Shouts filled the air, the Snowskins and Weepers exchanging curses. Wagga the White took the bone-club from Stegra’s grasp and smashed it hard against the tooth. “Quiet! Quiet! The Walrus wishes to speak!”
The voices died down. The Walrus Lord was well respected, the oldest person here by a decade. He stood with the help of two strong men wearing green-grey whale-skin cloaks. His great necklace of tusks clattered as he rose, knocking against one another. He surveyed the room through rheumy eyes, thick-bodied and stooped, with long bristles drooping down from his lips and chin. Once they were red, Stegra had been told by his father Skagar, who had been Snowfist before him, but had long since turned white and brittle.
“The snows fall thick on the western shores,” the old man said, in a weak voice that one had to strain to hear. “Thicker than I have ever seen them. Many islands are lost beneath heavy drifts and the seas freeze over like never before. I am nine and ninety years old, and would live long enough to see my century on this good earth. That will not happen upon my lands, I fear. Stegra Snowfist is right. The End Fall is upon us.” His men helped him sit back down to more rattling and clacking of tusks.
His words left a silence. Stegra looked across his audience, saw the nodding along the benches. The Walrus Lord was wise, all agreed. Stegra had hoped for his support and expected it as well. Why else would he have emptied out his lands? Why else would he have packed up his tribe and stacked his great sleighs and ranged all this way through the cold, dark wilds? He has abandoned his home, Stegra thought, as I have. We have no choice now but to keep on going.
Men were musing along the benches, muttering at one another. Children fidgeted in the laps of their mothers and grandmothers and sisters and aunts. Stegra looked at those he had spoken with in private conference over the last few days. Many had expressed their fears to him. Some feared to speak against their leaders, and so Stegra would not expose them now, but he knew they would break from their tribes and join him when he left. We will become one tribe, he thought. As Shrikna said.
“These blizzards will not stop,” he said, ending the silence. His voice was final. He knew it was the truth. “They will fall until every tree and hill is buried beneath a hundred feet of snow. Even the Mole Men will not survive it, nor the Stone Men in their caves. There will be no food, no shelter, no relief. Every man, woman and child who remains in these lands will die.”
“Says you,” sneered Blood-Eye, sitting at the back. Stegra looked at him. Stegra hated him. Stegra had fought his people many times before. “You want to claim our lands in the mountains. You want to rally all these sheep and drive us out.”
“If you can be driven out by sheep, you deserve it,” Kusto Crowbane shouted at him. He spat on the floor. “You shouldn’t have come, Blood-Eye. No one wants you saved.”
The Weepers rose as one from their table. There were only ten of them, but they were fierce warriors all, and bore cruel weapons to go with their cruel ways, each one more ugly than the last. Smoke grey steel, jagged-edged and bloodstained. Clubs with spikes and nails bearing the marks of their latest kills. Short stabbing knives that they liked to use to put out eyes. Spears with razor edges that could be swung through a man just as easily as it could skewer him. The Weepers were raiders, rapers, pillagers, who roved down through the Weeping Heights and into the Banewood, killing villagers and setting traps for passing soldiers so they could steal their weapons and make them their own. They mutilated their arms the same as they did their enemies. And their faces, Stegra thought, reviled.
“Put away your weapons,” he said, over the noise. “Crowbane, do not inflame them.”
“Why not? I’m only saying what everyone is thinking.”
The Weepers stood ready for a fight. Two of them had leapt up onto the table at which they sat, brandishing bloodstained steel. If they seek blood, all of them will die, Stegra knew. They would kill many before then, yes, and would not care if they were women and children - nay, they would probably target the women and children - but none of them would make it out of the Hall of Orthrand alive, and this was sacred ground as well, where no blood should be spilt. Blood-Eye knew this. He raised a hand, and called for calm. Slowly, his men settled back down.
“We do not mean to take your lands, Blood-Eye,” Stegra said. “Only to pass through them.” He had spoken with some of the Crowmen already, their leader Tarek among them, who told him the passes would soon be closed and buried and there would be no way through the mountains. The Crowmen of the Crag dwelt in the lower foothills, but sometimes they ranged higher. Tarek’s reports had concerned him greatly. If we do not leave soon, we will all be trapped. “You know the high passes better than anyone, Blood-Eye. Forget Crowbane, he is an unwashed cur and has too much snow between his ears. I say it is good you have come. You are the best person to lead us out.”
