“He smells like haulkat.” Darbon sneezed.
“It could be worse.” Vanx thought back to the rank smell of dragon shit, and even worse, those rotting ogre corpses outside Dyntalla.
“So what are you going to do?” Darbon finally asked. “Go on and find the ice palace?”
“I may, but after I finish our current business. Chelda’s ancestors are from Great Vale. It’s somewhere up in the Bitterpeaks. I was thinking of hiring her for a guide, but after we’ve killed our saber shrew, of course.”
“If you don’t let her help kill one, she might try to kill us,” Darbon joked.
“She might.” Vanx laughed with him.
He was pleased to see that Darbon was no longer in his grieving slump. It was plain on the boy’s face that he couldn’t wait to get back to Salma. At least this hunt had accomplished that much.
“Do you think it’s true?” asked Darbon.
“What’s that?”
“That your father was born from the Hoar Witch. That, if she is alive and real, she is your grandmother?”
“I don’t know, Dar.” Vanx rolled onto his back and put his hands behind his head. “Like I said, I’ve got a strong feeling that sooner, more likely than later, I’m going to go find out.”
“If you need me to go with you, Vanx, you know I will.”
“I know you would go, Dar.” Vanx nodded to himself. I know you would.
The silence that followed those words lasted until they were both soundly asleep.
The scouting expedition, at least Vanx, Chelda and Xavian’s side of it, was a failure as far as finding any signs of snow leapers or shrews, but they did find something of interest.
About midday, with a powerful wind coming off the distant mountains, they spotted the dark splotch of a mound pushing up through the snow. First it looked like a boulder, but as the haulkatten laboriously pulled them headlong into the gritty torrent, the blurry site began to take on a bit more clarity.
It was no rock, Vanx decided. His exceptional vision was hindered by the icy wind, so it wasn’t until they were nearly atop the thing that he realized it was a half-devoured animal carcass.
It was buried in a drift that looked to have been covering the gory sight before some subtle shift of the wind had caused it to be scoured away instead of piled upon.
The red meat and pinkish white layers of fat that clung to the big, wagon-sized ribcage still held their vivid color. Even the partially eaten pile of purple-gray organs and coils of silvery-blue intestine remained as they had been when the beast first froze.
Vanx followed Chelda as she high-stepped through the snow over to the leeward side of the carcass. She pulled down her face protection, gave Vanx an excited smile, and then went about investigating the remains more intently. After a few moments, she seemed to have figured out what the creature was, and when she looked up at Vanx, he found her normally peachy complexion had paled to a shade not much darker than the snow around them.
Immediately, Vanx was alarmed. He had no idea what this pile of fur, bones and guts had once been, but if there was something about the scene that pulled the blood from Chelda’s face, he was sure he should be worried.
Xavian had stayed in the sled, still bundled tightly and gripping the haulkatten’s guide ropes with heavily gloved fingers. Vanx glanced at him and could tell that the mage was aware of their concern. He didn’t move from his perch on the sled bench, though.
“There’s no way it should have been down this far out of the mountains,” Chelda was saying. “And hauling goods, no less. It’s impossible.”
“What is it?”
“It’s a shagmar, and shagmar do not get domesticated,” she snapped. She was using her hands to dig out a leather strap. “Shagmar don’t get saddled and ridden like those dullard haulkats. They are the fiercest of the bear family. They are the biggest, and hardest to kill. They—they—th—”
Vanx saw what stopped her. It was the bottom of a boot. After a few more healthy swipes with her hand, Chelda recoiled. There was a frozen, fur-clad leg extending out from under the shagmar carcass.
“There is someone under it.” Her expression was one of curious fear.
Before Vanx could think, Chelda whirled toward the sled and traipsed back over to it.
“Hey, wizard, can you lift this frozen thing up, or turn it over?”
Xavian’s eyebrows shot up, causing a fraction of his face wrap to open and expose the tiniest sliver of his skin to the wind. It was almost comical the way he fought to stay covered while trying to hide his discomfort.
