A serenity of facial muscles; a rhythmic rising and falling of her chest; a relaxed mode with which Ulran was familiar; and a steadfastness of eye that suggested a strong will and indomitable spirit. Already, bodily, Fhord had recovered from the avalanche. The shivering had stopped. But now this change had occurred.
“First Dloinma,” Fhord mused. “It must be significant,” she mumbled, as though to herself.
Alomar looked askance at Ulran. “We’re three again,” he said.
***
Their clothing was completely dry. They crawled through the tunnel into the “ante-chamber” cave.
Preceded by wisps of breath and the final smoke strands of the extinguished fire, they squeezed out into the cool dawn air.
First Sufin’s dawn was crisp and windless.
“We’re in luck.” Alomar grinned, strapping on his pack. He scratched his stubble; neither he nor Ulran felt inclined to continue shaving.
Snow fell in a leisurely sort of way. The horrors of yesterday’s avalanche seemed far removed, of another world.
To their left snaked the glacier and, beyond, silent and proud mountain peaks. To their right, the bulk of this mountain, and over its shoulder a hog’s-back that meandered towards other towering peaks, stark against a bright almost colourless sky.
“But we’ll still need caution,” warned Ulran. “Listen.”
The sound of distant rumblings – more ever-present avalanches.
Fhord thought of her friend and squinted down the mountainside, at the fresh blanket of snow, now unblemished. While in the sanctuary cavern they had each used some clothing from Rakcra’s pack to manufacture cloth strips to cover their eyes, save for narrow knife-slits to see through, and in some measure this combatted the threat of snow-blindness. Any other essentials from Rakcra’s pack that they might need had been shared out. She turned to the task ahead.
Roped together, sword in one hand and scabbard in the other, they trudged through the crisp clinging snow, up a zigzagging gully.
After only a few steps, the snow stuck and weighed down their feet and swords. They stopped often, to brush it free.
They climbed to the rise that was level with the summit of the ice-fall.
“If possible we’ll skirt round this peak’s summit,” Ulran said, then coughed spasmodically.
Fhord reached out a steadying hand but the innman waved it away.
“I’ll be all right,” Ulran said, rubbing his forehead. Curse you, Mirm!
Higher up, where the glacier twisted slightly, Fhord could see it narrowed.
“Yes, that’s probably where we’ll cross,” Ulran supplied uncannily. “We must go with great care – you see the surface glacial stream, it’s treacherous.” The innman’s sword indicated the glint of melt-water that covered the entire glacier, trickling in wide sheets down to the brink of the ice-falls. “One slip and you could be sliding down those fissures.”
Dark ominous longitudinal crevasses scarred the glacier’s surface, ugly contrast to the surrounding whites, greys and blue-shadows.
Ulran led the way up the steep incline that bordered the lateral moraine. He stumbled on two occasions but the others didn’t notice. He gradually gained on them and, for once, his judgement failed him. He slipped the line free and, instead of waiting for them to catch up, he determined to cross the glacier, here at the slight bend, where it was narrowest.
His head throbbed repeatedly now, and his eyes and brow felt puffed-up. He was breathing through his mouth only and the icy-cold air lanced into him as it coursed into his lungs. His body felt hot and sweat soaked his armpits, waist and neck. His legs ached: he hadn’t wanted to rise at dawn, so weary did he feel; but he couldn’t give in, it was not his way.
Yet a little voice in the back of his mind kept saying, rest, rest, before you weaken. But he ignored it: the voice of self-doubt, which he had conquered many years ago. Its reappearance now surprised him. So much training, ritual, self-appraisal and practice, and yet through a moment’s weakness, all that sacrifice could be for nought.
He shook his head to clear his vision through streaming eyes and wiped his nose on a sleeve.
Wherever possible, he walked upon little upjutting rocks that were impregnated within the glacier and poked through its surface. Melt-water streamed past, so that the icy surface was doubly slippery.
Imbedded in the glacier where he crossed were bands of dark and light ice, ancient evidence of the dirt collected when the snout had been at this point many years ago.
