Winterheim

6

Four hundred and twelve humans, one elf, and one gully dwarf gathered in the courtyard of Brackenrock. Gray clouds hung low over the fortress, and by the time they were ready to march a steady drizzle had begun to fall. It was hardly the greatest omen for the start of a perilous expedition, and the weather-combined with about four hundred ripping hangovers-cast a pall of gloom over the war party’s departure.

The gates of the fortress had not been repaired since the destructive attack earlier that summer, and the warriors filed through the gaping entrance in no particular order. They carried everything they would need: food, weapons, shelter, a nip or two of warqat for the cold nights. Many more Arktos lined the towers and walls of the fortress, watching in silence as the war party marched away. By the time they had gone a mile, Moreen looked back to see that the citadel had already vanished into the mist and rain.

The soggy weather continued, with drizzle more or less constant over the next ten days. Nevertheless, the war party made good time. Even old Dinekki, who of course had insisted on coming, hobbled along at a brisk pace. Mouse led the way across the Whitemoor, following the same route he had taken two months earlier when he had ambushed the raiding party led by the ogre Broadnose. The long file marched past the ruin of one hamlet after another, the skeletal remains of small huts, no more than a dozen or two for each village, standing as a stark reminder of ogre cruelty. As each little ruin faded into the mist and rain behind them, the Arktos and Highlanders felt anew the hatred of their ancestral foes and the desire for vengeance that had sent them on this mission in the first place.

Even Slyce seemed grim as they passed these sights, the gully dwarf apparently affected more deeply by this devastation than he had been by the accident that had claimed the lives of his comrade and his captain in the submersible boat. Moreen noticed the rotund little fellow sniffled sadly as they passed the muddy remnant of a village, and he looked down and saw the broken pieces of a child’s stick-and-feather doll.

The terrain of the moors undulated gently, the landscape utterly treeless except for a few cedar groves in the most sheltered valleys. Mouse led the band along these streams for the most part, though when swampy marshes blocked the lowlands he took to the rocky ridges. Their bearing remained almost due south, the direction determined by Dinekki’s instinct and confirmed by a nautical compass Kerrick had made from a bit of lodestone.

The months of the midnight sun were drawing to a close-now four or five hours of twilight marked the middle of the night, though even in the cloudy, gray mist it never got truly dark. The short period of dusk seemed to suit the marchers well. They stopped only long enough to stretch out on the driest ground they could find, each person covered by his fur cloak to keep off as much of the rain as possible. Some sipped warqat; others brewed small pots of bitter tea. After a few hours of sleep they rose, ate sparingly from the dried fish, kelp, and trail-bread provisions each warrior carried along, and resumed their march.

Moreen usually fell into step somewhere in the middle of the pack, holding her head up and slogging along among the rest of the Arktos and Highlanders. Most of them were men, and that included of the Highlanders, but several dozen women of the Arktos tribes had eagerly joined the band. Bruni was here of course, as well as several other female veterans of the long march to Brackenrock eight years earlier. Even slender Feathertail, who had been a mere girl then, now carried a bundle of spears lashed to her back and wore the heavy leather tunic that was the traditional-and only-battle armor of her coastal dwelling people.

Every day the chiefwoman regarded them proudly-and guiltily. For all of her life, and the lives of her parents and all of her other ancestors, the humans of Icereach had lived in fear of the ogres, running and hiding, and when possible, trying to defend against their raids and attacks. To reverse that lifelong relationship was like trying to change the very reality of the world in which they lived.

Moreen told herself they were doing something that needed to be done. So what if she had led her small tribe to Brackenrock and held that citadel against two attacks in the last eight years? What did that mean if in the next eight years the ogres were able to attack them two, three-perhaps eight-more times? All she would have done in the end is bought her people some time along a path that would lead to the same inevitable fate. Now, if they entered the ogre capital and brought out Strongwind Whalebone and who knew how many slaves, they might change relations between ogres and humans for the rest of history.

