Late Winter, 5E988
[The, Present]
It was yet dark when Riatha and Aravan awakened the others. But dawn came late to Mithgar in these northern climes at this time of year. Even so, Faeril felt as if she had not gotten enough sleep. Gwylly, too, seemed sluggish, groaning awake in the frigid night.
When they stepped outside to relieve themselves, both Warrows noted that low in the west the Eye of the Hunter yet rode the sky.
“Adon!” exclaimed the buccan, “makes shivers run up and down, eh?”
Faeril did not reply, her grim silence speaking volumes as she trudged through the starlit snow, her boots scrutching in the frigid white.
When the Warrows returned, the odor of freshly brewed tea was redolent on the air, mingled with the pungent smoke of burning ren droppings. They hurriedly ate a cold breakfast of jerky and crue, warmed by hot tea. And during the meal Riatha paced back and forth, anxious to be gone. Now and again she stepped from the ruins and peered southward through the fading starlight, toward the dark bulk of the distant Grimwall Mountains.
As they had done the previous night, the sledmasters melted snow for water for the dogs; they used copper pans and poured the melt into the many waterskins each team carried. As B’arr had explained, “Dog no drink enough Sledmaster make dog drink. Then have enough makt, enough strength and lasting, to go long. Eat snow, bad. Eat snow, steal makt. Eat snow, dog get cold inside. Dog need more food get warm again. More food get makt back. But food sometime…sometime little, sometime not much when hunting poor, when fishing poor, or when go long way but not carry many food. We give water. Drink water, good. Dog stay warm inside when drink water, not get cold from eating snow, not waste food to get back makt.”
Even as snow was being melted, the sledmasters made several trips to the dogs, forcing them to drink, returning to fill more waterskins with fresh liquid, aided in this task by the Warrows.
Meanwhile, Aravan and Riatha busied themselves breaking camp, rolling up tightly the down-filled sleeping bags, packing away the supplies and utensils, bundling all.
With the dogs watered, the Mygga and Fé laded the sleds, while B’arr and Tchuka and Ruluk began hitching the teams to the tow line: the great power dogs in back, closest to the sleds, where their strength would best serve, the lighter and faster dogs fastened farther up the line, the swiftest in front, each team arranged as B’arr had said: “Makt in back, hast in front.”
Last to be hitched were the lead dogs—Shlee, Laska, and Garr—each sledmaster parading the dominant dog the length of the span.
At a nod from B’arr, Gwylly and Faeril settled into the sled basket and covered themselves with the warm furs. The sledmaster glanced back, seeing that the others were ready, too.
“Hypp!” he barked, and the team surged, dogs leaping against their tug lines, lunging to get the sled in motion. Slowly it started, and then picked up speed, gliding across the frozen waste. Behind, Gwylly could hear the other sledmasters calling out “Hypp!” to their own teams.
And out into the vast wilderness they fared, the dogs trotting eagerly through the glancing light of the low-hung Moon, while stars yet shone dimly in the paling skies above and the Eye of the Hunter dipped beyond seeing over the rim of the world.
* * *
An hour they ran, the sledmasters calling out now and again strak or venstre or høyre to keep the team running straight or to swing left or right, and at last the Sun rose low in the southeast, riding a shallow angle up into the sky. Before them the Grimwall Mountains loomed in silhouette, dark and foreboding, black and grey stone rearing upward snow-covered for the most. Faeril and Gwylly looked at each other, while their hearts pounded a desperate tattoo.
“Fear not, love,” said Gwylly, his voice filled with a bravado that he did not feel. “Once we know it, this Grimwall, it’ll not be so sinister.”
Faeril turned about and faced the mountains once more, examining them, trying to see them for what they were, trying to gain knowledge and thereby master her fear.
Onward ran the dogs, slowly drawing closer to this place of danger, where Spawn were said to dwell.
* * *
In mid-morn they stopped to stretch their legs and rest the dogs, giving each animal more water. Too, they cared for other needs, relieving themselves as necessary. Shortly, however, they set off once more, running through cold sunlight, long shadows trailing behind.
And this was their pattern throughout the frigid day: the dogs trotting at a goodly clip, hauling sleds and passengers across the whiteness for an hour or two, then resting for long, airy minutes, while the sledmasters gave the team more water.
At one of the stops they took a meal of jerky and crue, but they did not stay longer than necessary, getting underway as soon as they could.
And all the while, the Grimwall loomed closer, rearing up into the sky.
