But one by one, his men had been taken, dragged away in utter silence into the perpetual night of the abandoned mines. Those in the front would suddenly realise that the rear man was gone, and none would know at what point he had disappeared.
Ho’Demi had eventually gone to the rear himself, but within an hour the front man had been taken, then the remaining man, and then Ho’Demi had been left alone in the dark. Utterly, totally lost.
If he could, he would have escaped this hell, but at some point he had become so disorientated that now he only crawled through the shoulder-high tunnels. Even death would be a release.
But Ho’Demi was not ready to die. He still had the Prophecy to serve, and he still had Sa’Kuya waiting for him. He rested some minutes, taking a swallow of water from the almost empty flask that hung at his belt, then he moved again…slowly…slowly…expecting death at any moment.
Chitter, chatter. Chitter, chatter.
Ho’Demi’s head flew up and, again, he struck it on the roof of the tunnel.
Chitter, chatter. Chitter, chatter.
Ho’Demi realised the noise was in his head, not in the shaft about him.
Chitter, chatter. Chitter, chatter.
Whatever had taken his men was now coming for him. He flexed his hand then closed it about his dagger. If he could not kill these creatures, then he would kill himself. At least, if he died by his own hand, he could die pretending he was on the ice-fields of the Ravensbund.
Chitter…who are you? Chatter…who are you?
Ravensbund, his mind replied instinctively, and the creatures that he could now feel crowding the tunnel behind him ceased their chitter, chatter, surprised by the response. My name is Ho’Demi, and I am Chief of the Ravensbund.
Chitter…doesn’t matter, chatter…still you can die.
Why? Their need reached him, and Ho’Demi could feel that they needed him to die, but he didn’t know why. And he wanted to know why. Every man deserved to know why he died.
Chitter, chatter. Why can he speak to us? Others have not. Never, chitter, chatter.
I speak with the mind voice because that is the privilege of the Ravensbund Chief. All Ravensbund people serve the Prophecy, and the Chief more than most. Why do you want me to die?
So you can join us. Don’t you want to join us?
No. I want to escape these confines.
(Sigh) So do we, chitter, chatter. But we need a world crueller than the one we have lost to accept us.
Ho’Demi felt as though his mind were going to explode. He communicated in the mind voice with Axis, and it did not hurt him, but these creatures drove sharp claws into his head with every word they…chittered, chattered. And he was confused. You need a world crueller than the one you have lost?
We are lost, lost, lost, chitter, chatter.
The word ‘lost’ echoed through Ho’Demi’s mind and sang up and down the tunnel.
Sad, sad, sad, chitter, chatter.
WHO ARE YOU? Ho’Demi screamed into the blackness.
For a long moment there was silence. Then…Our bodies have gone. Lost. Stolen. Ground to dust and pebbles to crown golden rings on graceless fingers.
Something clicked in Ho’Demi’s mind. You are the…souls…of the opals?
Chitter, chatter. Souls, lost. Will you join us? Or can you offer us a world crueller than the one we have lost?
Ho’Demi abruptly sat down in the dust and gravel. It had long been rumoured among the people of Tencendor that opals were stones of ill-luck and cruelty, but their incredible beauty still created a market.
If only they knew.
We asked your companions if they knew of a world, a cruel world, that might accept us, but they merely accepted their death, and would not speak to us.
But if they could have spoken, then I would wager that each and every one of them could have suggested the world that I will now offer you, Ho’Demi thought. He shifted slightly in the darkness. I will offer you a cruel, cruel world, and yet one more beautiful than the one you have lost. No-one will come to chase you from this world, nor seek to chisel into its depths.
He could feel the wild excitement of the lost souls. Chitter, chatter. Can you? Will you? Where will you?
A bargain, though. For a world I want freedom from these dark spaces…and information.
The souls were suspicious. Show us this world then. Show us, and do not lie to us with your mind, for we will know.
