There was hardly any sunlight anymore. The gray skies, howling winds and constant snow made seeing or hearing anything hard. Spike was certain it wasn’t actually snowing much any more. The snow was just blowing around. He shuddered in his jacket and blinked. The fire in his belly felt less hot every day, and he was ever so sleepy.
“Why are we stopping?” he said, tugging at Twilight’s tail. The expedition had ground to a halt when the scouts returned, and everyone was just standing there in the snow, trampling on their skis now and then to keep warm. Twilight had been huddling with the expedition leaders, their heads close so they could hear each other clearly.
“We are discussing how to continue,” said Twilight. “The part of the glacier where we think Sampo and his follower were buried with snow is the lower one, and then we have to turn south-west - left, as it is.”
“So why aren’t we going there?” said Spike surly.
“Because Saga’s hunch from her spell tells her Viglek’s remains are on the upper part of the glacier,” said Twilight and pointed. “That’s in the opposite direction. And uphill. And over a chasm, though the chasm isn’t really that deep here and the uphill part isn’t that steep.”
“So if we cross it, we cross now,” said Spike.
“Exactly,” said Twilight. “Later on it will be much more of a nuisance and we don’t need any nuisances right now.” She turned back to the discussion.
“Look,” said Vigg, “we cannot be sure how far from Viglek the Sampo is buried. But if the call Saga feels is so strong, we can tell exactly where to dig. We cannot be sure where to start if we go down the glacier.”
“Vigg, that’s like looking for your keys under the streetlight because if they’re there you can at least see them, no matter where you really dropped them,” said Twilight. “But I agree that we should check that site first. I’m certain we’ll need to dig in both places, very carefully, and we better get up there now while we can.”
“What’s the other thing you feel, then?” said Tuva.
“It’s so weak, it’s probably nothing,” said Saga.
“But what is it?” Tuva persisted.
Saga fidgeted.
“An echo, probably,” said Twilight. “Hundreds of people died here tragically long ago. Any neighcromancy is bound to have disturbances here.”
“There’s an ice bridge over the chasm further down from here,” said one of the other scouts. “It looks good for everydeer except the troll.”
Twilight looked at Kvalhissir, who snorted.
“The ‘troll’ can leap through the air,” Twilight said. “We should try out that ice bridge. What do you say, Vidar?”
“Let’s do what the fawn says,” said the older reindeer reluctantly. “She’s a prophetess, after all.”
They started to trot down on their skis, following the chasm as they continued down the slope.
“Finally!” Spike muttered as he started dragging his skis.
Vigg and Saga stayed behind a little bit as Saga spit out her wad of tobacco and put in a new one.
“That’s not much better than smoking, you know,” said Vigg.
“Thanks for supporting me,” said Saga and nudged his flank a little.
Then she started to trot down as well, while Vigg followed with a small grin.
The ambush was perfect. The drifting snow must have obscured the ground, rendering special Sight for hidden things in snow useless. All around the small her, Skolls burst forth from the deep snow, howling and snarling. They had dirty white shaggy fur and eyes as algae-rimmed ice, and wore nothing but a few trinkets of bone and horn jewelry. Some of them waved around wicked icicle spears and daggers of cold flint, but most were unarmed except for huge fangs dripping with drool.
Twilight noticed, as she began to summon magic power and her senses sharpened, that none of them had the cloud of white breath around their muzzles any normal person had in this weather. They were literally cold as ice.
“Back!” shouted Vidar. “Form a circle! Spears out!”
“The shield!” shouted Spike frantically as he and Vigg clambered on the concealable ackja. “The shield!”
Twilight formed the sphere in her mind and a shimmering force field erected between her friends and the ice-wargs. One of them leapt straight into it and almost poured off it down to the snowy ground, completely dazed.
“Hah!” shouted Tuva. “They cannot reach us, but we can reach them! Just like the holdraugr!”
The other reindeer whooped, and Tuva grabbed her lariat and let if fly through the shimmering field. It landed around the shoulders of a huge female Skoll grappling a long icicle spear in her front paws, and Tuva pulled as the Skoll pulled in her direction, her right foreleg pinned to the her side. Alva darted forward with a spear and prepared to jab at the Skoll, when she took a deep breath and breathed on her.
Or more correctly: breathed from her. The Skoll leaned back on the lariat and inhaled, and a white stream flew from Alva’s leg and shoulder and into her mouth. Thick ice formed around Alva’s right shoulder and right front leg and she fell to the ground shrieking.
As if on cue, the dozen Skoll closest to the sphere also inhaled deeply, and ice licked the reindeer closest to the front, though none as badly as Alva. In other cases the snow turned to backed ice from the inhalation of the ice-wargs.
