Yet, little does he know, the worst is yet to come.
To the readers, I thank you. I hope you are enjoying Winter's Gift. Part six will be available for your viewing pleasure next week. Until then, take care!
By the time Gidwyn reached Axefall Canyon, the weather had turned. Black clouds had drawn in around him as he ran northwards, following the tracks of the Yaghu that had taken Kiryae. They had dogged him all the way, swooping in from the south like an ink-black cloak attached to Gidwyn’s shoulders – no matter how hard he tried, he could not escape them.
Soon, with wind ripping at him from every side and the thick shroud of dark cloud wrapped around the Great Mountains, Gidwyn could barely see twenty paces ahead of himself. He clutched the Yaghu dagger he had taken in his fist as he staggered onwards. It was a savage blade: serrated iron, hooked at the tip, and the size of a short-sword in Gidwyn’s hand – and his only defence against any Yaghu lurking just beyond his vision.
He was no warrior, not like Galahad. By the Fire, wha’ I’d give fer ‘im to be ‘ere right now, Gidwyn thought as he shivered in a particularly frozen gust of wind. But Gidwyn was completely alone on the mountainside, and there was no time to wait for help. With every passing moment, with every laughing howl of wind and flurry of sleet and snow, the tracks Gidwyn was following – his only hope of ever finding Kiryae – faded.
The disappearing tracks, slowly filling with fresh snow and being blown level by the wind, led Gidwyn to the narrow rope bridge that spanned the gaping rift in the earth he knew as Axefall Canyon. The narrow construction of knots and timber slats rocked and shook and rocked in the savage gale as if it were a lock of hair. By the Fire, Gidwyn thought as he paused on the edge of the precipice, trying to ignore the yawning maw before him and focus on the bridge, ‘ow am I t’ cross tha’?!
On any other day, Gidwyn would have stopped, turned around and given up the crossing as hopeless. He had heard stories of intrepid farmers chasing lost goats being lifted from cliffs and ledges by the wind and being cast down to their deaths. But Axefall Canyon was different – it was no cliff or plateau edge. It was a gaping chasm, a yawning pit, a descent into utter darkness. If I fell, I’d ‘ave so much time, Gidwyn thought as he lingered on the edge of the precipice, clutching the wooden post that anchored the narrow bridge to the mountainside, so much time t’ think about everythin’, about everythin’ I’ve done. About ‘ow much I failed. About Eoina. About Kiryae.
But he knew he had no choice. If the Yaghu had made it to the other side, then he told himself he could as well. Taking a deep breath of freezing air that stung his throat and tucking the Yaghu dagger into his belt, Gidwyn walked forwards.
He seized hold of the wind-whipped guide-ropes that ran across the gaping canyon – they were cold, frayed with age and strain, and writhed like trapped animals in his fists as the gale yanked them this way and that. Clutching at the ropes, Gidwyn gingerly lifted a foot forwards towards the rime-blistered wooden slats that made up the bridge's footway. The snow lashed at his face, the wind tore at his clothes and pulled the bridge this way and that beneath him.
Now or never.
Gidwyn stepped onto the bridge. The frozen board beneath his feet slipped and slid as he tried to put his weight onto it. He staggered forwards, clinging to the ropes either side of him, dragging himself forwards as the bridge writhed and bucked in the wind.
Below him, Axefall Canyon laughed: a pair of enormous stone lips parted in frozen mirth as Gidwyn struggled across the bridge one step at a time, clinging to the simple construction spanning the massive gap. The canyon’s great spires of tooth-like rock glinted with frost, sharp as nails, ready to impale Gidwyn should he fall.
Oh, Fire, Gidwyn silently pleaded as, wide-eyed and white-knuckled, he clung on to the bridge for dear life. Oh, Fire, preserve me. Don’t let me fall, don’t let me-…
Gidwyn had no idea if it was the wind or the ice beneath his feet that made him slip. The gale seemed to scream with joy as he clutched at the ropes both sides of him and shrieked in terror. He twisted as he stumbled, his foot catching between two of the wooden, rime-blasted boards at his feet. Pain shot through his ankle, up his shin and into his knee, but Gidwyn dare not let go.
