The Cry of the Icemark

18



They had been traveling for most of the short winter day. The air was freezing cold, and tiny particles of ice drifted and shimmered in the brilliant sunlight so that they seemed to be journeying through a world of polished crystal. Thirrin and Oskan were snuggled down deep under thick coverings of fur while the glittering white world rolled rapidly past. They were in a long low sleigh being pulled at breakneck speed by six enormous white werewolves, their legs pounding tirelessly through the snow, while their arms pistoned the air like parts of a living machine. Alongside them was a second sleigh packed with food and fuel and other equipment needed for their survival in the wilds of the far north. This, too, was being drawn by six of the white Wolffolk, and as they ran they constantly raised their snouts to the air as though smelling their route to the top of the world.

The Wolffolk had arrived the day before at King Grishmak’s cave, announcing their presence with a great clamoring and baying that even Thirrin’s untrained ear could tell was different from the usual werewolf language. With them was one of the King’s runners, who had set out three days earlier to find them, and she saluted her leader proudly as she approached.

“They were far to the north and east, My Lord,” she had explained in the human tongue. “But they answered your summons at once.”

The King nodded, and turned to the newly arrived werewolves, who immediately howled in salute. “Wolffolk of the Icesheets, I have an important task for you,” he had said. “This human female is Thirrin Freer Strong-in-the-Arm Lindenshield, Wildcat of the North, Queen of the Icemark, and ally of our people. She is also my beloved friend whose safety and good health I cherish above all others.”

The huge white werewolves turned to gaze at her, their ferocious faces for a moment calm as they sniffed the air, marking her scent and memorizing her form. Then, as one, they threw back their heads and howled.

“Your task, my people, is to take Queen Thirrin and her adviser to the court of the Snow Leopards at the Hub of the World, where she will invite their King to join our alliance against the Polypontian Empire. Her safety and good health are your responsibility. No blood must be spilled unless it be yours, no breath may be stilled but your own. You will set your teeth at death and you will be an enemy of failure. And you will return the Queen here to this cave in one half of the Blessed Moon’s cycle. Do you understand?”

The leader of the white Wolffolk, Grinelda Blood-tooth, then stepped forward. She stood a head taller than even the King, and to Thirrin and Oskan her mouth seemed as full of teeth as a forest of trees.

“Lord Tharaman-Thar and his Snow Leopards are a fearsome people, King Grishmak Blood-drinker,” she said bluntly. “But the human Queen will be returned safely to you, or we’ll die defending her.”

“Thank you, Grinelda Blood-tooth. I can ask no more,” Grishmak had answered after a moment’s silence, then turning to Thirrin, he’d said, “You can see now how dangerous your task is. The Snow Leopards are answerable to none. If they don’t like you, they’ll kill you.”

Here was the duty at the center of Thirrin’s power. At that moment she would have liked nothing better than to give the responsibility of it all to another, but she knew she had no choice. It was for this sort of pressure and danger that she’d been born, so she simply nodded and tried to look as though riding off to meet killer leopards was an everyday event in her life.

“Before I set off on this journey, King Grishmak, I would ask you to give shelter to Oskan the Warlock until I return, or …” she said, after a brief pause, “until I don’t return.”

The changed form of his name momentarily shocked Oskan into silence, but he quickly recovered and exploded angrily, “If you dare try to leave me behind, I’ll follow on foot, and when I die in the snow, I’ll come back and haunt you. I’ll make your life a complete misery. No ghost will ever have been as inventive in its nastiness as I’ll be: I’ll turn your food rancid; I’ll transform your drink into blood; I’ll howl and moan throughout the night; there’ll be no place safe from me. And don’t think I couldn’t do it, Thirrin, Queen of the Icemark, because I can assure you, I could.”

Thirrin looked at her young adviser, whose eyes were wide and alight with barely suppressed rage. There were times when she found his friendship terrifying, but this was soon overridden by a sense of huge relief and gratitude. At least she wouldn’t have to face the Snow Leopards alone.

“I think, King Grishmak, we’ll not need to impose on your hospitality any longer,” she’d said. “We’ll both be going to the palace of Lord Tharaman-Thar.”

