by Phil Tucker
Rising, he drew a red arrow from the quiver slung over his back, the last of three. Each arrow was three feet long, as thick as his thumb and headed by a bolt of black iron, wickedly sharp and forged in the human lands. He set the arrow to the string, took a deep breath and drew. No other in his tribe could draw this bow, not even his father, and weak as he was, he worried that he too would fail to bend it. The horn groaned, the arrow drew back, he sighted down its length and released.
It was gone, blessed by Dead Sister Moon, not arcing high to fall upon his opponents but shooting straight, a bolt of fury that punched into the lead kragh. It knocked him clean off his feet, arresting his momentum as if he had run into a stone wall. The others split around their fallen comrade, coming still, and Tharok drew his second and last red arrow. Only his death arrow remained.
Tharok took a second, steadying breath. The trembling might of his body was near exhausted. He growled deep in the back of his throat, a coarse rumble of bestial fury, and then he roared and drew and fired the second great bolt in one rapid heave. It whistled out through the moonlight and missed his target. The Tragon were bunched so close, though, that it didn’t matter. The bolt hit the one right behind him, slammed into his gut, passed through him as it spun him around and lodged deep into the thigh of a third.
Tharok grunted his pleasure.
He drew his last arrow. His black-fletched death arrow. He’d carried it with him since he’d learned to draw the bow. It was only to be shot when he knew he was about to die. That time had come. Now, where was the Tragon leader? There, in the middle of the pack. Cunning old wolf. One-eyed, he'd led the hunt for three days with discipline and ferocity that would have done a highland kragh proud. It was time to end his life.
Tharok took a final breath, deep into his cavernous chest, and pulled one more time at his grandfather's bow. The horn creaked, the string quivered, and he felt his hands weaken, his forearms tremble, the muscles in his shoulder and back burn and writhe. It was like trying to heave a boulder right out from the frozen ground. His lips writhed back from his fangs, his snarl turned silent as he saw red, and then he felt his ancestor’s strength course through him. He hauled the arrow back. His final arrow, his death arrow, the last arrow he would ever shoot. He drew the string back farther and farther. Never had he drawn the old bow so far. He pulled it back till the wicked arrowhead was flush with the bow’s curvature, drew back till it felt as if the string was going to slice through his fingers and the bow explode in his hands, and only then released.
His death arrow hit the one-eyed lowland kragh right in the face. It punched through his cheekbone with bone-shattering power and exploded out the back of his skull. Down crashed the old wolf, and Tharok lurched to his feet, a roar of defiance tearing from his throat. He cast his horn bow aside and drew his axe, the great curved blade gleaming like ice hewn from the heart of a glacier. Eight kragh were closing in on him. Their bloodlust was upon them. They cared nothing for their felled comrades. Their numbers were great, they had hunted him for three days without rest or good food, and now was the time to end it.
Tharok wanted to laugh. He wanted there to be more. He wanted an ocean of lowland kragh to dive into, the entire bloody Tragon tribe for him to attack. His own blood fury was rising. Did they think they knew what battle rage felt like? It was time for them to learn.
Tharok lowered himself into a crouch. They were almost upon him. He drew his heavy curved dagger. He felt nothing but rage and scorn. None of them were even half his height. He roared and raced forward, three great strides across the curving top of the boulder, and launched himself into the night air, right arm scything down and throwing the curved dagger so that it whipped forward, tip over pommel, right at the lead kragh. It connected hilt first, but had been thrown so hard that the kragh dropped and tripped the one directly behind him. Tharok fell amongst their charging mass, axe swinging, and all was rage and blood.
Tharok felt the berserker fury descend upon him. It swept the fatigue, the cold, and all thoughts from his mind. Like a crescendo of scouring fire, a storm of crimson, it drowned his mind in rage and he felt as if he could lift mountains, crack open boulders, tear down Dead Sister Moon with his own ragged claws.
