Heavy winds hammered through the Pass of Noose, howling in pain as he twisted them, bent them to his will, and threw them into the faces of his enemies. His heavy fur cloak of white bear rolled out to his side like a personal banner, pulled horizontal by the small hurricane of forces surrounding him, whipping his hair about. He felt the clouds above lower themselves in his honor.
Then he unleashed Ymir’s terror on the hapless Galla, Crom’s pathetic children.
Lightning crashed down in four places throughout the dwarf forest, crawling like a beast alive through the snowcapped evergreens. Blasting open trunks and scarring the ground, it lashed out at his victims with claws of argent fire. A few fires burst among the branches, crackling as they ate up the tinder-light pine needles. Torches, by which the Vanir hunted.
The savage winds burst upon the forest, fanning up the fires until columns of flame and cinder sparks rose up in tall, twisting cyclones. The winds knocked people over and picked up dust and dirt and the sharp, sharp pine needles to cut at their eyes. It made them easy meat for a Vanir blade.
But it wasn’t enough. Lodur’s thirst was far from quenched. It was barely whetted. And the Galla, for all their confusion and fear, held stronger than he had predicted. Inside the alpine forest, they huddled in knots and clusters, with blades ready to challenge any Vanir who came at them in low numbers.
They moved beneath the branches like wraiths. Avoided the tall, dancing columns of fire, and sought darker paths.
More paths than he could guard, or than Magni could block in time.
It let them regroup, pushing youths and children to one side while the men and women of strong arm rallied, bursting from concealment near one edge of the stunted tree cover. A handful of them fell against a trio of Vanir raiders, pushing them back against a boulder-strewn field, where the flame-haired northerners went down in a flurry of sword strokes.
Most rushed the winter-carpeted slope, over which Lodur waited. No guards. No defense against the several dozen warriors who rushed at him.
A hawk screamed overhead, and Magni could be heard deep inside the forest ordering his warriors forward, to wheel about and guard the ridge from which Lodur watched, and aided them. He seemed to think Lodur needed protecting, as if Ymir’s sorcerers could not stand on their own.
“Stand aside and learn, my brother.” Lodur’s whisper, carried on a small zephyr of wind, sped from his lips to Magni’s ear without need of sight and without care for distance. Then he called down the hunger.
Mountain spiders were fearsome creatures, to be certain. But every predator, somewhere, was also another’s prey.
Leathery wings beat at the air, riding the uncertain winds with skill and determination. A flash of charcoal skin, and scales. Burning, red eyes that hunted. An ear-piercing shriek that scraped sharp talons down the spine of every man in the pass, Vanir or Cimmerian.
A great weight slammed into the line of Galla warriors, knocking aside full-grown men as if they were merely a fragile collection of twigs.
A whip-strong tail lashed about. Nothing more than a blur, lost in the darkness, as it stung first one man with its deadly poisoned stinger, then a woman who had nearly rolled clear of the nightmare’s assault.
Wings scooped up dust and debris, slashing about in a sudden maelstrom of confusion.
Then, with a second shrieking call and two more struggling victims—one grasped in each taloned claw—the wyvern leaped back into the air.
Many among the Galla were struck numb, so sudden and savage the attack had come. Several lost interest in any thought but to flee. Less than half remained in a strong center, still set to rush the snow-frosted ridge on which Lodur waited.
And now it was his turn to feed.
Reaching deep within, Lodur fanned to life that dead spark of cold, blue flame all Ymirish knew. From this icy fire had once come the overwhelming cold he’d lived with his entire life, until Ymir’s Call came to him at Venarium. Only a blinding rage had been enough to overpower it and warm his flesh. Now, awakened to true warmth at last, he found in that tiny spark a reserve of power so long denied him.
The kind of gem that drew black spirits up from the cold, dark depths to which they rested, or were banished.
A tool through which he worked his greatest, and most fearsome, sorceries.
The winds continued to howl around him, picking up his cloak, swirling a wall of horizontal sleet before him as the small hurricane picked up snow from the back side of the ridge and flung those small ice crystals about like blinding daggers. Through the zephyr’s icy touch he had tested the depths, over which the Galla now ran, and found it adequate. Drawing a darkened soul through that small flicker of cold flame, like a poisoned needle threaded through flesh, he bound that spirit into the ice and snow, fusing it together, molding a new life around the abomination.