The wolfman had nodded. “As you wish, My Lady,” he’d said, secretly relieved that he wouldn’t have to contain the power of an angry warlock. “We will watch keenly for your return.”

A sudden dip in the ground jolted the sleigh, and Thirrin’s thoughts returned to the present. Oskan seemed engrossed by the land around them as the werewolves thundered along at an incredible pace. His face turned upward to follow the branches of a small stand of pine trees they were passing beneath, and he twisted in his seat to watch them as they left the copse behind and thundered on toward the Kingdom of the Snow Leopards.

“They were the most northerly of all trees,” he said almost to himself. “From here onward the lands of humanity end, and the rule of the wild begins.”

Ahead of them the land was white and featureless under its slowly undulating blanket of snow. The sun had already sunk after the brief day of the northern winter, leaving the sky stained by the pink afterglow of its light. And low over the horizon the pristine brilliance of the Even Star shone out as the day faded.

Thirrin looked at Oskan as he gazed at the star. “Why were you so determined to come with me to the Kingdom of the Snow Leopards, Oskan?”

He turned to look at her, a slight frown on his face. “If you fail, Thirrin, and you die trying to make an alliance with Tharaman-Thar, then the Icemark will be lost, and Scipio Bellorum and all he stands for will rule in the land. Rationality, science, industry, progress. All fine things in their own right and when playing their proper part in the life of a nation. But as far as I can tell, in the Empire they rule over all else. Magic and mystery have no place or worth; even nature is only a sort of huge storehouse to provide science and industry with the raw materials they need. What place could there possibly be for me in such a world? I’d be a bit of flotsam, some trash left behind by a retreating tide. Interesting enough in its own way, but with no real worth beyond some small curiosity value.” He turned to look ahead at the sky that was slowly unfolding the bloom of its night stars. “I’d sooner die a quick death under the crushing paw of a Snow Leopard, a victim of some unstoppable force of nature, than dwindle away like an oil lamp low on fuel.”

She nodded, understanding him perfectly. “You’ve obviously been thinking this through for some time, and I suspected you might say something of the sort.” She suddenly smiled at him. “Look at the two of us, barely out of childhood and already we’re too old-fashioned for this changing world. Is it possible to be born old? Because I certainly feel it sometimes. How can we hope to stand against unstoppable progress; how can we possibly win a war against the forces of science?”

Oskan snorted. “Which question do you want me to answer first? Born old? Yes, right now I feel ninety. And as for the rest, we’re not fighting progress or science; they’re both ideas that belong to all people — ideas that should help us to understand the beauty of our world and improve the lives of everything that lives in it. But the Empire has kidnapped them, and progress of its sort means sweeping aside everything that isn’t new, whether good or bad. And to the Empire, science is just a means of creating more efficient ways of killing people.”

“Do you think all scientists are bad?” she asked.

“Maggiore Totus is a scientist,” he answered simply.

“Yes,” she said, remembering the experiments and tests she’d sweated over only the year before — in another life. “He’d use science to make people happy.”

“He would. And I’m sure there are many others like him.”

They fell silent, listening to the hiss of the sleigh’s runners as they sped over the snow. The last of the light had drained from the sky, and the stars coldly blazed above them, glittering and scintillating like ice crystals in the frozen air.

The werewolves ran on, seemingly tireless, sniffing the wind and occasionally adjusting their course as they headed for the Hub of the World. But then, as a half-moon rose over the horizon, they howled in greeting of the sacred giver of light and slowed to a halt.

Oskan and Thirrin watched as the Wolffolk busily emptied the second sleigh of most of its contents and erected a low tent that was big enough to take them all. When everything was ready, Grinelda Blood-tooth curtsied politely and asked them if they would care to join them in the shelter.

Thirrin nodded with the proper amount of regality and accepted a fur-covered hand as she stepped from her sleigh. Made of thick layers of dressed hides, the tent was spacious, with furs piled deeply underfoot and braziers set at intervals around its wide interior. At the entrance a huge fire had been built where two of the werewolves squatted with slabs of meat on sticks, which they were attempting to toast for the human guests. After watching for a few moments, during which the meat was first burned and then dropped into the ashes, Oskan politely took the sticks and told the werewolves that he and the Queen would prefer to cook their own food.

