I.
The Reckoning
On the morning of the fourth day, the Archduke called them into the great hall.
The pallets had been cleared away.
The long tables had been pushed back against the walls.
In their place, Captain Orsa’s soldiers had set out ten rows of benches facing the great hearth, one row for each lance, and the candidates filed in and sat down on them in silence, lance by lance.
The wounded came too.
Ylva Brenn came in on crutches, grey-faced, and would not let anyone carry her.
Hakon Aarn came in with his arm strapped across his chest.
Emrik Stahl came in last, with a black patch over his eye, and sat down at the end of the Fourth Lance’s bench, and his lance mates moved up without a word to make room on his left.
In front of the hearth stood the House of Eisenhardt.
Lucian on the left, Kenneth on the right.
Roderick behind them, taller than all of them, with his arms folded.
And in the middle, the Archduke, with a single sheet of paper in his hand.
He did not sit.
He did not say good morning.
“On the ridge above the Rimefang,” he said, “I told you I would watch every step you took and every blow you struck.
I did.
So did my brothers.” He held up the paper.
“This is what we saw.”
Nobody breathed.
“I’m going to tell every lance what it did wrong.
Some of you, I’m going to tell by name.
I’m not going to soften it, and I’m not going to tell you what you did right, because you already know what you did right.
You’re alive.
That’s what you did right.” His grey eyes went along the rows.
“What you did wrong is the thing that will kill you next time.
So listen.”
He began with the First.
* * *
It took nearly two hours, and it was the hardest two hours of Lyra’s life, including the Thousand Steps.
The First Lance had gone in at the mouth of the gorge in a perfect wedge, the Archduke said, and it had held perfectly for as long as they could see.
The moment the fog came down, it had broken into ten people fighting ten separate fights, because the leader had stopped calling and started swinging.
“When you can’t see,” he said, “your voice is the lance.
Stop using it, and you have no lance.” The First Lance’s leader, a tall, grave girl from one of the tower families, went scarlet to the ears, and nodded, and did not look away.
The Second had held its shield-line like a wall.
It had also never once looked up, and forty goblin troops had climbed the rock on its right flank and come down on its shoulders from above.
“The Wall doesn’t only face forward,” said Alaric.
“Neither do you.”
The Third.
He looked at Ylva Brenn, on her crutches at the end of the Third Lance’s bench.
“Ylva,” he said, “why did you leave the line?”
The girl’s chin came up.
For a moment, Lyra thought she would not answer.
Then she said, in a thin, clear voice, “There was a goblin with a torch, Your Grace.
Going for the tents at the back of the warren.
I thought there might be prisoners in them.
From the farms.”
The hall was very quiet.
“There might have been,” said the Archduke.
“There weren’t.
We searched every one.” He let that sit.
“You left a gap in your line to chase something you thought might be there, and an archer put an arrow through it, and it went through you.
If it had gone through the girl beside you instead, you’d be sitting here knowing that.” He paused.
“Next time you see something your lance can’t see, you tell them.
You don’t go alone.”
“Yes, Your Grace,” whispered Ylva.
The Fourth.
The Archduke looked down the row at the boy with the black patch over his eye, and for the first time that morning, his voice changed.
Only slightly.
“Emrik Stahl,” he said.
“When the warriors came out of the fog, one of them went for your lance leader’s back.
You saw it.
Nobody else did.
You broke from the line and charged it, alone, with an axe, and you killed it.”
Emrik sat very straight.
“That was brave,” said the Archduke.
“And it was wrong.
It was the bravest wrong thing anyone did in that gorge.
You went alone into a place where two more warriors were waiting, and nobody followed you, and you lost your eye for it.” He turned his head and looked, very deliberately, at the other nine on the Fourth Lance’s bench.
“And nobody followed him.
Nine of you.
Your lancemate charged into three warriors, and you held your line and watched him go.
That’s the other half of it.”
The Fourth Lance’s leader, a stocky Kharn boy, opened his mouth.
Then he shut it again, and his eyes were suddenly wet.
Emrik put up his hand.
