The prince was in no mood to give ground. The Barkon Sword was in his hands now, no longer merely a ceremonial weapon. Baldruk Dinmaker’s word-someday-echoed in Grimwar’s mind. He raised the great weapon tentatively. It felt good in his hands.
“You dare to draw steel against your father, the king?” snarled Grimtruth, taking another step forward. “You worthless spawn, you are your mother’s milksop, a disgrace to my line!”
Before anyone could say anything else, metal clashed, and sparks flew. The weapons met again and again, propelled by all the strength of two bull ogres. A haze settled around the prince, and he hacked and charged, parried and smashed. The king was a huge ogre, and his axe was formidable, but his son was fast, and he felt driven by years of pent-up rage.
The great hall fell silent, the ogres gaping in awe and the humans in fear as the king and the prince battled. Thraid’s cheeks were flushed, her white-knuckled hands clenching the table. Baldruk Dinmaker licked his lips, stared, drew his breath in a great hiss.
Axe met sword in another ringing clash, and both ogres strained. The king’s weight and his huge weapon bore down on the prince, who suddenly backed away. The Axe of Gonnas cut deeply into the stones of the mountain balcony. Grimwar stabbed, his sword grazing the king’s shoulder, and Grimtruth roared in fury as he pulled his weapon back and struck anew. The younger ogre barely dodged.
Again and again they clashed and broke apart. First one held the advantage, then the other. Grimwar’s thigh bled from a deep gash, while both of the king’s wrists and arms were scored with cuts. Each wound seemed to drive his father into a wilder rage, while Grimwar, for his part, found himself growing calmer and more determined. Strangely he found himself thinking of the beautiful queen watching this fight, of the dwarf, and the masked high priestess. He knew what would happen, what he had to do.
Cautiously Grimwar circled his opponent, pressed him back against the rim of the balcony at the very edge of the Ice Wall. There was a measure of fear in the king’s eyes now as he lost strength and flailed wildly, no longer pressing the attack, merely holding his son at bay. He parried desperately, and Grimwar stabbed at the monarch’s exposed hands, driving the blade deep, forcing the axe out of the royal grip. The king sprawled backward, shrieking, to lie fully across the wall.
“The axe-you must draw blood with the axe!”
Grimwar heard the words over the gale, knew that his wife was speaking to him, uttering the awful truth that he already recognized. The rite had been sanctified by Gonnas, but the axe was needed to fulfill the ritual. The prince dropped his sword and picked up the artifact, raising it high over his head. The king, his father, this monstrous drunken cur of an ogre, was blubbering pathetically, trying to scramble away.
Grimwar Bane chopped down with all the strength of his powerful body, angling the blade toward his father’s bulging gut. The Axe of Gonnas sliced royal flesh, and Grimtruth gazed stupidly at the crimson liquid spurting from the great, gaping wound. The blood gushed across the ice, sinking into the white frost. The prince stood numb, watching, until Stariz grabbed him and pulled him back through the melted window, into the shelter of the Hall of Blue Ice.
More of the fallen king’s blood soaked into the frozen dam, and the power of the Sturmfrost surged and exploded, while all Icereach quailed at the threat of killing cold.
17
A massive crack spidered its way across the Ice Wall, beginning at the spot where Grimtruth Bane’s blood soaked into the dam of frost. The sounds of fissuring ice split the air like staccato bursts of thunder. The Snow Sea surged against the multiplying cracks.
A huge slab of ice broke free from the crest of the wall to tumble down the sheer face. Other pieces were jarred free as the huge chunk crashed and shattered. More great sections tumbled. Finally the first real crevice appeared, and the Sturmfrost burst through with a shriek of gale force, an eruption of furious wind and snow.
That initial finger of storm tore at the gap, widened it until other pieces of the Ice Wall spun away. The whole vast surface quivered and expanded, additional fissures opening everywhere, gouts of storm erupting. Sounds of crashing ice made a roar to shake the world, as a thousand geysers of blizzard simultaneously exploded and cascaded.
At last the Ice Wall fell away along its entire length. The Sturmfrost hurled away mountainous pieces of the dam. Many crashed far away into the White Bear Sea, raising huge spumes of water. As the wind whipped past the water, they froze into fountains of ice, picked up again and hurled farther, rocketing through the sky with monstrous force. Winds screamed with hurricane power. The black waves billowed and surged with frigid violence.
As the storm spilled out of the Snow Sea, it spread, fanlike, to the east and west as well as covering the north. In the blackness of the Icereach night an even blacker face churned on its path, shaped and driven by the cold and vicious wind. The front was a mile high and utterly lightless, full of destructive energy, large enough to swallow anything and everything in its path.
“This is really boring.”
Coraltop Netfisher slumped on the roof of the cabin, chin resting in his hands. “No wind, no waves, nothing. I hate to complain, but at least when I was rowing it was more fun.”
Kerrick bit his tongue and didn’t break his rhythm of gentle oarstrokes. Back and forth he plied the single-bladed paddle, propelling Cutter slowly toward land. Listening to his shipmate’s complaints, he was tempted to invite the kender to take a swim. Coraltop’s attempt at rowing had involved turning a wide dizzying circle in the placid waters, and Kerrick was still trying to make up for the lost time.
They were far out at sea, in the middle of a still, starry night, and the weather was preternaturally calm. There was not even a whisper of wind. No ripple marred the mirror-still surface of the water.
“How far do you think it is, back to that steam cave?” Coraltop Netfisher wondered.
“I don’t know … maybe a mile, maybe less,” the elf replied. Because of the faint glow of starlight, he could make out the the strait, he thought, but he wasn’t sure how far away it was. He was startled to see, low in the west, a green star sparkling above the place where he remembered that cove to be.
“Hey, there’s Zivilyn Greentree,” he said. “Once again, right over my bearing.”
“Who’s Zivilyn Greentree?” asked Coraltop.
The kender listened and nodded as the elf explained about the god of his family tree. “It can be a good thing to trust in your god,” Coraltop observed.
A breeze stirred the air. Ripples marked the slick water, and the sail puffed and fluttered, filling slightly.
“It’s a bit of north wind,” Kerrick noted, perplexed. “It ought to be coming from the south.”
“Should we try for the ocean again?” Coraltop said, sauntering to the mast, ready to pay out the line. “Like my Grandmother Annatree used to say, ‘If you’re going to ride a horse, you should already be sitting in the saddle when it starts to run.’ ”
Kerrick was torn. He had decided to head back for temporary shelter with Moreen and her people. This fresh wind was coming from the wrong direction. Should he head back or sail on? Curious, he glanced to the south. What he saw filled him with foreboding.
A wall of darkness loomed, blocking out the stars along the horizon, rising higher as it approached. The monstrous seething thing extended across the whole southern horizon. Now he understood the light breeze from the north. He had encountered the same phenomenon with a few other ocean storms. Before the weather struck, it moved through a swath of low pressure, actually sucking air, water, and boats toward the front.