The Warrior Returns: Far Kingdoms #4 (The Far Kingdoms)
Page 12
I looked across the heavily trodden field and saw the trail the caravan entered and exited from. It led off into the stony wilderness that surrounds AnteroBay.
I turned and started trotting back toward our boats. My captain followed.
“We’d better get to the other outpost,” I shouted to Carale. “Just as fast as we can.”
By the time we’d reached the shore the skies had gone from fair to stormy black.
Without warning a wind came whistling in from the bay growing stronger and colder by the minute.
I shouted for the others but my voice was made suddenly small by the winds.
Then the storm struck full strength.
And it didn’t relent for a month.
CHAPTER SIX
THE STORM
It slammed down on us like a black steel curtain, ringing us in on all sides so we couldn’t escape.
It was as if the hells were ice instead of fire and the gates had been opened wide to unleash the full demonic fury that resides there.
Before my eyes, I saw the wind rip the surface off the sea and fling it at us in long needles that tormented flesh, and bone, and finally the very soul.
Then it turned colder still and the sea water became sleet, then became sharp pebbles of hail.
The Tern was lost in the first few minutes.
I remember its going as if it were only yesterday. For in that awful moment all hope was crushed along with the three lives of our shipmates who’d stayed behind.
When the first fury of the storm stuck, we all flung ourselves on the ground and scrambled for cover. I found a low clump of rocks and hugged the earth to escape that icy fist.
I raised my head - cheeks instantly going numb. I could barely see through the stinging rain and had to use spread fingers for a shield. First they lost all feeling. Then they began to burn as if I’d plunged them into liquid fire.
But I had to witness what was happening. I gritted my teeth and peered through the fence my fingers made.
My eyes went up, up, crawling up the storm swept shore. I saw a gray boil of foam and rock and sand where the land met the sea.
I tried to make sense of the confusion, then located myself and forced my eyes along the surf line.
In horror I saw our longboats shatter against the shore, the pounding sea swiftly carrying off the timbers.
It was all so quick that it could’ve been my imagination but I knew it wasn’t. And I knew worse would soon follow.
Then I couldn’t stand the elements anymore and ducked down, sucking in air and rubbing feeling back into my fingers and face.
I recovered, breathed a prayer to gods I knew weren’t listening and raised my head again.
My eyes were gulls in a hurricane, fighting forward, surging over the bucking winds.
Out at sea there was a white sheen flat on the horizon. It shone through the darkness like a grimace.
And in that grimace I saw the Tern heeled over, struggling with her anchor.
A loose strand of hair barbed with ice lashed my cheeks, drawing blood. The droplets blinded me and I had to duck down again to clear my eyes and draw breath.
When I came up only the white grimace remained. The Tern was gone.
I sagged down, struggling with the enormity of what had just happened. The death of all our comrades.
And now…
And now…
There were only eight of us left. The next outpost was many days’ sail away. And we had no ship to sail to it.
Even if we had, that camp might already be in ruins. There was no help elsewhere.
This storm might be early but winter would soon descend and it would be many months before anyone could come and look for us.
In other words, we were marooned.
If we lived, that is.
I pushed all but thoughts of survival away. My first duty was to see that we all made it through the storm. Then I’d take stock.
Urgency fired me. If I didn’t act soon we’d all die on this shore.
I pushed my senses out, seeking some magical solution. But it seemed as if they’d become as numb as my fingers and I could barely grope ahead.
Clumsily I felt about in the ethers. At first the storm seemed a raw natural force. Then I caught an undercurrent of sorcery. Then cold, both real and magical, closed in and I had to snatch myself back to safety.
I tried to think through what I’d experienced but the gale fogged my brain. It was apparent that for the time being I’d have to depend on my physical abilities. Because if I used magic our enemies would be upon us.
Very well then.
What should I do?
I thought... shelter first. I must find us shelter.
The largest and strongest buffer I could recall in the desolation behind me was the chimney and fireplace in the destroyed trading center. With some difficulty I got my intentions across to the others and we slowly withdrew.
It took a long time to reach that shelter. And to call it an agony makes light of it. It was all done in darkness, with the wind’s hands tearing at us, grabbing us and shaking us about and flinging stones on us and drenching us with freezing mixture of sea and sand.
And by the gods it was cold. None of us had ever felt such intense cold. So cold.
Even Carale and I, who had experience in these lands, had never encountered such misery.
The storm swooped in off the sea as if it’d rolled down from the highest coldest mountain range that any demon king could conjure. It cut through our parkas like they were the lightest summer wear instead of good sealskin with a firm magical spell of warmth attached to each garment.
