Fortress of Ice

One spark lived, and spread to two strands of the red fiber, and three. He sheltered it with his hand, and made a window between his fingers for a little wind to reach it, until heat burned his palm. Then he added twigs ever so gingerly. He fed it and fed it, while the feeling left his upper limbs. He stumbled about on half-dead legs, broke dry branches he yanked from off the oaks on the higher bank. They smoked, their upper surfaces being soaked, but they burned, and he dragged back larger ones and put them in, building a blaze in a spot clear overhead.

Ice had formed in his hair, and it dripped water, now, down his face when he faced the fire he had made. It sent up smoke in plenty: he hoped Lord Tristen himself might see it, and know he was in trouble; but he began to be warmer.

He drew Feiny closer to the fire. He limped over under an oak limb he had seen, still clinging to its tree, a big dead limb from which the bark had fallen. He seized it, wrenched it back and forth and dragged it back, posing the arch of it over his fire, ramming it down so it would take.

His feet had suffered all he dared allow. He sat down by a considerable fire, worked off his boots and stockings down to bare feet, and rubbed life back in until it tingled and hurt. Feiny, having sense, had stayed close by the warmth, and showed no disposition to leave him and go ru

Fool, he said to himself. He should have had better sense than to ride Feiny across. Nothing else had been that flat. The spot had been too sheltered, and too inviting, and if not the fire kit and the stand of willows, he would be freezing to death. As it was, he set his boots and stockings nearest the fire but could not get them dry again before he had to go out, barefoot in the snow, and crack off more dead limbs and pile them on. The cold hurt his skin. His limbs jerked uncontrollably as he worked, but he hauled back whole branches, unwieldy as they were, and made a larger and larger fire, until it melted back the snow, and melted the cover off a rock overhang, and melted the very edge of the icy stream.

Lord Tristen, he wished, in Owl’s absence, Lord Tristen, help us. Help us, or we freeze to death in your woods.

But Owl stayed gone, and he piled on the wood hour after hour, until he had a good bed of coals under the burning wood. Whenever the bigger logs burned through, he heaved both their burnt ends closer in on the coals, and kept the blaze high and strong, fire that melted all the snow that fell, and only whipped about in the driving wind, too strong and hot to fail. He sat in the smoke stream, where the greatest warmth was, and finally had strength enough to set his cloak and other clothing up on a frame of dead willow branches, likewise in the smoke, where they would dry faster. The dark came down around him, and by a firelit dawn, he had gotten his clothes and boots dry enough to put on, but not dry enough to risk leaving his fire yet. He unsaddled and fed Feiny, who had kept warm near his fire through the night, and having warmed himself again, he decided he finally dared sleep, his head on his forearms, and all of him tucked in a fire-warmed, smoky blanket, in smoky air.

His nose and his eyes ran. He waked whenever the fire needed feeding, but slept, and finding himself, and now the blanket, damp from the air about him, he dared not leave the fire for long. He stayed all the next miserable day, ranging farther and farther about to find dry, deadwood still on the trees, chilling through in the process, then warming himself again. He was dirty and smoky, but at least not starving, thanks to Cook’s cakes, which he ate sparingly, the while, and which he would have sworn were not so numerous. He began to be quite pleased with himself now that he had recovered from his folly and saved himself and the horse, alone as he was. Paisi, he thought, would be proud of him. Uwen would nod, in that way he had, and approve. He had done as much as anyone could do, on his own, and with no help at all.

In the morning the snow had stopped, and he got up, saddled the horse, and used the end of a log to break up his bonfire and shove the coals and burning wood out onto the ice of the brook, where it fell through. Then he mounted up and rode along his side of the brook, which at least offered him a road through the trees.

Something brushed his shoulder, and shot along in front of him. Owl had turned up, after two nights and a day, and continued remarkably well behaved until the sun was high, after which he disappeared again, faithless bird.

Elfwyn decided he could be as obstinate as that. He stopped, got off the horse, and waited, sitting, wrapped in his cloak, on a relatively warm fallen log until Owl decided to show up again. He was feeling quite pleased with his management of calamity, sure that Owl would come back, and having slept well enough and eaten a bit of a breakfast. Paisi, he thought, again, would be proud of him; and he was more and more anxious to get home again and tell Gran what he had seen and have her word on things—she and Paisi both had known Lord Tristen, and would want to know everything, every tiniest thing.

After he had gone to Lord Crissand, that was, and—

He had a terrible thought, and looked in his purse, which was empty of everything but his fire kit and a little willow bark; and felt about his person— he remembered putting it into his shirt—but he had had every stitch of his clothing off in that terrible hour, and he had been shaking all over, numb, and the wind had been blowing, so he would never have felt a little thing like a letter fly away from him.

It was a day behind him, that place, and he had no idea now how to find the fire site, or how he would find a scrap of paper in a snowfall. The snow had covered everything. He had been so pleased with himself for staying warm, and never once thought of the message he was carrying, never once put it in a safer place after he had tucked it inside his shirt that morning he had left.

Fool! he said to himself, distraught. Fool! So smug, so sure… and it’s gone.

He sat there, however, having no other answer and no rescue for his folly. Owl came back, perched smugly on a branch nearby, waiting for him.

“I’ve lost it,” he said aloud to Owl. “What shall I do? Can you tell him?”

Owl paid no attention at all, but took wing before he had quite gotten back into the saddle.

He had to get back to Gran and Paisi and get their advice about the message he had lost.

But what would Lord Tristen’s message have said? It surely advised Lord Crissand of what Tristen had already said to him, that he intended to ride out and probably pay Lord Crissand a visit—that, at least, he knew, and he could at least advise Lord Crissand that there would be a visit.

And then he had a reason to ask Gran if she could See what Lord Tristen was up to—because he ached to know when Tristen would ride out, and whether that riding out had to do with him. He had had a kindly welcome at Ynefel, no question—but Lord Tristen had looked into matters, as he had said, then decided to send him out first in some degree of haste.

That haste, he had denied to himself for the last several days, but haste it was—urgency was certainly what he had felt in his dismissal.

Well, Guelenfolk had certainly wanted him gone from their premises, which, now that he was gone, probably made things easier for his father.