“It doesn’t work!” shouted Vidar. “Fall back!”
“Do something, Hestalander!” shouted Tuva and let go of her lariat, running to her sisters aid. “DO SOMETHING!”
Twilight was stunned by the sudden development, but snapped out of it, furrowed her brow and bit her teeth. Suddenly the sphere changed to an opaque purple, and all sounds and lights from outside were muted. A thin runnel of blood seeped from her right nostril.
“This should be safe,” she said with a hoarse voice.
“Alva!” said Vidar and kneeled at his daughter’s side. “How is your leg?”
“I can’t f-feel it, “ she mumbled. She tried to roll over. Her sister started helping her.
“Spike!” Twilight said. “Help warm her! Melt the ice very very carefully! To fast, and you hurt her instead. You really should wait until you get to safe place when warming frostbite, but I’m sure that would be too far.”
“Will do!” said Spike and hurried to her with a cautious look at the magic sphere. Vigg followed him with a blanket from the ackja.
“They are still trying to get through,” said Twilight with an evil smile, “but I won’t let them. They are even trying to dig through from below.”
“They are too many,” said Vidar.
“Why didn’t the shield work?” said Vigg with desperation in his voice.
“Because a Skoll doesn’t breath cold at you - he swallows your heat,” said Vidar. “Lady Sparkle set up her magic wall so that things couldn’t pass in, but they could pass out - including our life-warmth. Isn’t that so?”
“True,” said Twilight and swallowed. “I cannot - I cannot keep this forever and hope they tire. I can do something that hopefully should knock them down and get them on the run, but I don’t think I’ll be able to raise a shield for a while after that.”
She swallowed again.
“Or do much of any magic before I lay down and have a rest, anyway,” she added.
“We’ll do it,” said Vidar. “We cannot just sit here. Tell us what to do”
“What about Alva?” said Tuva, anger in her voice.
“She, Saga, Vigg and Spike hide on the ackja and keep out of trouble, “ said Twilight. “I’m going to swat them all down and aside with a massive work of magic that won’t harm any of us. Leap at them and harass them. I’m sure many of you have fought Skolls before. Try to drive them off… or kill them if you have to.” She said the last with a whisper.
“I’m not going to hide again!” Vigg fumed.
“Yes you are!” said Twilight. “You and Saga are necessary for our quest, Alva is badly hurt and Spike… Spike cannot fight either, and we need him even more than me to send for help. You all stay on the ackja!”
Vigg said no more but helped carry Alva, with everydeer pressing him to be careful to not move the frostbitten part too much. Spike hobbled after letting a thin stream of steam play over the affected shoulder.
The other reindeer formed a circle and grabbed weapons.
“Ready when you are, Lady Sparkle,” said Vidar. Tuva trampled at his side and snorted in fury.
Twilight closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She remembered what her brother had told her about raising force fields long ago, and how he had demonstrated by filling a balloon with air… and how he had shown her this trick, by pumping it until it burst, and earned himself a scolding from the housekeeper.
“Here it goes!” she shouted. The purple sphere pulsed…
...and with a silent explosion it shattered. Shards of force, for a moment solid pieces of purple, burst outwards. They slammed into the Skoll gathered around the sphere, sending them flying into the snowdrifts or knocking them into the snow. They packed the snow deep beneath the snow upon which the expedition was standing, the sphere expanding suddenly in all directions. Twilight felt a shape becoming trapped below as she let go of the last strings of energy, and shuddered. Then she was overcome with nausea and fell over.
The reindeer were shocked as well for a second, then they screamed and leapt out at their stunned enemies, trampling and kicking and butting them, jabbing them with their spears and daggers. They didn’t hit particularly true, but their main tactic was to harry the Skolls and cause them to flee. The attack exceeded their expectations.
The Skolls were shocked. The only ones that didn’t flee howling, bleeding and concussed, with yelling reindeer warriors after them were those too hurt to even move. They lay there whining and moaning, and while most of the herd ran after the enemies hollering, chasing them down the glacier, Tuva stopped and jumped angrily on the fallen Skolls, ending with a drum solo of four hooves on the skull of the Skoll that had frozen her sister.
Twilight, overcoming her nausea, rose up and shouted at her.
“Stop it! Tuva, snap out of it! She’s down!”
Tuva snarled and planted another kick in the muzzle of the unconscious Skoll.
“Stop it!” Twilight begged. “Please, help the kids and your sister instead!”
Tuva stopped, breathed heavily and left to go back to the ackja. Spike had quickly resumed heating Alva’s leg, used as he was to high-magic shenanigans. Saga was so shocked that she had lost control of her spell. Vigg wasn’t any less shocked.
