They made camp and waited, the Realm folk huddling around their fires, the Lonak occupying themselves by butchering the fallen ponies and horses. Meat should not be wasted on the ice after all. The now-familiar booming crack came soon after sunrise. The sound lasted much longer than before, the ice giving full vent to its torment as walls of white mist rose on all sides. Abruptly the ice shifted beneath their feet, the sky seeming to sway above as the entire field shattered for miles around with a thunderclap crescendo. The subsequent silence seemed vast, all members of the company fallen to their knees and staring about in expectation of some climactic calamity. But nothing came. The ice swayed gently beneath them, the surrounding ice-scape moving in a slow but constant drift to the east.
Vaelin joined Wise Bear at the edge of the fragment where they were now marooned, looking down at the cavernous gap between them and the nearest berg, so deep the ocean water below was lost to sight. “The ice is kind,” the shaman said in a surprisingly calm voice.
“Kind?” Vaelin asked.
“Islands to the east.” A faint smile played over Wise Bear’s aged face. “Home.”
• • •
The weather remained calm for the following week as they accustomed themselves to life on their new home. The berg was a good three hundred paces from end to end allowing for a sprawling camp, and, thanks to the storm, they were well supplied with horse-meat. Occasionally the berg would collide with one of its neighbours, the ice shuddering from the impact but so far failing to crack. For Vaelin the ever-shortening days were more worrying than their immobility, the Long Night was coming and he had no illusions as to their chances when it came.
“You had no choice,” Kiral told him one morning. He had gone to the edge of the berg in what had become something of a daily ritual. They were so far north now that Avenshura could be glimpsed for a brief time between dusk and sunrise, shining brighter than he had seen before.
“These people followed me,” he said. “To their doom it seems.”
“The song called and you answered. And our journey is not yet done.”
She spoke with a calm authority but Vaelin could not suppress his skepticism, gesturing at the slowly moving ice surrounding them. “It holds no warning about this?”
“It has sounded a warning note since we began this journey. But it also holds certainty. We are on the right course, the endless man awaits our coming. I know it.”
• • •
The first island came into view four days later, a small snow-covered rise some miles to the south, several larger cousins appearing a day later. The berg’s collisions increased as the floe became constricted by the channels through the islands. After many hours constant shuddering, and an ominous crack that shook the ice beneath their feet, it came to a grinding halt.
Wise Bear led them across the now-fractured ice-scape to the nearest island, taller than the others with bare rock jutting from its snow-covered slopes. His mood became sombre as they tracked around its southern shore, coming eventually to a collection of huts beneath a tall cliff. They were conical in shape, the walls constructed from seal hides over a framework of bone and wood, long out of use from their evident state of disrepair. Many were missing hides and others half-ruined by the constant assault of the elements.
“You know this place?” Vaelin asked the shaman.
“Bear People hunting camp,” he said, standing still and expressionless.
“We could press on,” Vaelin suggested, sensing his reluctance. “Find another island.”
“Nearest two days away.” Wise Bear started forward, moving with deliberate purpose and pointing his staff towards the north. “More storm coming. We rest here until it passes.”
They repaired the huts as best they could, using horse-hide to cover the gaps, the night coming on fast and bringing a bitter wind. By now they were all well attuned to the moods of the ice, the speed with which a storm could descend, birthing a new level of cooperation between the Sentar and Orven’s guardsmen. They worked together with wordless efficiency, seemingly unhampered by any language barrier.
“Once the ice made all men brothers,” Wise Bear said that night. They had repaired five huts, enough to shelter the whole company from the storm already howling outside, the surviving horses herded into a single hut with what scant fodder remained. The shaman sat beside the fire in the centre of the hut, the smoke rising to a small hole in the roof as he carved a new symbol into his bone-staff.