The Wolffolk seemed relieved, and after bowing they hurried off to help with the other tasks of setting up camp. But it soon became clear that Thirrin was no better at cooking than the werewolves, and Oskan told her to leave it to him.

“I’m pretty sick of meat, anyway,” she whispered when the rest of the party seemed busy. “I’d happily kill for a loaf of bread or a bowl of carrots.”

“Or even just an apple!” Oskan whispered back.

She nodded in vigorous agreement. “I never thought I’d find myself dreaming of cabbages and turnips, but right now they seem like food for the gods. My jaw aches with chewing all this half-cooked meat.”

“I suppose we can expect more of the same from the Snow Leopards,” said Oskan. “Assuming, of course, that we’re not part of the menu ourselves.”

“Well, I’ll do my best to stick in their throats, if it comes to that,” said Thirrin fiercely, and watched in surprise as Oskan giggled uncontrollably. There were times, she thought, when boys were just impossible to understand.

The entire party of twelve white werewolves and two humans crammed into the tent to eat their meal, and as soon as it was done, the Wolffolk settled down to sleep. There was no ceremony and not much room, but the braziers, the fire, and the hairy bodies generated enough heat to make conditions quite comfortable. Even the intense cold of the dark hours found it impossible to penetrate the cocoon of warmth that the werewolves had made. Both Thirrin and Oskan were soon asleep, and woke with a shock to a brilliant morning light and the howling of the Wolffolk greeting the day.

They were now so far north that daylight would last for little more than three hours, and before they reached their journey’s end they would be traveling through perpetual night. Grinelda Blood-tooth urged them all to eat, pack, and begin the trek as quickly as possible, and within a few short minutes they were again thundering over the ice on their way to the Hub of the World.

The land was now almost completely flat and featureless. Occasionally they would pass strangely contorted shapes where the wind had carved the snow into fantastic sculptures. But mostly the terrain slowly billowed and undulated toward the horizon with no landmark or feature to show they were getting anywhere.

As they approached the realm of the Snow Leopards, the weather began to change. Thirrin didn’t think it could possibly get colder, but the temperatures tumbled and a thick rime of ice began to grow over everything. The outer covers of the sleigh were stiff with it, and even the pelts of the werewolves sparkled with a frosting of crystals. The air burned with a hideous cold that froze living skin within seconds of being exposed to it, and the glare of the sun, reflected from the white world around them, made their eyes ache even through their whalebone slit-goggles that let in only the barest sliver of light.

But the intense brilliance of the sun stopped being a problem when, one morning, dawn didn’t come at all and they entered the world of perpetual winter’s night. For Oskan the true magic of nature was encapsulated in that journey to the Hub of the World. Above him the star-encrusted sky slowly exploded across the hours of the day as the constellations rose from the horizon and gradually arced to their setting while their sleigh glided on across the snows. Very occasionally a shooting star would streak a brushstroke of light across the sky, and he’d find himself childishly making a wish that they’d win the coming war and no one would die. But then he’d cynically remind himself that the first part of the wish was unlikely and the second part impossible.

Moonrise was always greeted by the werewolves, who would stop in their tracks and howl in salute as the brilliant silver fire broached the horizon. Even half full, its light was sufficient to illuminate the snows to a breathtaking radiance that somehow contrived to be brighter and yet more subtle than daylight.

Both Oskan and Thirrin began to lose all sense of time and with it their understanding of reality. Without the regular exchange of day for night and night for day, they felt themselves to be adrift in a coldly beautiful world journeying on and on across forevers and nowheres. Neither of them minded too much. An eternal trek through beauty was preferable to any war, and slowly all sense of urgency was leached from their minds.

But one day, as the sleighs whispered over the endless snows, Oskan felt a shift in the patterns of the air. He sat up and looked out over the snowfields to the horizon, but there was nothing to be seen.

“What is it?” Thirrin asked.

