The first mile was relatively smooth going. Nobody spoke as they traversed the rolling surface pocked with crystal clear puddles and ponds of ice melt. As they traversed the flatter parts of the glacier, the bishop did as promised and began teaching them how to read the ice for hidden indications of danger, what cracks in the ice to avoid, how to spot the shadowy signs of sagging swales of snow-covered crevasses.
They ambled straight into a sun that lashed the glacier with such a ferocity it made it hard for Nail to see anything unless he wrapped the cowl of his cloak around his face and over his eyes. Seemed the others had the same idea, as they, too, found similar ways to block out the sun’s blinding rays. The armor Nail wore was also rubbing him raw. He felt trapped by the stuff. The sun was such a menace he found himself clenching his eyes shut the majority of the journey, blindly following wherever the rope led him. In the moments he would break his lids open and look about, he was assailed by a harsh brightness beyond description.
Soon his mind began playing tricks on him, conjuring up images of Bloodwoods cloaked in black, chasing him across the glacier on red-eyed stallions the color of midnight. But in his hazy dream, he wasn’t running from the assassins, nor did he seem scared. Someone carried him. Some almost familiar woman with a blood-covered face and a boning knife lodged in her back. And just as Nail was about to figure out who she was, she was gone. All that remained of her was a broad bloody smear on the ice. And then he was alone at the edge of a sheer drop-off. But he found comfort in the blackness of the assassins’ steeds, which had followed him. So he watched their approach, a black soothing mist where his burning eyes could take rest.
He felt the shade overtake him and sure enough, obstacles had risen up silently in his path, towering chunks of ice blocking out the sun. Am I awake now? At the base of these teetering blocks of blue and white were gaping crevasses. There were no black horses chasing him anymore. But he could hear some rumbling sound rising from the nearest chasm, some deep booming thunder from far below. He stopped and listened.
Are the black horses down there?
He took two steps toward the nearest crevasse, leaning forward for a better look.
“Nail!” He heard a shout. “No!”
He woke up as the ice sheared away from under his left foot with a loud crack. He fell sideways onto the lip of a chasm, clutching at the ice with both hands. He slid into the gaping hole, the rope around his waist catching him halfway over the edge. The heel of his right foot, still hooked over the rim of the ice, dug in and both gloved hands frantically clawed for purchase.
Then he was slowly being pulled up from danger. Culpa, Liz Hen, and Roguemoore were all heaving on the rope until he was completely clear of the crevasse, all three sitting down on the ice as Godwyn had previously instructed.
“By Dokie’s bloody shit!” Liz Hen yelled as Nail crawled across the ice. “What in Laijon’s name were you doin’ wandering over there like that, Nail?”
“I don’t know,” Nail mumbled. “I couldn’t see.”
“Well, you ’bout jerked me off my feet, you clumsy clodpole.”
Roguemoore was right next to him, looking into his eyes curiously. “He’s snow-blind,” the dwarf announced.
“We should stop and rest.” Godwyn stood.
“There’s an even bigger chasm blocking our path in the distance,” Val-Draekin said, eyes roving over the ice to the north. “I’ll scout the length of it for a place to cross.”
Godwyn said, “If we can’t find a way around it, we will have to stake the mules here and leave them. I will go with you.”
The bishop and the Vallè were roped together. They marched north across the ice.
Roguemoore and Culpa began digging through the packs and food was passed around, cold elk jerky and dried potatoes. As he ate, Nail cast his gaze back toward the hole he’d fallen into, blinked against the pain still piercing through his eyes. Culpa and Roguemoore had saved him. Liz Hen, too. The entire episode had been humiliating. He wished he still had Forgetting Moon. Wielding it in Ravenker against Jenko Bruk had been the only time he had ever felt totally confident and invincible. Precision in everything. He recalled how Shawcroft had taught him how to swing an ax-pick in the mines.
He looked toward his friends, huddled in their gray cloaks on the ice, the great D’Nahk lè rising above them. Stefan. Dokie. Liz Hen. Three moons ago, who would have ever thought the four of us would be here, of all places.
This ominous stark place of my birth.
Whatever dark history he and this place shared would not leave him be. It lingered just out of reach, haunting him.
