Seeing that braid, knowing from experience what something like that meant, Kimmie immediately burst into tears and ran over to the table, kneeling before it and clutching the severed braid between trembling paws. She knew that he would never have left something like that, a piece of himself a magic-user could use against him, without a very good reason. And giving it to her, the mother of one of his children, told her his reason, even if she wasn't entirely sure how she knew what it meant.

Weeping into the braid, she cradled it and the cat statue to her breast, knowing that it was Tarrin's way of telling her goodbye.

And that he wasn't sure if he was coming back.

And so, without fanfare, without farewells, and without even any notice, Tarrin and Jesmind disappeared from the Tower of Six Spires after Tarrin retrieved a small book of lunar charts and astronomical observances from Phandebrass, made a few other arrangements, picked up Jesmind, and then he had Jenna Teleport them silently out of the Tower. The only ones who knew they'd left were Triana and Jenna, and neither mentioned anything to anyone until well into the next day

And a quiet, mourning Kimmie, who jealously guarded the precious gifts he had left to her, gifts that she did not reveal to any other living soul.

To: Title EoF

Chapter 13

It was cold.

Cold wasn't a very descriptive term, however. Freezing would have been better, or arctic, or brutal, but they all described the biting, knife-like cold of the coastal plains of Ungardt.

Tarrin and Jesmind loped to the east, leaving the city of Dusgaard behind during the dead of night, with only the light of the Skybands and the Red Moon to light their way, the colors casting stranges shadows on the crusted snow that was piled a span or more on the ground. The snow did little to slow them down, for Tarrin's height made a span of snow a pittance, and Jesmind followed in the trail he broke in the frozen snow. His feet, submerged in the snow most of the time, felt comparitavely warm compared to what he felt against his skin. Winters were cold in Ungardt, and coming out at night, the temperature was as far below the freezing point of water as it was above the freezing point in the midday desert. Biting cold sank its teeth into both of them, but it found that it could not gain purchase. Neither was properly dressed for the intense cold, but their Were-cat natures defended them from frostbite. Their regenerative abilities prevented their flesh from freezing by expending energy to keep them warm, and that would protect them for a short while. For Tarrin, it was a bit more. His strong connection to the Weave allowed its energy to flow through him just as if he were a strand, something that required no effort or energy on his part, and that energy produced heat. The same heat he had Transmuted his body to protect against now warded off the arctic chill, keeping him at a comfortable temperature.

It would have to protect them, because they couldn't stop. Ungardt weren't paranoid, but if they knew Tarrin was there, they would slow them down. Not over challenging them, but over hospitality. Hospitality was serious business to the Ungardt, and if any of the clan caught him out on his own, they'd invite him into their lodges, and Tarrin would be foreced to accept. If he snubbed them, it could cause an incident between his family and the offended family… and in Ungardt, such spats often led to bloodshed. The Ungardt did not have the same strictures about fighting among themselves as the Selani had, and Ungardt fought with each other with greater enthusiasm than they did with outsiders. Ungardt considered a fight with another Ungardt as a fight worthy of their talents. Tarrin had to get them out of the populated areas before dawn, then the sun's return brought the temperate up to that which the Ungardt would find more acceptable to outside activity. The other reason was because he didn't want anyone to know where he was. If an Ungardt saw him, they'd spread the word, and it wouldn't take that long to get back to his enemies. He didn't want to give anyone any help in tracking him down. So Tarrin led Jesmind on a murderous pace, knowing that they had to get off the coastal plain and up into the foothills as quickly as they could.

It took them quite a while to get off the coastal plain. Ungardt was the largest kingdom in the West, but it was also the least populated, and the vast majority of that population was hugged up against the sea. There were occasional villages scattered along the rolling hills off the coastal plain, but one could go for days travelling between them. The other concentration of Ungardt was to the far east of the kingdom, in the Frozen Mountains and the rugged foothills abutting them on the west edge, where Ungardt miners and craftsmen were concentrated to mine the vast deposits of iron and coal out of the glacier-covered mountains and rugged foothills, and craft it into tools, weapons, or large ingots of pure iron for sale to other kingdoms. There were huge complexes up in the mountains where the Ungardt used their precious blast furnaces to melt the iron down into stock and ingots, using the coal they mined from the foothills to fuel their furnaces. The technology of the blast furnace was relatively new, the Ungardt only having it for a about fifty years or so, and it was the cause of the infamous Iron War between Wikuna and Ungardt. The Wikuni had refused to sell the plans for a blast furnace to the Ungardt, trying to maintain a stranglehold on their trade in cast-iron goods, so one enterprising Ungardt noble emptied out his entire strongroom to buy a Wikuni agent and have the man steal the plans for the device. The crazy idea actually worked, and a year later the Ungardt noble had in his greedy little hands the plans for constructing a blast furnace. The Wikuni took great offense to this, and made the eternal mistake of blaming the king of Ungardt and the entire kingdom rather than just the offending noble. Malor Eram, king at that time, declared war on Ungardt. The Ungardt were actually happy over it, ready to put the arrogant Wikuni in their place, and began a two year war. The Ungardt were not fools. They knew that the clippers and frigates of the Wikuni gave them superiority at sea, so they took their longship up into the pack ice of the arctic reaches of the northern area of the kingdom and left them there, beyond the reach of the Wikuni, whose ships were not designed to deal with ice-laden seas. Then they pulled back from the coastal plain and allowed the Wikuni to occupy Ungardt soil, because they wanted them where they could get their hands on them. But Jorg Skullsplitter, king of the clans at that time, didn't attack them immediately. He let them build up as much as they desired that first year, and then winter set in. The Wikuni learned quickly and to their eternal regret that no one invades Ungardt in the winter, and no one can defeat the Ungardt who fight in the winter. The Ungardt fully understood and expected, and were both used to and prepared for, the fury of the northern winter. The Wikuni knew what to expect in the Ungardt winter, but even they underestimated the depths of the cold of the winter, a cold so intense that the Wikuni, even in their fur, didn't want to venture more than two steps from their fires. Jorg let them freeze to death for a couple of months, then his warriors boiled out of the foothills like a wave crashing on the beach and easily overwhelmed the Wikuni defenders. They even captured their clippers and frigates, which were stripped of their gunpowder, cannons, and then set at the heads of the fjords to fire on Wikuni vessels from atop unreachable fjordheads as they passed. Malor Eram sent an even larger force in the spring, but they were shocked when the Ungardt, sailing Wikuni vessels, began ambushing them on the open seas and captureing or sinking their troop transports at an alarming rate. The Wikuni were forced to use convoys to protect their vulnerable transports, but that only minimized the destruction. The Ungardt would sweep down on those convoys, sink as many troop transports as they could, which weren't heavily armed to give more space to carrying soldiers, then they would run away. The Wikuni learned that the Ungardt were their equals on the seas when they had Wikuni vessels under them. These slashing tactics had a devastating effect, and the numbers of troops that landed on Ungardt soil were overrun by hordes of berzerk Ungardt warriors, unafraid of their muskets and cannons. They held the Wikuni off the whole spring and summer, then again pulled back into the foothills as winter approached, daring the Wikuni into trying to occupy their land in the teeth of winter again.