“The world’s making weather,” he answered, without taking his eyes from the distant line where land met sky.

“Bad weather?”

“Very bad, I’d say.”

Immediately Thirrin called to the werewolves, and the sleighs stopped. Grinelda Blood-tooth stepped out of the traces, walked back to the two humans, and curtsied deeply. “There’s a problem, My Lady?”

“Oskan the Warlock says there’s bad weather on the way.”

The creature eyed the boy for a few seconds, sniffed the air, and called to the others in her own tongue. A growled conference took place, punctuated with much snuffling, squinting at the horizon, and spitting speculatively into the wind. Finally the leader turned back to them and said, “The warlock’s right, but it’s very faint. We should have three days before it hits us.”

“Two and a half,” said Oskan decisively.

“Then we’ll need to make our own shelter. It’s still another four days’ journey to the border of the Snow Leopards’ lands.”

“Will these shelters take long to construct?” Thirrin asked.

Grinelda Blood-tooth shook her head. “No. An hour at the most. We still have at least two days’ traveling time.”

“Then let’s make sure we don’t waste it,” Thirrin said in her best royal voice.

Grinelda curtsied again, strode back to her position at the head of the pulling team, and with a ferocious howling they shot away across the snows at a startling speed.

But no matter how fast the Wolffolk ran over the Icesheets, they couldn’t outstrip the weather. Over the following day, the stars were slowly hidden from view as a huge bank of clouds advanced across the sky. And with them came a strange whining and howling, thin-sounding in the distance and fitful, like a hunting wolf pack that has picked up a scent. This was the voice of the distant wind, icy and deadly, that hated all living things, and that would drain the life-warmth from whatever it touched.

Over the following days and hours, the wind gradually ran them down, eating up the distance between its blood-freezing cold and the teams of werewolves who ran on tirelessly through the arctic night. Soon Thirrin and Oskan could see a deep gray shadow dancing and swirling on the horizon as the blizzard bore down on them, and the moaning and keening came closer and closer.

At last, the Wolffolk teams stopped and turned the sleighs to face the approaching storm, making a V formation by drawing their fronts together and lashing them securely with hide ropes. Quickly they cut blocks from the icesheets around them, using whalebone blades they’d made sharp and rigid by spitting on them and allowing the saliva to freeze. As one group cut the blocks, another built them into a wall, so that soon the sleighs were surrounded by a boat-shaped barrier that stood to shoulder height and sloped slightly inward. The pointed “prow” of this barrier faced into the oncoming wind and its tail tapered away to a second point.

The blizzard was now only minutes away, and Thirrin and Oskan watched in amazement as the Wolffolk moved at an incredible speed, draping the thick pelts of the tents over both sleighs and lashing them tightly into position to make a secure shelter. The frozen floor was covered as usual with furs, and braziers were lit as they all scrambled inside and settled down to wait for the storm.

In less than an hour the werewolves had built a weatherproof refuge, and not a moment too soon. Suddenly the wind hit them, howling and screeching like an army of giant Vampires. The hide roof of their shelter flapped and shuddered crazily. Thirrin and Oskan were afraid it would be torn away, but it soon became obvious that the hide ropes that lashed it firmly to the sleighs would hold, and they began to relax.

It even became quite enjoyable as the temperature within their ice walls reached comfortable levels, and a cozy sense of safety settled over them. The meat that the Wolffolk served out from their supplies tasted better than it had in a long time. Even so, they still longed for the simple pleasure of a crust of bread or a dish of boiled vegetables.

After the meal, the werewolves began to tell tales and legends of their northern tribe, in which giant bears and magical whales were hunted over ice and across the seas. They told how their great hero Ukpik had fought a battle with the Demon of Darkness that had lasted half a year, but which he had finally won, and so brought the sun back to the sky to give light to the world. They told, too, how the Demon of Darkness somehow managed to steal the sun again every year, plunging the world into winter, before Ukpik would repeat his feat of strength and rescue the light of the world just in time for summer.

