Near the pond, the summer grass was tall, and the saber-toothed cat had found a low place in the ground to hide. Despite his skill at hunting and tracking, Kagur’s father failed to notice the spotted beast. Nor did he hear it when it broke cover at his back.
Thirty paces away, Kagur had paused to admire little pink bog rosemary flowers growing intermixed with stringy white reindeer moss. Still, she saw Jorn’s peril, and she had an arrow fletched with goose feathers already nocked. As the saber-tooth started its charge, she drew and loosed.
Her arrow plunged into the cat’s shoulder. It stumbled but then kept running.
Kagur drew another arrow even though it was too late. Quick as she was, she didn’t have time for another shot.
Fortunately, she didn’t need one. The cat staggered again, although she couldn’t tell why, and then fell down thrashing.
Father heard that. He pivoted, pulled back his own longbow, and drove an arrow into the saber-tooth, whose convulsions then subsided.
Kagur ran toward the fallen beast while Eovath did the same from the opposite direction, his long legs eating up the distance. He must be the one who’d stopped the cat.
Along with their father, they scrutinized the animal, making sure it was really dead. Then Kagur asked, “How?”
Eovath showed her and Jorn the rock in his callused, enormous hand. “All I had that would carry across the distance.”
Father grinned up at him. “Good throw.”
It was an understatement, but Kagur couldn’t take pride in Eovath’s feat the way her father did. Frost giants were notorious for the deadly force and accuracy with which they hurled stones, and despite the circumstances, it suddenly seemed like a hideous portent that Eovath had inherited the knack.
“Why?” Kagur demanded of him. “Why save Father on this day if you meant to kill us all in the end?”
“Who are you talking to?” Eovath replied.
Except that it wasn’t his deeper-than-deep rumble coming out of his mouth. It was a reedy voice she’d never heard before.
Her eyes snapped open.
She was lying on one bearskin and under another in a tent with a gaunt old man kneeling beside her. Sticking out every which way, long wisps of white hair ringed his otherwise bald, spotted head, and an assortment of carved bones, feathers, and polished stones dangled around his scrawny wrinkled neck. The fetishes suggested he was a shaman—the healer she’d fought so hard to reach.
Looking up at him, however, she wondered how ably he could tend her or anyone. Milky cataracts all but masked the pupils of his eyes, and it seemed unlikely he could see out any more clearly than she could see in.
“How badly am I hurt?” she asked. Her throat was dry, and the question came out as a whisper.
He held a clay cup of water to her lips. The cold liquid brought a surge of pleasure; her body was eager for it. A bit of it escaped her mouth and dribbled down her chin.
“Not too much at once,” the shaman said, lifting the cup away. “You asked how badly hurt you are. That’s something we need to figure out together. Do you know me?”
She shrugged, and her stiff back popped. “You must belong to the Fivespears tribe.” She’d pointed Grumbler toward their camp. It was the only one within reach.
“Yes, but do you know me?”
“Should I?”
“I’m Holg. I took the dagger out of you and tended you thereafter. You’ve been awake—well, give or take—and spoken with me several times. But you never remembered it afterward.”
She grunted. “I will this time. My head is clear. Give me more water.”
He tried to bring the cup back to her mouth. She hitched up onto one elbow so she could hold it for herself and was pleased that it didn’t require any great effort and only produced a slight twinge in her abdomen. Blind or not, maybe the healer knew what he was doing.
“You are making more sense,” Holg told her as she drank. “And the fever’s broken, so there’s no reason you should still be delirious.”
“The fever?”
“I know prayers to close a wound, but you had yours for a while before you reached me. It festered.”
“But it’s all right now?” She realized she was naked between the bearskins. She gingerly felt her stomach and found a short, ridged scar.
“It was touch and go for a few weeks, but I believe so.”
She glared at him. “A few weeks! Couldn’t you work faster?”
He frowned. “Believe me, I wanted to hurry it. I have a keen interest in whatever it is you have to tell me. But I could easily have hurt you.”
“I need to get up.”
“I recommend you go on resting. We can still talk with you lying down.”
“You’re not the one I need to talk to. Where are my clothes?”
“Gone for rags. They were so bloodstained, it’s all they were fit for. I found you some new ones.” He indicated the pile with a wave of his hand.
She threw off the top bearskin and stood up. It made her lightheaded for a moment, but after that, she was all right.
She started to pull on the clothes and found several ways they differed from the ones she was used to. The lacing that threaded through four eyelets on a side instead of five. The belt that was too narrow and had an unfamiliar pattern hammered into the leather. Gauntlets lined with the fleece of a mountain sheep rather than the wool of a mammoth.
Little differences, but they signified that she was wearing garments made by Fivespears, not Blacklions, and they brought the reality of her situation crashing down on her. Father, Dolok, everyone gone! She averted her face to keep Holg from discerning her anguish.
