Iron Will

by James Maxwell

  It came all at once. A growing wind blowing chunks of ice changed into a freezing storm. White particles flew in all directions, swirling in shapes that seemed to take on form, as if ghostly apparitions shared the plain. Sharp crystals stung Kyphos’s lips and pricked the skin of his exposed cheeks.

  He ducked his head into his chest and pushed on. Despite the wind, there was no fog and he could still see the tracks if he squinted. If anything, he increased his speed. The path carved by his people was deep, but who knew how long the blizzard would continue? If he lost the tracks, they might never be found again.

  Kyphos also knew that his people would be suffering more than he was in this cold. They had left Necropolis with no food, and they would be starving. He pictured them as he fought against the snow that dragged at his feet and the biting wind that pushed him in one direction then another. Imagining someone who was hurting more than he was gave him the strength to press on.

  A hand clasped his shoulder. ‘We should make camp!’ Elmar cried into Kyphos’s ear. The fur-lined cloak the sorcerer wore was covered in white specks.

  ‘No!’ Kyphos shook his head firmly. ‘We keep moving.’

  He glanced behind and saw that although the other men were struggling, they were still keeping up. Like Elmar they were being assaulted by particles. If the flurries grew any thicker, they might lose each other.

  Kyphos forced himself to keep moving, but he soon realized that Elmar was right to point out the danger. He took another dozen steps and then stopped in his tracks and turned, waiting for the men to catch up.

  ‘Ropes!’ Kyphos called. ‘We’ve prepared for this. I want ropes around every man’s waist!’ They stared at him blankly; all they wanted was for him to let them rest. ‘Get to it!’ he roared above the wind.

  The cold bloods stirred themselves into action first, rummaging in their packs and taking out the coils of hemp rope they’d brought with them. Kyphos waited impatiently as they started to fasten the men at the rear first; he was conscious that every passing moment increased the depth of the snow and meant they might lose the tracks altogether.

  He glanced ahead while he combed snow away from his eyes and beard. Everything was white. It was difficult to judge distances. The churned-up snow was beginning to disappear.

  He almost jumped when he saw a dark figure rushing toward him through the blizzard.

  The bald man was waving his arms, and Kyphos relaxed when he recognized Nero. The indomitable tracker’s beard and face were crusted with ice. He was shouting something, but Kyphos couldn’t understand what he was saying. Finally Nero was close enough to grip Kyphos by the arm.

  ‘You need to see this!’ Nero’s voice was urgent.

  Kyphos turned back to the men. ‘Wait here!’ he called out. He saw several of them nod back to him. It would take time to get them all fastened at any rate.

  A moment later Kyphos was running behind Nero, who led him onward, following the tracks. Kyphos became perplexed when he saw a broad swathe of darkness covering the ground just ahead. He pulled up sharply beside the tracker. The two men could go no farther.

  The tracks finished abruptly, terminating in a void. Kyphos was standing on the edge of a jagged cliff, a shelf where the ice sheet had broken. Twenty feet below him was raging water, black as pitch.

  Kyphos and Nero exchanged glances. Kyphos swore. His people had traveled onto the ice sheet, which had sheared after they crossed onto it. They were now drifting on the open sea. When it melted and sank, they would die.

  But then Nero pointed. ‘You can see the other side!’ he cried over the wind.

  Kyphos shielded his eyes and peered through the snowflakes. He finally saw another ice sheet on the other side of the dark water. He thought he could make out where the tracks continued.

  ‘Go back for the others!’ Kyphos shouted.

  ‘You sure—?’

  ‘Just go!’

  Kyphos paced and stared while he waited. He knew it would be dangerous to make the crossing onto the second ice sheet, but he had given the king his promise. He would risk everything if he had to.

  Finally they came, appearing out of the white to assemble near the edge of the ice sheet. Half of the men were connected by rope around their waists. Kyphos singled out Elmar and beckoned the sorcerer over.

  ‘I need your light!’

  The sorcerer nodded and reached for the staff he’d strapped to the back of his pack. He lifted it high and in an instant golden light bathed the area.