Weakness impairs judgement; so said one of the Tangakol Tracts. He was halfway across. Unsteady upon his feet, he attempted to transfer his body-weight evenly at each step. He moved with the occasional rush of meltwater, yet the glassy surface afforded no grip.
He peered over his shoulder: Fhord had drawn level with Alomar and they were both some way further down, still climbing in his tracks.
They waved feverishly at him.
He turned and walked on. He couldn’t go back now. He was annoyed with himself: he should have waited for the others and ensured a safety line was attached.
Judgement impaired, he thought, tight-lipped.
He had averted slipping onto his backpack countless times already. But, this time, he was not fast enough. His feet slid from under and he landed bruisingly hard on his pelvis and immediately slithered down the glacier on his side, unable to arrest his rapid descent.
***
“He’s crossing before we’re ready!” Fhord exclaimed.
Alomar looked up and stopped. “By the gods, this is too foolhardy for Ulran – rushing ahead serves no purpose.” He eyed Fhord, concern flickering. “I fear he’s ill, lass.”
“If he slips...” Fhord left the sentence unfinished and her eyes rested on the serried ranks of jagged black crevasses that dissected sections of the glacier.
“Here, tie this rope round your waist. Unsheathe your sword. Right, and tie another line to the sword’s handle – and to you, fine.”
“What –?”
“We keep climbing,” Alomar said, ignoring Fhord as he watched the innman’s progress. “But don’t move your eyes from him.”
At that moment, Ulran’s head turned and he looked down at them.
Fhord waved for him to come back and use a line. Even Alomar signalled. “He’s halfway over now – he might as well go the rest–”
Then it happened.
Ulran slipped in the blinking of an eye and Alomar barked, “I’m your anchor, lass – dive across the ice, intercept–”
Fhord was already diving, arms outstretched. She hit the hard surface, knocking the breath out of her, but her momentum continued to move her across.
One hand gripping the sword, she slithered on chest, belly and thighs over the meltwater. She left a pink trail of blood where small imbedded stones cut into her legs.
But her momentum carried her too far across.
Ulran slithered down between her and the medial moraine.
But the innman managed to grab the rope stretched across: with the added weight, Fhord’s side-ways slide jerked to a halt and they both slipped down towards a gaping crevasse barely three marks away.
Now Fhord understood Alomar’s intentions and rammed the sword-blade home into the glacier ice.
Chips flew into her face and the blade came out, jolting suddenly. She quickly hauled on the line and grabbed the hilt tighter, slithering all the while on her belly, the ice-cold wetness stabbing stomach, body-core and her small cuts.
She thudded the blade into the ice – and this time it held.
Her arms were almost wrenched from their sockets with the arrested weight as Ulran jerked on the rope. Fhord twisted round a little and peered over her hunched hide shoulder. Through wet streamers of fur-hair, she glimpsed Ulran. The innman hung onto the rope with one hand, and from the waist down dangled over the crevasse edge.
Great gasps of air gushed out of Fhord as she lay there. The insidious cold began working on her.
&nb
sp; Alomar still held the other end of the rope. He shouted across, “Ulran, haul yourself up the rope towards Fhord!”
The innman must be ailing, she thought, else he would normally have thought of that.
Fhord checked again, her neck becoming stiff.
Ulran had waved acknowledgement and was tugging himself up over the lip of the crevasse.
Fhord twisted round.
The left-hand side of the glacier was about a mark distant, ragged and unsightly with moraine-stain. But the moraine, almost a half-mark in width, would provide better surface grip than here. She had formulated the next move, once Ulran had reached her.
At last Ulran was alongside. He let go of the rope attached to Fhord’s waist and gripped the sword-hilt. “That was quick thinking,” the innman gasped.
Fear suddenly flooded into Fhord’s mind. She had never seen the innman so breathless, no matter how much exertion he’d been under.
“I – I...” Fhord mentally shook herself. “I’m tied to this sword and to Alomar,” she began again. “If you can put all your weight onto the sword, I’ll cross to the moraine, there – if I slip, the line’s not long and I should be able to grope even then.”