* * *
They stopped at last in the shadow of the range, cast northeastward beyond seeing by the setting Sun, for B’arr would not run the dogs in the darkness, that time between the coming of the night and the rising of the Moon.
This time they camped in a small swale, a shallow hollow providing scant shelter from the chill air breathing down from the Grimwall. This night the dogs did not get a ration of salmon, for they were fed only every other day.
It was a cold camp and dark, but for the moonlight and starshine, there being nothing spare with which to make a fire. Oh, they had brought ren møkk with them, but it would be used to melt water on the morn, water for dog and Man and Elf and Warrow alike.
And once again the Eye of the Hunter rode the darktide up into the sky, its long glowing tail streaming out behind, while now and again the land below shuddered and shivered and quaked.
* * *
Once more the predawn hours found Gwylly and Faeril lugging waterskins out to the sledmasters. Sensing the Warrows coming, eagerly the dogs got up from the burrows they had twisted in the snow and shook ice crystals from their fur, a fur so efficient that no heat escaped to melt the beds they slept in.
After a cold breakfast, again the teams began their trek toward the Grimwall, now so close that Faeril felt as if she could reach out and touch the dark mass.
’Strak! Strak!” called the sledmasters, and the dogs hewed straightly to the course, Gwylly and Faeril, Riatha and Aravan, borne onward, across a snow gone silver grey in the low, glancing light of the Moon. Through the platinum beams they glided, and finally the late dawn lightened the skies. At last the Sun rose, though still they could not see it, travelling as they were in the shadow of the range.
On toward the mountains they ran, straight toward the rearing walls of rock and snow, occasionally the earth shuddering beneath them, quaking in the early day. High above now loomed the Grimwall, and it seemed as if the sledmasters were aiming to drive straight into the walls of granite. But at last, at the very foot of the towering face of sheer stone, they came to a wide river, flat, frozen, the wind-scoured ice dark, grey, its surface raddled with cracks.
“Venstre!” called the sledmasters, and leftward they turned along this course, running atop the grey ice and alongside the massive flank, black with shadow.
An hour or so they ran, but of a sudden, “Stanna!” cried B’arr, stepping down on the footboard mounted between the runners at the back, the dragbrake cleats pressing into the ice, digging in, the sled gradually sliding to a halt as the dogs slowed to a trot and then to a walk and then stopped altogether, peering back and about.
“What is it, B’arr?” asked Faeril, throwing off furs, struggling to get up and out.
Tchuka and Ruluk brought their own sleds to a stop alongside, yet some distance away, maintaining a space between each of the teams, avoiding the risk of a mêlée for dominance between spans.
Winning free of the sled basket, Faeril stood and repeated her question. “What is it, B’arr? What’s wrong?”
The sledmaster pointed at the ice, and where he pointed, a small spot was pink. “Blood.”
“Blöd!” he called out to Tchuka and Ruluk. “Sørge for din spans!”
B’arr turned to Faeril, Gwylly now at her side. “I tell them to look at dogs. Ice cut feet.”
The sledmaster began examining each dog in turn until he found two with pads slashed, cut by the sharp-edged cracks in the ice. He walked back to the sled and took up a bag, inside of which were—“Booties!” cried Faeril, laughing in spite of her concern when she saw what B’arr was doing. “Dog booties.”
“Renhud,” grunted B’arr, smiling up at Faeril. He slipped the deerskin booties onto the feet of each patiently standing dog and pulled the drawstrings firm, tying them in place. “Protect from cut. Dogs no like, but wear while run.”
Faeril squatted beside B’arr. The damman ruffled the fur of the dog, Kano, fending off its licks. “But you will bandage them up when we stop for the night, won’t you?”
B’arr pulled another bootie onto the waiting dog’s left hind foot. “No, Mygga. Dog no like. Bite bandage off. Lick cut, like lick Mygga face. Lick clean. Make well.”
Then B’arr laughed as Kano took another lap at Faeril and again the damman fended him off. “Let Kano lick your face, little one; if you sick, he not make you well, but he make you feel better.” Again B’arr laughed, and Faeril smiled.
Off to the side, Gwylly stooped and examined one of the cracks jagging through the frozen river. In that moment the ground shuddered, and then he knew what caused the riven ice. “Sharp,” he exclaimed, drawing his thumb along the edge. “But I say, B’arr, why is the ice so grey? I mean, it looks as if it’s frozen milk—milk gone bad with dirt, that is.”
