Dawn of the Ice Bear

by Jeff Mariotte

  When he had settled down, he let out a sigh. “Here we go,” he said. “Pray to whatever gods listen to you that this will be the last leg of our long trek.”

  Donial, sitting in the bow, raised his paddle from the water. “I’m for that!” he said. “Let’s get this done and get back home!”

  Easy for him, Kral thought. He had lost his father, but he still had Alanya, and a home.

  Kral and Tarawa had none of those things. When this was over, Kral would deliver the Teeth back to the Guardian’s cave, where Mang, as clan elder, would take over as the new Guardian. But what then, for him? Stay with Klea at the old village site to protect the cave? Klea was too old to bear children, so if they were to rebuild the Bear Clan, he would need to find another woman. Alanya came to mind. She would never do it, though, never give up Aquilonia and her inherited wealth to live in the forest like a Pict. Tarawa? Not if Donial had anything to say about it. Someone from another clan, then.

  Or no one at all. Perhaps the Bear Clan was meant to be finished, and some other clan would take over protecting the Teeth.

  His mind swam with the possibilities. Nothing he could do about any of it now, though. No firm decisions he could make. He knew only that if he did not find the missing teeth in time, none of it would matter.

  Clearing his mind of the rest, he put his entire being to paddling once more. What waited at the end of it all, none could tell. But he meant to finish it, and to do it soon.

  USAM LED THE Pictish army that went north to attack the settlement the Aquilonians called Tanasul. His scouts told him that Bossonians and Taurans had been heading west to reinforce the settlers, and rumor had it that the Aquilonian army was marching that way. All of these things underscored the importance of speed. Not knowing where the Teeth was, and wanting to drive out the settlers in any event, he was glad that Koronaka had fallen quickly and prayed that the rest of the settlements would be the same.

  The group that went south had a Loon Clan chieftain named Jano at its head. Both parties split their forces, some taking the Black River north or south, others traveling on foot. Two days after completing the fruitless search for the Teeth at the Koronaka site, Usam stood among the trees, looking at the walls of Tanasul. The walls looked sturdy, but so had those at Koronaka. Armored soldiers patrolled the ramparts, without torches, but visible anyway in the pale moonlight. More than there had been at Koronaka, but he had expected that. The assault on Koronaka had taken the settlers by surprise, even though they were the ones who had initially broken the delicate peace that existed in the region. Once that battle had been joined, others would be anticipated.

  Still, he expected the settlers to underestimate just how many Pictish warriors there were, as well as the fire that burned in their guts for victory. This was not just a military campaign; it was a battle for the very survival of his people.

  The ground under Usam’s feet was frozen and crunchy. He did not object to the cold—Picts lived largely outside in every kind of weather. But he was surprised by it for that same reason. He knew what to expect of the weather, month in and month out. He knew it was subject to variation from year to year, but for the most part, it followed certain long-standing patterns. And always, always, winter had been preceded by an autumn of some duration or other.

  Not this year, it seemed. Early autumn had been warm. Then, with what seemed no transitional time at all, it had turned cold. He did not know what it meant, but he didn’t like it.

  The cracking of a downed branch, behind him. Usam spun, raising his newly acquired spear. But it was only Galok, a warrior of the Eagle Clan. He was a broad-shouldered man with short, bandy legs and a deep chest. Eagle feathers dangled from his long, dark hair, bumping into the wolfskin cloak draped over his shoulders. He smiled at Usam, showing uneven yellow teeth. “Usam,” he said as he approached. “Are they ready for us?”

  “They think they are,” Usam said. “But they are mistaken.”

  Galok laughed dryly. “We should have done this years ago. We should never have let them build those settlements in the first place.”

  “Agreed,” Usam said. “But we were not making those decisions, you and I. Our forefathers believed them when they said they wanted to live in peace. Ask the Bear Clan if they meant it.”

  Galok chuckled again. “Which one? Mang, or Klea?”

