Andre Norton - The Warding of Witch World

Odanki pushed with spear point. There was a ping and a splinter flashed upward.

“Solid ice,” he commented. To Simond’s surprise the Latt sat down on the edge of this threat of dangerous footing and burrowed into the pack he carried slung over one shoulder.

What he brought out might have been chipped from the same great horns as the ones they had discovered. And he fit curved frames, one over each trail boot, testing several times each fastening. When he stood again he rocked awkwardly from foot to foot and then deliberately stepped down upon that glassy surface, using his spear to steady himself.

He moved out a space and then curved back, nodding to Simond as he came.

“I go across.” He indicated the far side of that ice lake. “Have no runners for you.”

Before Simond could protest, Odanki did head out from the shore, slipping along on the ice, apparently well satisfied with his method of progress, leaving the Estcarpian fuming behind.

But there was nothing Simond could do. The Latt was plainly used in his own land to such odds and was ready for them. However, Simond had no intention of returning alone to camp, his part of their scout having ended so abruptly. Why had the Latt not shared from the beginning these aids? Or else they were so common to his people that he had thought Simond already knew of them.

The Estcarpian watched carefully the Latt’s progress until suddenly he became aware of something else. Though the ice seemed clear when looked down upon, it was opaque beneath the surface and seemed solid. Only Odanki’s shadow, pale in this thin sunlight, stretched in the opposite direction. However, now there was a vague trace of movement beneath him under that ice.

Since here certainly the unknown was to be feared, Simond shouted. When Odanki turned his head to look back toward him, the Estcarpian waved vigorously, first to that half-hidden movement in the ice and then for the other to return.

Only his warning was a fraction too late. Suddenly the Latt floundered. Around him spread a patch of fast-melting ice. He was fighting for footing as might one who had been caught in quicksand. He cried out in a shout which held both pain and fear.

Simond measured the distance between the shore and where the hunter struggled. Though Odanki floundered and fought, that space of melting ice had slowed in enlarging. Simond threw a twist of rope about a rock and pushed off away from the shore.

By great effort the Latt had reached the edge of that melting ice, wedging his spear across that point from side to side. But he shrieked—not fear now, but pain.

Simond teetered forward on the ice, hoping that the sand and gravel frozen into the soles of his thick boots would give him some steadiness. Small and slight though he might seem, his Tor blood gave him a strength of arm and shoulder which might equal, if not better, Odanki’s.

Somehow the Estcarpian was able to fight his way toward the Latt, though what had attacked the latter remained well hidden under the ice shield. Simond knotted the other end of the rope into a loop. The Latt cried out and raised an arm to wave him back, but Simond was able to throw that circle over the upheld arm.

Then he dropped to his hands and knees and turned his back on the hunter, beginning to crawl for the shore, taking the strain of the other’s weight on his shoulders. Always he looked beneath him for any shadow moving under the ice.

There was a sudden loosening of the strain, and, holding fiercely to the rope, he dared to look back. The Latt had somehow clambered out of the ice mush and was using both arms to propel himself in a frantic slide toward Simond.

After breathless moments they crawled out on the shore, Simond jerking Odanki with him. For the larger man had suddenly gone limp. Simond looked down the length of the Latts body.

There was torn hide clothing, there was blood—and a trio of things which brought bile up into Simond’s throat. He beat at them as they still held to their prey, for Odanki could only feebly raise his hands now, smashing them against the firm ground.

One had dug itself so deeply into its intended feast that Simond had to grab it with one hand and slash with a knife he held in the other—only to cry out himself as the body he stubbornly held until it was free of the Latt’s leg was like a branding iron laid across his own flesh. The things were soft and pink, with wedge-shaped heads which flamed into fire-red and were nearly the length of an arrow. Luckily their removal into the outer air apparently seemed to weaken them, and Simond was able to kill the last and let the burning body fall.

That things of such heat could lair in the ice was like another form of Power and certainly one he could not understand. He worked over Odanki quickly, stanching the bleeding bites, while the other lay his arm flung across his eyes as if he could not bring himself to look upon Simond’s work.

There were bites, and torn flesh, but the Estcarpian applied the powders and pads each of them carried for emergencies. Then he urged Odanki to chew a twist of root which he knew was a painkiller.

That there might be venom in those bites worried Simond. And he was not sure he could get Odanki back to camp on his own. At length he dragged the Latt as far from the edge of the ice lake as he could and covered him with handfuls of earth to keep him warm.

Before Simond left to summon help, he went back to view the inhabitants of the lake. Their brilliant color was fading fast now as their broken bodies cooled. But they were still repulsive—like great worms. They carried the fringes of many small legs on either side, and the open mouths of those horny wedge-shaped heads were well equipped with double rows of teeth.

When Simond returned with Stymir and Joul to aid the Latt, Odanki insisted that he would walk with help, and he did. Simond supposed it was the Latt’s horror of the very nature of his enemies which had added earlier to the loss of blood to weaken him.

Both the Sulcars had inspected the bodies with open astonishment, being forced to believe that Simond and Odanki were right: the creatures could generate such heat in their bodies that they could melt the ice and so trap prey they could probably see as shadows on the surface above them. Even after lying dead in the cool air, those flame-hot wedge heads still held a good degree of heat.

“Do they live in the mud?” Simond wondered. “But then why hunt prey in the ice?”

Stymir laughed grimly. “You can ask many whys for things one comes across traveling, Lord Simond. This is another freak of nature.

“Not something sent?” Simond wondered.

“I think not. Come, let us get our comrade back to those who have healing Power.”

As they passed the horned skull, Odanki made them promise that that also would be retrieved. Stymir tested the strength of the horns and then agreed. “Such are good tools upon occasion,” he told Simond. “It will do no harm for us to see what can be done with this pair, especially since he may be in camp for some time.” He gave a meaningful glance toward the hunter.

When Simond returned to camp for the second time, he looked around for Trusla, surprised that she was not in sight. Joul mentioned that with the shaman and her familiar his wife had gone to hunt Audha, who had disappeared. He would immediately have set out on their trail—perhaps ice worms were not the only strange perils to be met with—but Frost stopped him.

She looked very gaunt and drawn, and he was sure that she had been using some Powers, so that a thrust of fear went through him.

“Listen.” She kept him both silent and pinned with her eyes, so that he could not leave her. “They have broken the secret lockings—Hilarion and those of Lormt. I have it here.” She touched not her jewel but her forehead. “But lest something happen to me, the secret must now be shared. The shaman is gone, as is Trusla—both having talents. The Sulcars—they had never been able to use any Power unless it deals directly with the sea. Therefore…”