Travel To the Ice Land

I am Ortossi, Ubar of Ven'dara.

Ven'dara stands high-walled and proud on the edge of the northern trade routes, her banners of crimson and steel snapping above the gate towers. For twenty winters I have held the Chair, by sword and by will. The Home Stone is secure. The city thrives.

Now I leave it.

Word has come from the north - beyond the Barrens, beyond the last outposts of the Wagon Peoples, where even the sleen grow thin-coated and white. A frozen land. In the tongue of the Red Hunters it is called the Hard Ice, where the sun is pale and the sea itself becomes stone.

Two things call me there.

First, a tarn rider, half-dead from cold, fell from the sky onto the courtyard of my palace three nights ago. His tarn died beneath him. On his body was a pouch of bluish white furs, such as no hunter of the south has ever seen, and a shard of clear ice that does not melt, even by the brazier. He spoke one word before he died: "Torvald."

Second, Torvald is of Ven'dara. My cousin. Exiled five years ago for raising steel against me in Council. I spared his life. I should not have. He fled north with fifty men and swore he would return a Ubar himself.

He has not returned. He has built.

My scouts say there is smoke over the polar ice. A palisade. A tower of black rock hauled from beneath the glacier. He calls it New Ven'dara.

I will not have two Ven'daras in one world.

So I go north.

I take with me one hundred swordsmen of the Scarlet Caste, twenty tarn riders, though the cold will kill many birds, and ten of the Caste of Builders, to see how a wall can be made to stand on ice. I take kaiila, shaggy and thick-footed for the snow, and sleen, to scent the white larl that hunts there.

We wear the furs of the northern tabuk. Our helmets are bound with wool. The tarn goads are wrapped lest the metal freeze to flesh.

This morning I stood before the Home Stone and placed my hand upon it.

"Tarl Cabot once went to the polar north for Priest-Kings," said my First Scribe. "Few return."

"Then I shall return where others did not," I said. "Let it be written: Ortossi, Ubar of Ven'dara, has gone to claim the frozen land, and to settle blood debt."

The gates opened. The snow wind came in, from the north.

We march.

The march - Day 27.

We have left the world behind.

The Barrens are gone. The grass has given way to stone, then stone to snow, then snow to ice that sings beneath the kaiila's feet. The wind never stops. It is a living thing here, a knife that finds every seam in fur.

Half my tarn are dead. They could not breathe so high and so cold. We released the others, sent them south. We are on foot now, and kaiila-back. In this place, the tarn is not the master. The sleen is.

It is dusk, though it is difficult to tell dusk from dawn here. The sun is a pale coin behind white haze. It does not set. It circles.

And then - we crest the last ridge of blue ice.

Below us lies the frozen land.

It is not a land at all. It is a sea, frozen so hard and so long that mountains have grown upon it. Glaciers, taller than the walls of Ven'dara, gleam green and blue in the low light. Between them, veins of black rock thrust up. And in the center of the largest plain of ice...

Smoke.

I lift the far-seer to my eye, though the glass fogs instantly. I wipe it.

There.

A wall. Low, but thick. Built not of cut stone, but of ice blocks, each the size of a cart, fused together with water that has frozen harder than mortar. Behind it, huts of fur and bone. And a tower. Aye, a tower of the black rock I was told of, quarried from beneath the ice. It is crude. It is defiant. A banner flies from it - not the crimson and steel of Ven'dara, but crimson and steel torn, with a white slash across it.

Torvald's banner.

He has taken thirty or forty men, and made them live where no man should live. I see figures moving on the wall. Hunters, returning, dragging a great white-furred beast behind them.

My warriors gather around me. Their beards are ice. Their eyes are red from wind.

"Ubar?" says Tharn, Captain of my Guard. "It is as the scout said. New Ven'dara."

"It is no Ven'dara," I say, my voice harsh from cold. "It is a camp of thieves on my ice."

I dismount from the kaiila. My boots sink to the knee. I draw my sword. The steel sings, though the air would freeze the breath in a man's lungs.

We will not approach in darkness. The ice deceives. There are crevasses here that could swallow a kaiila train whole.

"We camp on this ridge," I order. "No fires. The smoke would be seen. Eat cold meat. Sleep in the furs together, for warmth. At first light, we will go down."

Tharn looks at me. "And your command when we are met, Ubar?"

I look down at the tower. My cousin waits there, thinking himself safe at the end of the world.

"My command," I say, "is that I will speak first to Torvald of Ven'dara. One Ubar to another. And if he kneels, and renounces the name, I will permit him to live as a bondsman in the place he built."

"And if he does not kneel?"

The wind howls off the frozen sea below.

"Then there will be only one Ven'dara before the sun circles again."

I sheathe my blade.

We descend a little, to find shelter from the wind behind a spine of ice. Below us, the lights of Torvald's settlement begin to kindle - small yellow fires, impossibly fragile against the vast white and blue.

The frozen land knows we have arrived.

Dawn - if it can be called dawn. The pale sun has not moved, only brightened.

I have not slept. No Ubar sleeps the night before a reckoning.

We rose before the light strengthened. We left the kaiila on the ridge with ten men. The ice plain below is treacherous at midday when the top layer softens. Now, in the morning cold, it will hold.

I take fifty swordsmen down. We go in column, shields slung, swords sheathed to show we do not come for slaughter - yet. The sleen pads before us, breaking trail.

The settlement sees us when we are still a half pasang out. A horn blows below - a deep, clumsy sound, made from the horn of the great white snow-larl. Men scramble to the ice-wall. Small figures.

We do not hurry. Let them watch. Let them feel the weight of Ven'dara coming across the white.

