Chapter 59 (Part III): Horizon's Oath
The campfire cast jagged shadows across the bloodstained parchment. Byrnrich's calloused finger circled the flattened oval symbol. "The Great Circle Lake—a silver mirror three miles wide, frozen solid until spring's first thaw." His voice took on the cadence of a bard recounting ancient tragedies. "Twenty summers past, I watched moonlight dance on its waves... and watched those same waves swallow two hundred mercenaries when a water wyrm surfaced."
Cartographer's Lament
Bennett leaned closer, frost crystals melting in his breath. "You've charted lands beyond the lake."
"Not charted." The mercenary chief's laugh held the weight of cracked ice. "Stolen whispers. Bartered rumors from frostbitten madmen staggering back south." He tapped a cluster of claw-shaped runes north of the lake. "These marks? Paid for with three barrels of firewine to a delirious ranger who'd lost both legs to ice wraiths."
Dadaniel's knuckles whitened on his dagger hilt. "And you trust these... scribbles?"
"Trust?" Byrnrich's eyes glinted like flint striking steel. "In this forest, boy, trust gets you a shallow grave. But hope..." His thumb brushed a faint indigo stain at the map's edge. "...hope makes fools of us all."
Bargain of Broken Men
The fire popped as Bennett unrolled his bedroll. "Your terms, then."
"First—" Byrnrich drew a serrated blade to clean his nails, "—when the frost drakes come screeching, you burn them. Not some pitiful spark. Burn them proper, like a true sorcerer."
"Done."
"Second—" The blade stilled, "—should you survive to see white spires of the Imperial College again... remember who showed you winter's true face."
Silence stretched. Somewhere in the pines, a wolf howled its approval.
Dadaniel snorted. "You gamble cheap, chief. A child's scribble-map for a mage's lifelong debt?"
Byrnrich's smile revealed missing molars. "All great partnerships begin with small betrayals."
Dawn's Grim Arithmetic
Morning revealed the mercenaries' ritual—bare-chested warriors scrubbing skin raw with snow, their tribal scars glowing crimson against pale flesh. A red-bearded giant carved obscenities into an ice pillar while urinating. Bennett noted their discipline: twelve scouts fanned northward before dawn's first light, returning with hand signals more complex than courtly dance.
"Watch the flankers," Dadanel muttered as they marched. "That one-eyed brute keeps measuring your neck."
Bennett adjusted his frost-rimed spectacles. "He measures my cloak's fur lining. Common mistake."
Blood on Snow
The ambush came at high noon—a roar shaking icicles from ancient firs. Sixteen mercenaries swarmed the snow bear's den, flames dripping from pine-knot torches. Bennett's stomach lurched as the beast emerged—twelve feet of muscle and matted fur, eyes glowing like cursed lanterns.
"Windward!" Byrnrich's bellow cut through chaos.
The bear's howl became tangible—a spiraling vortex of ice shards and splintered timber. Two mercenaries soared skyward, their safety ropes snapping taut like macabre marionette strings.
"Now!"
The net descended—steel-weighted edges biting frozen earth. Four teams strained, veins bulging as the enraged beast thrashed. Byrnrich's axe gleamed with hoarfrost... then flew.
Aftermath
Bennett stared at the cleaved skull oozing blue-tinged marrow. "Your throw..."
"Thirty winters perfecting." The chief wrenched his axe free with a sickening crunch. "First rule of ice hunting—never close enough to smell their breath."
As skinners reduced the carcass to bloody parcels, Bennett noted the precision—no wasted movement, every organ harvested in order of value. The gutted mercenary received less ceremony; a shallow grave, a stolen dagger placed between stiffening fingers.
"To barter with Death," Byrnrich murmured, tossing a frozen clod onto the mound. "May he charge you interest in hell."
Night's Vigil
By the dying fire, Bennett watched the abstaining sentries—twelve silhouettes prowling darkness. Their eyes reflected wolflike in the gloom, breath steaming in synchronized rhythm.
"See how the third from left shifts weight?" Dadanel whispered. "Military training. Imperial regulars, maybe."
"Or men who've learned what happens when vigilance falters." Bennett's gaze drifted to the map's enigmatic northern reaches. "Prepare your warmest furs. Tomorrow, we test whether madmen's scribbles outlast a mage's fire."