At last the rolling swath of the Whitemoor came to an end. The high tundra was pinched between the rocky shore of the White Bear Sea, and the lofty crest of the Fenriz range, the impassible mountains that formed the east boundary of the long glacier bearing the same name. The warriors gathered on the last height of the moors, looking across a flat valley about two miles across. A shallow river flowed from the mountains through the center of the valley to spill into the sea. Some distance past the valley a rugged ridge, partially visible in the shifting haze, rose across their path.

“This is the Breakstone River,” Mouse explained to Moreen, Kerrick, and Barq One-Tooth. “That ridge beyond is the face of the Tusker Escarpment-maybe ten or twenty miles past the valley. Pretty much everything on the far side of the river is thanoi territory.”

“Do you think the thanoi know we’re coming?” asked the chiefwoman. She was not afraid of the dull-witted though fierce walrus-men, but she was annoyed at the prospect that they stood between her and her goal.

“Hard to say for sure, though I don’t expect so,” said the Arktos warrior. “We haven’t seen any tracks on the moors. Still, I suspect that they’re keeping an eye on this valley-you can see there’s not a lick of cover in the place, so they’re bound to observe us as we head across the river.”

Kerrick squinted at the sky. “It’s almost dusk. Do you want to camp here and go across at first full light?”

“I think we should keep moving,” Moreen said. “The night will provide us with a little concealment-not as much as I’d like-but if we go on now, then they’ll have less time to prepare a reception for us.”

“That’s the right idea,” Barq said, surprising Moreen with a nod of approval. “Go forward right away, and damn the flanks and any poor tuskers who try to stop us!”

The warriors continued onward, following the crest of a gentle ridge as it descended to the flat ground of the valley, then moving forward at a fast pace. Throughout the long column, humans fingered their weapons, nervously eyeing the rise on the far side of the river, wondering if tusked enemies were crouching there, waiting in potential ambush. The twilight deepened, and by the time they drew near to the Breakstone the murky gray of the late summer night had closed around them, masking the heights on both sides.

Moreen soon realized that the bottomland that had looked so flat from the height of the moors was in fact crossed by numerous gullies and washes. These were typically no more than six or eight feet deep, but they were steep sided and muddy in the troughs, forcing Mouse to pick a circuitous route as they drew closer to the actual riverbed. It was midnight by the time they stood at the gravel bank and looked at the channel itself.

The murk had deepened to the point where they could see only about a quarter of a mile ahead, and this seemed to be about the width of the river. For once the sky was clear, and a few stars twinkled in the purple north, away from the direction of the sun lurking just below the southern horizon. Moreen would have been pleased to have some of the dense cloud cover, even the drizzling rain, but as it was they would have to settle for the late summer twilight of the midnight sun.

Much of the riverbed consisted of flat bars of sand and gravel, with strands of gray water rippling between these dry islands in channels of various depth. Some of these courses looked deep and dark, while others trilled over stony shallows.

“I’ve never been across here before,” Mouse admitted. “I don’t know of a good ford, but if we pick our way carefully we should be able to do it without having to swim.”

“Lead on,” Moreen said, confident in the man’s eyes, and judgment.

They found a place where the bank sloped gently down to the shallows and started to wade across. Mouse and Barq One-Tooth went first, with Moreen, Kerrick, and Bruni coming next. Using a long spear, Mouse probed the depth of the water with the butt end of the weapon while the big thane held his great battle axe ready in both hands. The chiefwoman and the elf had their swords drawn, while Bruni held a cudgel at the ready. The head of the Axe of Gonnas, the golden blade shrouded in a leather sack, jutted upward from her backpack, ready in case of emergency.

Cold water spilled over the top of her boots as Moreen followed the two men across the channel. Their guide had chosen well, and for fifty yards they slogged through a flat-bottomed stretch of river that seemed to be free of jagged stones and other obstacles. Shortly they emerged onto one of the sand bars, where Mouse turned upstream and led them along dry ground, following the bend of the dry land to carry them farther across the broad riverbed.