  Kyphos peered down into the channel. The sea raged, pushed forward by a strong, relentless current. The water was still dark, despite the light shining down onto it. It continued to eat at the base of the ice sheet he was standing on. If anything, the distance across the channel was growing.

  He needed to get across the gap. But how?

  Kyphos came to a decision. He gathered a few of the nearest men, Nero and Elmar among them. ‘Get one of the longest ropes. I’ll need you to fasten one end to the ice.’

  ‘Why?’ Nero frowned.

  ‘Because I’m going to tie the other end around my waist,’ Kyphos said grimly. ‘I’m swimming across.’

  ‘You’ll die!’ Elmar clutched Kyphos’s arm. He shook his head. ‘I can’t let you do it.’

  ‘You can’t stop me, magus. Not unless you want to use your powers on me.’

  Kyphos tore his arm free. He peered out at the drifting ice sheet, where the people he’d come to rescue needed him. He looked down at the dark water and noticed that the light from the sorcerer’s staff had faded.

  ‘More light!’ he growled.

  Elmar raised his staff again. The golden hoop standing on top of the staff glowed once more.

  ‘Brighter!’ Kyphos ordered.

  He heard a pounding sound and turned to see a pair of men hammering a thick wooden stake into the ice. One of the men handed him the end of the coiled rope, and Kyphos began to tie a loop.

  He stared grimly down into the water. He was a strong swimmer, but he knew the cold.

  It was almost certain to kill him.

  30

  Varos wiped snow from his eyes as he stared back the way he had come. He thought he had heard something, carried on the wind. The guttural cries of men.

  ‘Keep moving,’ his sister Miera said into his ear. ‘Varos, please.’ She pinched his arm tightly, but he was so numb he barely felt it. ‘If we stop, we’ll die.’

  She met his eyes, and he saw that she was worried that he was going to collapse again. Her head was so wrapped in cloth that only the top half of her face was visible, but lines of concern had further tightened what had once been smooth, youthful skin. Her face had always been sharp, but she was now so gaunt that her head had taken on the appearance of a skull.

  Glancing ahead, Varos saw that he and his older sister were at the back of the group. Varos often found himself at the rear. He wanted to go home, even if the kona might kill them, and every step was taking them farther and farther away. He hadn’t eaten in so long that his ribs were protruding from his chest. It was always cold. He wanted to sleep somewhere warm. And if he couldn’t find somewhere warm, anywhere would do. He no longer cared if he ever woke up again.

  Even Varos’s father was in despair. Their mother was sick, and he was hauling her on an improvised sled, dragging her blanket-covered body over the frozen ground. It was frightening, seeing her like that. Varos’s father never spoke anymore. The last thing he’d said was to instruct Miera to take care of her brother. Since then, he had left them to their own devices.

  It was a large group – several hundred people – but already the last dark silhouettes were becoming shrouded, swallowed up by white. Varos knew he should hurry to catch up with them, but he was tired.

  ‘Please . . .’ Miera begged. ‘Varos, please.’

  In the end, Varos nodded. He knew she would stay with him, no matter what. So he had to keep moving for her.

  He turned away from the direction he thought the voices had come f
rom. But then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a light.

  ‘Miera! Did you . . . Did you see that?’ Varos stammered.

  ‘There’s nothing there,’ she said. Her eyes pleaded with him. ‘Varos! You know we can’t stay here.’

  ‘Look,’ he said. ‘Watch.’

  She cast a frantic glance at the rapidly vanishing group ahead, but she reluctantly agreed. ‘If I watch, will you come?’

  Varos nodded. ‘I saw a light. I swear it.’

  They peered into the falling snow. Varos pricked his ears. He thought he could hear men’s voices again. But he waited; he wanted to see if Miera heard them too.

  Miera yanked on his arm. ‘There’s nothing—’ She suddenly broke off.

  The light was brighter this time. Undoubtedly it was shining from somewhere in the distance behind them. It moved slightly, but generally maintained the same position. Miera’s eyes were wide as she stared at it.

  ‘I see it,’ she said. ‘And voices. I can hear them now.’ She took him by the hand. ‘We have to tell the others!’

