This was a storm like none he had ever experienced before.
“That looks kind of interesting,” the kender allowed, noticing the wall of Sturmfrost as it churned closer. “How far away is it?”
“Too close!” Ten miles or twenty, and the gap would certainly narrow in the next few minutes. “Raise the topsail!” he shouted.
He took the tiller and turned toward the faint firelight and the little cove, catching the gathering wind to push them along. Whether he sensed the urgency or was just glad to have something to do, Coraltop efficiently deployed the topsail and jib, and the sailboat began to cut through the fast rippling water with surprising speed.
When Kerrick next looked to the south, it seemed as though the dark wall had grown to block the sky. Tendrils of cloud reached from the mass, stretching, grasping, embracing, snuffing out all starlight. Now he heard it: more like a battle than a storm. The keening of wind was a supernatural noise, a constant violent wail mingled with a cacophony of crashing and banging.
The pillar and the cliff bracketing the entrance to the cove materialized before them. The temperature was dropping rapidly. Already the dampness on the deck had frozen into slick ice, and each breath they took solidified into droplets.
“There-that’s the signpost rock!” the kender shouted excitedly.
The wind whirled chaotically. Kerrick fiercely maneuvered the boom and the tiller as the sails alternately puffed and sagged. He tried to head toward shore, toward the remembered patch of warm water. “Bring in the sails!” he cried, and the kender leaped to obey.
Something heavy fell into the sea, raising a wave that sent the boat careening wildly. Kerrick saw a great slab of ice, shining slickly, and was stunned to realize that it had dropped right out of the sky.
The wind struck like a hammer. Coraltop had barely stored the jib and topsail when the main sheet ripped away and swirled into the darkness. The ocean heaved, and a wave hoisted Cutter and held her, poised in the air, seemingly for minutes, as if ready to hurl its brittle hull against the unforgiving rock.
Garta’s hand had been chopped off by a thanoi battle axe, and Moreen was certain the woman would bleed to death before they could reach the foot of the mountain. Despite the fact that she feared tusker pursuit, the chiefwoman stopped to rig a tourniquet.
“The rest of you-keep going!” she insisted. “I’ll bring Garta down.”
“Not by yourself, you won’t,” Bruni said. The big woman’s deerskin dress was soaked with blood, her long hair was tangled across her shoulders and down her back. With her face locked into a frown and the big hammer resting easily in her hands, she planted her feet and looked up the path toward Brackenrock.
“Well, we’re not leaving the two of you here alone,” Tildey said. “I still have a few arrows left. I’d like to see one of those tuskers come into range.”
Moreen sighed. In the dark night the walrus-men would be right on top of them before the archer could launch any arrow. Still, she was warmed by the loyalty of her companions and griefstricken over the brave Arktos they had left behind.
“Dinekki will be able to patch this up for you when we get back,” she said with forced confidence, not even sure Garta could hear her. The matron was white-faced, shivering. Her lips were pale, and her eyes, although they were open, did not focus. The chiefwoman lashed a strip of leather around the stump of the wounded woman’s wrist, and when she cinched it tight miraculously the wound stopped bleeding.
“Can you stand up?” Moreen asked. “We’ll help you.”
Garta lay on the rocky ground, her breath coming in short gasps. She made no sign that she understood or even heard the question.
“I’ll carry her,” Bruni said. She handed the heavy hammer to Moreen and lifted up the injured woman as though she was a babe. “Let’s get down to the cave, now.”
Moreen and Tildey brought up the rear, imagining thanoi lurking in every shadow, behind every boulder on the mountainside.
“How many did we lose?” the archer asked, too softly for her voice to reach the others.
“I saw Nangrid fall, and Marin … and Carann and Anka were surrounded on the stairs. I don’t think they got out.” Moreen tried to speak dispassionately, but each name caught in her throat and tears burned her eyes. “I don’t know how many more!”
“Maybe some escaped,” Tildey said. “You kept us together and led us to the gate. Otherwise we never would have made it.”
“Why did I lead us in there with no idea what we were going up against? Dinekki’s spell-she saw the place and said there were no dragons there! But she never said … I never asked … about tuskers! Why?” Sobs choked her words. She couldn’t blame the shaman, couldn’t blame anyone but herself. She made the decision, and at least four brave and good tribemates had paid for her mistake with their lives.
So immersed was she in self-pity that she almost bumped into Bruni who, still cradling the semiconscious Garta, had halted in the midst of the steep trail.
“Listen,” asked the big woman. “Do you hear that?”
The moaning sound reached them first on a primal level, as something they felt in their bellies, through the soles of their feet. The rumbling permeated the air, the ground, the whole world. The import of what they heard was clear to Moreen, to all the Arktos, in a flash.
“The Sturmfrost!”
“Yes … it has been unleashed.”
“Go! All of you, hurry!” cried the chiefwoman, as the ragged file of weary Arktos hurried as much as they could in the darkness, on the steep and rocky pathway.
How much farther to the bottom of the mountain, to the cave where the rest of the tribe was waiting? Moreen didn’t know. They were lost in darkness on the trail. Tildey tripped over a rock, cursing as she went down in a tangle, then bounced right back to her feet and jogging along. The wailing of the storm grew louder, a roar that shook the air and sent tremors rippling through the ground. A glance to the south showed that the sky was blacked out and the storm was surging hungrily north toward them.
“There’s the fire!” someone cried, and Moreen saw flames at the base of the cliff, the dark outline of the cave mouth just beyond. Now the noise of the wind had risen to a pitch, and they felt it swirl around them, blasting their exposed skin with needles of ice and snow. The signal fire vanished, swallowed up by the storm. Chunks of ice flew, splintering rocks free from the mountainside, bruisingly bouncing off flesh.
Moreen heard a loud smash and a scream. Stumbling blindly forward she tripped over a body, bent down to see Banrik, a young woman of seventeen years. The back of her skull, where a boulder-sized piece of ice had slammed her, was a crushed, gory mass. Her eyes were open but she was mercifully dead.
With a desperate shout, Moreen pushed ahead toward the remembered shelter. She was vaguely aware of Tildey and Bruni close to her, other women too moving through the chaos of the Sturmfrost. Her skin seemed frozen, and she was surrounded by deafening noise. She followed the downhill slope, felt the level ground at the bottom of the cliff. Finally, the cave walls were around them, and they could find refuge from the wind, slipping inside to stand near a raging fire that Dinekki and the others were tending, several bends past the cave mouth. The storm roared and wailed as they escaped it but the wind couldn’t reach them here.
Moreen slumped defeatedly against the wall, sinking down to sit on the floor.
“Where’s Little Mouse?” asked Garta, suddenly opening her eyes and sitting up. They looked around in panic until the youth, his cheeks pale and his hair caked with frost, stumbled in from the cave mouth. He was shouting and gesturing.
“No, stay here!” cried the chiefwoman, too exhausted and discouraged to care what he said. The lad shook his head, as if he hadn’t heard.