For a moment, all he could do was hold on as his leg throbbed with pain. He was a lone sailor upon a shattering sea, standing atop the deck of a miserable wood-and-rope ship, clutching the hempen wheel for dear life. Oh, by all the gods and wha’ ever there is waitin’ beyond… Gidwyn thought as he screwed his eyes shut. Please, I cannae fall, I cannae…
Slowly, as the wind continued to whip around him, Gidwyn opened his eyes. The pain in his leg had lessened – though whether through rest or the numbing of the cold he could not tell. The bridge still stretched before him, bucking and rolling like a sea torn by waves, but he had to continue.
‘I cannae fall,’ he breathed, his voice lost in the wind. ‘I cannae fall, I willnae fall!’
Slowly, he began to creep forwards, clutching the rope either side of him, feeling each board with his feet before stepping onto it. ‘I willnae fall…I willnae…’
Gradually, Gidwyn made his way across the bridge. The wind threw him from side to side and the snow and sleet drove at him as ten-thousand ice-cold darts. But Gidwyn refused to let go – refused to give up.
‘I willnae fall,’ Gidwyn yelled into the wind as he struggled across the bridge, hand over hand, foot over foot. ‘I willnae fall! Kiryae! Kiryae!’
It felt as if a lifetime had passed. Gidwyn dragged himself across the bridge as the indefatigable wind blasted leaden clouds and blinding snow around him. Eventually, just as his knees were rubbed raw from crawling and his knuckles and arms ached from clinging on to the rope bridge, through the whirling, blackened mist around him he saw the far side of Axefall Canyon.
Spurred on, Gidwyn dragged himself forwards, slipping and sliding on the frozen wood beneath him. Axefall Canyon seemed to scream the wind up at him in a last desperate attempt to dislodge and swallow him: the wind, like ten-thousand invisible hands, struck and grabbed at him, pulled at his clothes, his hood, his beard, but Gidwyn would not let go, would not give up. Not now, not this close…
And when he stepped from the rope bridge and into the snow on the northern side of Axefall Canyon, Gidwyn could have wept for joy. He fell forwards, collapsing into the waist-deep snow and feeling for the solid rock beneath with his hands. Even as he knelt there, his fingers and knees pressed into the stone, he felt as if his whole body were swaying, as if he were still being bucked and thrown from side-to-side on the terrible bridge.
After a moment, he dragged himself to his feet and looked around. The tracks of the Yaghu that had taken Kiryae were fading fast, almost lost under new-fallen snow and shrouded by blizzard. Still, though, they headed north. ‘Ow much further can they possibly go? Gidwyn asked himself as he set off again, lifting an arm above his head to shield his eyes from the driving snow. There’s nothin’ this way – absolutely nothin’.
But still the tracks went north, and so Gidwyn continued to follow them. The further north he went and the higher up he climbed, the more and more reluctant the wind and black cloud seemed to be to follow him. Soon, when Axefall Canyon was a good few miles behind him, the screaming wind had diminished to a whisper and the dark cloud through which he had struggled was little more than a faint fog hanging in the air. Above him, the sky began to darken as the day slowly drew towards its end, but what little light from the setting sun crested the mountains drew their shadows long made the snow around Gidwyn shine like millions of minute pearls.
Despite the darkening day, the tracks were clearer beyond the falling snow and the wind. Behind and below Gidwyn, back the way he had come, the long rock- and snow-covered slope was partially obscured by a low layer of cloud, though he could just faintly make out the long crevasse he had carved through the snow, up across and along the crags and bluffs that had led him up the face of the mountain he was now on.
Gidwyn had barely paused to think – he had been so driven on charging forwards through the snow, fog and wind that he had barely taken stock of where he was. Kûrthalag loomed before him, massive even at this altitude, stretching a shadow dozens of miles long across the mountainside, but he was on a lower peak. Morthassu, Gidwyn thought. Skyline, on Kûrthalag’s east. Twinned with Gyrahaal – Horizon, rising on Kûrthalag’s west.
As Gidwyn turned his eyes westwards and saw the sun sinking beneath the mountains, he realised just how far he had travelled in his blind, panic-stricken run. By the Fire, he thought as the last sliver of the fiery globe in the west sunk below the mountains, I’ve gotta find shelter – I’ll freeze t’ death if I’m out ‘ere at night!
Gidwyn looked around. There were dozens of cracks and crevasses littering the mountainside, but he could not bring himself to stop. Kiryae an’ the Yaghu that ‘ave taken ‘er can’t be far, he thought as he looked at the tracks stretching away across the snow, still north-bound. If I stop now an’ there’s new snow in the night, I’ll never find ‘er. Oh, wha’ am I to do?
