connected to the huge capstans. The rumble of the massive slabs shook the stone floor. The cold air blasted in as the gates parted wider. The sky in the north was pale blue and cloudless.
Black Ice Bay was a frozen swath of drifted snow. When the gates had opened wide enough, Stariz strode along the stone edge of the dock to halt before the wall of snow, perhaps twenty feet high, rising almost to the top of the Stormgates. She held the treasured Axe of Gonnas in two hands, high above her head, declaiming loudly. Baldruk stood beside the king, his pale eyes shining as they watched the priestess begin her incantations.
“Gonnas, our Immortal Protector, Gonnas the Mighty, Gonnas the Strong, show us thy will, and thy path!”
Grimwar felt awe as he looked at that gleaming axehead, saw it glowing with a light from within. Blue flame licked along the keen edge, rising and waving in a magical dance. When his wife swept the mighty weapon through the air, it seemed to make an audible hiss. Steam swirled through the air, like the moist gout of a hot spring, obscuring vision and slicking skin.
Stariz seemed to vanish into that mist, walking forward out of Winterheim and heading down toward the great snow wall. Grimwar and Baldruk hurried forward. The king saw her walking down a wide trench, making a deep gouge through the snow covering the sea. The axe struck, and more snow hissed and evaporated.
The ogre warriors, awestruck but disciplined, marched quickly behind their leader, the entire column snaking out of the city and onto the bay. Again Stariz gestured with her axe, and another great length of path was carved out of the snow. The icy drifts loomed to each side, but the base was solidly frozen bay, and the gap fully thirty feet wide-room for five or six ogres to march abreast.
The daylight was feeble, and only lasted for a few hours, but in that time Stariz was able to work wonders with her axe, and the ogre army crossed the bay and headed onto the smooth surface of Fenriz Glacier. They kept marching even into darkness, the arrival of which caused Baldruk Dinmaker to snort with pleasure even as frosty air closed around them. The blue flames on the Axe of Gonnas flickered unnaturally bright in the night.
Grimwar announced their stops for sleep would be brief. The route of their march led northward between the mountains. A hundred miles away they expected to emerge at the sea very near Brackenrock.
“You Arktos will stay here while we explore your cave,” Strongwind Whalebone declared. A dozen of his warriors, as well as the high priest in his fur and bear-skull raiments, stood back as the tribespeople filed into a small side cavern just off of the main chamber.
“You, elf. Stay here.”
Kerrick halted, watching as the Arktos trudged through the narrow entry. Bruni turned to look back at him, then ducked to enter as a barbarian warrior raised his spear threateningly. Moreen was last, but she halted and then shrugged off a restraining hand, coming back to stand at Kerrick’s side.
“He is not your enemy,” she said, as the Highlander king narrowed his eyes. “We took him captive and coerced him into carrying us across the strait.”
“Is this true?” growled Strongwind Whalebone.
Kerrick was strongly tempted to say “yes.” Perhaps the Highlanders would spare him whatever fate they planned for the Arktos. Clearly they held the power here, and there was nothing to be gained by allying himself with Moreen’s doomed tribe.
“It’s true,” the chiefwoman insisted, glaring at the elf, but he saw the hidden plea in her eyes, urging him to deny the Arktos, to seek whatever escape he could. It was that plea, more than anything else, that forced him to speak the truth.
“I helped the Arktos willingly,” he told the barbarian monarch. “I consider them my friends.”
Strongwind grinned in mocking pleasure. “It is as I suspected. With your skill with your boat, you could have escaped easily enough. You-go!”
Moreen slumped in defeat as two Highlanders dragged her away. Strongwind turned back to Kerrick.
“I have heard that elves are magical people. Search this one. Let us divide him from his treasures.”
They ungirded his scabbard and set it aside. Rough hands lifted his knife, his small pouch of tinder and flint. Blunt fingers slipped underneath his belt, around his side. The hidden pouch was plucked away.
“No!” he cried, lunging, snatching back the small fold of material. The drawstring was tight-he couldn’t get his hands on the ring-but he broke the hold of the burly warrior clutching his arm.
“Stop him!” cried the king.
Kerrick heard steel slip from a sheath behind him, and he twisted out of the way, barely avoiding a stab in the back. The other Highlander, the one who had been searching him, drew a dagger and thrust at him.
His training took over. Feinting left, Kerrick twisted to the right and seized the man’s knife arm by the wrist. Pivoting, using his attacker’s momentum against him, he pulled the man past, sent him tumbling into the other warrior waving his sword.
More hands seized Kerrick as a dozen of the king’s men closed in. The pouch was yanked from his fingers. The elf was watching the two men who had collided and collapsed to the ground. The swordsman scrambled to his feet, looking in revulsion at his bloody blade. A groan of pain came from the other man. His chest was covered with blood.
“I … I didn’t …” Kerrick stared in horror, conscious of being gripped so tightly he could hardly breathe.
“Nevertheless, you did,” sternly declared the king of the Highlanders. He glared at the elf. “For that, you will pay the penalty customary among our people for the crime of murder.”
He nodded to his men. “Put him temporarily in the cave with the Arktos. Let him try to stay warm in there, as we prepare a slab for the Ice Death.”
20
Tap another keg, and fill my mug once more. Then shall we have some entertainment!” Strongwind Whalebone proclaimed with a wild flourish, to the deep, ringing cheers of this men. He stood in the center of the cavern, illuminated by two great bonfires his warriors had built, surrounded by a throng of Highlander warriors.
The Arktos were gathered together at the side of the big chamber, except for Moreen, who stood in the center of the room with Lars Redbeard and another bearded man flanking her. Along the wall was piled the great cache of supplies that had been unloaded from the Highlanders’ dogsleds. Much of that pile consisted of the ubiquitous casks of warqat, which the men had been drinking steadily over the past few days.
The Arktos had been segregated in a smaller chamber, though they had often been able to hear the raucous laughter and crude jeers of their drunken captors. Kerrick suspected it was only a matter of time before the women began to suffer even baser abuses at the hands of the crude men. He had spent his own captivity in grim anticipation of the sentence pronounced by the Highlander king.
Even so, he felt no regret about declaring his allegiance to the tribe. Contrasting the dignified captivity of the Arktos with the brawling revelry of the Highlanders, the elf found every reason to despise his captors. He was well aware that his contempt, unfortunately, did nothing to render these men less dangerous.
“You asked me about dragons,” King Strongwind chortled to Moreen, “and thus I knew you were seeking Brackenrock. Though little did I expect to find you in such snug shelter. That was well done, that wall you built across the cave mouth. I have given the order that it be rebuilt. I intend no harm to your people, if things go well between us.
“You should know, however,” he added with a harsh laugh. “Brackenrock was the ancestral home of
“That’s a lie!” declared the chiefwoman. “It is said that the Arktos came forth from that place during the Scattering. From that time we have made our villages on the shores of the White Bear Sea!”
The king shook his head, pointing a finger right at her face. “You say this, but you have no histories, no books, nothing for proof. I have the stories of this period written by Highlander bards three centuries ago!”
“Because if you write it down, that makes it true,” Dinekki muttered to Kerrick sarcastically, her voice too low for any of the Highlanders to hear.
