Chapter Twenty-Seven Elvine #3
Dawn in the far north proved a remarkable spectacle, Elvine waking to behold a band of red above the horizon casting its glow across a cloud-dappled sky.
Sometime in the night she had huddled down to sleep, still refusing to join her guards on the lower deck.
A wolf’s fur had been placed upon her slumbering form, presumably by Varnyr who still stood close by, as immune to the elements as ever.
Using the spear to lever herself upright, she saw that the landscape beyond the starboard rail had changed again.
The featureless tundra was now a series of forbidding snow-capped ridges.
Tracking her eyes across the jagged panoply of white and grey, Elvine found it impossible to credit any creature, human or no, traversing such an obstacle.
“This land was not made for people,” she muttered, her scholar’s mind soon fixing on the realisation that this region likely bore no name. Moving to the prow, she found Kahlvik squinting at the sky.
“Aerldun’s Eye,” he said, pointing to a cluster of stars still glimmering in the changing sky. “Means we’re now sailing a north-easterly course.” He smiled, a reflective shade to his gaze. “The furthest north I have ever travelled. Sorrowful it is that Lore and her creatures saw it first.”
“If the legends have it right, Veylorn saw it first. As for Lore, soon enough she will have no opportunity to tell anyone of her travels.” Elvine gestured to the ridges to starboard.
“Therefore, this land may be claimed as another geld in the Realm of Ascarlia, and is in want of a name. Why not give it yours?”
“Kahlvik’s Land?” Laughing, he shook his head. “The Spear Maiden’s Geld would be more appropriate. After all, when the tale of this voyage is told, I doubt it’s my name that’ll be remembered.”
“Kahlvik’s Land,” Elvine stated firmly. “I shall insist on it when we return. I’m sure the queen would approve.”
The Vellihr seemed about to argue further, but stopped, his brows knitting as something drew his gaze to the prow. “Signal arrow,” he said, Elvine catching the faint flicker of a descending flame against the gathering blue of the dawn sky. “It seems Captain Veltta has something to show us.”
They found the Chainbreaker anchored in a shallow inlet a mile on.
Here the landscape was dominated by a massive glacier.
It swept down from the ridge above in a frozen, white river, fading into a gurgling stream close to the water’s edge.
Veltta waited ashore with a party of warriors, clustered alongside the partially intact wreck of a warship.
Elvine’s heart began to pound at the sight of what she knew must be Lore’s remaining vessel, but the state of damage and the lack of urgency among the shore party made it plain her quarry was not to be found here.
As the boat carried her to land, Elvine made out the dark fury on the faces of the captain and crew.
“Fecking just left them!” Veltta’s words came in a clipped, barely understandable grunt, her eyes moist and face red despite the cold. “Still chained and stripped. Left them to freeze.”
Seeing her so disturbed was unnerving, for Elvine had thought this woman beyond tears.
The reason for her distress became starkly clear when Elvine moved to inspect the ship.
The hull had been sundered on contact with the rock-strewn shingle beach, planking falling away in places to reveal her ribs, and the contents of her rowing deck.
At first glance the slaves appeared to be alive, for they all sat erect and chained to their oars, though curiously still.
Then Elvine made out the blue-white skin and faces set in a teeth-baring rictus.
“It wouldn’t have taken long, this far north,” Kahlvik murmured. “The cold is merciless here.”
“Why?” Colvyn asked. “Why not unfasten their chains, or at least leave them some scraps of clothing?”
“She needed to silence them,” Elvine said.
“Most likely she worried what they might have overheard during the journey.” She clutched the spear, suffering a lurch of bitter, sickening irony at the pointless waste of life.
She doesn’t know you guide me, she thought.
I didn’t need them to tell me where she’s going.
“Not a morsel of food left on the ship,” Veltta reported once she had mastered herself.
“We found some tracks over there.” She pointed to the slope north of the glacier.
“Beyond the ridge there’s only a great field of ice as far as you can see.
The tracks tell of sleds hauled by human hand.
There’s a score of empty benches in the rowing deck, so it looks like not every slave was abandoned. ”
Nodding, Elvine turned to Kahlvik. “Any notion of how to build a sled, Vellihr?”
He stared at her. “You intend to follow her? Across the ice?”
“I do. With any who will come with me, though I’ll not compel them.”
“I’ll be with you,” Veltta promised, casting a vengeful glance at the wreck.
Her vow was swiftly echoed by her crew, along with all of Elvine’s guards.
Reasoning she had a large enough party, she spared Kahlvik the burden of arguing the folly of her course, and hence the need to voice a formal refusal to follow her.
“Remain here with the ships,” she told him, lowering her voice to add, “And I’ll ask that you continue to endure the former Tielwald’s company. The ice is no place for him. Stay only until your supplies can sustain you for the voyage home. If we have not returned by then, do not linger.”
“Spear Maiden…” the seafarer began, falling silent when Elvine clamped a firm hand on his arm and leaned closer. “She will not escape me,” she stated. “Nor the reckoning she is due. Even if I have to track her across the world entire. Now build me some sleds.”