  Usam smiled briefly, but the loss of an entire clan was nothing to laugh about. Pointing toward the wall, he said, “Many guards on duty, see? They know, because of what happened at Koronaka, that we will attack during the night. They think if they patrol without torches, we will not see them.”

  “Because the senses of civilized men are dulled by the way they live,” Galok surmised. “So they do not understand how much better ours are.”

  “Possibly. In this case, they will be disappointed.”

  “In what way?” Galok asked.

  “They will wait all night for us to attack,” Usam said. “Tiring themselves—their best warriors, who are undoubtedly the ones on the walls tonight. By morning they will decide that we will not come until the sun sets again. Their best warriors will go into their buildings, to their soft beds, possibly after gorging themselves on their rich meals. The weaker ones will take up positions on the walls, knowing they are not in danger from us until dark.”

  “So we will attack at sunrise?” Galok speculated.

  “No,” Usam said with a grin. “We will wait. Let the soldiers who have been on the wall all night get their meals and fall fast asleep. Let their replacements decide that they are in for a long day on the walls, waiting for an attack that never comes. There is no particular reason we have to attack with the rising sun, or the setting one. In the past we have done so, because it functions as a signal that warriors on all sides can see. But now, there are so many of us, we can pass the word, one to the next.”

  Galok laughed once more. “So we attack at midmorning, when they least expect us.”

  “That’s correct,” Usam said. “Spread the word, now. We only want it to be a surprise to their forces, not to ours.”

  Nodding, Galok started to walk away. “I am glad you were made the war leader of our people,” he said. “I hope Jano is as clever, at Thandara. The sooner our lands are rid of these interlopers, the better.”

  16

  SHEHKMI AL NASIR let the fire burn brightly. It was contained within a circle drawn on the stone floor of his inner sanctum—drawn in the blood of a young goat kept specifically for that purpose. Once the fire reached waist height, al Nasir dropped certain powdered herbs into it, making the flames change colors and spit toward the ceiling. Another powder turned them green and gave off a foul, sulphuric odor.

  When he felt the time was right, he doused the whole thing with a handy pail of water. The fire sizzled; thick gray smoke billowed toward the ceiling.

  Perfect.

  He spoke a few words and tossed two handfuls of yet another powder, this one made from the dried venom of a particular species of cobra, into the smoke. A patch of it, where the powder had struck, turned smooth, almost glassy. The gray color dissipated. It had become a kind of window. But instead of a window showing what was on the other side of the room, it showed a scene from what must have been hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away.

  No longer in Stygia, at any rate.

  He saw a dark river, its water almost black in color, which he assumed to be from the gray stone channel it ran in. On that river, he saw a plain brown canoe with four people in it. Only one of those did he recognize. The lovely Tarawa, who had vanished some days back, and who he assumed had been involved in the theft of his Pictish treasure because of the timing of her disappearance.

  Al Nasir smiled. He would reserve a special punishment for her. One that would take days and days, making her beg for the sweet release of death. The others could be killed quickly or slowly, as circumstances dictated. They were common thieves, he supposed, and nothing better could be expected of them. He had been surprised that they
had come in the company of mercenaries, but not that they had abandoned the corpses of their fellows so readily. Mercenaries and that young boy who stank of the sea.

  But they had taken his crown, and so they would be dealt with.

  Not right away, though. They had an apparent goal, a destination. Al Nasir had to assume that they were on the trail of the missing teeth, else they would have taken the crown straight to Kanilla Rey and not gone to the trouble of building themselves a canoe and paddling up a wild river. Unless they were not working for Kanilla Rey after all, as he knew the dead fighting men had been. Or unless they had some way of knowing that the Aquilonian mage had killed himself to avoid al Nasir’s vengeance.

  If they thought they could find the teeth, he was more than happy to let them. If they turned out to be unsuccessful—or if, unlikely as it seemed, he was wrong in his judgment of their course—he would have them killed then.

