The Messenger

“I’ll carry her,” Bruni said. She handed the heavy hammer to Moreen and lifted up the injured woman as though she was a babe. “Let’s get down to the cave, now.”

Moreen and Tildey brought up the rear, imagining thanoi lurking in every shadow, behind every boulder on the mountainside.

“How many did we lose?” the archer asked, too softly for her voice to reach the others.

“I saw Nangrid fall, and Marin … and Carann and Anka were surrounded on the stairs. I don’t think they got out.” Moreen tried to speak dispassionately, but each name caught in her throat and tears burned her eyes. “I don’t know how many more!”

“Maybe some escaped,” Tildey said. “You kept us together and led us to the gate. Otherwise we never would have made it.”

“Why did I lead us in there with no idea what we were going up against? Dinekki’s spell-she saw the place and said there were no dragons there! But she never said … I never asked … about tuskers! Why?” Sobs choked her words. She couldn’t blame the shaman, couldn’t blame anyone but herself. She made the decision, and at least four brave and good tribemates had paid for her mistake with their lives.

So immersed was she in self-pity that she almost bumped into Bruni who, still cradling the semiconscious Garta, had halted in the midst of the steep trail.

“Listen,” asked the big woman. “Do you hear that?”

The moaning sound reached them first on a primal level, as something they felt in their bellies, through the soles of their feet. The rumbling permeated the air, the ground, the whole world. The import of what they heard was clear to Moreen, to all the Arktos, in a flash.

“The Sturmfrost!”

“Yes … it has been unleashed.”

“Go! All of you, hurry!” cried the chiefwoman, as the ragged file of weary Arktos hurried as much as they could in the darkness, on the steep and rocky pathway.

How much farther to the bottom of the mountain, to the cave where the rest of the tribe was waiting? Moreen didn’t know. They were lost in darkness on the trail. Tildey tripped over a rock, cursing as she went down in a tangle, then bounced right back to her feet and jogging along. The wailing of the storm grew louder, a roar that shook the air and sent tremors rippling through the ground. A glance to the south showed that the sky was blacked out and the storm was surging hungrily north toward them.

“There’s the fire!” someone cried, and Moreen saw flames at the base of the cliff, the dark outline of the cave mouth just beyond. Now the noise of the wind had risen to a pitch, and they felt it swirl around them, blasting their exposed skin with needles of ice and snow. The signal fire vanished, swallowed up by the storm. Chunks of ice flew, splintering rocks free from the mountainside, bruisingly bouncing off flesh.

Moreen heard a loud smash and a scream. Stumbling blindly forward she tripped over a body, bent down to see Banrik, a young woman of seventeen years. The back of her skull, where a boulder-sized piece of ice had slammed her, was a crushed, gory mass. Her eyes were open but she was mercifully dead.

With a desperate shout, Moreen pushed ahead toward the remembered shelter. She was vaguely aware of Tildey and Bruni close to her, other women too moving through the chaos of the Sturmfrost. Her skin seemed frozen, and she was surrounded by deafening noise. She followed the downhill slope, felt the level ground at the bottom of the cliff. Finally, the cave walls were around them, and they could find refuge from the wind, slipping inside to stand near a raging fire that Dinekki and the others were tending, several bends past the cave mouth. The storm roared and wailed as they escaped it but the wind couldn’t reach them here.

Moreen slumped defeatedly against the wall, sinking down to sit on the floor.

“Where’s Little Mouse?” asked Garta, suddenly opening her eyes and sitting up. They looked around in panic until the youth, his cheeks pale and his hair caked with frost, stumbled in from the cave mouth. He was shouting and gesturing.

“No, stay here!” cried the chiefwoman, too exhausted and discouraged to care what he said. The lad shook his head, as if he hadn’t heard.

“It’s that elf and his sailboat!” he announced. “They were almost to shore when the Sturmfrost hit. Now I think they’re going to be smashed to death on the rocks!”

Cutter heaved and pitched, riding high on the waves crashing against shore, as Kerrick let out an involuntary sob of despair.

“Hey-look sharp there!” Coraltop Netfisher was on the deck near the bow waving the long oar. Feet braced against the safety line, he wielded the long shaft of wood so that, somehow, just as it seemed the boat would hurl itself against the rock and splinter to bits, the kender shoved it away.

Cutter bobbed back out to sea, carried by an eddy twisting into a curl. Again the storm roared and the waves surged, and Kerrick knew that the kender’s desperate maneuver wouldn’t save them twice.

Something crashed against the deck, and he saw a chunk of ice bigger than his head shoot past, shattering in the well of the cockpit. Another piece, as big as a house, plunged into the water next to the boar, drenching him with freezing spray. Fortunately, the berg had splashed down between the boat and the shore and raised a wave that tossed Cutter farther from the jagged rocks.

All the wetness froze instantly. Kerrick felt as if he were wearing plates of heavy armor. His hands, though he wore two layers of gloves, were numb. The sails trailed in tatters from the mast. Once more he wore the ring from his father-he had donned it once the storm hit-but even magical strength seemed a pale contrast to the fury of this storm. He could barely hold the lurching tiller.

Again, however, he spotted the rock and point of land he had dubbed the Signpost. The beach was a hundred yards away, although in this storm it might as well be a hundred miles.

The storm eddied again, and the boat whirled dizzyingly. More chunks of ice crashed down, hail the size of small boulders. The wind, trapped amid this bowl of cliff, moaned like a suffering thing.

“Hey! I’m going to try to rope the rock!” Coraltop Netfisher stood at the bow, a ridiculous grin on his face. He wore nothing over his favorite green shirt. He must be freezing, thought Kerrick. The kender, who had the anchor rope coiled about his shoulders, pointed gleefully at the signpost rock. “Watch this!”

“Zivilyn protect you!” Kerrick prayed, the words a rasping whisper vanishing instantly into the heart of the storm.

The bow rose on another wave, and Cutter leaped through spray and snow and icy water. Still holding the anchor rope, the kender sprang or was catapulted toward the rocks at the base of the pillar of stone. More waves rolled in, spray whipping in the wind, yanking the boat away, before Kerrick could yell or do anything. The kender was gone.

“Coraltop!” shouted the elf, scrambling forward, skidding on the icy deck. He saw the rope trailing from a deep pool of roiling water. There was no sign of his shipmate.

Hoping that the kender might still be holding on to the other end of the anchor line, Kerrick seized the rope and pulled. At the same time, another crest of water surged beneath the boat, lifting the deck, twisting him around, sending the elf over the rail headfirst into the surf.

The rope was still in his numbed hands as he kicked to the surface and gasped a lungful of cold air. Some part of his mind registered the odd fact that the water wasn’t cold. Something smashed his hip, and he knew the rocks were right beside him. As the wave lifted him higher he kicked and clawed, somehow forced himself into a safe area between the coastal boulders.

He still had the anchor rope, but Cutter had surged past the promontory now. She was heading toward the cove, pushed inexorably toward the beach. Kerrick almost sobbed in frustration as the rope slipped through his hands, bearing his treasure, his pride, his very life, toward certain doom. Even the ring, magic pulsing through his flesh, was not enough to help him brace against the storm’s relentless power.

He felt strong arms wrapping him in an embrace, and he was certain his mind had snapped. Someone … two hands … not his own, grasping the anchor rope, slowing the sailboat’s course toward doom. He grabbed the line again, feeling hope.

“Bruni!” He looked up into her round face, her lips compressed in a determined frown. Desperately his feet