Later, it would be Grimwar’s task to invoke the names of all his ancestors, calling upon them to melt the icy blue barrier. Only then would ogre and human alike feel winter’s deadly kiss, only then would the king release the Sturmfrost across the land.
Grimwar could hear the mournful wail of a cyclonic wind. The tumult was pure, frigid winter, churning with sleet and icy snow. The levels of snow had risen dangerously high, threatening the ice wall. Now, in this ceremony dating to the origins of time, the ogre king would once again release the storm onto the wider world, and Winterheim would be protected for another long, cold, sunless winter. Grimwar glanced toward the vast sheet of blue and was startled to see Balrduk Dinmaker glaring up at him, the dwarf’s expression somewhere between contemptuous and pensive.
“Prepare yourself!” hissed the royal adviser, before turning his attention to the royal couple, now but one tier above them.
The princess sniffed disdainfully at Grimwar’s side, and he glanced at her and her impassive mask. “She could at least wear a decent covering,” Stariz hissed. “Like too many others, she does not understand the sacredness of the event!”
Grimwar looked up at the young queen. Thraid wore a gown of white bearskin, cut low across her impressive bosom, gathered tightly to display the unusual slenderness of her waist. Rouge brightened her cheeks and her lips, creating an effect that the prince found altogether appealing. As she walked serenely, Thraid Dimmarkull ber Bane clutched King Grimtruth’s arm, clear proof to all of her position. Her eyes caught the prince’s as she approached, and she met his gaze with a hurt expression. For some reason, the emotion cut Grimwar deeper than any display of fury.
Angrily, he pulled his eyes away from the young ogress. The king himself, his father, Grimwar thought, looked downright disgraceful. Of course, he was dressed in the traditional white robes of his station, with the Crown of Cospid gleaming on his head, his black boots polished to a bright sheen. His slaves had seen to all that. As to the king’s person, his eyes were bloodshot, narrowed suspiciously, and a strand of drool dangled casually from one of his tusks. Those tusks were also circled with golden wire, but the monarch had not bothered to have slaves polish either the metal, or the ivory of his teeth. From the unsteadiness of the big ogre’s gait, the prince suspected that his father had begun celebrating early.
Nevertheless, the king reached the table without incident, and soon they, and all the other ogres of Winterheim, were seated. Stariz intoned a prayer, asking for the blessing of the Willful One. Baldruk raised the first toast, and the king took a gulp from his goblet that left warqat shining, slick and oily, down his chin.
A procession of slaves came forth with slabs of beef, whole salmon, great wheels of cheese, iced sturgeon eggs, and cask upon cask of pungent warqat. Throughout the hall ogres began to eat and drink.
To Grimwar, everything tasted like ash.
Baldruk Dinmaker rose again from his seat between the two mighty ogres. He cleared his throat, bringing the crowd to silence.
“It has been my great honor to serve the Bane kings for two generations-three, if we count the crown prince who, some day, will prove himself worthy of this throne.…”
The dwarf shot Grimwar a glance before continuing-again, that look half of disdain. The ogre heard none of the rest of the words. Instead, he flushed with a feeling of rage that started at his toes and spread upward through his entire body.
“… has applied himself with diligence to the learning. May it please the gods of us all-let the Rites begin!” Once more the trumpets, played by the human slaves who stood on the high rampart, brayed through the Hall of Blue Ice.
“The crown prince will now recite the Names of Dynasty!” proclaimed Hakkan. The lord of protocol, rigid and serene in a long green robe, stood before the royal table, his back to the king’s family as he bellowed his announcement through the Hall of Blue Ice.
“Are you ready?” hissed Stariz, who had sat through the dinner without eating, since to do so would have meant removing her tusked mask and risking the displeasure of her god. She rose to follow her husband, bearing the Axe of Gonnas as was required by her role.
Grimwar tried to concentrate on the names that were marching through his skull in dynastic progression. Baldruk leaned over and glared at him intensely. “You know what to do,” he said. Putting down the empty mug of warqat, which he had nursed through the long meal, the prince rose to the cheers of all the assembled ogres. Barely hearing the accolades, he was making his way past the king’s seat when Grimtruth seized his son’s hand and pulled him down closer.
“Do not embarrass me again.”
His father stank of warqat and sweat, both equally repugnant. Angrily, Grimwar pulled himself away and lumbered toward the massive window of blue ice.
Lord Hakkan was standing by to escort him, but the prince marched past without halting. The great sheet of frost, the window to the glacier and the Ice Wall and the Storm Sea, rose before him. Now Grimwar halted in the prescribed position. The names of his ancestors were ready, about to trip off his tongue, when his mind veered backward, to the humiliation of four years earlier.
“He’s a fool!” roared Grimtruth Bane, rising from his chair and lunging around the banquet table. The young prince stood paralyzed, speechless. For a long time he had been standing there, silent, unsuccessfully willing the names from his subconscious. He looked back, saw his mother, Queen Hannareit, looking at him with an expression of pleading … then Grimtruth Bane filled his vision, storming toward his son, face twisted by fury and warqat.
The high priest, Karn Draco, tried to stop the king, but Grimtruth would not be deterred. “Give me that!” he demanded, snatching the Axe of Gonnas from the priest’s hands.
“No-the window must melt before the Names!” protested Draco.
With a single blow from the golden axe the king shattered the blue ice. Shards of glassy frost exploded, and instantly winter’s vortex had swept into the hall. The first gust sucked Karn Draco into the frosty wasteland. Tables were tossed about, humans and ogres swept away by the lethal force of wind.
Grimtruth Bane seized a nearby slave, one of the hapless servers who had been working at the royal table, and, still carrying the Axe of Gonnas, marched out to the brink of the Ice Wall. Throwing the blubbering human down, he killed him with a single blow of the axe, so that his blood soaked into the dam as required by the ancient ritual.
That sacrifice was made without the full ceremony, however, without the blessing of Gonnas. When the Sturm-sea erupted that year, it did so capriciously, tearing away a great part of the city and burying a valuable gold mine in the process.
Everyone blamed Grimwar Bane. His father arranged the marriage to Stariz, whose tutelage, it was hoped, would see that the prince maintained a properly studious, devoted outlook on life. She came to Winterheim and replaced the fallen high priest and, for the past three years, it had been she who had recited the names.
Now, again, had come the time for the prince to prove himself.
“O Gonnas the Strong, Gonnas the Mighty, the Willful One …” Stariz intoned the names of the god. “Grant us your favor. Melt the Blue Ice, and let the king of Suderhold come forth to unleash your Sturmfrost upon the world!”
The watchers, ogres and humans alike, held their breath as Grimwar Bane took a step forward and began to speak.
“King Barkon, Barkon I, brought the clans to Winterheim, in the first year of Dynasty,” Grimwar began, “and reigned until year 63. It was then that his son, Barkon II, took the throne, until the year 91. Barkon III came next, in dynasty, to year 147. These were the Barkon kings, the founders of Suderhold.
“The Icetusk dynasty commenced in 150, with Garren Icetusk, who ruled through 212.…”
Surprisingly, the names seemed to burst forth with a will of their own. The Icetusks were easy-they had ruled for more than a thousand years, and it seemed that each date was inextricably attached to their name. When Grimwar said Icetusk VII, for instance, the years 503 and 571 loomed clearly in his memory. So, too, with the rest of that hallowed line.
