Douglas Niles - The Messenger

“Release her!” demanded Moreen, stepping forward, brandishing the elven sword.

“The kitten has teeth?” chuckled the king. He nodded at the blade. “A fine bit of silver steel for a beachcombing barbarian!” He lifted his own weapon, which was a massive sword held in both strong hands.

Kerrick saw Moreen grow tense, ready to attack, and he quickly stepped to her side. “He’ll kill you!” he whispered. “Is that what you want?”

“Let the girl go-for now,” Strongwind said. Her captor released her and Feathertail sprinted over to the warriors. Bruni scooped her up and held her close. The big woman made a soft, soothing noise, but her eyes as they looked over the girl’s shoulder were flat, dark, and angry.

The king continued, “Chiefwoman of the Arktos, I have a thousand warriors here, and you are defenseless. We claim this cave and all its squatters in the name of Guilderglow!”

Moreen drew a hiss of breath. More and more of the Highlanders pressed in, moving back along both walls of the cave, hundreds of them here now. Clearly there was no hope of resisting. Strongwind Whalebone swaggered forward, sheathing his blade, then snatching the sword from Moreen’s hand with a swipe of his gloved fist.

“You Arktos are my prisoners. We claim your weapons and your food. You will remain here, under the guard of my warriors, while I decide what to do with you.” He glared at Moreen, his eyes running up and down her body as if he inspected a haunch of meat for purchase. “I will think a while, before I decide.”

The sun pushed its nose hesitantly over the horizon, each day lingering a little bit longer at the place called Icereach, where for a quarter of the year wind and snow and ice and cold had shut the world in darkness. Drifts shimmered and swelled across flat landscapes, while mountains and ridges were draped in vast cascades of white. Avalanches regularly tumbled down the long slopes, carrying rock and ice in crushing waves.

With each fleeting exposure to warmth and light, a small part of that snowy blanket shifted. Drifts softened, valleys began to trickle, streams flowing beneath the snow each day grew more vigorous. The wind still scoured across the lifeless world, but now, for a short time each day, that wind bore a hint of moisture and warmth. The winds of darkness were still killing and cold, but they were more tentative, lasting less long, than the gales that had raked the land for the past three months.

Now, at the base of Winterheim, Grimwar Bane gathered his ogre army and his dwarven adviser in the small hours before the next glimpse of that precious sun. Beside him was his wife, in her black obsidian mask. In her hands she bore the long-hafted and gold-bladed Axe of Gonnas, the most hallowed artifact of her great temple. She had explained her plan to the king, who by this time knew enough to keep his grumbling and his skepticism to himself.

Urgas Thanoi was there, too, incongruously dressed in the loin-cloth that seemed to be his only garment. In contrast, the ogres of the king’s army, a thousand strong, wore long capes, high boots, leather gauntlets, and bulky, sheepskin hoods. If the ogres were bundled warmly, Baldruk Dinmaker was all but buried in furs, a hood drawn so tight that only his eyes and nose were visible. They were all prepared for a brutal march, though the warriors, as well as Grimwar Bane himself, were still not clear as to how exactly they were going to march anywhere, not when snow lay ten or fifteen feet deep across the Black Ice Bay and the rest of Icereach beyond.

The tusker chieftain, of course, had the advantage of his broad, webbed feet. He had explained that he had walked mainly on top of the snow when following the track of the Fenriz Glacier to Winterheim. If Stariz was right, the ogres could take that same route.

A horn brayed from high up on the city’s atrium, the golden notes ringing through the halls, finally wafting down to the great gathering on the harbor docks. “The sun rises!” Stariz hissed, as if the king might have forgotten what the signal meant.

“Open the gates!” called Grimwar Bane. Immediately, four hundred slaves set to work, hauling on lines connected to the huge capstans. The rumble of the massive slabs shook the stone floor. The cold air blasted in as the gates parted wider. The sky in the north was pale blue and cloudless.

Black Ice Bay was a frozen swath of drifted snow. When the gates had opened wide enough, Stariz strode along the stone edge of the dock to halt before the wall of snow, perhaps twenty feet high, rising almost to the top of the Stormgates. She held the treasured Axe of Gonnas in two hands, high above her head, declaiming loudly. Baldruk stood beside the king, his pale eyes shining as they watched the priestess begin her incantations.

“Gonnas, our Immortal Protector, Gonnas the Mighty, Gonnas the Strong, show us thy will, and thy path!”

Grimwar felt awe as he looked at that gleaming axehead, saw it glowing with a light from within. Blue flame licked along the keen edge, rising and waving in a magical dance. When his wife swept the mighty weapon through the air, it seemed to make an audible hiss. Steam swirled through the air, like the moist gout of a hot spring, obscuring vision and slicking skin.

Stariz seemed to vanish into that mist, walking forward out of Winterheim and heading down toward the great snow wall. Grimwar and Baldruk hurried forward. The king saw her walking down a wide trench, making a deep gouge through the snow covering the sea. The axe struck, and more snow hissed and evaporated.

The ogre warriors, awestruck but disciplined, marched quickly behind their leader, the entire column snaking out of the city and onto the bay. Again Stariz gestured with her axe, and another great length of path was carved out of the snow. The icy drifts loomed to each side, but the base was solidly frozen bay, and the gap fully thirty feet wide-room for five or six ogres to march abreast.

The daylight was feeble, and only lasted for a few hours, but in that time Stariz was able to work wonders with her axe, and the ogre army crossed the bay and headed onto the smooth surface of Fenriz Glacier. They kept marching even into darkness, the arrival of which caused Baldruk Dinmaker to snort with pleasure even as frosty air closed around them. The blue flames on the Axe of Gonnas flickered unnaturally bright in the night.

Grimwar announced their stops for sleep would be brief. The route of their march led northward between the mountains. A hundred miles away they expected to emerge at the sea very near Brackenrock.

“You Arktos will stay here while we explore your cave,” Strongwind Whalebone declared. A dozen of his warriors, as well as the high priest in his fur and bear-skull raiments, stood back as the tribespeople filed into a small side cavern just off of the main chamber.

“You, elf. Stay here.”

Kerrick halted, watching as the Arktos trudged through the narrow entry. Bruni turned to look back at him, then ducked to enter as a barbarian warrior raised his spear threateningly. Moreen was last, but she halted and then shrugged off a restraining hand, coming back to stand at Kerrick’s side.

“He is not your enemy,” she said, as the Highlander king narrowed his eyes. “We took him captive and coerced him into carrying us across the strait.”

“Is this true?” growled Strongwind Whalebone.

Kerrick was strongly tempted to say “yes.” Perhaps the Highlanders would spare him whatever fate they planned for the Arktos. Clearly they held the power here, and there was nothing to be gained by allying himself with Moreen’s doomed tribe.

“It’s true,” the chiefwoman insisted, glaring at the elf, but he saw the hidden plea in her eyes, urging him to deny the Arktos, to seek whatever escape he could. It was that plea, more than anything else, that forced him to speak the truth.