for their Men dream their dreams
and scheme their schemes…
and the skies above run red.”
The cruel winter eked toward spring, the Longnight at last coming to an end, the Sun returning, the long, long nights thereafter gradually growing shorter. With the return of the Sun, hearts lifted, and each day was a bit longer as the Sun slowly climbed upward in the southern sky. Faeril, Gwylly, Riatha, and Aravan continued to learn from their Aleutan hosts, discovering that these Folk had several hundred names for snow alone, though none of the four tried to master the list.
Steadily spring drew nigh, and finally came what was to be their last day in the village; on the morrow they would leave. But an elder seeking an augury cast a handful of carven ivory shapes and then shook her head, saying that the bones told of a bad storm, and none would be able to move for some days to come.
In the darkness of the night the storm yawled out from the Boreal Sea and whelmed upon the land, the blizzard fierce beyond measure and to venture forth was to court suicide. And so they waited, fretting, trapped, while shrieking days passed. Seven howling days and nights the wind and snow and ice hammered through the vales and into the barrens beyond. And seven howling days and nights Riatha and Aravan and Faeril and Gwylly paced the dirt floor and spoke of their plans going awry and checked their supplies and checked them again and snapped crossly at questions and…
Late on the eighth day the storm blew itself out, blessed quiet falling upon the land. The foursome pushed aside the layers of musk ox hides weighted at the bottom which served as a door, and they stepped out into the night. A light snow drifted down, and high clouds still covered the sky, moving swiftly eastward, driven so by unfelt winds aloft. To the soddie of B’arr they went, finding the sledmaster awake, and it was apparent that he had been playing with his two children as his wife looked on. Yet all scrambled to their feet and smiled and bowed as the foursome was invited in. But in the flickering light of a seal-fat lamp Riatha wasted little time on formalities, saying, “We must leave in the morning, B’arr, for even now we are seven days late.”
B’arr looked at the commanding Infé, then at the Anfé, and finally smiled down at the wee Mygga, and bobbed his head, agreeing, for were they not Chieftains all? “B’arr ready. Tchuka ready, Ruluk ready. Sled ready. Dogs ready, too.”
The four then returned to their own sod dwelling, preparing to rest, for on the morrow they would begin an overland journey of some seven hundred and fifty miles, a journey lasting some fourteen or fifteen days. And they were late. Seven days late. They had planned on staying in the monastery and waiting, but now they would barely reach the Glacier by Springday, assuming no more storms delayed them along the route. And Faeril wondered if the prophecy would come true or not, and she remembered the words of her dam: “…even prophecies need help now and again.” Yet the damman did not see how she could aid this prophecy; only the sledmasters and their dogs could do so. With these thoughts running through her mind, Faeril bedded down next to Gwylly.
Buccan and damman tossed and turned, trying to sleep but failing. Now and again Faeril would look to see Riatha and Aravan sitting quietly in the shadows as Elves are wont to do, not sleeping but nevertheless resting. But the damman knew that she and her buccaran would not sleep this night, and even as she thought this, she drifted into slumber.
It was well after mid of night when Faeril awakened once more and saw Riatha standing. The Elfess motioned to the damman, and quietly they stepped outside. The sky had cleared and the stars glittered in the frigid darkness. Without speaking Riatha pointed, and Faeril looked and her heart jumped into her throat, for there streaming high in the east was the Eye of the Hunter, its luminous tail long and bloody.
* * *
Ere the Sun rose the next morning they set forth from Innuk, B’arr’s team in the lead with Tchuka and Ruluk coming after. Faeril and Gwylly sat in the first sled, along with supplies for Man and dog and Mygga. Riatha rode in the second, and Aravan in the third, their sleds, too, laden with food and goods for the journey. The village entire turned out to see them go, and there was a small ceremony of leaving. Yet even the elders could sense the impatience of Fé and Mygga to be on their way.
At last “Hypp! Hypp!” called out B’arr, and Shlee eagerly lunged forward, all dogs in the team leaping, setting the sled into motion. Tchuka’s and Ruluk’s teams followed as those two sledmasters each cried Hypp! in turn, Laska surging forward, Garr, too. And up out from the vale and away from Innuk ran the dogs, sleds gliding after, sledmasters running alongside, then stepping onto the runners as the spans reached their strides.