B’arr glanced over at the wee one and grinned. “You see good with Mygga eyes. It jokel melk—glacier milk, in tongue you speak.”
As he tied the last bootie on Kano, the dog now licking at the sledmaster’s face, B’arr pointed eastward with his chin in the direction they were travelling. “Great jokel ahead. Ice fall down from above. Ice cloudy. Full of jokel melk. Melt in summer. Make river. River run dark. Things grow good in jokel water, in jokel melk.
“But river get hard in winter. Land shake. River crack. River break. Make knife edge all over. Cut dog feet. What she-Mygga name bootie we call sokk. Keep dog feet from cut on ice.”
Strolling over to the Warrows, Aravan arrived in time to hear B’arr’s words. “Glacier milk.” he murmured. “Silt-laden water. A river full of powdered stone, ground from the Grimwall itself by the ponderous ice of the Great North Glacier. And the land that drinks from this chill stream becomes rich soil. Plants and flowers and green growing grass burst forth from the bordering earth and reach up for the Sun in the long summer days.”
Gwylly looked again at the grey ice, and then at the snow-laden riverbank, barren in winter, and finally at the Grimwall looming above, and he wondered how something as foreboding as this dark, ominous range could engender fertility in an ice-cold waste.
The sledmasters soon had their teams ready to travel again, ren-hide booties on all the dogs, and once more they set out eastward, wending along the base of the towering Grimwall range.
On they ran, following the curve of the glacier river, frozen in late winter’s grasp. And as they rounded a bend, Faeril gasped, for in the distance she saw great tumbled-down blocks of shattered ice piled in a gargantuan jumble, ramping in a massive heap upward, lying against an ice-clad wall of black granite. And high above, two thousand or so feet up the sheer stone, the frozen wall of the Great North Glacier loomed white and deadly, two or three miles wide or more, and massive, an enormous frozen river, itself hundreds of feet high, poised to cascade downward.
Even as they looked, a huge section of the overhang broke away, the mass of ice falling silently for what seemed an eternity, to smash into the miles-wide ramp below. And seconds later there came a rending, a riving, a splitting krrack! the sound of the ice calving away just then reaching their ears, followed eventually by a thunderous whoom! of the mass whelming down.
And still the face of the glacier loomed above, seemingly undiminished by the gigantic fall.
Outward swung B’arr, driving the dogs on a course that would safely take them past this deadly place, Tchuka and Ruluk coming after.
An hour or so they travelled along this arc, and finally the glacier and ice fall stood off to their right. Yet onward they ran for another hour, skirting out beyond the danger to come to a broad gorge a mile or two beyond the far edge.
Again the earth trembled, and afterward came the echoes of ice rending and shattering in the distance behind.
“Høyre! Høyre!” called B’arr, and the dogs swung to the right in response, entering the mouth of the wide, shadowed defile.
Before them, Gwylly and Faeril could see a sheer-walled canyon twisting up into the interior of the Grimwall, its end beyond seeing, somewhere past a wrenching curve. A mile or more apart stood vertical bluffs to either side, their tops some two or three thousand feet above, crevices and crags and ledges marring the perpendicular stone. Snow and ice clad the walls, where they could gain a foothold. Scrub pine grew there as well, twisted and gnarled by the wind. Frozen snow lay on the rising ravine floor—how thick, the Warrows could not say.
Into this slot B’arr drove the dogs, aiming for a place known to Riatha and told to B’arr, a place where they could safely make their way up and to the glacier, to come to “the light of the Bear,” or so she deemed.
“Strak! Strak!” called B’arr, now telling Shlee to follow, the course, the command echoed by the following sledmasters as into the canyon they ran.
Up a gradual slope they fared, coming to the distant turn, only to find another turn before them. And another after, and more, as they wrenched and twisted deeper into the mountains.
The daytide ebbed, and shadows clustered thickly in the sheer-walled slot. And the farther they ran, the slower went the teams, despite the sledmasters’ urgings.
“Is it the slope?” called Faeril to B’arr. “Do the dogs tire?”
“No, little Mygga,” responded the sledmaster. “Dog no want to come into this place.”
Another mile or two they ran, and still the dogs slowed. And then without command, Shlee turned the full team and stopped, refusing to go any farther.
Into Gwylly’s mind sprang the image of Black refusing to go into one of the “closed” places in the Weiunwood. Black had not seemed to fear the place, but simply to respect it instead.