  In the meantime, he would have to prepare some acolytes for another ocean voyage. This time they would be more wary of failure, he wagered.

  Before he let the image fade away, he listened to it, sniffed it. He could not hear things like conversations, could not smell the odors of river water or unwashed bodies. But he could, nonetheless, collect impressions about the place he observed. When he was satisfied, he waved a hand at the smoke window, and it vanished.

  The Black River, he had decided. Heading north. Into the Pictish lands, no doubt. It made sense—a Pictish crown, and one of those in the boat appeared to be a Pict as well.

  He would, of course, keep an eye on them. But it was a starting point.

  THE SECOND DAY on the river the group encountered the first set of rapids.

  Alanya looked at the water with a worried eye. It had started flowing faster, showing whitecaps. She had seen rapids before, but never from a tiny boat trying to force its way against the current. She didn’t want to sound worried, but she had to know. “Are you sure we can do this, Kral?”

  “Of course,” Kral answered confidently. “This one’s easy. Wait until we reach Dead Elk Narrows. That is where you can worry.”

  “So you have been here before?” Tarawa asked.

  “Not exactly,” Kral said. He had never been inside Zingara’s borders before the Restless Heart dropped them off, and they had not yet passed into the Pictish wilderness. They were well into Zingara now, though past the most populous parts, and had not seen another boat since early morning.

  “Then how do you know?” Donial wondered.

  “I have heard stories of the Black River all my life,” Kral explained. “None of them told of treacherous waters this deep inside Zingara. So I have to believe that this will only be some minor whitewater and nothing terribly difficult to navigate.”

  Alanya’s concern was not completely alleviated by that explanation. Just because no one had told Kral stories of this spot did not mean it wasn’t trouble. How many of his friends or family had ever traveled down the river as far as Zingara, after all? It did not sound like a lot, from things he had said previously.

  So she continued to feel trepidation as the little boat made its way upriver into increasingly turbulent waters. The whitecaps were higher and more frequent now, splashing her inside the canoe. Kral still held his position in the tiny craft’s stern, helping to keep the canoe upright against the rough water, while Tarawa paddled in the bow.

  Within minutes, she could hear a dull roar as the once-placid river turned into a thundering monster. Kral and Tarawa increased the pace of their paddling. The canoe shuddered and shook. Alanya hoped it would hold together, since it had been crafted so quickly. What if it had needed more time to set? They could easily swim to shore, but her mother’s mirror was in a pouch on the canoe’s floor, as was the crown they had traveled so far to claim.

  A surge pushed against the bow, turning the canoe almost sideways in the river. Kral shouted at Tarawa to stop paddling, and he jammed his own paddle in the water and held it firm, slowing the sideways movement. Then he bade Tarawa paddle in a wide, sweeping motion on the canoe’s left side. Working together in this way, they managed to bring the canoe back to its proper orientation. But they had lost momentum, and even though they paddled hard, the craft barely seemed to move forward against the rushing current.

  “Perhaps we should get out and carry it,” Alanya said.

  “Not yet,” Donial countered, apparently speaking for Kral and Tarawa, both too involved in their effort to talk. “We make progress still.”

  She had noticed that Donial had been disagreeing with her more frequently lately. Well, that was not quite accurate, she amended mentally. As a little brother, he had always been somewhat argumentative. If she had said the sky was a lovely shade of blue today, he might have claimed that it was a sinister cerulean, instead. But recently, his disagreements had been over matters of greater substance, and expressed freely, with less emotion attached. Perhaps it was just a function of his growing up or a reaction to the stresses of the journey.

  Or maybe he was showing off for Tarawa. A combination of all three, most likely.

  Still, as the water became choppier, the current yet more forceful, she worried. Kral seemed determined to beat the river. He jammed his paddle into the water, tugged it back, raised it out, and plowed it back in with what looked to her like anger. All she could see of Tarawa was the girl’s back, her shoulders broad, her arms working feverishly, mechanically, as she tried to match Kral’s urgency.