Blood-Eye smiled a bloody smile, his gums all red and raw. They cut those too, Stegra knew, before going into battle, to make themselves appear more fearsome. “My help,” the Wildest Weeper said. That’s what they called their leader. ‘Wildest’. “So that is why you summoned us. For our help. And I thought you cared.”
“No one cares about you,” thundered Arnel Hammerhand, a giant of a man. A hundred other voices echoed him, coming from the Snowskins and the Deadcloaks and the Crowmen of the Crag. Even the shy Mole Men were shaking their fists.
It was the last thing Stegra needed. “Silence!” he bellowed, trying to restore calm. “Be silent, all of you! Silence!” Wagga the White gave the tooth another clang, swinging hard with the bone club, but it did no good. The entire hall had flown into an uproar, men and women hurling insults and accusations.
“You killed my mother!” one of the young Crowmen was shrieking at Blood-Eye. His feathers fluttered, black as night, as he surged to his feet and drew out a long black dagger. “I found her with her eyes stabbed out! You killed her! I know it was you!”
“I’ve killed hundreds,” Blood-Eye smiled.
Others were cursing them. More allegations were being hurled. One old woman said the Weepers had killed her husband and her sons. Another claimed her daughter had been raped and mutilated and left to die in the snow. One of the big Stone Men pulled a huge rock club from a strap on his back and gave a massive roar, but said no words. A few of the fisherfolk of the Silver Scar scampered away from him at that. Some were even leaving the hall, rushing for the pelt door, demanding that the guards let them through. Those men were under Stegra’s charge. He waved a hand so that the people could pass if they wished, and they turned to loose the drapes. At once the winds blew in, a frosted wind sparkling with ice crystals, stirring the flames of the serpent fire, causing the tongues to lick out at strange angles, the smokes to blow in a frenzy.
Wagga was still smashing at the tooth, but the arguing did not stop. Over all that, young Svaldar was shouting of the signs. “The creatures are leaving!” the boy was saying. “Listen to my father! They are leaving these lands and going to the south! It is one of the signs! And the other…the Ember of the Red Storm was seen! It was seen! It is the sign!”
Many did not heed him, and kept on shouting. Others, those closer, heard and turned to listen. They looked at Svaldar, and then Stegra, their eyes cast into fearful frowns. A few children were crying and clutching at their mothers. All knew the story of the Red Storm, the great dragon, wreathed in red lightning, that slew the bear god Orthrand, thousands of years ago. It was an age of gods and titans, when great monsters roamed the world. The dragon came from the distant lands of the south, a spawn of the Fire God, seeking to prove its power as the titan supreme. For hours, some say days, the two giants fought, until at last the colossal bear was cast down in this valley, his armoured fur breached at the neck, his throat ripped and torn asunder. It was said the fountain of blood that rose to the sky was like a geyser a thousand feet high, red against the cold white world, that when the bear fell the ground shattered beneath him, forming the great crater in which he still lay.
A woods witch, like Black Merryl, only much older and more powerful, had stood in the distance, watching the fight. Her name was Shrikna, and it was she who spread the story, she who said that one day an ember of the Red Storm would be seen, a spark in the night sky, and that it would herald the End Fall, the great snowstorm that would engulf all the lands until the time that the world shattered and ended, or was reborn, in what the steel people called the Last Renewal.
Stegra had not believed that tale, as he had not truly believed the prophecy of the Sea-King either. But then the Steel Lord had come, and the blight had been blown away, and Amron Daecar had found his fabled snow blade to take back to his lands. When Stegra said goodbye to him he had expected to never see him again. He expected only to lead his people to their prophesied land and settle there upon the shore, hunting the woods and fishing the rivers, but then the snow had come. It started as any snowfall, a soft drift gathering on the tops of the trees and coating the ground in a pretty white blanket, but within days all the woods were armoured in ice and the rivers had begun to stop flowing. The forests fell silent, he recalled. The creatures sensed it, and began to leave. And still the snow did not stop.
It fell for a week, and then another week, and then another, and another, and not once did it stop or slow, it only grew heavier. Stegra had called a council of his own people. They discussed it at length, and he said they had a choice to make. Some of the Snowskin elders said they should go, and abandon their new lands. Others that they should stay, that they had only just arrived, and could not give up so easily. The two-hundred-year prophecy of the Sea-King had been fulfilled. This was a time to celebrate, not surrender, they said.
