David Cook - Soldiers of Ice

Word-Maker noted her effort and snorted as he stood, wrapping his dirty robes over his sharp shoulders. “I go tell Elk-Slayer of my success. I leave you here unbound. If you try to escape, you will only freeze in the snow” Saying no more he slipped past the door flaps and out into the night.

It’s an accurate prediction, even if I could get outside , the Harper thought, but I’m not helpless. If only I can get a message to Jazrac… a letter. He might scry and see it, even without the dagger .

That thin hope kept Martine from collapse as she slowly gathered the simple materials for the task. A half-burnt stick, scraped from the lodge’s small fire, became a pen, a curl of birchbark her paper.

Poised to write, Martine paused. I’m overreacting. I’ve made it through the worst , she chided herself. If I call for help now, that’ll be a sign of weakness. I’ve got to prove to Jazrac I can be a Harper. I can make it. I know I can .

Taking a deep breath to steady her hand, the ranger slowly scratched block letters on the inside of the bark.

Hole sealed. Guest of gnolls. Will escape. Don’t worry. Not hurt.

Finished, the ranger looked at the message with the addled confidence of exhaustion. I cando this. All I need is Jazrac’s knife , she told herself as she carefully rolled the bark into a tube and tucked it away out of sight.

Disregarding the fleas and lice, Martine pulled the furs around her and lay back, waiting for sleep to overtake her. Overhead, the whistling blasts of the wind shook the wicker frame of the hut till the necklaces hanging from its spars began to vibrate softly, chattering their tales. Just as she was about to drift into sleep, she heard a hissing wail from somewhere in the frigid night. It was a cold voice that scoured the sky with its fiendish rage, and Martine knew the thing on the glacier was hunting.

Comforting sleep never came.

Martine was awake again when daylight seeped through the cracks around the hut’s doors. The woman felt none of the relief rest would normally bring, only a blurry haze of fear and confusion. She couldn’t even remember sleeping. Perhaps she had, only to suffer dreams no different from her waking fears.

With the magical healing and what little rest she might have stolen, the ranger did feel somewhat stronger, although not fully herself yet. Martine gingerly touched the still unclosed wounds on her shoulder. The imp’s slash marks were smaller, crusted over, and free of infection, but the skin was still stiff, and each move risked pulling the gashes open. Clearly the damage had been more than the gnoll’s single spell could mend.

No fighting for me yet , she decided, not for a few days at least . She smiled ruefully. It was unlikely there would be any need to, at any rate. Weaponless and opposed by an entire tribe, her chances of escaping seemed dim indeed.

The ranger’s thoughts were interrupted by the stiff rustling of the door curtain. Bright sunshine illuminated the hut as the gaunt Word-Maker stooped to pass through the doorway. The wind swirled ashes from the ebbing fire, adding to the thickness of the air.

The gnoll held the door flap open with one lanky arm, draining the scant heat from the small lodge. He was still dressed as the woman vaguely remembered him from last night. The bindings wound round his arms and legs were not bandages as she thought then, but wrappings made from scraps of cloth and leather layered over buckskin. Thongs bound the windings like cross-gartered hose, reminding Martine of an impoverished courtier she’d once met in Selgaunt. Bits of fur and fabric hung in loose bits beneath the straps. In the light, Martine could see that the straps were spiked where they crossed the backs of the gnoll’s hands and wound through his fingers. It was ornamentation heightened to barbaric fashion, for the nails, gleaming silver, seemed incredibly sharp. She remembered his bare chest from last night; today it was covered by a dyed leather shirt, printed in block patterns that duplicated the shining nailwork of his cross-belts. The bearskin cloak of last night hung loosely from one shoulder.

“Good. You are awake, human,” grunted the gnoll. Martine was too dazed to do anything more than stare wildly at him.

“Get up. Hakk wants you.”

The command jolted her back to the present. “To kill me?” the Harper asked warily. In all her years on various frontiers, Martine had never heard of gnolls taking prisoners.

“No,” the gnoll answered sharply, glaring at her with his deep-sunken eyes. “I have questions. If you are dead, it is difficult to get answers.”

But not impossible , Martine mentally added upon noting the unmistakable threat in the shaman’s tone. Perhaps she couldn’t tell when a gnoll was happy or distrustful, but threats were clear enough.

“Now get up, human. Hakk awaits.”

“I have a name, gnoll. It’s Martine… Martine of Sembia.” The fact that the gnoll preferred her alive gave the ranger heart, at least enough to put on a show of pride.

“Margh-tin.” The gnoll mangled the foreign sounding syllables of her name. “Easier to call you human. I am Krote… Krote Word-Maker. Do what I say and you may live.”

“Yes… Word-Maker. The name means you’re a…” The Harper searched for the right word. Her grasp of the harsh gnoll tongue was rusty and far from fluent.

“The speaker for Gorellik,” Krote completed impatiently. In case the human didn’t understand, he plucked an amulet from the latticework and dangled it in front of Martine. It was a crudely carved animal head, similar to a hyena the ranger had once seen on the plains south of the Innersea. Fetishes of feather and bone dangled from it, leaving no doubt Gorellik was a gnoll god.

“Now, go,” the gnoll demanded as he tucked the icon way.

Martine lurched to her feet, wrapping the fur robe she’d slept in tight around her shredded parka. The thin winter sunlight did little to warm the air, and she had no desire to expose her healing wounds to frostbite once more.

The shaman moved aside warily as Martine stepped outside. Blinking against the ice reflected sunlight, she surveyed the gnoll village. It was a meager collection of vulgar huts spaced in a wide circle around the edge of a roughly circular clearing. There were five huts all told. The nearest was typical of them all, built from old, stiff skins and strips of papery white bark lashed to a simple curved frame. Snow was mounded against the long sides in an attempt to provide some insulation. Smoke curled from a hole in the roof. By some trick of the air, the smoke rose into the sparse branches of the birches and massed there, a greasy pall that transformed the gleaming blue of the sky into a flat haze.

Yipping cries drew Martine’s gaze away from the lodge. A small figure darted around the edge of another hut and then stopped short at seeing her. Immediately on its heels came another. The second sprang upon the first from behind, and they fell tumbling across the churned snow. They were young gnolls Martine wasn’t sure whether to call them kits or cubs and were playing like children everywhere, though much rougher. Furry muzzles bit at each other in mock battle; then the one on the bottom grabbed a chunk of ice and smashed it against the snapping jowl of its playmate. The gnoll cub flopped back with a whimpering yowl, clutching its face, and the other lunged on top of it, pinning its prey with knees clamped against its chest. The victor barked and growled in triumph and then bounded away.

It reminded Martine of the way her brothers used to wrestle, though maybe without the biting. The thought came so naturally to mind that the Harper had to force herself to remember that they were not the same. These were her captors, and not even human.