As he stood in the snow, desperately trying to decide how to proceed, Gidwyn could already feel the cold of the night sinking into him, pricking his flesh through his heavy clothes like frozen daggers. I cannae stay out ‘ere, he thought, but then, neither can the Yaghu. I ‘ave to follow ‘em. At some point, they’ll ‘ave to stop an’ find shelter ‘emselves. An’ tha’s when I’ll get ‘em. Tha’s when I’ll find Kiryae.
Touching the hilt of the Yaghu dagger tucked into his belt, Gidwyn set off again, pushing onwards through the thick snow. The last light of the day turned the sky above his head a bloody red, then faded to a bruised purple, and before long became a tapestry of glittering stars.
The snow around Gidwyn shone in the light from the moon and stars, lighting his way across the mountains. Despite the fatigue in his limbs and the hunger gnawing at his belly he soldiered on, crossing crags and bluffs, skirting crevasses and canyons, clambering sharp walls of rock and icebound glaciers. And still the tracks continued – two pairs of Yaghu prints, either side of a set of stumbling, staggering prints. The Yaghu had led him on a chase through the mountains, veering east and west in the hope of throwing off any pursuers, but Gidwyn was not so easily perturbed.
It was nearing midnight and the cold had become truly bitter by the time Gidwyn saw a shape appear against the snow ahead of him. Still following the tracks of the Yaghu who had taken Kiryae, it took him a moment to realise just where he was – but when he did, a chill beyond the cold of the midnight mountains set itself into his bones. Blasted with snow and riddled with rime, a stack of stones wrapped with a length of dark cloth stood silent and stoic ahead of him – a silent guard to a dark and terrible world beyond: a land of labyrinthine frozen crags, of howling creatures known only to myth, and of certain death.
The Last Cairn.
And the Yaghu’s tracks were making straight for it.
‘Fire, don’t let it be so,’ Gidwyn whispered to himself, his breath clouding in the freezing air before him. ‘Fire, please don’t let it be so.’
But still Gidwyn marched on, following the Yaghu’s tracks. Each step brought him closer and closer to the Cairn – the point of no return. They cannae ‘ave passed it. Nothin’ good lives beyond the Last Cairn – surely the Yaghu know tha’, surely they wouldnae go this far…
Soon, it was right beside him – a
terrible guard to a world Gidwyn never dared visit. The last stop before Orthân
Vaarl.
And the
Yaghu tracks passed it, disappearing into the thick snow that coated the
terrible maze of mountains, crags, gullies and caves beyond.Gidwyn stopped beside the cairn. Tucked into the cracks in the rock were small frozen offerings: coins from the Underkingdom, the Vidorian Empire, even a handful from the Free Kingdoms where adventurous souls had eased their superstitious spirits by tucking small discs of copper and silver between the rocks.
Tha’ willnae save ‘em from wha’ lies beyond, Gidwyn thought. Tha’ willnae save no-one from Orthân Vaarl.
All the tales he had heard of Orthân Vaarl came back to him: of intrepid climbers being cast down from the highest peaks to be dashed on the rocks below for their fell deeds in life; of creatures borne of ice and frost, of rock and rime with a hatred of all warm-blooded life; of ancient wyverns and terrible frozen dragons that wrapped themselves around the peaks, preying on whoever was foolish enough to climb so high.
As Gidwyn stood beside the last Cairn, staring at the jagged, fang-like rocks and groaning crags beyond, he believed every single one of the old tales.
But he could still see the Yaghu’s tracks heading further and further north, deeper and deeper into the mountains. He followed them with his eyes across the snow before him and up into the spiralling crags beyond. Oh, Kiryae, he thought, wha’ am I to do?
But Gidwyn already knew the answer. Taking a deep breath, he took a step forwards and, for the first time in his life, passed the Last Cairn.
‘Daddy’s comin’, sweetheart,’ he whispered to himself as he set off once more, a tiny figure striding towards the black mountains before him.