They crested the lip of the vale and headed out into the Untended Lands, into the barrens beyond—sleds, dogs, passengers, sledmasters. And on board, Faeril, Gwylly, Riatha, and Aravan each felt that they might be too late to fulfill the prophecy, yet they would try regardless, East-southeast they fared, toward a goal afar, Mygga and Fé and B’arr and Tchuka and Ruluk, not knowing what the future held, but knowing that they coursed into danger.
CHAPTER 15
Monastery
Early Spring, 5E988
[The Present]
“’Ware, Riatha!” cried Aravan, shivers of ice slithering down the shifting ramp of shatter as he clambered up behind Gwylly and Faeril and into the golden glow. “It may be Stoke.”
Desperately, using nought but her hands, Riatha began digging away at the fragmented wall, great splinters and shards clattering down the icy slope of sliding scree. “Nay, Aravan, were it Stoke, then the fingers would be long and grasping. ’Tis the hand of Urus! Now aid me!”
Again a faint twitch rippled along the fingers of the huge Man’s hand jutting forth from the glacier, central to the light shining out from the wall.
“Surely he cannot be alive,” breathed Gwylly. “It must be the quaking causing—”
“Faeril, Gwylly,” barked Aravan as he backslung his spear and climbed up beside Riatha, “ward us, for though the blue stone grows warm, foe may return.”
Hearts hammering, buccan and damman turned to look out over the ’scape. The view was blocked by the great piece that had calved off from the glacial wall. “Quick, Gwylly,” urged Faeril, pointing at the mass, “let us take a stand on that.”
Up to their knees in sliding fragments of ice, they made their way down the heap, shards and splinters chinking and chinging as would shattered glass, cascading before them as they descended. At the base of the mound, they gazed at the solid mass rearing up, searching in the bright moonlight for a way onto the calved bulk. Behind them, more ice clattered down as Riatha and Aravan dug away at the wall. Gwylly turned right and Faeril left, as each scoured the gigantic block for a place to climb. “Here, love,” called Gwylly, seeing a way up.
Ascending a series of jagged ledges, the Warrows made their way up to the cloven surface of the shorn-off mass. “You stand at that end, I’ll take this one,” directed Faeril knife in hand, heading south.
A dagger in his left grip, Gwylly started north, his track taking him across from Riatha and Aravan, the Elves now reaching up and back into the wall, casting broken ice out, taking care to remove it from the upper part of the zone of shatter downward so that none would come crashing atop them or on the one trapped within. And just as the buccan came opposite the Elves, his eye fell upon—“Ai-oi Faeril!” he called softly. “Love, come here and see.”
Faeril, some distance away, cast a glance southward and finding no foe in sight, turned and came to Gwylly’s side.
“Look, love,” breathed Gwylly.
Faeril gasped, for at the bottom of a cusp in the ice was impressed the hollow of what could be nought but the shape of a Vulg, now gone. And in the moonlight shining upon that hollow, there where a Vulg once lay, something glittered. “Gwylly, it’s a knife!”
Her heart racing, the damman scrambled down into the cusp and reached into the hollow and took up the blade. It was a knife, a silver knife, the mate to the one in her bandolier
. “Gwylly?” The damman looked up, her eyes shining. “It is Petal’s knife. The one she hurled into Stoke.”
Gwylly looked at the hollow. “Then that shape in the ice…”
Fearil drew back from it. “It was Stoke. He was here. Right here.”
Gwylly looked up and southward, in the direction that the Rūcks and Hlōks and Vulgs had gone. “Riatha was right: that howl of a wounded Vulg—that was Stoke we heard. Calling for aid. And now he’s gone with them…or has been carried off by them.”
Overhead, blood red and ominous, the Eye of the Hunter gashed the skies, its long tail blazing behind. And the earth shivered below.
As the quake rattled the land, Faeril sheathed the silver dagger in its long-empty bandolier scabbard and then scrambled back up and out from the cusp. Across from the Warrows, shards clattered out from the glacier face, slithering down the ramp where Riatha and Aravan worked, the judders loosening more ice around the trapped figure. And now the Warrows watched as the Elves backed out from the hole they had cleared. And hauling, straining, out from the glacier Riatha and Aravan drew the body of a huge Man. A broad Man. A giant of a Man.