Ho’Demi leaned back against the wall of the tunnel, closed his eyes, and formed an image in his mind. Within a heartbeat both the tunnel and his mind reverberated with excited chittering.
Ours, chitter, chatter? You would lead us there? Would you? Would you? Would you?
There are creatures who will gambol about its edges and others who will travel its plains, and you must tolerate them.
But they will not tunnel, tunnel, tunnel?
No.
Ah, chitter, chatter. Then they may gambol. They may travel. It is beautiful. It is cold and hard and it glows with as many colours as our previous world. It is cruel, is it not?
Crueller than you can imagine. The surrounding waters are known among men as Iskruel.
And what is our new home’s name, chitter, chatter?
Ho’Demi smiled. Iceberg.
They led him, chitter, chatter, to the Skraelings. They had not bothered the Skraelings, because they hid deep in a natural cavern to which the lost souls, chitter, chatter, felt no claim.
Peering over a boulder at the mouth of a tunnel, Ho’Demi could finally see the soft glow of silver eyes, and the frantic whisperings of Skraelings.
Chitter, chatter. Is this who you seek?
Yes. My friends—and when did I ever think to call those who killed Ravensbund ‘friends’?—Can you drive them from here?
You did say a cruel world, did you not?
Cold and hard and icy. Not like this balmy darkness you currently inhabit.
Oh! Chitter, chatter! When?
At the moment, I and mine are consumed with warring the enemy that whispers beneath us, but when I have time and the opportunity to ride for my homeland, then I will come for you.
You are a true man. We can feel that. Come for us, chitter, chatter.
Ho’Demi edged back from the boulder. Can you drive them from here? he repeated.
We can drive anything from these caverns and chambers should we put a mind to it, chitter, chatter.
Then do it.
Axis?
Axis straightened so fast on Belaguez’s back he almost fell off. Belial, riding behind, kicked his horse forward.
Ho’Demi?
Axis. I have found them. It was as you surmised. They hid in the mines of the Murkle Mountains.
Axis frowned. Hid?
He could feel the wry amusement across the void between their minds. You have a horrendous enemy, StarMan. They are numerous beyond belief, and the Skraelings are so armoured now that a man will have to aim straight and sure if he wants to hit the eye. And the Gryphon…the Gryphon will blacken the sky. But they are no longer in the mines. I have herded them for you.
WHAT?
Ah, but I have had some assistance, chitter, chatter.
Axis cursed the man. Had cold finally tipped his mind beyond sanity?
Ride for the mouth of the Azle River, StarMan. That is where you will converge.
The mouth of the Azle, Ho’Demi?
Chitter, chatter, Axis. Chitter, chatter.
26
OF ICE AND LAUGHTER
He fought for a Great Lord, and in the name of that Lord he commanded a mighty army that undulated for leagues in every direction.
Timozel smiled and let the cold seep through to the marrow of his bones. Since he had vowed allegiance to his Great Lord, the cold no longer bothered him. Indeed, he had come to desire it.
The cold wind blew at his back as hundreds of thousands screamed his name and hurried to fulfil his every wish. Before him another army, his pitiful enemy, lay quavering in terr
or. They could not counter his brilliance.
He turned his head slightly and saw that, indeed, the Skraeling army undulated in every direction, and every whisper echoed his name. Soon, when he gave the command, they would scream for him.
Remarkable victories were his for the taking.
“Soon,” Timozel breathed and looked ahead once more.
It had not eventuated quite as he had planned, but no matter. He would still meet Axis (and how many months, years, had he lusted for this day?) with an army ten times his foe’s pitiful force, and he would face Axis on his own terms. Perhaps Timozel could not surprise his former commander, but he could still best him, and best him he would.
A great and glorious battle and the enemy’s positions were overrun—to the man (and others stranger that fought shoulder to shoulder with them) the enemy died. Timozel lost not one soldier.
Jervois Landing, no doubt. That had truly been a great and glorious battle, and Timozel had revelled in his victory.
