Seven Princes (25 page)

A day of following the scattered and obvious tracks of Udvorg hunting parties, and he found the great plateau that was the center of their territories. He climbed the wide trails, avoiding now and then a group of hunters coming or going. Wrapped in his white tiger-cloak it was easy to hide himself among the
snowdrifts. One group of hunters lumbered right past him without ever noticing. They were six blue-skins carrying the immense carcass of a shaggy mammoth. He recognized its great tusks as the substance from which the throne of Angrid the Long-Arm was built. There must be vast plains to the north where such behemoths grazed.

At last he topped an escarpment and saw the blue-green spires of the ice palace. He crossed the naked plateau during a snowstorm, the glacial towers growing larger with every step. A ring of frozen peaks hemmed the Udvorg tableland. The sky was a sliding mass of gray and black cloud, an aerial sea pouring tempests upon the world.

When the vast open gates stood before Vireon like the maw of some gargantuan beast, the guards first caught sight of him. There were only two at ground level, though he supposed more must be stationed along the battlements of the outer wall. Eight guard towers lined its forward expanse. He walked unhurriedly through the flying snow toward the sentinels at the gate.

Both blue-skins took up their spears. One hefted a great axe in his second hand, while his companion held a war hammer of stone and iron. One yelled something at Vireon, raising his spear in an unmistakable command. Vireon did not catch the words, but the gesture was obvious.

His own voice pierced the wind. He spoke loudly and slowly, so they could understand every word through his accent. “I am Vireon of Udurum! Son of Vod, King of Uduru! I escaped your dungeons days ago! I come to surrender myself to King Angrid!”

The Giants blinked, exchanged a fierce glance, and lumbered toward him.

“But only to King Angrid!” shouted Vireon. “Only to the King himself!”

The blue-skins rushed at him, grinning, their crimson-dyed
furs swirling in the wind. He vaulted above the thrust of the first spear, coming down to catch its haft under his boots. The blue-skin’s spear snapped in half. The second guard tried to impale him as well, but Vireon’s own spear came up in a blur and turned it aside.

He rolled between their legs and swept the blade of his spear across the back of a Giant ankle. The guard howled and fell to one knee, while the other swung the big hammer. Vireon avoided the blow – Uduru, blue-skinned or not, were powerful but slow. He was the wind and they were clumsy trees. The hammer cracked open the ice-floor of the plateau and Vireon sliced at the wrist that held it. The Udvorg leaped back, dropping the spear in an attempt to staunch his bleeding. Both sentinels kneeled in the snow, dripping ichor. Vireon tore the battle axe away from the one whose leg was useless. He stood before them now, far enough away to avoid their grasp. They stared at him with red eyes more fierce than any tiger’s.

“I surrender myself only to the King!” he yelled again, loud enough so those in the guard towers might hear him. Blue-skins moved along the battlements now, and someone blew a note on a great horn. The two wounded guards yelled up to their fellows.

“A little demon has come among us!” they bellowed. “Come, brothers, squash this insect! He bleeds us with his sting!”

The wind howled as the bleeding Giants crawled and stumbled back to their post. A moment later, a dozen blue-skins filled the gateway. They marched into the storm bearing axes, swords, hammers, and maces. Some of them grinned, others grunted, some looked at Vireon with eyes colder than the ice itself.

“I wish to surrender to King Angrid!” Vireon shouted at them. “Send for the King!”

They seemed unsurprised that he held up a Giant’s axe with one hand, a weapon as large as his whole body. Perhaps they
thought he could not wield it effectively. He disabused them of this notion when the first of the twelve came at him swinging a broadsword. Vireon ducked beneath the blade and his axe lopped off the swordsman’s arm just below the elbow. As the Giant fell screaming, Vireon sprang atop his broad shoulders and shoved a spear into the eye of the next Udvorg. This one’s writhing broke the wooden haft in two, but Vireon spun and picked up the fallen broadsword. He faced ten more blue-skins with an axe and a sword of their own making.

Now I am no exhausted fool, famished and chilled from days of running
.

Now I am the Son of Vod at my full strength
.

Let them see this and understand
.

