by Ben Galley
All across the ice fields and beyond, in the crags of the black Tausenbar Mountains and those beyond, in the scattered copses and frozen deep of the sea beneath, all manner of creatures stirred. Some crawled, dripping from their shells. Some began to pull themselves from their own graves. Some peeled themselves from the rocks, tasting the grit on their tongues and granite lips. Others felt their hackles rise, and felt their fur tingle. The rest weren’t animal enough to mention.
All who heard it rose, and began to head north. The sides could be decided on the way.
Chapter 21
“The wild vampyre is a skittish beast, one that doth require the company of a pack, or a coven, for any hint of boldness! Watch ye for pale skin and raking nails, and the pointed ears which betray its nature. Travel only by sunlight in coven territory! Beware the fangs, tipped with a horrid poison. To be bitten is to be cursed, and should you survive the feeding, you shalt find yourself a beast, no longer a man!”
From “Death and all her Beasts” by Master Wird, an old-fashioned and rather outlandish account of Emaneska’s creatures, first published in 504. Master Wird was a secretive fellow, a farmer by trade. He fell into writing by accident after he sent a letter to the magick council detailing the apparent existence of the so-called ‘Weregoat’ of the Össfen Mountains.
Farden awoke with a start.
Something was smothering him, trying to drown him in something wet and icy cold. Farden reached out and felt only asphyxiating cloth, heavy and dark. He could breathe, so he wasn’t drowning, no, not yet, but he still couldn’t get up. The darkness was bearing down on him, pressing down. He groped for air and found something hard and rough instead.
That was until somebody ripped it away.
Farden blinked in the sudden sunlight, finding the dark shape of Roiks staring down at him. ‘Gods, you’re an ugly one in the mornings,’ he said. ‘That’s why we have private cabins, mage. Now stop floundering in your own tent and rise an’ shine.’
Farden lay on his back like an overturned tortoise, gawping at the mid-morning sunlight. Reality blinded him along with the sunlight. He lifted his head and found a dark green, waxy tarpaulin half-covering him, heavy with the snow that had fallen in the night. Heavy and dark. Farden ran a hand through his wet hair and sighed. Just a tent, fallen in under its own weight.
Breakfast was some salted meat from the Waveblade’s larders and a barrel of fish the snowmads had caught. They liked their fish half-smoked and stored in seal blubber. The smell of it bubbling and spitting in the iron pans of the column was enough to bring a man back from the dead. It dragged Farden to his feet in seconds.
He was surprised to hear the sound of whetstones sliding across steel accompanying the rattle of pans and the murmur of morning conversation. Roiks explained for him. ‘Seems that everyone had a bad dream or two last night. A strange wind howled in the night. Or, might’ve been the cold. Might be somethin’ else. Either way it’s got ‘em all on an edge.’
Farden sat down beside the campfire and grabbed a slice of bread and some of the oily, smoky fish. It was music to his stomach. ‘It’s a good thing. We’re in dangerous waters now, after all,’ he said.
Roiks grinned. There was a fish bone stuck in his teeth. ‘Hark at ye, mage, sounding like a right sailor. You’ll be cursing on Njord’s balls before the sun goes down.’
Farden ate in silence while Roiks licked his plate clean. It wasn’t long before the bosun was stoking the little fire up, trying to coax some warmth out of it. It was tough going, in the frigid northern air. ‘So,’ he said, conversationally. ‘What’s all this I hear about you going to rescue a soul or two, then?’
Farden paused, his fish half in, half out of his mouth. Roiks tapped his nose. ‘Sailors talk, mage. More than women, they say. Gods know what women sailors are like. Have to ask Lerel, when she’s up an’ awake.’
‘So everybody knows?’
‘Not everybody, mage. Just a handful. Hundred or so,’ he smirked.
‘For f…’
‘Are you really goin’ to do it?’
‘Yes,’ said Farden, without hesitation.
‘Then you’re a braver man than I, Farden,’ Roiks said. ‘I leave the other side to the other side. Don’t do to go messin’ with souls and gods and all that.’
Farden couldn’t help but notice how ironic Roiks’ words were, with Heimdall sitting no more than a stone’s throw away. He was probably listening. ‘I never used to be,’ he said.
