‘But …’
‘They will be safe. Perhaps they mean to lead them into the Lether troops! Imagine that, hey?’ Hands tugged at him. He stumbled backwards. The bard’s voice hardened: ‘Do not ruin their gambit! More are coming!’
This shocked him and he took a sharp breath of the frigid air. He jerked a nod. ‘Yes. All right. Yes.’ He turned and started up the gravel. Fisher’s tight grip on his upper arm urged him onward.
Higher up the slope, a wide expanse of dirty white emerged from the clouds. The serpent of ice. Far closer, however, down the wash towards them clattered stick-thin figures in rags and beast armour. Kyle snapped a glance behind: their pursuers were closing.
‘Circle up!’ Cal-Brinn ordered, and the Crimson Guard closed into a tight circle that pushed Kyle, Fisher and Jethiss inside.
Kyle fought to join the line. ‘You will need my blade!’ he shouted to Cal-Brinn.
‘You may yet have the chance,’ the Dal Honese answered grimly.
Their pursuers, further T’lan Imass that had risen behind, reached their circle first. Flint blades swung, meeting Crimson Guard shields in a clash of stone on bronze and iron. Kyle was startled to see the Imass using the flat of their blades upon the guardsmen and women. One of the women fell to a blow from an Imass fist.
Then he realized: they do not want these people … They are after us alone. His back shivered in a sensation that only hunted prey could know. He hefted the white blade, waiting for one to break through.
Next to him, Jethiss, his two hatchets readied, saw his chance and bounded out to join the defence. A blow of one hatchet split the skull of an Imass and shattered the haft of that weapon. He flung it aside. Another thrust for him but Jethiss swung, severing the arm at the shoulder.
Kyle watched this, amazed. Who could do such things to the T’lan Imass?
Then the newcomers from above closed upon them then, washing round the mêlée, and Kyle was further stunned as these Imass assaulted their attackers. Imass fought Imass in a ruthless terrifying whirl of flint swords and hard dry limbs, and then it was done, seemingly in an instant.
Eight standing T’lan Imass stood motionless, regarding them with their eerie empty sockets. One raised an arm of bone and hanging dry flesh to point upslope. ‘Run, now,’ it breathed in a voice like falling sand.
‘Who are you?’ Kyle called, even as Leena tugged at him.
‘We are of the Ifayle. I am Issen Li’gar. I came seeking my sister Shalt Li’gar, gone so very long ago. Now, run. We shall guard.’
Leena pulled Kyle backwards. He wanted to ask much more of this Ifayle, but of course to delay would defeat their purpose. He turned and kicked up the loose gravel as he went.
They pushed their way across a muddy flat of thick grey-green silt. It clung to his leather shoes and smeared all the way up to his knees. He’d served for a time in the Guard, and had heard the stories that the Imass had never attacked them. At the time he’d dismissed such tales as rather too self-promoting. ‘They wouldn’t kill you,’ he panted to Leena, still amazed.
‘They never have.’
‘Why?’
‘I believe they respect us,’ she answered, short of breath as they tramped through the thick mud. ‘Everyone calls us mercenaries, but the truth is we do not fight for money. We have honour, and this is their way of respecting that.’
Kyle thought of the Crimson Guard swordswoman they had picked up from the mud, groggy, spitting blood from the blow across her jaw. The Imass had an odd way of showing their high regard. As daughter of an Iron Legionnaire, Leena might think it was honour. The Legion had probably been esteemed for its noble values, and she had absorbed that. But he did not think such things would impress the Imass. No. There must be some other reason.
Ahead, across the broad gravel wash, now empty of run-off, the valley-wide dirty expanse of the ice-serpent rose ahead. They picked up their pace. A short hurried dash later and they reached the cliff-like leading edge of the nearest lobe, or tongue, of the ice-river. Great caves of sapphire-blue gaped at its base, where, Kyle imagined, rivers of water once flowed.
Something had halted that natural melting process. A few of the Guard, and Jethiss, clambered on to the dirty-grey leading edge and crunched their way up. They beckoned everyone to follow. A glance back revealed what Kyle thought might be thin motionless shapes through the tatters of scudding clouds. He climbed up on to the ice.