“I have this, too,” the shaman said. “Although I don’t know if you’ll want it.”
She looked around. He was proffering Eovath’s dagger. He’d found a black leather sheath for it that nearly matched the inky stain on the hilt.
“I want it,” she said. It would gall her every time she noticed she had it, and the sting would spur her onward. She started to buckle the sheath to her new belt.
“I’d put it somewhere less conspicuous,” said Holg. “For now, anyway.”
She scowled. “Am I a captive?”
“You’re an honored guest of the Fivespears tribe. The traditions of hospitality say so. Still, you have my advice.”
Given what he’d just said, Kagur had no idea why it was his advice, but she had more important things to do than stand here trying to elicit an explanation. She slipped the dagger inside her shirt. “Satisfied?” she asked.
He shrugged.
“Then take me to Ganef.”
“All right.” In an unhurried fashion that made her jaw clench, he put on his cloak, pulled up the hood, took up a short staff covered in intricate carvings, and finally preceded her out of the tent. The sunlight made her squint.
The camp was much like that of the Blacklions, only with standards made of five spears fanning out from a single base planted in the snow and most of the tents round and stained a muddy red. Holg led Kagur toward the central meeting tent. He swished the butt of his staff back and forth in the snow in front of him, and she realized he was partly feeling his way. Apparently, it was a useful trick, as she watched him step neatly over guy ropes without tripping.
A mammoth trumpeted. Kagur turned. His trunk still upraised, Grumbler stood with a couple of the Fivespears’ animals. Unlike him, the other beasts had no leather rings on their tusks and bore five vertical crimson stripes dyed into the wool on their flanks.
Kagur owed the faithful creature her life, but even so, she was too set on her purpose to stop to scratch the leathery hide beneath the thick brown hair or find him a treat. Soon, she promised, soon.
The air was cold, but not bitterly so, and the meeting tent had the flaps thrown back to admit the daylight. A lanky man with dark, close-set eyes and a pointed gray beard, Ganef sat at the far end drinking from a leather jack.
Trophies Kagur recognized—an orc banner with a three-eyed demonic face on it and the great cave-lion skull itself—hung or reposed around Ganef, just as if his own tribe had taken them in battle or the hunt. Spears, bows, shields, pots, and a smith’s tools sat here and there, perhaps awaiting distribution or an opportunity to trade. A longsword with a round black stone in the pommel—Jorn’s blade and the blade of his fathers before him—hung from one corner of the Fivespears chieftain’s high-backed chair.
Evidently Kagur’s arrival had prompted some of the Fivespears to visit the Blacklion camp, and when they’d discovered the carnage there, they’d looted whatever took their fancy. It felt like an affront, an attempt to erase even the memory of the slain, but she took a breath and told herself it was nothing compared to Eovath’s treachery.
Ganef beamed at the sight of her. “Kagur!” He must have recognized her from trading visits and those rare occasions when Varnug, the Mammoth Lord of their particular following, called together those tribes that had accepted his leadership.
“Chieftain,” she said, advancing.
“Are you well?” Ganef looked past her to Holg. “Should she be up?”
“No,” the old man answered. “But since she refuses to stay down, it doesn’t matter.”
“I’m fine,” said Kagur to Ganef. “Thank you for taking me in, and thanks to the healer here for tending me. Now—”
Ganef raised his hand. “Please, before anything else, you must let me welcome you properly. Sit.”
She wanted to snap that she didn’t have time to waste on courtesies. But it would be foolish to offend him, and so, biting back her annoyance, she settled herself on a bench and waited while he poured a second jack of ale, pricked his fingertip with a dirk, and squeezed a drop of his blood into the beverage.
“Drink,” he said, “and you will be one of us for as long as you remain.”
She drank. “Thank you.”
“Now, please, tell me what happened at your camp.”
Finally! She began a terse recitation of the tale.
Relating and so reliving the horror scourged her with fresh waves of grief, and once again, she tried to keep the emotion from showing. Her pain wasn’t a spectacle for strangers.
But there was no humiliation in letting them see her anger, and so she focused on that until it shivered inside her and made it impossible to stay sitting. She jumped back up and finished the story on her feet.
“I am so sorry,” Ganef said. “I wish there were something I could do.”
“There is!” Was he so thick that he didn’t understand what she required of him? “You, your warriors, and I need to track down Eovath and kill him.”
He fingered a tuft of his beard. “Hm.”
“The Blacklions have to be avenged!”
“Of course,” Ganef said, “ideally. But how are you going to find him when the trail is so cold?”
“We’ll find a way.”
“I’m sure you’d try. But he must be high in the Tusks by now, and has likely found a new home with his own kind. It would be foolhardy to attack a tribe of frost giants on their home ground in the midst of winter.”
“My tribe has done it and won. Are the Fivespears afraid to try?”
