Chapter Thirty-Two Elvine
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Elvine
They used scavenged timber and ropes from the wrecked ship to construct a dozen sleds.
Several of Kahlvik’s crew hailed from the northern gelds where crafting such things was an annual chore.
Deck boards were sawed down the middle to create runners and ropes woven into webbing to bind the contrivances together.
Each sled was allocated to a three- or four-strong group who hauled them up the slope to the ice plain where they were laden with supplies.
“Nothing stirs hunger like cold,” Kahlvik warned Elvine as the last few bundles were fixed to the sleds. “Expect to eat twice as much and still grow thinner by the day. You have perhaps enough for a week upon the ice, Spear Maiden. So, if you haven’t caught her within three days—”
“I will,” Elvine cut in, hefting the spear for emphasis.
“For my guide senses the Traitor Queen moves slowly. The folly of using unwilling slaves to port her victuals, I expect. Fitting that it should be her undoing.” Seeing Gruinskard’s bulky frame struggling to the crest of the slope, she went to greet him.
“Better you had remained on the ship,” Elvine said.
“Then I would miss what will most likely be the last glimpse of the Spear Maiden before she disappears forever,” the old man replied in a gust of steaming breath. “One of many salient events seen by this aged eye. I should really get round to writing it all down one of these days.”
“A chronicle I shall be very curious to read, in time,” Elvine said. She paused, unable to properly phrase her request. “My mother…” she began, only for Gruinskard to wave her to silence.
“I’ll tell her all about it should you fail to return,” he said. “Though it’s bound to make her hate me even more.”
“I want her to know I had no choice. And that I…” Finding her words stalled in a thickened throat, Elvine faltered, wiping at her eyes with fur mittens lest the tears freeze upon her skin. Gruinskard watched her sniff for a short interval before speaking.
“When I learned of your birth, I considered having you killed,” he said.
“I knew who your father truly was, of course, for it has ever been my business to know such things. He was, and still is I imagine, a very dangerous man. Having a child with his blood born to one of my most valuable agents felt like a risk I was unwilling to tolerate. But, even for one such as I, killing a child is not something done lightly. So, I had you watched instead. Every year I would receive a report from my agent in Olversahl, and every year the question of killing you rose to mind. You seemed so harmless, until, of course, you began your curious attachment to the Covenant of Martyrs. I found it both strange and disappointing. I had thought you too keen of mind for the mundanities of cults and such. The foolish enthusiasm of youth, I suppose.”
“Was that how Ilvar learned of our congregation? You told him?”
“I never told that empty-skulled fool a single thing of value. No, he learned about your clutch of heretics from one of your fellow youthful idiots. You might have imagined yourselves discreet, but you were anything but. I did, however, take full advantage of the situation when Lore brought it to my notice. For that is what a Tielwald does. If it matters to you, I consider it one of my better decisions.”
Unable to parse whether this was a compliment or not, Elvine merely shook her head, voicing a hollow laugh. “Also,” she said, “should I not return, I would ask that you convey my apologies to Queen Thera for failing to deliver the Traitor Queen’s head.”
Gruinskard nodded, his eye slipping to the spear. “I overheard your brother telling you to throw that thing in the sea. When this is over, I strongly suggest you follow his advice. One thing centuries of life has taught me is that no good ever comes from mortal communion with the gods.”
For the first few miles, Elvine found the trek easy-going.
Hauling a sled alongside Colvyn and Varnyr proved a relatively untaxing chore, although she was aware her guards and Captain Veltta’s crew felt the strain far more acutely.
But, after hours of crunching across the snowbound plain, she found the cold to be an even worse adversary than exertion.
Despite the swaddling of fur and wool that covered her, the chill appeared skilled in finding ways to seep into her flesh.
It began in her hands and feet, a creeping ache that never quite became the numbness she would have preferred.
Added to that was the irritation of ice forming on the fur of her hood which had a habit of breaking off to leave tiny cuts on the small fraction of her face still exposed to the elements.
Varnyr had insisted on wrapping a scarf about her nose and mouth, cutting a small slit to allow for easy breathing.
Although, as the sojourn dragged on, she increasingly felt every breath to be inadequate, as if her lungs refused to draw in sufficient air.
