The lad looked up, ‘Yes?’
‘The Losts. Stalker and Badlands. They may still be alive. It’s just that … they’re lost again.’
Orman ruefully shook his head. ‘I see. Thank you,’ and he waved a farewell.
They returned to tramping through the snow. ‘Let us collect our scattered people,’ K’azz said as they pushed onward through the drifts. He offered Blues a joking smile. ‘Shall we split up to do so?’
Blues waved his arms in alarm. ‘Gods no! No more goddamned splitting up!’
Shimmer’s quiet smile was so fierce it almost hurt her lips. It was good to have K’azz back with them.
*
Orman watched the mercenaries, the Crimson Guard, wading their way through the snow down the ice-field. Beyond them, far down the serpentine slope, the Imass, the Army of Dust and Bone, had already disappeared. How odd it seemed to him now that he should pity them, his former enemy, labouring as they did beneath an endless curse. Yet endless no longer. Their Summoner had come. Perhaps, then, they would find deliverance.
They might no longer be enemies — at least for the time being — but he hoped never to see them again.
He turned back to his people. What he now saw as his extended family. Keth and Kasson followed, walking just behind at each shoulder. He planted Svalthbrul and examined these three: all survivors like himself. All knowing the true perils and secrets of these heights.
He nodded to them. ‘It seems these upper slopes are ours once more. I doubt we shall ever see the Army of Dust and Bone again. If their queen has her way they shall remain of the dust and the earth. So, my offer stands. Shall we rebuild a Greathall and hold it together?’ He looked to Baran and Erta of the Heels.
The brother and sister exchanged bruised and exhausted glances. Baran pulled on his tangled beard. ‘The question is where? These valleys are all scraped clean of trees and soil.’
‘If I may,’ the Myrni girl, Siguna, began timidly, ‘there are woods on the slopes farther to the west.’
‘What of the heights?’ Baran asked.
‘We must guard them still,’ Orman answered. He understood now what Jaochim and all the other elders had been doing all this time. Guarding the Holdings, yes, but more important barring the way to these heights and the secrets they contained. The hidden places that mustn’t be opened. He would honour that heavy purpose and guard these secrets. Perhaps, in time, he would come to be feared or cursed by the lowland newcomers as a hoarder of mysteries. But better that than the end of the world come again — perhaps in truth.
‘And the Matriarch?’ Erta asked.
‘She will remain. She will call us if she needs us.’ He studied the Myrni girl, turning his head slightly to see her better. ‘You will guide us west, then, Siguna?’
She bowed. ‘Yes, Orman.’
One last thought struck him and he turned to Baran. ‘Oh — I have heard that the Losts were last seen alive to the east. Will you hunt them out?’
Baran bowed also, smiling behind his beard. ‘With pleasure.’
Orman leaned more of his weight upon the thick haft of Svalthbrul. He nodded to Siguna. ‘Find us a favourable high vale that we may call our home.’
*
Jute haunted the cliff tops of Mantle Keep. They overlooked the one narrow clear channel that allowed access to the Sea of Gold through the ice cliffs. Great chunks of cerulean ice floated there, bumping and clashing on their way out to wander the sea. More fell daily, calving in massive eruptions of splitting ice.
Sometimes the Jaghut sorceress joined him to exercise her leg. Yet her gaze was drawn not out to sea, but to the north, and he knew she was considering leaving soon to make the journey up the great serpentine ice-floe where she claimed her mother abided.
Sometimes Cartheron walked with him, though any extended period of exertion tired the old campaigner and he would sit instead, grumbling about the food, the cold chambers, or the lack of circulation in his feet.
Other times the former lieutenant Giana Jalaz joined him. She, too, was quite eager for word from the outside world. King Voti of Mantle, it turned out, had been generous in rewarding the defence of his keep. His people had been residing here for a very long time on the shores of the Sea of Gold and had had ample opportunity to amass a considerable hoard of its namesake. All hidden below in chambers carved from the rock — all of which could have been swept away by the ice-serpent had not Cartheron intervened.
In any case, Giana was eager to transport her newfound riches home, where a certain plot of land awaited repurchase from the rapacious moneylenders of Mott. Jute knew also that a rather large chest sat in Malle’s chambers with his name upon it. None of that interested him, however, more than the sight of a certain vessel returning from its southern journey.
This day Cartheron sat in the sun while Jute paced back and forth, casting the occasional glance to the channel. Nearby, carpenters hammered and sawed a new stairway from the surplus of fallen logs surrounding them.
‘She made it, I’m certain,’ Cartheron assured him for the hundredth time as his pacing brought him past. ‘Question is, how far south did she go? Did she drop them off on the Bone Peninsula? Plenty of towns and cities down there, I understand.’
Jute nodded. Yes, he’d been through all that countless times in his mind. Always, he asked himself, what would I have done? How far would I have taken them? All the way to Genabackis? Gods, please, no!
He kneaded the still raw slash across his arm, shuddered in the chill air wafting off the ice. ‘We could build a new vessel before she returned,’ he complained.
Cartheron laughed. ‘Usually it’s the womenfolk home fretting for years — how does it feel to be on the other end?’
‘Ieleen and I always travelled together.’
The ex-High Fist straightened in his chair. ‘Ho? What’s this?’
Jute squinted out to the very mouth of the channel. Something dark was moving there amid the drifting chunks of frosty-blue ice.
‘Looks like a visitor,’ Cartheron observed.
It was still too far away for Jute to identify, but its general size and cut appeared encouraging.
‘Looks three-masted,’ Cartheron affirmed.
Crew were poling aside the ice as the vessel came on. Recognition came to Jute as the lines of its hull and the arrangement of its sails resolved into familiar lines. It was the Silver Dawn.
He waved frantically from the cliff’s edge. They drew nearer; sails were reefed and sweeps emerged. The Dawn advanced warily up the centre of the channel. It neared the wreckage of the docks and fallen lumber of the stairway in the waters at the base of the cliff.
Jute continued waving, one-handed, as his off-arm was still too stiff to raise.
And from the stern, next to the long tiller arm, though he knew she did not possess normal vision to see him as others did, a figure there returned his wave. His beloved Falaran sea-witch.
*
In the end, the ferocious relentless wind drove them to seek shelter at the Jaghut matriarch’s dwelling amid the bare rock of the peaks. It was no more than a heap of stones, a tomb rather than a home. He and Fisher took turns fetching wood for the meagre fire they kept.
Of the Matriarch they saw little; she invited them in yet quit the dwelling herself. Kyle felt uncomfortable for having driven her from her own home, yet he was also thankful for her absence, as the slim cave was hardly large enough for him and Fisher.
The bard passed the time composing on the kantele. Kyle listened with one ear while he scanned the lifeless windswept rocky slopes, his legs out, half asleep. One morning he overheard the bard singing faintly to himself as he strummed.