Ike Frostthread's Arc

Chapter 3 of 2

Thorn's demand still hung over the ice. A live frost-gorgon, caged and tamed, and Ike had nothing that could hold one. His glider boxes were toys next to that beast. So he lifted the drinking horn at his belt and blew. The long note rolled across the frozen lake and into the trees. The hunters came. Sivara reached him first, blowgun across her back, her buck hunt abandoned at the sound. Veyla followed, bow in hand, moving without wasted steps. Seren came last, spear tip still faintly purple with Venara toxin, a Gloomstalker trail left cold behind them. Ike told them what Thorn wanted. No one laughed. "We don't kill it," Veyla said. "We catch it." She said it like a closed door. "Then we need a pit," Seren said. "Far side. Narrow ground." They built it on the lake's far shore, where two ridges pinched the ground into a narrow passage. Ike laid out the design. He had trapped all his life, but never anything this size, and the others trusted his eye for triggers and trip-lines. They dug deep into the permafrost. They dropped frostbound logs for walls and hung weighted bars above the mouth. They strung the trigger lines taut. It took two full frost cycles. The hunters worked without rest, grinning at the size of it, asking Ike where each line should run. Then they found the gorgon. It fed in a hollow below the ridge, a mountain of gray armor on six pillar legs, the dome of its skull studded with glowing purple eyes. It was taller than their huts. Ike's mouth went dry. They spread wide and closed in. Veyla banged her spear shaft on frozen log. Seren shouted and waved. Sivara drove it from the flank, careful, never close enough to be crushed. The gorgon swung its great head and bellowed. It would not turn toward the pit. "Push harder," Ike called. "Give it one way to run." They tightened the ring. Sivara flashed her skin bright blue, a wall of light on the one open side. The gorgon panicked. It wheeled and charged straight down the narrow passage, legs hammering ice. The trigger lines snapped. The weighted bars dropped behind it with a crack that shook the ground. The beast slammed the log walls and roared. The pit held. Six purple eyes glared up through the bars, but the frostbound logs did not give. They had a live frost-gorgon, caged and whole. Ike sagged against a post, arms shaking. The hunters whooped and clapped his shoulders. They looked at him now the way village folk looked at his father, like someone who could teach them. "It's trapped," Veyla said. "The rest is Thorn's problem." Ike stared at the furious beast. He had done the impossible thing Thorn asked. But taming it, harnessing it to a sled, that was never his trade. Now Thorn had to make the monster pull.