Magnus Frostbeard's Arc

Chapter 14 of 15

The white ridge rose ahead, a wall of ice between Magnus and the warmth. He counted the murmlets in his pack. Two days of food, maybe three. He could not see past the ridge. He did not know if a man could climb it. Guess wrong, and they would starve on the wrong side of the world. "We find the route before we spend the food," Magnus said. "Not after." Greta grunted and shouldered the coil of rope. Winterchase pressed her palm to the ridge's base and shook her head. "Solid rock under the ice here," she said. "But I cannot feel the top. Too high." Magnus walked the base and looked up. The face ran smooth and steep. No ledge, no crack he could reach. Then he saw the trees. A cluster of slender trunks grew from a shelf halfway up, their branches glazed white and shining. Roots meant cracks. Cracks meant handholds. "There," he said. "If we reach those trees, we can see the far side." The blue horse stood higher up, on a narrow ledge Magnus had not marked. The frosted marmoset clung to its flank and chittered down at him. The horse pawed the ledge, then climbed a slanted seam in the rock, slow and sure. Magnus watched where its hooves found purchase. He traced the line with his eyes and fixed it in his mind like a route on a chart. "We follow the horse again," Magnus said. He tied the rope to Greta, then to himself. Winterchase went first, reading each hold before he trusted it. Her fingers found solid rock where the eye saw only ice. Magnus climbed after her, boots wedged in the seam the horse had shown. Greta braced below, ready to haul. The wind tore at them. Magnus's beard froze stiff. Near the frost-glazed trees, his boot slipped on glass ice. He dropped. The rope snapped tight and Greta held him. He hung, swung, then caught the trunk of a frozen tree and pulled himself onto the shelf. His hands bled through his gloves. He stood among the shining branches and looked over the ridge. Below spread a bowl of green. Winterberry bushes grew thick with red fruit. A stream ran dark and unfrozen. No snow lay in the hollow at all. The warm valley. It was real, and it was close. An ice butterfly the size of a hawk lifted from the trees below. Its wings shimmered with frost, and a crown of ice rose from its head. It circled the valley once, then settled on a winterberry bush and folded its great wings. Magnus watched it and did not know if it guarded the place or lived in it. "I can see the route down," Magnus called to his crew. "The valley is there. We can eat when we reach it." He marked the descent in his mind and started back for the rope. The climb into the valley would be the next thing, and its guardian waited below.