“Tie off the reins and come over here out of the wind,” Vanx called.
“Out of the wind,” Xavian mumbled as he reluctantly followed the mountain girl over. “I doubt there is such a place here.”
Vanx watched in the lee. The two of them were forced to lean into the wind as they came back over. Suddenly, the steady gale force that had been supporting their weight was gone. Chelda only stumbled, but Xavian fell face first into the snow.
Chelda snorted out a laugh at him. “Better over here out of the wind, ya.”
“Let him shake off the windblown before you start into him,” Vanx cautioned her. “Not everybody was born out here and can handle it as well as you do.”
She smiled her understanding, and while Xavian brushed himself off, she began digging out one of the frozen saddle packs. When she finally wrestled free the straps that held it in place, she plopped down in the snow and started to open it.
“Wait,” Xavian said. “Let it thaw first. The stuff inside is probably frozen so hard that it’s brittle. It might be dangerous. That mark, there on the side, is older than old.”
Chelda gave him an unpleasant look but didn’t open the satchel. For the first time, she looked at the strange symbol branded boldly into its leather flap. It was a triangle with its three points projected out of an ellipse.
“What is it?” she asked. “How do you know how old it is?”
“It’s the mark of the Trigon,” said Xavian with a bit of fear and awe in his voice. “They ceased to exist seven or eight hundred years ago. History says that there were three of them. A necromancer, an alchemist, and a conjurer. All of them were servants of the dark one.”
“They are the ones who magicked the first safe caravan routes from the lands beyond the Bitterpeaks over to what is now Orendyn,” Vanx added, remembering some of that particular history lesson. What he didn’t say was that they created the route so that some power-hungry Darkean king could bring his army across and take a crack at the growing Parydonian settlement of Orendyn.
The conquering king succeeded in a fashion. Orendyn was no longer considered part of the kingdom of Parydon, but the vast distance and inhospitable terrain between the greedy king and the seaside settlement caused his interest to dwindle. The same Trigon of wizards was eventually responsible for his demise.
No one was sure why, but some of the Zythian historians who had lived through the period had written that the king hadn’t produced a son to fulfill his side of the bargain for their aid. It was also recorded in those histories that the Trigon didn’t cease to exist, as the wizard said, but had moved on to the land of Harthgar, where their ancestors now lived in supreme luxury.
The Trigon wizards had used any means possible to gain control of the forested areas of Harthgar. They were the founders of the vast shipping empire that made its profit trading Harthgar’s lumber for the more valuable oils, skins and ore that came out of the mountains.
“They were powerful wizards,” Vanx said. “They had all sorts of servants and underlings back then. No doubt your great bear was magicked into complacency.”
“The Trigon was never able to topple the wizards of the Royal Order,” Xavian boasted.
Vanx didn’t tell him that the two factions of wizards had never actually fought. Though the Trigon did perform certain tasks for the Darkean king who thought to take on the Parydonian humans, the Trigon never fought for him.
; “All of this is fine and well,” Chelda said with an impatient look about her. “Getting on with it will give us a better look at who or what was riding the shagmar, and what else it might be packing.” She craned her neck and looked up at the blustery gray sky until she found the sun. “We’ve not much time left before we’ll have to start back. Then directly to Xavian, “Might be a fat sack of gold or some fancy magical jewel under all this, like Vanx and them minstrels sing of in their ballads.”
Vanx couldn’t help but chuckle at the eager expression that suddenly bloomed on the wizard’s face. “Might be this place is under two feet of snow tomorrow, and no one will ever be able to find it again,” he added for good measure.
Xavian immediately motioned them to step back.
Chelda’s speech had set a fire to Vanx’s curiosity as well, and the three of them went about the grisly, laborious task of digging and melting the carcass and its baggage out of the snow without damaging it.
Chapter Eight
Like roots they spread and dug in deep,
they built a kingdom strong.
