Dawn of the Ice Bear

by Jeff Mariotte

  Once clear of the initial fight, he had worked his way quickly into the town, away from the walls. A big square led to a large, log building with a massive stone chimney. The structure looked important, particularly the way it commanded the square, so Usam set out for it first. The crown, if it was here, would most likely be kept in a place of honor, he reasoned. This place looked like the most prestigious building that he could see from here, so it was a start.

  The building seemed empty when he went in. Lamps were lit, and the front door was open, so he assumed that whoever had been inside had rushed out when the attack came. That was fine with him—it gave him a chance to look around without having to kill more of the enemy first.

  What he found seemed to be a public space, with long tables for eating and drinking. But beyond that was a smaller, enclosed space such as the fort’s chief or commander might use as his headquarters. This was just what Usam had been hoping to find. He ransacked every space that might be big enough to hide the Teeth of the Ice Bear and had been about to go deeper into the building’s interior when he’d heard the scuff of a boot on the outer steps. He stepped into black shadows at the back of the room, held his breath, and waited. Just one man entered. He was armed, but looked soft, bloated. Usam stepped out to face him.

  Now that the man denied knowing anything about the crown, Usam prepared to split his skull. If the man was lying, he would speak up, or die. Either result would satisfy the Pict.

  He could tell by the trembling of the man’s arms when he lifted sword and shield that his foe was no warrior. Usam swung his axe in a slow circle, at his side, then over his head, as he approached. The Aquilonian’s eyes grew wider, and he tried to ready himself for the first blow, but Usam kept varying the angle of the swing. Keeping his opponent guessing. The other man’s lip quivered, and Usam wondered if he was going to beg for mercy. He hesitated a second, just in case the Aquilonian had decided to tell him where the crown was after all.

  But the man simply closed his mouth again, as if aware how it made him look. Tired of waiting, Usam charged.

  OUTSIDE, A FEROCIOUS wind howled, loud as the souls of every wolf who had ever died, joining their voices. Conor sat inside his home with a fire crackling and a mug of ale close at hand. He had hung furs against the walls to provide one more barrier against the cold. Smoke blew back down the stone chimney from time to time, but he was warm and dry, and both things counted, on this strangest of Cimmerian autumn days, more than most.

  The wind was so violent that he almost didn’t hear the hammering on his door. Or to be more precise, he heard it, but didn’t think it was anything more than something blown up against the door or an outside wall. He was not expecting anyone, and only the worst kind of imbecile would be about on a day like this one. It was only when the knocking turned into a determined pounding that he realized someone was outside. Reluctantly, Conor opened the door to admit whoever it was.

  Snow blew into the hut when he tugged open the plank door. Two figures stood there, shadows against the field of white. The taller of them ducked his head to pass through Conor’s doorway. Conor recognized the blunt features, the squarish head, the black hair hacked chin length with a knife. Roak Treefeller. Biggest man in Taern, with arms as massive as Conor’s thighs. Behind him came Morne, more compact but with shoulders wider than an axe handle’s length, a scar as big across as two of Conor’s fingers running from chin to brow, and a perpetually angry expression because of it. He stepped back to admit them.

  “What brings you out in this storm?” he asked.

  “We wouldn’t be out if it was not important,” Roak assured him.

  “It’s Grimnir,” Morne added.

  “I’ve heard the name,” Conor said. “A Vanirman, is he?”

  “Vanir,” Morne said with a nod. “But no mere man. A sorcerer of the worst kind.”

  “We believe him to be responsible for this weather,” Roak said. “As a cover for an assault on Cimmeria. And a Cimmerian men call Wolf-Eye is leading a counterattack. Warriors from every village are joining Wolf-Eye’s effort. We have rounded up Taern’s best, and we leave today. Will you join us?”

  Conor thought for a moment. He had only heard rumors of this Grimnir, and they all indicated that he was a great threat to every Cimmerian. But he had not heard of Wolf-Eye at all. It would no doubt be a dangerous campaign, not to mention cold and unpleasant.

  Besides, if the rest of Taern’s warriors left the village, who would be left to protect it from other threats? Who would be left to make love to its women? No, better that someone stay behind. And that someone would be he.

