* * *
They walked in silence, for there was nothing more to say. None called for a halt for a meal; no one stopped when the sun set, nor when the sun rose. It seemed unnecessary, even tedious to Shimmer to consider halting so close to their goal.
K’azz led through the woods and high ridges. He pushed through frigid streams and up steep valley slopes. Shimmer followed next in line. Bars came after, then Lean, Keel, Black the Lesser, Turgal, Gwynn, and Blues in the rear. Where Cowl had gone, or even whether he still followed, she did not care.
They were high in these northern mountains now, the Salt range. They parted thick hanging cloud banks as if walking through an underworld of mists. Banners of the opaque fogs wove about them like the sinuous bodies of dragons. For brief moments she would note how loose her mail coat hung from her; how her hair lay tangled about her face and shoulders; how ragged her leather boots had become, yet she walked on, uncaring. K’azz promised their fate lay ahead. The secret of the Vow – which was clearly now a curse.
They came to a high meadow, a clearing that had once been a series of cultivated fields, now long abandoned, and they spread out. K’azz, on her right, was a vague silhouette in the low churning clouds, as was Bars on her left. A burned empty husk of a Greathall emerged from the mists ahead. Whatever tragedy had happened here had been wrought long ago. Saplings grew within the tumbled logs.
Past the overgrown remains of the burned hall stood a modest log cabin, sod-roofed. Here two figures rose from the tall grasses to confront them. Enormous they reared, to Shimmer’s eyes, both far taller than any normal man or woman, yet both obviously young in years. The lad wore supple tanned leathers and possessed a thick curled mane of russet hair and a beard to match. The girl was equally sturdy, in hunting leathers, her long blazingly red hair plaited.
The lad drew two hatchets to stand protectively before the girl. ‘You’ll not take us easily, damn you.’
K’azz raised his open hands. ‘We intend no harm. We seek the heights and those who live there.’
‘You intend no harm?’ the lad repeated, incredulous. ‘You who have slain all our kin?’
‘We have slain no one. We are mercenaries out of lands far to the west.’
The lad frowned his disbelief but rubbed his eyes then examined them more closely. He jerked a nod. ‘I am sorry. For a moment there I mistook you for … for someone else.’
‘What has happened here?’ Shimmer asked.
The lad slipped his hatchets into his belt then gestured to the cabin. ‘Our parents lie within, side by side.’
‘And these others you speak of,’ K’azz said, ‘they did this?’
The girl shook her head. ‘Nay,’ she said, her voice dull, yet full of wonder. ‘They simply chose to go. They bade us seek our elders in the heights then lay down together side by side.’
‘I am sorry,’ Shimmer offered.
The lad shook his head. His great mane of wild hair blew in the strong winds out of the north. ‘No. We do not weep. It is good to see them here together, holding hands. So loving, yet so different. Yullveig the Fierce they called her, and Cull the Kind. Apart too much in life – together now in death.’
Shimmer regarded the modest cabin. The lad’s words pulled at her distantly. There was something here, an ache that fought to squeeze her chest, yet she felt lost in a fog, or dullness, that held her numb to feelings.
‘We travel to the heights,’ K’azz said. ‘We may travel together?’
The two nodded a sort of bruised agreement.
‘Do we leave them in this manner?’ Blues asked the girl.
‘Yes. No flame will burn there now. We will leave them. None shall disturb them.’ She inclined her head to Shimmer. ‘I am Erta and this is Baran.’
Shimmer, K’azz and the rest introduced themselves. The two gathered up small rolls of gear and they headed upland once more.
The higher they climbed the thicker the fogs became and the more intense the cold. It was as if they had entered a realm of frigid winds and coiling mists as dense as streams. Ice now sheathed the trees and blades of tall grasses and they clattered and rattled as Shimmer pushed through. The light was diffuse, silvery; it was almost impossible to tell whether they travelled in night or day. The slopes steepened, became half barren ridges of grey and black rock, the only colour a mute orange and yellow of lichen.
K’azz and Baran, at the fore, halted here, as did the rest of the file in turn. The clattering of rocks no longer echoed about the shrouded steep valley they currently walked. Shimmer moved up to join K’azz. He and Baran stood peering ahead into the blowing, churning clouds where a figure was approaching. It was a girl; yet she stood man-high, slim, in trousers of wool and a leather shirt that hung to her knees, decorated in bright red and blue beadwork. Her hair blew about her, long and in tangles. Streams of tears darkened the ash and dirt that smeared her face.
