Chapter 15

Outside Zeriak, the foothills that rose in the south were covered with the same low-growing scrub the party had encountered on their trek east from Ice Mountain Bay. In a few places, it had been cleared away to leave the fields Saleh had described to Ayshe, but they looked cold and barren under the winter sun, with only stubble showing above ground. Ayshe, laboring along behind Riadon and Samustalen, was at least partially shielded from the cold wind that blew against their faces over the bare earth.

At first Tashara ordered a careful watch to be sure none of the townsfolk were following them, but it soon became clear no one from Zeriak had any interest in venturing into the icy wastes to the south.

The party tramped along mostly in silence. The exuberance they had felt at Tashara’s speech in the Bone and Bristle began to fade in the face of the terrain’s harsh and indifferent cold. Harfang, pacing at Tashara’s side, rarely spoke, save to give an order to halt or to resume the march. The captain herself spoke not a single word though she walked steadily, her back straight, her head held high. Not for the first time, Ayshe marveled at the ability of the blind elf woman to move without aid or hesitation.

Malshaunt walked close behind her, his black cloak flapping in the breeze. He looked, to the dwarf, like a black crow, its feathers stirred by the wind, its beak thrust forward. The mage’s right hand, lean and clawlike, rested perpetually on his whip.

Because of the rough character of the landscape, their progress was slow—not more than six or seven miles a day. The dwarf wondered how that would affect their stock of provisions but thought it best not to raise the subject with either of Dragonsbane’s commanders.

At night their fires were small and smoked heavily with little warmth. They wrapped themselves in blankets, keeping out the cold as best they might and sleeping fitfully. Ayshe remembered with longing his comfortable hammock swinging belowdecks aboard the Starfinder, and the warmth of the forge fire as it sent sparks from the deck into the night sky scattered with stars. On the Plains the moons rose each night in a cloudless sky, glaring down in silver and red until sometimes they seemed like great eyes watching Dragonsbane’s progress. Most of the party avoided looking at them.

On their fifth day out from Zeriak, the hill they were climbing ended in a rocky ridge, as if it were the spine of some great animal buried beneath the earth. Riadon—whose slight build and miraculous ability to blend with the landscape made him an admirable scout—and Jeannara went forward, keeping low to the ground, and crawled up the rocks to peer over the top.

They returned shortly, faces grim. Jeannara reported to Tashara. “There’s a valley,” she said. “It’s covered in boulders, some large as houses. Beyond, there’s smoke.”

“Ogres?” queried the elf.

“Thanoi.”

Riadon added, “We watched through the glass. It’s a village, lying on a river running from the mountains. I’d guess there are sixty or seventy of the walrus folk there.”

Tashara nodded. “Are there boulders between us and the settlement where we could find concealment?” she asked.

“Aye,” the second mate returned. “Two to the west, three or four to the east, about fifty yards from the nearest huts.”

Ayshe, listening, had expected the captain to order them to pass around the settlement and continue. Instead, to his surprise, she prepared her followers for an attack.

“Harfang, you take five bowmen and conceal yourselves behind the boulders to the south. On my signal, commence volleying your arrows. The remainder of us will attack from the north and draw them into the open. Again on my signal, charge.”

The elves divided, and Harfang’s party slipped south about a furlong then cautiously mounted the rocky ridge and disappeared over it. Tashara, aided by Jeannara and Malshaunt, led the remainder of Dragonsbane north and over the ridge.

Having seen the elves prepare for battle only on board the Starfinder Ayshe was impressed at how expertly and easily they moved on land. At the top of the ridge, they wriggled like snakes through the scant cover, each intent on reaching a preassigned battle station. The dwarf did his best to imitate their stealth, but from the irritated glances Jeannara flashed at him, he knew he was clumsy.

The boulders were enormous—great rocks that might have been hurled by giants in some gargantuan contest of strength or skill. They concealed the elves completely from the cluster of huts that marked the thanoi settlement. Beyond, Ayshe could just make out a glint of water where the river meandered aimlessly through the valley.

Jeannara surveyed everything carefully through her glass then tugged Tashara’s sleeve. “All in place and ready, ma’am.”

“Malshaunt!” the captain whispered.

The dour elf mage crawled forward.

Tashara jerked her head in the direction of the huts. “On my mark!”

The mage muttered softly to himself his hands cupped in front of him. Ayshe, his axe in his hands, could see a glow through Malshaunt’s fingers.