Ganef frowned. “No, but we aren’t stupid, either.”
“Think of it as you like. If you won’t help, I’ll hunt down Eovath by myself.”
“I can’t let you attempt that. You’ve been deathly ill for weeks.”
“I’m better now.”
“Not enough to survive alone on foot on the plains with only the clothes on your back.”
She stared at him. “What are you talking about? My mammoth is here. Everything the Blacklions owned is here. You can’t begrudge me what little I need.”
“No one ‘begrudges’ you anything, but we have to think about what’s fair. We fed you. The old man there spent his prayers on you, magic that might otherwise have benefited the tribe.”
“So I have to pay for hospitality?” Much as she’d always disliked Ganef, she’d never dreamed he could stoop this low.
“Yes,” he said, scowling, “if that’s what it takes to keep you from throwing your life away. Instead, you’ll recover the full measure of your strength and, when you’re ready, repay our generosity by hunting along with the rest of the tribe.”
“Then you’re enslaving me.”
“We’re adopting you, idiot. Giving you new kin and a new life. And I don’t care how sick you were and how the fever cooked your brain. Your ingratitude is starting to rankle.”
Kagur drew breath to snarl that she’d rather die than join a tribe of thieves and cowards. But before she could get the words out, Holg cleared his throat.
Ganef turned his glower on the shaman. “What?” he snapped.
“It’s kindly of you to seek to look after this warrior.” Holg’s tone was dry but stopped short of overt sarcasm. “But you still don’t understand the situation.” He turned to Kagur. “Tell him about the sun in the deep and all the rest of it.”
A chill oozed up Kagur’s spine. How did the old man know about Eovath’s ravings? She’d left them out of her story because they didn’t seem worth repeating.
She supposed Holg’s mystical talents were responsible. Anyway, it didn’t matter. If he thought repeating Eovath’s gibberish might throw a scare into Ganef, she was willing to give it a try.
Attempting to act like she took it seriously, she laid out the giant’s threat to do further harm, his claim that Rovagug spoke to him, and all the rest of the craziness. But when Ganef smirked, it was plain he wasn’t impressed.
“It does sound mad,” said Holg, demonstrating that he too somehow perceived the chieftain’s skepticism. “But occasionally mad things happen.”
Ganef sighed. “And your spirits are whispering that this one will?”
“In a sense.”
“Well, if you hear from our Lord in Iron, let me know.”
Holg shook his head. “Your god has no quarrel with the powers I serve. I’ve never understood why one of his worshipers feels the need.”
“Perhaps if the spirits’ servant didn’t question and second-guess me at every turn—” Ganef took a deep breath. “But our guest doesn’t need to hear us bicker.” He smiled at Kagur. “It’s obvious you’re too sensible to believe the ravings of a lunatic—and a lunatic giant, at that—so you’ll understand why I don’t, either. In other words, my decision stands. You’ll bide with us. Now, have the old man find you something to eat.”
It was clear she couldn’t change Ganef’s mind. Kagur turned, strode out of the tent, and, fists clenched, looked around for something or someone to hit.
Unfortunately, there was nothing and no one within arm’s reach—or rather, no one but Holg emerging behind her. And she wasn’t quite disgusted enough to punch a blind old dodderer who’d saved her life.
“You should understand,” Holg said, “Ganef knows of your skills with sword and bow. He’s heard stories and seen your prowess for himself when the following united.”
“So what?”
“So your talents would make you a valuable addition to the Fivespears. And since he doesn’t believe Eovath poses a threat to his own tribe …” He shrugged.
“Yes. I think that when the giant spoke of performing the task that Rovagug set him, he meant he’ll continue as he began and wipe out other human tribes. Maybe even all of us. That’s certainly the kind of thing the Rough Beast might want a follower to do.”
“Still, why do you take Eovath’s ravings seriously? How do you even know about them? Did your familiar spirits tell you?”
He smiled. “No. You did. I told you we’ve talked before today, even though you don’t remember.”
So he had. She felt stupid for not figuring out the actual—and thoroughly mundane—explanation.
“But I don’t need prompting from the spirits to take the danger seriously,” Holg continued. “I have other reasons. So the question is, what are we going to do about it?”
The answer to that was obvious. “We” weren’t going to do anything.
Kagur unclenched her fists and sighed. “What can I do? Your chieftain is a worm, but he’s right. I’ll never find Eovath, and if I did, I couldn’t kill him without a band of warriors at my back. There’s nothing for me to do but try to make a new life with a new tribe. It’s what my father would have wanted.”
Holg snorted. “You’re not—”
“I need to go to Grumbler. My mammoth. No doubt your people have taken good care of him, but I need to see for myself. After that, I would like some food.”
And that was nothing less than the truth. She needed to eat, rest, and gather her strength if she were going to escape come nightfall.