It was impossible to tell which of the two peaks was greater. From sea level each loomed impossibly high, spires of rock that seemed to challenge the laws of gravity. The mountains were so close together that the entry to the fjord was all but invisible to enemy vessels. The ogre helmsman, Barelip Seacaster, guided the galley with skill, however, and Grimwar stood and watched, knowing what was about to unfold.
The ship approached the shoreline and veered to port. Gradually, as they drew close, the shoreline became visible in clear relief. Finally the shade from the low sun cut a swath across the mountainside, and the ogre prince could see the opening of the narrow channel.
Barelip Seacaster hauled on the great tiller as the drumbeats slowed and the rowers settled their pace. The ship followed a smooth curve, moving with stately grace, easing toward the entrance. When they passed behind the looming shoulder of mountain the shadows embraced them chillingly, a sense of frost that penetrated through Grimwar’s heavy sea cape and brought visible mist to each royal exhalation.
They moved through utterly still water, oars dipping, pushing, rising to drip across the calm surface, before once more gently immersing for another stroke. Each side of the fjord was close enough that the prince could have struck it with a well-thrown stone. The wall emerging from the deep water sloped steeply upward, slick with ice and glowering dark stone. Every time he passed through here the hulking ogre felt small and vulnerable.
“By Gonnas, it’s good to be going home,” Grimwar noted as Baldruk Dinmaker joined him in the prow.
“Aye-and ’tis a fair pleasure to bid goodbye to that cursed sun, Your Highness,” agreed the dwarf heartily. “Will we see the city before nightfall?”
“I hope.” The prince had been through this channel on many occasions, but he didn’t dare make a prediction. Sunset occurred earlier with each passing day, the season waning so fast that he wasn’t sure. Still, he hoped they would get a glimpse of Winterheim while there was still light, for there was no finer view that he had ever seen in his life.
There, an hour later, it was. The galley slipped from between the close walls of the fjord and emerged into a watery bowl called Black Ice Bay, an enclosure that was completely sheltered from the sea except for this dangerous approach. The shadows were long, the water inky dark and still, but Grimwar’s eyes were drawn to the alabaster facade sprawling across the full stretch of the southern horizon. The clear sky, rich with the deep indigo of twilight, brought the snowfields, cornices, and glaciers into splendid, purple relief.
Winterheim was a city, but it was also a mountain. If the Ice Gates were towering pillars, Winterheim itself was a monument of sublime wonder that dwarfed every surrounding elevation.
Fading sunlight glimmered with phosphorescent brilliance along the crest of the great mountain, a corona of white light sparkling along an arcing ridge of pristine snow. Fresh powder blanketed the upper palisades. Even in summer, such precipitation was an almost nightly occurrence, and now already the darkening days of autumn crept closer.
The King’s Wall circled the summit perhaps two-thirds of the way up the lofty slope. This palisade of sheer stone was more than a hundred feet tall and looked like a belt of gray around the mountain’s lumpy midriff. A multitude of towers jutted from the slopes, many of these strung along the upper ramparts above the King’s Wall and across the highest shoulders of the edifice. Other spires dotted the lower slopes, and from these-as well as in great windows and doorways in the mountainside-a multitude of fires hove into view, sparks of light brightening the massif as the shadows of sunset inexorably thickened.
To the right a ridge extended into a great, flat surface with ornate columns, these pillars rising up to merge with the base of the King’s Wall. On this field the king’s troops drilled, and his people gathered for such celebrations as occurred outside the city walls. Grimwar recalled with a thrill standing up there and watching King Grimtruth drive the pillars into the ice during the Icebreaker Festival, which took place at the end of the long, sunless winter.
To the left of the mountain appeared a great, frozen cliff of solid ice. This was the Icewall, the dam holding back the Snow Sea. In a few months that wall would be shattered by the king himself, in a ritual as old as Winterheim. When the sun finally vanished for the winter, a strong male slave would be offered in sacrifice, and his blood, together with the enchantment of the high priestess, would provide the power to break the Icewall, and release the Sturmfrost to dwindle across Icereach.
Barelip Seacaster called out to the drummer, who picked up the pace. Grimwar felt the galley surge beneath his feet, and he thrilled at the power of the great ship, of a hundred and twenty slaves responding to a single command.
Darkness settled across Black Ice Bay, but the prince of ogres didn’t budge from his post. Instead, he watched the sparkling lights of his home, remembered the smells of scented oil, of roasting whale meat, and the day’s catch of fish. A slit of brightness appeared in the base of the mountain, where it merged with the dark water. The gap slowly widened as the Seagate, operated by hundreds of slaves turning great capstans, trundled open. His ship had been spotted, and the ogres made ready to welcome their prince and his crew. Grimwar thought of the slaves, the throng of captives crammed below the deck, of the victories that had marked the campaign along the Icereach coast.
He hoped his father would be pleased.
“You call these slaves?” King Grimtruth Bane snarled. His massive fists were planted on his hips as he stood next to his son on a landing above Winterheim’s great harbor. The massive chamber had been excavated in the base of the lofty mountain. The great stone slabs of the Seagate were still rumbling shut, though the galley had been docked for nearly an hour.
“Why, they’re scrawny as skeletons! It’s a wonder they could even row the galley back to Winterheim!”
Beside the king a fat nobleman, Quendip, laughed in sycophantic amusement, but Grimwar’s eyes were drawn past that obese ogre, to the more sympathetic gaze of the king’s young wife, Thraid Dimmarkull. She wore a woolen gown and her long hair was loosely bound. Like the king, she had been roused from bed to greet the prince and his ship. Indeed, the smile that had brightened her face when he stepped off of Goldwing had been the highlight of this homecoming.
Now the prince, slumping under his father’s criticism, took heart from the kindness he saw in the eyes of the ogress queen, who, though she was his stepmother, was several years younger than himself. He looked to Baldruk Dinmaker, saw that the dwarf was quietly standing behind the king. Naturally, he took no chances of falling under Grimtruth’s stern gaze and any subsequent recrimination.
Grimwar Bane sighed. His mistake, if it could be called that, was arriving home at midnight, after the king had quaffed his fiery warqat and then fallen asleep. Of course, he had been rousted when the prince’s galley returned, but he was inevitably ill tempered, bleary eyed, and thick tongued with drink.
“Of course they’re scrawny,” the prince retorted, indignance overcoming his better judgment. “They’ve been cooped up, some of them for three months! We didn’t have enough to feed them, but now they’ll fatten up again.” He wanted to add that only two of the slaves had died during the months of confinement, but he decided not to waste the words.
The king leaned close, his bloodshot eyes squinting as he peered at the humans huddling on the wharf, now starting to file up the ramp toward the lower level of the ogre city. “What about wenches?” whispered Grimtruth, his boozy voice carrying easily to his young wife’s ears. Thraid flushed and compressed her thick lips as she looked purposefully away.