The Archduke looked at him.
“Your Grace,” said Emrik.
His voice was steady.
“I’d do it again.
I’d see it again, and I’d go again.
I can’t help it.” He swallowed.
“So what should I do?”
For a long moment, Alaric Eisenhardt did not answer.
Lyra saw something pass across his face, very quickly, and then go.
“Shout,” he said.
“Shout their name, and then go.
So that when you get there, you’re not alone.” He looked at the Fourth.
“And the rest of you, when you hear him shout, you go too.”
The Fifth and Sixth had done well, and he told them so in a single sentence each, and then spent a quarter of an hour telling them everything they could have done better.
The Eighth, Ninth and Tenth had waited on the lip for the horn, and they had been right to wait.
But the Ninth’s leader had seen the fog fall a full thirty heartbeats before the horn sounded, and had not asked to go.
“When you’re the reserve,” said the Archduke, “your job isn’t waiting.
It’s watching.
And the moment you see the thing that changes the battle, you tell me.”
And then he came to the Seventh.
* * *
“Rowan Thorne.”
Rowan stood up.
“Your plan was good,” said the Archduke.
“I said so at the time, and I meant it.
You found the one piece of high ground in the gorge that nobody was watching, and you used it.
Without that ledge, the archers on the west wall would have kept shooting into the mouth of the gorge until the First and Second were cut to pieces.” He paused.
“And you put ten people on a goat track with no way back.
When the troops came up the cliff, you had nowhere to go.
No retreat, no reserve, and nobody watching below.
You didn’t win on that ledge because of your plan, Rowan.
You won because Isolde Frostmere did something none of us expected.
A plan that only works if a miracle happens isn’t a plan.
It’s a gamble.
With other people’s lives.”
Rowan’s face had gone quite white.
But he did not look away.
“I know, Your Grace,” he said.
“I’ve been thinking the same thing for three days.”
“Good.
Keep thinking it.
Every time you draw a plan, draw the way out first.”
Rowan sat down.
Beside him, Sigurd Kell nudged him with an elbow, very slightly, without looking at him.
“Isolde Frostmere.”
Isolde stood.
Her face was composed and pale and absolutely still, the way it had always been, before the Rimefang.
“You froze,” said the Archduke.
“On the ledge, when the first volley came.
For forty heartbeats, the best archer in the North lay flat on her face and did not draw her bow while her lancemates were shot at.
I counted.”
Isolde did not flinch.
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“Then you did something I have seen perhaps twice in my life.
And then you collapsed.
You put everything you had into one arrow, and when it was gone you couldn’t stand.” He looked at her steadily.
“The silver rain can’t be your plan, Isolde.
It can’t be anybody’s plan.
If you’d frozen for eighty heartbeats instead of forty, or if the goblins had had a second witch, the Seventh Lance would be dead.
You need to learn to shoot when you’re frightened.
And you need to learn to make a small silver arrow, and then another, and then another, instead of one great one that leaves you on the ground.” A pause.
“Can you do that?”
“I don’t know, Your Grace,” said Isolde.
Then, after a moment: “I’ll find out.”
“Hilde and Hakon Aarn.”
The twins stood together.
“You held both ends of that ledge,” said Alaric, “and I’ve never seen anything like it, and I’d like to again.
But you ended up at the two ends by accident.
You didn’t choose it.
Nobody chose it.
Which is why Hakon was standing at the most exposed point on the rope with nothing between him and forty archers.” He looked at Hakon’s strapped arm.
“What you two can do is a weapon.
A weapon you don’t aim is just luck.”
“Cedric.”
Cedric stood up.
“You dropped your left shoulder,” said his father.
“Twice.
In front of a goblin warrior.
And your sister had to come in underneath it or you’d be dead.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ve told you about that shoulder since you were nine years old.”
“Yes, sir.”
The Archduke looked at his son for a long moment.
“I also watched her spend three hours last night in the yard fixing it,” he said.
“So I’ll say nothing more about it, except this: it took a goblin to make you listen.
Don’t let it take a worse teacher next time.”
