by Ben Galley
‘No,’ Farden replied, with perhaps a hint of a lie. He knew what was coming. He couldn’t deny the little tingle of fear. A ship made of fingernails. A vulture’s head… his mind kept repeating it.
‘Sure?’
‘Indefatigably.’
‘You put on a brave face, nephew.’
‘So do you.’
Tyrfing fell back. ‘Elessi would be proud,’ he mumbled, before he left.
Farden’s chest swelled with that. He pushed aside his thoughts with two names, repeating them with every step he took, like he used to on the flint roads of Fleahurst. Elessi. Korrin. Elessi. Korrin. Samara might have sneaked in here and there.
Within the hour, darkness had fallen. Soldiers began to flank the column with their swords drawn. A few mages and Written walked up and down, their hands and skin shining like beacons. They made an impressive sight in the thick snowfall.
Talk of camp scampered up and down the lines. Eyes began to look into the darkness and long for trees or rocks or anything besides endless flat ice. They were nothing but disappointed. There was nothing there on the ice fields. And so, soon enough, the snow and darkness grew too thick to allow them to go any further. Camp had to be made.
Tyrfing strode up and down the long column, shining twice as bright as any of the other mages. Farden walked beside him, quietly helping the people tip the sleds onto their sides and set up lean-tos and tents to keep out the cold. Braziers and lanterns were dug out and forced into life. The smell of dried meat and warm broth soon joined the bitter breeze and the smell of tired bodies and trodden leather. Ilios came down from the sky, frozen almost stiff by the snow and the wind. Tyrfing spent half an hour snapping the icicles from his wings while the gryphon whined and whinged about missing his deserts.
For the most part, the people of the ship seemed quietly resigned to the terrible weather. They had bigger things to worry about. Nobody spoke of what was to come. It wasn’t necessary. What was there to say, after all? Only the sailors seemed twitchy. Farden could see them longing for the sway of something wooden under their feet. They huddled together in thin little groups and sang quiet songs of waves and Njord’s storms.
All the while, the gods stood like two statues in the haze at the head of the column. Like Eyrum, they stood with their chins and faces held high to the snow and the wind, almost as if they were tasting the air. Farden watched them from a little distance away, wondering what they were up to. Loki had his hands deep in his pockets as usual, while Heimdall scanned the darkness with slow sweeps of his head. Farden could only imagine what he could see, so he decided to ask.
‘What’s out there?’ he asked as he approached. Loki sidled away, still sour from their last encounter. Heimdall, of course, had heard him coming.
‘Magick,’ he replied. ‘Great clouds of magick, streaming towards the north, like wind to a building storm. Clouding my senses,’ Heimdall sighed as he waved his hand towards the heavens. Farden followed his hand but saw nothing but snow and a pitch-black sky beyond. He tried to paint a few colours onto it with his imagination, but gave up trying to figure out what colour the magick would be.
‘I suppose you humans would see it as a mixture of blue and green mostly,’ Heimdall said, as though he had heard Farden’s thoughts. ‘The Sirens call it the Wake, which is the path of the First Dragon. They are right, in a certain manner of speaking.’
‘Why north?’
‘It is gathering to the Roots. Growing with every step we take north.’
‘I’ll just pretend to know what that means, shall I?’
‘The Roots and the Spine of the World are at the most northern point of this earth, where creation itself stems from, where the magick flows to, as it once flowed from. It is also where she is headed.’
Farden nodded. ‘Where the giant fell.’
Heimdall winced as though Farden had uttered some dark blasphemy. ‘I would not stoop so low as to refer to him as a simple giant, but yes, you are correct. Where he fell, and curled, and where the great ash withered on his back, until it formed the Roots. Irminsul, in the Siren tongue.’
‘And it’s not just her that’s headed there,’ said Loki, looking out into the haze.
‘Loki speaks the truth. The ice shivers with the sound of creatures and beasts making their way north.’ Farden peered into the night but saw nothing save what his imagination could conjure. ‘An army is growing, the sight of which you humans have not seen in two millennia.’
Farden rubbed his gauntlets together. ‘Well, I’d best get my sleep then.’
