Soldiers of Ice (14 page)

“That’s… quite a claim.” Martine picked her words carefully, trying not to let any sarcasm creep in, despite the arrogant egotism of the gnoll’s beliefs.

“It is right. Why else would the gods make the world?”

WordMaker proclaimed.

A series of shouts from outside interrupted any need to reply. Krote’s ears twitched as he stepped to the door flap and peered outside. The woman braced herself to spring at him while he was distracted, but before she could act, the shaman whipped out a knife. Involuntarily a savage growl welled up in his throat.

The chorus of barking yelps from outside intensified.

The dog-man suddenly whirled, pointed the knife in her direction, and barked, “Stay!” before disappearing through the door flap. It wasn’t the ranger but something outside that had triggered Krote’s reaction.

Martine sat dumbfounded for a moment, but only for a moment Scrambling to her feet, she hastily gathered whatever she could find that might be of use in her escape—furs, a pouch, a sharp stick, even a few trinkets from the walls. Wrapping them into a tight bundle, she paused at the lodge’s flap to listen before venturing outside.

Whatever was happening, it was important, judging by the noise. From the mingled chorus of barking shouts, Martine imagined the entire tribe had turned out. The words were unclear, but the excitement was obvious.

This is my chance, the Harper thought as she crouched Soldiers of Ice

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low by the entrance. With luck I can make it into the forest unnoticed.

Pulling back the door flap slightly, Martine was greeted with a view of an assembled throng, their backs facing her.

The massed gnolls, some robed, others bare-skinned in the cold, were gathered in the center of the clearing, their attention transfixed by something the Harper could not see.

The gathering piqued her curiosity, but not nearly as much as the chance of escape. Grabbing her bundle, she slipped through the opening and edged her way along the front of the lodge, moving quietly in hope of avoiding attention. Her breath steamed out in tense bursts, and each crunching footstep made her wince even though there was little chance of being heard over the racket made by the gnolls, which sounded like battle cries and war alarms. Had Vilheim returned with the gnomes? Or was it Jazrac? Martine paused, hope rising that someone might be coming to rescue her.

Even as she stood eagerly waiting, the fierce war cries of the gnolls gave way to howls of panic, and the tightly knit mass of bodies abruptly exploded as the gnolls turned and bolted, those at the back thrust aside by others from the front lines. Females scooped up their kits and ran for the shelter of the lodges. Latecomers scrambled for weapons stacked near the lodge doors. Through a brief gap in the crowd, Martine saw Elk-Slayer, muscular and nearly naked, berating his warriors to form a wavering arc of spears against whatever approached.

Then Martine saw the intruder and understood the

cause of the gnolls’ panic. It was her tormentor, the creature from the rift, icy bone-white, moving with clicking stiffness as it stalked into the center of the village. Its head snapped from side to side, its icicled brow hiding eyes that swept over the gnolls. The small, rasping mouth clicked together in threatening snaps, while its long arms swung to 106

The Harpers

and to, thin claws cutting gouges in the hard snow.

Seeing the fiend, Martine paled and promptly forgot about caution. Relying on the confusion the creature’s arrival was creating, she clutched her bundle tightly and sprinted from the shelter of the lodge into the gap that separated it from the gloom of the forest. A gnoll charged past, forcing the ranger to veer madly, but the creature seemed to pay her no mind.

I’ve made it! she started to think as the trees drew nearer.

The second she entertained the thought, the woman

knew it was precipitous. Before she had completed another two steps, a rough hand seized her. “Hah!” snarled a harsh voice as clawed fingers gouged into her tender shoulder.

Her arm jerked in a spasm of pain and her bundle spilled from her grasp. Kicking and struggling, she tried to break free from the gnoll, but his grip did not loosen. With a fierce twist, she was pulled about to face her captor.

“I thought you might try to escape,” Krote grunted as he held her fast, his amulets jingling as she squirmed about.

“Cyric take you!” Martine tried to kick him, a move the gnoll easily avoided.

“Varka, bring the human,” the shaman barked to a warrior hurrying by with sword and shield in hand. Varka, a short, mangy creature, grinned wolfishly, and with a sharp poke of his sword, urged Martine into obedience. Realizing her chance to escape was lost, she sullenly pretended surrender, all the while still hoping for a chance to break free once More.