Yet when Gwylly looked at Shlee, he saw that although the lead dog was not cowering, still his hackles were raised, and he seemed to be saying, Bad! Place bad!
Gwylly twisted about and saw that Laska and Garr had also turned their spans and would run this way no more.
“B’arr?” Faeril’s unspoken question seemed to hang or the cold air.
“Shlee know, little one. Trust Shlee. He know.” B’arr turned and called to Tchuka and Ruluk. “Ikke mer. Vi vende tilbake.”
Turning once more to the Warrows, the sledmaster’s bronze features reflected the worry he felt. “We go back You come. Not safe. Shlee know. Laska know. Garr know. All dog know. Trust dog. All know.”
Riatha and Aravan dismounted from their sleds and trudged across the snow to come to B’arr’s side.
Faeril struggled out of the fur blankets and stepped from the sled basket. “B’arr says that we must turn back.” Her face was stricken with uncertainty. Gwylly stepped free and put his arm about her.
B’arr looked Riatha in the eye. “Shlee know, Infé. Shlee know. This bad place.”
Riatha sighed. “I know, Sledmaster, what the dogs deem. Yet we must go on.”
B’arr turned to Aravan. “Anfé, tell Infé she must turn back. All must go from this bad place. All dog, all Alute, all Mygga, all Fé. Place vond…evil. Dog know!”
Aravan shrugged. “We have no choice, Sledmaster. Our way lies yon.” Aravan pointed up into the defile.
Riatha turned to the Waerlinga. “Once again these mountains have become a place where evil dwells. I had hoped that it had not yet reached this side of the Grimwall.” Riatha looked at the dogs. “But given the actions of the dogs, of Laska and Garr and Shlee, I deem that the Spaunen or worse have now come into this region as well.”
Faeril’s heart was hammering, and she did not trust her voice. Nevertheless, she glanced at the waning sky and hitched her bandoliers into a more comfortable position, the look on her face now resolute. “Then let us gather our things and go.”
At a nod from Gwylly and Aravan, Riatha turned and made her way back to Tchuka’s sled, where she began to gather up her gear, as did Aravan at Ruluk’s sled, and Gwylly and Faeril at B’arr’s.
Riatha slipped a waterskin under her coat where it would not freeze. She slung her sword in its scabbard across her back, and then shouldered the already prepared frame pack, settling it so that it did not interfere with the sword.
Aravan also slung a waterskin under his parka, then strapped his long-knife in its thigh scabbard onto his leg. He slipped his arms through the shoulder straps of his frame pack, buckling the chest belt across. Last, he took his black-hafted, crystal-bladed spear in hand, then turned to the others.
Gwylly’s sling was looped through his belt next to the sling-bullet pouches, and his dagger was affixed to the opposite side, and so when he slung his waterskin and shouldered his pack, he was ready to set forth.
Faeril, too, prepared herself, waterskin and frame pack, the damman already bristling with knives crisscrossing her torso. She turned to B’arr when she was ready and held out her hands. “Oh, B’arr, do take care. We shall miss you, you know.”
B’arr knelt down and squeezed the she-Mygga’s hands. “Already I miss you, little one. I know Mygga and Fé must go now. I worry you not safe. We come back when”—B’arr gestured to the night sky and groped for a word—“when star with tail gone. You stay safe till then, eh? Then we run happy back to Innuk, yes? Summer come, we fish.”
Faeril managed a wistful smile and nodded and kissed the sledmaster on the cheek, then turned away.
Gwylly, too, said good-bye to B’arr, then stepped to each of the teams and ruffled the fur of Garr and Laska and Shlee, whispering something to each, his words heard by none else.
Aravan and Riatha bade each of the sledmasters farewell, and then all four—Riatha, Aravan, Gwylly, and Faeril—set forth up slope, heading deeper into the shadow-wrapped canyon, while the skies above grew dim. B’arr watched them go, and for a long time he did not move. And he glanced down at his bone-bladed spear and wondered what perilous game, what deadly foe, the four of them pursued, a foe so dangerous that it would require weapons of steel and silver and starlight and crystal to slay it.
At last he looked up at the darkening skies, then signalled to Tchuka and Ruluk. As had been commanded, they would go back to the ruins two days north and wait until the strange star was gone from the skies. Then would they come back for the Mygga and Fé. Grasping his sled by the handlebar, “Hypp! Hypp!” he called, the dogs lunging ahead in response. “Venstre, Shlee, venstre!” Slowly the team wheeled leftward, until they were heading down slope. “Strak! Strak!” and down the course they fared, back the way they had come, Shlee’s span running hard, Laska’s and Garr’s spans just as swift behind.
