"Sleep for an hour; then we'll set out again." Truls Rohk sat with his hands locked together in front of him, animal hair on their backs gleaming faintly, like silver threads. "I'll keep watch."
Bek nodded wordlessly. An hour was better than nothing. He took a moment to look back the way they had come, to where the Ilse Witch was, to where his friends and companions were, somewhere in the dark.
Be strong, he prayed for all of them. He prayed it even for Grianne.
FIVE
Dozens of miles away, deep within the glacier-draped mountains that warded the coast of the peninsula, bracketed by the thousand-foot walls of the gorge that channeled the ice melt out into the Blue Divide, the Jerle Shannara drifted in solitary grandeur. Rudderless, unmanned, sails in shreds, she rode the twists and turns of the winds that howled down the canyon, moving as if drawn toward the pillars of ice that blocked the way out. Clouds roiled overhead, mingling with mist off the ice and the spray off the crash of waves against the rocks below, white sheets of gauze layered against dim shards of sunlight. Shrikes circled and dived past the rigging, bright anticipation in their gimlet eyes, each pass bringing them closer to the dead men who lay sprawled across the airship's decks. Echoes from their cries and from the pounding surf mingled and reverberated off the cliffs in eerie counterpoint.
Ahead, growing closer with each twist and turn of the airship, the pillars waited. Giant's teeth ground together and withdrew, opening and closing over the gap through which the ship must pass, hungry-sounding, ravenous, as if anxious to catch hold of what had escaped before, as if needing to feel the wood and metal of the Jerle Shannara reduced to shards of debris and its crew reduced to bones and pulp.
Battered and dazed, barely conscious, Rue Meridian dangled from a rope nearly fifty feet below the stern of the ship. She hung from the rope with the last of her fading strength, too weary to do anything else. Blood coated her left arm and ran in rivulets down her side, and she could no longer feel her right leg. The wind howled in her ears and froze her skin. Ice had formed in her hair, and her clothes were stiff. Everything leading up to this moment was a haze of fragmented memories and jumbled emotions. She remembered her struggle with the Mwellret, both of them wounded, their tumbling to the deck of the airship, then sliding inexorably toward the wooden railing, picking up speed and unable to stop. She remembered them striking the railing, already splintered and broken by a falling spar, the Mwellret first, taking the brunt of the impact. The railing had given way like kindling, and they had gone through in a tangle.
It should have been the end of her. They were a thousand feet up, maybe more, with nothing between them and the rocks and rapids below but air. She had kicked free of the Mwellret instinctively, then grasped for something to hold on to. By sheer chance, she had caught this length of trailing rope, this lifeline to safety. Slowing her rapid descent had nearly dislocated her arms and had torn the skin of her hands as she ripped down its length to a knot that brought her up short. Twisting and turning in the wind, she clung to the rope in stunned relief, watching the dark shape of her antagonist tumble away into the ether.
But then shock and cold had set in, and she found she could not move from where she hung, pinned against the skyline like an insect on paper, frozen to her lifeline as she fought to stay conscious. She kept thinking that eventually she would find the strength to move again, to make some effort at climbing back aboard, or that someone aboard would haul her to safety. Her mind drifted in and out of various scenarios and near unconsciousness, always unable to do more than tease her with possibilities.
But she was not so far gone that she didn't realize the danger she was in and how little time was left to deal with it. The Jerle Shannara was drifting ever nearer to the ice pillars, and when she reached them she was finished. No one aboard ship was going to help her. Those who were topside were all dead, Furl Hawken among them. Those below were locked away in storerooms and could not break free or they would have done so by now. Her brother, Redden Alt Mer. The shipwright, Spanner Frew. Her friends, the Rovers from her homeland. Trapped and helpless, they were at the mercy of the elements, and their end was certain.
No one would help her.
No one would help them.