A Glibertarians Exclusive:  Season of Ice X

On the river

Moving downstream was, as it always is, much faster than rowing up.  On the first afternoon they passed the village they had raided and burned, to find a band of provincial cavalry picking through the ruins.  The horsemen rode to the riverbank and loosed arrows at the Northmen’s ship, but Mabinne gestured, and a sheet of ice rose from the river, deflecting the arrows.  As the ship moved away, its crew untouched, the horsemen made to follow but found their horses’ hooves frozen to the ground.  When they dismounted, they found their own boots encased in ice as well.

“The horses will be uncomfortable, but they shouldn’t be lamed,” Mabinne said as the laughing rowers moved the ship down-river, away from the shouting, cursing provincials.  Hengist looked at her, one shaggy eyebrow raised.  Mabinne shrugged.  “It’s not the horses’ fault who rides it.”

Later that day, Mabinne took some water to their sole captive, the fire caster from the village they had sacked.  The girl’s eyes blazed.  Mabinne undid her gag to allow her to drink, which she did, thirstily.  Then she spiked Mabinne with a glare.

“You’re of Beretan, aren’t you?”  The girl’s Beretanian sounded strange to Mabinne after so many months of speaking Ikslunder.  “What are you doing with these… beasts?  What made you turn against your own kind?”

“You wouldn’t believe me,” Mabinne snapped, “if I told you.”  She regarded the girl.  “What’s your name?”

“Aalis,” the girl replied.  “Aalis Pummeroy.”

“You’ll have been to the academy, then.”

“I have.”

“You’ll remember the Northmen and women there?  They did the cooking, cleaning and so on?”

“I do.”

“Slaves,” Mabinne told her.  “How does that sit with you?”

“No less then they deserve, if you ask me,” Aalis said, scowling.  “A generation raiding our shores, only just we get some back.”

“Wait a few days,” Mabinne advised.  “You may find yourself singing a different tune.”

The rest of the trip was uneventful, and three days later they were on the open sea, tied alongside two other ships of the summer fleet.

The raid leaders conferred on Hengist’s ship.  While they were skeptical at first, Mabinne explained her plan, and Hengist and his second Jorgunn assured the other leaders that Mabinne was sincere.  After a detailed description of her actions to date, the plan was agreed to.

That night, just after the moon had set, the three ships anchored at the foot of the cliff under the magic-user academy.

“Sweet,” Hengist said, motioning to the water.  “It’s all up to you now.”  The crews of all three longboats were in full fighting trim:  Iron breastplates, swords, crossbows, and helms.

Mabinne moved to the front of the ship.  She extended her hands…

A broad, solid patch of ice appeared and grew, slowly, slowly.  Mabinne let out a gasp of effort; Hengist placed his hand on her shoulder, a concerned look on his face, but Mabinne shook her head.  “I can do it.  Saltwater freezes harder than fresh.”  She could feel the weight of one of her soul crystals, on a chain around her neck.  No, she told herself, I’ll need those later.

“There,” she said at last.  “Get everybody on the ice.”

The raiders scrambled on to the sudden ice floe, cautious of their footing at first, then more confidently when they found Mabinne had managed to texture the surface to make for sure footing.  When the last raider was aboard, save the one man each left behind to mind the longboats, Mabinne stepped onto the ice and walked to the forward edge.

“Mind yourselves,” she warned the raiders, “and stay away from the edge.  This isn’t going to be easy.”

The men clustered together, but Hengist remained at Mabinne’s side.  “You can do this, sweet,” he said, smiling.  “Raiders in a hundred years will sing songs of this day.”

“I know,” she said, smiling.  Then, with an audible gasp, almost of pain, she raised her hands.

The ice floe rose.  A column of ice rose from the sea, bearing the raiders aloft – higher and higher, until it reached the top of the cliff.

There was no response from the great stone bulk of the academy building.

“Let’s go,” Hengist said, his voice little more than a whisper.

Mabinne collapsed into the grass.  In spite of the ice, she was physically spent, soaked with sweat from the short but overwhelming effort.  When she finally looked up, she could see she was proven correct.  There were no guards, no watchers covering the rear of the academy.  The raiders swarmed in through the gardens, into several doors, and took the bulk of the students and instructors in their sleep.  Mabinne got tiredly to her feet and followed.

One fire-wielder incinerated two raiders in a narrow hallway before Mabinne arrived to encase her in a block of ice hard as granite.  She moved to an overlook in the front wall she remembered from her time as a student, and so by the time the raiders got to the front of the building, the watchtowers, and the guards within, were likewise encased in ice.

In the end, sixteen students – all girls – and four instructors, three women and one man, were taken captive.  The raid leaders placed binding collars on each of them, and then the sack began.

While the raiders were looting, Mabinne went back outside.  The sun was rising.  She could see the great round elevator of ice she had made, and remembering, not so long ago, when she couldn’t have imagined doing such a thing.