* * *
Orman walked blind through the heaviest snowstorm he had ever known. He, Keth and Kasson had strung themselves together with belts. They took turns leading the way. Whoever was at the fore thrust at the ice with Svalthbrul, searching for crevasses hidden beneath the fresh snow cover.
This snowfall was so thick it came up to their knees. A brutal wind lashed them, numbing Orman’s face and finding any gap in his leathers. He reflected sourly how unfair it was that even though he shared Iceblood, he should still feel the damned cold. He supposed that he simply wasn’t immune to it. Occasional quakes, or massive cracking, shook the broad plain of ice beneath them and they rocked, arms out, steadying themselves.
They were making for a strange azure light that glimmered and sizzled far up upon the ice-field. The black clouds seemed to congregate there, licked by sheet lightning. It appeared to be the focus of this massive storm that smothered the entire north. Through passing gaps in the churning overcast layer he caught brief glimpses of the barren rocky peaks of the Salt range above, grey and forbidding.
They pushed against the wind, fighting their way across the ice-plain. Even as they walked, Orman had the definite sensation that it was moving beneath them – crackling and rumbling profoundly as it shifted down slope.
He was walking onward, pushing at the snow ahead, when the deafening howl of the wind faded away and he found himself standing in relative calm, the dense fat snowflakes drifting down nearly straight. He looked to the brothers in wonder. Here all was quiet, though the massive cloud front churned above as it blazed with lightning and flickering mage-fire. Ahead, a figure sat waist-deep in the snow; pillows of it covered his shoulders. Buri. They approached. The snow crunched beneath their feet. Their breath steamed in the chill air.
‘Buri?’ Orman called, hesitantly.
The figure stirred. The head with its great mane and beard of hair as white as the snow lifted. The long almond-shaped eyes flickered open. He smiled and inhaled a long steady breath. ‘Ah, Orman. You have brought Svalthbrul. Good. It will help immensely.’
‘Is it … yours, then?’ he asked.
The smile became wistful, like Vala’s just before she walked into the flames. ‘No. Not mine. It is a weapon taken from the T’lan Imass long ago – your Army of Bone and Dust.’
Orman and the brothers studied its faceted leaf-shaped stone head of deep brown flint, the colour of earth. ‘The enemy? Then … how can it help?’
The smile turned rather savage. ‘You have heard of those who drink the blood of their enemies? Who hope to claim their strength? Well, there is magic there, Orman. Magic the one who first laid this ice barrier used. Magic I too shall exploit.’
‘What must I do?’
The Elder now looked upon him with compassion. ‘Must you ask? Sacrifice must be made – has been made. The old enemy must be forestalled.’
He felt his heart racing in awful panic; he could not breathe. Sacrifice? Jaochim and Yrain? Vala? Who knows how many others? Perhaps even … Jass? He flinched from the man – the Iceblood – sickened. ‘No … never.’
Buri would not release him from his steady gaze.
Orman tried to shift his hands on the cursed weapon but found that they were frozen to the wood haft. ‘I am sorry, Buri. I … cannot. I dare not.’
‘You must. To complete the invocation.’
‘I’ll not kill you the way Lotji slew Jass.’
The Elder blinked heavily, swaying, utterly spent from his efforts. ‘Ah – I see. No, Orman. That had nothing to do with this. If Jass were here now,
I would demand the same of him. But it was fated that he should not be. It is up to you to act that another should not have the blood upon his hands.’ He gestured, weakly, to Keth and Kasson. ‘Would you leave the task to one of your friends?’
‘Of course not!’
‘Then you must do what must be done and take it upon yourself.’
Orman closed his eyes against this Elder’s relentless logic. He hated having to do anything so terrible, so dire. Yet it would be shameful to hand the responsibility, and the consequences, to another. He gave a weak nod of submission.
‘Very good. Through the back, please.’
The Reddin brothers went to stand off at a distance. Orman slowly made his way around behind the cross-legged Elder. ‘I’m sorry …’ he began, but Buri interrupted him.
‘Nay. Do not be sorry. Be glad. I have prepared for this for a long time. You will complete it and for that I am thankful.’ He rested his hands on his knees and straightened his slim bare back.
Orman raised his arms high, Svalthbrul angled downwards. He pressed the tip of the stone blade against the Elder’s back high and to the right of the spine. He intended to thrust downward at an angle through the heart.