How many will have to die?

He was too fast for their weapons. They were like Men trying to swat a wasp with iron bars. These Udvorg moved even slower than the Giants of Udurum – perhaps it was their cold blood. Vireon pounced from shoulder to shoulder and cleaved skulls, darted between legs and severed tendons or entire limbs. He left the axe buried in a Giant’s skull and began fighting with only the sword, which doubled his speed. Once an iron spearhead plunged toward his heart, but his dense skin turned the blade aside. It left a shallow gash from nipple to ribs. They never touched him again. He whirled and struck, darted and punished, vaulted and thrust, ran and hacked. After some time he stood alone amid twelve fallen blue-skins. They moaned, dead, or dying, and his cloak of white fur was drenched in their violet blood.

A host of Udvorg lined the walls now; faces looked out from the oval windows of towers or stood on balconies watching the slaughter.

“I surrender myself!” he shouted so that all might hear him. “But only to the King! Angrid come forth! No more will die!”

He expected more blue-skinned warriors to come howling at him, but they did not. The two at the gate had gone within, and four more took up the post, keeping their distance. A few of the beaten Giants crawled back toward the gate, though most lay unmoving in the snow. Some few would never move again. The storm wailed in Vireon’s ears. He stuck the Giant-blade into the ground before him and pulled the bloody cloak tight about his shoulders.

Twice more he shouted his message, and the roof of clouds turned to the infinite dark of night. Cold azure flames danced along the walls at intervals, and the blue-skins stared at him, whispering among themselves and passing orders to and fro. Would they leave him standing here all night? Would they ignore him until he went away? If so, he would have to brave the depths of the palace himself to find Angrid. He pondered his chances of surviving such an incursion alone. The gigantic palace glittered before him, a masterwork of sapphire and emerald bathed in starlight. He waited, and snow obscured the bodies of the fallen Giants.

A great cold-fire glow lit up the gateway. Another horn blew somewhere inside, and dark shapes moved within. They emerged as a procession of warriors in oval formation about a central figure. Angrid the Long-Arm walked amid his armed escort, twenty Udvorg sentinels bearing spear and sword. The King carried his great axe casually at his side. A shaman, robed and hooded in a cloak of black wolfskin, walked behind him with a tall staff. The tip of the staff burned with a blue flame that did not consume its wood. The King’s tigers accompanied him too, twins to the wild one Vireon had slain. A sentinel on the King’s right held the leashes of these beasts as they strained forward. If he let go, they would pounce upon Vireon in an instant.

The forward sentinels moved apart, and King Angrid strode to
the head of the column, shaman and tiger guard behind him at either side. Vireon stood his ground, arms crossed, the stolen sword planted before him. The wind whipped at his cloak, which had gathered a mantle of snow on its shoulders.

Angrid spoke first in his antiquated dialect. “Little One,” he said, voice like grinding icebergs, “you already escaped my grasp. Now you give yourself to me?”

“I do,” said Vireon, raising his voice above the shrieking wind. “On one condition!”

Angrid the Long-Arm lifted his axe and rested it on his brawny shoulder. His tigers growled and strained at their chains. The shaman stared from the black depths of his hood.

“What do you ask, killer of Udvorg?”

“These deaths are regrettable,” said Vireon. “They sadden my heart. Here is my condition. Fight me, Angrid! I make the Challenge of Hreeg. We face each other as Uduru – arm to arm, chest to chest… no metal in our way. If I win, you must declare me of Uduru blood – your cousin – and accept my offer of peace.”

The Ice King glared at him with ruby eyes. The gems in his crown cast a blue gleam across the snow.

“What if you lose?”

“If you best me, my life is yours. I will not protest. I will slay no more of your people.”

A moment of silence fell thick as the snow between Vireon and Angrid. Then the Ice King threw back his head and laughed. His chest rumbled, and he bent over to smack his knee. His tigers writhed in their collars, sniffing and gnawing at his iron-shod boots. Shards of ice fell from his beard as he chuckled. When he looked back into Vireon’s face, his thick blue lips were split in a wide smile. His teeth were the saffron color of the tigers’ fangs.