By the time Veltta called time for their first rest, Elvine found she had to resist the urge to collapse.
“You must eat, Spear Maiden,” Varnyr said, handing her a jar of pickled fish. Never especially fond of the stuff, she nevertheless wolfed down the contents in moments. Kahlvik clearly hadn’t been exaggerating the effects of cold upon her appetite.
“Strange they’re making no effort to cover their tracks,” Veltta commented, nodding to the ruts and footprints clearly visible in the snow. By her reckoning, they described a course almost exact in line with the constellation of Aerldun’s Eye.
“Concealing a trammelled path is nigh impossible on the ice,” Varnyr said. Casting a critical eye at the partially clouded sky, he added, “And they may be counting on snow, which I judge will soon fall.”
“W-won’t help them,” Elvine said, patting the spear while fighting to control the chatter of her teeth.
The spirit within had been constant in assuring her that it could track Lore’s path, while also providing an arch commentary on her lack of progress.
She seethes with frustration, venting her anger in cruelty to her slaves.
She knows we follow and is tormented by the thought that she might be prevented from reaching her goal.
“She needs a fire,” Colvyn said, moving to peer at Elvine’s shivering features through the ice-encrusted hood. “We should rest a while longer.”
“No,” Elvine said.
“If we know where they’re going…”
“NO!” She shoved him away and clambered to her feet, taking up the sled’s ropes once again. “We’ve dawdled here enough!” she proclaimed in as close an approximation of the Spear Maiden’s voice as she could manage.
Colvyn was the only one to argue, the rest of them dutifully gulping down their meals and making ready to resume hauling. “If I didn’t think your pet monster would break my arms,” her brother said with a cautious glance at Varnyr, “I’d tie you to this thing and drag you back to the ship.”
A retort rose to Elvine’s lips, but she found she lacked the energy to voice it. “I appreciate your concern, esteemed brother,” she muttered in Ishtan, smothering a groan as the ropes bit into her shoulders and the ordeal began again.
Varnyr proved a good judge of the sky, for snow began falling within the hour. It quickly erased the tracks left by their quarry but the spear’s guidance remained both unerring and reassuring. This slows her too, it advised. And those around her begin to perish.
In response, Elvine tried to quicken their pace, but the changing weather made it impossible.
What had begun as a gentle snowfall soon became a blizzard.
She stumbled often, blinded by the swirling curtain of white, the chilled ache in her limbs spreading to her shoulders and hips.
She tried to ignore her pains, filling her mind with inward recitations of Ishtan poetry and long passages from the Altvar Rendi.
She was halfway through the saga detailing the trickery and myriad betrayals of Ihryka the Deceiver when she realised she was mumbling them face down in a snowdrift.
“Enough of this!” Varnyr’s voice was a dull, distant thing, though the feel of his arms as he gathered her up felt pleasantly real.
“There!” she heard him call out. “I see a ridge! We’ll shelter until this passes!
” After that, she was aware of being carried but not much else and slipped into senseless oblivion attempting to recall the name of Ihryka’s fifth husband.
She was woken by warmth, a sharp, jarring sensation that banished her aches to replace them with an uncomfortable head-to-toe itch. Blinking watery eyes, she saw the glow of a fire playing over what appeared to be an arched roof.
“Who is Torgyr?”
Raising her head from a fur pillow, she found Varnyr regarding her from across a fire.
Looking around, she saw Colvyn sleeping at her side and the rest of their company huddled together in something that resembled a long, low-ceilinged barrow.
“What?” she asked Varnyr, her head still fogged by waking.
“You spoke of a Torgyr in your sleep,” the Nihlvarian said. “You appeared worried for him. Is he a man close to your heart?”
His gruff, guarded tone almost brought a laugh to her lips.
Is he jealous? “Torgyr was the fifth and final husband to the goddess Ihryka,” she said.
“And, supposedly, the only mortal she ever truly loved. Yet, trust was not in her nature and so she had him prove his devotion by placing his hand in a cask full of adders. They didn’t bite, but he threw himself from a cliff shortly after anyway, unwilling to live in thrall to a woman incapable of trust.”