It was that binding collar, she mused, and more than that, it was that I fought against it.  Somehow it made me stronger.  As a blacksmith grows powerful through handling iron all his life, as a messenger grows faster from running, somehow, my pushing back against the collar gave me greater magical strength.  I wonder what I could do with one of the soul crystals.  She reached into the pouch she wore at her belt; her other soul crystal was inside.  It felt faintly warm.

She watched as a pair of laughing Northmen led the captives out of the building.  All had hands bound in addition to the binding collars, but Mabinne could see several of them fighting to summon their own particular magics.  I’ll have to watch that, she thought.  With the captives came a dozen laughing, liberated Ikslunders, three men and nine women, chattering excitedly, happy to be going home.

Mabinne found lowering the pillar of ice easier than raising it.  All I had to do is release my hold on it, she mused, realizing in the moment that she hadn’t been aware that she had been maintaining the ice by force of will.  No wonder I’m so exhausted.  Her amazement at her new-found strength had not gone away.  It was the months in the binding collar, she reminded herself.  I wonder what just a few days will do for these captives.

She climbed into Hengist’s ship and watched from his side as the freed Ikslunders and the captives were loaded into the raiding fleet’s ships.  Then, as the sun was not yet at the zenith, the fleet set sail north for Port Stronghold.

Over the three days the fleet sailed north, Mabinne made a point of circulating among the captives.  She described Port Stronghold to them, its markets, the general layout of the city.  “Things might go more smoothly if they have some idea what to expect,” she told Hengist when he asked her about it.  “Also, you know, I have some idea how they are feeling right now.  I cannot help but be a little sympathetic, even if things for me did turn out rather better than I expected.”  She smiled at the big Northman.

“Some of the men may be keeping some of the girls for themselves,” Hengist pointed out.  “They won’t all be going to the markets.”

“I have told them that, too,” Mabinne said.  “I could hardly have forgotten that, you know.”

Hengist grinned, nodded and moved off.

Finally, they arrived at Port Stronghold.  As the year before, the great chain was lowered to allow the raiding fleet to enter the harbor.  As the year before, the sails were furled, and Hengist bellowed at his men to man the oars.  And as the year before, the ships of the summer fleet arrived at the docks.

When the ship was tied off, Hengist stood, started shouting orders.  As the year before, young roustabouts swarmed aboard the ship to carry the loot away to the markets.

Mabinne stood up.  She leaned over the side of the ship, looked at the water, and extended a hand.

The water around the ships froze.

Hengist stopped his shouting.  He looked down at the water, then turned to look at the Beretan woman he now acknowledged as his wife.  “Sweet?”

The ice rose swiftly up over the sides of the ships, into the ships, and grew up to encase the Ikslunders – only the Ikslunders – in a hands-breadth cocoon of ice.  Tendrils of ice reached out to the captives, encased their binding collars and, with a tap of an ice tendril, shattered them.  The mages were loose.

Mabinne had left Hengist’s head free.  She walked over to look him in the face with a snarl.  “Did you think I’d forgotten?” she snapped.  “You murdered my husband, raped me, took me as a slave.  Didn’t you think that one day I’d take my life back from you?”

The ice grew over Hengist’s face, sealing him in a solid cocoon.

On the shore, city guards and a host of armed Ikslunders had seen the ice and were rushing towards the docks.  Aalis Pummeroy came to stand beside Mabinne, flame dancing around her fingertips.  “What do we do?  We can’t handle all of them.”

“I can.”  Mabinne reached into the pouch on her belt, found the soul crystal, crushed it.

An unbelievable surge of power filled her, overflowing, making the surge she had felt when her binding collar was removed as nothing by comparison.  She knew the power would overwhelm her in a moment, and so stepped to the bow of the ship, around the icy coffins of Hengist and his Northmen, and held her hands high, let the icy power flow away…

And all of Port Stronghold was covered in ice.  Rock-hard ice, as deep as a big Ikslunder was tall.  The mightiest city of the Northlands was laid low in a stroke.

Mabinne stepped back, exhausted.  “We’ll take two of the ships,” she said, softly, to the captives.  “Aalis, melt the ice around us.  Someone, raise the sails.  Any wind mages, take us out to sea.”

Over the years that followed, the news spread like fire, warning of an army of magic-users, that preyed on the villages and ports of Ikslund and the Ashlands.  The army was led by a Beretan woman, an ice-magic user with long brown hair, who was said to be on the path of revenge.  Mabinne the Merciless, as she was known, and no settlement was safe; all Beretanian, Jutlander or Mondrian captives were freed, those that held them killed, any others that resisted were burned or buried in ice.

Mabinne, at the head of her growing army, often heard of the fear her army inspired, and was amused.  But sometimes, late at night, alone in her sleeping furs, she could still hear Hengist’s laughter.

The End (?)