Another day, and another battle. The enemy used foul magic this day, and Timozel’s forces were grievously hurt…but Timozel still won the field, and the enemy and its crippled commander retreated before him.
Timozel knew his enemy would be hard to defeat—he could not ignore the fact that Axis was an experienced and battle-hardened commander, as was the army he led—but he hoped Axis would be dead by the end of this day. After all, his vision had shown him time and time again how he would prevail. How easily he would prevail.
Timozel had wanted to catch Axis in full retreat. Catch the lightly defended rear of his column as he moved back to Carlon. He had hoped that Axis would think, when he could not find the Skraeling host in northern Aldeni, that they had outflanked him and were heading straight for Carlon. Then Axis would turn south and Timozel could spring the trap from the Murkle Mountains.
But Axis had not fled south, and those cursed…Chatterlings…had worried at his Skraeling host so badly in the mines that Timozel had finally been forced to lead them back into the open air. Now here they were, encamped by the Azle River (frozen over, as were the northern parts of Murkle Bay itself), and Axis’ army lay a league and a half to the east.
Today they would meet. Today Timozel would finally show Axis who was the better commander. Axis would not live to defile Faraday again.
His eyes slipped to the slopes of the closest of the Murkle Mountains. Not all those hunched shapes were rocks.
Timozel turned back to the ice-field before him. In the distance he could see his foe’s first row of formations darken the snow.
Thank the Stars for Ho’Demi and his strange pact with the lost souls of the Murkle mines, Axis thought, keeping Belaguez reined back as his army slowly moved past him. Without those souls, I would surely have been defeated before I raised my sword to fight.
If the Skraeling host had kept to the mines, there would have been no way to flush them out, and they could have attacked at leisure; perhaps after several weeks of allowing Axis and his men to slowly freeze in this Gorgrael-blasted land.
For the past twelve days, ever since Ho’Demi had contacted him, Axis had moved his thirty thousand towards the mouth of the Azle River. It was not country he knew well, and even had he known it from days when the grass actually grew over this land, he could not have recognised it now. The mountains, plains and river were completely encased in ice. While storms no longer blew, the air remained frigid and the north wind bitter. At night men cried with the cold, and the Icarii suffered most of all. Fires were few and pitiful even when they did flare into life. Supplies had to be packed to the army by mule, and the beasts’ backs were already so bent with food that they could not carry fuel as well.
Everyone suffered, and Axis knew his army’s effectiveness would be severely compromised by the cold it had already endured and would endure yet. A movement in the sky distracted him, and he shifted his eyes to watch FarSight descend to the ice beside him.
“StarMan.” FarSight clenched his fist above his heart, and Axis noticed the birdman’s hand was blue with cold.
“Well?”
FarSight shivered, and Axis did not think it was entirely with the cold. “They wait three hours’ march from here, StarMan. Hundreds of thousands of them. Skraelings and IceWorms.”
“Gryphon?”
FarSight shook his head. “I have not seen them.”
“But they must be here. Somewhere.”
FarSight inclined his head towards the towering Murkle Mountains. “My guess is that they lurk among the rocks and chasms of those slopes, StarMan.”
Axis regarded the mountains. His eyes were sharp, their Icarii farsightedness enhanced by his powers as an Enchanter, but even so he could discern nothing but bare rock, blasted and scraped by ice sliding down from the peaks. But they must be there. On that he agreed with FarSight.
“I do not want to risk the Strike Force unnecessarily, FarSight. Your thoughts?”
“You cannot afford not to risk us, StarMan. That Skraeling force is massive, and it sits well-ordered and disciplined. You, we, have faced nothing like this before. On their own, our ground forces will be obliterated within hours.”
An overestimate, Axis thought morosely. It should take only an hour for a Skraeling force that size to eat through us. He shuddered, and thanked the Star Gods that Azhure, Caelum and StarDrifter were safe so far south. If the worst occurred…then all hope would not be left lying dead in this wasteland.