Buri remained immobile throughout. He appeared to be gathering himself, and after a time he let out a long breath. He was waiting; still Orman could not bring himself to thrust. Perhaps the Elder understood this and knew what he needed, because he murmured, softly: ‘Now.’
Orman thrust. The spear slid in smoothly to pass through the man’s chest and on to sink into the ice before him. Orman hadn’t intended to strike so deeply but something seemed to yank upon Svalthbrul and demand that the stone blade pierce the ice as well.
Buri remained sitting upright, impaled and affixed to the ice. His head was tilted forward, his long snow-white hair hanging.
Orman wept. Hot wetness stung both cheeks as tears also fell from his ruined eye. He could not be certain but it seemed as if a profound vibration emanated from where Buri sat, expanding in all directions, like an immense stone tossed into a lake. He gritted his teeth and worked to remove his hands from the Imass weapon. Skin tore off in strips as he yanked each free. The blood that came froze swiftly; only a few drops stained the snow at his feet.
He turned to the Reddin brothers. The wetness at his cheeks was now frozen ice as well. He felt oddly numb. All sounds seemed muted. He examined his hands – bloodied. I have blood upon my hands. I am kinslayer now in truth. Uncles from both sides of my line have I slain.
He did not know how much of these thoughts showed upon his face, but the brothers knelt on one knee before him, bowing their heads, just as a hearthguard may to his lord.
If anyone is to be damned, it will be me. I have spared them that. He turned to the south.
Now let us see what we Icebloods have wrought upon the land.
* * *
Bodies, old and new, dotted the mud flats along the shores of the Sea of Gold. They lay amid the remains of broken rickety docks. Silverfox numbly observed to herself: these nuggets are hardly gold. This sea should change its name to something more … appropriate.
She stood on the grassed lip of the shore cliff, peering south to the slate-hued water beneath the overcast sky. She wondered whether she faced this way because she dared not glance east.
What she might see there would make all this appear pleasant.
She felt, rather than heard, Pran Chole take his place at her side. ‘Almost all human, Summoner. I sense no recent fallen who carry the Jaghut taint.’
‘This is supposed to cheer me?’
‘There are … many,’ the Imass allowed. ‘These invaders do not appear to be handling themselves well.’
She stole a glance at the ancient being. She had ordered him to remain behind but he had simply refused to obey. The nearest thing she might claim as a father – and he millennia old. We are a strange family, she mused. He, I, and – she cast a quick look about for Kilava, found her standing far off staring north – and the disappointed aunt.
‘So they fled,’ she sighed, more relieved than she dared con-template. Yet her aged and crooked hands still shook and even she sensed it: fragility. That she was composed of four souls, four awarenesses, made her particularly susceptible to … shattering.
‘They are close. A day’s journey. Gathered together.’
‘Yes, I sense them. A last stand, perhaps.’
Pran Chole added nothing to this, as there was no more to say. The mummified sinew of his joints clung to his bones as if he were strapped together, all animated by the eldritch ritual of Tellann. Most of the dried leather flesh of his face remained, though patches of it had fallen or been worn away. Mostly along the ridges of bone: the sharp edges of the cheekbones, the upper orbits of his empty sockets, or where the flesh had been thinnest, such as across his forehead where the skull peeked through, smooth and polished like old seasoned wood. The skullcap of the ancient deer he wore as a helmet had fared far worse. Grey with age it was, and utterly dried. It would probably weigh next to nothing in her hands. Its muzzle where it rode high above Pran’s head was longish and narrow.
She knew she was drifting … delaying.
‘Summoner,’ Pran began, and he always used this form of address when he wished to be stern with her. She could almost hear him clearing his throat, had he breath to do so. ‘We cannot delay any longer. We must confront them.’
No. We mustn’t. She had made her decision. ‘This time you must remain behind.’
If a desiccated mien of bared grinning teeth could express surprise and dismay, Pran’s features came closest. ‘Summoner …’ his breathless voice whispered. ‘Do not cast us off.’
‘I alone must speak to them. You have brought me this far and for that I thank you. Now you must remain. I’ll won’t—’ She stopped herself. ‘That is, I cannot risk losing any of you.’