* * *
Night fell as up the rift they hiked, Gwylly and Faeril setting the pace for Riatha and Aravan. The Moon rose unseen, shielded by the ice-clad canyon walls. Overhead, stars wheeled in slow procession, and the four comrades knew that somewhere above the hidden horizon the Eye of the Hunter streamed.
Up the slope they walked, twisting deeper and deeper into the defile, its sheer walls looming closer in the darkness, the snow-covered floor of the vale rising up to meet them.
And now and again the earth shuddered, and snow sifted down from above, along with clattering rocks and jagged slabs of shattered ice, hammering onto the canyon floor at the base of the steep ramparts.
It was after one of these rumblings that Gwylly asked, “Hoy, Aravan, tell me about Dragons and about this Black Kalgalath. How be was slain and all.”
The Elf looked down at the Waerling and smiled, There’s much to tell and little, for the life of any given Dragon is not well known. Even so, much is known concerning Dragons taken altogether.
“They are a mighty Folk, and perilous. Capable of speech. Covetous of wealth, gathering hoards unto themselves. They live in remote fastnesses, coming now and again upon their deadly raids, usually to steal cattle and other livestock, though I ween they think of it as hunting. ‘All must aid when Dragons raid,’ so goes the eld saying. Yet I deem that nought can be done when Dragons raid, and so the saying simply means to give shelter and comfort to those afflicted by a Drake’s comings and goings.
“They sleep for a thousand years and waken for two thousand. At this time Dragons are awake, and have been so for some five hundred years.
“There are two strains of Dragons, though once there was but one. Fire-drakes and Cold-drakes they are now called: the breath of Fire-drakes a devastating flame; the breath of Cold-drakes a cloud of poison, its spittle an acid spume which chars flesh and stone and metal alike.
“Once there were no Cold-drakes, but in the Great War of the Ban, some Dragons sided with Gyphon. And after He was defeated, Adon reft the fire from these Dragons, causing them and their get to become the Cold-drakes of today.
“Too, the Cold-drakes suffer the Ban, the light of the Sun slaying them, though their Dragonhide saves them from the Withering Death which strikes the other Foul Folk. Have thou not heard the saying ‘Troll bones and Dragonhide’? It comes about because there are two things among the Foul Folk which do not wither under Adon’s golden light: the bones of Trolls; the hides of Dragons. And so, when exposed to the daytide, Cold-drakes do not turn to ashes, as do the Rúpt, the Spaunen. Even so, still the Sun slays them, the Cold-drakes…though the Fire-drakes are unaffected by the light of day.
“But Fire-drake or Cold-, terrible are they, massive and deadly and nearly indestructible, their claws like adamantine scimitars, their hides scaled in nearly invulnerable armor. Great leathery pinions bear them up into the sky, and their flapping wings hurl twisting vortexes of air to hammer down upon a foe.
“It is said that they can sense all within their domain, and that their eyes see the hidden, the unseen, and the invisible, as well as the visible, too.
“None knows how long they can live, and in this they may be as are the Elves, though I doubt it. Some have estimated that if the waking and sleeping times of the Drakes correspond unto that of Man—that is, three thousand years for a Dragon is likened to one day for a Man— then because the lives of some Men span as much as one hundred summers, say, thirty-six thousand dawns, then the equivalent span of a Dragon would be more than one hundred thousand thousand years.”
Gwylly gasped, then blurted, “One hundred thousand thousand!”
“Aye, wee one: one hundred thousand thousand years.”
Gwylly turned to Faeril, his mind boggled by a number so large, unable to grasp even a glimmering of what it meant. The damman, seeing the confusion in the buccan’s wide eyes, said, “Let me see if I can put this in terms that we can understand, Gwylly.”
She thought a moment as they continued trudging up slope. “Mayhap this will serve: I have heard that there are seven thousand grains in a pound of wheat.”
Gwylly nodded, for he had heard the same from his foster father, though he surely did not know who would have counted them.
Faeril continued: “And, too, I have heard that there are some fifty to sixty pounds of wheat in a bushel.”
Again Gwylly nodded, for often he had helped with the harvest, and a bushel of wheat weighed nearly as much as he.
