Ellen Porath - Steel and Stone

It had taken some negotiating, in the form of gestures and much acting out, to persuade the giant owls to allow the Ice Folk to cremate Xanthar's body. Beyond the trilling and crying that had immediately attended Xanthar's collapse the previous day, the giant owls practiced no formal rites after the death of a comrade. The concept of "funeral" seemed to confound Golden Wing and Splotch. Tanis had attempted to explain that consigning a body to smoke and fire was a great honor among the Ice Folk and that the ceremony, these villagers believed, would release Xanthar's essence to continue to soar across the sky in death as the great bird had in life.

Ultimately the owls seemed unpersuaded but resigned. Tanis was left suspecting that the giant owls believed these humans embraced the astounding view that poor Xanthar was merely frozen and thus would rise from the bier once he was warmed. Their acquiescence was more bemused than sorrowful.

Now the giant owls, no doubt driven as much by curiosity about the Ice Folk as by respect for Xanthar, stood in rows at the rear of the villagers. Silence fell over the crowd. The warriors, attired in sealskin parkas, were kneeling at the fore; others stood behind them, and the owls towered in the back. Tanis was jammed between Caven and Brittain. He sniffed the stench of the special unguent that the Revered Cleric had insisted he and Caven anoint themselves with to protect them from the clinging ice of the Valdane's warren.

The Revered Cleric stood and spoke to the crowd. Tanis realized that while the ordinary people of the village spoke Common, it was a courtesy to the newcomers and not their native language. He could follow little of the cleric's untranslated speech this morning, and he soon gave himself up to his own thoughts-first to musing about Xanthar, and then to wondering whether Kitiara had indeed allied herself with the Valdane.

He glanced over at Caven, his rival of the past few weeks. The Kernan's features were heavy, and Tanis saw exhaustion and sadness written in his eyes. Caught by the half-elf's stare, Caven turned toward him and nodded gravely. After a moment, Tanis inclined his own head, and then, feeling as though something had been settled between him and the Kernan, he turned back toward the Revered Cleric, who leaned toward the bier with a torch.

A sigh rose from the crowd as the flame touched and caught. The women and children began to sing in a minor key, high-pitched, with a walrus-bone flute for accompaniment. Then the warriors joined in, baritones and basses adding depth to the lament. The owls suddenly stood at attention, raised their beaks, and trilled a softer version of the previous day's mourning. All the while, the flames flickered stronger. Finally the canvas that wrapped Xanthar's body began to smolder just as the ice blocks of the bier melted. Almost magically, the owl's body sank into the roaring flames.

At that, the Ice Folk rose as one and filed silently from the central area of the village. The owls parted ranks to permit the humans' passage, then followed.

Soon the warriors were mounted, spiraling into the sky around the column of smoke from Xanthar's pyre, forming a line, and heading south. Two hundred owls flew without riders. Tanis watched from Golden Wing as the Ice Folk's chief scout, mounted on a gray owl, eased into the lead, trailed by three other scouts. Soon the four were out of sight, roaming far ahead.

Caven and Splotch flew at the rear, winging from warrior to warrior, offering advice and encouragement to the neophyte fliers. Brittain, atop a gray and white owl he'd dubbed Windslayer, was positioned next to Tanis. The wind was too strong to permit conversation at anything less than a bellow, so the half-elf and the Ice Folk leader communicated mainly by pointing.

An hour later, the scouts hove into view, darting toward the main group. "They're just over that rise!" Delged, the chief scout, shouted to Brittain and Tanis. "Behind a great wall of ice blocks."

"Describe the camp," the half-elf ordered.

"A thousand minotaurs, walrus men, and ettins," Delged replied, his face red with the wind, the cold, and the shouting. Tanis nudged Golden Wing closer to Windslayer.

"And our people?" Brittain persisted.

"A hundred captives." The scout pointed. "In pens to the east."

"Only a hundred?" Brittain demanded. "But far more than that were taken from the fallen villages!"

The scout looked away from the leader for a moment, then shouted back, "There are bodies of The People strewn across the glacier. Some… some appear to have been devoured."

The three were silent for a time. Finally, as the glittering tops of the ice blocks came into view, Tanis pulled Golden Wing into a wide spiral. The rest followed, then moved into the battle positions they'd devised.

Brittain's chief officer, who would free the captives, split off to the left with forty owls and warriors. Brittain and Windslayer would lead the main force, which swooped to the ground now, then rose heavily into the sky again, each owl hefting a jagged chunk of ice in its talons.

"Attack!" Brittain commanded as they passed over the ice blocks.

The mass of bull men, thanoi, and two-headed trolls looked overhead in dumb astonishment. At that moment, the owls altered their flying technique, their wings fighting the wind, booming with noise instead of slipping soundlessly through the air. The resulting roar split the morning air, further terrifying the amazed foe. The thanoi and ettins scattered to the edge of the force. Only the minotaurs remained, calmly preparing for battle. Windslayer, in the lead, dropped his ice chunk onto a minotaur, who toppled to the ground. A pool of blood widened on the snowy terrain. The felled enemy didn't move. The attacking force let out a cheer, and dozens more of the sharp, frozen projectiles hurtled toward the Valdane's forces.

"Where is the leader?" Tanis shouted.

Brittain surveyed the enemy below, but it was Delged, the scout, who provided the answer. "There!" He pointed to a heavyset figure dressed in a leather harness, wielding a battle-ax. "The minotaur! Toj, they call him."

"But what of the woman?" Brittain demanded. "Did you see the woman we've heard about?"

Delged shook his head.

"Only a rumor, maybe," Tanis said. Brittain gave him a look but said nothing. Then the Ice Folk leader nodded at the half-elf, touched the hood of his own parka, and guided Windslayer and the rest of the troops into another attack.

Already more than a hundred enemy soldiers lay motionless on the ground, and not one of Brittain's forces had been lost. Another cheer rose from the Ice Folk, echoed by the captives below. Tanis scanned the camp again and again. Caven pulled next to him on Splotch.

"See any sign of Kit?" Caven demanded.

"Nothing."

"The Valdane? Janusz?"

"Nor them."

"Good. We've taken them by surprise."

The minotaurs had obviously realized that massed forces were vulnerable to an air attack. They scattered and hauled catapults into play. The bull men drove the disorganized ettins before them, forcing the two-headed beasts into the battle despite themselves. Soon Brittain's force was dodging airborne boulders and the same ice blocks they'd hurled at the minotaurs. Tanis watched as a stone broke the wing of an owl, sending the bird and its Ice Folk warrior crashing, screaming, into the Valdane's camp. A second volley from the catapults killed three more owls and riders.

Another shout rose from below, to the east. Tanis saw a score of frostreaver-wielding warriors guide their owls close over thanoi guards, slashing this way and that with the ice weapons. Then more owls, outfitted with harnesses but no riders, flew low over the captives' pens, using their talons and beaks to tear at the walrus men. A third attack followed, and this time each riderless owl rose with an Ice Folk slave in its talons. Clutching the captives' clothing, the birds carried the people away from the camp, then landed and urged the newly freed slaves onto the birds' backs. The captives were weak, but the bravest of them gamely clambered back onto the giant owls. The attackers' forces swelled as more owls retrieved the rest of the captive Ice Folk.