Belial and Magariz joined them; both men, like Axis, wrapped in felt and blankets under and over their armour. It severely hampered their fighting ability, but a frozen limb would be disastrous in battle.
“Belial,” Axis asked, “have you and Magariz had a chance to look at the terrain?”
“Yes. It favours neither them nor us. Flat ice-land in this wide river valley, bordered in the south by the upper Murkle Mountains, and in the north by the low ranges of Western Ichtar.”
“The river is iced?”
“Completely, Axis. As is the northern Murkle Bay,” Magariz replied. “We shall have no help there.”
Skraelings hated open water and Borneheld had kept them out of Aldeni for long months by the series of canals he had constructed between the Nordra and the upper reaches of the Azle. But now Gorgrael had so completely iced in northern Tencendor that all rivers north of the western Ranges were frozen. The Skraelings were no longer hindered by the hateful waters.
Axis chewed his lip thoughtfully, his eyes on the distant mountains. The other three stared at him, waiting for his lead. Save us, Axis, Belial thought, for I have too much life to live yet.
As if he had caught Belial’s thought, Axis shifted his gaze to his friend’s face sharply, then abruptly drew the glove off his right hand. He stared at his Enchanter’s ring, fingering it gently.
Finally he lifted his eyes. “I have a plan,” he said softly. “It is only a fragile plan, but it may work. It had better work, because it is all I can think of.”
The two armies met as the noon-day sun, shining incongruously over this ice-bound wasteland, began its descent towards the western horizon. There was little finesse to the action, for both armies just advanced until they met on the southern banks of the frozen Azle. Axis had pushed his army hard in the final half-league, for he did not want the Skraeling force to advance too far across the Azle. Their lives depended on being able to keep the Skraelings to the frozen river-banks.
And how do we stop a juggernaut? Axis thought despairingly as he urged his men forward. How will we manage to push back a force so large it only needs to stand firm to resist us?
He threw everything he had against the Skraelings. What brands and fuel they had were flourished in the front ranks; but the Skraelings were not the cowardly wretches they had once been, and fire no longer terrified them.
Pikes, lances, spears, arrows—all tried to penetrate the bony ridges surrounding the Skraelings’ silvery eyes, but the armour was so extensive that men had to keep a cool head to aim precisely, a
nd cool heads were difficult amid the terror that surged towards them. And the Skraelings fought well. They were disciplined and they were ordered, and Axis quickly realised that he could not rely on spooking them into a retreat as he had done occasionally on previous occasions.
Arne did not stray from Axis’ back. Wherever Axis drove the plunging Belaguez, there also Arne drove his horse. His eyes were slitted but watchful, for Arne could feel to the very core of his being that treachery rode the northerly wind this day, and Axis would not die if he could help it.
Within minutes of the attack, Axis could see that his men were already in danger of being overwhelmed, the numbers against them were so fearsome.
FarSight, attack if you dare. Axis did not like using the Strike Force, but he had no choice. Only the winged archers would be able to strike beyond the first ranks of the Skraelings, and Axis needed to keep fresh ranks of Skraelings from his men.
Ho’Demi? Your archers, if you please. Six days ago Ho’Demi had rejoined Axis, and now he led the massed squads of archers, including Azhure’s. Their arrows, Axis hoped, would also prevent too many Skraelings from rushing to support their front line. But thirty thousand against three hundred thousand were pitiful, laughable, odds, and Axis, as every man in his force, knew it.
Still they fought, bravely and well. Yet many died, overwhelmed, and in some places along the front line more men than Skraelings died.
For a long time Arne and Belial between them managed to keep Axis out of the front rank of the fighting, but eventually it grew so intense, so confused, that Axis found himself engaged with Skraeling soldiers, no thought but to plunge his sword time and time again into a Skraeling eye.
Above them the Strike Force wheeled, and over Axis’ head shot flights of arrows so thick that sometimes they blotted out the sun, and Axis thought he could feel the line of Skraelings give way slightly.