And so they lingered, hoping the snows would ease. They didn’t. They just kept coming, and coming, and coming. Hope thinned, and more were swayed to the notion that the End Fall was upon them. Stegra and his hunters spoke of their time with the Steel Lord. They told the tribe of the scruffy little man called Walter, who was certain the Last Renewal had come, the war to end the War Eternal. It was cruel, Stegra’s people lamented. So cruel that their lands should be cleared of the blight only to be taken away again. Wagga the White said that one day they could return. When the world was reborn, the snows would thaw and they could come back, but how many would be left by then? None, if they did not leave. Stegra pressed and pressed, until one day, the huntsman Verner returned from a long ranging, and what he told them sealed their course.
He had seen the Ember.
One night, he said, when camping upon a hilltop, he had seen it pass the sky, the red light moving among the clouds. It drifted slowly, gliding, he told them, before falling away beneath some hills. At once he rushed back, leaving his kill behind. When he told Stegra what he’d seen the chieftain convened his people once more. He let Verner speak, telling them of his tale, and that same night Verner was christened with his new name, Verner the Herald, the one who had seen the sign. When the huntsman was done, Stegra saw no further dissent among his people. “We leave,” he had said to them. “Send out word to the other tribes. Tell them to gather at the Hall of Orthrand.”
And so they had come, gathering over the last week. And now we make our choice. Now we become one tribe.
The noise was thick in Stegra’s ears. His head was pounding, drumming with the beat of Wagga’s club against Orthrand’s fang. Many were staring at him, waiting for him to confirm his son’s words. He pulled back the hood of his cloak, and shouted. “The Ember has been seen. As the woods witch said it would, thousands of years ago.” He waved for Verner to climb the stage. The man joined him there. “Verner the Herald has seen the light spark in the sky, red as blood, spawn of the slayer of Orthrand. It cannot be denied! Tomorrow, the Snowkins will go south across the mountains. Who is with us? Who will come?”
The Walrus Lord was helped again to his feet, but many were still shouting and arguing and calling their curses and his words could not be heard. Wagga smashed harder at the tooth until he grew weary, and Svaldar took over, young and strong, pounding. Hraka the Great added his booming voice, and his Stone Men smashed clubs against the table, cracking the wood, splinters flying. “Quiet! Quiet! QUIET!” the stone lord bellowed. “I have heard enough! I will come with you, Snowfist! The Stone Men are with you!”
Stegra nodded at him. He met with the gaze of the Walrus Lord, who lowered his head, tusks clicking, and then sat back down with the help of his men. The voice of Black Merryl sliced through the tumult. Her eyes were like green moss, her hair tangled and black and wild. It was said she derived from Shrikna’s line, blood of the ancient woods witch. “Is this of the Ember true?” Her eyes moved to Verner. “You saw it?”
Verner told her yes with a nod. Then another voice said, “I have seen it too.”
Stegra looked around. The din was dying out now, more turning to listen. The voice was a woman’s, pitched high. Stegra saw her. One of the fisherfolk of the Scar. A young woman with an ice pick at her hip and a frog spear in her grasp, wearing clothes of thick, roughspun wool and a cloak of greatyak fur.
“You’ve seen the Ember?” Stegra asked her. He did not know the woman’s name.
She nodded. “It is why we came. We are of the high northwest, where the Scar nears the sea. I saw the light near the mountain.’
“The tomb of the steel god?” hissed Merryl. Her face twisted. “The Ember went close?”
“Only so close,” the fisherwoman answered. “Then it veered away, as the mountain stirred.”
“Stirred?” Stegra asked. “The mountain is dead. I saw it die.” He had been there the day the caverns and chambers collapsed, the bridges and the stairs and the towers all tumbling. They only just escaped, he and the Steel Lord and Blacksteel and Walter. Before then, the mountain had been rumbling for weeks, months, even so long as a year. But that day was the worst. It felt as though the trapped spirit of the god Vandar was raging down inside the earth, giving out his final death bellow before the world came down upon him.
“It still lives,” claimed the river-woman. She looked to others of her clan, in their yak-cloaks and river garb. Some of them were nodding. “It is weak, but the mountain lives.”
“Not dead, but dying,” rumbled Hraka the Great. “When the End Fall comes, all gods die.” The huge men about him murmured in assent.