“There is no need,” he said. “Only a true Uduru… would make such a challenge. For surely I would… grind you beneath
my heel. You face death like… a proud Udvorg. You use the ancient name of Hreeg, first King of Uduru. Only an Uduru raised by Uduru… would know of this tradition. You come back… to the lands of the Ice Clans… walking without fear to the Palace of Blue Flame. I do not
need
to fight you, Little One… Only an Uduru would do these things. I call you…
cousin
!”

Vireon stood speechless as the King’s escort and the crowds along the wall cheered Angrid’s announcement. He had not expected this: he had expected to fight, and possibly to die, in order to prove his blood. These Udvorg were not as savage as he presumed. Their King was wise.

Angrid dropped his axe and came forward with open arms. He offered his great hand to Vireon, who took it in both of his own. Then the King bowed to embrace him.

“Tell me again… the name your father gave you,” said the Ice King.

“Vireon.”

“Come, Vireon,” said the King. “We will feast, and you will tell me of the southlands.”

That was all the apology the King would offer. Likewise, Vireon would never again need to apologize for the warriors he’d slain. The ways of Uduru and Udvorg were not so dissimilar.

These were, after all, his cousins.

Drums throbbed between the blue-green pillars of the King’s dining hall. A chorus of Udvorg sang low-pitched hymns to the Gods of Night and Cold. The great ice table lay heavy with mammoth beef, thawed fruits from deep cellars, gelatins of bear fat, and spiced ale from palace breweries. All the fare was served cold and raw. A hundred soldiers sat along the King’s table, most of them male. Not all of the folk of the Ice Clans were warriors, or were expected to be. This society offered far more variety than the
Uduru. Of course, most of the Uduru were dead. The survivors of Old Udurum were the most hearty and warlike of the Giant folk; the rest had perished a quarter-century ago. Vireon’s people may have been more like the Udvorg before the Serpent-Father destroyed their ancient city.

The Ice King peppered him with questions. Vireon sat at his right elbow; at his left sat the shaman, who pulled back the hood to reveal the face of a handsome Giantess. She wore a bronze hoop through her nose, six more through each ear, and the marks of ritual scarring ran along her high-boned cheeks. Her hair was black, unlike most of the Udvorg, whose hair was the color of snow. He noticed a few other blue-skins with black hair. Either white or black; there were no in-between shades. All their eyes were crimson, all their skin blue, so this duality of hair color was interesting. The shamaness – whose name he learned was Varda the Keen Eyes – said little as Vireon spoke with the King, but she eyed him curiously. If she harbored feelings good or ill toward him, he could not tell.

“Your mother rules the Uduru since Vod has give himself to the Great Water?” asked Angrid. Vireon followed the Udvorg accent easier now, but some words still took a moment.

“Queen Shaira,” Vireon said, “rules the City of Men and Giants.”

“She is… human?”

“She is,” said Vireon. “Yet the Uduru love her. They respect her wisdom. Fangodrim the Gray, my father’s brother, is First Among Giants.”

“Why does your uncle not take the throne?” asked Angrid.

Vireon shrugged. “He loves my mother, too. And I think he does not want the weight of the crown. The Uduru do not care. They… they are dying.”

Angrid put down the joint of mammoth meat upon which he
gnawed. His frosty brows furrowed. “What do you mean dying?”

“I told you how my father killed the Lord of Serpents,” said Vireon. He drank a gulp of the bitter black ale. It was not bad, and it was the only thing in this feasting hall that warmed his bones. These Udvorg had become one with the cold over the centuries – they were as comfortable in frigid conditions as he would be on a sunny spring morning. He was glad of his tiger cloak. “When the beast died, he put a curse on Vod’s people. The women are barren. No child has been born to the Uduri since that day.”

The shamaness Varda whispered something in the Ice King’s ear, and the monarch turned back to Vireon. “How many of our cousins still stand?”

“More than a thousand,” Vireon replied. “Perhaps twelve hundred.”

The King did not understand his Uduru numbers, so Vireon rephrased his answer. “Only a fraction of your people. Perhaps ten times more than are in this room. No young ones at all.”