“Now!”

Malshaunt spat a harsh, guttural word and lifted his hands. From them a spark flew toward the thanoi village, expanding as it became a ball of fire. It burst in the center of the huts with a boom that rocked the valley floor.

The burst was so brilliant, Ayshe turned his face away lest he be blinded. When he looked back, the huts at the center of the village had been flattened, while many of the others were burning brightly.

Malshaunt lifted his hands again and spoke another word. His hands sent forth a group of bolts, like arrows of light. They wove through the air just in time to meet walrus men rushing toward the source of the fireball. The missiles crashed into their chests and exploded. The thanoi fell backward and lay in the snow, their bodies still twitching.

Cries came from the huts, and other dark figures ran toward the boulder where Tashara, Malshaunt, and the others lay concealed. The figures drew closer, covering the distance with surprising speed. Tashara, her whole body as finely drawn as a bowstring, raised her arm and brought it down.

“Now!”

Malshaunt hurled another set of bolts, not at the charging thanoi, but into the sky. In answer, a flight of arrows came from the south, taking the leading thanoi in the side and dropping them in their tracks.

The archers with Tashara loosed as well, and Malshaunt sent forth another flight of magical bolts as the walrus men turned and swayed, unsure which way to charge.

“Now!” Tashara roared again in a voice that sounded over the thanoi’s cries.

The elves and Ayshe burst from their hiding place and bore down on the walrus folk, just as Harfang and his companions did the same. Only Malshaunt hung back from the melee, sending another fireball crashing into the remains of the village.

To his surprise, Ayshe felt a wild joy seize him, as a red mist lowered before his eyes. He ran forward and met a thanoi lifting a crude wooden spear, its haft bound in leather.

It was the first time the dwarf had seen one of the walrus folk close up and out of water. As if suspended in time, he noted the bristling mustache and hair, the claw-tipped flippers, and especially the long, razor-sharp tusks that protruded on either side of its tooth-filled mouth.

He slashed down with his axe and the creature partied with its spear, blocking the blow with a. force that made the dwarf’s teeth rattle. It thrust at Ayshe, and he managed to twist away, swinging his blade at the huge foot that clawed at him. His axe gashed the creature, which snarled and lunged again. The dwarf brought his blade down on the wooden spear and sliced cleanly through it. His backstroke slashed away one of the thanoi’s tusks and most of its check to an accompanying spurt of blood.

The creature howled in pain and staggered. Ayshe saw his opportunity and brought his axe around in a wide arc. The thanoi’s head leaped from its shoulders, and its body toppled into the suddenly reddened snow.

Another walrus man rushed at the dwarf, and Ayshe brought up the flat of his blade to catch it a ringing blow on the front of its skull.The creature stopped dead and fell forward. With a shriek, Jeannara leaped on its unconscious body and slashed her dirk across its throat.

Two more of the creatures hurled themselves forward. Jeannara came up with a twist and knifed one of them in the leg as she rolled past it. Ayshe, bracing himself, his legs spread wide, met a blow from the other’s spear with his axe. The two weapons rang together, and the dwarf dodged to one side, bringing his axe around again. Dim memories came to him of his old training master beneath the Khalkist Mountains shouting angrily at a group of young dwarves, practicing with wooden axes.

“Fast on your feet! Fast, you slugworms! Fast, or die where you stand!”

Ayshe’s thanoi spun with a speed surprising for its bulk, and struck high. The dwarf partied, trying to catch the spear’s haft in his axe blade, but the walrus man was too crafty for that and drew the weapon back. The dwarf noticed that the creature had a necklace of teeth and bones strung about its neck, bearing, at the center, a carven pendant, and he wondered if it were some sort of chief or shaman among the thanoi.

He had little time to think. The walrus man struck again, with a clawed flipper instead of the spear. Ayshe did not dodge in time, and its claws raked his arm. He felt red-hot pains shoot up into his chest, but he did not dare let himself become distracted. One part of his mind worked, as if distanced from the battle, reviewing tactics, seeking an opening.

There! He found it. The thanoi’s back step was just a bit too short. Ayshe slashed down and felt, with satisfaction, his blade bite into flesh. The creature howled and sprayed red across the snow. The dwarf followed up with a thrust with the top of his axe that caught the thanoi in the chest, propelling it backward. It sprawled, and the dwarf cut its head from its shoulders in a single stroke.