‘Greetings,’ Baran said gently. ‘I am Baran of the Heels.’
‘Siguna of the Myrni,’ she stammered, her voice soft and wary.
Erta knelt before her. ‘What happened, child?’
Her wide eyes darted about as if expecting attack at any moment. ‘They came out of the river gravel,’ she said, awed. ‘I saw them myself. They came out of the ground. I ran home. There was a fire. Uncle sent me away.’
‘Who came?’ Shimmer asked.
The girl’s terrified gaze flicked to her. ‘Demons. The Army of Dust and Bone.’
Siguna travelled with Erta in the middle of the file. K’azz and Baran led. The closer they were to their destination the more their old general seemed to have shaken off his reluctance and self-imposed isolation. Shimmer for her part was content to leave him to command; she’d begun to suspect that something was wrong with her. When she looked at the young Myrni child alone in the world she knew that something ought to move within her, yet all she felt was a remote poignancy as of an old loss, now a distant memory. She searched her feelings only to find a landscape as desolate and lifeless as these barren rocky slopes.
She was terrified of what was happening to her.
Some time later in the climb, the loose rocks shook beneath her feet. Everyone paused, peering about in alarm. Rocks and boulders came tumbling down out of the ground-hugging fogs. They moved to a nearby ridge and gathered together. Blues came to stand next to her, his arms crossed. She noted how ragged and torn his leather jerkin had become, his scruffy beard and hollowed dark cheeks. Far above, beyond the immediate shoulders and slopes between them and the uppermost peaks, the clouds churned as if being drawn into a funnel. A blue glow suffused the region – a dazzling sapphire brilliance muted only by the cloud cover.
The ground shook again and Shimmer was alarmed to sense that the entire ridge of rock had actually moved. Baran and Erta shared a shocked glance.
‘What is it?’ Shimmer demanded. ‘An earthquake?’
‘This is no earthquake,’ Blues growled, his eyes fixed upon the heights.
‘We must reach the ice-fields,’ Baran called over the crash and hissing of tumbling stones. ‘Quickly.’ And he set off, leaping from boulder to boulder. K’azz followed while Shimmer and Erta brought along Siguna. Bars and Turgal helped any of the rest who struggled to keep up.
A howling, biting wind punished them as it came driving down into their faces. Shimmer scrambled her way up the slope of loose rock. She had the strange sensation of actually travelling backwards as she advanced. The shifting talus and gravel seemed to heap even higher before them. She came across the trunks of fallen trees, shorn of branches, slowly edging their way down towards them like battering rams.
She clambered over the trunks only to hear a despairing call behind. She urged Siguna onward and stopped to peer back into the moiling fog. Others, she knew not who, passed as blurred shapes in the mist. Something closed upon her foot and ankle between the logs and she was yanked to her knees. A churning mix of gravel and soil had her. It was burying her as it came shifting down the slope. It rolled over her side and up her chest as it advanced. She drew breath to scream but took in a mouthful of dirt. Beneath the soil larger rocks squeezed her legs until she knew her bones would be shattered to splinters.
Then a tight grip at the mail over her chest, an agonizing yank, and she was free on the surface, gagging and coughing, lying on her side. Someone stood over her, his gaze watchful: Cowl.
He helped her clamber to her feet. She stood swaying, unsteady, as the ground felt like the deck of a ship. ‘Thank you,’ she managed, spitting out dirt.
‘You will not thank me. You, above all, I want to make it. I want you there to see what he has done to us. I want you to see it.’
‘Who has done what?’
The mage retreated down the slope. ‘I know already. It is for you to discover. Then I want you to face him! Now go.’
‘Cowl!’ she yelled after him, but he was gone.
The very ground groaned and vibrated beneath her feet. She dashed up the rocks, pushing against the loose debris as it came sloughing down the entire valley slope to either side.
She made the crest of fresh steaming earth, and stopped, utterly amazed. A dry frigid wind battered her as she stared at a wide wall of dirty glacial ice that stretched from side to side across the entire high mountain vale before her. Far ahead, tiny figures, no larger than ants, struggled up the first of the leading lobes of dirty ice. Nearer, two figures ran towards her, stopping now and waving.
She waved back. And she might have been imagining it, but it seemed to her that the entire gargantuan frozen river itself, a very mountain of ice, was moving.