Over the course of the next two suns, Jax barely slept, moving between the guarded perimeter of Orok’s salt-tents and the dense shadows of the western pines.
Orok held true to his end of the bargain, providing several sleds and bundles of dried meat for the transport, while Tor’s ten hidden spearmen organized the rigorous screening of the refugees who slipped into the woods.
As for the dissemination of the rumor, Jax wasn’t worried in the slightest that Broken-Tooth would handle the task with anything less than fanatic devotion after swallowing such an incredibly lucrative bait.
Letting the Bone-Scrapers do the whispering was infinitely safer than using armed mountain hunters.
Although the scavengers’ range was mostly limited to the outer filth of the gorge, the starving refugees spread the whisper of the "Mountain Lord" among themselves like a spark in dry moss.
On the night of the planned departure, nearly three hundred destitute survivors had crept out of the camp and huddled in the forest... a number vastly exceeding Jax’s initial expectations.
Had he relied on the rigid spearmen to loudly proclaim Frodo’s offer, he would have been lucky to attract thirty terrified people before Kael’s scouts noticed.
According to Frodo’s explicit screening instructions, the youngest children were processed first and placed onto Orok’s sleds, followed closely by their mothers and remaining family members, and finally, the able-bodied adult survivors.
As for the elderly... Jax quickly discovered there was not a single person with gray hair in the shivering crowd.
The reality of the Ice Age meant the elders had either been left behind in the burning River Clans to die, or they simply hadn’t survived the grueling trek to the gorge.
After the first column of one hundred and fifty refugees departed into the deep snow, escorted by five of Tor’s heavy spearmen, the rest of the waiting survivors were ordered to stay hidden in the tree line.
Jax assured them that the spearmen would return for the second batch.
Thinking he had executed the first phase of Frodo’s grand plan, Jax did not expect that a catastrophe would strike the gorge just a day after the first column departed.
An unknown sickness suddenly erupted in the neutral trading camp.
The first victim discovered was a scavenger who lay dead near the edge of the ice-cliffs.
His face and neck were covered in raised, black blisters, and his teeth had rotted out of his gums.
His skin had split open in several places, and the blood that pooled in the snow was not red... it was a sickening shade of black, resembling frozen tar.
Not long after, several more bodies exhibiting the exact same gruesome symptoms were discovered in the refugee sheds...
Furthermore, some of the neutral traders who had carelessly dragged the corpses away to the refuse pits began to cough uncontrollably, small black spots forming on their own wrists.
Whether the local healers applied burning poultices, packed the sores with snow, or attempted blood-letting with flint blades, nothing subdued the sickness.
Soon, panic swept through the thousands of people trapped in the gorge.
The number of panicked traders flocking to the tribal Shamans increased drastically, but their bone-rattles and chants were entirely useless.
Every day, more people showing the black blisters would collapse in the mud.
Finally, the High Shaman of the gorge emerged from his guarded lodge and declared to the terrified masses that this was a blood-curse...
A dark, foul magic woven by Kael’s warlocks to punish the neutral tribes for trading with the enemy. This chapter was taken from g.com without permission.
The High Shaman claimed that ordinary herbs were powerless against this demonic rot, and those who caught it would die in pain.
However, the Shamans promised they would not sit idly by; they claimed to have mixed a ’Sacred Ash’ from the bones of ancient bears, a powder powerful enough to drive the curse out of the blood.
This statement gave the infected traders a desperate glimmer of hope. Every morning, they would huddle shivering outside the Shaman’s lodge, offering their last scraps of meat just to wait for a pinch of the Sacred Ash.
Although Jax had profound, logical doubts regarding the Shaman’s ridiculous claims of a ’blood-curse’ he immediately halted the departure of the second group of refugees to prepare for the worst.
"Why are you stopping?" Broken-Tooth demanded. "Why aren’t you rushing to send these walking corpses into the forest before they infect my lodge? Do you want them to stay in the gorge and spread the black rot to us?!"
"This is not a decision for a scavenger to question," Jax replied, his hand on his dagger. "They are ordinary refugees. If I blindly send this sickness into my Lord’s enclosed mountain, how many will die in the caves?"