‘And what of you?’
‘You know I will be safe. Fetch my horse.’
He inclined his head until the empty sockets of the beast skull seemed to stare at her in direct remonstration. ‘As you order, Summoner,’ he murmured in his sad dry voice.
He shuffled off and she went to talk to Kilava. A cold wind buffeted them all, slicing down out of the mountain heights. The beaded laces of her shirt rattled and her long tangled grey hair tossed about her face. She drew it aside. She sensed something, far in the heights behind the dense cloud cover. But just what it was she couldn’t be certain. Oddly enough, she had no interest in the Jaghut themselves, or their sorcery. Her purpose was not to prosecute the Jaghut; her purpose was to bring an end to the ritual of Tellann. No doubt, however, it was this stirring that had so distracted Kilava these last two days.
She stopped next to the squat muscular woman whose midnight black hair, being even longer than hers, lashed violently in the gusting wind as if reflecting her angry thoughts. She stared north for a time, trying to see what this elder Imass Bonecaster might be seeing.
‘You have not seen a Jaghut refugium before, have you?’ Kilava asked.
She shook her head. ‘I am a child of the warm prairie.’ She might not have seen one, but in response to the Bonecaster’s question there came a cascade of images provided by the three awarenesses that shared her being: Nightchill, crossing one such windswept waste beneath hanging curtains of flickering lights tinged pink at their frills; Tattersail, sailing past gleaming cerulean cliffs of ice far taller than those they glimpsed just to the south; even Bellurdan, sharing a fire with a Jaghut elder within one of these remaining enclaves.
‘I see them through other eyes,’ she said.
Kilava nodded her understanding. ‘What I see troubles me. It has been a long time …’ she glanced to her, ‘an unimaginably long time – but what I sense hidden there reminds me …’ She frowned then, losing whatever memory it was she hunted. ‘Well, perhaps we will have to chase the Kerluhm even there.’
‘I hope it will not come to that.’
The Bonecaster
turned to Pran, Tolb, and the waiting T’lan. Silverfox looked as well. How painfully few this remaining handful, some thirty only. Yet incalculably precious to her.
‘You have hurt Pran’s feelings,’ Kilava observed.
‘They have no feelings.’
Kilava raised one silken black brow. ‘You know that is not so.’
‘Yes,’ she sighed, exhausted. She was just so tired of their company. Their rigidity. Their silence. Their unrelenting … alienness. ‘Yes,’ she sighed again. ‘They feel twice with their spirits what they can no longer feel with their flesh. I know this.’
‘Do not forget it. It is too easy to forget.’
Pran arrived, leading the watered and rested mount. Tolb followed, his withered hands clasped at his ragged belt. ‘We are to remain behind,’ Pran told Kilava.
The Bonecaster eyed him. ‘I see. Yet why should the Kerluhm listen to her now?’
Silverfox stroked the bay’s neck, avoiding her gaze. ‘I’m not going to ask this time.’
‘Then perhaps I should follow at a distance,’ Kilava offered.
Silverfox felt her brows rising. This was a day of days. The legendary Kilava being obliging. ‘There is no need.’ She added, mounting: ‘You would be too far away to intercede in any case.’
But the three Bonecasters were paying her no attention. All three had turned to the north, as had the faces of the rest of the Imass. She glanced that way, shading her eyes. What was it? She sensed there, behind the bunched soot-black clouds, the stirring of Omtose – was that it?
Then she saw it. Through her own Bonecaster’s vision she glimpsed a kind of wave descending the upper slopes. Invisible, yet visible by the disturbance it evoked as it came, like a wave through water. It came on, descending the slopes at astounding speed.
Kilava spun to her. ‘Protect yourself!’ she ordered.
She could only gape. What was this thing?
Then a hammer struck her across the head and she tumbled sideways off the horse to land numb with the shock of it. Pink coloured the swirling visions that assaulted her. She sensed her awarenesses, like survivors lashed to a raft, battling to remain afloat. The most potent of them, Nightchill, appeared to swim before her. Not in ten thousand years have they dared! she snarled, enraged. Bizarrely, behind the cracks widening between her shared essences, came the bellowed joy of Bellurdan as the giant gloried in the unleashed puissance washing over them. Darkness took her then.
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