Jeannara had dispatched her thanoi with a deep stab to the heart. Her face was streaked with blood, but none of it appeared to be her own.

Ayshe looked around the battleground. The thanoi were scrambling back to the ruins of their village, except for the many dead, who lay in untidy heaps in the snow. Tashara, a red blade in her hand, stood over several bodies. The dwarf could not help but notice the sword she carried was not the one in her bundle, the one she had said would be used in the final battle with the wyrm. The captain cocked an ear toward the retreating thanoi, then, dropping the sword, snatched a bow from the elf standing next to her and sent an arrow into the back of a walrus man. He dropped with a groan.

Following her lead, the elves of Dragonsbane loosed their shafts with such skill that not one of the thanoi reached the burning huts. Tashara lifted her sword again.

“Sweep the settlement!” she called. The band marched forward, slashing at any bodies that moved. One or two thanoi concealed among the remains of the settlement fled for the river and were ruthlessly cut down. Within minutes, no living walrus folk were on the plain.

Ayshe watched the slaughter without participating, his stomach churning. Killing in the heat of battle was one thing, but that brutal cleansing was something else. Not for the first time, he felt there was something cold-blooded about Tashara and her followers.

“Well fought, Master Dwarf!” Harfang, coming up from behind him, put a hand on his shoulder. He had a streak of blood across his forehead but seemed unharmed. The mate looked happier than he had for days, as if the battle had been cathartic.

Ayshe turned away. “Did we have to kill them all?” he demanded. “Come to that, why did we attack them in the first place? They were doing no harm. We could easily have gone around them, and they would have been none the wiser.”

The mate snorted. “Not very familiar with thanoi, are you? I thought you’d learned your lesson from that fishing boat we encountered—the one attacked by spawn.” He led the way past the huts, burning down to smoldering cinders. Malshaunt, oblivious to the destruction, was sitting on the ground in the middle of it all, his eyes closed, his body rigid. The dwarf had seen the mage do that before and knew that after such an expenditure of magic, immediate rest was essential for Malshaunt.

The huts were—or had been—grouped in a crude circle around an open area where there had recently been a fire. Along one side of the fire stood two poles, about five feet apart, with a rope strung between them. Dangling from the rope were a collection of objects that it took Ayshe a moment to identify. Then he gasped.

They were human heads. The thanoi had strung them through the ears so they gazed with the blank stares of the dead. Most were men, but there were several female heads as well. One or two had been hacked or gored in a savage manner.

Harfang looked at them and said without expression, “The thanoi make regular raids on caravans of travelers, either on the edge of Icewall or, occasionally, farther south. So they told me in Zeriak. These are probably Ice Folk.” He glanced at the dwarf. “Do you still regret attacking them?”

Ayshe was silent. There seemed nothing to say.

The settlement yielded a small cache of dried fish but little else Dragonsbane found useful. They spent the night among the ruins—having buried the heads Ayshe and Harfang had found—and early the next morning continued on their way.

The tundra had given way to snow, and the land sloped gently up to meet the edges of a swelling range of hills. Wind from the distant mountains whistled around the rocks and seemed to sing a never-ending lament for something lost beyond recall. When the sun shone on the snow, the light was blinding, and the party learned to wrap rags around their eyes to protect them from the glare. All were clad in their warmest clothes, purchased in Zeriak, which they wore over their padded armor. Fur-lined cloaks and pants kept out the worst of the cold.

At night they huddled together for warmth. Malshaunt managed to keep a small magical fire burning but only for a little time. The mage seemed more withdrawn than usual and stayed close to Tashara, his eyes rarely leaving the captain. Harfang had sunk back into his gloom, and nothing the other elves could say or do seemed to stir him from it. The low feeling communicated itself to the rest of the company, and fewer and fewer words passed among them as they made their way south. Still, they took comfort from the mountain peaks drawing steadily closer, and so far, the way had not been burdensome. Some, in fact, wondered aloud if the stories of the Snow Sea they had heard in Zeriak had been exaggerated, perhaps because so few in the town traveled into the frozen reaches of the south.

On the third day after the battle with the thanoi, they reached another ridge crowned with the windswept rocks that seemed to abound in that country. The snow blew against the stone, and, looking to the south, it was clear their eyes had deceived them. The mountains, among whose majestic peaks were somewhere concealed the Mountains of the Moons and the lair of their quarry, were much farther off than imagined. Before them the hills fell to a great plain, white and featureless. The whiteness was blinding, and they looked away from it to avoid harming their sight even behind the rags they wore.

