Frostborn

by Lou Anders

  “Agreed.”

  Thianna constructed another shelter, teaching Karn how it was done as they worked. She had no trouble plunging her bare hands into the snow, so he made use of the trolls’ ax and one of their blankets to help shape the bricks. That evening they were almost warm as they lay inside their makeshift shelter. The smell of the trolls was strong, but not as strong as it had been when they were dangling against their backsides. Thianna produced a small phosphorous stone that gave off a wan light when it was shaken. Now that they had a large stock of fresh meat, they ate heartily of Thianna’s mutton, and she again used her dwarf stone to melt water for Karn. He noticed she only used it for him. When she was thirsty, she could melt the snow in her mouth, untroubled by the cold.

  “Can you even go south?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re eating straight snow. You’re a giant. The cold doesn’t bother you. Does the heat?”

  She shook her head.

  “It doesn’t seem to. Cooking fires, hot springs, sunny days—all the things the other giants steer clear of.”

  “Best of both worlds, huh?”

  Thianna stared at him.

  “Never thought of it that way. Being able to take the heat just marks me as different, you know. Not fitting in.”

  “Nonsense,” said Karn. “You can take the cold as well as any of them. Taking heat too just marks you as special.”

  “Thanks.” She leaned back on her elbows. “So, what about you? What’s special about you, Norrønboy?”

  “Not much, really. I never really had to be.”

  “There must be something.”

  “No. Well, I’m good at Thrones and Bones.”

  “Oh yeah, your boring game.”

  “Board game.”

  “What did I say?”

  “Well, I’m good at that.”

  Thianna sat up, careful not to bump her head on the low ceiling.

  “So how do you play?”

  “Like you care.”

  “Like we have anything else to do.”

  Karn shrugged. He rummaged in his pack and withdrew the board. Then he lifted out the pieces.

  “Oh,” he said. “I used the defenders’ team to chase off some wolves. I only have the attackers now.”

  “Wow. You lost your precious playing pieces.” Karn nodded sadly. “What did the defenders look like?”

  “Eight shield maidens. One Jarl.”

  Thianna reached under their blankets and scooped up a handful of snow. She molded it into a crude figure, then pressed the snow together in her hands, muttering a cantrip as she did so. When she uncupped her hands, Karn saw the snow had hardened to near-transparent ice.

  “Will that do?”

  “Yes, if you make seven more, and a larger one. But you’ll have to play the defenders. I’m not freezing my fingers off moving those around.”

  Karn and Thianna played until late into the night. She wasn’t particularly good at Thrones and Bones, but he found that teaching her was a different kind of fun and he enjoyed showing off his talent to the frost giantess. They slept late afterward, then rose to a glorious, sunlit morning. The air was clear, the sky a brilliant blue. They set out east, working their way carefully down a broad bowl of loose powder that shifted and slid under their boots, and felt considerably brighter.

  “There’s not much of a bright side to things today, if you ask me.” The speaker was the optimistic troll head who had tried to console Thianna and Karn when they were his captives. His other head just grumbled and swore as their shared body stumbled along through the snow. They and their two companions were bleeding from multiple savage bites. The frost sprites had chased them for miles, mercilessly nipping at them again and again. The trolls were a hardy lot, but they were still stinging from their frost-sprite wounds.

  “No one did ask you,” said another troll.

  “The next time we find humans camped out here,” said the third troll, “we squash first and ask questions later.”

  “But if we squash first,” said the optimistic one, “how can they answer questions later?” No one answered but his own second head, butting him savagely in the temple for that bit of stupidity.

  “Ow!” he hollered. “That really hurt! Then again, looking at the bright side, how could this day get any worse?”

  As if in answer, a huge black-winged reptile plunged down from the sky, landing in the trolls’ midst and kicking up a whirlwind of snow. A woman in bronze and black armor sat astride the beast. She looked cruel and hard, respectable troll traits to be sure, and the creature was unfamiliar, and thus threatening. But they were three in number (with five heads between them) and they’d already hit on “squash first” as their preferred policy for dealing with humans.