*
The jagged wasteland beyond the Last Cairn known as Orthân Vaarl had another name in the Common tongue: the Black Crags. So called for the onyx-black, fang-like rocks that rose from the snow like gigantic skeletal fingers, the Black Crags were a maze of gullies, caves, chasms and clefts that snaked between wind-scourged spires of rime-scarred rock. A permanent blanket of snow hid the deep, wound-like crevasses that criss-crossed the crags’ stone flesh, themselves snarling mouths waiting to swallow up whoever crossed them.
In the east the sun was rising, and Gidwyn was exhausted. He had not eaten for hours, and he had not allowed himself the chance to stop and rest, for the Yaghu’s tracks continued onwards before him.
Gidwyn had walked through the night, staggering through the frozen wasteland. His feet and lower legs were numb from the snow, and the rest of his body was freezing with cold. He had pulled his heavy hooded cloak around himself, but the cold’s daggers had struck true time and again, and now as the sun reddened the eastern horizon, rising towards Orthân Vaarl’s blackest rock-spires, he felt his body beginning to give up on him.
His legs stiffened as he walked and his whole body shook with cold. He could barely feel the ground beneath his feet for his toes were so numb, and the whole world before him was a dizzying blur of white snow and black rock. But he dare not stop – could not stop – for the Yaghu’s tracks still led onwards, deeper and deeper into Orthân Vaarl.
The Yaghu, it seemed, had walked through the night just as Gidwyn had. Gidwyn was sure they had slowed, though, for their tracks were getting fresher and fresher with every passing hour. They ‘ave to stop soon, Gidwyn told himself as he staggered onwards. They cannae keep goin’…they cannae…
For he knew he could not.
The tireless pace the Yaghu had set was killing him, and he knew it. He was so cold, so hungry, and so tired – yet he could not pause, for he knew that if he did he would never see his sweet Kiryae again. He longed for home, to be by the fire-pit in the middle of his stone-built house, Eoina and Kiryae by his side, the three wolf-dogs at his feet. But now there are two, Gidwyn had to remind himself. They took poor Coren…
The memory of Coren lying dead in the snow, his pelt riddled with arrows and steaming blood pooling around him drove Gidwyn onwards. Taking a deep breath, he drove himself forwards, onwards through Orthân Vaarl.
Enormous walls of black stone hundreds of feet high rose around Gidwyn on either side; terrible, face-like clefts in the rock leered out at him, frozen in mocking laughter as the lonely Dwarf struggled onwards through the narrow gullies below, doggedly following the tracks before him. Gargoyle-like overhangs of rock weighed down by thick snow jutted above him, threatening to break and come crashing down onto him as he passed beneath them - like a gigantic palm crushing an ant.
But the Yaghu tracks were fresher than ever before. Less than an hour old, Gidwyn told himself and he knelt to inspect a fresh track. I’m catchin’ up.
He set off again with renewed vigour, jogging through the snow in spite of the fatigue dragging at his limbs. The blanket of white that covered the Great Mountains was not as thick in Orthân Vaarl, for the high walls of rock and the shadows of the mountains looming on all sides helped shelter the gullies from the worst of the snow.
Then, quite suddenly, there they were.
Gidwyn rounded a corner in the gulley and saw, perhaps two-hundred paces ahead, three figures. They were climbing a steep, snow-covered slope together that led up out of the gulley and onto a narrow shelf of rock winding its way around the neck of a mountain above them. Two were dressed in white furs and leathers and were tall, similar in height to Men, but stooped and long-limbed. Between them they dragged another figure wrapped up in a dark cloak and brown leathers. They were perilously still, being dragged by their wrists, and putting up no fight.
Kiryae.
Gidwyn forgot about his freezing limbs and the hunger in his belly. He forgot how tired he was, and how much his body ached. He focused instead on the rage boiling inside him, making his blood run hot, shaking the snow from his beard and guiding his hand to the hooked Yaghu dagger at his belt.
‘Kiryae!’ he yelled at the top of his lungs, setting off at a sprint towards where the three figures were. ‘Kiryae!’
The figure between the two Yaghu flinched and began to struggle. ‘Father?’ a voice came. ‘Father! Father!’
‘Kiryae!’
The first arrow whistled past Gidwyn’s head and cracked against one of the jet-black rock walls that loomed up beside him.
Oh no ye don’t, ye murderin’ bastards!
The three figures were half-way up the snow-strewn slope. One of the Yaghu now held Kiryae in both its hands whilst the other was aiming its bow at Gidwyn and readying a second shot.