“Well, then,” said Faeril, “if that’s so, then a bushel of wheat contains some”—the damman did a quick reckoning in her head—“oh, say, four hundred thousand grains altogether.”
Gwylly shrugged, vaguely irritated, feeling ensnared in an arcane academic exercise. “If you say so. But what’s this got to do with—?”
Faeril held up a hand, and Gwylly fell silent, and buccan and damman continued striding through the snow, while she did another quick reckoning. “Then that means that two hundred and fifty bushels of wheat contain one hundred thousand thousand grains.”
Gwylly looked at her blankly.
“Don’t you see, Gwylly, if each one of those grains was like one year in a Dragon’s life, it would take two hundred fifty bushel baskets full of wheat to have enough grains to number the years of a Drake.”
At last this was something that the buccan could visualize, for Orith had sown and harvested wheat: In his mind’s eye Gwylly saw two hundred fifty bushel baskets stretching out before him, each full to the brim with grains of wheat, each grain representing a year. He envisioned one basket spilled—for he’d spilled them—the grain spread in a uniform layer across a wide floor, the total covering a great area. Then he tried to envision two hundred fifty bushels spilled, knowing that the spread would be vast. But here his mind balked at trying to grasp it in its entirety. To think each grain represents one year in a Dragon’s life. And as to the whole of it, well, it’s quite unimaginable.
But Faeril’s thoughts, on the other hand, followed a completely different track, and she glanced up at Riatha and Aravan striding alongside. If the span of Dragons seems so vast, then what of that of Elves? Why, all the grains of sand of all the beaches and all the deserts of all the world cannot even begin to number the years lying before each one of that Fair Folk.
Aravan’s words broke into the thoughts of the Waerlinga. “Thine example is apt, Faeril. Yet I caution thee: ’tis but speculation that the sleepings and wakings of Drakes correspond to the days of Man. It could just as well be that they do not…or that they correspond to that of other beings—Waerlinga, Elves, Dwarves, Utruni…None that I have spoken to knows the truth of it.”
Faeril looked at the Elf, weighing his words. “Then tell me this, Aravan: how old is the oldest Dragon now?”
“Adon knows, Faeril,” responded the Elf. “Dragons were here on Mithgar when first we came, and that was several thousands of years apast.”
For some time the foursome strode up the slope without speaking, their boots scrutching in the snow. Again the earth trembled, and more snow sifted down the face of the vertical walls looming to each side, rocks and ice rattling and shattering down as well. At last Gwylly broke the silence that had fallen among them. “All right, then. What about Kalgalath?”
Aravan took up the tale once more. “Black Kalgalath was perhaps the mightiest Drake upon all of Mithgar, though it was said by some that Daagor was mightier still. Yet Daagor was slain in the Great War as he fought on the side of Gyphon.
“Black Kalgaiath, though, sided with no one, remaining aloof from the War.
“But there was a power token named the Kammerling, though others called it the Rage Hammer and some named it Adon’s Hammer. It was said that this hammer would slay the mightiest Dragon of all.
“Black Kalgalath in his arrogance thought that the hammer was meant to be his bane, and so he stole it from its guardians, from the Utruni, from the Stone Giants, and gave it to a Wizard to ward for him.
“Yet two heroes, Elyn and Thork, recovered the hammer and used it to kill Kalgalath.
“It was in his death throes that Black Kalgalath smote the earth with the Kammerling, there at Dragonslair, whelming the world with that puissant token of power. And ever since, the land has been unstable, quaking, shuddering with the memory of Kalgalath’s death here in the Grimwalls.”
Onward they walked, an hour or two, then another, the night growing deeper, and the Eye of the Hunter appeared above the east canyon wall, its fiery tail streaming out behind.
Again the earth jolted, this time severely, and great rocks and slabs of ice shattered down into the deep slot below.
And Gwylly and Faeril thought that they could faintly hear the far-off ringing of iron bells. But in that very same moment there came a distant, juddering howl, long and ululating.
Faeril’s heart jumped into her throat, and Gwylly beside her clutched her hand. “Wolves?” she asked, fearing the answer.
Again came the howl, louder this time perhaps, the sound echoing from crevice and crag, confusing the ear as to its direction, and Gwylly involuntarily squeezed Faeril’s fingers.
Riatha looked about, sighting up the nearest wall even as debris rattled down from above. “Nay, Faeril, not Wolves,” she gritted. “Instead it is the hunting cry of Vulgs on the track, and they are in pursuit.”