading the longboats. They assembled the sleds before strapping their gear onto them to make for easier traveling and hauling back the results of their hunting.
Two tents, each with a small iron stove and a sack of coal provided their shelter and heat when wood was unavailable. Foodstuffs went on next, as well as spare clothing, rope, and traveling gear. Half the men carried heavy crossbows while the other half wielded lighter and less-cumbersome light crossbows for smaller game such as foxes and hares, reserving the powerful arbalests for ice bears—or Eislanders if it came to a fight.
The last things they loaded were a pair of scorpios. Scorpios were nothing more than a very heavy crossbow mounted on a base and were too large and too heavy for anyone to wield with the possible exception of Toron, although even he would find the things far too cumbersome. Each scorpio was manned by a team of three who were trained to set it up and have it ready to fire in less than a minute.
The scorpios were a weapon of dire emergencies. The heavy crossbows and pikes could take down an ice bear, even the big ones that stood over twelve feet tall and could reach a weight near fifteen hundred pounds. However, even the powerful crossbows and large spears would do little to deter a dire ice bear.
Dire ice bears were essentially a dire bear that had made its home in the far north, its fur growing in white to help conceal itself from prey in the largely colorless landscape. These fearsome beasts often exceeded three thousand pounds and could shake off all but the most powerful weapons. The scorpios were the human’s only real defense against such a creature and not an impressive one at that.
Crossbows at the ready and spears close at hand, Zeb let their professional hunter and Derran lead them out with most of the men pulling and pushing the sleds that would only get heavier as their hunting became successful. Whoever had been out here last night was gone now and had left no trace of ever having been present. Zeb started to wonder if perhaps they had not seen a willowisp. Maybe they were just all delusional.
“Whoever or whatever was out here seems to be gone now,” Derran said, seemingly reading the Captain’s current thoughts.
“Yeah, but for how long I wonder?”
The hunting party followed the ice-inundated river that was more ice than liquid water at the surface. In another month, possibly less, it would be frozen solid along with most of the bay. Winter set in this far north later than in the south. For some unknown reason, it seemed to lag behind by an entire season. Just as spring started in the south, winter set in up here with an unforgiving fierceness.
Derran, Zeb, and another man who was an experienced hunter and tracker walked a hundred yards ahead of Toron and the rest of the group who had the important but thankless job of hauling the sleds. By the time they made camp that evening, they boasted a brace of hares, two foxes, and four snow-white ptarmigans. They would eat the rabbits and birds that very night, the skins scraped and prepared, and the feathers bagged.
Zeb stepped out of the tent and approached Derran who was scouring the flat countryside with his eyes. “Any sign of our friends?”
“No, sir, but with this damnable fog that’s no real surprise. There could be a hundred men surrounding us no more than fifty yards away and, unless one of them suddenly sneezed or broke wind, we’d never even know,” the young sailor replied.
“I’ve ordered the men to build a berm around the camp before they turn
in. A wall of snow is no great defense, but it’s better’n nothing at all. Here they come now. Go on and give em a hand. It’ll take your mind off it for a bit.”
Derran gave his captain a nod, grabbed a shovel from one of the sleds, and lent his muscles to the task. Zeb stared out at the thick fog that had rolled in once more as they were making camp. He had seen a lot of fog in his time, it was a regular part of a sailor’s life, but never had he been in mists this thick, cold, and dry. A fog like this should soak a man to his skin as quickly as a light rain, but this stuff acted more like scentless smoke than any kind of precipitation.
It was so thick now that a man could lose his way trying to return to camp from using the privy they dug just a few yards from the tents. He would have to order another privy dug, one inside the growing berm. It would not do to lose a man answering a call of nature. That was no way for a man to die. With a sigh of helplessness, Zeb grabbed a shovel and decided he would dig the privy hole himself while his men packed snow into a six-foot-tall ring surrounding their small camp.