† † † † †
Godwyn and Val-Draekin returned a half hour later. “From what we could tell,” the Vallè said, “the crevasse stretches the length of the glacier, twenty to fifty feet across at most places, and deep. Darkness obscures the bottom, but a glacial river far below can be heard.”
“We will have to cross the gorge,” Godwyn said. “Luckily, the narrowest spot is not far from here. Our ropes are plenty long. We’ll have to unload the pack mules. Each of us will now have to carry what we can on our backs from here.”
Culpa dug a metal spike from a bundle on one of the mules. With the back of an ax head, he pounded it deep into the ice and secured the reins of both mules to it.
“They’ll starve,” Liz Hen said, worreid. “There’s no sage or brush for them to nibble on at night. No drinking streams.”
“They can drink the ice melt,” Godwyn said.
“What if oghuls come to get them?”
“Oghuls have no use for horses or mules. They don’t ride them. They don’t eat them. They scarcely even use them as pack animals.”
To Nail it all seemed like nonsense to ease the girl’s fears.
“We can’t leave them.” Liz Hen was nearly in tears.
“We have to,” Godwyn said. “And I am afraid Beer Mug won’t be able to cross that chasm either.”
Liz Hen’s eyes widened in horror. “But if I leave him, I just know I’ll never see him again.”
“Beer Mug is a hardy fellow,” Seita tried to comfort her. “He will be safe until we return.”
Liz Hen knelt next to Beer Mug and ruffled his fur with both hands. “Did you hear that, boy? You must stay here with the mules. Guard them from silver-wolves and saber-tooths and oghuls and such. Nuzzle the mules when they get cold. Keep them safe for me.” The dog looked up at her, distressed, sensing this was their farewell. “You’re a good boy.” Liz Hen was crying now. “I will bring you food when we return. Don’t you worry none, okay?” She stood, sobbing.
Seita slipped her hand into Liz Hen’s, their fingers entwined. Tears streamed down the big girl’s cheeks.
It only took a few minutes to divide up the gear. A plan was formed. Each would carry their own ration of food, and their own blanket. The two woodcutting axes were divided between Nail and Culpa Barra. Godwyn and Stefan carried the extra quivers of arrows. The nine torches and ice picks and small iron spikes were separated evenly among all. Roguemoore slung one of the spools of coiled rope over his shoulder; Liz Hen carried the other. Dokie, Seita, and Val-Draekin were assigned water skins and leather sacks filled with pine-resin pitch for the torches.
Roped together again, the company made their way from the mules to the chasm, another small trek over slippery ice. The crevasse itself was a yawning blue scar in the glacier, dropping down into a bottomless purple nothing stretching to the east and the west—an inescapable nothing that seemed to pull at Nail with unyielding force. He couldn’t look away from the gorge, the threat of immediate death so powerful and looming. A dull rumble issued up from the deep—the glacial torrent Godwyn had mentioned churning far below.
Culpa pounded an iron stake into the ice about five feet from the edge whilst Dokie stripped out of his armor down to nothing but his breeches and rough-spun shirt. Roguemoore secured one end of a rope around Dokie, creating a makeshift harness that stretched over the boy’s shoulders
and around his waist and between his legs, the other end tied to the stake. Despite how petite Seita was, Dokie was the smaller of the two, and it was decided he would crawl across the rope—the rope Stefan would fire across the chasm with his bow. Only a twenty-foot shot as they were at the narrowest part of the crevasse
The end of the second rope was tightly secured to the stoutest arrow in Stefan’s quiver. “I don’t know how the arrow will do with something so heavy tied to it,” he said. “It feels awkward. And I ain’t never fired an arrow into ice before.”
“You’re a good shot,” Godwyn said. “Better than me anyway, and that’s saying something. Aim for any small crack in the ice. It’ll work. I’ve seen it done before.”
Stefan nocked the arrow to his bow, rope drooping to the ground and coiled along the lip of the ice. Godwyn held on to the other end. Stefan aimed and fired. The arrow, rope dragging it down, fluttered and sank lifelessly into the chasm. Godwyn slowly reeled the rope and arrow back in.
“I didn’t pull back near as far as I ought,” Stefan said, nocking the arrow again. He hauled back on the bowstring, straining it farther than Nail had ever seen a bow strained before. Stefan let the bowstring go. With a snap, the arrow sailed across the chasm. It bit deep into the ice just below the opposite rim and stuck.
