“Spring will come early this year-soon, before you are prepared for its challenges,” Stariz said, studying the knucklebones she had tossed in a large golden bowl.
“Pah! Spring comes, and the snow melts. Same thing every year. How is one prepared or not?” Grimwar retorted skeptically.
Stariz glared at him with an expression that insinuated he was rather a slow-witted child and she was working very hard to pass on her wisdom.
“Perhaps … perhaps our god means to tell you-” Strariz spoke painfully slow-“that when the spring comes, you should be prepared to act.”
“To do what?” demanded the king impatiently.
The queen set her jaw in a tusk-baring scowl. “Well, that would be up to you, presumably, but we must keep our eyes open, our minds ready for signs of the god’s will. Just last night I had a new dream-”
A knock interrupted the scrying session, and Grimwar raised his head, relieved.
“What is it?” he demanded, in a tone perhaps gruff enough that his joy at being interrupted would not be noted by Stariz.
“Sire, my deepest apologies for the interruption.” It was Lord Hakkan, pushing the door open slightly but not stepping into the room.
The king waved away the apology. “What is it?”
“There is a messenger come to Winterheim. He wishes to speak with you.”
“A messenger? Here? He has journeyed through the Sturmfrost?” Grimwar Bane asked in amazement, even as he welcomed the diversion. Stariz had been about to begin what would surely be a painstakingly detailed interpretation of one of her dreams, and that was reason enough for him to see the visitor.
“Who is it?” the king asked.
“It is … well, it is a thanoi, Sire,” Hakkan said with obvious distaste. “He is waiting in the harbor well.”
“The harbor will be fine,” Grimwar said. He could just imagine how the ice cart, not to mention the air in the royal apartments, would smell if the fish-eating visitor was brought into the upper reaches.
“I’m coming with you!” declared Stariz, immediately rising and hurrying after him.
“This is a king’s matter,” Grimwar protested, as Hakkan tactfully withdrew, closing the door behind him.
“No!” Stariz said heatedly. “Don’t you see-this is the sign from Gonnas. The thanoi has come to show you the will of the god!”
Urgas Thanoi was as wrinkled and fishy smelling as Grimwar Bane remembered. Yet the king tried to overlook those unpleasant features, for in this crude and tusked brute, he had an ally.
“The Arktos survivors have come to your citadel?” Grimwar asked in disbelief.
“Yes, a small tribe of women. They attacked my fortress, and we defeated them, drove them away with much killing.”
“Of course.” Grimwar wondered how “much killing” the walrus-men had accomplished. After all, their chief had come here, plodding a hundred miles through deep snows, to seek the aid of the ogres in dealing with the hated humans.
Grimwar was not displeased. Indeed, the tusker’s news might provide the key to his wife’s nagging and prophecies.
“Human women, do you hear that?” he asked Stariz, baring his tusks in a grin of pleasure.
“An elf-did they have an elf with them?” she asked anxiously, speaking bluntly and directly to Urgas.
“No, my Lady Queen. None was present in the group that attacked my castle.”
“He must be there. He is there!” insisted the ogress.
“It is indeed possible.” Urgas was hasty to agree. His piggish eyes tightened as he appeared to concentrate his thoughts. “My spies reported to me the presence of a strange watercraft, unlike either the kayaks of the Arktos or the great galley of Your Most Noble Highness. This boat arrived after the battle. It may be that the elf was borne in that.”
“Yes. Most certainly, that is the elf’s boat,” the queen said, leaning back and glaring triumphantly at Grimwar Bane.
“Well, of course!” snapped the ogre monarch. “I never disputed your auguries! The boat makes sense. After all, elves cannot fly!”
“What are you going to do? Remember the augury-spring will come early! You must be prepared to act!”
Grimwar snorted. “Of course I will act, when it’s possible to do something! We can march to the citadel. I can take my whole army there, over land, down the Fenriz Glacier! And I will do so. We will enslave the humans, and exterminate this rumored elf. But ogres are not thanoi-we cannot march through snow for a week, and expect to reach the end of the journey with any hope of fighting a decent battle. So I will indeed act in spring! The snowmelt is months away!”
“When the Willful One demands action, he who would honor his god must act!”
“How?” demanded the king hotly. “By taking a thousand ogre warriors out where they will freeze to death?”
“Faith,” Stariz said, her voice softening ominously, “sometimes require that we take chances.”
“You have very fine weapons,” Moreen told Kerrick, examining the keen metal sword he had brought from Cutter. Now that the winds had died down Kerrick was spending more time outside the cave, and, by agilely maneuvering himself from snowbank to rocks, he was able to get out to his boat, climb aboard, inspect it, and bring some of its contents to shore.
Moreen had accompanied him on his most recent trip out to Cutter, and he had enjoyed her company. Together they had looked at the sky, pointing out the stars of their respective gods, the emerald speck of Ziviliyn Greentree close beside bright Chislev Wilder, both stars in the zenith overhead.
“It occurs to me that, perhaps, you could teach my tribeswomen something about fighting,” Moreen suggested.
She never ceased her planning or working, it seemed. Ruefully Kerrick stretched his sore muscles, reflecting on how she had recruited him on so many of her goals. Just yesterday a group of them had finished their biggest project yet, a diversion of the warm stream that had run through the main cavern. Now they had a series of small pools for soaking and bathing, all of which were maintained at a comfortably hot temperature. The main stream, colder most of the time, vanished down a waterfall that still plunged through the hole in the center of the cave, but they had built a low wall around it to keep the children safe.
Those were nice benefits, the elf admitted. He considered the wall of ice they had built across the mouth of the cave. Certainly, if the tuskers were to attack, that would be an invaluable safeguard. What was the matter, though, once in awhile, with just resting and daydreaming?
He agreed that the Arktos women could use some training in combat and agreed to help. They tromped back through the snow, along a path now becoming a permanently worn groove. Back in the cave they gathered nearly thirty of the tribeswomen, as well as the enthusiastic Little Mouse, and filed through the darkness to a large, dry chamber lit by numerous oil lamps. A large, flat floor in the center of the room made the place ideal for training.
Kerrick set to drilling the Arktos with spears, the first type of weapon he had learned to use in his studies under his weapons master. Within three hours he had them thrusting, parrying, and blocking in relatively orderly sequence.
“If you can stay together when facing a number of opponents, they won’t be able to get between you. Each of you only has to worry about your front. That’s the way to prevail, even when you’re outnumbered.”
For another two hours they worked on hurling, using wooden shafts as spears, and charcoaled outlines on the cave wall as targets. Kerrick also let Moreen practice with his sword, showing her some basic maneuvers for attack and defense, pleased that she showed real aptitude with the weapon. In a short time she was carving big splinters out of the pine trunk he was using as a mock target. All of the women were breathing hard, faces glistening with sweat. Little Mouse alone still sprinted after his hurled “spear,” racing back to cast his shafts, one after the other, right into the target.