There was some relief, but not much, when we finally got behind the chimney. The storm howled through the eye of the fireplace and tried to crush its fingers around the stone sides.
There was no sense trying to speak over the wind so I made signs to convey my orders - we needed rocks, piled just so.
I don't know how long it took. It seemed like days or even weeks, although I wouldn’t be writing this now if it’d taken more than a few hours.
Eventually we stopped up the holes with a rough stone wall. Wind shrilled through the cracks but it was better. Then we stacked more rocks along the sides, building up a low wall to keep the storm from pinching in at us.
We were all exhausted but I knew we didn’t dare rest - not just yet. I was so stricken with the cold sickness I could barely make out the details of my surroundings. I was becoming weaker by the minute.
I thought that soon the core of me would be frozen and I’d lose the will to live. And I knew the others must feel the same.
I had to keep moving. All of us had to keep moving.
I organized teams to creep out into the frigid blast and grab what hot timbers they could from the ruins of the burned-out center.
We did it in stages. First one team - the twins, for instance - would reconnoiter a smoky pile. They’d drag back what they could, fighting the winds and deadly cold all the way.
Speech was still impossible - the roaring winds swallowed all other sound. So if they had something to communicate - some danger, say, for the next team to avoid - they had to signal with their hands. But sometimes they’d be so chilled they couldn’t move their fingers and we’d have to spend precious time and fuel to thaw them out.
Then the next pair would take its turn in the freezing, body-and mind-battering maelstrom.
We made a shallow bed of the coals, just wide enough to hold the eight of us if we stayed close together. We covered the coals with pebbles and stretched out full-length on that rocky mattress. The warmth rising up was like heaven but we had no blankets to hold in the heat and so found ourselves turning constantly as the sides exposed to the elements quickly became numb.
There was more I wanted to do but I could see the weariness in the lined faces of my comrades and knew I couldn’t drive them or myself much longer. We had to eat and rest.
Expecting a short stay, we’d only brought ration
s for the day - one large meal at most. For that reason I had to make my next, and perhaps most crucial choice. Either we went on short rations and tried to stretch out the little food we had for as many days as we could. Or we could do what I finally decided. Which was to eat all the food while we still had strength to draw nourishment from it.
Then we slept like drunkards, or as if we’d joined the dead, the storm howling around us and rattling the stone.
It was the last deep sleep any of us enjoyed for many a day.
I came awake as the storm’s great hammer battered down on us harder than ever. Wet debris spurted through the holes in the walls like water through constricted pipes.
I woke Carale who prodded the others up and we got to work making our shelter more substantial.
I had no idea how long the storm would last. But an old hand from these regions - a shaman from a fishing tribe - said the only way to fight the elements was to assume you might have to spend what remained of your life in whatever situation you found yourself. Nothing can be temporary. And every gain must be as if snatched from the jaws of a tiger shark.
I had the men make the walls of the rocky shelter thicker and higher but not so high as to let what little heat we could produce escape. We made a roof of flat rocks held up by piled rocks that turned the interior of the shelter into small rooms, if you can picture rooms inside a structure about the width of a goat shed and the height of a tall person’s waist. You had to kneel inside and crawl about, clambering over the forms of your comrades.
We stopped up the cracks between the rocks as best we could with bits of debris and earth. This turned out to be a constant job as the wind seemed to find new places to pierce every time we got one gap plugged. A small hole was left in the roof to carry out the smoke. We had to make the fire small - there was no way we’d find enough fuel to maintain that rocky bed of heat. Each trip out to find more bits to burn was an ordeal that left us near dead.
Only four could huddle around the fire at a time. One side of you would be barely warm, while the other side was like ice. Meanwhile, your comrades shivered and chattered as they waited their turn at that little space of choking smoke and feeble warmth.
After warmth - such as it was - food was next. This was even more difficult. The fire had destroyed all the outpost supplies so there were only scraps to be found consisting mainly of a few leftovers from our comrades’ last meals. It was the greatest misery imaginable to crouch in the middle of that ice storm and paw through the hearths for such poor leavings.
They tended to be scorched and so hard that we mixed them with water from melted ice to make a gruel. It was barely palatable and hungry as I was I came to dread to feel of the mush against my tongue. The only blessing was that the scraps weren’t spoiled. Even without the storm, in that area of the south it’s always too cold for rot or decay.
Perhaps a week passed, a week of increasing misery, before Lizard came to me.
“Beggin’ your pardon, Lady,” he said, voice barely distinct over the wind. “But I’ve been thinkin’ about the garbage.”
