01 The Anvil of Ice by Rohan Michael Scott

Author:Rohan, Michael Scott [Scott, Rohan, Michael]
Format: epub
Published: 2010-04-10T22:21:39.265000+00:00

"Those would be crevasses, I fear," said Kermorvan. "Thicker and deeper at the elbow, as you say. Let us keep well away from there! They will be hard enough to avoid as it is!"

And indeed, when they at last drew near the margins of the glacier, Elof wondered if he had not led them astray, so rough did their way look, and so fearsome the moaning of the wind among the moraines. A frozen film, clear, hard and treacherous, lay over all the lower rocks, and slippery pockets of dirty snow lay frozen between the stones. One last step from the rim, he stumbled badly, almost fell, and halted, wavering. Then, cautiously, he took his first step onto the Great Ice.

For a moment he thought crazily he was back in his forge, and had trodden on a hot iron coulter. The searing blaze in his worn boots was cold, not flame, but the sensation was the same, a fearful burning that mounted to his calves. He hopped with the agony, scrambled up onto some stones to find a moment's relief, but it was as if ice was touched to his bare nerves. He hesitated, gasping, desperate to spring back to the rocks. A longer time he might have stood there, perhaps to his own destruction, had Kermorvan not plunged straight out among the frozen debris at the moraine's edge without so much as breaking stride. That took away Elof's choices; he could only set his teeth in his lip, and stumble after.

He was startled to see Kermorvan hurrying along, choosing his way carefully in the twilight, but swinging his pickstaff and bounding from stone to Ice and back again with all his usual energy. It struck Elof just how bold this man was, marching out to confront a thing that had probably been a childhood bogey, and in manhood had come to embody the powers he hated. There might be tremors in his mind, but in his stride none, nor did he fail to turn back to help the smith when he slipped noisily down a high ridge in the uncertain dusk. By then, an hour on, numbness had dulled the pain enough to let Elof speak. "Don't you feel it?"

Kermorvan crouched down beside him among the debris of shattered rock. "Feel what?" It was obvious he did not. Elof wondered, but did not explain. Kermorvan drew his cloak about him. "The wind, yes! And cursedly exposed, out there in the open, with so much light around us. It might be harder going in the dark, but I would be less worried about unfriendly eyes. May those clouds come south before moonrise, and blot out the stars also!"

But he was not to have his wish, for though the clouds mounted into immense black ramparts on the northern horizon, the wind died, the chill air fell still and silent. The sky over the valley remained open and bitterly clear, and the stars as they came out looked down on their warped reflections in the Ice.

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