Cedric sat down, red to the ears.
Several people in the hall were trying not to smile.
“Sigurd Kell.
You spent nine weeks fighting the wrong enemy.
You spent one morning fighting the right one.
I’d like to see more of the second.” Sigurd’s jaw tightened, and he nodded once.
“Senna Vaar.
You went at the champion alone, from the front, with a spear, because nobody else was closer.
You were right that nobody else was closer.
You were wrong to go from the front.
Your father will tell you the same about bears, if you ask him.” Senna went red, and nodded.
“Mira Halvard.”
Mira stood up, very straight, with her stained orange fingers clasped in front of her.
“You saw the fog come down,” said the Archduke, “and you knew what it was, and you knew how to break it.
You had the answer in your satchel.
You’d carried it for eight years.” He paused.
“And you waited until someone asked you.
By then, the Fourth had been fighting blind for ten minutes.”
Mira’s lips went white.
She opened her mouth, and then shut it again.
“You’re not the kind of person who likes to be wrong in front of people,” said Alaric, not unkindly.
“So you wait until you’re sure.
On the ice, being sure takes too long.
When you know, act.
Even if you might be wrong.
Especially then.”
“Yes, Your Grace,” said Mira.
Her voice was very small.
“Finn Brannoc.”
Finn stood.
The Archduke looked at him for a long moment.
“Good,” he said.
And that was all.
Finn sat down again, looking as though he had been struck by lightning.
“Lyra.”
She stood.
Every eye in the hall was on her, and she could feel them, the way she had felt them on the dais at the Rite.
Her father looked at her for a long moment, without any expression at all.
“You caught a blow,” he said, “that you should never have caught.
A mammoth-bone club, swung by a goblin twice your weight, on a sword held flat.
A Sword Master’s arms would have broken.
Yours didn’t, which is luck.” He paused.
“You didn’t need to catch it.
You were fast enough to move.
You chose to stand.
Your feet were in the wrong place, and you let them be.”
The words went into Lyra like a cold needle.
She understood exactly what he was saying, and exactly what he was not.
You were too convincing.
A Sword Master would have dodged.
“Next time,” said her father, “move your feet.”
“Yes, Your Grace,” said Lyra.
She sat down.
Beside her, on the bench, she felt Senna’s shoulder press very lightly against hers, and stay.
* * *
When the Archduke had finished, he stepped aside, and Lord Lucian stepped forward.
The Sword Maniac did not have a paper.
He did not seem to need one.
He stood in front of the hearth with his hands behind his back and his wild hair falling in his eyes, and looked at them.
“You fought,” he said, “like a hundred people.”
They waited.
He did not go on for a moment, and a few people looked at each other, confused.
“That’s the problem,” said Lucian.
“A hundred people.
Ten lances of ten people each, and every one of you fighting your own fight.
The swords in the First fought their goblins, and the spears fought theirs, and nobody looked at anybody else.
I watched a boy in the Sixth kill a warrior and then stand there admiring it while another warrior walked up behind his lancemate.” His eyes went along the rows.
“You’re not ten swords in a lance.
You’re one weapon with ten edges.
When one edge strikes, the other nine should already be moving to where the next blow is going to land.”
“How, my lord?” That was the leader of the First, the tall, grave girl.
“We can’t see each other in the fog.
We can’t hear each other.”
“You can feel each other,” said Lucian.
“The Aarn twins were at opposite ends of a cliff, and they fired as one archer.
They’re twins, and they’ve had sixteen years of practice.
You have ten weeks.” He shrugged, very slightly.
“So practice.
Spar in threes, not in pairs.
Fight blindfolded, with your lancemates calling.
Learn the sound of each other’s feet.
By spring, I want every one of you to know where the other nine are without turning your head.”
He paused, and something in his face changed.
“I saw one lance do it,” he said.
“For about four minutes.
In a gully at the north end of the gorge.
A spear pinned a warrior’s arm, and a second spear took its knee, and a cleaver broke its club, and a longsword went for its heart, and not one of them looked at the others.” He was not looking at the Seventh.