Heimdall turned to face him, looking irritated. ‘You use your humour as a soldier uses a shield, mage. I should know, for I have listened to it for long enough. You shrug off importance and danger like a jester jiggles his bells. It does not befit the man I saw take the wheel of the ship so recently. Be serious mage, for these are serious times.’
Farden calmly thought his answer through. ‘We can’t all be stone-hearted and cold-thinking, Heimdall. I think a man is allowed a little humour, when the darkness needs to be kept at bay. It keeps us human. Keeps us from going crazy.’
Heimdall didn’t answer. His eyes glazed over. Loki stepped forward to interject with something dagger-sharp and witty, but he was silenced by a hiss from his elder. Heimdall pointed into the distance, where a single point of light was emerging out of the haze.
‘Arms!’ shouted Farden, to the ring of steel. Fireballs and lightning sprang to life all along the column of tents and shelters.
‘Who goes there?’ Eyrum challenged, striding forward. An axe rested gently in the hollow of his shoulder, just like old times. He stepped out into the haze and yelled out again. ‘I said, who goes there?!’ he boomed.
Foreign words came back from the snow. ‘Ragna! Olfjaarn bethest!’
Every Siren within earshot visibly relaxed, while the others were left to look around, more than a little perplexed. Eyrum turned around and waved his hands. ‘snowmads. They’re friends.’
Eyrum was right. The newcomers couldn’t have been more harmless if they had come bearing flowers on velvet pillows. Farden left the gods where they were and went to greet them with Eyrum. As a group of them came into the light of the camp, Farden couldn’t help but be reminded of the Paraian nomads he met so many years ago; long-limbed and wild of face, almost half-animal, half human. These people were very much the same. Most of them were taller than Eyrum and had faces with long snouts. They had yellow eyes set into their pale faces, and manes of very fine, chalky hair. Their skin was so hairy that it almost bordered on a pelt.
‘Well met, and good wishes,’ announced Eyrum, bowing in an odd way, his hands outstretched beside him.
‘Asgarot, i beshemth snarvi da uglot. Siot af narla. Kurami,’ rattled off the nearest snowmad, a tall man with a goatee of braided hair and pine needles.
‘He says hello,’ Eyrum translated.
‘All that means hello?’ Farden looked worried. He dreaded to think how long their songs were.
‘Hullo,’ echoed the snowmad, with a beaming smile.
It didn’t take long for the rest of the column to gather around these strangers. They were curious sights, to be sure, even for the most travelled amongst them. The snowmads’ clothes were made of ice-bear pelt and white fox fur, with shoes and gloves of seal-skin. Some walked on shoes that had wide soles shaped in an oval, strung with sinew and string nets. With these they almost floated on top of the snow, barely making it move at all as they strode back and forth, jabbering in their foreign tongues.
As it turned out, Eyrum knew painfully little of their language. Fortunately, a few of the older Sirens spoke it almost fluently. They introduced Farden, Tyrfing, and Eyrum one by one, and then explained why they were there. It took almost half an hour to spit it out, with much eye-rolling and sighing on the part of the mages. Still the snow fell around them.
The most curious thing about the snowmads was their transport. It largely consisted of pelt-wrapped domes sat on ricket
y sleds made of driftwood, with runners made from the long, curving tusks of some unknown animal, very much like the one Farden had seen on Kiltyrin’s wall. But it was the actual animal that was pulling the sleds that was most curious indeed. It seemed that nomads, snow, Paraian, or otherwise, had an obsession with obscure animals.
There was no easy way to explain it to the eyes. They were moles. Big, grey, harnessed moles. Farden had to rub his eyes to make sure he was seeing the right animal. Moles indeed. They sat contentedly in their harnesses and stared about short-sightedly as their masters went about setting up camp for the night. Farden and the others couldn’t help but go and examine them.
Each of them was about as large as a decent-sized boar. Their fluffy grey coats were thick and well-groomed. They looked like docile beasts, with about half a dozen tied to each sled in little packs. Their long digging claws, each the length of a man’s hand, were folded calmly in front of them, with their plump bodies splayed out behind. Farden watched with mild amusement as a group were unhitched from a nearby sled and led into a makeshift pen for the night. The moles were prodded into action with little poles. A mole-pole, Farden couldn’t help but chuckle. The funniest thing was that they never seemed to lift their weight fully off the ice. Instead they shimmied across it in a frantic manner, digging claws and splayed feet shuffling feverishly, noses and whiskers twitching all the while. They practically flew across it. Farden pondered if they ever grew big enough to ride. He stored that question for later.
