Even at their breakneck pace through the starlit night, Martine tried to note their passage. It was an attention to detail born of habit. The curl of a drift, the switchbacks of their trail, even the grating shifts of crumbling snow beneath her feet were like islands of reality in a nightmarish sea of ice. The slide they were on was not fresh. She could tell by the way the wind had sculpted the snowy blocks and by the stiff-crusted drifts that nestled in the hollows. Near the base, where the slope tapered off, the path crossed a ribbon of ice that left the ranger confused. Even in the starlight, it glinted with clear purity, reflecting the night back in the smooth ripples of its surface. It should have been jagged and cracked, the way ice gets when it warms and freezes, but she could only imagine it as a flowing river.
She noticed, too, that there was something about the ice that spooked the gnolls. Their rapid pace broke as they neared its edge, and they crossed almost gingerly. The eyes of those closest to her were filled with fear, constantly straying to one another as if waiting for some hidden peril. Once they were off the ice, the tension faded as quickly as it had risen.
At the leader's barked call, the pack plunged across the snowy moraine at the glacier's base. They followed the winding moraine straight into the woods, moving along a well-packed track that cut through the waist-deep snow.
In the darkness of the screening branches, Martine had no opportunity to take sightings and therefore had no clear idea where they were when the pack finally rounded a dense thicket and broke into a shimmering clearing. Five dark arches of primitive longhouses were nestled at the forest's edge. The tang of pine smoke and burnt meat filled the air.
"Harrrooo!" the pack's leader howled before stepping
into the clearing. A deep-throated howl blended with the echo. Satisfied, the pack hurried across the trampled snow, past cold fire pits and snow-buried mounds of wood to the largest of the longhouses, an arch of bent wood clad in birch and leather that flapped in the breeze, as if welcoming the hunters with ghostly applause.
The leader threw open the thick hide doorway and barked at Martine to go inside. She stumbled at the sill, and a gnoll shoved her through, mistaking the near fall for hesitation. The inner curtain was pulled aside, unleashing a thick rush of humid odors, a mixture of leather, blood, smoke, flesh, birch, and sweat. A mumbled snarl rising from a horde of throats greeted her entrance.
The lodge was filled with warm yellow flickers of fire that made Martine blink. The long hall was draped with furs and hides. The work was sloppily done. The coverings didn't always match up, leaving the frame of woven saplings that formed the longhouse's arch exposed. Elk skulls and antlers hung from the arch as macabre decorations, alongside soot black strips of jerky. The general impression was that of a moldering cellar. The ranger could guess the rest of the lodge's construction a layer of pine boughs for insulation, capped by the outside shell she'd already seen.
This place is a tinderbox waiting for a spark. The thought came nervously to the Harper's tired mind. Perhaps it was prompted by the source of the glow, a long fire trench dug at the far end of the hut, filled to the edges and beyond with glowing coals.
The fire illuminated a tangle of furry bodies that covered the floor, a carpet that drew back before the blast of winter air that accompanied her entrance. Tawny, spotted arms stretched curiously while muzzles raised to sniff the new scent that had suddenly intruded upon them. Ears twitched; fleshy lips curled back from needle-sharp fangs.
Just beyond the sprawled mass, at the far end of the lodge, stood a high bench, the only recognizable piece of furniture in the place. The wooden benchtop was heaped with elk robes and mantles stitched together from the pelts of innumerable sables. Planted deep in its center was a burly gnoll. He dozed upright, robes pulled around him till they fell away from his shoulders like the talus slope of a mountain. Even asleep, his immense size and his passive dominance over the rest of the pack left no doubt that he was the chieftain.
"Forward," grunted her guard. The command prompted another of her guards to step forward and force a path through the pack, which reminded Martine of dogs or wolves sleeping in huddled mounds to generate warmth as she gingerly stepped through the narrow passage.
Unlike the party that had found her, most of the gnolls in the hall were nearly naked, their winter gear hung from the arches near the entrance. Propriety was served only by simple loincloths and ornaments of bone, wood, and feathers. Each was covered with tarnished white fur, dappled with spots that ranged from red to black.
"What is it?" The chorus of whispered voices slithered through the cramped lodge.
"Human."
"Trouble."
"We kill it?"
"And eat it"
'Too stringy."
"What is this you bring me?" rose one voice above all the others, speaking with presumptive authority. The whispers stilled only slightly.
"Tonight we found new game, Hakk," the old gnoll boasted, shoving Martine forward roughly. Pain shot through the Harper's wounded shoulder, penetrating through her freezing numbness. With a strangled moan, the woman lost balance and sprawled onto the dirt floor just
before the fire pit The landing caused another searing stab of pain, which left her sweating, almost writhing before the coals.
"We trapped it on the tall ice, Hakk," the old one continued. "It was doing terrible magic, but me and my pack mates caught it." He proceeded to tell a tale of their great victory, more fanciful than real. In it, Martine became a powerful fiend, able to make the whole glacier tremble. The gnoll's lies were palpably obvious as it strutted about, miming out the tale. Martine was astonished to note the rapt acceptance of the huddled pack. Martine was in no position or condition to object. As the pain finally eased, she struggled to a kneeling position, no small accomplishment with her hands still bound.
Just as the mighty sorceress of the tale was about to fall for the final time in the leader's spirited retelling, the one called Hakk cut in. "Enough! You are a brave pack leader, Brokka. You will have the choice meat." With a thicknecked shrug, Hakk stood, letting the robes fall to the floor. Golden fur with fat rubbed into it was plastered smooth against the gnoll's hard muscles. With a casual move, the chieftain sprang across the fire pit, landing in a squat just before the Harper.
Hakk is not without his share of vanity, Martine noted. That might be useful.
"It might need fattening up." The chieftain prodded at Martine, reigniting the shuddering pain in her shoulder. Instinctively she reeled back, only to be shoved forward again by strong hands behind her.
"Kill me and you won't know the danger of the tall ice," Martine sputtered out in a mixture of gnoll and trade common.
The chieftain's eyes flared, and a deep snarl forewarned her of the savage backhand that followed. Martine barely had time to pull back and roll with the blow, but the gnoll's
fist still glanced viciously off her temple. Her vision blurred in one eye, and it took more willpower than she thought she possessed to face the chieftain once more. She dare not show weakness now. She had to play it out all the way.
"There is someone else on the ice." The words came hard as she blinked, half-blind and shivering.
"You speak only when I say!" the chief raged, but his face gave away his curiosity.
The Harper took a deep breath and then daubed with her bound hands at a trickle of blood seeping into the corner of her eye.