“Female, what is that creature?” Krote rasped as they hurried to where Hakk’s warriors uneasily faced off against the intruder. So far, neither the gnolls nor the fiend had done More than glower at each other.

“I don’t know. It’s the same creature that captured me on the glacier.” Her near escape and failure had crumbled the Soldiers of Ice

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Harper’s resistance.

Krote started to say something else, but his words were silenced by a warm buzzing as the fiend spoke.

“Warm thingz,’ the newcomer droned slowly as it surveyed them all, talking as if they did not matter. “Many

warm thingz. Good. You will be my slavez. I am your master.”

To Martine’s ears, the claim would have been preposterous were it not for the monotonous confidence with which the creature spoke. It was not a thing of this world, and there was no sure way to say what it was capable of doing.

Beside her, Krote sucked in the cold air with a snarling hiss.

An eerie silence fell upon the tribe. Martine had expected outrage, or at least More of the wild tumult that had heralded the fiend’s arrival, but instead the gnolls seemed to go dumb. The warriors in the half-circle around the fiend wavered. Martine assumed it was cowardice until she realized they were waiting. The eyes of the warriors, indeed of all the crowd, turned to their chieftain, Hakk Elk-Slayer.

“What are you waiting for? Your tribe can kill it,” the Harper found herself urging the WordMaker. Though still a gnoll prisoner, she feared the fiend More.

“Quiet,” Krote whispered. ‘q’he creature challenges Elk-Slayer.

He must fight to remain chieftain.”

“What? Against that thing? What kind of a challenge is that?” Unable to contain her disbelief, Martine nodded toward the elemental.

“Quiet! It is the way things are done.”

It seemed to Martine that the fiend was as confused as she was by the sudden silence of the gnolls, for it swayed from side to side, glaring this way and that as it waited for an attack. The droning buzz of its voice went higher, perhaps in amusement, as it spoke again. “No fight? Good

slavez…”

I OH

The Harers

‘qhe Burnt Fur are not slaves,” Hakk finally roared out.

Even before the first faint echo rebounded from the dense woods, the chieftain sprang forward, using two hands to whirl a gnarled club over his head.

Crack! The resounding crash of wood striking bone

broke the spell over the crowd. The elemental reeled from the blow, pinkish-clear blood seeping from a crack in the smooth carapace of its leg. The tribe roared in approval of Hakk’s assault, and the chieftain launched another blow while the creature was still reeling. The gnoll ran straight at the fiend, his club pointed toward its skeletal chest like a battering ram driven against a city’s gate.

Just before the wooden club drove home, the fiend

twisted sideways and let the chieftain charge past. Long, iciclelike claws flashed, and suddenly the dirty white snow was splattered with red. Hakk wobbled and then dropped to his knees, his fingers clutching at his side in a futile attempt to stanch the flow of blood. The gnoll’s massive chest rose and fell in desperate pants. He dropped his club and doggedly lurched to his feet, sword in hand.

The fiend seemed to be in no hurry. Mockingly it

waggled its bloodstained claws, flicking little drops of blood over the onlookers. The gnolls shifted and wavered with uneasiness, but none made a move to intercede. Krote’s hand, firm on Martine’s shoulder, restrained her from fleeing.

“I’ll kill you,” Hakk croaked as he advanced, More cautiously now, having gained a new respect for his foe.

The naturally armored fiend responded with a trilling buzz that Martine imagined was laughter. It was a morbid and heartless humor that the fiend punctuated by clacking snaps of its gleaming jaw. “Come, then, and kill me,” it intoned.

Hakk was not to be goaded so easily, and the two circled round each other. The tribe formed a ring surrounding the Soldiers of !ce

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duelists, the warriors at the front with their spears and swords held in readiness. Krote pushed Martine, whom he still held firmly, into the forefront. There the shaman fingered his charms and amulets, his lips moving silently.

Martine wondered if it was a prayer and, if so, what the shaman was praying for.

All at once the fiend staggered as its wounded leg

wobbled beneath it. One clawed hand dropped to the snow as it recovered its balance, and in that brief instant, Hakk sprang forward with a wild, howling rush.