‘Snow moles,’ said Eyrum, as he joined Farden in watching the hairy creatures scuttle around.
Farden rubbed the snow from his forehead. ‘And you say that as if it’s completely normal.’
‘Hmmm. In the meantime, we’ve found a snowmad who speaks our language.’
‘Great news. Where is he?’
‘Here,’ Eyrum gestured to a buxom female. Her yellow eyes were round and nervous.
‘Hullo,’ she said, in a quiet voice.
‘M’lady,’ Farden said as he bowed, remembering his manners. ‘I hear you can speak our tongue.’
‘A little,’ she shrugged. ‘Not much.’
‘Maybe you can help us answer some questions?’
The female bowed back, not quite understanding the protocol. ‘Whatever you need, sirs,’ she said.
‘First of all, what’s your name?’
‘Sapinjurskjafelli,’ promptly replied the female, as if she were immensely proud of the amount of syllables she owned. Farden was grimacing after the first three.
‘Right. Sapin it is. What are you doing here, Sapin?’ Farden asked.
Sapin pointed to her moles, smiling like a proud mother. ‘We follow the storms across the fields. Storms chase the fish. Fish chase the storms. Our moles dig holes in the ice. We fish out the fish.’
‘Makes sense,’ said Farden. It really didn’t. He was willing to let that go. ‘What about the magick, Sapin. Can you feel it?’
The snowmad looked confused. She looked to Eyrum. ‘Magick?’ she asked. ‘I know not this word.’
‘Er… Elexkjir?’ Eyrum guessed. He was apparently right, as the woman looked to the sky.
‘Strange goings on. The ice is moving. Creatures going north. To fight. Darkness coming.’
‘So I’ve heard,’ replied Farden.
Sapin blinked her pink eyes. ‘Do you go north too?’ she asked. ‘Because you point west. This line. You are headed west, no?’
‘Well, we were headed north. Or so we thought,’ Farden sighed.
‘Snow can make eyes wander, and feet turn,’ she advised, in simple nomad wisdom. ‘Why north? It is dangerous there. Fire and ice and rock. War coming.’
‘War is our business, Sapin. We need to find a girl, and a woman too. A girl with black hair, and eyes like mine. About this tall. A very powerful mage like me,’ Farden asked, waving his hand about. ‘Have you seen anyone like that?’
‘No,’ Sapin shook her head. ‘But my brother, Volskurskinha, went east two days ago in search of storms. He will be back any day now. Maybe he has seen her.’
‘He went alone?’
‘We always send one to look and guide the way.’
Farden smiled, hoping this brother was safe. East was where Samara would be.
‘And what about these?’ Farden tapped his gauntlets. ‘Have you seen this sort of armour before?’
‘Never,’ Sapin replied. She looked a little worried by his armour, as if it were some sort of sin to wear metal like that. ‘No.’
Eyrum leant forward. ‘And have you seen any dragons come this way? Nelska dragons?’
Sapin thought for a moment, and then shook her head. ‘No. Only the northern, how do you say… group, band, no… Clan! Yes, clans.’
While Eyrum growled something to himself, Farden interjected. ‘Finally, Sapin, could you help us find… Sapin?’ Farden stopped talking. The woman had promptly crumpled into a prostrate heap on the ground. He was in the middle of wondering whether she had fainted when he noticed that the other snowmads around them were doing the exact same thing. All of them fell to their faces and flattened themselves to the snow. ‘What in the…?’ Farden muttered, spinning around. He soon found his answer, in the form of Heimdall and Loki standing nearby, looking blank and irked.
Sapin was tugging at Farden’s bootlaces. ‘The Skylights. Shanaeh-yivag! Heaven dos rjint,’ she babbled on in her native tongue.
‘It’s okay,’ Farden announced to those around him. ‘They are with us.’