"Ah—" Broken-Tooth stammered, stepping back. "But what happens to your Western Mountain does not matter to us! Little Jax, listen to me. We can just ignore the sickness and drag them into the pines! Think about it, this is a cursed rot... one touch and your skin turns black. I cannot stay here and wait for the curse to find me!"
"As if I will ignore it?" Jax hissed, his eyes narrowing. "Just like you, I only have one life. I am not risking the wrath of my Lord."
After leaving the furious scavenger behind, Jax sprinted through the camp, heading straight for the largest mammoth-hide tent marked with Orok’s massive tribal totem.
He flashed the green stone to the guards and pushed his way inside.
"I must speak with the chieftain. Immediately," Jax demanded.
It didn’t take long for Orok to emerge from the back of the lodge, his face grim.
"The sickness definitely has nothing to do with Kael’s blood-magic," Orok rumbled, pouring a cup of hot water. "If that warlord could summon a rot like this with a chant, he wouldn’t need to conquer the rivers with spears. He would have turned the entire world into a graveyard already."
"I know," Jax said urgently. "But this is a pressing matter that must be reported to my Lord immediately. Although the first column of refugees showed no signs of the black blisters when they departed for the mountain, it seems this sickness hides in the blood before it shows on the skin. If anyone in that first group carries this rot, Frodo must prepare the mountain before they arrive."
Jax grabbed a piece of birch bark and a charred stick from the fire, drawing Frodo’s mountain symbol and a series of jagged lines. "I need your fastest sled-runner to carry this warning to the mountain. Now."
"It will be done," Orok nodded. "A sled-dog is always faster than a marching column."
...
After several days of marching through the deep snow, Nia wanted to vomit.
During the past moon cycle, it seemed she had been doing nothing but fleeing... first from the burning forests of the River Clans to the freezing gorge, and now from the gorge into the uncharted western wastelands.
She fled the former because she had been hunted like an animal, and she endured the latter because the whispers promised a glimmer of hope.
"Sister... snow... I am burning..."
Renn, her eight-year-old brother, let out a weak moan and reached up, his trembling fingers grabbing Nia’s collar.
"I know. I’ll get you some clean ice."
She grabbed a handful of ice, but as she did, her stomach acid bubbled up.
Unable to contain it, she retched, vomiting a string of yellow bile into the snow.
She had eaten nothing but pine bark for two days.
She forcefully suppressed the urge to burst into tears, clenched her jaw, rubbed her face with the back of her dirty hand, and scooped up a fresh handful of snow.
She held it in her palms, letting it slightly melt from her body heat, and trotted back to her brother.
"Here is the water, open your mouth."
However, Renn’s face looked worse than it had an hour ago.
His cheeks lacked their healthy flush, replaced by a sickly gray.
With no other option, Nia forced his jaw open and let the water droplets fall onto his tongue.
"You are staying too close to him. The black blisters have already reached his neck. He cannot walk for much longer," a middle-aged refugee walking beside them muttered. "We are all going to die on this trail. You have to leave him for the wolves and think of yourself."
Shortly after they had left the gorge and entered the pines, a few of the refugees had begun to suffer from the terrifying sickness...
First, their bodies would become unusually hot, followed by the emergence of black blisters on their skin.
Within three days, the illness worsened drastically.
Not only had the infected fallen into delirious fevers, but those who shared furs with them also began to cough.
Therefore, on the fifth day of the march, the five mountain spearmen had halted the column.
They didn’t slaughter the sick but they strictly separated them, forcing anyone with a cough or a fever to march at the very rear of the column, pacing far behind the healthy.
Nia guessed the only reason the spearmen hadn’t abandoned them was because one of the spearmen himself had started coughing.
After the first dark spot was discovered on Renn’s small arm, Nia didn’t listen to the discouraging words of the others.
She dropped back, choosing to walk in the trail of sickness.
In order to keep young Renn moving and prevent him from freezing in the snow, she had carried him on her back for two entire days, refusing to sleep.
However, Nia had still not given up...
She believed that as long as they were able to reach the Mammoth Mountain, everything would change.
If the whispered rumors in the gorge were true... the boy-leader who performed miracles would be their final hope.