It was Urus.
Riatha wept as they dragged him down the slithering mound of shards and to the bottom.
Now all could see what caused the glow, for at his belt was an aspergillum—a device used by monks and clerics for sprinkling blessed water upon a congregation. And it was this object which gave off the illumination.
Even as they looked, a wondering Aravan reached out and touched the glowing dispenser. Instantly the light faded and was gone, leaving behind what appeared to be nought but a religious device, though a precious one, for it was made of ivory and silver.
Riatha lifted her ear from Urus’s chest, and on her knees she rocked back and forth, keening, her arms clutched across her breasts. Her face was twisted in anguish, and wrenching sobs racked her frame, as if she had been withholding her grief for a thousand years. And ’midst her sobs she called his name—“Urus…oh, my Urus!”
Faeril’s face fell, and tears rolled down her cheeks and she turned to her buccaran. “Oh, Gwylly, I was hoping against hope…”
Gwylly embraced her and held her close and stroked her hair, his own features stricken. Aravan knelt beside Riatha, and put an arm about her and spoke softly. And still overhead, the Eye of the Hunter streamed through the sky, and again the earth below jolted violently and trembled for a time after, and from a distance came the sound of iron bells ringing.
And lo! in that same moment, Urus drew in a great, shuddering breath of air, and exhaled again, and did not move afterward.
Riatha flung herself forward, her ear against his chest This time she remained listening long. At last, without lifting her head, she spoke. “He lives, but only by a thread We must get him to a place of safety. A place where we can warm him, tend him.”
Gwylly looked at Faeril as the echoes of the iron bells diminished. “The monastery?”
Faeril called down from the height of the calved mass “The monastery, is it close?”
Riatha lifted up from Urus’s form, and still kneeling, glanced at the damman above. “Nay, ’tis some seven miles o’er rough terrain, broken land…but thy words are worthy—it is the only proper place of care for league upon league.”
Aravan stood and loosened an ice axe at his belt. “We cannot carry him for a lengthy distance. I will find a tree or two and make a travois.”
Gwylly turned about and from his vantage spotted a stand of scrub. “This way, Aravan.”
The buccan scrambled down from the mass and led the Elf southward.
Faeril clambered down as well, coming to where Riatha tended Urus. The Elfess examined the Man for broken bones, finding none, after which there was little she could do until they got him to a place of shelter and warmth “Perhaps if we could move him away from this ice…” suggested the damman.
“I would rather wait for the litter, wee one,” replies Riatha.
They waited without speaking, watching, and after a long while Urus for the second time slowly took a breath, one breath, no more. Again Riatha put her ear to his chest. “He yet lives,” she murmured.
Removing a glove, Faeril reached out and took the Man’s huge hand in her own. His fingers were like unto the very ice itself. “How can this be…that Urus is still alive after a thousand years?”
Riatha’s answer was long in coming. “I know not,” she said at last, lost in thought, absently gazing at the silver and ivory aspergillum. “Perhaps—”
Gwylly’s hail interrupted whatever Riatha was about to say.
Using ropes and climbing harnesses and limbs chopped from an arctic pine, they fashioned a travois. Carefully, they rolled Urus onto the litter, and Aravan slipped the make shift harness onto his shoulders. Aided by the others, the Elf dragged the Man out away from the glacier, and following Riatha’s lead, they set off southward, intending to bear west as soon as the terrain would permit, heading for the abandoned monastery.
By the platinum light of the overhead Moon the Warrows could clearly see the Man, and how like Petal’s description in her journal he looked: he had dark reddish brown hair, lighter at the tips, giving it a silvery, grizzled look, and his face was covered with a full beard of the same grizzled brown, both beard and hair were grown long, very long, reaching to his waist and beyond. He was dressed in deep umber, and wore fleece-lined boots and vest, and a great brown cloak. A morning star depended from his belt, the spiked ball and chain held by slip-knotted thongs to the oaken haft. And although they couldn’t see them, they knew by Petal’s journal that his eyes were a dark amber.