He did not need to.
“Four minutes.
I want you all to do it for four hours.”
Then Lord Kenneth stepped forward, with his ledger under his arm.
“I have one thing to say,” said the Alchemy Maniac, “and I’m going to say it very clearly, because I’m very annoyed.”
He opened his ledger.
“Eleven of you are alchemists,” he said.
“Eleven.
I’ve taught you for ten weeks.
You can refine clean mid-grade pills, all of you, and two of you can refine high-grade.
You know more about wounds and poisons and fevers and frostbite than any field-surgeon on the Wall.
And in the Rimefang, three of your lances didn’t have a single one of you in them, and one lance had two.” He looked up.
“When Ylva Brenn took a black-ice arrow in the thigh, there was nobody in the Third who knew that black ice poisons the blood as it melts, and she lay in the snow for twenty minutes with it melting.
When the fog came down on the Fourth, there was nobody in the Fourth who could have done what Mira Halvard did.
And when Mira did it, it was a hundred and fifty yards away, in a different lance, for the Seventh alone.”
He closed the ledger.
“The alchemists are not an afterthought.
You are not the ones who stand at the back and wait for people to bleed.
You are the ones who break hexes and counter poisons and keep people alive long enough for the swords to matter.
Every lance needs one.
Every one.
From today.”
* * *
The reassignments did not take long.
The Archduke read them out from the back of his sheet of paper, lance by lance.
Most of them were small: an archer moved from the First to the Sixth, a spear from the Ninth to the Third.
The alchemists were spread out, one to each lance, as Kenneth had said.
Three of the wounded would not be going on.
Ylva Brenn, Emrik Stahl and Hakon Aarn would stay at the Twelfth Tower under Captain Orsa’s care until the lances came back from the Hollowmere.
Ylva nodded.
Emrik said nothing, but his jaw was tight.
Hakon looked at his sister.
Hilde’s face had gone completely white.
“And the Seventh,” said the Archduke.
The Seventh Lance went very still.
“The Seventh had two alchemists.
It will have one.
Mira Halvard moves to the Fourth, to take Emrik Stahl’s place.” He did not look up from the paper.
“Arne Stenvik moves from the Fourth to the Seventh, in exchange.
And Isolde Frostmere remains in the Seventh, but for the next hunt she will not be on its rope.” Now he did look up.
“She will command the high line.
Every archer from every lance, on the high ground above the hunt, under one captain.
With Hilde Aarn as her second.”
Nobody spoke.
Then Mira stood up.
Lyra saw her do it, and saw what it cost her: the stained fingers clenching, the tight line of her mouth.
She looked along the bench at Isolde, and Isolde looked back.
“Your Grace,” said Mira.
“The Fourth has no alchemist?”
“The Fourth has no alchemist.”
“And they lost Emrik because nobody could see what was coming for him in the fog.”
“They did.”
Mira was silent for a moment.
Then she turned to the Fourth Lance’s bench, and to the stocky Kharn boy who led it, and to Emrik Stahl at the end of it with his black patch.
“I’ll need a new satchel,” she said.
“Mine’s full of spices.
And somebody will have to carry my cauldron.”
The Fourth Lance’s leader stared at her.
Then he stood up and bowed, very formally, as though she were a lady at a banquet, and several people laughed, and the tension broke.
Mira sat down.
Her hands, Lyra saw, were shaking.
Isolde reached over without a word and took the little tin of salve out of her own coat, the one that had gone back and forth between them across the Frozen Land, and pressed it into Mira’s hand, and closed Mira’s fingers round it.
“You’ll need it more than I will,” said Isolde quietly.
“The Fourth don’t know about ears.”
Mira looked down at the tin for a long moment.
Then she put it in her pocket, next to her heart, and did not say anything at all.
At the end of the Seventh’s bench, Hilde Aarn had taken her brother’s good hand, and was holding it so hard her knuckles had gone white.
“I’ll be at the other end,” Hakon murmured to her.
“Like on the ledge.