‘What changed?’
Farden gazed into the spitting pan. ‘The old me was lost for a long, long time. Very lost, in the darkest places he could find. Then the old me died. I came back in his stead. Then I made a promise. Now I’m here.’
‘Sounds simple enough,’ Roiks said, unfazed by the vagueness of it all. ‘An’ I hear other rumours too.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘About the girl you’re huntin’. It’s your daughter ain’t it? That’s what the talk is. But that can’t be true, I told myself, but then I remembered you at the table, that night before Hjaussfen, when…’
Farden cut him off. ‘It’s true, Roiks.’
The bosun sighed, eyes wide. ‘Well, Njord’s ballsack, what a pickle you’re in, mage.’
Farden had never heard it put quite like that, but he had to agree. ‘I am that.’
Roiks shook his head. ‘I didn’t think it were actually possible. Not after what you already been through. From the stories I ‘ear about you, you’ve had quite a run o’ bad luck, Farden. Not fair, if you ask me. If I were you I’d be still sat in Krauslung harbour, with me arms crossed, yelling I’m not going. Takes a man to make a promise. Takes even more of a man to hunt down his own daughter for the good o’ the world.’
Farden nodded. The simple honesty of the bosun’s words was almost as refreshing as the air. He didn’t know what to say apart from, ‘It’s not over yet.’
Roiks nodded, and was silent for a time. He kept tapping the handle of the pan, making a strange sort of music between that and the silence. Then he piped up, and said something that Farden hadn’t heard in a long time. ‘Thank you, Farden,’ he said solemnly.
Farden was more than a little overwhelmed. He struggled to swallow his mouthful of smoked fish, and then mumbled a quick, ‘You’re welcome,’ before the moment got too long.
‘Well,’ said Roiks, slapping his knees. ‘We’re leavin’ with those snowmad types soon, accordin’ to that big Siren of yours. Better get packing I s’pose.’
‘Mmm,’ said Farden. He was still a little bit bewildered. He just kept eating, and tried to ignore the feeling of Heimdall’s eyes upon him.
‘Don’t think I’ve ever travelled by mole before,’ said Lerel.
‘I think you would know if you had,’ Loki snidely remarked.
Roiks was sitting in the front of another nearby sled. ‘Ain’t there one missin’ on yours?’ he said, counting the moles of his sled, then theirs. ‘Yep, one short.’
Lerel waved a hand at him. She nodded to one of the snowmads, who was kicking at the ice, head bowed low. ‘Shh. The man’s distraught. One escaped in the night.’
Farden strode up, and quickly hoisted himself aboard the sled. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Time waits for no mage.’ The inside of the sled was strewn with warm seal-fur blankets and a myriad of pots and pans and other cookware. It was surprisingly warm, under its fur canopy.
‘Except a dead mage,’ said Loki.
Farden glowered. ‘And you’re sure there isn’t another sled free, Loki?’
Loki quickly climbed the steps before anybody could object. ‘What an abject shame for me that there isn’t.’
‘The shame is all yours,’ Farden hissed. Lerel made a confused face, and decided to ride up front.
With the crack of whips and the frantic rattling noise of mole-claws on the ice, the sleds jerked forward at a surprising rate, far faster than any trudging could accomplish. Unfortunately, they were limited in their speed; there was not enough roo
m in the sleds for all of the column, so the majority still had to walk. The sled drivers kept it slow to allow them to keep up.
Their sled was second from the front. Farden sat next to Lerel for most of the morning, talking through the years of her life that he had missed, and idly dodging the subject of his own years. Every now and again, Loki would throw in a sly or sarcastic comment, and was rewarded with icy stares from Farden. Lerel was polite. She knew what he was, and didn’t dare share the same disdain for him. She kept it deep inside instead.
It was about midday when Farden finally snapped.
The mage whirled around, infuriated by yet another snide comment. ‘Why are you even here, Loki? What purpose exactly are you serving?’
Loki smirked and looked away, meeting the disapproving eyes of Heimdall in the sled behind. ‘Our reasons are not the business of mortals,’ he sighed, aloofly.