  The trolls fanned out, trying to outflank the creature. It snarled and swung its long neck back and forth, glaring at first one of them, then another.

  “I’m looking for someone,” the woman said.

  “What do you think it is?” said one troll to another, as if she hadn’t spoken at all.

  “Is it good to eat?” asked the optimistic one. “Because if we are going to squash something, we should eat it.”

  “Excuse me, boys,” said the woman. “I said I’m looking for someone.”

  “If two of us grab a wing each, the third can smash its head with a rock while it’s pinned down.”

  The creature hissed and jerked its head back on its neck as if it understood.

  “Would it taste like chicken, or snake?”

  “That’s practically the same taste.”

  “I don’t have time for this,” grumbled the woman. “Boys, your attention please.”

  “I don’t see any rocks. Will a large tree branch do?”

  “Anything big and heavy, really. Just crush its skull.”

  “Perhaps you didn’t hear me. I said, your attention now.”

  The woman sighed. Almost casually, she unslung a large lance from her back. The trolls were still giggling when it shot out a burst of flame that struck the single-headed troll squarely in the chest. In a blink, he was utterly engulfed in fire. He ran off, screaming and howling, a blazing ball of flames tumbling down the white hill, leaving melting snow and nasty ash in his wake.

  “Do I have your attention?” the woman said.

  The four heads of the other two trolls looked at each other, then at her.

  “I’d say you got it now, miss,” said the optimistic one.

  “Good,” said the woman. “My name is Sydia. As you might have guessed, I’m not from here. But I’m looking for someone. A young girl. Unusually tall, though not I suppose from your perspective. Dark complexion. Athletic.”

  The trolls thought about that.

  “Maybe we seen her,” one said at last. “If that’s the case, what’s in it for us?”

  Sydia smiled.

  “That’s a good question. I’d say, what’s in it for you is that you don’t have to burn up.”

  It wasn’t as big an upside as they’d hoped for. But no troll likes fire. They decided to cooperate.

  “We captured someone like that earlier today. Come to think of it, she might have mentioned someone like you was chasing her. Only she got away from us.”

  “She got away? From three of you?”

  “She was tougher than she looked. And she had help.”

  “Summoned some frost sprites, she did,” said the other. “They bit into us something fierce.”

  “You didn’t kill and eat her, then?” asked the woman, her eyes narrowing and her grip tightening on her lance.

  “Not as such, no.”

  “It’s lucky for you you haven’t harmed her yet.”

  “You don’t want her harmed?” asked a troll.

  “I didn’t say that. I don’t want her harmed before I find her. But that’s my business. Yours is to tell me where you last saw her and what direction you think she was heading.”

  “Hard to say.”


  “Harder to say with your head on fire, you mean.” Sydia leveled her lance and thumbed a trigger. The end gave a little burp of flame that set the trolls cringing.

  “It was west of here, on that ridge.” A troll pointed.

  “We ran north, northwest from there,” the other troll said helpfully, stating the obvious.

  “She wouldn’t have followed you, so we can rule this direction out.”

  “No, I don’t suppose so, and the going’s hard on the southwest side of the ridge. They would have headed east.”

  “They?”

  “Yeah, don’t you know? There was a boy too. Scrawny little human feller.”

  “I didn’t know she was traveling with any boys,” said the woman.

  “Just the one, ma’am,” said the optimistic troll. He’d added ma’am to be polite, since she had just set his friend on fire.

  “She was alone when she fled her village,” Sydia said. She leaned forward in her saddle. “Tell me everything you can about this boy.”

  “He was scrawny.”

  “So you said.”

  “He was most inconsiderate about my body odors.”

  “Ghastly manners, but hardly germane.”

  “He did say he had some cheese.”