  “I cannot join you,” he said. “This Wolf-Eye is no one to me. My place is here in Taern, making sure no evil befalls our own people.”

  Roak and Morne locked eyes, and Morne’s big shoulders moved in a faint shrug. “You would let your betters die protecting your homeland?” Roak asked.

  “I told you it was pointless to ask him,” Morne said.

  “It is my homeland I’m thinking of,” Conor said. “My home is Taern. I would not abandon it in a time of need.”

  Roak shook his great head slowly and started for the door. Morne fixed Conor with a look that, on his ruined face, was as fearsome as the visage of a horrific demon. “This will not be forgotten, Conor,” he said. “Upon our return, there will come a reckoning.”

  “I wish you safe journeys,” Conor said, crossing to close the door behind them. And may your scarred, ugly head be ripped from your body and left to rot in the snow, he thought but did not add. When the two were gone and the door closed, Conor went back to the fire and tossed another split log onto it. He would wait at least one day after they had left, maybe two, he decided. Then he would start to spread the word to the village’s women that he had stayed behind to take care of them.

  No matter what their needs might be.

  20

  THE BLACK RIVER’S source was a spring in the foothills, just across the border with Cimmeria. The spring fed a lake in a mountain meadow, and from the lake, water flowed into the channel that, many miles downstream where additional creeks and snowmelt fed into it, became the raging river they had navigated in Kral’s canoe all this way. The lake was a deep indigo color, frozen at the edges, and around it the meadow was carpeted in white. There seemed to be no smell at all, or if there was, Alanya’s nose had been frozen, and she could not detect it.

  They all stepped from the canoe onto solid ice and dragged it to the shore, where Kral made it fast to a leafless tree. “We may need it again, when we have the rest of the teeth,” he pointed out. “Best to know it will be here when we come back for it.”

  Alanya couldn’t argue with that. She had not given much thought to getting back out of Cimmeria once the quest was over—if it even turned out that Conor had the missing teeth in his possession. It was just as possible that he had sold them, and they would be off again to some other part of the world.

  But whenever it was all over, the hard decisions would come. Go back to Tarantia to run Father’s business affairs, with Donial? Could the two of them ever agree on how to run a business? And what about Kral, who would take the crown back to its cave beneath the Bear Clan’s home? And Tarawa—would she go to Aquilonia with them? She seemed to like Donial, and he was clearly smitten with her, so possibly.

  On the way up the river, she could tell that Kral longed to be home again. Even though there was little left of his clan, he could join another clan or stay on at the Bear Clan village to help protect the Teeth of the Ice Bear. He had been worried about the emptiness of the land, the fact that all of the Picts seemed to have gone off someplace. Finally, as they worked farther north, they had seen the smoke from many fires, on the Aquilonian side of the Black. Kral had seemed heartened by the sight. “There they are,” he had said, relief evident in the glow on his face. “Making war against the settlements is my guess. Mang meant to unite the clans against them, to regain the Teeth, and it looks as if he did so.”

 
“Should we go to them?” Alanya had asked, worried about the scale of the battle. “Tell them that the Teeth is not in the settlements at all?” She had been told that Conan was sending an army to help the settlers, and when it arrived, she feared the Picts would be destroyed completely. She was surprised that her loyalties had shifted toward the Picts in this case, but when she reflected on it, decided that what she truly longed for was peace. Neither side should be crushed under the other’s heel, and both should learn to get along peacefully. Her father had given his life for the cause of peace between Pict and Aquilonian. Perhaps, she thought, there was a way that she could continue that legacy.

  “We haven’t time,” Kral had replied. “If I could tell them that I have the Teeth, perhaps the war could be called off. But I cannot tell them that until the crown is made whole again. What if it turns out that your uncle sold the teeth before he even took the crown to Tarantia? They may still be in the Westermarck, for all we can say.”

  A number of arguments came to Alanya’s mind, tripping over themselves before she could give words to them. Finally, she didn’t bother. Kral had made up his mind. He was satisfied that the fires indicated the location of the Pictish clans and would not take time out of their journey to go to them with only a partial crown.

