David Cook - Soldiers of Ice

“How soon can you leave?” The question was cautious, designed to still give him an excuse to say no, but Martine could only remember Jazrac’s old advice about allies that no one ever helps without a good reason. What was Vilheim’s reason? She wondered if the old wizard would have agreed to let him accompany her.

“As soon as you’re ready. Tomorrow?”

“Seriously?” It was Vil’s turn to nod. “Then tomorrow it is,” Martine agreed, still not comfortable with her choice. The next morning found the pair airborne as Astriphie labored under the double weight of two riders. Vil sat behind Martine’s saddle, bloodless fingers clutching the saddle’s angled back. Although the wind was bitter at this height, it was more than the cold that made him shiver. Even with a rope lashed around his waist, the man clearly did not feel safe. Martine tried to distract him, but between the wind’s howling bite and the hippogriff’s labored pants, it was only possible to communicate by shouting. After a few minutes of that, Martine knew she had to stop or lose her voice.

Nonetheless, the woodsman’s ability to guide from the air impressed the ranger, considering that common landmarks seemed to transform themselves from a height of a thousand feet. At Vil’s direction, Astriphie was making a straight course for a low gap in the mountains to the north. Unlike the pass at the southern end of the valley, which had been a smooth, open snowfield that stretched above the timberline, the northern pass stood out dark green as the trees marched right up and over the crest of the ridge.

To the left and right of the gap, the mountains sloped down like weak shoulders till they joined the curve of pass. Below them, Vil pointed out the river that flowed from the pass, a churning white ribbon that cut though the green foliage. That, he shouted, was their path until they crossed over to the north ridge.

Gradually, pulling higher with each beat of Astriphie’s wings, the trio passed over the ridge, crossing from the gnome-occupied woods of the south to the cold and feral north. Beyond the ridge lay another valley penned in by mountains. It stretched out like a narrow finger to the north until it abruptly ended, truncated across its length by a sparkling wall that at this distance seemed to flow from between the mountain peaks like frozen treacle. In the morning sunshine, the distant glacial ice looked like a diamond set in silver. The wall’s many facets glittered and glowed, beckoning them forward.

“Amazing!” Martine leaned back as she shouted so Vil could hear. The Harper had never seen such a great wall of ice before. The jewel-like glacier rose over a bed of dark, brooding green, a virgin forest that seemed to shrink before the ice’s advance. The glacier towered over even the tallest trees and then stretched backward into the mountains until everything disappeared in a tangled horizon of smooth ice rivers and rock.

“Where to now?” Vil bellowed.

Martine realized she didn’t actually know what she was looking for. Jazrac had been long on explanation about his elemental rift, but the wizard had never really told her what to look for. He had said it was on the glacier, but that was all. Martine didn’t realize then how vast a glacier could be. Still, she couldn’t admit not knowing what to do after dragging her host this far into the wilderness.

“When we get there, look for some kind of a disturbance, something unusual on the glacier.” Although her answer seemed a safe bet, she was thankful that the yelling effectively hid any doubt in her voice.

“How long?”

“What?”

“How long for your mount to get us there?”

“An hour, maybe less,” the Harper answered as she scanned the valley floor, trying to gauge their distance to the ice wall. Just then she thought she spotted something below. “What’s that down there?” Used to traveling alone, Martine pulled Astriphie into a quick dive, prompting Vil to clutch frantically at her waist. “Hold on,” she remembered to caution tardily.

“Look down there,” she asked, pointing toward a small clearing as they leveled out once more. “What’s that?”

Vil strained, his eyes tearing against the cold, until he made out what had caught her attention. It was a thin stream of smoke rising from the edge of the clearing. As they swooped closer, he made out a cluster of long narrow huts in the shadow of the trees.

“Gnolls this is their valley. They are the reason the Vani would not come here.”

“The gnomes were afraid?” There was no mockery in Martine’s question.

“Each respects the other’s valley. Usually there is no trouble. Besides, it is best not to rouse the hornet’s nest.” As he spoke, three figures darted from the huts for the dark shelter of the woods. “Best to fly high. They are skilled with the bow”

Were she alone, Martine would have swept as low as she dared for a better view. Instead, she heeded Vil’s warning and pulled Astriphie back up.

“Are there many of them?”

“The gnolls? It’s not a large tribe, but more than the Vani… enough to be a threat.”

Vil’s answer sounded ominous. Although there were more questions she could have raised about the skills of the gnolls, their hunting patterns, and even their totems, Martine lapsed into silence, the cold and the shouting getting the better of her throat. There was a great deal you could learn about such creatures from things like totems, she thought idly. Take a bear totem it meant the tribe respected strength and solidity, a good sign all in all, even in savage creatures like gnolls. On the other hand, if the totem were, say, an ice worm, that wasn’t a good sign. Tribes that chose totems like that were too often cruel and ravenous like their god.

Given the proximity of the glacier, she wouldn’t be surprised if this group had chosen the latter. The closeness of the ice probably made for sudden death. Hard lives bred hard gods.

A tug at her coat reminded Martine of her duty. “There!” Vil shouted at her ear to be heard over the wind. “Over there!” Tentatively easing his grip, he pointed to a swirling plume of ice, a jet of frozen crystals, that heaved and spurted like the irregular storms of the sea against the crested shore. The icy column rose up until it expanded like some swollen vegetable a cauliflower instantly came to Martine’s mind.

“See it? Is that it?” Vil shouted again, uncertain if she had heard him.

“It must be. It’s certainly unusual,” she howled back. Martine had no doubt it must be her goal. What else but a geyser of hoarfrost would mark a rift such as Jazrac had explained? She understood now why the wizard hadn’t bothered to describe it. With a rekindled confidence that she could end this quickly, Martine leaned the hippogriff in a broad arc that would carry them toward the plume.

When they had less than a mile to go, the air around them changed, the temperature plummeting with ferocious suddenness. Bone-gnawing cold attacked every inch of exposed skin, even penetrating through the layers of fur that had managed to keep them warm till now. Astriphie rocked and struggled mightily against the increasing buffets of the frenzied gale.

The trio were close enough now to make out vaguely, through the swirling gaps of wind burning ice, the starshaped fissure, crudely heaved upward in cracked blocks. The main ice jet, for now it was apparent there was a small group of lesser fumaroles, pulsed with the otherworldly tide that forced its icy discharge up from the center of the fissure and sent it flowing down one of the jagged arms. The tighter the gap became, the higher the plume shot as the pressure increased until it hit the end. Lightning couldn’t have raised greater thunder as the geyser broke over the splintered end, blowing out chunks of glacial ice visible even at a distance.