Soldiers of Ice h-7

by David Cook

  "So that's my big break, eh?" the woman deduced, adding a flip of her bangs to give just the right touch of sardonic nonchalance.

  "If it all goes well," Jazrac said with pointed emphasis. Martine realized her flippancy was wasted on the humorless wizard and assumed a serious expression. Still, her earlier nervousness was gone, and she felt the need to celebrate somehow. Wrapping an arm around the older man's waist, she tugged him toward the town before he could resist. "I promise not to fail you. Come on. It looks like snow. You can buy me an ale at the Old Skull and give a toast to my success."

  "For that, I'll have to buy you a bucketful of ale, my eager young tyro," Jazrac protested as he allowed himself to be pulled along. The last summer songbirds scolded loudly at the approaching storm as the two hurried across the fields for the warmth of the thatched-roof inn.

  Over mugs of spiced ale that warmed away the chill, Jazrac outlined the mission in detail. He spoke softly, for there were a few others in the taproom, and Harper business was none of their concern. From his pocket, he produced five stones, polished and smooth. They glittered like ice with blue fire at their cores. "Opals from the south," the wizard explained once he noted Martine's interest. "You'll

  have to set them around the rift like this. I assume it will be a crater." Jazrac spread four of the stones in a circle, deftly tracing the points of a star with his thin fingers, leaving one point empty. "Exactly equal from each other. Don't worry, the stones will glow when they're in the proper position." He nudged the fifth stone into place, and suddenly five points of blue luminescence glittered before Martine's eyes.

  "'That's it?"

  The wizard broke the ring before the tabletop glow could attract the attention of Jhaele or the beet faced Dalesman who sat near the fire. "Not quite." He produced another stone from a separate pouch. "This is the capstone. Touch it to each stone as you put it in place. That activates the seal."

  "Okay," Martine nodded, taking the stone from his fingers. It looked like a fading ember, dull red and pitted, rather than a powerful magical artifact.

  "Be careful. Keep it separate from the others. You don't want an accident triggering the seal while you're traveling." "Is it dangerous?" The woman looked at the stone with new respect as she prudently set it back on the table.

  Jazrac shook his head as he swept the opals into a pouch. "Not very-but an accident would ruin all my work." The words reminded Martine that Jazrac, at least, considered her journey important

  "Another thing. The red stone is a temporary fix. You have to bring it back so I can cast the finishing spells. Be careful not to bang it around too much. It's not as solid as it looks. Once the seal is activated, if the stone breaks, the seal breaks. So be careful and bring it back with you. Understood?"

  Martine nodded. As she took the pouch of opals, the stones rattled softly in her hand. "Sounds clear enough," she added to cover a sudden twinge of nerves. Her first important mission… It seemed simple enough, but she couldn't help but worry whether she was up to it.

  Across the table, Jazrac smiled, his goatee making him look cheerfully fiendish. "Good. Now, I want you to stay in touch with me while you're up there."

  "How?"

  "I'm a wizard, my dear, remember?" the older man chortled, letting a tone of condescension slip back into his voice. He tipped back in his chair. "I'll use my crystal ball. I can't hear you or talk to you, but I can see you through it."

  Martine wasn't sure she liked the idea that Jazrac would be checking up on her. She hastily took a sip of her ale to cover a grimace.

  "I'm not spying on you. If you write a letter, IT be able to read it through the ball. Take this. I'll need an object to focus on, something to track you by." From deeper still in his pocket, Jazrac produced a small dagger. "I know your fondness for knives. All you have to do is pin your letter up with this dagger. That way I can find it with the crystal ball. I have to know what I'm looking for, after all."

  Still uncertain, Martine took the knife and turned it over in her hands. It was a decorative knife with a carved bone handle and a red garnet set in the hilt, but the blade was short, hardly practical. A typical wizard's choice, she noted somewhat contemptuously. "If you insist."

  Her sponsor ignored the reluctance in her voice. 'hat's it, then. How soon can you be ready?" he asked, elbows on the table, leaning forward till the tip of his goatee brushed his tented fingers.

  Martine rolled the knife in her hands, letting the light from the inn's fire play off the blade. "A day or two, I'd guess. Three at the most. It depends on how long it takes me to get supplies. Astriphie's fit and ready for travel." Indeed, her mount was growing restless in the stables.