  Instead, they had continued paddling the canoe upriver, against the stream. Alanya had comforted herself with a glance into her magic mirror, summoning the image of Invictus, her father. The last time he had looked into the mirror, it seemed, was when he had presented it to her, telling her that it was a special object she must always take care of. He had patted down his black hair, then moved closer to it, pulling up his eyelid. His mouth moved, and though she couldn’t hear it, she remembered that he had said, “Something in my eye.” Then he had touched his eyeball with his finger, apparently retrieving a trespassing eyelash. He’d handed the mirror back to Alanya then. She watched his motions in the mirror a couple of times, vowing to the image there that when this was over, she would do what she could to further the cause of peace, in his name.

  Standing by the shore of the lake, she noticed that Tarawa shivered more than the others, even though she also wore the most. “Are you all right?” she asked the Kushite girl.

  “Just . . . c-c-cold . . .” Tarawa stammered. “I . . . I had heard that Cimmerians were a h-hardy sort, but . . .”

  “They are that,” Donial answered. “Conor, the man we seek, is this tall.” He held his hands up over his head, almost to their full length. Then he moved them out to his sides. “And this wide. He probably never feels the cold.”

  “He’s still human,” Alanya said, laughing. “He is no doubt more accustomed to it than you, Tarawa. But I’m sure he feels it.”

  “Perhaps,” Donial said. “But I fail to understand how anyone who can feel cold would willingly return to such a place.”

  “It’s his home,” Kral suggested. “Everyone feels a special fondness for home, I believe, however wretched the place really is.”

  “I suppose,” Tarawa said. She flapped at her arms with her hands and stomped her feet against the chill. “I have no desire to return to Dugalla, though I’d rather be there than here.”

  “We’ll try to make this as fast as we can,” Kral said. “And then depart for warmer climes, if any such still exist.”

  Even at the best of times, Alanya knew, Cimmeria was a cold and forbidding land, seldom visited by outsiders. But Elonius, the one surviving member of Gorian’s mercenary crew, had been there, and claimed to know where the village of Taern was. He had drawn them a rough map, indicating that it was not far at all from this point, just a little to the south and east. He had indicated a few landmarks on it as well, the first of which was a peak shaped like a hunched-over woman. Looking in that general direction, they saw the peak, and it did resemble his description. Heartened by this discovery, they gathered their things from the bottom of the canoe, fixed them to their bodies, and started off on foot. Each step, Alanya prayed, would bring them closer to finishing this for good and all.

  SHARZEN DUCKED UNDER the Pict’s first blow and threw his shield up to deflect it. The axe glanced off the shield, but still Sharzen could feel its power in his shoulders and chest. He stabbed with the short sword, but the Pict danced away from the thrust. Sharzen backed him up with another couple of stabs, trying to take the measure of his opponent as he did.

  The Pict was older than he, but strong, rangy. Light on his feet. He wielded the war axe like it weighed nothing. Scars crisscrossing his torso indicated that he’d been in battle many times before and survived. This would not, the governor knew, be an easy win.

  But he was a survivor as well, and it would take more than one old Pict to bring him down. The Pict charged again, bringing his axe up in a swinging motion from lower right to upper left. If it had connected, the blow would have split Sharzen open, groin to shoulder. Sharzen sidestepped it. It was on the wrong side to block with his shield, but he kept his blade up and the axe’s handle grazed it. He tried to follow up by slicing at the Pict’s axe hand, but the old one yanked it out of the way, and the sword found only air.

  He lashed out again toward the Pict’s belly. The Pict dropped the head of his axe, parrying the thrust. Sharzen tried again, but his foe stepped away from the attack and reached out for Pulliam’s chair, close beside him. Scooping it up in his left hand, he hurled the thing at Sharzen. Sharzen batted it out of the way but the Pict used the moment to come forward again, axe arcing toward him. Sharzen got his shield up just in time to block it.

  But the axe did not bounce off the shield, this time. Instead, it plowed through the steel-and-leather construction, carving into Sharzen’s upper left arm as it did. Sharzen let out a yelp of pain as he was driven to one knee. With the point of his sword, he held the Pict at bay long enough to force his left leg to straighten beneath him.