“Fine shot!” Seita clapped Stefan on the back. Then the bishop tugged hard on the rope. The arrow had lodged itself solid in the ice across the chasm and held. Godwyn fixed his end of the rope to the stake Culpa had pounded into the ice.
Dokie, securely tied in Roguemoore’s harness, crawled to the edge of the crevasse. He took hold of Stefan’s rope with one hand, tugging on it too, testing its strength. He had the most dangerous job of all, but looked excited to do his part.
“If the arrow breaks free of the ice,” Godwyn said, “you’ll merely swing back against the ice wall underneath us and we’ll reel you back in. You’ll likely experience a hard impact with the ice. But brace for it and you’ll be okay.”
Dokie did the three-fingered sign of the Laijon Cross over his heart and crawled out over the edge, both hands grasping Stefan’s rope. He slid all the way out over the gap, swinging his entire body under the line, clamping both legs up and around the rope, gripping it with the underside of his knees. Nail’s heart crawled into his throat as Dokie shimmied his way across the crevasse, suspended underneath the rope.
As Dokie made his way across the chasm, the rope drooped in the middle under his weight. Then Stefan’s arrow tore free of the ice. The boy plummeted down and out of sight. Nail’s heart lurched. Liz Hen screamed. Dokie struck the ice wall below with a heavy tthhrummmph! He quickly shouted, “I’m okay!” as he dangled below.
Godwyn and Culpa seized the rope and pulled the boy back over the rim of the chasm. Once Dokie was safe, Liz Hen dusted ice crystals off his clothes. “I’m okay,” he kept repeating as Liz Hen fussed over him. “I wanna try that again. It was fun.”
“Fun?” Liz Hen exclaimed. “You’ve lost your bloody mind! Nearly gave me a heart attack, that did.”
Godwyn checked the knot around the arrow. Stefan nocked the arrow to his bow again and shot it across the chasm again. This time the arrow sank clear to its fletching in a crack in the ice not a foot below the opposite rim.
Harness still secure, Dokie crawled to the edge of the chasm and shimmied his way over the crevasse again. Stefan’s arrow held this time, and Dokie scrambled safely up and over the opposite rim and stood, triumph on his smiling face.
Liz Hen expelled a gasp of pent-up breath.
Culpa Barra tossed one iron spike and one wood ax over the chasm. Dokie scooped both up and, with the flat of the ax blade, hammered the spike into the ice five feet from the edge. He crawled to the lip of the crevasse, reached down, and untied the rope from the arrow lodged in the ice. He scrambled back and tied that end of the rope around the spike. Then he squirmed out of Roguemoore’s harness and tossed it back into the chasm, where Godwyn reeled it in. With all that done, the company now had a secure, but very precarious, single-rope bridge over the crevasse.
Culpa and Godwyn tossed all their heavy gear and armor across the chasm. Nail and Stefan threw most of the armor and weapons over too. Bishop Godwyn was the first to slip Roguemoore’s makeshift harness around himself and cross over the rope bridge to stand with Dokie. Culpa, Seita, Stefan, and Roguemoore were next. The dwarf struggled the most in his squat, bulky armor. It took Liz Hen about ten minutes to get into the harness, then another ten of sitting at the edge of the chasm, petrified. She eventually talked herself into crossing, and did, slowly.
Nail and Val-Draekin were last to go. Val-Draekin secured the harness over Nail’s shoulders and legs. Nail stepped to the edge of the huge drop, gritted his teeth, and did what the others had done before. Upside down, hand over hand, he slowly crossed the chasm, looking straight up at the sky the entire time, not daring to look down once, not even when he reached the other side and felt Culpa and Godwyn’s grasping hands. Once free of Roguemoore’s harness, he stumbled away from the rim of the gaping pit, heart thundering.
On the other side of the chasm, Val-Draekin untied both ropes from around the stake. The plan was to leave the iron stakes in the ice for the return journey. Godwyn reeled one of the ropes over. Val-Draekin slipped the harness around his midsection and leaped casually over the edge, swinging down into the gap, disappearing from Nail’s view. He landed without a sound against the wall of ice below Godwyn and Culpa Barra, who quickly pulled him up and out of the gorge.
