They trekked east until the sky had darkened to black and the green fire once again danced in the sky. Wise Bear rested on a stunted plinth-shaped mound of ice, regarding the sky and singing his song to his ancestors.
“What do you tell them?” Vaelin asked when he fell silent.
“Bear People still live. I still live, but not long to wait now.”
“Are you so eager to join them? To be with your wife once more?”
“She with me now, watching.” Wise Bear gave him a sidelong glance. “You think this . . . a story. Your word . . . the word for not real story.”
“A lie.”
“Yes. Lie. No word for lie in Bear People tongue.”
“A lie is still a lie, even if you don’t have a word for it. But no, I don’t think it a lie. I believe your people, and mine, crafted legends to better understand a world that often makes little sense. And a legend becomes its own truth in time.”
“Legend is what?”
“An old story, told many times and changed with the telling. A story so old none can say if it ever truly happened.”
“You had power, when we met. Song like Fox Girl, but stronger. That a legend?”
“No, all very true. But like a legend, it had an ending.”
“No.” Wise Bear lifted his staff to point at the swirling lights in the sky. “Nothing truly ends. There stories live forever.”
He looked over his shoulder as Iron Claw gave a low growl, rising to sniff the air.
“Many come.” The shaman sighed, getting to his feet. “War party. Keep hands empty.”
The spear-hawks came first, seven of the great birds descending from the clouds to circle them, occasionally swooping low enough to make Vaelin duck. He had heard enough stories from Dahrena to appreciate the birds’ deadly power but was still surprised by their size, judging each to have a wingspan of at least seven feet, their beaks as long as spear-points and, he noticed, steel barbs glittering on their talons.
“One shaman controls all these?” he asked Wise Bear.
“If strong enough. They see and he sees.” The shaman’s gaze settled on the eastern horizon, a disconcerting note of foreboding colouring his tone. “Few strong enough to bind so many.”
The black dots appeared on the horizon moments later, at first only a dozen or so but soon growing in number until Vaelin counted over fifty. The dots resolved into loping figures as they came closer, moving with effortless speed and grace over the ice. On nearing, their tight group split apart and formed a near-perfect circle with Wise Bear and Vaelin at the centre. They sat regarding them both with placid indifference, all uniformly white of fur and larger than any wolf Vaelin had seen, save one.
More dots soon appeared on the horizon, moving with less grace but almost equal speed. The sight was so unfamiliar Vaelin was initially unsure what he was seeing, teams of wolves all tethered in a line dragging something behind. As they came closer he realised the wolves were towing sleds, each carrying three men, all armed with spears and flat bows similar to those carried by the Seordah. The wolves towing the sleds were smaller in stature than those surrounding them, and markedly less placid, snarling and nipping at each other as the sleds came to a halt. Vaelin quickly counted heads as the men on the sleds dismounted; over a hundred, less than their own company, but this was their ice and they had wolves and hawks.
The sled-borne warriors spread out to form a second circle outside that fashioned by the wolves, two figures striding forward to approach Vaelin and Wise Bear. One was of similar proportions to the other ice people Vaelin had met, little over five feet tall and stocky of build. But the second figure stood at least as tall as Vaelin, broad at the shoulder but with a rangy, athletic look.
“You know them?” Vaelin asked Wise Bear.
The shaman shook his head, his expression now more tense even than when they had confronted No Eyes. “Trade with Wolf People sometimes,” he said. “Not live with them.”
The two figures halted a short distance away, reaching up to pull away the fur that covered their faces. The shorter of the two was revealed as a woman of middling years with the high cheekbones and broad features common to the ice people. She regarded Wise Bear with an expression of obvious recognition, even respect, though her bearing was no less tense. Vaelin noted she carried a bone of her own, shorter than Wise Bear’s but similarly adorned with etchings. The tall figure at her side removed his fur mask to uncover the face of a young man a few years shy of Vaelin’s age, the features holding no vestige of any ice-folk heritage. Vaelin’s unease deepened as he took note of the man’s colouring: pale skin, eyes and hair dark to the point of blackness, like many Volarians he had seen.
The woman said something in her own language, addressing Wise Bear who replied with a nod and a few words of his own. “Shaman greets shaman,” he explained. “It is . . . custom.”