They barely moved. Loki seemed to be lapping up the attention, hands on hips and chin high, looking from snowmad to snowmad, as if to examine which one was more prostrate than the next. Heimdall, on the other hand, was slowly walking away. ‘Come, Loki,’ he ordered, and Loki sullenly did as he was told. As soon as they had gone, the snowmads got to their feet.
‘You travel with the stars?’ asked Sapin, yellow eyes wild like saucers.
Farden watched the gods retreat. ‘In a fashion.’
Sapin slowly got to her feet. ‘Then we help you in any way we can, agmundr,’ she said, before walking away, a little paler than before, if that were even possible.
‘Agmundr?’ queried Farden.
Eyrum thought hard. ‘Sounds like the dragonscript word for “protector” if I’m not mistaken.’
Farden turned to leave. ‘How convenient you should know that word, old friend, and not many others,’ he said, with a smirk. Eyrum raised his hands to the sky and shrugged.
‘What am I, if not helpful?’ he asked the snow and the darkness. They didn’t say much in reply.
Night deepened and the noise of the shivering camp died away. Soon enough, all that could be heard was the snuffling of the sleeping, and the almost inaudible patter of the snow falling in the breeze. All was still in their little corner of the ice fields.
All save for one single shadow, treading softly across the snow.
Loki padded like a thief between the lean-to’s and makeshift shelters. The lanterns and braziers had been left to the mercy of the cold, snuffed out by the snow. Now the only lights were those of the snowmad sleds and the mole-pens. Barely anything to see by.
The god crept to the nearest pen and gently undid the wire holding the gate shut. The moles were fast asleep, shivering gently in their dreams and in the cold. Loki took one by the scruff of its neck and led the half-asleep animal out of the pen and out of the camp. It snuffled at him as it shuffled along. Not a single eye followed them.
A few mages stood alone on the outskirts, glowing softly like fireflies as they kept watch. They were none the wiser to the shadow passing between them, heading out into the darkness beyond.
Loki paused barely a mile outside the camp. He craned his neck to listen to the night. He wished he had Heimdall’s ears sometimes. He could have made better use of them. There were whispers that needed listening to, secrets that needed gathering.
Loki raised a finger to the sky and let the snow caress it. He could feel a little shiver ru
n through him. Not the cold, no, something else in the air besides that. Something surging and undulating. Magick.
The god turned east and squinted into the near-pitch darkness until his eyes closed. Slowly, gently, he bent down to the snow and held the mole tight under his arm. The thing wriggled, but only gently, still half-asleep.
From one of his deeper pockets, Loki drew a thin blade, no more than a spike, and held it to the mole’s neck. The creature barely made a sound as Loki pressed upwards into its windpipe and opened its neck to the cold. ‘I know you will feel this,’ whispered the god to the silence. ‘I know you can hear me. Tomorrow, we will meet. They will all be here, just for you.’
Loki bled the poor mole until every drop of its life lay in the snow. With a sniff of disdain, he wiped his hands on its milky fur, and then walked away, feeling the magick change slightly as the darkness sagged, and faded.
Faraway on the ice, a daemon got to his feet, and withdrew his claw from its hole in the ice. Hokus lifted it to his chin and listened to the melt-water hiss as he touched it to his neck.
‘How interesting,’ he said. ‘Valefor?’
‘Yes, brother?’ he replied, unfolding from the night itself. Behind his smoky wake, two figures lay on a nest of dragon saddles and bear fur. One lay asleep. The other lay awake and counting the stars, occasionally plucking at the sky as if fingering unseen harp strings. In her other hand lay a half-sharpened blade, whetstone idly held at the ready.
The two daemons touched heads. ‘It is time. You know what to do,’ said Hokus. ‘Call them.’
Valefor nodded, for once not a trace of mirth on his slippery lips. He wiggled his jaw from side to side, slowly unhinging it piece by piece until it hung at a sick angle. He then took a breath so big it sounded like his ribs would crack. He seemed to swell and grow until his body was ballooned out in every direction, ready to rupture. He grit his fangs together, and then let a roar, a great, screaming roar, burst forth.
Half the dragons took to the sky at the sound of it. The rest wriggled their spines and snarled as the roar deafened them. Lilith sat bolt upright and clapped her hands to her ears. It sounded like rocks being ripped apart. Only Samara stood still, blade in hand, smiling at the roaring daemon.