Thirty-Nine Days: Under the Ice

The gorge floor smelled of sulfur smoke and crushed mineral salt.

Eighty feet above the frozen riverbed, the white haze from Kallpa-qa’s western smudge-pot drifted across the basalt lip, trailing grease across the grey winter sky. Rumi-qa needed the southern bank beneath his boots before midday. Reaching those unpatrolled shale ridges was the only way to bypass Kallpa-qa’s containment box before the Seventh Vanguard sealed the valley. The canyon walls kept the worst of the choking fumes overhead, but the cold at the bottom had settled into something thick and motionless, pooling between the stone slabs like standing water.

Rumi-qa stepped off the final basalt ledge and planted his heel onto the river ice. Ten years in the vanguard had taught him that imperial commanders trusted smoke too much and ice too little; a captain who believed fire could seal a gorge had never tried to march an army across rotting slush.

The surface did not ring with the clean, high chime of solid rock-frost. It gave a muffled, wet groan that vibrated through the leather of his boots. Beneath eight inches of translucent blue crust, the black water of the gorge rushed south, churning through invisible limestone chutes with a muffled, steady roar.

"Keep eight paces between us," Rumi-qa said, uncoiling Yuraq-illa’s hemp rope. He tied one end around his waist with an overhand loop and tossed the running line back to her. "If the ice drops under me, do not run forward. Plant your heels against the wall and brace."

Yuraq-illa caught the frozen hemp and snubbed it once around her forearm. She adjusted the strap of her hunting arbalest, eyeing the jagged expanse ahead. The river here was sixty paces wide, jammed with buckled floes, frozen drift-logs, and milky patches where subterranean thermal springs had rotted the ice from underneath.

"Kallpa-qa burned twenty tubs of imperial tallow and half a pine knoll to build a cage," she muttered, her breath puffing white against the dark basalt. "An imperial commander torches a forest to catch one deserter, and the river will drown us both for free."

"Free is the only price the empire respects," Rumi-qa said. "And the river leaves no sentries on the south bank."

He reversed his grip on the ash poleaxe, using the heavy iron spike at the butt as a sounding rod. He struck the ice two feet ahead of his lead boot.

The iron bit four inches into milky crust. A dull thud echoed back, followed by a spray of dry white powder.

Solid. He took two paces forward and struck again.

This time, the spike punched through with a soft, hollow shk. A jet of pressurized black water hissed out of the puncture, bubbling across the frost. Rumi-qa stopped instantly, shifting his weight back onto his left heel. The bandage across his ribs pulled tight under his wool tunic, the waxy crust of tallow biting into the healing spear-graze, but the seam held.

"Vein-pocket," he said quietly, pointing with the blade. "The spring hollowed the underside. Step wide to the right, along the dark seam."

Yuraq-illa followed his tracks, her boots stepping precisely into the shallow indentations he left in the hoarfrost. She moved without sound, her eyes flicking constantly from the smoking canyon rim above to the dark fissures beneath their feet.

They cleared twenty paces before the wind shifted.

A sudden downdraft slammed into the gorge, funneling a curtain of yellow sulfur smoke over the northern rim. The stench burned Rumi-qa’s throat, blurring the pale blue ridges ahead.

Below them, the river answered. A grinding crack ripped through the center channel downstream. The ice beneath Rumi-qa’s feet lurched upward an inch, then settled with a shuddering groan that set his teeth on edge.

Then the water beneath the translucent crust changed color.

Rumi-qa froze. Ten paces ahead, beneath three inches of clear blue ice, a long, pale shape slid through the black current.

It was twelve feet of mottled grey muscle and pale rib-plates, moving without fins. Its head was blunt, armored with the same calcified horn as the high-mountain Yana-wolves, but its jaw was split into three hinged plates lined with translucent needles. It drifted against the underside of the shelf, its blind snout nudging the frozen ceiling, testing the load lines where their boots rested.

"Stay still," Rumi-qa whispered.

"What is that?" Yuraq-illa’s voice dropped to a razor hiss behind him. Her fingers were already tightening on her arbalest stock. "That is not a ridge-wolf."

"Gorge-leech," Rumi-qa said, his eyes tracking the pale belly beneath the ice. "They nest in the thermal vents beneath the winter roads. When the high packs drive game into the rivers, they take whatever drops through the cracks."

