Tanis stored the information away, urging the leader to continue.
'We know that the evil… that this Valdane has a powerful mage who sometimes oversees the troops. We know the mage appears old and frail, and our Revered Cleric has posited that the mage's strength wears thin from the oppression of this Valdane. That gives us cause for hope. But the latest rumors have been the most troubling.'
'And they are?'
'That the Valdane has found a new commander who has great practical skills and has led enemy troops, within the last days, into a deadly assault against a village of The People.'
'What do you know of this new commander?' Tanis pressed.
'Only that it is a woman.'
Tanis felt his face grow pale, but he said nothing as Caven and his Ice Folk students returned boisterously from their practice flights. Brittain ushered them all into the large central dwelling for supper-and a planning session.
Chapter 19
Tanis knelt in the Ice Folk village, waiting for the Revered Cleric to begin Xanthar's funeral. Behind the half-elf were arrayed several hundred owls.
At this time of the year, the Icereach experienced its own version of spring, but the signs were sparse. The bitter temperatures of winter eased slightly. The windswept ranges saw increasing hours of daylight, and dusk lingered long into the night. Although the clatter of the Ice Folk had awakened Caven and Tanis in the middle of the night, it was still light enough to see without the aid of walrus-oil lamps.
Turning a deaf ear to Caven's grumbling, Tanis had slipped on his travel-worn leathers and covered them with a long parka of black sealskin. The half-elf had split the lower seams of the garment with his dagger, like Caven and the Ice Folk warriors, to be able to wear the warm coats comfortably while perched on the backs of the giant owls. The villagers had spent hours fashioning sealskin into harnesses like the one that Tanis now tucked into his pack, but theirs had a certain modification-a loop that would carry the Ice Folk warriors' frostreavers. Slipping the mask to prevent snow blindness into a pocket and putting on the lined boots that Brittain had lent him, Tanis headed for the doorway, bending over at the waist to step beneath the jamb. The Ice Folk kept their entrances as small as possible to conserve heat. Caven followed close on the half-elf's heels.
The sight of a mound of peat had greeted their eyes. The Ice Folk had erected a low bier of ice blocks, with a canvas sling across the top that held Xanthar's shrouded body. Peat, a valuable commodity among the Ice Folk, was piled at the base.
It had taken some negotiating, in the form of gestures and much acting out, to persuade the giant owls to allow the Ice Folk to cremate Xanthar's body. Beyond the trilling and crying that had immediately attended Xanthar's collapse the previous day, the giant owls practiced no formal rites after the death of a comrade. The concept of 'funeral' seemed to confound Golden Wing and Splotch. Tanis had attempted to explain that consigning a body to smoke and fire was a great honor among the Ice Folk and that the ceremony, these villagers believed, would release Xanthar's essence to continue to soar across the sky in death as the great bird had in life.
Ultimately the owls seemed unpersuaded but resigned. Tanis was left suspecting that the giant owls believed these humans embraced the astounding view that poor Xanthar was merely frozen and thus would rise from the bier once he was warmed. Their acquiescence was more bemused than sorrowful.
Now the giant owls, no doubt driven as much by curiosity about the Ice Folk as by respect for Xanthar, stood in rows at the rear of the villagers. Silence fell over the crowd. The warriors, attired in sealskin parkas, were kneeling at the fore; others stood behind them, and the owls towered in the back. Tanis was jammed between Caven and Brittain. He sniffed the stench of the special unguent that the Revered Cleric had insisted he and Caven anoint themselves with to protect them from the clinging ice of the Valdane's warren.
The Revered Cleric stood and spoke to the crowd. Tanis realized that while the ordinary people of the village spoke Common, it was a courtesy to the newcomers and not their native language. He could follow little of the cleric's untranslated speech this morning, and he soon gave himself up to his own thoughts-first to musing about Xanthar, and then to wondering whether Kitiara had indeed allied herself with the Valdane.
He glanced over at Caven, his rival of the past few weeks. The Kernan's features were heavy, and Tanis saw exhaustion and sadness written in his eyes. Caught by the half-elf's stare, Caven turned toward him and nodded gravely. After a moment, Tanis inclined his own head, and then, feeling as though something had been settled between him and the Kernan, he turned back toward the Revered Cleric, who leaned toward the bier with a torch.
A sigh rose from the crowd as the flame touched and caught. The women and children began to sing in a minor key, high-pitched, with a walrus-bone flute for accompaniment. Then the warriors joined in, baritones and basses adding depth to the lament. The owls suddenly stood at attention, raised their beaks, and trilled a softer version of the previous day's mourning. All the while, the flames flickered stronger. Finally the canvas that wrapped Xanthar's body began to smolder just as the ice blocks of the bier melted. Almost magically, the owl's body sank into the roaring flames.
At that, the Ice Folk rose as one and filed silently from the central area of the village. The owls parted ranks to permit the humans' passage, then followed.
Soon the warriors were mounted, spiraling into the sky around the column of smoke from Xanthar's pyre, forming a line, and heading south. Two hundred owls flew without riders. Tanis watched from Golden Wing as the Ice Folk's chief scout, mounted on a gray owl, eased into the lead, trailed by three other scouts. Soon the four were out of sight, roaming far ahead.
Caven and Splotch flew at the rear, winging from warrior to warrior, offering advice and encouragement to the neophyte fliers. Brittain, atop a gray and white owl he'd dubbed Windslayer, was positioned next to Tanis. The wind was too strong to permit conversation at anything less than a bellow, so the half-elf and the Ice Folk leader communicated mainly by pointing.
An hour later, the scouts hove into view, darting toward the main group. 'They're just over that rise!' Delged, the chief scout, shouted to Brittain and Tanis. 'Behind a great wall of ice blocks.'
'Describe the camp,' the half-elf ordered.
'A thousand minotaurs, walrus men, and ettins,' Delged replied, his face red with the wind, the cold, and the shouting. Tanis nudged Golden Wing closer to Windslayer.
'And our people?' Brittain persisted.
'A hundred captives.' The scout pointed. 'In pens to the east.'
'Only a hundred?' Brittain demanded. 'But far more than that were taken from the fallen villages!'
The scout looked away from the leader for a moment, then shouted back, 'There are bodies of The People strewn across the glacier. Some… some appear to have been devoured.'
The three were silent for a time. Finally, as the glittering tops of the ice blocks came into view, Tanis pulled Golden Wing into a wide spiral. The rest followed, then moved into the battle positions they'd devised.
Brittain's chief officer, who would free the captives, split off to the left with forty owls and warriors. Brittain and Windslayer would lead the main force, which swooped to the ground now, then rose heavily into the sky again, each owl hefting a jagged chunk of ice in its talons.
'Attack!' Brittain commanded as they passed over the ice blocks.
The mass of bull men, thanoi, and two-headed trolls looked overhead in dumb astonishment. At that moment, the owls altered their flying technique, their wings fighting the wind, booming with noise instead of slipping soundlessly through the air. The resulting roar split the morning air, further terrifying the amazed foe. The thanoi and ettins scattered to the edge of the force. Only the minotaurs remained, calmly preparing for battle. Windslayer, in the lead, dropped his ice chunk onto a minotaur, who toppled to the ground. A pool of blood widened on the snowy terrain. The felled enemy didn't move. The attacking force let out a cheer, and dozens more of the sharp, frozen projectiles hurtled toward the Valdane's forces.
