His brothers faced him.
Trull looked away. ‘This feels wrong.’
‘Have you lost your courage?’ Rhulad snapped. ‘We have walked all this way, and now you voice your doubts?’
‘What sort of weapon is this gift? Who fashioned it? We know nothing of what we are about to release.’
‘Our Warlock King has commanded us,’ Fear said, his expression darkening. ‘What would you have us do, Trull?’
‘I don’t know.’ He turned to Binadas. ‘Is there no means of prying the secrets loose?’
‘I will know more, I think, when we have freed the sword.’
Fear grunted. ‘Then begin, Binadas.’
They were interrupted by a shout from Theradas. ‘A wolf!’ he cried, pointing to the south.
The beast was barely visible, white-furred against the snow, standing motionless a thousand or more paces distant, watching them.
‘Waste no more time,’ Fear said to Binadas.
Shadows spun from where Binadas was standing, blue stains crawling out across the snow, coiling up the shaft of the Blackwood spear in Trull’s hands, where they seemed to sink into the glossy wood. The weapon felt no different through the thick fur of his gauntlets, but Trull thought he could hear something new, a keening sound that seemed to reverberate in his bones. It felt like terror.
‘No more,’ Binadas gasped.
Trull glanced at his brother, saw the pallor of his face, the glistening sweat on his brow. ‘They are resisting this?’
Binadas nodded. ‘They know they are about to die.’
‘How can wraiths die?’ Rhulad demanded. ‘Are they not already ghosts? The spirits of our ancestors?’
‘Not ours,’ Binadas replied, but did not elaborate, gesturing instead towards Trull. ‘Strike at the ice, brother.’
Trull hesitated. He looked round over his left shoulder, searched until he found the distant wolf. It had lowered its head, legs gathering under it. ‘Daughter Dusk,’ he whispered, ‘it’s about to charge.’ Below, Theradas and Midik were readying their spears.
‘Now, Trull!’
Fear’s bellow startled him, so that he almost dropped the spear. Jaw clenching, he faced the spar once more, then slashed the iron spear-head against the ice.
Even as the weapon whipped forward, Trull’s peripheral vision caught motion on all sides, as figures seemed to rise from the very snow itself.
Then the spar exploded into blinding, white mist.
Sudden shouts.
Trull felt a savage wrench on the spear in his hands, the Blackwood ringing like iron as countless wraiths were torn free. Their death-cries filled his skull. Stumbling, he tightened his grip, striving to see through the cloud.
Weapons clashed.
An antler clawed for his face, each tine carved into a barbed point tipped with quartzite. Trull reeled back, flinging the spear shaft into the antler’s path. Trapping it. He twisted the spear round, reversing grip, and succeeded in forcing the attacker into releasing the antler. It spun away to one side. An upward slash with the spear, and Trull felt the iron blade tear through hide and flesh, clattering along ribs before momentarily springing free, to connect hard against the underside of a jaw.
The scene around him was becoming more visible. They were beset by savages, small and bestial, wearing white-skinned hides, faces hidden behind flat white masks. Wielding claw-like antler weapons and short stabbing spears with glittering stone points, the Jheck swarmed on all sides.
Fear was holding three at bay, and behind him stood the sword, upright and freed from the ice, its point jammed into the frozen ground. It seemed the Jheck were desperate to claim it.
Trull struck at the closest of Fear’s opponents, iron tip punching deep into the savage’s neck. Blood sprayed, jetted down the spear-shaft. He tore the weapon loose, in time to see the last of the Jheck in front of Fear wheel away, mortally wounded by a sword-thrust.
Spinning round, Trull saw Binadas go down beneath a mass of Jheck. Shadows then enveloped the writhing figures.
Rhulad was nowhere to be seen.
Down below, Theradas and Midik had met the wolf’s charge, and the huge beast was on its side, skewered by spears, legs kicking even as Theradas stepped in with his broad-bladed cutlass. Two more wolves were closing in, alongside them a half-dozen Jheck.
Another score of the savages were ascending the slope.
Trull readied his weapon.
Nearby, Binadas was climbing free of a mound of corpses. He was sheathed in blood, favouring his right side.
‘Behind us, Binadas,’ Fear commanded. ‘Trull, get on my left. Quickly.’