Just further away.” He squeezed her fingers.
“I’ll feel it.
The whole time.”
Hilde nodded, and nodded, and did not cry, and Lyra thought it was the bravest thing she had seen anyone do in that hall all morning.
II.
The Sleepers of the Kharn
“Right,” said Lord Roderick Eisenhardt, and clapped his hands together with a sound like a door slamming.
“Bears.”
The whole hall jumped.
The Cultivation Maniac had been standing behind his brothers for two hours with his arms folded, silent, which for Roderick was very nearly a medical condition.
Now he stepped forward into the space in front of the hearth, rolling his great shoulders, and the grin that spread across his face was the first real grin anyone in the Twelfth Tower had seen in four days.
“Frost-bears,” he said.
“I love frost-bears.
Best beast in the North.
Anybody here ever seen one?
Alive, I mean.
Not on the floor of your bedroom.”
A few hands went up, hesitantly.
Senna’s was one of them.
“Vaar!” Roderick beamed at her.
“The Kharn girl.
What did you see?”
“I killed one, my lord,” said Senna.
Then, as the whole hall turned to look at her: “A small one.”
“How small?”
Senna thought about it.
“It came up to about here,” she said, and held her hand at the height of her own shoulder.
“On four legs.”
There was a pause.
“That,” said Roderick with enormous satisfaction, “is a two-year-old, and it would have weighed as much as five grown men, and you killed it with your grandfather’s spear.
Somebody tell her father she’s mad.
Right.” He turned back to the hall.
“I’m going to tell you everything about the frost-bear, and you are going to remember all of it, because in two days you’re going to meet one.
Several, actually.
Probably eight.”
The hall went quiet again.
“Start with the size.” Roderick lifted one hand above his head, as high as it would go, then went up on his toes.
“A grown male, standing up on his hind legs, is about here.
Twice the height of a tall man.
On four legs, he’s about the height of your chest, and he’s as long as a cart.
He weighs what ten of you weigh.
Maybe twelve.
And none of it is fat, except the part that is, and that part is a hand thick all over, under the skin, and it will stop a sword-cut like a sack of wet sand.”
Somebody in the Sixth Lance made a small, unhappy noise.
“Now the coat.” Roderick pointed to the frost-bear rug in front of the hearth, the one every candidate in the hall had walked across that morning without thinking about it.
“That’s three layers.
On the outside, long guard hairs, white, and every single one of them is hollow, like a straw.
Underneath, a thick underfur, like the down in your quilts back at Frost-Crest.
Underneath that, black skin, which drinks in the sun.
The cold doesn’t get in.
It slides off the guard hairs and it can’t get through the down and it can’t get through the fat, and the bear doesn’t care if it’s midwinter on the top of the Kharn.” He turned, and looked straight at the Seventh Lance’s bench.
“So which of you is going to tell me why that matters?”
There was a silence.
Then Cedric said, slowly, “Frost doesn’t work on them.”
“Frost doesn’t work on them!” Roderick pointed at his nephew as though he had won a prize.
“Frost-qi, frost-arrows, the famous Eisenhardt frost that freezes your enemy’s blood in his veins.
You can pour it all over a frost-bear and he’ll thank you.
He’ll think it’s a nice cool bath.” His grin faded a little.
“A lot of you are frost-born.
The whole North is.
You’ve been taught since you could walk that your frost is your best weapon.
Against the frost-bear, it is your worst.
Leave it in your pocket.
Use steel.
Use mithril.
Use your legs.”
Lyra felt her brother go very still beside her.
She knew why.
Half of what the Dragon-Spine Cleaver did, it did with frost.
“Now.
What does he do to you?” Roderick held up his great right hand, fingers spread, curved like claws.
“This.
The paw.
As wide as a shield, with five claws as long as your fingers, on the end of a leg that can lift a boulder.
He’ll swing it once, from the side, like this.” He swung his arm, slowly, in a flat arc.
“One blow breaks a shield.
Two break the arm behind it.
The Frostweave will turn a claw.
It won’t turn the weight.” He dropped the hand.