Farden began to clamber into the back of the sled, but Lerel held him back. ‘How about I make it my business?’ he threatened.
‘Calm yourself, Farden. You should be conserving your strength.’
Farden spat at him, and Loki wiped the front of his coat.
Lerel was wide-eyed. The man was a god, after all, no matter how annoying. ‘There’s no love lost between you two, is there?’ she whispered, as quietly as she could. The rattling of the sled and scuttling of the moles drowned out most of her voice. ‘Come sit down.’
‘None,’ muttered Farden. ‘As far as I am concerned, he was brought to this earth simply to piss me off.’
‘Maybe you’ve just answered your own question,’ she suggested.
Farden shook his head. ‘No. There’s more to him than just being infuriating.’
‘Maybe he’s goading you for a reason. Trying to bring the magick out of you.
Farden shook his head.
‘Then maybe he’s heard the stories of the old Farden.’
‘He met him already. And I think the new Farden is still very likely to slit his throat. If he asked.’
Lerel raised an eyebrow. ‘There’s a story in there somewhere.’
Farden shook his head, managing to smile ever-so-slightly. ‘And it’s not for you,’ he said, awkwardly patting her knee. He didn’t know why he made that gesture, but for some reason he did. Lerel didn’t seem to mind. She caught his hand and traced the metal lines of the gauntlet for a moment, testing the limpness of its missing finger before letting it go. She looked up and sighed at the white wastes spread out before them. In the distance, something resembling a snow-trapped forest had appeared, and was growing bigger by the hour.
‘It feels like we’re getting nowhere fast on these ice fields. It reminds me of the dune seas of Paraia.’
‘The calm before the storm,’ replied Farden, and it truly was. It was the itching period between clouds. The insecurity. The trepidation. The preparation. The worry. Farden felt it all. He pushed it all deep inside his mind where he wouldn’t have to think about it, at least for now. Fortunately, it was something he was very good at. His stubbornness had been put to good use.
Lerel ventured a new line of conversation, the one she had been building up to for at least an hour. ‘You’re really going to do it, aren’t you? Going to drag Elessi back from the other side.’
Farden rubbed his eyes, chuckling dryly to himself. ‘Roiks has been talking again, I take it? Or was it somebody else? Maybe it was you who talked to Roiks in the first place…’
‘So, why are you putting it off?’
Farden pursed his frozen lips. ‘I’m not, and I’m struggling to see why everybody thinks I am. We’re heading north this very moment, are we not?’
‘Strange, to go by sled, when there’s a gryphon,’ muttered Loki, eyes shut, head leaning against the canvas of the sled. ‘I thought this was a race?’
‘Shut it,’ Farden warned him.
Loki rubbed his palms together, as if he were the god of sarcasm himself. ‘I am as eager as you are, Farden. You just tell me when, and we’ll go,’ he said. ‘It will be like old times, back in Albion.
Farden turned around to glare at him. ‘What makes you think you’re coming with me?’ he demanded.
‘Aside from one questionable dream, one dalliance with the other side, you have no knowledge of where you’re actually going, do you?’ Loki asked smugly, outlining his ploy, like a glittering hand in a game of cards.
Farden could see what the god was angling for. ‘And you do, I take it.’
‘More than you. I know of the ship. The bridge. You did know about the bridge, didn’t you?’
Farden’s frown couldn’t have got any deeper if it tried. ‘So that’s it, is it? Your grand purpose? Guide of the underworld.’
‘I could think of worse callings.’
‘I’d rather take Heimdall. Shit, I’d rather go by myself.’
‘By all means. Suit yourself. We’ll see what he says,’ Loki said, already on his feet. He nimbly hopped to the back of the sled and jumped to the snow. In the blink of an eye, he was sitting in the sled behind and talking earnestly to Heimdall.
Farden clenched a red-gold fist. ‘That bastard. If only he weren’t a shadow, I could drive something sharp and ugly through him.’
Lerel’s tone was scolding. ‘He’s a god, Farden. You should still show some respect.’
‘I don’t show respect to liars,’ replied the mage, shaking his head resolutely.
‘He lied to get you back to Krauslung, or so I heard. Wasn’t that a good thing?’