Next they crossed a deeper channel, where the water came up to Moreen’s waist. Here the humans and the elf linked arms, and thus supported by the presence of many comrades, fought through a current that would have swept a lone walker off her feet. Dinekki somehow held her own here, though Slyce was nearly carried away by the water that rose above his head. A big Highlander picked up the gully dwarf by the scruff of his neck and dragged him through the channel. They climbed out onto a wide shelf of gravel, and this they were able to follow past the halfway point of the riverbed to another stretch of shallow water that looked like the last obstacle before the low bank on the far side of the river channel.

“I’d like to spot a good way out of the riverbed before we do the last part of the ford,” Mouse admitted, eyeing the bank with a scowl. “That’s about six or eight feet high, I’m thinking, the perfect place for them to meet us with an ambush.”

“Have the archers string their bows,” Moreen suggested. “That way they can give us some cover if we have to fight our way out of the stream.”

“Good idea,” her guide replied.

About a hundred of the fighters, Arktos and Highlanders both, were armed with the short, double-curved bows of the Icereach hunters. Under the captaincy of Thedric Drake, who looked very martial in a silvery metal helm, they readied their weapons and arrayed themselves on the gravel bar. The rest of the party-Mouse and Barq still in the lead-started across the last stretch of the channel.

Moreen kept her eyes on the flat bank, trying to see through the low tangle of willow bushes lining the crest. Nothing seemed to move there, and as they drew closer she began to hope that the speed of their advance had surprised the tuskers. At the foot of that embankment Mouse held his spear ready while Barq reached over his head, grabbed a handful of willow branches, and started to pull himself up the steep, sandy surface.

Something rustled through the bushes, and Kerrick was the first to shout, “Look out!”

The big Highlander thane cursed and staggered backward as Mouse stabbed into the bushes with his long, steel-tipped spear. Barq, his shoulder slick with blood, where something sharp had chopped through the thane’s heavy cloak, cursed and stumbled, before regaining his balance.

A snarling creature lunged into view, twin tusks jutting from its jowls thrusting like speartips toward the two men. Mouse stabbed again, and the thanoi writhed on the blade of the weapon that pierced its guts. The creature slid down the embankment toward the riverbed, dropping a bloody stone knife. Wielding his battle axe in one hand, Barq chopped down hard, and the walrus-man lay still.

At least a dozen other brutes rose from the brush, hurling spears at the column of humans. One of these missiles flew past Moreen, grazing her ear-and inflaming her temper. She rushed forward, scrambling up the bank with the aid of one hand, while with the other she stabbed her sword into the rustling bushes atop the steep crest.

She shouted a profane curse as something grabbed at her, but she didn’t have enough of a grip to hold her balance. She toppled backward into the water, falling on top of Kerrick. Only then did she realize that the elf had seized her and pulled her away from the enemy.

“What are you doing?” she spat, sitting up in the shallow water, shaking her head to clear the drops of her eyes.

“Get down!” he snarled, his voice harsh.

She opened her mouth to argue, and he reached out with both hands to push her roughly under the water.

This time when she came up she didn’t even try to speak. Instead, she clenched her fist and smashed a blow into the elf’s shoulder. The thanoi were forgotten as she lunged at him, infuriated beyond words-until she realized that he was laughing at her.

“What’s so funny?’ she demanded, surprised enough that her rage dissolved.

“You would have gotten shot by your own archers if you’d made it up that bank,” he said, rubbing his shoulder. He wasn’t laughing any more. “That hurt!”

Startled, she remembered the enemy and whirled around to glare into the brush. Several thanoi were partially visible, slumping forward, arrows jutting from the motionless bodies. There was no sign of the rest of them. Even more telling, the sandy bank, right where she had charged, bristled with feathered shafts. Obviously, the archers had delivered a lethal volley.

