“Filthy squab!” Kelemvor called, touching his fingers to the cuts in his forehead.
The crow circled several times, then flew away toward the west. With some alarm, the warrior noted that the sun was sinking and there were only about two hours of daylight remaining.
He began to feel lonely and frightened, and wished he had not chased the bird away. Though it had been waiting to pick his bones, at least the crow had been company.
Kelemvor noted that his legs had gone numb from the thighs down, and that his hands had taken on a blue tint. He was in danger of becoming a lump of ice. The fighter began waving his hands and trying to kick his feet, hoping to get the blood circulating and warm them.
This was only a temporary solution. If he was going to survive, he needed to warm himself. Fortunately, it looked as though the tools to do that were within arm’s reach.
Hoping that this was not another confused idea brought about by the cold, Kelemvor started gathering materials to start a fire. Stretching as far as he could, the fighter swept the snow off tufts of beach grass and pulled them out by their roots. He stored the grass inside his shirt, and did not stop gathering it until his shirt was bulging. The warrior was working more by instinct than by thought, for he had started a thousand fires and trusted his intuition more than his muddled intelligence.
Next, he gathered all the driftwood within reach, separating the smaller pieces from the larger. Within minutes, he had three small piles of wood. Finally, he selected his six largest sticks and laid them to his left, side by side so they made a small platform. From experience, he knew that once the fire was burning well, the flames would convert the ice directly to steam. But in the initial stages, the fire had to be kept off the ice.
Kelemvor removed a handful of grass and rubbed it vigorously between his hands to dry it. He laid it atop the platform of sticks and repeated the process until he had a small pile of fairly dry tinder. Then he took the flint and steel from his purse and started striking them together. Five anxious and painful minutes later, a spark caught. One blade of grass began to burn, then two, then several. The fighter put on more grass and, after it started burning, held several twigs over the fire to dry.
Thirty seconds later, Kelemvor began to shiver and could no longer hold the twigs. He laid them on the fire. The wood began to smoke, then one caught. The fighter blew gently on the flame. The other two twigs began to burn.
Kelemvor put his flint and steel away. Minutes later, a small circle of orange flames danced in front of him. The breeze eddied around his body, blowing ash and smoke into his face. His eyes teared and he coughed, but the warrior didn’t care. To him, the smoke was perfume and the coughing a small price to pay for heat. Soon, he stopped shivering and his whole torso was warm.
Ten minutes later, Kelemvor no longer felt confused. He was fatigued and numb below the waist, but he was no longer drowsy. His motor coordination had returned to normal. The fire had made a small bowl in the black ice, and the fighter took comfort in seeing that it melted like normal ice. Now, all he had to do was find a way to break it.
Kelemvor considered starting a fire where his hips disappeared into the frozen lake, but rejected the idea. He could not reach enough driftwood to melt away that much ice. What he needed was a way to chip the ice, and that meant he needed something hard.
The lake was surrounded by all sorts of cliffs, boulders, and rocks, but there wasn’t even a pebble within reach. They were all buried beneath the sandy beach.
Had Kelemvor still been half-frozen and muddled, he would have missed the significance of his last thought. However, now that he was warm, his thoughts were focused and he was mentally alert. With renewed determination, he grabbed the strongest piece of driftwood within reach and began digging in the sand in front of him.
Not six inches below the surface, he found the first rock. It was a round, hand-sized stone useful for throwing, but not for smashing through ice. He kept digging.
The second stone was a little better, being about the same size, but with jagged features more suited to chipping. He set aside this rock, too, and kept digging.
A foot beneath the surface, Kelemvor found the ideal stone. It was a dark gray thing, featureless and drab. But to the fighter, the stone was more beautiful than any diamond. It was as large as he could handle with a single hand. On one end it had a small, sharp point, and the other end was large and ideal for gripping.
Kelemvor took the stone, then smashed it into the ice near his hip. A small spray of black chips shot up. He brought the rock down a dozen more times, trying to create a crack in the ice. The result was simply a dozen more small chips.
At the top of the slope, wings fluttered. The crow settled beneath its tree, holding its left claw off the ground.
Looking at the injured leg, Kelemvor said, “I’m sorry about the foot.”
The crow tilted its head and, unable to stand for long on one foot, settled on the ground as though sitting in a nest.
The fighter smiled and held up the rock. “It looks like dinner will be late,” Kelemvor added.
The crow’s head bobbed twice. Had Kelemvor’s mind been more addled, he might have interpreted the awkward gesture for agreement, as if the crow were saying, “Delayed, but not cancelled.”
The fighter decided to ignore the crow and began chipping beneath his chest, where the ice was thinner. To his delight, a large, jagged section broke away. Working toward his waist from this break, Kelemvor managed to start a crack that pointed more or less toward his right hip.
He worked for twenty minutes, pausing every now and then to throw some more driftwood on the fire. In that time, he managed to extend the crack clear to the middle of his hip. Then, as the sun sank toward the moor hills and the sky turned pink, his fire melted through the ice. It dropped into the water, leaving a sizzling and smoking hole two feet to his left.
“No!” Kelemvor screamed.
His only answer was the chill moan of the wind.
The fighter began to grow cold immediately. He tried to pull out of the ice, hoping the crack he had opened was enough to free him. His hips did not budge.
Kelemvor reached for more grass to start another fire, then found he had already used most of it. Worse, only a few sticks of driftwood remained within reach. Even if he did start a second fire, it would never last through the night.
He beat his forehead against the ice and cursed. Already, numbness was creeping back into his hands and fingers, and he knew that there was not much warmth left in his body. At last, Kelemvor allowed himself to think the unthinkable: he had been wrong to insist upon rescuing the caravan. His stubbornness had gotten Adon, and probably Midnight, killed.
“Friends!” he screamed. “Forgive me! Please, Midnight! Oh, Midnight!” He screamed her name again and again and again, until he could no longer bear hearing the hills throw the name back at him.
When he stopped yelling, the crow flapped down to the shore, taking care to land out of arm’s reach. It squawked three times, as if suggesting Kelemvor give up and die.
The bird’s eagerness enraged the fighter. “Not yet, squab!” he snarled. He grabbed the first stone he had uncovered, the small round one, and flung it at the crow. Though his aim was wide, the crow took the hint and flapped away into twilight. After the bird had gone, Kelemvor picked up his large stone and angrily pounded at the ice on his left. If he was going to die, he was determined to fight until the end.
Kelemvor was so angry that he did not notice the tiny fractures his blows were causing. Five minutes later, a long crack opened in the black ice from his shoulders to the hole the fire had caused. It took only ten minutes more to open a seam all the way to his left hip.