Ulran nodded. “It’s worth a try. Go, now – I’ll hold the sword.”
Balancing precariously, Fhord walked across, pitched at an angle because of the slope.
She made it without slipping once. As her boots crunched onto the rough and quite firm moraine, she felt sure her heart had only just begun hammering into life again.
Once she had attained the rocky edge, she wedged the line into a crevice and jammed it there with a rock torn loose from the ice. “Right, ready when you are!” she shouted.
The line draped quite loosely and enabled Ulran to hold it while he walked with a stoop. He, too, managed the crossing without further mishap.
Presently, he was beside Fhord. He released his pack and sat down on a boulder. “Can you manage on your own?” he asked.
Fhord nodded, inwardly disturbed. She then waved for Alomar to cross.
Alomar wound the rope round himself as he went, and crossed with steady, painstaking slowness. He withdrew her sword and then continued on over, still gripping the line. He slipped just before the moraine, but Fhord’s hand darted out and yanked the warrior onto the firm surface.
“My unseemly haste has cost us some time,” Ulran said and swung his pack on again. “I had hoped we’d get well down the other side of the mountain before the night-winds came.”
Fhord wanted to say something but found herself speechless.
Alomar more or less voiced her thoughts: “Are you ailing, Ulran?”
“You’re quite right, friend.” The innman clapped a hand upon one of Alomar’s lacquered pauldrons. “It came on me yesterday, on the hog’s-back.”
A thought struck Fhord. “Could it be related to my headaches?”
“That had occurred to me, but no, it’s quite unrelated; anyway, your headaches haven’t returned, have they?”
“No... true.”
“Could be delayed reaction to the bane-viper,” Alomar suggested. “A small trace in your system, perhaps.”
“Perhaps. But come, Alomar, I think you should lead the way – at least till this ague passes.”
And so Ulran temporarily relinquished leadership of the company and followed Alomar, with Fhord bringing up the rear.
***
Yip-nef Dom’s solitary eye widened and his thick moist lips slavered. “Lost them, you say?”
Knees quaking beneath his black robes, Por-al Row nodded. He swallowed thickly. “It was to be expected, sire,” he squeaked. “The – the Fourth, yes, the Fourth Durin I last located them, Your Excellency. Approaching the Sonalume foothills. I – they, the mountains – it’s probably the mountains, Your Majesty – getting in the way, obscuring my Sight.”
Yip-nef Dom agitatedly paced up and down the battlements mumbling to himself. He cast a belligerent look over his shoulder. “When will they reach the mountains?”
“I’d give them two days, three at the outside. Depends on that horde, I imagine, though.” He calmed a little, guile returning to his aid. “I’m sure there must be a link between one of the travellers and those Devastators. No one city-bred could meet them and live, otherwise.”
Some old Lornwater rumours niggled at the back of his mind but would not take shape.
“Sire! Sire!” called the keeper of the hawks. He dashed up the stone stairs two at a time. “Sire, your birds–!” The red-faced and breathless keeper was in tears.
“What is it – not the red tellars?” Yip-nef Dom demanded.
Por-al Row remained silent for he knew very well what troubled the damnable keeper.
Quivering before his obese king, the keeper moaned self-pityingly and pointed over the battlements.
In twos and threes, the royal hawks flew drunkenly home, many scratched and gored and not a few actually scorched. A couple were so far gone they flew directly into the battlement wall with a nauseating splat and perished.
“What – is – the – meaning – of – this?” stammered the king, levelling his evil eye upon the quailing keeper.
“I – I don’t know, Your Highness! The last time I looked, they were all present and accounted for. Then – then I was called away. My wife had taken ill – some black malady that wouldn’t leave her, sire. She recovered this morn – I’ve just returned.”
Too soon, evidently, mused Por-al Row. “Negligence in the enactment of his duties, I should say, sire,” offered the alchemist.
“Yes, and I think we shall show others of my entourage just what slackness in duties can entail! Guard!”