“I don’t think we got them all,” Mouse said grimly, “but the ones that weren’t killed ran as soon as the arrows came down. I expect they’ll carry the word to their fellows-I don’t think we’ve seen the last of these tusked bastards, not by a long shot.”

Moreen reached down and groped through the water until she came up with her sword. “Sorry,” she muttered to Kerrick, “and, um, thanks.”

“Any time,” he said breezily. “Thank you, too.”

“For what?”

“For dropping your sword before you swung at me.”

“Oh,” she said. She didn’t feel like explaining to him that at the time she hadn’t realized she’d lost her weapon.

Kerrick walked along the perimeter of the camp, his eyes straining to penetrate the fog that had rolled in before sunrise. Some of the humans were sleeping, shaggy cloaks drawn over them to hold back the damp and penetrating chill. They weren’t going to rest for long, but after nearly twenty-four hours of straight marching fatigue had forced this halt.

The elf, however, wasn’t particularly tired. He had offered to join the first shift of picket duty, some fifty or sixty warriors who remained awake and-like him-patrolled around the outside of the dry hilltop where the war party had made its bivouac. The ground was rougher here than on the moors and climbed steadily toward the Tusker Escarpment, which was still eight or ten miles away. The fog had thickened quickly so that he couldn’t see more than fifty feet in any direction, and he fought a sense of aloneness brought on by the mist.

He tried to focus on his surroundings, but his thoughts naturally turned inward, reflective. How odd it seemed that he, a sailor of civilized Silvanesti, should find himself here, near the very end of the world. An elf among men-that had become his life, and for the most part he had come to accept, even enjoy, that existence. Certainly he had no regrets about coming along on this expedition. There was no place on Krynn that he would rather be than with these brave companions in the service of the chiefwoman of Brackenrock.

The elf kept his eyes open, warily looking across the shrouded landscape. The expedition was camped at the crest of a rounded hill five or six miles south of the Breakstone River. The ground, like everywhere else in this part of the Icereach, was treeless, the last groves straggling out north of the river. The terrain was grassy and green, broken by patches of white, square-edged boulders. Kerrick paid special attention to those rocks, reasoning that if they were being spied upon, the outcrops would offer the perfect concealment to enemy scouts.

Unfortunately, elf eyes were no more sensitive than human when it came to seeing through this kind of murk. The shifting fog seemed to have a life of its own, growing thicker or thinner in the blink of an eye.

Was that something moving? He imagined a leathery, tusked figure crouching down beyond a nearby boulder. Most likely it was a tendril of fog, but he drew his sword and took a few steps down the hill. With a sudden spring, he dashed forward and found only a patch of green moss.

Now he could see even farther down the slope. A shape flitted across the limits of his vision and staring intently he saw more, dull figures hunched over to advance in stealth. Ten, twenty-no, a whole mob of them, more than he could count-were creeping stealthily up the hill.

Quickly the elf retreated, backpedaling toward the crest until once again he saw the comforting shapes of his fellow warriors. He shouted an alarm, bringing the Arktos and Highlanders to their feet-and at the same time provoking roars of attack from the encircling mists below. The human fighters shook off their slumber in an instant, forming a defensive ring around the crest of the hill. Still holding his sword, the elf took his place in the line, standing shoulder to shoulder with Moreen and Bruni, once more prepared to do battle with the enemies of his friends.

The attackers came out of the mist in a wave, at first roaring and barking in the distance like unseen, angry ghosts. As they drew closer, the vague shapes resolved into an army of snarling, bestial thanoi armed with spears, knives, and stone-headed clubs.

The humans met them in time-honored fashion, a resolute line of warriors standing side by side, with nearly half of the force waiting in reserve in the center of the ring. Moreen kept her eyes on a large bull that bore a stout spear and charged directly at her. The creature’s bloodshot eyes glowed with hatred, the grotesque face twisted by an expression of almost maniacal rage. Twin tusks of ivory jutted forward from the brute’s upper jaw, and when it raised its head to utter a loud roar those two prongs drove directly at the chiefwoman’s face.