  "Excellent. The less time wasted, the better. Here's to a safe journey and a successful mission, my dear." With

  tankard raised, Jazrac toasted her success.

  The next day Martine, suffering from a slight hangover, set to work preparing for her departure. Shadowdale wasn't a large city, nor even a border town where outfitters thronged, so it took only the better part of the day to gather all that was needed-flour, salt, jerky, dried fruit, flatbread, sugar, lard, arrowheads, oil, extra bowstrings, needles, thread, and more. She especially wanted soap, since she had no desire to do without the luxury a bath might offer, even in some glacial lake. By nightfall, as she stretched her legs before the fire at the Old Skull, the ranger was relieved to be through haggling with the village's only trader, the irascible Weregund. Her status as a Harper, which it seemed everyone in town knew about, didn't make much of an impression on him, and every purchase had been a battle. Her supplies were finally complete, though, even the soap, and tomorrow she and Astriphie could hit the trail. As she gingerly sipped at her ale, she toyed with Jazrac's little knife, playfully refracting the flames of the fire from its blade.

  "You'll be leaving us tomorrow, then?" Jhaele asked, her hair the bloody color of a hunter's moon in the blazing firelight. Pot in one hand, she offered up a fresh ladle of ale. "Old Weregund told me you were at his place buying supplies."

  Martine nodded, tossing back the dregs of her mug. The innkeeper sloshed another round into Martine's cup. "This one's on the house."

  "Well, thank you, Jhaele." Suddenly flustered by the landlady's kindness, it was the best Martine could manage. "Call it a traveler's blessing. May Tymora's wheel turn in your favor."

  "And may your house know the joy of Lliira's smile," Martine replied. She reluctantly raised her mug to Jhaele, unwilling to get into another night of toasting.

  "Fair enough. Here's to the ladies of luck and joy." She raised her ladle to match Martine's toast. Draining it in a long draught, she wiped the foam from her chin and looked down with a kindly expression at the younger woman, still stretched in the chair. "I'll see that the stableboy has Astriphie fed and ready in the morning. You'd better rest up for tomorrow."

  `"Thank you, Jhaele." The landlady was already leaving as Martine spoke. Left again to herself, Martine settled back into the small firelit cocoon that surrounded her chair. The knife blade resumed its flashing in the light, somehow less playful than before.

  Although she'd only been staying at the inn for a few weeks, Martine hadn't expected the farewells to sting so much. After all, besides Jhaele and Jazrac, there were few people she really knew here. She'd been pointedly avoiding most of the Dalesmen with a Harper's natural instinct for secrecy. Now, slightly tipsy and pleasantly tired, she felt a poignant stab of regret at the prospect of leaving the sleepy little hamlet. The flowing river, the winter-stripped trees, even the cracked, barren slopes of Old Skull seemed somehow homey and comforting. I could live here as well as anywhere else, the Harper thought idly, but she knew she wasn't ready to settle anywhere just yet. I'll be back, she told herself before draining her mug and trundling off to bed.

  The dawn came with Martine feeling ill-rested and anxious. Journeys always do this to me, she noted irritably as she climbed out of bed. She could never sleep soundly the night before a trip, always wakin
g up at hours only marked by their darkness, always jittery with the hopes and the tensions of wanderlust.

  Astriphie's shrill cry from the stable yard got the ranger's sluggish blood moving. It was time to shake off the numbness of town and return to the wilds where she really

  belonged.

  After a quick splash of chill water that passed for a rinse and a struggle with her traveling clothes, Martine clomped down the worn wooden stairs and into the yard. The pale morning sun washed over the cobblestones, the light having yet to reach the full richness of the day.

  Martine was greeted by a harsh birdlike shrill that turned to a whinnying squawk. "Astriphie, keep still!" she shouted as her mount reared back, tossing its head so that it threatened to swing the goggle-eyed stableboy clinging to its halter clean over the yard fence. Astriphie was no ordinary steed, but a hippogriff, with the forequarters an enormous bird and the hindquarters a sturdy horse, the juncture between the two marked by a pair of golden-feathered wings. The beast clicked the bill of its eaglelike head, threatening playfully to snap the stableboy's arm like a dry splinter. The lad trembled, almost dropping the rope in abject terror, not being able to distinguish the hippogriff's playfulness from hunger.