In a blur of movement, the fiend struck, and Marfine saw instantly that its apparent weakness had been a trap. As the chieftain’s golden-furred body lunged beneath the fiend’s intentionally clumsy sweep, Hakk overconfidenfiy left his side exposed. Even as Hakk’s sword flashed upward for the kill, the fiend’s head lashed downward, striking faster than Martine could imagine. Hakk’s strangled shriek mingled with a pulping crunch as the fiend’s razodike teeth clamped on the gnoll’s neck. Elk-Slayer’s thrust was never completed, with the nerves that linked thought to action severed.

The pair plunged to the ground, and the air filled with a buzzing roar as the fiend tore at the spasmodically flailing gnoll like a terrier with a rat. Blood splattered the snow.

The gnolls recoiled from the gruesome scene, widening the circle around the carnage.

The end came with painful slowness. Even though the jerking convulsions had long since stopped, the creature still huddled over the body, savagely gnawing at the gnoll’s neck. The tribe was held frozen in shocked surprise, the first yips of fear radiating from the edges of the throng.

Martine could only gaze helplessly in disbelief, suddenly terrified at how easy it would be to pick her out of the crowd. Warily she tried to edge backward, to put bodies between her and the fiend. The shaman noted her movement and seemed to nod conspiratorially. In any case,

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although he didn’t let her slip free, the gnoll pulled her back a step into the crowd.

As if on a signal, howls rose from the foremost gnolls.

The pain and fear behind their voices was unmistakable. At the dueling ground’s center, amid the crimson-soaked snow, the fiend rose to its full height. Red streaked the ivory armor of its body, and blood glistened from its quivering, sharp chin. One bonelike arm reached over its head, and clutched in those claws was the severed head of Hakk Elk-Slayer, his dead eyes seeming to gaze out upon his tribe.

“Warm thingz!” the creature shrilled to the stunned gnolls, whirling about to face them all. “I am your leader now. You are my slavez!”

The gnolls wavered, caught between fear and their own traditions. Those closest to the shaman looked to him for guidance, but the WordMaker had no answer.

As they hesitated, the fiend hurled the still-warm head at the assembled warriors and sprang in a bounding hop upon the nearest gnoll. Seizing the terrified tribesman in its long claws, the fiend shrilled, “I am your master! Vreesar is your master!” Each claim was punctuated by a brutal shake.

“Y-Y-You… are.., chieftain,” the gnoll stammered.

Gradually the chant was taken up by those nearby until it grew into a fear-stricken chorus of confirmation.

Vreesar flung the quivering guoll aside with an easy toss and triumphantly turned to survey its new subjects. All at once it stopped and pushed its way through the rapidly parting sea of gnolls.

Martine suddenly felt the burning gaze of the fiend’s eyes. Its foul voiced buzzed in her ears.

“Human, you are here! You must come to my new

throne!”

Seven

A biting wind deadened Martine’s

limbs as she stood before the dais of the

great Vreesar, new chieftain of the Burnt

Fur. With its conquest, the fiend had

taken possession of Elk-Slayer’s lodge

and quickly found the accomodations

not to its liking. Heaping a miscellany of

wood and baskets at the entrance, Vreesar sat poised on a throne made from a cradleboard laid between two stools.

This crude dais was much More to the fiend’s liking, since it was safely away from the scorching fire pit at the far end of the lodge. Elk-Slayer’s furs and robes were banished, eagerly snapped up by the tribe members determined to gain something from the chaos. Instead of rich bearskins, the platform was coated with a heap of caked, dirty snow dug from the clearing. The door flap, formerly sealed with care against the hostile outdoors, was now pulled wide open to let the bitter breeze blow through.

No gnolls lounged half-naked in the steaming heat, as they had the night before. Those tribe members in the 112

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lodge huddled tightly together as far back from the entrance as they could, trying to capture the precious warmth of the smoldering fire pit-It

was a warmth the ranger did not feel from where she stood in the bare earth between Vreesar’s throne and the clustered gnolls. Since the occupation of the lodge, Vreesar had kept her near its crude throne. No More than three paces behind her, Krote squatted, waiting for the new chief-rain’s words.