She held her sword at her waist, her arm bent back like a coiled spring. The thanoi rushed forward with its fellows, sweeping up the hill with surprising speed and grace. As it drew close it sprang, using the spear like a third, lower tusk. Moreen ducked under all three prongs, for once grateful of her short stature. She thrust with the sword and drove forward on her wiry legs, puncturing the beast’s belly and grimacing as a rush of gore warmed her weapon-hand.

The monster howled and twisted, trying to wriggle off the blade, finally collapsing back into the ranks of its fellows. Moreen followed up her success with a slashing blow to the side, slicing the razor edge of steel into the flank of another tusker. By the time that one fell away, the whole line was locked in a howling, thrashing melee. Many on both sides fell in the first crush, but the Highlanders and Arktos held firm. From somewhere she heard Dinekki chanting a prayer praising Chislev Wilder and seeking the blessing of the goddess against their enemies. The chiefwoman took heart from that blessing and felt renewed power as she lifted up her weapon for the next parry and attack.

After slashing, chopping and stabbing for a frenzied minute or two, the wave of brutish attackers staggered then broke backward in the face of this determined resistance.

They did not fall away any great distance. Instead, the tuskers backed up only ten or twenty paces, where they continued to roar and beat their chests with clubs and fists. The din was deafening.

“Archers-give me three volleys! Let them eat your arrows!”

Moreen glanced back, glad to see that Thedric Drake was rallying the bowmen in the middle of the ring of defenders. His metal cap, the only such helm in the war party, stood out like a silver beacon. He strode back and forth, gesturing and shouting. The archers showered the attackers with missiles, and in seconds a score or more of the walrus men fell dead, pierced by the lethal arrows.

It was hard to calculate the odds, but Moreen estimated that the enemy had them outnumbered at least three or four to one. The only hope for the humans was their tight formation-so long as they held their defenses, the walrus men could not bring their greater numbers to bear, but how long could that last?

Once again the tuskers roared forward, hurling themselves with bestial frenzy against the wall of steel and flesh. Bruni cracked the skull of a huge, feathered chieftain, while Kerrick wielded his slender blade with dazzling skill.

The chiefwoman fought against a pair of attackers, brutish creatures who lunged forward in unison, using spears to block her frantic thrusts. She dropped to one knee as a stone blade scratched across her scalp, and when the other raised his spear she saw death staring her right in the face.

Her elf companion would not allow the attack. Knocking aside his own foe with a blow to the head, Kerrick turned and lunged, hacking his sword across the thanoi’s flank, scoring a deep, ghastly wound. The monster howled and staggered away, clutching both hands to its side in a vain effort to contain its spilling entrails. Moreen sprang upward again, stabbing her crimson blade through the guts of the other tusker. Her weapon began to feel like a lead weight, and she wasn’t sure she could lift it again, but fortunately the wave of attackers fell back once more, leaving more than a hundred of their number bleeding and still on the battle-churned field.

She gasped for breath and let her sword tip rest upon the ground, waiting for the next press of attack. Someone tapped her on the shoulder, and she turned to see Thedric Drake.

“We can’t hold like this all day,” said the elder warrior, his face creased by deep lines of worry. He removed his helm to wipe the sweat from his scalp, and she was surprised to see how bald he looked.

“Do you have a better idea?” she asked impatiently.

“Yes-let’s carry the battle to them! Attack, and we might break their morale.”

She looked at Kerrick, who had been listening to the suggestion, and the elf nodded in agreement.

“At least we can push toward the south,” he added. “Make the bastards realize that we’re not running away. If necessary, we can fight our way right up and over the Tusker Escarpment!”

She saw the audacity of the idea, and she also perceived that the thanoi were as tired as her own people. Perhaps a show of resolve was all that would be needed to break their will.