Cold as I was there was life enough in me to wonder what in the hells he was talking about.
“There is no garbage, Lizard,” I said. “If there were we’d eat it. So what’s the sense in worrying about stuff we don’t throw away? And if there was a surplus there’d be no need to worry about spoilage or sanitation. It’s too damned cold for that.”
His fur parka bobbed as his head went up and down in what I supposed was a nod of agreement. He could have been grinning as well, but who could tell? It might be nothing but the permanent grimace we all had on our faces, fixed there by the bone-grating chill.
“That’s what got me thinkin’, Lady,” he said. “Nothin’ spoils here. Which means any garbage thrown away by the others’d still be in a pit. And it’d all be as fresh as the hour and day the cook made each meal.”
The thought of eating garbage did not revolt me. Instead my mouth spurted with juices in anticipation of a messy feast.
The trouble was, how to find the garbage pit. There was no telling where it might’ve been dug, especially since the settlement was nothing but rubble now. If there were no storm we could hunt about and eventually find it. But each trip outside the shelter was a lifetime for the traveler, a lifetime that could be measured by grains falling in a glass.
My Evocator’s faculties were nil. The storm’s natural force, combined with the underlying spell of confusion, fuddled my magical wits so there was little force I could bring to bear on almost any detail.
I could have made a fire, for instance, if ours burned out. But I couldn’t have drawn enough energy to fuel it. Even the spell of warmth on our cold-weather gear had faded to nothingness. And that spell had been especially formed and cast by skilled Evocators who worked with the Chandlers’ Guild.
My chest of sorcerous goods had been lost with the Tern, so there was no way I could test to see if those materials were affected as well. I suspected they would be, so there was no real reason to mourn their loss.
Which brought me full circle to our dilemma - how to find the garbage pit. A physical search was out. Only magic would do. How could I accomplish such a thing considering the circumstances?
I felt very small against the howl of that never-ending storm.
Then it came to me that smallness might be the answer. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed that the less magical surface I presented the better off I’d be. I had a little laugh for myself. The young Evocators at home would have called this Greycloak thinking. Friction – and the avoiding of same – being as much of a force in the magical world as the physical.
Meanwhile, our last foraging party had come back with a great prize, the frozen body of a ship’s rat found beneath a hearth stone.
Donarius had clawed it up as he was searching the ashes for blackened crumbs of food. We’d all made much over him for his find and were eagerly anticipating the rat’s body being boiled into a broth and that broth and the creature’s ground up bones added to our next batch of gruel.
Now that would be a feast indeed.
You can imagine the frowns I got when I asked for the rat. Even men, hand-picked and superbly trained as these couldn’t resist the very human feelings of suspicion that I might be demanding more than my share.
I paid them no mind, trusting in their professionalism to keep their heads fixed tight to their necks.
I withdrew to a corner and the men went back to taking turns around the fire. They did their best to ignore me, giving me privacy for my wizard’s work.
A task that wouldn’t be hard. The wind roared all around us, making normal speech impossible. It was easier to let the sound swallow you as you crouched before that fire for the small time allotted each person. For a few minutes you could enter a state of dreamy exhaustion where the outside world was faint and far away.
I laid the gray body before me. I fumbled my firebeads from my purse and draped them across the small corpse. I didn’t bother breathing the little chant that’d make the beads glow into life. I’d attempted it before and knew even that simple spell - which every Orissan child knows - wouldn’t work in the face of this powerful spell-storm.
But I thought I might use the beads as a focal point like a magnifying glass. At least that was my theory. It remained to be seen if the theory could be made to work.
I concentrated on the beads lying against the dead creature. I made my will a narrow beam, slender as a needle. I held that image, made the magical needle sharper still and narrower with a wide eye to receive the thread. I slipped the imaginary needle forward as delicately as I could.
I felt a hum in the ethers. Something… had been alerted! I felt inquisitive little particles of magic waft toward me. But the interest was mild and there were only a few bits - like a gentle puff of snow flakes - swirling about.
I kept still until they were gone.
When it was safe I prodded with my magical needle again. I pierced a fire
bead, felt a minuscule glow of power and pressed on through the bead and into the rat’s body. I left the magical needle fixed in the body and slowly withdrew, unreeling a thin magical thread I had gently conjured up from the needle’s eye.
In my wizard’s eye I could see the thread unspool, a silver bit of gossamer waving in the etherous breeze. My mental fingers gripped the thread and I chanted:
Fur and fang,
Squeak and quarrel.
Scurrying, always
Scurrying...
Busy in the burrow.