“Then there’s the bite.
Then there’s the thing he does when he stands up and takes you in both arms and squeezes, which I won’t describe, because some of you have just eaten.”
Hilde Aarn put her hand over her mouth.
“How fast?” That was the leader of the Second, sharp and practical.
“Over a hundred paces?” Roderick shrugged.
“Faster than a horse.
Faster than any of you, even without your cuffs.
Don’t ever try to outrun one.” He held up a finger.
“But only over a hundred paces.
He’s built to charge, not to chase.
And he’s long.
It takes him a long time to turn.
From the front, he’s a mountain falling on you.
From the side…” He turned himself, ponderously, in a slow circle, like a barge on a river, and several people laughed.
“From the side, he’s a very big animal having a very bad time.”
“Where do we hit him, my lord?” That was Sigurd.
“Good question.
Not the head.” Roderick knocked on his own forehead with his knuckles.
“His skull’s as thick as a shield and it slopes, so your blade will skid off it.
Not the belly, because of the fat.
Here.” He turned sideways and laid his hand flat against his own ribs, just behind his upper arm.
“Behind the foreleg, low, when he’s turned side-on.
That’s his heart and his lungs, and there’s no bone in the way if you go in at the right angle.
A spear there, or a longsword, driven hard, and he’s done.
Second-best is the back of the hind leg, the big tendon above the heel.
Cut that, and he can’t charge anymore.” He glanced at Senna, with a small approving nod.
Not the front.”
Senna went red.
“What about his senses, my lord?” asked Isolde, from the end of the bench.
Her voice was cool and careful, the way it always was, but she was leaning forward.
“Ah!
Archer’s question.” Roderick tapped his nose.
“He smells everything.
A frost-bear can smell a cooking fire ten miles off.
He can smell a seal under three feet of ice.
He can smell you, and what you had for breakfast, and whether you’re frightened.” He tapped his ears.
“Hears well.
Not as well as he smells.” Then he tapped his eyes.
“Sees badly.
Very badly, for a hunter.
Movement, yes.
Shapes, not much.
Colors, not at all.
So your high line, Frostmere, is invisible to him, as long as the wind is right.
He’ll never know where the arrows are coming from.”
“And the arrows won’t go through his coat,” said Isolde.
“Not ordinary ones.
So you won’t try to kill him with them.” Roderick pointed at her.
“You’ll steer him.
An arrow in the snow in front of his nose, and he turns.
An arrow on his shoulder, and he turns the other way.
An arrow in the eye, if you can, and he’ll stop to paw at his face while the lances go in.
You’re not the hammer, Frostmere.
You’re the shepherd.”
Isolde considered that for a long moment.
Then she nodded, slowly, as though the idea pleased her.
“Now the most important thing.” Roderick stopped pacing.
“How he behaves.”
He held up his hand again, and began to count on his fingers.
“One.
When he stands up on his hind legs, he isn’t attacking.
He’s looking.
Trying to see you with those bad eyes, and trying to look big so you’ll go away.
If a bear stands up in front of you, stand still.
Make yourself tall.
Don’t run.” A second finger.
“Two.
When he drops back down onto four legs and his ears go flat and he starts to sway his head from side to side, that’s when he’s coming.
You’ll have about three heartbeats.” A third.
“Three.
Never run.
Running tells him you’re food.
Everything that runs from a frost-bear is food.” A fourth.
“Four.
Never, ever get between a mother and her cubs.
A male will kill you because he’s hungry.
A mother will kill you because you’re there, and she won’t stop until you’re very, very flat.”
He held up his thumb.
“And five.
Never go into the den.
Never.
Not for a core, not for a cub, not because your friend’s in there.
A den is a cave with a bear in it and one way out, and the bear is standing in it.”
The hall was absolutely silent.
“Now,” said Roderick.
“Here’s the part that’s wrong.”
He glanced at the Archduke.
Alaric nodded, very slightly, and Roderick went on, and his voice had lost all its cheerfulness.
“Frost-bears sleep through the deep winter.
Every one of them.