  “Okay, but still not really relevant,” said the woman. “I’m afraid that you aren’t helping me, boys.” She thumbed her lance menacingly. Her mount snorted in a way that was as unsettling as the lance itself.

  “I think the girl called the boy ‘Cairn’ or ‘Corn’ or something. Maybe it was ‘Karn.’ ”

  “Karn,” said Sydia. “Now that is something. Very well, thank you for your help. You can go now.”

  “Nothing for our troubles?” said the other troll. He rubbed his fingers together.

  “No further troubles for your troubles,” replied Sydia. “But if you like, I could light you up.”

  “No, no, ma’am,” the trolls said hastily. “We’ll just be heading away.”

  “See that you do.”

  Sydia closed her eyes as if in prayer. When she opened them a moment later, her mount suddenly reared up, screeching and beating its wings. The trolls ducked as the creature took to the skies. They watched her climb higher and higher, until she was a dot in the white sky.

  “That was something.”

  “Well, maybe now it’s safe to say the day can’t get any worse,” said the optimist.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” said a new voice. “I’d say there’s always lower you can go.”

  Three creatures strolled into their midst. They were human in appearance, but rotting and decayed like walking corpses. The draug. And they were slinging rusted but wicked-looking weapons casually back and forth in their bloodless hands.

  “Now,” said the undead speaker, “how about you boys tell your good friend Snorgil here who that was you were just speaking to and everything you just told her.”

  “Hold on now,” said a troll head. “What’s in it—?” He was about to say “for us” when his companion punched him in the gut, shutting him up. The optimist, it seemed, had finally learned his lesson.

  The snow continued to shift and slide under Karn’s feet. The bowl was full of loose powder, and a misplaced footstep could send them tumbling down the hill. It wouldn’t be long before the sun dipped beneath the high crags and draped the bowl in long shadows. It would be even harder going in the dark, but rushing was just as dangerous. The trolls had carried them a surprising distance—farther north and higher in altitude than they wanted to be. Now they had to make up for lost distance and time.

  Sometimes Karn hated snow. Then it struck him that where they were heading might not even have snow. Even though he had always wanted to leave the farm, this was not the way he’d imagined it, running for his life in shame and grief. He looked at the giantess. Despite her bulk, she moved with a lighter, more assured step than he did. She was so much more a creature of this frozen land than he could ever be. And yet she was leaving it just as he was.

  “What was it like?” he asked, glancing northward at the Ymirian mountain range. “Growing up in the mountains, I mean.”

  “Best place ever.”

  “That doesn’t really tell me anything. What’s it like living there?”

  Thianna pursed her lips as she studied the ground, choosing her footing.

  “You spend a lot of time looking up,” she said at last.

  Karn laughed, uncertain if he was supposed to or not. He couldn’t tell if she was making a joke. Seeing her smile back was a relief.

  “I’m serious, though,” she said. “The mountains—they are incredible and they go on forever. Right to the top of the world. The sky is so big when you are up there. You really feel like a giant. And also really small. Of course, everyone’s taller than me. But everything is just bigger, you know. Big games. Big celebrations. Big arguments. My dad, though—he’s the biggest thing around.”

  “I know what you mean,” said Karn. Strange to think of this enormous person as a small girl having to survive by her wits and dexterity among much larger, rougher folk.

  “So this rabbit-on-a-stick tavern,” said Thianna, snapping him out of it. “Is that all it’s going to serve?”

  “What do you care?” laughed Karn. “You’re just the door giant.”

  “Door giantess. Get it right. But we door giantesses have to eat.”

  “My mother makes a mean skyr,” Karn said, thinking of the creamy, soft Norrønir yogurt. “Maybe I could try to re-create her recipe.”

  “Yeah? I might like that better than cheese. Go on.”

  “Only … I don’t have any skyr with me, and it takes skyr to make skyr. You have to mix in a little of the old batch to get the new batch to taste right.”

  “That’s too bad. Maybe we could score some on the way across the border.”

