Soldiers of Ice

dim indeed.

The ranger's thoughts were interrupted by the stiff rustling of the door curtain. Bright sunshine illuminated the hut as the gaunt Word-Maker stooped to pass through the doorway. The wind swirled ashes from the ebbing fire, adding to the thickness of the air.

The gnoll held the door flap open with one lanky arm, draining the scant heat from the small lodge. He was still dressed as the woman vaguely remembered him from last night. The bindings wound round his arms and legs were not bandages as she thought then, but wrappings made from scraps of cloth and leather layered over buckskin. Thongs bound the windings like cross-gartered hose, reminding Martine of an impoverished courtier she'd once met in Selgaunt. Bits of fur and fabric hung in loose bits beneath the straps. In the light, Martine could see that the straps were spiked where they crossed the backs of the gnoll's hands and wound through his fingers. It was ornamentation heightened to barbaric fashion, for the nails, gleaming silver, seemed incredibly sharp. She remembered his bare chest from last night; today it was covered by a dyed leather shirt, printed in block patterns that duplicated the shining nailwork of his cross-belts. The bearskin cloak of last night hung loosely from one shoulder.

'Good. You are awake, human,' grunted the gnoll. Martine was too dazed to do anything more than stare wildly at him.

'Get up. Hakk wants you.'

The command jolted her back to the present. 'To kill me?' the Harper asked warily. In all her years on various frontiers, Martine had never heard of gnolls taking prisoners.

'No,' the gnoll answered sharply, glaring at her with his deep-sunken eyes. 'I have questions. If you are dead, it is difficult to get answers.'

But not impossible, Martine mentally added upon noting

the unmistakable threat in the shaman's tone. Perhaps she couldn't tell when a gnoll was happy or distrustful, but threats were clear enough.

'Now get up, human. Hakk awaits.'

'I have a name, gnoll. It's Martine… Martine of Sembia.' The fact that the gnoll preferred her alive gave the ranger heart, at least enough to put on a show of pride,

'Margh-tin.' The gnoll mangled the foreign sounding syllables of her name. 'Easier to call you human. I am Krote… Krote Word-Maker. Do what I say and you may live.'

'Yes… Word-Maker. The name means you're a…' The Harper searched for the right word. Her grasp of the harsh gnoll tongue was rusty and far from fluent

'The speaker for Gorellik,' Krote completed impatiently. In case the human didn't understand, he plucked an amulet from the latticework and dangled it in front of Martine. It was a crudely carved animal head, similar to a hyena the ranger had once seen on the plains south of the Innersea. Fetishes of feather and bone dangled from it, leaving no doubt Gorellik was a gnoll god.

'Now, go,' the gnoll demanded as he tucked the icon way.

Martine lurched to her feet, wrapping the fur robe she'd slept in tight around her shredded parka. The thin winter sunlight did little to warm the air, and she had no desire to expose her healing wounds to frostbite once more.

The shaman moved aside warily as Martine stepped outside. Blinking against the ice reflected sunlight, she surveyed the gnoll village. It was a meager collection of vulgar huts spaced in a wide circle around the edge of a roughly circular clearing. There were five huts all told. The nearest was typical of them all, built from old, stiff skins and strips of papery white bark lashed to a simple curved frame. Snow was mounded against the long sides in an attempt to provide some insulation. Smoke curled from a hole in the roof. By some trick of the air, the smoke rose into the sparse branches of the birches and massed there, a greasy pall that transformed the gleaming blue of the sky into a flat haze.

Yipping cries drew Martine's gaze away from the lodge. A small figure darted around the edge of another hut and then stopped short at seeing her. Immediately on its heels came another. The second sprang upon the first from behind, and they fell tumbling across the churned snow. They were young gnolls Martine wasn't sure whether to call them kits or cubs and were playing like children everywhere, though much rougher. Furry muzzles bit at each other in mock battle; then the one on the bottom grabbed a chunk of ice and smashed it against the snapping jowl of its playmate. The gnoll cub flopped back with a whimpering yowl, clutching its face, and the other lunged on top of it, pinning its prey with knees clamped against its chest. The victor barked and growled in triumph and then bounded away.

It reminded Martine of the way her brothers used to wrestle, though maybe without the biting. The thought came so naturally to mind that the Harper had to force herself to remember that they were not the same. These were her captors, and not even human.

Krote pushed her toward the largest of the lodges. The chief's lodge looked no different from the others, only slightly higher and longer. 'Me main distinctive feature was an arch of painted skulls that hung over the entrance. Invisible by night, the gaudily striped and spotted faces stared down at Martine now. They comprised all manner of creatures. Some, like the elk, bear, and griffon, she could identify. Others were mysteries, although the ranger guessed that at least two small skulls were those of gnomes.

Inside, the lodge was lit by the fire pit, whose dull glow made the hanging bones flicker and dance. The massed

gnolls that had filled the hall the night before were gone, no doubt at the day's work. Krote pushed Martine across the cool earthen floor until she stood once more before the chieftain's platform.

Meticulously laid out on the far side of the fire in the brief space between the rock ringed pit and the wooden dais was Martine's gear. Her long sword, leather backpack, and a few sausages from Shadowdale were testimony to what little she had been able to salvage from the glacier. Ignoring the chieftain, who glared at her from his crude throne, the ranger eagerly scanned the gear until she spotted the ivory gleam of Jazrac's dagger. Right next to it rested the dull black rock that was the seal's keystone. The Harper's spirits leapt with both relief and dread. The sudden panic that she might have lost the keystone was replaced by the realization that it was now part of Hakk's booty.

'Wife, is this all your kaamak?' Hakk's lips curled in a snarl as he spoke. There was no affection in his words. 'Kaamak?' It was a term the rangerhad never heard. 'Kaamak!' Hakk repeated loudly as he jabbed a sharp finger at her goods before him.

Gear? Magic? Possessions? Martine thought desperately as she tried to fathom the gnoll's words. She warily shook her head in incomprehension, trying not to provoke another outburst.

Krote interceded, his voice rasping softly behind her. 'Kaamak… wife's payment… gifts to the mate.' 'Dowry?' Martine blurted in Sembian, startled at the suggestion the marriage had anything to do with her wishes.

'Yes, dow-ry,' Krote responded with satisfaction, once more having difficulty with the foreign shapes of the Sembian tongue.

Martine goggled at him, too amazed to attempt any reply. The chieftain was acting as if she had agreed to this wedding, as if she weren't a prisoner! I hope he doesn't expect me to have any goats, she thought

'Is this your kaamak?' Hakk bellowed, now infuriated with her impudence.,

'Answer, female,' Krote hissed. 'Be respectful to your mate.'

'Yes, those are my things,' she answered dazedly.

Hakk smiled with satisfaction and ignored her. He picked up the long sword she'd won from a captain of the Pirate Isles and jabbed it into the ground to test its blade. ''The sword is good. I will keep it.'

Martine bristled. Winning that sword had cost her an ugly scar across her back. Perhaps noticing her reaction, Krote gave her a cautionary jab to remain silent.

Flourishing the sword, Hakk bit into one of Jhaele's sausages, only to immediately spit it into the fire with a retching growl. 'This meat is spoiled!' he pronounced, kicking the rest of the links into the fire. The coals hissed and spattered as the grease oozed from the casings.

'Mose were good sausages, smoked and spiced, you flyspecked idiot' Martine muttered under her breath, unable to repress her anger. 'This time the jab from Krote was considerably harder.

'Krote, I give you the dagger,' Hakk offered expansively after examining Jazrac's knife. With an easy flip, the