“The Snow Sea,” observed Jeannara, coming up behind Harfang. Tashara stood a little way away, her face turned, as always, to the south, as if her blind eyes, proof against the whiteness, could somehow envision the end of their journey.

Harfang sighed. “I know. How long to cross it, d’you think?”

Jeannara pursed her lips. “Well, there doesn’t seem to be any obstacles, and we’ll be traveling on flat ground. Still… a week at least.”

“How are supplies?”

“We’ll last,” the elf said grimly, “provided we don’t have far to go beyond that. That’s not what worries me, though.”

The mate turned his gaze to her face without saying anything.

She shrugged. “We may get there. If we’re on the right track, if these Mountains of the Moons stand out clearly from the other mountains, if our captain’s visions or voices or seeings or whatever’s driving her forward are leading us in the right direction.”

“Well?”

“So we get there. But I wonder if we’ll ever get back.”

Harfang made no answer and returned to his study of the Snow Sea. Since he’d cast his fortune with Dragonsbane—or had it cast, more accurately, by Tashara’s relentless call—he had refused to think about the future more than a week or two ahead. In part, that was a habit born of his years on the streets of Palanthas, when daily survival was the most important thing. What would happen? What role would he play? Where he would go after they caught up with the Great White Wyrm? He had no idea of the answers to those questions. For the first time in his life, he confronted the idea that, beyond the quest on which he’d embarked twenty years ago, he might not have a future.

Otha-nyar came up and saluted. “Something to the east, sir.”

Harfang swung around, brought the spyglass to his eye, and stared for several minutes.

“Thanoi,” he said at last.

“Aye, sir. Only three of them. If we move fast, we can catch them.”

“Do it.”

Otha-nyar sped away and vanished east, taking three other elves with her. Harfang could see them gradually overtaking the tiny dark figures whom he had identified as walrus folk. The thanoi were fleeing, but their large bodies made them clumsier than the fleet-footed elves. At last they turned and stood at bay. As the rest of Dragonsbane made their way toward the confrontation, two of the thanoi fell to elven arrows. The third stood motionless, surrounded.

When the rest of the band caught up, Tashara stalked to the front and began questioning the creature, speaking in the Common tongue. The thanoi answered, its voice rasping and heavily accented, as if its vocal chords had some difficulty forming the syllables of Common speech.

“What is your name?”

The thanoi responded with a string of unpronounceable syllables.

“Where are you going?”

The creature flung out a clawed flipper. “Brackenrock.”

“Why?”

“Ogres send out scouts. Report back. Use thanoi.”

“Know you of the Mountains of the Moons?”

The creature was silent. Harfang struck it with the flat of his sword, leaving a trickle of blood along its bloated face.

“Yes,” the thanoi moaned.

“Where are they?”

“There—somewhere.” Again the flipper gestured, this time to the south and west.

“How can we find them?”

“Cannot!” The creature’s voice grated on their nerves, coming as harsh as the sound of ice breaking. “Across Snow Sea it is! You find white death there if you go. Bad place.”

Tashara’s voice remained calm, and her tone was unchanged. “Where? How can we find this place, the Mountains of the Moons?”

The creature shook its head, and Harfang struck it again. His blow cracked one of its tusks, and the creature shrieked in pain. “Death there!” it wailed. “Death on white wings!”

Tashara pushed her face next to the wounded walrus man. Though she was smaller by a head and a half, the creature recoiled from her as if terrified of her blind visage.

“I am fated to find those mountains,” she told the thanoi. “Help me, and you shall live.”

The creature stopped its wailing and stared at her. Its face went blank, as if the walrus man and the elf were communicating in some way the watchers could not understand.

“Look for place of joining moons,” it said at last, its tone sullen. “Where moons and mountain meet, there is Mountains of Moons.”

Tashara turned to Harfang. “There.” There was a note of triumph in her voice.

An odd sound came from the walrus man. After a moment, Ayshe realized the creature was laughing.

“Yes! Go!” he chuckled. “Go and die, foolish elf! Is written in prophecy that elves seek wyrm and die.”

Tashara turned back, her face very still. “What did you say?”

“Elves seek wyrm and die. So is told!”

“What prophecy is this?”