  The Harper hurriedly took the reins, and the boy scrambled to safety behind a stable door. "Astriphie, stop!" Martine commanded, punctuating her words with a quick falconer's whistle as the hippogriff reared up again. A sharp tug brought the creature back down, its front talons scrabbling on the stone while its rear hooves beat out an irritated tattoo. It craned its feathered head around to fix one blinking eye on Martine and then clacked in disapproval until she reached up and stroked the feathers of its massive wings soothingly. The long equine tail flicked against its haunches as if to point out where to scratch next.

  "Good girl, Astriphie," the Harper said softly as she automatically ran her hands over the saddle straps, checking their fittings, making sure her packs and saddlebags were secure. High above the forests was no place to discover a loose girth. Golden-pinioned wings beat the air in a gentle whoomph that swirled a maelstrom of dust and straw. The saddle slipped as the mighty trapezius muscles of the flying beast rippled under the leather seat, but the straps held tight. Satisfied, Martine tossed a coin to the boy. By now he had recovered enough to venture out from behind the door. Martine led Astriphie out into the road and lightly swung into the saddle. The stableboy ran to the fence to watch as the pair trotted, then galloped down the road, until at last, with a muscular heave of its great wings, the hippogriff lifted from the earth and sailed away over the top of the brown-leafed forest.

  All day they flew east, soaring over the forest, the coast of the Moonsea barely in sight to the north. With only the briefest of stops for rest, they pressed on the next day and those that followed, until on the fourth day, they passed the vulture-haunted spires of Hillsfar, then three more to carry them past the streets of Mulmaster tumbling down the mountain slopes, and farther east to where boats could cross the Moonsea to the rocky shores of Vaasa. Here Martine nosed Astriphie northward and piloted the hippogriff over the stormy waters of the Moonsea until they sighted the northern coast, where they rested in a village of fishermen too poor to be suspicious of such a strange traveling pair.

  After a few days of dining on fish while Astriphie took a well-deserved rest, the pair resumed their northerly course, following the trails up passes winding through the mountains that isolated the north. They flew over the northern stretches of Vaasa, where people thought all strangers were Damaran spies, and beyond to the plains of Damara, where villagers spoke in whispers of her supposedly Vaasan looks. Mindful of these animosities and suspicions, Martine kept her questions few and short when she stopped in villages, passing herself off as a merchant's

  agent looking for new markets for her employer.

  By this subterfuge, Martine passed through Damara and found herself at last flying over the snowbound ridge of an isolated valley, the last before the walls of the Great Glacier itself. Samek, it was called, home to a village of gnomes, or so the garrulous frontiersman farther south had claimed. "Be the last outpost afore the wilds," he swore. "Mebbe they can guide you to the glacier, though 'tain't a harderheaded batch than them little folk. Tain't got no trade, an' they put up with no truck at all from outsiders, big folks especially."

  The tracker's gloomy predicition came to mind as the Harper steered Astriphie into a gentle dive that would carry them over the valley's heart. At its widest, Samek was no more than a few miles across, pointed like a narrow slot north and south. The sides of the valley were ringed in by mountains already deeply cloaked in snow, the treeless peaks mottled with frozen white. Tall pines dressed in the dull greens of winter lined their slopes, the dour monotony broken on the higher reaches by cracked outcroppings of collapsed rock. Natural cathedrals to the gods was how Martine thought of these spectacular mountain peaks.

  They swooped lower over the valley, and Martine turned her attention away from the peaks to scan the forests and meadows below, watching for the village. Since the valley was inhabited by gnomes, she didn't expect to see houses, barns, or the patchwork patterns of fields. The little folk didn't build their towns as humans did, she knew from experience. They liked to hide their dwellings in the bases of trees, in hillsides, or among the reeds along the river. Still, she hoped to spot a trace of smoke or a winding trail she could follow.