Chapter 60: Bonds Forged in Frostbite
The Wolves' Den
Five days among the Snow Wolf Mercenaries had softened Bennett's edges. He now drank fermented wolf milk from communal skins without flinching, laughed at crude jokes about tavern wenches in Winterhelm, and privately marveled at how these scarred men treated frostbite wounds with the same nonchalance as adjusting bootlaces.
Old One-Eye became his favorite enigma—the grizzled cook who could skin a snow hare one-handed while predicting hailstorms by sniffing the wind. "Lost these to a cave wyrm in '67," the veteran grinned one night, tapping his leather eyepatch and the iron hook replacing his left hand. "Traded the beast's fang for three barrels of dwarven whiskey. Best deal I ever made." His stews tasted of charcoal and desperation, but no man complained when he conjured edible lichen from ice sheets thicker than castle walls.
Arrows and Arrogance
Strelir the Eight-Fingered took longer to warm up. The archer's ruined left hand—missing digits claimed by a frostfang's death throes—clutched his yew bow like a lover's neck. When Bennett complimented his shot skewering a raven mid-flight, the marksman spat into the fire. "Magic's cheating, pretty boy. Real men kill slow."
The insult dissolved during the phantom leopard hunt.
"Bloody shadows!" Dadanel cursed as seven identical beasts materialized in the pines, claws glinting like cursed daggers. Bennett's incantation unfurled—a shimmering net of violet runes that pinned the true predator writhing in snow. Strelir's arrow found its eye before the spell fully dissipated.
That night, the archer slid a carved bone token across Bennett's bedroll. No words. Just the crude engraving of a wolf howling at a crescent moon.
Economics of Trust
Byrnrich's men developed rituals around the mage. Scouts mimicked Bennett's pause-and-tilt head movements before declaring "game trails" or "ambush points." A hulking axeman started leaving frostberries by his sleeping spot—an offering to what he called "the sorcerer's weather sense." Even Dadanel's perpetual scab of suspicion began to heal, though he still slept with daggers forming a steel halo around his pillow.
The mercenary chief observed it all through narrowed eyes. During the third night's watch, he cornered Bennett near the latrine trench.
"You're making them soft," Byrnrich growled, breath crystallizing between them. "My wolves don't need petting."
Bennett met his glare. "Your wolves were starving before I doubled their prey count."
A beat. Then the mercenary's bark of laughter startled an owl from its perch. "Fair point, spell-slinger. But remember—" His gloved hand crushed a icicle hanging from a pine bough. "—winter spares neither the kind nor the clever."
Mirror of Mortality
The Great Circle Lake revealed itself at dawn's brittle hour—a vast obsidian mirror framed by skeletal birches. Bennett's breath caught. Sunlight refracted through ice formations taller than castle keeps, painting prismatic ghosts on the snow.
"Summer turns it sapphire," Byrnrich murmured, joining him at the tree line. "But beauty's a blade here. Last year, two greenhorns tried swimming. We fished out chunks."
Camp rituals unfolded with military precision. Strelir's scouts fanned out in diamond formation, steel-tipped boots crunching rhythmically. Old One-Eye began constructing a firepit using ice blocks as mortar.
Then came the laughter.
"Fish! Bloody gods, actual fish!"
Bennett turned to see young Baer—the recruit who'd bragged about bedding a countess in Frostspire—jabbing his dagger into a freshly hacked ice hole. A silver-scaled creature thrashed in his grip, gills flaring crimson.
"Put it down!" Byrnrich's roar carried primal terror.
Too late.
The fish's jaws distended unnaturally, ejecting a crystalline spine that pierced Baer's forehead with wet precision. The mercenary collapsed mid-celebration, smile still etched beneath the icicle protruding from his skull.
Fracture Point
Chaos erupted.
Bennett reached the corpse first, fingers brushing still-twitching eyelids. "The spine... it's melting!"
Indeed, the projectile liquefied into azure ooze that seeped into snow. Byrnrich arrived panting, boot connecting savagely with the ice hole. "Frostspine eels! I warned you maggots a thousand times—"
His tirade froze as the lake groaned.