“Let’s go,” she said.

The plan was spread quickly, the thanes, the chiefwoman, and Mouse quickly explaining the idea to all the fighters. Five minutes later Barq One-Tooth raised his axe and uttered a howling battle cry, and the entire formation lurched into motion.

The big Highlander clove his axe right through the skull of a startled thanoi. Warriors to either side of him added their own blows. The tuskers in the path of the advance quickly scattered out of the way, though not before several more fell to the weapons of the angry humans. In a tight formation, a solid ring with the archers and a dwindling supply of reserves in the middle, the war party moved down the hill and along the floor of a valley that took them due south.

A small band of tuskers worked themselves into a frenzy and rushed the front edge of the advancing circle. These were cut down with brutal efficiency, the war party not even breaking step as the humans trudged over the bodies of their enemies. The rest of the walrus men continued to bark and roar, howling on both sides of the ring and surging along at the rear, but they made no further efforts to try and block the advance.

On the flank, Moreen and Kerrick kept their eyes on the enemy as the tuskers remained just out of arrow range. The thanoi kept them surrounded, but the circular formation, bristling with weapons, maintained a steady pace toward the south. For three or four hours they continued on in this fashion, occasionally brushing off the attacks of small groups of thanoi who harried them. The humans did not have to contend with the full weight of the enemy numbers at any one time, though a thousand or more thanoi remained in view on all sides, still raising a constant din. The war party thus followed the course of the valley throughout its length, taking advantage of the smooth floor beside a shallow stream. Finally the march slowed as the formation began to climb the gradual slope toward the headwaters.

“This is the foot of the escarpment,” Mouse declared. “Not as steep as I thought it would be-though the summit looks to be a good cliff.”

“I think I see a pass there,” Kerrick noted. “We might be able to get through it without scaling a precipice.”

Indeed, the stream they were following seemed to issue from a narrow cut in the rocks at the head of the valley, and Moreen wondered if the thanoi would try to make a stand there to prevent the expedition from moving over the escarpment and into the wild lands beyond. Instead, she was surprised to see the attackers fall back even farther as the humans climbed the slope. Finally, as the Arktos and Highlanders drew near to the crest, the thanoi ceased their roaring and stomping. Now the creatures gathered in a long semicircle, an arc around the tail of the formation. They were several hundred yards away, out of range even of the stoutest longbow, and seemed content to allow the war party get away.

The humans drew near to the steep-sided pass that seemed to offer a good route over the Tusker Escarpment. The ring of warriors compressed in order to pass through that gap, smoothly adjusting their formation into a column at the front, while still maintaining a line of defense against attack from the rear. Bruni, Kerrick, and Moreen joined the rearguard, keeping a watchful eye on the brooding thanoi, while Thedric Drake and Barq One-Tooth strode boldly at the front.

Abruply the column came to a halt, and Moreen heard shouts of consternation from the leaders. She turned to look and gaped in awe as a monstrous figure shrugged off a tumble of rocks to rear up into the air, twenty or thirty feet high. It seemed to be a giant insect of some kind, with horrible bulging eyes and a mouth surrounded by a pair of sharp, clicking pincers. An insect easily the size of a whale, it buzzed angrily, taut and menacing.

Barq One Tooth uttered a fierce, ululating war cry and rushed forward with his axe upraised. Other Highlanders shouted too, and Thedric Drake urged them to charge behind Barq. The monster swept a spiked leg before it-it had many such limbs, jutting from a body segmented like a centipede’s-and knocked the big Highlander to the side with a slashing blow.

The horrible head snapped forward and down, a lethal stab followed by a click of those jaws. Thedric Drake shouted one word-“Kradock!” the name of the Highlander god-and vanished into that awful maw. The beast lifted its head again, wriggled through an unmistakable swallowing gesture, and let out a roar of challenge and hunger.

Thedric Drake was gone.