  He stepped back, gaze locked on the Pict’s eyes, waiting for the man’s next attack. A table nudged the backs of his legs. He tried to recall the layout of Pulliam’s office, but the Pict had moved things around in his search. Moving to his right, he felt with the backs of his thighs for the table’s corner. His left arm throbbed; blood spilled down it, making the straps that held the wrecked shield on slippery.

  Throwing the chair had been clever. A similar idea occurred to Sharzen. The shield was nearly useless for its original purpose. He shook it down his arm, letting it fall, then catching the second strap in his left fist. As the Pict circled toward him, Sharzen roared with pain and hurled the shield.

  The Pict raised his axe and deflected the shield, sending it clanging against a wall. But even as he did, Sharzen was on the move. He threw himself to his knees, sliding along the floor, sword point out. The Pict tried to swing his axe from its raised position to intersect Sharzen’s charge, but it sailed harmlessly over the Aquilonian’s head. The sword point found the flesh of the Pict’s thigh, dug in. Sharzen gave it a last push, then a twist before he wrenched it free and scuttled backward. The Pict’s axe slammed into the floor where he had just been.

  The Pict grimaced in pain, and blood ran from his thigh wound, splashing onto the floor. Slower on his feet than before, the Pict snarled and advanced again. Sharzen drew a dagger from his belt for his left hand. Teeth clenched, obviously fighting to ignore the agony, the Pict limped forward with his axe raised. Sharzen held both blades close together, waiting for the attack to come. His left arm burned with pain, and he knew he was losing too much blood to keep up the battle for long. The time had come to end it.

  When the Pict was off balance, limping toward him, Sharzen struck.

  USAM BIT BACK the pain in his thigh. The Aquilonian had surprised him with that move. He had never expected an opponent to willingly throw himself to the floor. But the move had paid off, drawing blood and slowing Usam down. Bad enough that his legs were still aching from the long drop earlier, but now he thought that his right would give out at any moment. His shoulder still throbbed from the earlier arrow wo
und, too.

  His weight was on his weakened right leg when the Aquilonian charged, his short sword and needlelike dagger both flicking toward him. Usam threw his weight back, onto his stronger left, and swept the axe up before him, creating a barrier of wood and stone that blocked both blades. The Aquilonian expelled his breath rapidly, then muttered an oath that Usam couldn’t understand. Usam could see that the man was weakening because of the blood running down his arm. The question was, which of them would outlast the other? He also knew that if either man managed to land another blow, that would likely decide the conflict.

  Steeling himself against the torment he knew was coming, he threw his weight forward again, catching himself on his right leg. It nearly buckled beneath him, but held. At the same time he swung the axe in an arc over his right shoulder, bringing it down with all the strength he could command. The Aquilonian, back against a wall with nowhere to move, raised both his blades in an attempt to block the axe’s descent.

  The weight of his axe shattered the longer blade, and drove the dagger from the Aquilonian’s weakened grasp. The man shouted a wordless cry and dove to the side. He hit on his right shoulder, rolled to his feet, and struck at Usam as the Pict was hoisting his axe again. This time, the man threw his arms around Usam and was able to drive the broken blade into Usam’s side, behind the ribs. Usam screamed and broke the Aquilonian’s grip. The man staggered back, into the wall again. Blinking sweat from his eyes, Usam rushed at his enemy. The man kicked the chair—the same one Usam had used before—into Usam’s path. It tangled his legs, and Usam lost his balance. He flailed out, almost losing the axe, and crashed to the floor before the Aquilonian.

  The other man still held his broken sword, its four inches of remaining blade slick with Usam’s blood. He stabbed down at the fallen Pict. Usam writhed away from the blow and with his free hand caught the Aquilonian’s ankle. He tugged, hard. The Aquilonian fought for balance, but his foot found a patch of blood on the floor and slipped out from under him. He collapsed to the floor, landing on his back, wincing in pain. Usam released his axe and threw his arm across his foe’s chest, pressing him down. The Aquilonian tried to bring his broken sword into play, but Usam grabbed the man’s hand with both of his.