Gidwyn ducked to the right and continued rushing forwards, the dagger he had taken now clenched in his fist. The second arrow whistled past him, thudding into the snow behind him. He was closing the gap, charging towards the slope. Hundred paces. I can do this.
‘Father!’ Kiryae’s voice came again. ‘Father, look out!’
Gidwyn kept running forwards as another arrow whistled past him. ‘C’mon, ye bastard!’ he roared, his voice bouncing off the sheer, black cliffs on both sides of him. ‘Ye’ll ‘ave t’ do better than tha’!’
He could see Kiryae and her
captors above him now, just a short dash away. I can make it, I can do it! ‘I’m comin’, Kiryae, I’m comin’!’
‘Father!
No!’Gidwyn heard the sudden panic in Kiryae’s voice as he ran forwards, now a matter of paces from the bottom of the slope. ‘I’m comin’, Kiryae, I’m-…’
The ground disappeared from beneath Gidwyn’s feet. He fell forwards, the dagger flying from his hand. Snow fell around him and he grabbed for something – anything – to hold on to.
A crevasse, only a few feet wide and previously hidden by a blanket of snow, opened up around him. He heard Kiryae scream and the Yaghu burst into thin laughter.
Through more luck than anything else, Gidwyn managed to grab on to the lip of the crevasse with one hand. His fingers wrapped around a thick lump of rock and as he swung for a moment, his eyes were drawn downwards.
The crevasse into which he had stumbled, even though it were no wider than a man was tall, extended down hundreds upon hundreds of feet. Dizzying, whirling blackness awaited below, a thick, inky fog between the two jet-black stone lips to which he desperately clung. Gidwyn felt his stomach drop and his throat go dry as he looked into the shadows spinning beneath him.
Gidwyn swung his other hand up to try and grab on to the ledge above his head, but instead his fingers closed around something else. He lifted his eyes and looked up to see one of the two Yaghu looming over him – his fingers closed around the hideous creature’s ankle. It seemed large by Yaghu standards: a male, Gidwyn guessed, with broad shoulders and sinewy limbs beneath the white furs and leathers it wore. Its pale face was criss-crossed with scars, and there were a number of crude iron loops in its lips and along its brow.
It grinned down at Gidwyn, displaying two rows of sharp, fang-like teeth. Its black eyes bored into Gidwyn's face. ‘You’re far from home, little Dwarf,’ the Yaghu said in the Common tongue. ‘I’m impressed. My name is Saark. I want you to know that, as I shall be the one who kills you.’
Gidwyn tried to heave on the creature’s ankle and toss it into the crevasse behind him, but it was no good. The Yaghu’s feet were planted firmly, and it was far stronger than he was.
The creature let out a thin, hissing laugh. ‘Pathetic,’ it said through its sharp teeth. ‘Utterly pathetic. And to think you’ve kept a creature suh as this,’ it gestured back towards Kiryae, ‘squandered for so long. You are a fool as well, it seems.’
‘That’s my daughter,’ Gidwyn snarled in response. ‘Ye’ll let ‘er go!’
The Yaghu leaned forwards until its face was only a hand’s length from Gidwyn’s. ‘You truly have no idea, do you?’ Saark said, his voice thin and cruel. ‘And you shall die not knowing.’
‘My daughter,’ Gidwyn snarled, trying to drag himself up from where he hung. ‘Ye’ll no take ‘er, ye’ll no ‘urt ‘er!’
Saark scoffed. ‘I’ll do all of those things,’ he said. ‘And you shan’t stop me.’
Gidwyn made one last attempt to heave himself out of the crevasse, but as he did Saark’s heavy, booted foot came crashing down onto his face. He let out a muffled cry and he heard Kiryae scream in the distance. Still, he hung on, clinging to the Yaghu’s ankle and the knobble of dark rock on the edge of the crevasse.
But Saark’s foot came once more, then again and again until Gidwyn could feel blood pouring from his nose and his head was spinning. Then, with one final strike from the large Yaghu, Gidwyn could hold on no longer. His hands slipped from the two holds he had and he fell back into nothingness.
Kiryae’s scream followed him down, as did dozens of droplets of blood from his nose. He plummeted downwards, the thin sliver of light from the world above fading fast as he fell further and further. The blackness that had swirled in the deep crevasse beneath him rushed up to greet him, and soon Gidwyn was completely lost to the dark.