The beast drifted past them, turning in a slow, sinuous arc toward the thinner shelf near the center current. For three heartbeats, the black water ran silent beneath the ice.

Then the shelf beneath Yuraq-illa exploded.

A massive slab of blue frost shattered upward in a geyser of black spray and slush. The beast breached through the fractured crust, its triple jaw gaping wide. It did not strike at Yuraq-illa’s legs; it lunged toward the scent of the salted llama tallow in her pack, its hooked teeth catching the hem of her wool mantle.

Yuraq-illa was wrenched sideways with violent force. She screamed as her boots slipped on the wet slurry, her body dragged toward the jagged edge of the breach. The hemp line snapped taut against Rumi-qa’s waist, the sudden jerk tearing him off balance and driving a spike of pain through his bandaged ribs.

Rumi-qa did not fight the rope. He threw himself flat against the ice, spreading his surface area across a stable basalt ridge to distribute his weight.

"Brace!" he roared.

He drove the iron spike of his poleaxe deep into a dry frost fissure, locking his arms against the haft. The rope bit savagely into his ribs, crushing the fresh tallow dressing against his torn flesh, but the anchor held. Yuraq-illa’s slide stopped two feet from the gaping hole, her boots dangling over the roaring undertow.

The beast thrashed in the breach, its blind head whipping violently as it tore the wool mantle from her shoulders. Its calcified snout slammed against the ice shelf again, fracturing the crust beneath Rumi-qa’s right knee.

The ice began to spiderweb under them. In five seconds, the entire shelf would collapse into the chute.

Rumi-qa read the fracture lines with cold, practiced precision. Above the breach, a heavy thermal overhang hung suspended, hollowed from beneath by the sulfur steam and grooved with a shear stress seam.

Keeping his left arm locked tight around the anchored poleaxe to hold Yuraq-illa’s line, Rumi-qa tore his remaining block of salted llama tallow from his belt with his right hand and hurled it across the breach. The fatty block smacked the underside of the hollow overhang.

The beast caught the rich scent of animal fat and lunged, its triple jaws gaping wide toward the overhang.

Rumi-qa did not hesitate. His right hand plunged into his tunic, hauling out the heavy, dead hearth-stone—two pounds of solid slate.

With a hoarse shout, Rumi-qa hurled the heavy stone directly into the thermal shear seam above the beast’s snout.

The impact landed like a miner’s wedge. The weakened seam fractured instantly, dropping half a ton of blue ice deadfall directly onto the creature’s armored skull. Bone cracked under the crushing mass. The slate hearth-stone shattered into dust, and the beast shrieked—a wet, bubbling hiss—as the collapsing ice drove its broken carcass into the roaring undertow.

A six-inch calcified needle-fang sheared clean from the beast’s shattered jaw, lodging deep into the hemp coil at Rumi-qa’s hip.

The shockwave tore the rest of the shelf apart.

"Run!" Rumi-qa yelled, wrenching his poleaxe free from the fissure and heaving on the line.

Yuraq-illa scrambled forward across the slurry. Rumi-qa hauled her upward by her tunic just as the center floe sheared into the foam.

He lunged for the southern ledge, but his right foot broke through the rotten rim.

Glacial water slammed into his boot—an iron trap crushing nerve and bone in blinding agony. He threw his upper torso onto the shale bank. Yuraq-illa seized his pack straps, hauling his dead weight clear of the collapse.

They collapsed together onto the gravel terrace of the southern wall, gasping while black water boiled behind them.

They had crossed. Kallpa-qa’s containment box lay broken on the northern rim, useless against the unpatrolled southern ridge.

Rumi-qa worked the beast's severed needle-fang from the rope. The calcified ivory was dense and hollow-pointed, harder than forged steel. He stowed the heavy barb into his belt pouch alongside his iron nails.

Then he drew his iron dagger and cut away his right boot.

The soaked leather peeled back with a sickening rip. The wool sock was solid ice. Beneath it, the flesh from mid-calf to toes was dead waxy white, webbed with purple veins frozen solid inside the muscle. When he pressed the flat of his blade against his heel, the skin did not yield; it was hard as dry pine, completely deadened by the glacial undertow.

Thirty-nine days remained until the convergence. Across the river, Kallpa-qa’s smoke plumes billowed uselessly into the empty sky, but on the frozen stones of the southern bank, Rumi-qa could not stand.