When she awoke the next morning Toulou was gone.
Zara suppressed the ache in her heart. A small smile lit up her solemn expression. “War and profit,” she whispered. “One day you will tire of those things.” She arose prepared to welcome to a new day. “In the meantime, I have a kingdom to govern.”
Icewitch
By
Rebecca McFarland Kyle
Ashlan spurred his tired stag the last few measures toward the warlord Lyrell’s camp. Doing so was not a safe maneuver on ice slickened ground, but the dread that sent him homeward ahead of the hunting party bade him hasten. Was it his mother, Lyrell’s headwife, or one of his younger half-sibs whose heart called him so?
He prayed he was wrong with every step his beast made. Coming home virtually empty-handed during a near-famine would subject him to more of Lyrell’s lash—or worse, ostracision.
Drumbeats on the frozen air, a broken-hearted death toll, slowed his pace only a little. ‘Attack,’ then ‘death,’ Ashlan read in the pattern, then nothing further.
Other hunters would follow to defend the now vulnerable camp, but most would remain afield hoping the whale, ice bear, or seal to feed the clan’s empty bellies.
The chill wind beat at his eyes, the only part of his seal brown face uncovered by furs and leather. His massive horned mount's hooves crunched as he moved implacably forward. Before them, their combined breaths fogged the air.
In the fullness of winter, darkness ruled even the day. A flickering blue spark of Ashlan's magic lit the path so his beast could see the ground before them. Endless night was not a fit time for anyone to venture forth alone, but the summer’s fishing had been lean and the camp's supplies were dwindling fast. The warriors already had begun to slaughter the slower riding beasts for food, which would leave them traveling afoot with narrower foraging. Should any of the other clans choose to attack, they’d be fighting afoot. Although attacks by competing warlords were infrequent in winter’s omnipresent darkness, war was not unheard of particularly when supplies were as scarce.
Ashlan paused at the rock wall where sentries were usually posted, awaiting a hail. When he heard nothing, he extinguished the flickering mage light that would target him like a campfire in the darkness and spurred his beast forward, his heart hammering with the hoofbeats on the flinty cold ground.
Lyrell cannily selected this site because it was protected by a ridge with small pocket-like caves protecting them from the Northerly winds. Ashlan’s mother, Alle, had gained status as the headwife when she used her gifts, freezing and shaping water, to create a wall of ice surrounding the ridge’s other three sides, spiky as a shark’s tooth and built up in a maze-like web. Ashlan was one of the few hunters privy to all means of entrance and that knowledge was only gained because he’d aided his mother using his small water-gifts to freeze the ice spikes she’d created into place.
If Lyrell could defend the area, they hoped to scavenge driftwood and whalebone enough to build permanent houses during the short summer months which gave them hours of daylight to work. Having a home base would make them more attractive to neighboring warlords with aims toward increasing their territory, but Lyrell trained many capable young men to defend their position. Their chief would soon celebrate his fortieth summer. He was aged for a warlord, ready to settle down and enjoy the fruits of his labors.
Ashlan slowed his mount as he worked his way through his mother’s puzzle-like wall. He stepped through quartet of spikes resembling the teeth of a great beast, a ‘Fire wing dragon’ she’d called it only to him, then sidled past a crevasse designed to break the legs of unwary man and beasts. He did all of this by feel, remembering the rhythm of a children’s song his mother taught to aid with the task.
Once past the wall, Ashlan’s breathing calmed when he sighted the main firepit still lit. Though the encampment was still as death, he saw no signs of battle in the day-old snowfall.
Scarcely any of the camp's inhabitants turned when Ashlan rode in to the inner circle of the camp past the outer ring of hide tents of the single warriors and hunters tasked to guard the women. The clan was clustered around the central cook fires talking worriedly. Many wore mourning gray and ash-smudged faces from the firepit.
"What happened?" Ashlan called when he neared the gathered people beside the periphery of the fire. Fear, shock and grief was what he saw, though his clansmen spoke not a word. He could plainly read the pallid features of Lyrell’s clan. None but his mother could discern the blood rising in his own shadowy mien.
"The Icewitch has come!" One grizzled Grandmother, twisting her hands in consternation, shouted in a trembling voice. "She has taken Ayrn as her offering."
Ashlan’s blood heated with rage. Of all his half-siblings, he was closest to the golden haired blue-eyed Aryn, fleet as an ice-bear with their Mother’s lyrical voice and gift for shaping water.
Ashlan’s fists tightened on his reins, causing his horned mount to dance nervously. The old woman made a frightened noise, shifting the children away from them. His mount reared, trumpeting a brief protest. He quickly regained the beast’s head, settling him down before his sharp hooves injured an innocent. He forced himself to breathe, to swallow the knot of panic in his chest so he could speak calmly.
"Where did she go?" Ashlan demanded. His mind whirled with memories of childhood terrors by campfire light. As the only dark-skinned child living within the camp of moon pale people, he’d been threatened more than most with being given to the Icewitch if he misbehaved. The creature had many faces in his youthful nightmares. Each of those dreams ended with him awakening stifling screams. A youth of seventeen years, he'd long since abandoned such childish