And if the short-lived take hold here,
we’ll end up but a song.
– Balldamned (a Zythian song)
“I still can’t believe it.” Chelda shook her head. “One of my people riding the shagmar like it was a haulkat.”
They were back at the camp now, eating more stew around the iron fire bowl. Outside, the sun had fled the sky as if it were afraid it might freeze in the night. Darbon, Smythe and Brody were listening intently to the reports of the others. Darbon wasn’t sure what to make of it all. They had more or less blocked and tarped the camp into a full shelter by midafternoon and had been bored ever since. Watching Brody string his huge, man-high great-bow and loose a single javelin-sized arrow out across the tundra had been the high point of the day. Searching for the missile out in the bitter wind had been the low point. Sir Poopsalot, who stayed back with them, had been the one to finally find it.
Endell had just told them all that he and the Skmoes found a herd of snow leapers near a large copse of mostly buried pines. He tried to explain its location in relation to the camp, but failed miserably. It was agreed that they would locate it and the herd again on the morrow. They were to take a leaper as bait to use in Endell’s proposed shrew trap.
The old trapper had rushed through his reports and, with no arguments from the others, turned his attention to the ancient weapon Chelda had sitting in her lap. Everyone else was staring at it, too, save for Xavian. He was intently watching the pair of satchel packs as they slowly thawed at his feet.
“He isn’t really one of your ancestors,” Vanx said. “Your people came across the mountains a few hundred years before the Trigon rose to power here. Maybe the three wizards, and the kingdom that employed them, are what drove your people this way in the first place?”
She pulled the scabbard off of the wide, short sword’s blade to examine it for the hundredth time. “Maybe that man was magicked into serving the wizards, too?” she wondered aloud. Her eyes were aglow with wonder as the blade reflected the firelight across her pale complexion.
The sword was silvery and bright, and as sharp as if it had just been whetted. The hilt and its leather-wrapped grip were plain enough, but the weapon was obviously well made, possibly even spell-forged.
Darbon was amazed, but only partially disappointed that he hadn’t gone with them.
Xavian promised to examine the sword further, but only after he’d rested and recouped all the energy he expended helping Chelda and Vanx get the rider’s body—or what was left of it—out from under the shagmar carcass.
The body had been half-eaten by what Xavian assumed to have been frost-wings. The blond-haired, full-bearded man’s head and one shoulder had been left intact and connected to his waist and leg by a thin ribbon of skin. His features were perfectly preserved by the never-thawing ice he’d been buried in since he met his demise. His eyes were as blue as Chelda’s and still seemed to be peering out at some world the others couldn’t quite see.
With most of his upper torso and one of his legs gone, it wasn’t a pretty sight—especially as the gore began to melt under Xavian’s concentrated fire.
Chelda had vomited and then grown angry at herself for making such a show of weakness. Xavian hadn’t dared to say a word about it. Eventually, she mastered herself and, with Vanx’s help, got the sword belt off of the corpse.
The frozen man had a necklace, too, a gut string with a small silver medallion boasting the same triangle-through-ellipse that was burned into the saddle pack.
Following Xavian’s advice, Chelda refrained from putting the thing around her neck. Other than a broken horn bow and an empty quiver, there was nothing else to be had but a small belt pouch.
The pouch contained two buttons made of black antelope horn, some thread, five smooth copper pennies that had obviously been clipped, an extra gut string for the bow, and a polished black river stone. There was an empty dagger sheath on the belt, too, but no dagger could be found.
Vanx had asked if she wanted to take the huge, thickly-furred bear’s valuable claws and teeth, and she shook her head in the negative.
“Only if I killed it myself would I disrespect a bear in such a way.”
“But you’d take the man’s sword and pennies?” Xavian had asked.
The look she gave him had kept him silent the whole ride back to the shelter.
Apparently, his question had bothered her, though, because on the sled-ride home she tried to explain:
“I’m not taking the man’s fingers and teeth, only things that were not part of his flesh, things he no longer needs in the afterworld.”