Fissures spiderwebbed outward from the violated ice. Something massive undulated beneath the surface—a shadow stretching longer than warships. Old One-Eye began chanting what sounded like a death prayer.
Strelir nocked three arrows simultaneously. "Mage! Whatever your gods are—pray harder."
Chapter 61: Whispers Beneath the Ice
A Corpse Without Farewell
Baer's corpse stiffened within minutes. The young mercenary's skin blackened like charred parchment, frozen fingers clawing at phantom saviors. When Bennett knelt to examine the forehead wound, bile rose in his throat—the hole resembled a grotesque hourglass, edges dissolving inward as if devoured by invisible flames. No blood. No bone fragments. Just a hollow tunnel where brain matter should have screamed defiance against death.
"Lake claims its due," Byrnrich growled as four veterans heaved the body onto thinning ice. The mercenary leader's knuckles whitened around his axe handle. "In Frostspire, he'd have gotten a pyre fit for war heroes. Here? Fish food."
The splash echoed longer than grief.
Guilt's Arithmetic
That night, the mercenary chief sat motionless by the fire, carving notches into a birch log. "Taught that fool to track snow hares in blizzards," he muttered, blade biting deeper with each word. "Could've been my son, had I ever..."
Bennett watched the man's shoulders sag—a mountain momentarily forgetting its duty to scrape the sky. When the mage repeated Byrnrich's own philosophy about life's transience, the mercenary's laugh cracked like glacier calving.
"Words taste like ash when it's your kin bleeding, eh?" Byrnrich hurled the mutilated log into flames. "Tomorrow, we'll carve his name on three trees. Maybe wolves will piss on them."
Hunter's Calculus
Strelir's discovery ignited different fires.
"Forty men. Heavy gear. Fresh tracks." The archer's ruined hand traced phantom maps in snow ash. "They're hauling something precious. Smells like dwarf-forged steel and desperation."
Byrnrich's grin mirrored ice-wolf fangs. "Generous neighbors! Shouldn't let hospitality go unanswered."
Dadanel's explanation later chilled Bennett more than midnight winds.
"Out here, mercy's measured in arrow counts," the swordsman whispered, oiling blades that already gleamed murder-bright. "Three rules: Never show weakness. Never share coordinates. And if you must kill..." His whetstone screeched. "...burn the bodies before ravens sing."
Ghosts in the Machine
Morning revealed Strelir's failure—and Bennett's conflicted relief.
"Gone. Like smoke through siege engines." The archer spat, disgusted. "Either masters of stealth or..."
"Or they're the bait," Byrnrich finished, eyes narrowing at untouched snowfields. "Double the watches. Triple the traps."
As crews scattered to set serrated nets, Bennett found unexpected company.
"Your conscience pricks like winter thorns," Semmel materialized atop a frost-rimed boulder, crimson robes bleeding against endless white. "Admirable. Futile."
The mage glared. "You vanish for weeks, then—"
"Your pet alchemist's wards reeked of paranoia." Her spectral fingers brushed ice crystals. "This place... it hums with forgotten songs. Can't you hear the lake weeping?"
Feast Before Storm
Old One-Eye's farewell feast became legend. The mushroom stew—harvested from toxic deathcaps rendered edible through arcane boiling rituals—left men weeping with culinary nostalgia. Byrnrich's private liquor stock flowed like summer rivers, until even Strelir sang off-key ballads about drowned lovers.
Bennett awoke to chaos.
"Gone. All eleven." Dadanel's sword trembled—a sight more terrifying than any beast. "No blood. No screams. Just... emptiness."
The campsite pulsed with dread. Veteran trackers found no footprints, no blade marks—only eleven depressions in snow where men had stood sentry. Like gods plucked ants from a child's sandcastle.
Echoes of the Drowned
Byrnrich's rage shook icicles from pines. "We stay! Dig trenches! Light pyres! I'll have answers or corpses!"
In the command tent, Semmel reappeared, her form flickering like unstable runes. "The lake remembers. It always takes eleven."
Bennett whirled. "Explain. Now."
But the spirit merely pointed toward the frozen expanse, where moonlight painted liquid silver across ice. "Ask the third wave. They're knocking."
Somewhere beneath the glacial mirror, something metallic clanged.