David Drake - Godess of the Ice Realm

The Hunters came toward him at a loose-limbed gait, giggling and apparently unaware of each other's presence. They didn't seem to be hurrying, but their long legs covered a considerable distance with each stride.

Garric drew his dagger with his left hand. For the most part the shorter blade was only there on his belt to balance the weight of his sword, but this time it might be useful. "Keep back," he muttered to Liane. "I may have to move-"

The creature with the trident cocked his arm back. Liane gripped her cuffs and spread her outer tunic wide, shouting, "Here! Here!"

Garric sprang forward as both Hunters thrust at Liane. The one holding the spear was on the left, nearer him, so he cut through the back of the creature's wrist. The spear came loose from the Hunter's nerveless fingers and clattered down the corridor. It ripped Liane's tunics, nicking her right thigh as she sprang back to safety from the expected spear thrust.

The Hunters collided with one another and recoiled, grunting in surprise. Garric sank his dagger into the knee of the creature he'd already wounded. As it bent to grab him, he leaped upward, using the imbedded dagger like a climbing iron to give his outstretched sword a few extra inches of reach. He stabbed the Hunter in the belly and jerked the blade back as he fell. When the point withdrew, coils of intestine and dark, stinking fluid spilled onto the ice.

The creature gave a despairing wail and batted Garric into the wall with its good hand. His head hit the ice; his ears rang and he could see things only in black and white. The Hunter reached for him again but vomited a great flag of blood and slowly collapsed on the ice.

The uninjured Hunter had chopped the ground where Liane stood taunting it. It raised its trident again and stamped toward her. Garric tried to get between the creature and Liane but his foot didn't rise as much as he intended it to; he stumbled on the faintly-twitching arm of the Hunter he'd killed. Liane poised between the slavering monster and Tenoctris. She was unable to move without exposing the old wizard-and therefore unwilling to move.

"Hah!" grunted the Hunter. There was a meat-axethwock! The creature arched backward. A spear-shaft stuck up from the middle of its face; the steel head had penetrated the thin bones at the bridge of the nose and grunched into the back of the skull.

"Garric and the Isles!" Lord Waldron said, holding his long cavalry sword high as he ran past Liane and Tenoctris. He hadn't thrown the spear; that had come from the Blood Eagle skirting the women on the other side. The soldier was tugging his own shorter blade from its scabbard.

A line of crimson fire led from Tenoctris' drawing and down the twisting tunnel. Scores of soldiers, a mixture of the bodyguard regiment and regular infantry, packed the opening between worlds, following the light the old wizard had sent to guide them.

"Your highness!" Waldron said. "I sent Lord Valser back to the camp with orders. The whole army will report to the palace and follow Mayne's regiment through that wall of light. Was that right?"

Garric looked down corridors shimmering in a pattern as complex as that of the veins of a hazel leaf. The Hunters were dead; soldiers had just finished hacking the one he'd crippled early into a mass as bloody and shapeless as a cow's afterbirth. But in the distance, from a score of mirrored branchings, came an army of half-men and not-men; some with swords, some with fangs and claws as long as daggers.

"Yes, milord," said Garric. He wiped his blade clean with the skirt of his tunic because the monsters he'd slain with it didn't have clothing he could use for the purpose. "That was a very good idea indeed. And I only hope that they don't waste time in getting here!"

"Nowwill you wake, mistress?" Sharina dreamed Beard was saying to her in a cave of glowing ice.

Sharina came alert, throwing off the bearskin and raising the axe to strike in whichever direction danger appeared. She was breathing hard, shocked to have slept so soundly and frightened by the threat that lowered over her unseen.

The night was as peaceful as night ever was in this world. The ice walls glowed with wizardry and from far down the tunnel the sea moaned, but at least there was no wind in the cave.

Several of the band besides Scoggin and Franca were sleeping outside. The others were in the bone cabin, but the rasp of snoring through the open doorway indicated that all was well there too. Nothing moved but the wizardlight, and its pulses were as slight and sluggish as the steps of an old man.

"What…?" Sharina began in puzzlement.

"The reason you should be concerned," said the axe waspishly, "is that Alfdan removed the Key of Reyazel from your sash and has re-entered the world it unlocks. Unless you find this an attractive place to spend the rest of your life, you might consider fetching him back."

Sharina stood, weighing the axe in her hand. She was coldly furious. The cabin door had been lying on the stones where the beetle's violence had flung it. Now it leaned against the bone wall, and the ground which it'd covered was a hole into the sandy beach.

Sharina started for it. "I don't see how I could've missed him taking the key away," she said.

"Heis a wizard, mistress," said Beard, "and one of his toys is the eyestone of a sloth. It let him cast a sleep spell deeper than even I could wake you from until he'd taken himself away. Did you suppose all these folk were sleeping naturally-that none of them would be wakeful inthis place?"

Sharina hadn't thought the cabin door had a keyhole; nor did it in the ordinary sense, but the flange of the gold key stuck up from the notch through which the latch cord had been led. She glared as she paused at the doorway in the ground; but there'd be time enough to decide how to deal with the key for once and for allafter she retrieved Alfdan.

The sun was setting on the beach beyond. Beard said, "If you're afraid to enter, then you may as well go back to sleep, mistress. You'll need your strength for when the beetle comes or something worse does."

Sharina stepped into the sunset. She didn't bother responding to the axe's gibe. He was right, after all.

Alfdan stood at the tide line; the oval sun threw his shadow far up the sand. The sea had drawn back, but a great swell was lifting beyond the jaws of land.

"Alfdan!" Sharina called. She started toward him. The air felt warm and the dry sand was very warm in contrast to the ice cave. "Wizard!"

The sea rolled into the narrow bay, curling and foaming. Sharina didn't suppose Alfdan could've heard her calling over the sound of the surf, much less that he'd have returned if he had. She began to run, her feet sinking deeper as she reached sand that hadn't been compacted with clay.

Beard pumped back and forth in her hand. She'd have to be careful when she reached Alfdan lest she slice the wizard open in an accident that her anger wouldn't completely regret.

The surf carved another curving slice across the strand, washing Alfdan's legs and springing up in droplets of spray. As it withdrew, the wizard bent and lifted something large from the sand.

"Alfdan!" Sharina shouted. "Leave it!"

The wizard heard her and turned. The object in his hands was a helmet whose rim spread into fanciful flares. The metal shone in the sunset like fresh blood.

"Leave it!" Sharina repeated, still twenty feet away. She felt Beard rise in her hand, but whether that was by her will or by the axe's she couldn't be sure.

Alfdan set the helmet over his head, just as she'd known he'd do. The flaring rim framed his narrow face. He took his hands from the metal and his eyes brightened in beatific delight. "This is…," he said. "I can see everything from the beginning of-"

Sharina halted. She was within arm's length of the wizard. His eyes suddenly lost their focus though he didn't look away. "That's odd," he said. "It's almost as if…"