Xavian hadn’t bothered to argue.
Back in the shelter, there was a long silence around the blazing fire as they all took in the shimmering piece of weaponry.
“Gargans run to Skmoe lands when gargan king yielded to dark king,” one of the Skmoes explained. “Later came the tribes of gargan man-hunters, who battled the falcon’s man-hunter tribes. Many die.”
The Skmoe was speaking of the invasion of Orendyn in his crude version of the common tongue. Gargan was the Skmoe word for giant, what they called Chelda’s people, and the way he’d used the phrase ‘man-hunter tribes’, Xavian assumed he meant troops or armies. The falcon always had been and always would be the symbol and standard of the Parydon kingdom.
“My people didn’t run from anybody,” Chelda snapped. “Our stories, the histories told at our fires, say that we chose to follow the way of our hearts, not the will of a madman who presumed to rule over us. After the sacrifices started happening, and the dark king’s slave masters started raiding our villages and putting strong men in chains, we chose to move on, hoping to return someday when the madman’s reign had ended.
“Little did my ancestors know that the bastard would live for three hundred years. By the time his own corruption had swallowed up his kingdom, our roots had taken hold in the Bitterpeaks and out along the foothills.”
“Well I, for one, think the past should be left in the past,” Brody offered diplomatically, trying to lighten the heavy mood a bit. “We are all here now: Skmoe, gargan, and Parydonian. We’re all living in the world and working in peace. There’s no need to let a thousand-year-old king and his evil deeds drag us down now.”
Darbon caught Vanx’s eye, and a knowing look passed between them. Brody should have said Skmoe, gargan, Parydonian and Zythian. But the wild-haired heathens from the island were barely considered civilized beings by most of the other races.
The irony was that the Zythians were far more intelligent and capable than the other races that walked the world on two legs. They had far sharper senses and more capable minds and lived for hundreds of years longer. The wealth of recorded knowledge they’d compiled over the centuries was far beyond anything the nearly primitive Skmoes and gargan folk could even comprehend.
Even though they didn’t accept them as equals, the Parydonians at
least respected the fact that the Zythians were more than civilized, but as Brody had just proven, Zythians were easily overlooked or dismissed during conversations of men and their affairs.
“What does any of this shit have to do with killing our shrew?” Endell blurted out. Apparently, he’d already grown tired of the subject. “That bear we found is older than the lot of us combined. How or why it came to be where you found it, and all that other stuff is for another day.” He then pulled a flask out from his boot. After he unstoppered it and took a big swig, he passed it to Chelda.
No one attempted to fill the silence with conversation, so the old hunter turned to Brody. “Can you rig a line to one of them fargin spears your bow shoots and still get where you’re aiming for?”
“If the line is fine enough,” Brody answered. “I think I saw some coiled in one of the sleds that might work.”
“Good.” Endell looked at Vanx.
Vanx took the flask from Chelda and took a sip.
“If it was my plan we was to follow,” started Endell, “then here’s how I’d do it.”
“It is your plan we follow.” Vanx winced down the stout liquor with a grimace. “It’s our plan. We’re all in this together.” Vanx passed the flask to Brody and wiped his mouth with a furred sleeve. “If someone doesn’t agree with part of your idea, I’m sure they’ll say so.”
“Yeah,” Darbon chimed in. “Let’s work this out now and get it over with. The sooner we kill that damn shrew, the sooner I can get back to—to…” He stopped himself before he blurted her name out loud and then found his cheeks aflame.
Brody patted him on the back and passed him the flask. “If a pull of this don’t take your mind off of her for a bit, then nothing will.”
Brody was right. It was a good while before Darbon could breathe, much less think.
“Are they thawed yet?” asked Smythe. Xavian had been listening with his eyes closed and the man’s voice mildly startled him. The others were sorting out the details of how they were going to catch a live snow leaper.
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