  Finally, they rounded a wooded bend and saw the source of the thunder. A short waterfall. Really, just a collection of massive granite boulders over which the river spilled, dropping about a dozen feet to the lower surface, where it landed with a white crash before continuing downstream.

  “We cannot . . . cannot possibly paddle up that,” Alanya pointed out.

  “You are right,” Kral said, breathing hard with the effort of paddling. “Time to portage.”

  He turned the canoe toward the west bank—it slipped back downriver as they went—and pulled for shore. By the time they reached it, all were soaked to the skin by water splashing up over the gunwales, and the belongings stuffed into the bottom of the canoe were equally wet. At the bank, Tarawa jumped out first, grabbing the bow with both hands and dragging it up onto a pebbled strip of sand. The others followed her out, then removed their various tied-down belongings, shaking the river water from them as best they could. Finally, Donial and Kral lifted the canoe and turned it over to dump out the water that had collected inside.

  Kral seemed almost reluctant to set the canoe back down on the ground. “I know time is important,” Alanya said. “But we really should rest for a short while, shouldn’t we? It will do us no good to kill ourselves with exhaustion before we get to Cimmeria.”

  Kral relented unhappily. “I suppose you’re right,” he said, lowering himself to a fallen tree. “But only a short break. I fear that time is running out even as we travel. I could not tell you why I feel that way . . . but I do.”

  “Every mile we put between us and Stygia makes me happy,” Tarawa said. “The quicker the better, for me.”

  “I know,” Alanya replied. “For me, too. I do not mean to nag, but you are both working so hard. When we get back in the river it’s my turn to paddle for a while. Me and Donial.”

  “That’s right,” Donial added. “We have watched you two workhorses long enough.”

  Tarawa laughed and flashed her brilliant smile his way. “So I look like a horse to you?”

  “Not at all,” Donial backtracked. “You look . . . like a lovely girl who has just come out of the bath. With her clothing on.”

  “Would you have it any other way?” Tarawa teased.

  “Perhaps not here in front of the others,” Donial suggested with a wicked grin. “But in private . . .”

  “In private you’d see just what you do now,” Tarawa assured him.

  Alanya wondered if she meant it. Their banter was definitely flirtatious. But Tarawa had probably had enough of the
touch of men for a while, if not for a lifetime, judging from what little she had said about her service to al Nasir.

  Kral smiled at their exchange, then nodded his assent to Alanya’s suggestion. “Very well,” he agreed wearily. “You two take over on the other side.” He closed his eyes and relaxed his limbs for a while. Alanya shivered from the soaking she had taken, and the cold air on her flesh as it dried. But she knew the chore of hauling the canoe and all their belongings through the woods and up the slope, to get around the boulders obstructing the river, would warm her back up again. After that, the effort of paddling the boat would likely keep her that way.

  She closed her own eyes. Her muscles, she realized, were bunched up and tense from the encounter with the falls. She didn’t feel like sleeping, but she wanted to relax them before they got under way again. The day was far from over, and they had miles yet to go.

  17

  SHARZEN SAT IN Pulliam’s office, waiting.

  Waiting.

  The governor of Tanasul had been hospitable enough. Sharzen’s belly was full, he had wine or mead when he wanted it, and he had been offered his choice of several women with whom to while away the hours. The office was kept warm by a steady fire, and the two couches in there were comfortable. Pulliam himself was out at the moment, checking on the troops, but when he was around his conversation was interesting and wide-ranging. Every day, reinforcements arrived—not the promised Aquilonian army, but Gundermen, Poitainians, Bossonians, Taurans, and the like, coming singly or in pairs or in small groups. Coming to offer their swords against the battle they all knew was coming. Even the rest of the group from Koronaka—about half the size of the original group, he noted sadly—had shown up.