They eat all autumn until they’re fat as barrels, and then when the first great blizzard comes, they go into their dens in the glacier caves, and they sleep until the thaw.
They don’t wake up.
Not for hunger, not for cold, not for anything.
You could walk into a den in midwinter and sit on a sleeping frost-bear and he wouldn’t notice.
I’ve done it.” A faint flicker of the old grin.
“Don’t.”
“But they’re awake,” said the Archduke.
“But they’re awake.” Roderick nodded.
“A whole sleuth of them.
Eight, the Twelfth’s patrols think, in the old glacier caves at the foot of the Kharn, four miles east of the Hollowmere.
The Sleepers, the Wall calls those caves, because in forty years of patrols nobody has ever seen a bear come out of them before the thaw.” He paused.
“They came out a month ago.
They’ve been raiding the Twelfth’s herds in the valley below the Wall ever since.
Twenty head of cattle.
Two shepherd’s dogs.
Last week, a shepherd.”
A murmur went round the hall.
“He lived,” said Captain Orsa shortly, from the side of the hearth.
“He won’t walk again.”
“A frost-bear that wakes in midwinter,” said Roderick, “has eaten nothing for two months and burned half its fat just waking up.
It’s starving.
It’s in a temper.
And it’s lost the only thing that makes a frost-bear safe to be near, which is that it would rather go around you than through you.
A starving bear goes through.” He looked round the hall.
“It won’t be afraid of your fire.
It won’t be afraid of your shouting.
It won’t be afraid of you.
It’ll just be hungry.”
“Why did they wake, my lord?”
The question came from the Seventh’s bench.
Every head turned.
Lyra had not meant to ask it aloud.
It had simply come out.
Roderick looked at her.
Then, slowly, he turned and looked at his younger brother.
Lord Kenneth, who had been standing silent by the hearth with his ledger under his arm, took a long breath before he answered.
“We don’t know,” said the Alchemy Maniac.
“Not for certain.
But I have a guess.” He looked out across the hall.
“The Sleepers are four miles from the Hollowmere.
The Rime Ravagers hunt by the mana in their prey’s blood, and they eat cores.
A sleeping frost-bear is a very large, very still, very full core, lying in a cave, with no way to defend itself.”
The hall went cold.
“I think the Ravagers went into the Sleepers,” said Kenneth quietly.
“I think they went in to feed, and the bears woke up to find their dens full of wolves with six eyes.
And the ones that got out ran.
South.
Toward the only other food there is.” He paused.
“Toward us.”
Nobody said anything for a long time.
“Which is why,” said the Archduke, breaking the silence, “the frost-bears are the second hunt, and the Hollowmere is the third.
We clear the Sleepers.
We see what’s in those caves.
And then we go on to the Hollowmere knowing exactly what we’re walking into.”
He unfolded the sheet of paper in his hand again, and turned it over.
“The high line,” he said.
“Isolde Frostmere, captain; Hilde Aarn, second.
Every archer from every lance, on the ridges above the ground, with the wind in your faces.
You steer the bears.
You don’t try to kill them, and you don’t come down.”
Isolde nodded once.
Hilde, beside her, had gone pale, but her chin was up.
“The Ninth Lance,” said Alaric, “will cook.”
The Ninth Lance stared at him.
“A frost-bear can smell a cooking fire ten miles away,” said the Archduke, perfectly seriously.
“And I’m told your stew can be smelled from the Wall-top.
You’ll build your fire on the open snow, a quarter-mile from the caves, with the wind blowing toward them.
And you’ll make that stew.
With all the chili.” A faint murmur of laughter went round the hall.
The Ninth Lance’s anxious leader looked as though he might faint.
“The Eighth will stand with them and guard the fire.
When the bears come for it, the Eighth falls back, slowly, in a line, facing them.
Not running.”
“The Second Lance is the anvil.
Captain Orsa is lending you the Twelfth’s bear-spears: long, heavy, with a crossbar below the blade.
You’ll set them in a line, butts in the snow, points out, in front of the fire.