  Together Varos and Miera lumbered through the snow. Varos felt the strength draining from his body with every step as he struggled to keep up with his sister, but he pushed on anyway. Light meant people. It could mean warmth. It could even mean food.

  They caught up with the stragglers at the rear. The first people they passed stared at them blankly, utterly consumed with the task of keeping themselves moving. The adults had packs that bowed down their shoulders. The children had their hands tied to their parents’ belts.

  The group thickened as Varos and Miera ran into its heart. The former inhabitants of Necropolis, who had been abandoned by their king, were uniformly skinny, some so thin it was a wonder they kept moving. Dozens and dozens of weary people on both sides cast them inquisitive looks. For two people, even children, to be running was truly out of the ordinary. Raised voices called out, asking what was happening.

  Varos and Miera found their father somewhere in the middle. He hadn’t noticed their approach and was grim-faced as he put his head down and walked with trudging strides. Under each arm was a long pole and on his back was a pack containing the family’s few possessions: a hand axe, the last strip of dried meat, and heavy blankets made from the thick skins of the musk ox. He kept a water skin strapped to his chest, inside his clothing, using the warmth of his body to melt the snow.

  The two poles under his arms were connected to the long sled, and on the sled lay their mother, wrapped head to toe in skins. She was awake, Varos saw with relief. Her head was tilted, and her eyes were surprised as she saw her children running toward them and calling out.

  ‘Father!’ Varos cried.

  Shaken out of his reverie, Varos’s father, Claus, looked up in surprise. Once a brawny man with a long nose and a thick head of black hair, he was now horribly thin, and the tip of his nose was dark with approaching frostbite. He glanced around and saw that the people watching had stopped. The cries and waving arms of the children had caused everyone around to come to a halt. Varos heard someone shouting to the strong men up front to come and see.

  ‘Lad,’ Claus said. He let the poles he’d been pulling drop to the ground and opened his arms. Varos fell into his embrace, and then his father pushed him back by the shoulders. ‘What is it?’

  ‘There’s a light,’ Varos said. He pointed. ‘Back there. Miera saw it too.’

  Claus turned to his daughter. ‘Miera?’

  ‘It’s true,’ she said urgently. ‘I didn’t believe him at first.’

  Suddenly everyone around them was looking back in the direction Varos was pointing. Varos prayed with all his heart, desperate to see the light again.

  Time dragged out. The wind had died down, and now there was complete silence.

  Then the light appeared, a golden orb wavering in the darkness.

  ‘By all the gods,’ Claus said. ‘Everybody, look!’

  ‘You’re a brave man, Kyphos,’ Elmar said. ‘I’ll give you that.’ The old sorcerer shook his head. ‘Surely you know that you’ll never survive the water?’

  ‘I have to try,’ Kyphos said. ‘But yes, I know. I can’t ask anyone else to do it.’

  Kyphos stood on the edge of the ice sheet, staring down at the rushing black water revealed in the glow of Elmar’s sun staff. He had a rope tied around his waist and had removed his thick furs, so that he was standing in his vest and trousers, shivering as he prepared to jump. The wind had dropped, but it was still unbearably cold. The last thing he would do would be to remove his boots. He knew that as soon as the soles of his feet touched the frozen ground, it was going to hurt.

  And then he would have to leap into the water.

  He glanced at the low white cliff on the other side of the channel. The ice sheet had drifted farther, increasing the distance he would need to swim. The opposite cliff wasn’t high, but after the swim it would be difficult to climb with unfeeling fingers and hands that didn’t respond to his command. He would have a hammer at his belt and a wooden stake strapped to his leg. The task was near impossible.

  Kyphos bent and began to take off his boot.

  ‘Look!’ someone cried.

  Kyphos straightened, and his eyes followed the man’s pointing arm. Peering at the opposite bank, he gasped.

  Two children stood at the edge of the cliff, on the opposite side of the channel. They were jumping and shouting, waving their arms, their high-pitched voices carrying across the distance.

  Kyphos and Elmar exchanged glances.