‘Maybe,’ Farden said, instantly wincing. ‘I mean, yes. It was. Is. Loki just enjoyed it too much for my liking. That god is not like the others. He’s too… human.’ And he stared back at the sled behind, catching the subtlest of subtle glances from Loki as he talked and gestured wildly at Heimdall, while the other god listened, and, irritatingly, seem to be nodding soberly. Why was Loki so excited, all of a sudden? Farden thought to himself. Lerel was still waiting for him to finish. ‘I trust him as far as I could throw him. And I can’t throw shadows very far.’
‘Haven’t you got enough enemies? What with Saker, the daemons, and your daughter, I would have thought you’d had your fill.’
‘And what better time than now to come crawling out of the woodwork. Even those we don’t yet know about.’
‘He’s a god, Farden. A god.’
‘And as they say, they’re not perfect.’
Lerel didn’t respond. She simply reached out a hand, rough from the ropes of the ‘Blade, and rested it in one of his gauntlets. Farden didn’t quite know what to do, so he just stayed still and enjoyed it, listening to the rattling of the sleds, the crackling of the ice, and the snuffling of the odd moles.
Evening fell a rosy pink on the ice. They had almost reached the frozen copse, its tall skinny pines all clad in white and permanent armour of frozen snow, from tip to root. It made them look like a phalanx of faceless knights, silent and dangerous. Frozen rubble poked out from the snow, here and there, dead pennants hanging stiff from forgotten flagpoles. The bones of a long-gone kingdom.
As the tired moles began to slacken in their harnesses, the snowmads reined them in and pulled the sleds into a long line that faced the faraway tree-line, like the shields of a brave little barricade. Farden couldn’t help but notice the imagery.
There was one thing he wasn’t noticing, however, and that was the magick that all the mages were a-whisper about.
‘Bah,’ was all he could say, as he strolled up and down the line of sleds to work some heat back into his feet. Loki’s badgering had already put him in a foul mood, and now this. ‘Bah,’ he said again, watching the steam billow out of his mouth. Let them whisper.
Apparently one of the Written had singed his tunic, his Book had been burning so bright. Tyrfing had been shaking all day, and not from his fever. Every mile they crept towards the north, towards the giant black mountains on the horizon, the more the magick bit them, the more it ran through their bodies. The more it made the air shiver and the ice g
low.
To all of them but Farden.
Even some of the sailors were feeling it. Farden could hear their laughter behind him. He knew exactly what they were up to. Holding their fingers in the fire of a torch and watching the flames slide harmlessly across their hands. Like children and a box of mud-worms. Amateurs. Lucky. Bloody. Amateurs.
Farden put a bit more anger into his step, and began to stamp his feet instead of placing them. A horrible doubt had appeared in his mind, one that spoke of a legacy of his years of nevermar. A lingering idea of poison, and the terrifying word “permanent” had crept into his mind. It had been different in Albion and Krauslung. His magick had bee the root of his problems. But now that he had decided that he needed it, now that it was needed in the fight to fix those problems, he had finally been granted his wish: to have it banished.
Farden stretched out his hands to the snow lying trodden and trampled around his boot-prints. He stretched his hands out like he used to, fingers slightly bent and clawed. Rigid and tense. He tried to suck the magick from the base of his skull, where he hoped it still lingered. He tried to remember the little room in Krauslung, and his anger. But all that came was a sharp pain and a numb hand.
Farden wiggled his fingers. ‘Screw it,’ he said. He needed a drink to drown his mood.
‘Cheers!’ yelled the entire tent as the mage ducked under its sealskin flap. Farden just smiled weakly at them all, and they drank anyway. One of the Written handed him a cup of something clear and steaming. Worryingly, it had a slight yellowish hue to it. Farden didn’t even want to sniff it.
‘Er…’ he began.
‘Glassmelt,’ said the mage, clanking his cup off Farden’s with a smile. ‘Snowmad’s own recipe.’
‘They have been making it since the sun refused to come up. We should count ourselves lucky. It is not for outsiders,’ rumbled Eyrum from the bar, if it could really be called that. It was a crate barely covered by a cloth, with a three-legged mole curled up around its corner, snoring softly.
