I'm not unarmed, she suddenly realized. Twisting, she gazed directly into the imp's face. Its tiny jaws snapped, crystal teeth shining fiercely. Gulping for air, the Harper blew as warmly as she could into the mephit's ice-ridged eyes.
"Burns!" squealed the imp. Its death lock grip loosened as it clutched at its scalded face, and in a flash, Martine clenched James knife.
"Burn, Hot Blood! You burn!" the creature squealed in her ear.
Martine wrenched her bloodied arm free and reached up to seize the creature's forehead. The stretch of muscles triggered fires of pain that she forced herself to ignore. Somewhere she'd lost a mitten, and now the mephit's icy ridges tore at her hand. With a panting effort, she bucked once more, twisting the imp's head back as she did. Blindly she jabbed the dagger over her shoulder. It hit something solid, held, and then dug in farther. The mephit shrieked in her ear, proof enough she'd hit home. With all the strength she could muster, Martine shoved the blade outward, feeling it slide in jerky pops as it cut through something. All at once the blade broke free, and her arm shot out like a punch-drunk fighter's.
The shriek still rang in her ears, almost blocking out the choking gurgle that replaced it. Clear blood, colder than ice water, washed down her shoulder as the arms of the imp broke loose in wild flails. Martine flung the creature off her and spun around to deliver the coup de grace. The killing stroke was unnecessary, for the mephit already lay on the ground, its head lolling as the body heaved in reflexive jerks. Her thrust had caught it just below what looked like its ear and sliced down the length of its neck, releasing a flood of silver-white blood.
Martine didn't wait for the creature to die. Already she felt unsteady on her feet, and her wounds were icing up with blood-soaked frost. Concentrating dully, she gutted her pouch, first taking care to pocket Jazrac's keystone, then plastered the leather over her shredded shoulder. A quick inspection gave her no relief, for her wounds were both bloody and deep. She recovered her mitten and gingerly slipped it over her scraped hand.
"I can't wait here. Vreesar might be back." Talking kept her focused. She looked up into the darkness at the jumble of the slide. Somewhere up there was the glacier wall and the valley beyond. Gathering her sword and her few recovered possessions, the woman began to climb.
Two steps up, one back; two steps up, one back… So it seemed through the long ascent Boulders tauntingly gave beneath her feet, triggering slides that threatened to drag her back down to the bottom of the slide. Ice made her footing treacherous. Wind froze her hands into claws. She stabbed into the ice with her sword like an ice axe, chipping footholds with the point, driving the blade in as deep as possible. The blue light of magic was gone, leaving only the feeble starlight to suggest the way. More than once she
almost plunged into darkened hollows, thinking they were solid ground.
How long it took her to reach the top or how she reached it, Martine could not say. After a point there was no memory of the climb's details, only the need to climb and keep moving. The exhausted ranger wasn't even aware she'd cleared the worst of it until she found herself staggering across the cracked ice plain of the surface. Up here, with all the stars of the night to guide her, Martine could just see the subtle change where the frozen wall sagged to the valley floor, a descending road to safety. She made for it.
At least I can die in the forest, she thought morbidly.
At the edge of the great ramp, Martine heard voices. Dumbly, she froze where she stood, unable to think of cover or safety. She concentrated on the voices. They were guttural and sharp, not like Vreesar's hissing buzz. There were several of them, too a group, though she couldn't tell how many. Numbly she moved slowly closer to the source.
Then she saw them, no more than twenty feet below her. There were six, perhaps seven gnolls, working their way up the slope, well armed and thickly furred. They were still too far away to understand their words, but Martine could only presume the night's events had drawn them here. Vreesar wasn't with them, and she doubted they even knew of him.
Perhaps it was blind exhaustion that gave her the idea, or perhaps it was the need to survive. Although the Harper knew she could hide and let them pass by, instead she stepped boldly into the path or as boldly as her wavering muscles could support her and raised her arms above her head in the universal sign of surrender.
Five
For a moment, the gnolls stood gaping at the apparition over them, their weapons dangling at their sides. The leader tore back its parka hood and sniffed the air in suspicion, its glistening muzzle quivering to catch the scents of the night. Its black lips curled back from yellowed fangs as it barked orders to the others. In a concerted rush of flapping furs and clanking weapons, they fell upon their prisoner with astonishing haste.
The five dog-men acted quickly to take control of their prize. Martine was so weak and consumed with fatigue that she practically fell into their arms. She knew surrendering was a risk, but if it worked, it would at least get her off the ice. She denied to herself the other possibility that they just might kill her.
Under the leader's command, the group stripped her of weapons with brutal efficiency, even finding Jazrac's pretty little knife, before lashing her wrists with a spare bowstring. Her torn shoulder hurt terribly, but at least they
hadn't killed her outright.
"What do we with it?" the smallest gnoll in the group yipped finally. The fur of its hide was still raw beige and downy. It was barely more than a cub, Martine guessed.
"Kill it." The snarl came from a stocky male, the long jut of its muzzle barely visible under the cowl of its hood.
The leader of the pack, its hood pulled back as it surveyed the glacier, flicked a loose ear in irritation. "No killing now," it barked in gravelly whisper. "Later back in camp. We will share meat with our females." A sharp finger prodded the Harper's side, as if testing the thickness of her fat. "Or maybe we eat it all ourselves." The group broke into a coughing laugh, stomping their snowy feet with approval.
It was clear her captors didn't realize their prisoner understood every word of their guttural language, knowledge gained from her years as a huntress. Nor was she about to tell them. It might be the only advantage she would get, so it was best to keep her knowledge concealed for now. Doing her best to play dumb, Martine waited for the last of their chuckles to die.
"And the lights on the tall ice?" the runt asked with a nod toward the crest of the plain. "Do we go closer?"
The bareheaded one, its thin white fur wisping in the breeze, shook its head from side to side. "We came to hunt, not to look at colored lights. Now we have good game. We go." There was no debate against the old gnoll's decision, and Martine could tell it expected none.
The group made a quick descent, their keen night sight allowing them to move easily through the darkness. Martine, her bound hands hampering her balance, unable to see the path in the blackness, stumbled along trying to keep up. None of the hyenalike men ever once slowed its pace or suggested concern for the struggling human. Each slip and fall was rewarded with a savage jerk or shove to set her back on course, the fire in her shoulder renewed.
Even at their breakneck pace through the starlit night, Martine tried to note their passage. It was an attention to detail born of habit. The curl of a drift, the switchbacks of their trail, even the grating shifts of crumbling snow beneath her feet were like islands of reality in a nightmarish sea of ice. The slide they were on was not fresh. She could tell by the way the wind had sculpted the snowy blocks and by the stiff-crusted drifts that nestled in the hollows. Near the base, where the slope tapered off, the path crossed a ribbon of ice that left the ranger confused. Even in the starlight, it glinted with clear purity, reflecting the night back in the smooth ripples of its surface. It should have been jagged and cracked, the way ice gets when it warms and freezes, but she could only imagine it as a flowing river.