  Kyphos threw his furs back on and furiously untied the rope from his waist as he barked orders. ‘Get this rope ready to throw!’ He tossed the end to the nearest man. ‘Quickly! Tie something to the end. Hurry!’

  The search party leaped into action. Kyphos walked among his men, testing the rope that had already been fastened to an embedded pole and hectoring them as they fastened a second stake to the other end. He got them to take the spare food out of their packs and roared at another group to start a fire with the tinder they’d brought.

  More people on the opposite bank joined the children. With every set of arrivals, Kyphos felt his heart sing. Husbands hugged their wives. Kyphos counted twenty, but then another twenty arrived, followed by a dozen more, and still they kept coming. Soon there were hundreds of them, a great mass of people.

  His people.

  Elmar waved his staff from side to side, giving them no doubt about the identity of their rescuers. Their faces lit up with hope, the people on the opposite bank cupped their hands over their mouths and shouted, but Kyphos couldn’t make out their words. The rescuers smiled and signaled that they were going to throw the rope across the growing gap.

  But despite their smiles, Kyphos knew that his men were thinking the same thing he was.

  The people he’d come to rescue looked like plague victims. Skeletal in appearance, they were skinny, even wrapped in cloth as they were. A few of the younger men stood proud and tall, but these cold bloods were shades of their former selves.

  One of Kyphos’s tallest men swung the stake on the end of the rope three times and then released. The rope sailed across the gap and was caught in the arms of a black-haired man standing with the two children. He pulled the rope until it was as taut as a bow string and then a companion pounded it into the ice with a hammer until it was almost entirely embedded. They tested the tension in the rope and then waved at Kyphos to indicate they were ready.

  Kyphos slapped some of his men on the shoulders. ‘Head over there and help them from the other side,’ he ordered.

  The members of the rescue party were fatigued, but they were well fed and rested compared to the people across the channel. The tracker, Nero, shimmied across the rope, heedless of the fast-flowing water below him, and then climbed onto the ice on the opposite side, where he was hauled to his feet by the cold bloods. A moment later Nero was being patted on the back and had his hand shaken a dozen times. More of Kyphos’s men crossed over to help, and soon t
hey were ready to send the first children back over the water.

  They were frightened, but calls of encouragement from both sides gave them heart. Kyphos was proud of them. Despite their plight, these were his people, cold bloods: as strong as iron, as hard as ice.

  Dozens of children crossed, and with each successful passage the others felt less fear. Then came the women, old and young, followed at last by the men. Some people needed to be carried over, their arms around the neck of someone stronger. Others shimmied over with ease.

  ‘Give them food and clothing!’ Kyphos called. He glanced over his shoulder and saw that his men had a blazing fire going. The newcomers stumbled over to the flames and sank to their knees, hands held out to the warmth, forming a growing circle.

  The group on Kyphos’s side grew larger and larger. He could see some of his men hugging the newcomers as they were reunited with friends and family. He nonetheless stood a little apart on the edge of the ice sheet, watching the last men cross.

  He clenched his jaw.

  The opposite ice sheet was still drifting away. He could see strands of rope near the stake had begun to unravel. Soon the rope would snap.

  ‘Hurry!’ Kyphos called.

  The rescuers all shouted at the last two people to make the attempt. The first, an older man with white hair, made it across the gap without trouble. Then the last, a big, middle-aged man with a beard, grunted as he made his ungainly way over.

  Kyphos watched the rope fray, and then it snapped.

  The man screamed as he plummeted in an instant, dropping into the water with a splash. But Kyphos was ready. He lunged for the rope and grabbed hold of it. It ran through his hands, but he held on tight and began to heave. Nero rushed to help him, and then two more men. Working together, they hauled the big man out of the water.

  Kyphos yanked off the shivering man’s drenched furs and at the same time peeled away his own. He stripped the big man of his vest and then wrapped him in the dry furs, before leading him to the fire.

  Kyphos let out a breath of relief. He felt his throat catch when he realized it was done. The survivors of Necropolis were all looking at him, as were the men of his search party. He saw that they expected him to say something.