Magnus Frostbeard's Arc

Chapter 6 of 15

The relic warmed Magnus's fist, but warmth did not fill bellies. He counted the sacks at dawn and found them empty. The fuel tin held nothing but scrapings. Blank ice stretched ahead, white and flat, no shelter, no game, no end he could see. He did the math cold. Two days of walking. One day of food. His crew would starve before the ice broke into any valley. "We turn back or we die," Greta said. She dropped the last frostberry crumbs into her palm and stared at them. "There's nothing out there to eat." Winterchase knelt away from them, both hands flat on the ice. She had read the ice all night, guiding them turn by turn, and now she read it again. Her pale eyes narrowed. "Hollow," she said. "Not water. Air. A cave, under us. Wide." Magnus dropped beside her and pressed his ear to the ice. Faint, far below, he heard hooves. Many of them. "Something lives down there," he said. They found the mouth of it a half mile on, where the glacier split open. A tunnel led down into blue walls that glowed with their own light. The wind died the moment they stepped inside. Magnus's breath slowed. The chamber ran deep and still, smooth ice curving overhead like a frozen sky. At the far end grazed a herd of stocky pale horses. They lifted their heads, untamed, ears back, but they did not bolt. They fed on thick blue clumps of leaves that grew from cracks in the cave floor, layer on layer, fresh and green-blue in the dim light. Magnus had not seen a living plant in weeks. "Food," Thornpaw said. He crouched low, nose working. "Real food. And meat, if we need it." Magnus pulled a clump free and bit it. Bitter, wet, but it filled his mouth and did not sicken him. He handed clumps to the others. Greta ate three at once. Winterchase chewed slow, watching the horses, then reached out and touched the nearest one's neck. It let her. "They know the way in and out," she said. "They didn't come here to die. There's more cave beyond. Warmer air moves through it." Magnus felt it then, a thread of warm wind from deep in the glacier, the same warmth the relic held. He rolled out his chart and marked the sanctum, the leaves, the herd. Not a guess. A place that fed them. A place that pointed on. "We rest here," he said. "We eat. We fill every sack." He looked at the tunnel running deeper, where the warm air came from. "Then we follow the wind." But as the crew ate, Winterchase pressed her ear to the ice at the cave mouth. Her hand went still. "Hooves," she said. "Shod. Coming from above." The riders had found the tunnel too.