  A sudden screech in the air overhead made Karn miss his footing. He waved his arms to keep his balance, then cast his eyes skyward.

  Three wyverns and their riders.

  They looked around wildly. Apart from a few rock outcroppings, the terrain was smooth and featureless. There was no cover anywhere.

  They ran along as best they could, hurrying down the slope. The wyverns dipped closer and closer, then dropped to the ground, aiming to surround them on three sides, but their hasty landing sent the snow sliding and slipping under them. They flapped their wings in an ungainly manner as their riders struggled to stay mounted. You’re not used to this—no snow at all where you come from, thought Karn. He filed that information away.

  When the wyverns had found their balance, the lead woman turned her attention on Thianna.

  “So,” said Sydia in her peculiar accent, “you are the one that’s giving us so much trouble.”

  The woman and the girl studied each other. Thianna stared into the face of her enemy for the first time.

  “Only trouble is what you brought,” Thianna replied.

  “If only that were so,” said Sydia. She gave a regretful shake of her head.

  “And you …” She looked at Karn. “Aren’t you the boy whose father fraternizes with giants? Even so, it’s odd to find you alone here together.”

  “Nothing odd about it. We’re just taking a stroll, enjoying this lovely weather. But what are you doing here?”

  “Hunting for this one,” she said, indicating Thianna. Her wyvern stretched its neck toward the giantess in a threatening gesture, but this unbalanced the creature. The reptile hissed as the snow shifted under it.

  Karn noticed. And he noticed the drifts of snow around them. Taking stock of the game board, he thought. Very slowly, he began to step backward up the hill. He met Thianna’s gaze, willing her to understand, but she was focused on Sydia. Typical, unsubtle Thianna, looking for a fight.

  “Hunting for my mother, you mean!” barked Thianna.

  “I don’t think so,” said Karn, who was putting things together in his mind even as he was trying to get Thianna’s attention. When she met
his eyes, she wrinkled her brows in confusion. Not understanding. Hadn’t she learned anything from their Thrones and Bones session? The playing field was everything.

  “What do you mean?” said Sydia, her eyes narrowing.

  “You said you were looking for truth,” Karn said. “But I don’t think you were speaking it. In Stolki’s Hall. You said then you were looking for something that was lost years ago. Something, not someone.” He spoke to the giantess. “Thianna, what are you carrying? What did your mother give you that this woman wants?”

  “Nothing,” said Thianna, frowning. Then, withdrawing a small metal horn from her satchel, she said, “This?”

  All three wyverns grew agitated. More snow slippage. More claws scrambling for balance. Hissing.

  Sydia hissed too.

  “Give it here,” she said. “Hand it over and we can all go home.”

  Thianna examined the horn curiously. She had thought it was a trivial, inconsequential thing.

  “My mother died a long time ago,” she said, almost to herself.

  “Talaria was always trouble. Years before she went and started this ruckus. But we were never after her. We were after what she stole. The Horn of Osius.”

  “What is that?”

  “Nothing that matters to you. But long ago it was in my charge. My honor was stained by its loss. Now give me the horn, and we will leave and forget all about you and Talaria and the trouble she caused.”

  Thianna was still pondering the horn in her hand. The Horn of Osius, not that the name meant anything to her. It really didn’t matter to her very much. Or did it? Then there was Sydia. The woman who had chased her mother. Her mother who had fallen from the sky.

  She took a step back up the hill toward Karn.

  The wyverns advanced on them, stomping clumsily forward on shaky legs.

  Karn grabbed Thianna’s arm and pulled her up beside him.

  “Blow the horn,” he whispered.

  “What?”

  “Aim downslope and blow the horn.”

  “What?”

  “Just do it,” Karn insisted.

  “You’re right,” she said, addressing Sydia. “This horn really doesn’t matter very much to me.”

  Sydia smiled and reached a hand forward.

  “But you matter even less.”