As we near, I see it more clearly. The wall is stronger than I thought. The ice blocks have been poured over with water until they are one solid rampart. Spears of ice line the top. The gate is made of black rock and bone, lashed with leather.

The gate opens before we reach it. He would not have me batter it. He is proud.

They come out to meet us on the ice.

Torvald.

He is changed. His beard is long now, braided with bone beads in the manner of the Red Hunters. He wears a coat of the bluish-white fur, the animal I have not named yet. His face is scarred by frost. But his eyes are the same - my aunt's eyes. My blood.

Behind him, thirty men. Thin, hard men, survivors. And among them, Red Hunters too, tall in their furs, with their long bows.

We stop, twenty paces apart. The wind cuts between us.

Torvald speaks first.

"Ortossi." His voice carries. "You came. I knew you would, when Hark did not return."

"Your rider died with honor," I say. "He kept your secret until death. The ice kept the rest."

I step forward, alone. My Guard would follow, but I raise a hand. This is between Ubars. Or between an Ubar and a pretender.

"You fly a banner that is not yours," I say. "You build a wall on land claimed for Ven'dara by my sword. You call it New Ven'dara."

"It is Ven'dara," he says. "A true Ven'dara. Not your city of soft merchants and scheming scribes. Here a man is what he can kill, what he can build with his own hands. Look, cousin! The ice tower! The herds! We have found the white fur that southern women will pay gold for! We are rich!"

"You are cold," I say.

That strikes him. He flinches.

"I offer you what I offered five years ago," I say, so all can hear. "Kneel. Renounce the title Ubar. Renounce the name New Ven'dara. Swear the Home Stone of Ven'dara again, and you will live. You will hold this outpost as my Warder of the North. Your men will be pardoned."

A stir goes through his men. I see hunger in their faces - not for food. For law. For city. For Home.

Torvald looks at them, then at me. Pride wars with need in him.

"And if I do not kneel, Ortossi?"

I do not draw yet. The cold air is sharp in my lungs.

"Then I take this wall apart with my hands," I say, "and I take you back to Ven'dara in chains, to face the Council you once drew steel upon. The frozen land will have only one master."

The Red Hunters among his men notch arrows. My men shift, hands going to sword hilts. The sleen growls low.

Torvald stares at me across the ice that is our council chamber.

The moment holds.

He does not kneel.

Torvald laughs, and the sound is cracked by cold.

"Kneel? On ice that I cut? In a wall that I built? I knelt once, Ortossi. In your hall. You spared me. That was your weakness. An Ubar does not spare. He kills."

He tears open his fur coat. Beneath it, on a thong of leather, hangs something.

A Home Stone.

Small, chipped, but true. He has taken a fragment from the sacred vaults when he fled. He has dared to found his own city on a stolen stone.

My men gasp. This is sacrilege. This is war.

"You see?" Torvald shouts to both sides. "I am Ubar! I hold a Home Stone! This is Ven'dara! My Ven'dara!"

I have heard enough.

"False Ubar," I say, and my voice carries across the ice plain like a lash. "That stone was stolen. It has no city. A Home Stone without walls is only a rock."

I draw my sword. The steel screams in the frozen air.

"For the true Home Stone of Ven'dara!"

"For the true Ven'dara!" my fifty roar.

Torvald draws. His blade is a northern blade, shorter, heavier.

He does not wait for his men. He comes for me himself, as blood should. He charges across the twenty paces of ice, boots slipping, fur flying.

Our swords meet.

The clang is dull in this thick cold, but the shock runs up my arm. He is strong - the north has made him strong. He strikes again, overhand, aiming to split my helm. I turn it with my shield, though I left the shield on the ridge - no, I have only my forearm wrapped in fur and steel bracers. The blade bites, but does not go deep.

We lock, chest to chest, beards icing together, breath steaming.

"You should have killed me," he hisses.

"I will not make the same mistake twice, cousin," I say.

Behind us, the battle is joined - but it is not a battle of armies. His thirty against my fifty, on slick ice, Red Hunter bows unable to fire for fear of hitting Torvald, my men holding a line.

It is you and I that matters.

I twist, using the high-stance of the Ven'dara sword schools, and sweep his legs. He falls, hard, onto the ice. The stolen Home Stone flies from his neck and skitters across the frozen plain.

He scrambles for it. I place my boot upon his sword hand.

"Yield," I say.

He looks up at me, frost in his lashes, hatred and shame warring.

"I... will not kneel," he whispers again, but there is no strength in it.

"You already have," I say. "You are on your knees on the ice."

I kick his sword away. It spins out onto the white.

I do not kill him. An Ubar of Ven'dara does not kill kneeling kin on conquered ice. That is for the south. For the courts.

"Bind him," I order Tharn. "Bind all who still raise steel. No killing unless they refuse binding."

My men move in. His men, seeing their Ubar down, seeing the true Ubar standing over him, drop their blades one by one. The Red Hunters lower their bows, wisely.

I bend and pick up the stolen fragment of Home Stone. It is cold enough to burn. I will return it to the high vault in Ven'dara, where it belongs.

Torvald is pulled to his feet, his hands bound with leather before him.

I look past him, to his black rock tower, his ice wall, his fragile fires.

This outpost will stand. It is too valuable to tear down. The white fur trade, the black rock...

It will stand - but not as New Ven'dara.

"From this day," I proclaim, so all hear, warriors of both sides, "this place is named Torvald's Hold, a protectorate and northernmost tower of Ven'dara. You who live here will live under my law, and under my Home Stone. You will prosper."

A cheer goes up - from MY men, and after a moment, from his.

Torvald says nothing. He stares at the ice.

We will shelter in his wall tonight. Tomorrow, we begin to make it stronger.

The frozen land is taken.