***
Several hard-eyed, blond-haired warriors lay face down in the snow not twenty yards from where the southerners piled snow around their tents in a futile attempt at making their camp more defensible. The scouts wore no metal save for the swords strapped tight to their backs beneath the white fur cloaks. They even covered their faces with a white, wool wrap to hide their features as well as to protect them from the freezing temperatures.
The spies lay there, ignoring the bone-numbing cold, until the southern men finished their preparations and returned to the warmth of their tents. True dark had fallen, and not until then did the scouts move away to inform their Battle Jarl of the men’s activities. As silent and invisible as ghosts, the large northerners stood up from their prone positions, giving their blood a moment to warm the parts of them that had gone numb before slowly moving away.
***
Zeb walked up to Toron as the big minotaur stood just outside one of the tents. Huge billowing puffs of steam erupted from his large bovine-like nostrils in apparent agitation. “What’s up, Toron? You look fit to charge off and sink your axe into somebody.”
“We were being watched…closely,” the minotaur replied without turning his head. “I got a scent of them when they got up and moved. I never did see them through this blasted fog.”
“What do you make of em?”
“Eislanders, I am almost certain of it. At least two were spying on us, which means there is likely at least ten men in their party.”
A look of concern flashed across Zeb’s weathered features. “You have some knowledge of Eislanders then?”
The minotaur nodded his large head, his horns swinging forward and back. “Aye, our two peoples often ply the same waters and run across each other as we raid our way along the northern isles. Eislanders like to engage us to test their strength and battle prowess, as we are one of the few people they respect as warriors. To take a minotaur’s horns in battle is one of their highest honors.”
“Don’t sound like very good neighbors to me.”
“They are worthy adversaries,” Toron answered, bestowing the Eislanders one the highest praises a minotaur could give.
“What do you think they will do?”
Toron shook his head. “They will confront us, but I cannot say when, only that it will likely be soon. Eislanders have less patience than even my people do. Whether they will open with words or axes is anyone’s guess. We are lucky not to be on their land, or the answer would almost be certain and not to our good fortune. As it stands, I would give us an even chance of either supping with them or being buried by them within the next day or two.”
The sailors-turned-hunters struck camp and loaded the sleds before the fog burned fully away. By the time they were prepared to depart, the mists had dissipated enough to travel, its obscuring properties all but gone. They found signs of the Eislanders not far from their camp, but they had deliberately scoured their prints away, probably by dragging heavy furs or canvas behind them. That by itself did nothing to prevent someone from following the track, but it effectively made it impossible to judge their numbers. To complicate their ability to track them, several drag marks spilt out into differing directions a hundred yards away, and Zeb had no desire to split up even if he were willing to follow the dangerous northerners.
Zeb’s crew continued following the river as it veered sharply south. Evergreen trees began populating its banks, and the animal life became more prosperous. Despite the increase of life and color, it would still take at least two days of hard traveling to reach anything they could call a forest. The small trees that grew this far north were weak and twisted things, widely spread out or growing in small clusters of three and four.
Fox, ptarmigans, and snowshoe hare became more abundant and, as the morning moved on into afternoon, the number of furs and wrapped meat piled on the sleds was becoming a legitimate load. It was perhaps two hours before dusk when Derran sprinted ahead and to the party’s left, his snowshoes kicking up clumps of snow. The young sailor stopped a hundred feet or so away then waved furiously to the others.
Zeb and the leading party veered to their left to see what had attracted his attention. When Zeb and the other three men approached, Derran was squatting down next to a series of prints nearly as large as those left by his snowshoes. The biggest difference was the pointed marks extending from the front of the impressions, proof of the four to five-inch long claws of the ice bear.
“What do ya make of those tracks, Farley?” Zeb asked their least competent sailor but undisputed master huntsman.
The burley, wiry-haired, black-bearded man spit a gob of tobacco juice and saliva onto the ground as he crouched next to the track, making the only dirty brown spot in the vast sheet of white for miles in any direction.