Indeed, it was Urus…
Alive…
Barely….
After some moments of march, Gwylly said, “We must be wary, for this is the way Stoke was borne.”
Startled, Riatha swiftly questioned the Waerling, her voice sharp. “How know thee this, Gwylly?”
The buccan looked up at Riatha. “Above you, in the ice where we stood, we saw where Stoke had lain trapped all these centuries, for his impression was yet there—a Vulgshaped hollow at our feet. And in that hollow Faeril found her lost knife, the one Petal winged him with.
“You yourself said that the howl of the wounded Vulg we heard was Stoke. Calling for aid. Well, they came and got him and carried him off, or so I think.
“And while Aravan cut branches for the travois, I looked about and discovered the track where the Rūcks and such went with him, bearing him…or so I surmise. For if Stoke is damaged, as we think he is, then I would expect to find evidence of a limping Vulg, or tracks of a Man…if Man he be. Yet none of these things did I come across. Only Rūck and Hlōk and loping Vulg tracks did I find, running south, there to the left a hundred or so paces away.”
Riatha groaned, indecision upon her face. “If he is indeed helpless, as is Urus, then now is the best time to halt his murderous madness.”
Gwylly protested: “But he is warded by many maggot-folk.”
“Vulgs, Rūcks, Hlōks,” added Faeril.
“Nevertheless,” began Riatha, “if he regains his strength—”
Riatha was interrupted by Aravan, the Elf speaking even as he pulled the loaded travois across the snow, his words labored. “Hearken, two demands lie before us: we must not lose Stoke; we must tend to Urus. These two goals are not incompatible, but it means we will have to divide our forces.
“This I propose: Riatha and Faeril will track Stoke; Gwylly and I will bear Urus to the monastery—”
Gwylly began to protest, as did Riatha, the Elfess speaking first: “To divide our force is to court disaster. And I have the best skills to treat Urus.”
“I would not be separated from my dammia,” added Gwylly.
Aravan continued dragging Urus. “List, and list well:
“First, we know not what the weather has in store. But should a spring storm come, it will erase all trace of Stoke’s trail, and in this season storms are likely. Hence, to not b
egin tracking him immediately risks all.
“Second, only I have the strength to hale Urus any distance, especially o’er rough terrain, and he must be taken to a place where he can recover.
“Third, Gwylly is hampered, there where his shoulder was struck while climbing, and he cannot wield his sling. To send him tracking after the Rûpt is to send a wounded, defenseless warrior into combat. Yet he can aid me greatly, by ranging to the fore in the broken land ahead to find the least arduous trails, those with the easiest passage unto the monastery, and once there he can aid in the treating of Urus.
“Too, we are without food and other supplies, and by going in pairs, while one forages or hunts, the other can tend to the task at hand.
“In Gwylly’s and my case, one will hunt and forage while the other tends the Man.
“In thy case, it will take two to track Stoke for any length of time: one to guard while the other rests; one to forage, to hunt while the other tracks; one to bring back word if and when Stoke goes to ground. And heed, I deem that he will go to ground, and soon, given that he is impaired as is our newfound comrade, Urus.
“Now if ye wish to risk losing Stoke, then let us all fare to the monastery; mayhap after reaching there and treating Urus, we will later discover Stoke’s location. Yet I remind ye that once long past he escaped for nigh twenty years, years in which he committed his foul deeds.
“But if ye would of certain not lose him now, then here we must divide, and two follow Stoke unto his hiding place, while two others hie Urus unto the monastery.”
Aravan’s arguments were unassailable, and in the end Riatha, Gwylly, and Faeril had no choice but to accede to his logic. And so, after Riatha described the location of the monastery to Aravan and Gwylly, and spoke to them of the treatment for Urus, handing the Elf a packet of herbs taken from a pocket in her down jacket, she and Faeril were shown by the buccan to the track of the southbound Spaunen.
Then Gwylly embraced Faeril and gently kissed her. “Take care, my dammia. Come to me soon with news of Stoke’s bolt-hole. But should Stoke not go to ground, then leave trail sign, and we will follow as soon as we may.”
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