Magnus Frostbeard's Arc

Chapter 13 of 15

The food gave them strength for one hard march. Magnus led his crew across the ice toward the white ridge, the compass burning gold in his fist. Then the ground broke open. A crack split the ice before them, wide as a wagon. Magnus stopped at its lip and looked down. Black water or black shadow. He could not tell. On the far side lay a low white shelf, and beyond it the ridge that held the warmth. "Can you read it?" Magnus asked. Winterchase knelt and pressed both palms flat to the ice. She closed her eyes. Her fingers moved along the edge, then stopped. "The far side is water under thin crust," she said. "Not rock. If you step there, you fall through." She opened her eyes. "Half a day's warmth, and a river we cannot cross." Magnus walked the crack's edge. It ran left and right until it vanished into gray haze. Too far to go around. Greta thumped her heavy fist against the ice. "Then we swim, or we die here in sight of it," she said. Magnus shook his head. Wet clothes in this wind meant death. A snort stopped him. Across the crack, a horse stood on the thin white shelf. It was stocky and broad, its coat dark blue shot through with purple. It watched them with steady eyes and did not sink. On its flank clung a small marmoset, its fur frosted white, its wide eyes fixed on Magnus. The horse pawed the crust. It held. "It stands where you say we'd fall," Magnus told Winterchase. She frowned. "Then the crust holds a light weight in one place and not another. It knows the ice. We don't." Magnus watched the horse cross the shelf. Its hooves found firm spots the eye could not see. He made his plan. "We follow it," he said. "Not straight. Where it steps, we step." He unwound the rope from his pack. He tied one end to Greta, the strongest, and the other to himself. Winterchase would read each step before he took it. The horse turned along the crack. It walked a slow line, and where its hooves pressed, the crust rang solid. Magnus followed, one boot at a time, testing with the rope taut behind him. Winterchase called out the soft spots. Greta braced to haul him back. The marmoset chittered from the horse's back, and the horse kept moving. The line the horse walked was not a bridge, but it held like one, a hard span of clear ice bending toward the far shelf. Magnus crossed it step by step. His crew came behind, roped and slow. When his boots touched the white shelf, it did not give. He turned and pulled Winterchase up, then Greta. The horse trotted ahead toward the ridge and did not stop. Magnus stood on solid ground at last. Between him and the warmth lay no more water. Only the climb.