Magnus Frostbeard's Arc

Chapter 2 of 15

They cleared the town in the dark, boots crunching hard snow. Magnus had planned to chart the way out by first light. The pursuers stole that from him. Now he led four people into open ice with a map that ended at the town's edge. He pulled his fur-lined coat tight and squinted at the black plain ahead. Two paths split the snow. He did not know either one. "Left," Magnus said, because a leader must say something. Greta Stonebraid stopped. The troll planted her feet and folded her thick arms. "You're guessing," she said. "I go where maps end, Frostbeard. But I don't die because a dwarf won't admit he's lost." Her red braids swung as she jerked her chin at the ground. "Read the snow first." Magnus felt his face burn under the frost in his beard. She was right, and that stung worse than the cold. Frost Thornpaw dropped to all fours ahead of them. The were-bear's white fur nearly vanished against the drift. He pressed his black nose to the crust and moved slow along the left path. Then he stopped and growled low. "Hollow," he said. "Ice over water. It won't hold Greta. It won't hold me." He backed away from the spot with careful paws. Magnus stared at the left path he had chosen. One more step and it would have swallowed them. Frost Winterchase pushed past him. The ice elf knelt at the fork and laid her small blue hand flat on the snow. She had promised to guide them through the crevasse fields. This was her price coming due. "The right path runs on rock under the snow," she said. "I can feel it. Cold and solid. The left is a frozen pond. By morning the sun weakens it and it opens." "You're sure," Magnus said. "I was born in the ice," she said. "It talks to me. Follow." Magnus swallowed his pride and waved them right. Winterchase led. Thornpaw ranged ahead on all fours, testing each stretch. Greta walked last, rope coiled on her shoulder, ready to haul anyone who slipped. They moved slow. They moved alive. By the time the sky turned gray, the town had shrunk to a black smudge behind them. They stood on hard, safe ground. No one had gone through the ice. Magnus pulled out his map. His half-charted line ended where the town did. He took his stub of charcoal and drew the new path, fork by fork, the way Winterchase had read it. The blank half of the chart gained one thin mark. "That's one turn," Greta said behind him. "There's a thousand more." "Then we chart them one at a time," Magnus said. He did not tell her the harder truth. Winterchase's ears kept twitching toward the smudge of the town, and her hand had not left her blade. Whoever hunted her had not turned back.