The nearest sentry hurried over the stone walkway flags, shield and spear clanking.
“Lock up the keeper for the time being. I shall hear his plea tomorrow, if I feel like it!” And he turned, dismissing prisoner and guard from his mind.
Tears welled in Yip-nef Dom’s eye. “My birds, my poor birds!”
Por-al Row excused himself, ostensibly to check on an elixir, when in truth he had need to change his clothes that were so saturated with the seepage of fear.
***
A drop of a terrible distance loomed beneath the narrow ledge.
Negotiating the mantel-shelf of hard rock with patches of snow was made more difficult by the presence of their bulging packs. They could not press themselves back against the rock face, nor their faces to it, lest the packs unbalanced them and they plunged.
Progress was slow. A shuffle at a time, one foot in front of the other. Bodies three-quarters on, packs balanced above the actual ledge whilst both hands gripped and felt along the rock face.
The clothes of Fhord and Ulran had been soaked due to the glacier crossing. And Alomar now fared no better – he was saturated with sweat, because of the added weight of his armour, all of which he argued time and again he would not abandon.
The immortal warrior still led. The rope threaded through each of their belts tended to give them a false sense of security, when in truth all knew that if one fell, it was likely that all would go together.
Varteron winds sliced into their wet garments. All three shivered though, strangely, Fhord less than the others.
Even the cuts and abrasions she had sustained sliding across the glacier had begun to heal. She could barely feel any pain from them.
She still wrestled with half-formed images from her cavern sleep. But she was no longer afraid, not of the cold, the exposure, the winds, nor of the heights. She could not explain it, but she felt a strange surge of raw naked power course through her.
As yet, this power was dormant, untested, something alien to her psychic abilities. Her observations of Ulran’s iron control served her in good stead. Now was not the time, so she held herself in check and mentioned her swirling thoughts to nobody.
Then they were round and onto a sloping escarpment of snow and boulders. Here, they could rest a few moments before the gradual descent into Astrey
Caron Pass. Eerily, the wind died as Fhord peered around at the view.
They were higher than the top of Saddle Mountain – and the Glacier Peak’s summit was still higher up. She was glad they had skirted the summit.
Just over the ranmeron shoulder of Soveram Torne, many launmarks distant, the dark stain on the countryside could be seen where the great Manderranmeron Fault ran. And, jutting through the fault, the smouldering cone of Astle, one of the four fault volcanoes.
The sky was filled with a ragged mass of cloud, scudding towards the mountains. “Bad-weather clouds,” Ulran remarked and coughed, bringing green sputum to his lips.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
ANGEVANELLIAN
The wine they drink Below
Will surely lay you low!
– Chorus of Military Ale Drinking Song
Late after-morning and nothing that resembled a pass was in sight. Fhord fleetingly wondered about the accuracy of Ulran’s madurava bearings.
With Alomar still leading they descended the steep escarpment sideways, using their swords to curb momentum.
Then they suddenly came upon a gaping chasm, its icy sides reflecting the white of snow.
If it had been dusk they could easily have walked over the edge. The chasm appeared bottomless and was at least seven marks wide – too far to risk jumping.
“The sides seem to veer closer further down – it’s like a great V in the mountain.”
“Could be an illusion – perspective,” Ulran warned. “But I agree, Alomar, it’s our only chance. I’m probably the most agile here, but–”
“Yes, normally, you’d be obvious choice to go first. But now, I think I had better.”
“Go?” Fhord queried.
Alomar handed the rope to Fhord in reply. “You and Ulran hang on damned tight while I climb down.”
Fhord’s thoughts raced to her mountain gods and she mumbled a swift prayer. “May the gods go with you, Alomar!”
“You’re incorrigible!” snorted the warrior and lowered himself over the side.
To begin with, any kind of foothold was impossible. He could feel the strain on the rope. He should have taken off at least some armour before trying the descent. But now it was too late; he needed a foothold, to give his companions a respite. He withdrew his dagger and chipped away a handhold on one side of him then on the other.
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