He was kneeling to scoop up the frigid ice-water when a voice spoke, close and gruff: ‘You are bold.’
He held out his arms, turned, and was quite startled to find a near-giant standing directly behind him. The man must have possessed a good full third again in height over Kyle, though he knew he wasn’t all that tall to begin with. The fellow wore thick leathers and possessed a wild mane of mussed brown hair tied up with leather strips, and an equally wide and bushy beard that touched his chest. A sword hung on one hip, a long-hafted axe at the other. The fellow regarded him from within his nest of hair with something like an eager grin, as if hoping Kyle would go for his sword. He kept his arms wide. ‘I’m just passing through.’
The grin broadened on the man’s ruddy features and he scratched his scalp beneath his bunched and matted hair. ‘You pass through to what? To peak? You’ll not like it there, I think.’
‘I’m looking for someone.’
The expressive brows rose. ‘Oh-ho! Looking for someone! You have friends here, yes?’
‘Yes, in fact I might.’
The giant slapped Kyle’s side, nearly sending him tumbling into the pond. ‘Ho! You are funny little man! I give you chance. You go south now. Don’t come back.’
Kyle rubbed his ribs. ‘Do you know a man named Stalker? Badlands? Coots?’
The fellow dropped his grin. He edged backwards from Kyle. A hand went to the bearded axe at his side. ‘The Losts? Yes, I know.’
Losts? Kyle wondered. Well, that made sense. They called themselves the Lost Army. ‘Well … they named me Lost as well.’
‘Did they?’ the man rumbled. He threw his arms wide. ‘Cousin!’ He wrapped Kyle in a crushing hug and lifted him from the ground. Only when he set him down again could Kyle breathe once more. He leaned over, hands on knees, sucking in air.
‘I am Cull Heel!’ the fellow announced, his voice booming over the valley. ‘Come! You go with me to Greathall!’
Hardly able to talk, Kyle nodded. ‘Thank you, yes,’ he gasped. ‘Thank you.’
Cull set off upland. Kyle hurried after; the fellow set a fast pace with his great strides. ‘I know lowland ways,’ he was saying. ‘I travel. Sail as pirate. Work as mercenary. Much fighting, little coin. Wife not happy.’
‘I see.’
‘You?’
‘Oh — I was a mercenary as well. For a time.’
‘Same as Losts. They go too, I hear. They come back.’
It took some time for Kyle to realize that he’d been asked a question. ‘So they said.’
Cull grunted his understanding. ‘We go but we come back. Always. Cannot escape.’
‘Escape?’
By way of answer, the big fellow opened wide his arms as if to embrace the entire valley. ‘The land. The Holdings. We are one.’
‘Ah. I see.’
They climbed steeply for the rest of the day. Towards evening, Kyle was surprised by a shadowy figure awaiting them in the woods. Cull walked on, giving no clue that he’d seen the stranger. When they were quite close, Kyle cleared his throat and gestured ahead. ‘Someone’s there.’
Cull bunched his thick brows as if vexed. ‘Yes?’
‘Oh — so, a friend?’
‘No. No friend,’ the man answered darkly.
Closer, Kyle paused as he saw how the black trunks of the trees shone through the outline. Some sort of shade, or revenant. Cull walked on. He passed quite near to the tall wavering shape with its frayed tattered leathers and long unkempt hair, yet made no effort to acknowledge its presence.
‘There are trespassers on the Holding,’ the shape called after them.
Cull waved the back of his hand at the outline. ‘Yes, yes.’
‘You must deal with them!’
‘Certainly.’
As they walked on, Kyle following Cull who did not slow, the last thing the shade said was a murmured, ‘We are ashamed.’
Kyle decided not to ask what all that had been about.
They only stopped when Cull led him to what was an obvious campsite, complete with a lean-to of cut boughs and a ring of stones. The big fellow set to cutting wood with his bearded axe. Kyle followed his lead by gathering more wood. It was dark when Cull got the fire going by taking out a tinderbox and striking flint to iron over a bed of dried moss.
Once the fire was sure, the big fellow sat back. Overhead, the aurora was out in wide draping bands of green and yellow frilled in pink.
‘That was ancestor,’ Cull said, throwing another stick on to the fire and raising a great gust of sparks that flew up into the night. Kyle watched them rise on and on, as if they would join the aurora itself. He decided that Cull was talking about the shade. ‘Tell me to kill all trespassers.’ He poked a thin stick into the fire then pointed it at him. ‘Like you.’
‘Thank you for not killing me.’
The giant frowned at the glowing tip of the stick. ‘I have enough killing. Besides,’ he shrugged, ‘too many come.’ He eased himself back against a log. ‘Too many to kill.’
‘They are coming for the gold.’
The fellow swished the glowing tip through the air, making circles and snake-like lines. He seemed delighted by the designs. ‘Yes, the gold.’
‘Why don’t you just let them take it?’
‘Gold in the land. They take the land.’
He felt like a fool. ‘Yes. Sorry.’
‘I’m sorry for them.’
Kyle shook his head in amazement. ‘They are running you from your land and you are sorry for them?’
Cull continued swishing the stick. ‘Gold least important thing in land.’
‘Really? Then what is the most important?’
The fellow thought about this for a time. Frowning, he peered about at their forested surroundings, his brows crimping. Finally, a big infectious grin split his lips, and he offered, ‘Life.’
Kyle thought that a strange answer but decided he wouldn’t argue with his host. They slept then. For a time the blazing banners of the aurora kept him awake. It reminded him of Korel and the lights that glowed above the Strait of Storms. But they had been far fainter, more diffuse. Here they appeared so bright and low he thought he could pinch them between his fingers.
Over the next three days of climbing snow-patched slopes, Kyle decided that his host was very strange indeed. The man didn’t seem to think the way he did. At times he seemed a child in a giant’s body; at other times he was just plain odd. When Kyle remarked on the great rush of run-off streaming down the rock faces and the gathering summer, the man answered: ‘Sun not the enemy. Time the enemy.’
Another day Kyle found him standing very still and solemn as he appeared to be doing nothing more than studying the mossy forest floor before him. He stood with him for a time, but soon became bored and moved off to sit and rest for the unannounced, extended stop. Cull woke him with a gentle touch. Kyle started up, peered back to where the man had stood for so long. ‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘Powerful ancestor fall there long ago,’ Cull answered, and started off.
Curious, Kyle crossed to the spot which appeared no different from any other patch of needle-strewn ground. Then he noticed how the dirt was darker here, far wetter than the surrounding earth. He knelt and brushed aside the leaf bracken and litter. Something gleamed amid the dirt. He dug deeper into the dark wet humus. A layer of it came away in a swath. Below gleamed a black smooth face of buried ice. Kyle flinched backward in shock and surprise. His hand throbbed, numb yet tingling. How like the Stormriders — but different. Theirs had been an alien cold, seemingly anathema to flesh and blood as he knew it. This was not so alien. Frigid, yes, but somehow far more comprehensible. Like … well, like a snow-capped mountain peak: formidable and inhospitable, but also majestic and awe-inspiring at the same time.
‘Little brother,’ Cull called, sounding far away.
Kyle shook his head and blinked to clear his vision, as if emerging from a dream. ‘Yes, sorry. Coming.’
Towards late afternoon, they exited the forest to push through the tall weeds and saplings of what had once been cleared land. Fields, Kyle decided, now abandoned — or neglected — to fall back to the forest from where they’d been taken. The fields climbed a rising slope that allowed a magnificent view of the haze-shrouded lowlands.