  In her first two passes over the valley, Martine noticed the meandering track of several game trails, mountain streams reduced to waterfalls of ice, and the grass-tufted snowfields of frozen bogs, but no sign of a village. It was on the third pass, as Astriphie banked into a turn that tilted the saddle to a dizzying angle, that Martine caught sight of a wisp of smoke rising through the thick-growing trees. With a quick series of whistles and a hard pull on the reins, the ranger swung the hippogriff in a broad loop that came to bear straight toward the smoke. Black-green branches flashed beneath her feet as she urged Astriphie lower until her mount's hooves scraped off the branches of the uppermost pines. Martine strained in her saddle to peer over the hippogriff's side while its wings rose and fell in massive beats. Bearing straight on, they closed on the column of smoke that was their guide.

  Flying almost too fast, the pair shot over a small clearing and straight through the rising plume of smoke. Martine instantly noted it had the tang of woodsmoke. Whipping around in her saddle, she caught a glimpse of a cabin and a man on the ground, staring up, with an axe in his hand. Not pausing to consider the consequences, she yanked back on the reins and shouted, "Down, Astriphie! Land."

  The hippogriff plunged toward the nearest clearing, a smooth meadow along the banks of a stream. The beast hit the snow with a running bounce that jarred the ranger in her saddle and engulfed them in a blizzard of white powder. Martine wasted no time unbuckling herself and dropping to the ground, cat footed and ready, her sword already in her hand. "Stay, Astriphie," she commanded, leaving the hippogriff unhobbled just in case something dangerous happened by. The mighty steed flexed its wings contentedly and seemed to chirp back in understanding.

  Once she was into the woods, the snow was far deeper than Martine had expected, and it was with considerable difficulty that she floundered through the heavy drifts. By the time the Harper reached the clearing she had spotted from the air, she was panting and sweat soaked. She didn't

  try to scout out her goal, but stepped through the screen of underbrush boldly and stood in full view of the axeman. At first glance, she guessed the cabin's owner was at home in the woods like herself, a man who chose to live out in the wilds, and so she placed her faith in the usual frontier hospitality.

  The man was standing near a stump where he had been chopping wood. There was a neatly piled stack of waiting logs on one side of him and a jumbled heap on the other. Behind him stood a small cabin built of solid pine logs. A rickety stone chimney clung to one side of the house, and a little shed that looked like a combination storehouse and entrance jutted off t
he front. The substantial walls were broken by one small window, heavily shuttered. The yard around the cabin was cluttered with snow mounded piles of cordwood and what she could only guess were the half-finished projects of every frontiersman.

  Despite the chill, the man wore no coat or gloves, and his tasseled woolen cap was pushed far back on his head. His hair was dun gray and short, cut carelessly so that it cropped out over his ears. Dark stains of sweat marked the heavy smock he wore.

  As Martine stepped out of the woods, he hefted his axe in one hand, and she noted he held it the way a warrior would, rather than a lumberjack. He was a big man and older than Martine. She guessed his age at forty or perhaps fifty, her father's age, at least judging by his graying brown hair and the slightly stiff way he moved. His nose was crooked, as if it had once been broken, and a thick stubble grew on his chin, the look of a man who had few guests. His expression showed no surprise or emotion beyond the wariness that filled his eyes.

  "Greetings," he said with the same hospitable caution she had shown. The stranger's voice was deep, and when he spoke, haggard lines flexed across his face as if his

  weatherbeaten cheeks were unaccustomed to shaping words. "I am Vilheim, son of Balt: " He stopped, offering no more information about himself, although his sharp accent was like those she had heard along the Chessentian coast in the south.

  "My respects to you, sir," Martine offered deferentially, taking care not to move any closer. "I have traveled a long way to see the gnomes of this valley. Do you know of them?"

  The man swung his axe with a casual stroke and sank it into the stump. The sharp chunk of the blow echoed dully through the snowy woods. He spread his hands slightly, as if to show that he was unarmed, though Martine noted he never stepped out of arm's reach of the axe. Again there was a long silence that neither seemed eager to fill.

  "Gnomes, eh?" he finally intoned. "You came here to talk to gnomes. That was you flying overhead, right, Miss…?" "Martine. Of Sembia." She shifted from side to side to keep her feet from freezing inside her boots. "I'm hoping the gnomes will guide me onto the Great Glacier."