And that was it. Everyone in the company was safely across.
They quickly gathered all the gear and armor and weapons, tied themselves together again, and continued their trek across the ice toward the great D’Nahk lè.
But before they got far, Liz Hen let loose a ghastly shriek of horror. “Nooo!”
Nail turned to see Beer Mug charging toward them, the chasm a looming gash of blue between them.
“Nooo!” Liz Hen screamed again, and bolted toward the dog, jerked off her feet as she hit the end of the rope, nearly staggering Nail and Culpa Barra to their knees.
Beer Mug’s legs churned as he gained speed, fur rippling in the wind, muscles of his shoulders and haunches bunching as he launched himself over the icy gorge.
On her knees now, Liz Hen loosed one last tortured scream. “Nooo!”
But the dog cleared the chasm by a good ten feet and scampered happily across the ice, tail wagging as he bounded right up into Liz Hen’s arms, licking her face. As she hugged Beer Mug, Liz Hen could do naught but suck in great sobbing gulps of air that echoed off the ice like the honking of a goose.
“Well,” Roguemoore said, “I reckon that dog just ain’t the type to be left behind.”
† † † † †
Luck had been with them. They’d traversed a handful of cracks in the ice, but they jumped each one with little effort. They encountered a few walls of ice, none more than fifteen feet high. Those they scaled with the iron spikes and ropes. Beer Mug could leap up onto most himself. For the higher walls of ice, Roguemoore’s harness was used on the dog too. Along the way, Godwyn had taught the others in the company how to look for the shadowy signs of the sinking and sagging swales that typically marked a snow-covered chasm.
Now, hollow-eyed with weariness, bitter cold sapping their energy, the company stood at the foot of the great D’Nahk lè almost near the timberline. Nail gazed up at the hulking mountain silhouetted against a deep blue dusk, its white peak swathed in clouds. A massive churning river tumbled from a deep carved canyon to his right, the raging waters crashing and roaring directly into the glacier, swallowed whole by a huge glacial cavern. Several other similar waterfalls could be seen in the distance, those too eventually disappearing under the ice.
Other than the thundering waters, there was naught else at the head of the glacier, no signs of civilization or even a lone scraggly tree, just high mountain sage and the faint tracks of Dall sheep in the sn
ow. Bundled tightly in his cloak, Nail wanted to keep moving and reach the mines as soon as possible, for it was there they were to camp for the night.
The bishop led them up a snowy vale to their right. As they began their ascent, the nature of the once mighty mining effort here became quickly apparent to Nail. Mine shafts and their tailings dotted the snowy hills and steep, boulder-strewn valleys round about. The base of D’Nahk lè likely had more than a thousand open mine shafts dug into its side.
Godwyn claimed the entry they were looking for was not man-made, but a natural cave set against a sheer wall of rock situated deep in a narrow gorge about half a mile up the side of the great mountain.
The vale they crossed soon grew into a steep slope of shale and rock crusted with snow. They climbed on hands and knees until they reached a steep ridge lined with tall, pointed boulders leaning like icy fangs thrust skyward. As they threaded their way along the ridge, the evening grew dark. Shadows rich in purple and blue seeped down D’Nahk lè like paint. They lit torches, which illuminated their path, but more importantly to Nail, warmed them some. They continued on for another hour until Godwyn pointed to the stony hollow he sought. They changed course, snow crunching underfoot, knee deep in places. The cold swarmed around them now and the wind began to howl above, the torch flames whipping to and fro.
A hundred feet into the snowy gorge, they came upon the sheer wall of rock Godwyn had described. There was a large crack in the cliff face, black and foreboding and running crooked up the spine of the crag like a sliver of midnight. Nail did not care for the looks of the jagged, cold fissure splitting the cliff. Though Godwyn claimed it was a natural cave, there seemed nothing natural about it. Even Beer Mug seemed to balk at the sight.
“We’ll set up camp just inside the cave,” Roguemoore said. “Get out of this weather, which is sure to become nasty soon.”
Bearing guttering torches aloft, the Company of Nine made their way toward the bleak crevice in the wall.
And to Nail, danger seemed to flow from the mine entrance like a vaporous fume.
The Blackest Heart Page 38