His fall dropped three of them, his bulk and weight crushing one directly down into the rocks as the other two were swept off their feet by his outstretched arms. Tharok went down hard, but he tucked his head and left shoulder into a roll and came up running. He swept his axe in a howling arc around and behind him as he broke free of their number, only to wheel and drop into a deep crouch. He’d severed a foot. That kragh was down screaming. Only three were still standing, another three regaining their feet. The moon shone on their bald pates and glinted on the gold earrings in their ears. Their eyes burned red as their own feeble rage fueled them. Tharok opened his great maw and screamed his fury at them, ropes of spittle flying forward. Not waiting for their charge, he attacked, leaping into the madness of their blades.
One went down, a blade bit deep into his side, and he slammed the base of his palm against the face of another. Something ricocheted off his shoulder; he ducked and slammed his shoulder against a gut, staggered back as a blow cracked his temple, shook his head and bellowed once more. Another blade dug into his back, tried to penetrate the thick hide armor, but failed.
Tharok reared back and buried his axe deep in the head of the kragh before him, reached out and wrapped his fingers around the neck of another and brought it in close enough to tear its throat out with his tusks. He threw the suddenly limp body at another, ducked under a swung blade, and roared his joy. He began to roar as the enemy fell and failed to kill him.
A blade sliced deep into his left arm. Pain flared and was ignored as his arm dropped uselessly by his side. He ducked his head and rammed it to the side, wrenching it across and up so that his tusks dug tore open a stomach. Lowland kragh had no tusks. Small-toothed and pathetic, they disdained them. Here and now, Tharok would show them the meaning and power behind them.
He staggered back, turning to find a new foe. One of the lowland kragh was trying to crawl away. The others lay still. Heaving for breath, reeling, he stumbled over to it and smashed his foot down on the nape of its neck. It crunched and the kragh went still.
Silence now but for his heaving breath. He didn't know where his axe was. Blood covered his left arm, was running down his side. The pain had yet to hit him, held back by his berserker rage, but that was sluicing from him now that the battle was over. Weakness began to encroach.
Moving with clumsy haste, he knelt down by one of the corpses and tore free its shirt, then wrapped it around the wound in his left arm and tied it off tight. He bit the cloth and yanked till it bit cruelly into his arm. He took another shirt, balled it up and held it against the wound in his side. Gasping and shivering, he then took two belts, forged one from them both, and cinched it tight over the balled bandage, pulling it in against the wound.
It wouldn’t be enough, not in the long run, but for now, it just might allow him to ascend to the Dragon’s Breath. Why the Hell not? If he didn’t bleed out, he might even reach the Valley of the Dead.
Tharok left the Dragon’s Tear behind, the bodies of the Tragon kragh, the whimpering of the hounds. He began to climb, following the narrow waterfall that trickled from the base of the Breath high above to form the Tear, the water so cold it could freeze a hand solid if one were foolish enough to plunge it in. Black rock, harsh edges, hands clasping and muscles contracting as he pulled himself up. Thoughts of those behind him receded and were gone. The moon sailed overhead, crescent and casting a serene light over the mountains. Above him, calling him on, were the Five Peaks, the sacred home of the gods and where legend had it the kragh had been birthed. Only dying shamans, blind and wizened, would dare climb this high when they knew their death was upon them. As far as he knew, he was the first to attempt this climb alone and without the blessings of the spirits. He didn’t care. Let them kill him if they were offended.
Soon he was high up above the Tear, which gleamed below him like an ax blade before a fire. He paused to survey the world spread out at his feet, swaying with fatigue and pain. Beyond the lake the dark crevice that was the gorge fell away into the depths, while across from him and all around surged the ragged peaks of the mountains, caped in snow and as harsh and unyielding as life itself. He saw the flitting silhouette of a lone wyvern, high up on one of the peaks. He was far above the tree line now, having left the last of the stunted firs behind, and the air this high was so thin that he had to breathe deep just to walk, just to place one booted foot before the other.
Tharok took one last look at the world. He thought of his tribe, his dead relatives, thought of the wrongs that would not be righted, of the wars and battles he would never fight, and then turned his back to it all and faced the glacier known only as the Dragon’s Breath.