In the short silence that followed this epic, Thirrin decided to tell the tale of Edgar the Bold and his war against the Dragon-folk of the Wolfrock Mountains. The werewolves were hugely impressed and growled their approval when she finished. But only Oskan noticed how sad she looked. No one else knew that Thirrin was remembering the last time she’d heard the tale, sitting with her father in the cozy comfort of his rooms on Yuletide Eve while Grimswald, the Chamberlain-of-the-Royal-Paraphernalia, read from The Book of the Ancestors. But that was when she’d still been a child.

The storm raged for two days, screeching like a “sackful of boiled monkeys,” as Oskan put it. But at last the wind slowly dropped, until its final moan drifted away over the ice and silence returned. Grinelda Blood-tooth opened the flap in the hide tent and crawled out. Downwind of the storm, snow had gathered around the wall of ice blocks in a long-tailed drift that stretched off into the darkness, but on the windward side the wall was smoothed and polished as though a giant hand had rubbed it to a sheen.

The others scrambled out, too, and stood stretching and breathing in as much as they dared of the bitterly freezing but wonderfully fresh air. Two days spent in the cramped company of twelve huge and hairy werewolves was not the most fragrant of experiences, and the pristine beauty of the frozen world was in striking contrast to being inside the tent. After a few minutes of enjoying the freedom of space, the Wolffolk started to prepare food and soon they were all eating the inevitable meal of meat.

After that it was a matter of minutes before the tents and other equipment were stashed away, and they set off once again on their trek to the Kingdom of the Snow Leopards. Thirrin and Oskan took their usual places in one of the sleighs, and they sped over the ice as the world got steadily colder and colder.

The Wolffolk seemed determined to make up as much of the lost time as they could, and they ran on for hours as the stars wheeled slowly in the black crystal sky. Then, as Thirrin and Oskan watched the stately theater of the night, a sudden burst of color draped itself in a long wavering streamer from horizon to horizon. They both gasped aloud, and the werewolves slowed and stopped before throwing back their heads and howling.

“What is it?” Thirrin called to them. “What are those strange lights?”

“The Veils of the Blessed Moon, My Lady,” Grinelda answered as a cascading curtain of red-and-yellow flame shimmered and flickered over the sky. “They’re omens of great good fortune.”

The visual immensity of the display of fire was in awesome contrast to its total silence. In Thirrin’s opinion, a manifestation of such brilliance and beauty should have crackled and roared like the biggest bonfire, and yet every cascading waterfall of color, every billowing banner of light, was as strangely soundless as an empty hall.

“I think I remember Maggiore talking about this in one of my geography lessons.”

“You did listen sometimes, then?” Oskan whispered, as though not to disturb the display and frighten it away.

“It had a strange name … the aurora borealis, I think … Yes, that’s it! The aurora borealis.”

“So what is it? What causes it?”

“I can’t rightly remember,” Thirrin answered. “It’s to do with the sun’s light on the upper atmosphere, or something like that.”

“That’s the trouble with science. It has to explain beauty. It can’t just let it be.”

“It doesn’t stop it from being beautiful.”

“No, but it takes away the mystery. It takes away the magic. I prefer the Wolffolk’s name for it: the Veils of the Blessed Moon.”

“But you asked me what it was. You wanted to know.”

“Well, next time don’t tell me. Knowing exactly what things are doesn’t improve my life in any way.”

“You know you don’t mean that. You’re just reacting against the Empire and its scientists. You’ve already said that science can be used for good.”

“Well, yes, I suppose so,” Oskan agreed grudgingly. “But leave some magic in the world. Leave us some mystery to enjoy.”

The werewolves now began to pull the sleighs again, and they traveled on under the colossal and silent majesty of the northern lights until, on the horizon, a dim uplifting of the land beneath its frozen skin of ice began to appear. Gradually over the next hour or so, the hills resolved themselves into mountains that climbed in awful majesty, white and glistering against the black of the perpetual night. The aurora borealis bathed their white crags in a deep blush of blue and crimson, and a shooting star blazed over the highest peak.

“The Kingdom of the Snow Leopards,” called Grinelda, and the sleighs shot forward at even greater speed as they headed toward the mountains.