“Ice bear to be sure, but even you seadogs could tell that. It’s a big one to be sure. He’s ten, twelve feet standing on his hind legs and well over a thousand pounds given the size and depth of the track. Hard to say how long ago he passed. These dry, freezing climes don’t like to tell their secrets much. I once followed the tracks of a huge stag north of End’s Run for three days. When I finally found it, it had been torn apart by wolves—more’n two days past.”
The hunter touched the sharp edge of the print and watched the tiny bits of dry snow crumble into the deep impression. “I’m pretty sure this’n is fresh though, real fresh. Can’t be more’n about an hour or two old.”
Zeb considered his options for a moment. “Me, Farley, Toron, Derran, and Ruben will take a sled and one of the scorpios just in case the bear’s got a big brother with him and follow the tracks. If we don’t find it by the time the sun sets, we’ll turn around and come back. The rest of you pitch the tents, build a palisade, and put some warm food on. We should be back shortly after dark with or without the bear hide. I don’t need to remind you boys to keep a sharp lookout. We have company out here, and we don’t know what their intentions are, so you all keep alert and your weapons close at hand. Keep those crossbows loaded and the strings dry.”
The men unloaded one of the sleds and strapped down the bare essentials that Zeb and his hunting party needed for the hunt plus a little extra in case they could not make it back to camp that night. It was meager provisioning, but it would allow them to survive a night in the frigid region.
The sailors erected the tents first then began shoveling up piles of snow for the berm, packing it just inside the area they dug up to make the wall, creating a trench around the outside. Two men went out and cut down dozens of the spindly pines, sharpened the ends, and stuck them into the wall of packed snow around the camp. It was minimal defense against a determined enemy, but it was far better than nothing at all.
Toron pulled while Ruben pushed the sled along, Farley kept his eyes pointed at the ground, and Derran scanned the land between them and the horizon. Zeb kept pace in the middle, the cold angering the rheumatism that had started to trouble
him the last couple of years. He was thinking that if this was not his last hunting trip to the far north it was very near to it.
It was not the best command decision for him to insist on leading the hunting party. It was a task far better suited to the younger and stronger men, but he loved the hunt and was loath to give it up. It was also the most dangerous part of their journey not counting the ship-crushing ice packs and high seas, and he was not the type of captain to send others where he would not dare to go himself. Maybe next year he would put Balor in charge of the hunting party and keep himself to the ship. The ship was a captain’s rightful place after all.
Derran dropped two hares and the fox that was hunting one of the rabbits. His keen eye and masterful use of the crossbow brought them down without a missed shot. They skinned and scraped the hides, hastily flayed the rabbit meat off the bone, and packed it all away in minutes. Even Farley was having trouble determining if they were getting any closer to their quarry, and the snow’s refusal to help the hunter in any way was quickly making him surlier than usual.
“Damn all this snow! If it were snowing now I could tell you if we were getting closer, if there were some wind I could tell you, if the damn thing would even so much as take a crap it would give me something to go off to at least make a guess! For all I know, these tracks were made before the elves packed up and moved out of Valeria,” the hunter complained, taking a swig of powerful spirits from a small flask he wore around his neck and tucked under his shirt.
“I think I see something,” Derran whispered even though such stealth was rather pointless after Farley’s rant.
“What do you see, lad?” asked Zeb, glad to break the churlish master hunter out of his tantrum.
“Movement atop the hill near the horizon.”
Zeb squinted in the direction Derran pointed, but he could make out nothing other than the expanse of white. The terrain was gently rolling with low hills, little more than broad mounds, and low-lying regions that resembled the undulating swells of the open sea. Even though the hillock was near the horizon, the ground sloped upward and was not such a great distance away. In a land where standing atop even a tiny hill would allow a man to see for miles in every direction in the flatter areas, this was far from a bad thing.
The Sorcerer's Path Box Set: Book 1-4 Page 107