Its face was a shattered wall of ice, splintered cracks cutting deep into its body, a crown of warped ice spokes and slivers emerging from its upper edge. From beneath its body came the cold water that fed the world.
Tharok took a deep breath, reached out, and grasped hold of a spar of ice, hiked a boot up and dug it into a gap, and then hauled his body up. Another handhold; he kicked his other boot deep into another crack, and then he was moving, ignoring the penetrating freeze that entered his hands, moving up and up until he reached the summit and crawled out onto the Dragon’s Breath itself.
Legend had it that at the end of his life, Ogri the Uniter, the kragh who had gathered all the tribes to his banner and forged the Ur-Tribe, had ridden his dragon mount Jaermungdr high into the Five Peaks. He had returned to the home of the gods from whence he had come, had landed Jaermungdr and died, falling into the snow of the Valley of the Dead. Jaermungdr had roared its grief, and with every roar had let loose a blast of ice, a gout of pure cold so powerful that they had become the Ice Roads. It had reared up high one last time, its old hide scored by countless scars from countless battles, and then fallen and died next to its master. From the Valley of the Dead the three Ice Roads had ever since descended, with the Dragon’s Breath being the greatest and reaching the farthest down below. To ascend the Dragon’s Breath was to ascend grief made manifest, to walk alongside the ghosts and spirits of every kragh who had passed away and were returning to the Valley of the Dead. With Ogri’s death the Ur-Tribe had split, fragmented, and never since had the kragh been of any consequence in the known world.
By the light of Dead Sister Moon Tharok stood and gazed up the sweeping curve of the great glacier. It was a great, sinuous snake whose ragged and broken surface was hidden beneath a mantle of snow. From here it looked as smooth a road to ascend as one could desire, but Tharok knew that climbing it would kill him. He had crossed glaciers before, smaller Ice Roads in other valleys, off other mountains. He knew the peril of the sudden crack that heralded a drop into the blue heart-ice deep within, how easily an ankle could twist and snap, how shards of ice could puncture and pierce. It would not be the ghosts or spirits or gods that would kill him for his effrontery; it would be the very fact that he was climbing the road itself that would do him in, if his body did not give out first.
Still, there were worse ways to die. Climbing to the Valley of the Dead on foot was as good a way as any. His death arrow had flown. There was no returning once he set foot on the greatest Ice Road in the world.
Finding some small measure of peace with his own death, finally casting away his last regrets, fears and doubts, Tharok took his first step upon the Dragon’s Breath and began to climb.
CHAPTER SIX
Iskra Kyferin hesitated at the entrance to her chamber, her hand stopping but an inch from the heavy wooden door. The bell would soon toll to summon the castle to Mourning. She had to dress, prepare herself, assume the calm and confident mien that would convince everyone from her lowliest stable boy to Father Simeon himself that Kyferin Castle was not without a ruler. And yet, her heart fluttered in her chest like a panicked dove. She hesitated a moment longer, and then pressed her palm to the door and pushed it open.
The first time she’d entered this room had been in Enderl’s arms. She’d been fifteen, and he’d been drunk. The entire castle had rung with their wedding celebration, a thousand torches banishing the night, and raucous catcalls had followed them each step of the way from the great hall to the top of the keep. Enderl had breathed deeply but never flagged. His strength had always been prodigious. He’d smelled of spiced Zoeian wine, the anointing oils from their ritual, and a deep, masculine scent that had unnerved and excited her.
Iskra paused in the doorway and smiled with bitter pity for her younger self. How little she’d known. She’d been a child. A foolish, naive child. Twenty years had passed since that awful night. An entire life. And now Enderl was dead and gone and she was alone. She raised her candle so that its soft glow spread over the furnishings, dimly outlining the huge bed on which he’d stripped away her virginity and so much more. It didn’t take much effort to bring back the memory of her cries. Her pleading. The sobbing that she’d tried to bury in her pillow for fear of awakening him.