“Old prophecy. Very old.” The thanoi closed one eye, partly swollen from Harfang’s blows, in an attempt to look cunning. “You go, you die. That what prophecy tell thanoi. We watch. We watch White Wyrm many, many years. But it not kill us. Because we watch.”

Tashara listened, head tilted slightly to one side. When the thanoi’s voice stopped, she lifted the bound bundle that she carried, the sword of Kuthendra. She cast it on the ground before the thanoi.

“Open it!”

The walrus man did not move. Jeannara bent and loosened the straps. She pulled the sword free of its swaddling and handed it to the captain.

The thanoi gaped at the sword. Its handle was bound in black leather, studded in gems that shone with an inner fire. Its well-polished blade, etched with Elvish runes, gleamed in the low evening sun, casting a golden reflection.

Tashara lifted it, turning it this way and that. “With this sword,” she told the thanoi, “I shall slay the White Wyrm.”

The creature stared at her. Then suddenly it snarled and lunged, claws outstretched. Harfang started forward, but Tashara, spinning like a dancer, whirled the blade over her head and brought it across, slashing the thanoi’s head from its shoulders. A spray of blood fanned across the snow.

Tashara plunged the blade into the snow and drew it out, wiping it clean. “Kuthendra’s sword has been baptized,” she said. She handed the blade to Jeannara and without hesitation turned toward the southwest, setting off across the vast, empty expanse of the Snow Sea.

The snow that covered the Snow Sea looked smooth, but it was deep, in some cases rising to the thighs of the elves who plowed their way through it. It slowed their pace and wearied their limbs until all their existence seemed to have been spent struggling through that unending field of white. Although near the edges of the sea, the snow was smooth and featureless, it soon rose in waves, the crests of which sometimes reared high over the party’s heads. Sometimes they were able to break through those waves and beat a path across them. Other times they struggled, pushing aside the snow and forging a way over the tops of the swells before plunging down again. It was painful, wearying work, and the snow soon covered them, dampening their clothing and freezing them.

When night came—and it came very early—they hollowed out caves in the snow in which to sleep. The caves kept out the worst of the wind, but even wrapped in every blanket and cloak they could find, the party felt the bitter cold acutely.

Ayshe found that what he had thought was cold before had been the merest chill compared to what he felt at that moment. Every bone in his body was stiff with frost. His fingers and toes felt numb, and he had to massage them constantly before sleeping for fear of frostbite. In the mornings when he awoke, usually after only a few hours of restless sleep, his blanket was stiff and cold, and he had to struggle to get up. He realized his great enemy in that environment was his own sweat, which froze almost instantly and covered his clothing in ice. His hair and beard were brittle, and after a few days, his beard actually shortened as parts froze and broke off. The party slept close to one another, huddling for warmth.

Malshaunt’s magical fires melted enough snow to fill their water bottles but gave little real heat and could not be sustained for long. After each fire, the mage sat, eyes closed, resting and renewing his magical energies. Each time it was more of a struggle for him, and yet his dark eyes shone as brightly as ever, following Tashara as she rose each morning and set out toward the mountains that rimmed the southern edge of the sea.

The party’s spirits, which had risen after the battle with the thanoi, fell again. Riadon, who plodded next to Ayshe in the line, seemed to the dwarf to be growing more morose and withdrawn with each step. He spoke little and ate less, and his strength ebbed from his emaciated body.

Two nights after they had begun the crossing of the Snow Sea, Ayshe lay awake and listened to the labored breathing of the elf. The two lay with their backs to one another, but the dwarf could draw little or no warmth from his companion. When at last light crept across the sky and Ayshe rose, Riadon lay wrapped in his blanket. The dwarf shook him and, looking more closely, called for Harfang.

The mate, Jeannara, and Ayshe stood in a little circle around the frozen body of their companion. Riadon’s face was pale, his lips blue. The mate reached over him and loosened his blanket with a jerk. He spread the woolen shroud over the elf and turned away.

“Aren’t we going to bury him?” the dwarf asked.

Harfang looked up at the leaden sky. Snowflakes were drifting down in a lazy pattern, brushing their faces with a gentle caress. “He’ll be buried soon enough,” he grunted. “We have no fuel to give him a proper funeral.” He turned his back.

Ayshe and Jeannara shouldered their packs and followed the rest of Dragonsbane on what seemed a never-ending journey south.