A bear that charges the Eighth runs onto the Second.”
“The Seventh is the hammer.
You’ll come in from the side.
From the side, Rowan, not the front.
Behind the foreleg, low.
Arne Stenvik takes the hind leg.
Cedric, your cleaver goes for the spine behind the shoulders, and you will not use a single thread of frost.”
Cedric nodded, grim.
“The First and Fourth on the flanks, with their alchemists ready, in case a bear breaks sideways.
The Fifth, Sixth and Tenth at the mouths of the caves, but not in them.
Your job is to see what comes out, and whether there are cubs.” He looked round the hall.
“If there are cubs, and a mother with them, we let them go.
We’re not here to empty the Kharn of bears.
We’re here for the starving ones that are killing the herds.
A mother with cubs goes free, and anyone who disagrees with that can take it up with Lord Roderick.”
“They can take it up with me,” said Roderick, cracking his knuckles, “on the Thousand Steps.
In cuffs.”
Nobody disagreed.
“One more thing,” said Roderick.
He hesitated, which Lyra had never seen him do before.
“The Twelfth’s patrols have seen the bears, but only one of them clearly.
The biggest.
An old male, grey round the muzzle, with a torn left ear, walking with a limp in his right hind leg.” He paused.
“The Wall calls him Greyback.
He’s been in those caves for thirty years.”
“You know him, my lord?” asked Senna.
“We’ve met.” Roderick rubbed the back of his neck, a little sheepishly.
“About thirty years ago.
When he was young and I was stupid.
I was trying to test my grip strength.” He held up his right hand, and for the first time Lyra noticed three thin white scars across the back of it, very old, in a row.
“I got his ear.
He got my hand.
We called it even.”
The whole hall stared at him.
“He’s rank four now,” said Roderick, quite seriously.
“Maybe higher.
He’s the oldest, cleverest, meanest bear on the Kharn, and if he’s awake and starving, he’s the one that took the shepherd.
He won’t charge the Second’s spears like a fool.
He’ll circle.
He’ll wait.
He’ll come for the fire from the side you’re not watching.” He looked at the Seventh Lance.
“If Greyback comes out of those caves, he’s yours.
Don’t let him get behind you.”
He paused.
“And if you get close enough,” said Lord Roderick Eisenhardt, and his old grin came back, slowly, “give him my regards.”
* * *
They filed out of the great hall into a grey, still afternoon, and for a while nobody in the Seventh Lance said anything.
Arne Stenvik fell in beside them at the door.
He was a big, quiet, sandy-haired boy from the Fourth, with a wide, square face and a long-hafted axe of frost-mithril over his shoulder, and he looked at the nine of them with the careful expression of someone joining a family at dinner in the middle of a fight.
“I’m the hind leg,” he said.
“Apparently.”
“You’re the hind leg,” agreed Rowan.
He held out his hand.
“Welcome to the Seventh.
We’re the trouble.”
Arne looked at the hand, and then at the others: Cedric and Sigurd shoulder to shoulder; Finn with his spear; Senna holding her side; Hilde, white-faced, still looking back through the door at her brother; Isolde with her bow case; Lyra.
“I know,” said Arne, and shook it.
“Everybody knows.”
Cedric laughed.
Sigurd grinned.
Even Senna’s mouth twitched.
Lyra walked a little behind them, across the yard, with her hand resting on the notched frost-lily blade at her hip.
Behind her ribs, the net was steady.
In the pocket over her heart, the witch’s golden-threaded core was a small, hard weight.
Move your feet, her father had said.
The Sleepers were two days away.
And beyond them, four miles on, the Hollowmere, where something with six eyes and three voices had gone into a cave full of sleeping bears to feed.
She thought about what her father had really meant.
A Sword Master would have dodged.
In two days she would face a starving bear that frost could not touch, the one weapon her family had always had.
She would have to fight it with nothing but steel and footwork and what a Sword Master could believably do.
It occurred to her, walking across the yard of the Twelfth Tower in the grey afternoon light, that she was looking forward to it.
* * *
End of Chapter 13.