She moved from wall sconce to wall sconce, lighting each candle in turn, till the whole silent room was bathed in a delicate white glow. Enderl had always preferred the roar and dance of the hearth fire, not caring if the room filled with smoke and the illumination was poor. She never lit the fireplace when he was gone, no matter how cold it got.
The thick stone walls seemed to ache with his memory. She’d never again hear his bellow of laughter. The high ceiling would never echo with his snores, his sighs and muttered curses of as he forced himself to read through Bertchold’s reports. This was his room. His tapestries hung on the walls. His weapons gleamed on their hooks. His armature stood by the fire. Twenty years she had slept here, but still it was his chamber.
Iskra moved to one of the narrow windows and gazed out into the night. Doors were opening in her mind, memories tumbling free now that she was alone. Enderl was dead. She thought of him as he’d held Kethe for the first time, his massive hands awkward, his expression tentative and then transforming into one of delight. How seven years later he’d raised Roddick in one hand over his head and bellowed, “This is my son! This is my son!” His beaming pride had warmed her even as she’d begged him to lower the babe back to her arms.
Goosebumps raced down her arms. She’d lived her life in opposition to him. Now that he was gone, she felt as she were suddenly stumbling. She didn’t have to plan for his return. Steel herself against the whispers. Compose her face in just the right away to avoid arousing his ire or interest. She didn’t have to hide the castle accounts. Didn’t have to plan his favorite meals. Didn’t have to sit by his side each night, or worse yet, sit alone when he’d left on his supposed errands. Didn’t have to gaze at him and hide her true feelings from his searching eyes. Reassure him when he doubted. Fight the warmth she felt when he dreamed of a future for their children. Dread the fury that might break forth at any moment and ravage the world.
Tears brimmed in her eyes, then ran down her cheeks. A certain man was rotting in the dungeon cell beneath the Wolf Tower, placed there by husband for reasons both good and foul. She’d have to deal with that man sooner or later.
The bell began to toll. It was time to descend and pray that Enderl’s soul had Ascended. She’d always considered herself superior to him in every way: more educated, more self-aware, more compassionate, a Sigean where he was but an Ennoian. Yet on a basic level he’d always been more alive than she, more vital, more entrenched in each and every moment, whereas she’d been frozen, fighting always to repress her true self, her every instinct. Now he was gone, and she hated this feeling of loss, of bewilderment, of fear.
Turning, she wiped her cheeks with her palms. Phye had left her dress laid out. Custom demanded that the Lady of the castle be tended and pampered at every opportunity by numerous ladies-in-waiting, but that was one of the few customs she’d insisted
on breaking when she’d first arrived here. She’d not abandon the simplicity of her Sigean upbringing; having another woman comb her hair and dress her as if she were a child was intolerable.
The dress was monochromatic and stark, black at the hem and then gradating up through the grays to become white just shy of her chest. An allegory for Ascension, of course. She dressed quickly. The bell was still tolling.
Drying her face, she stopped at the door to cast one last look over the room. The furnishings stood mute. They were not to blame for what had transpired here over the years, but she decided then and there that she would have everything dragged away and burned.
The chapel was already full when she arrived with Kethe and little Roddick in tow. Almost a hundred members of the castle staff were in attendance, packed into the pews and wearing their Mourning clothes. The thick candles at the front had been newly replaced, and what seemed like a hundred more were burning along the walls. Father Simeon was standing at the front before the great gleaming Ascendant Triangle, and he nodded when he saw her. Heads turned and the murmurings ceased as she stepped forward, chin raised, eyes locked above the Father’s head. She led her children to the very front and dipped one knee to the Triangle. Kethe did the same, her movements neat, while Roddick simply stared at everyone and had to be urged to comply.
There were no Aletheians in attendance, so she had the honor of sitting at the very front. Magister Audsley, as the only Noussian other than the Father, had the entire row behind her to himself, and then came the Ennoians, who composed the vast bulk of the gathering. A few Zoeians were behind them, with the Bythian slaves at the very back. Everything was as it should be. Iskra watched Father Simeon as he nodded to himself and then raised his hands to gather their attention.