“It worked!” he grinned. “You did it!”
Twilight threw up.
“Darned poison!” she wheezed. “I’m not well yet!”
“You don’t say!” said Spike, but there was worry in his voice.
Everyone laughed, even Alva smiled, and it was then that the last Skoll burst out from the snow like an orca leaping from the sea and grabbed Tuva in his jaws like an orca might grab a seal. She screamed and slammed her hooves down his back with force, but she didn’t have much leverage and lost her breath.
Twilight feebly tore at him with his telekinesis, and he actually let go of Tuva with his teeth, only to try to shift and grab her in his paws. He was bleeding more from his mouth and nostrils than Twilight was, and his cold blood mixed with Tuva’s warm on their coats. He spat out blood and some teeth in the snow.
Spike spit a stream of fire at him that singed his back, and he howled mournfully and moved back, back towards the opening of his tunnel.
“NO!” shouted Alva. “NO DON’T YOU DARE!”
Saga grunted cross-eyed and his tail caught fire, but that only increased his speed.
Then Vigg finally got Alva’s long knife out from its sheath. With it in his teeth he leapt at the back of the Skoll and stabbed him in the shoulder, trying to hang onto his back and stab at him again. The Skoll screamed and let go of Tuva, and he and Vigg tumbled in the snow to the horrified screams of the onlookers. Spike and Saga both held back fire, and Twilight halted a levitated spear in the air in fear of hitting the wrong target.
It was then that the ball of violence disappeared down the Skoll tunnel, despite its narrowness. It was a strange sight.
“NO!” shouted Tuva and Alva at once, leaving the Equestrians and the city reindeer stunned.
“What?” Twilight croaked.
“He pulled him with him!” shouted Tuva and rose bleeding from the snow. “Stop him before he…”
There was a soft deep sound, as if the snowdrifts sighed.
“...collapses the tunnel after him…” she finished.
She got up, shook herself and stumbled after with her eyes in the snow.
“We must follow them as fast as we can,” she said.
“What happened?!” said Spike. “Where did he go?”
“A Skoll might pull an enemy down with him in his tunnel, and if he leaves him there he might suffocate,” said Alva and coughed.
“Kvalhissir!” shouted Saga and thrust her nose into the air.
The moose came striding through the air, swinging his huge mace, flecked with blood. Lacking the ancestral animosity of the reindeer, he had given up the hunt earlier once he realized the Skolls were clearly on the run.
“Kvalhissir!” Saga shouted again, now in the moose tongue. “A Skoll got Vigg!”
She looked at the others.
“We must find him and warn the others, but Tuva can barely walk!”
“I will,” said the moose. “Jump on. I’ve got strength left in my hooves. Enough to run a league on air to save a child. I’ll call on powers you never knew.”
Saga dragged Tuva with her.
“Come on!” she shouted. “Get on Kvalhissir’s back!”
Tuva protested feebly but Kvalhissir grabbed her with his jaws and hoisted her on his back, while Saga jumped on her skis.
“Can he really fly that long?” Twilight mumbled.
“As long as he needs to!” shouted Saga.
“Take care of my sister!” shouted Tuva.
“Hurry up and save our stupid little cousin!” shouted Alva. “Tell the others to search!”
Kvalhissir galloped away, Saga hurrying after him down the slope.
“When he runs out of that spell he’ll be stranded in deep snow or ice, and the only one who knows the tundra is badly hurt,” said Spike.
Twilight washed her face with snow and stood up on .
“Keep looking after Alva,” she said. “I have things to do.”
“What?” said Spike.
“There’s coffee in your thermos still?” Twilight said and walked to Spike’s pack.
“Yeah, I think so…” he said and rubbed Alva’s shoulder.
“I’ll have a sip while I start working, and some sugarcubes, and when my brain is clear enough I’ll do some magic to find Vigg,” she said.
“You can do that, Lady Sparkle?” said Alva.
“It’ll be very indirect,” said Twilight, “but it’ll help.” She dragged out the thermos. “I think you should have a cup as well.”
Vigg had often read stories where someone suffering a terrible ordeal “mercifully fainted”. The real world had no mercy. His captor succeeded in swimming through the packed snow pressing the reindeer to his chest without getting stuck, but now and then Vigg’s antlers snagged. It hurt horribly, and Vigg first screamed until he lost his breath. That happened very quickly.
He screamed more when the Skoll leapt out of the snow and started running topside instead. Vigg kicked and wriggled and only succeeded in hitting his head on the snow when the Skoll made a somersault. He cursed and begged and cried out for… anyone, for his mother, for Twilight Sparkle, for his father. The Skoll didn’t even try to stop him, and he lost his breath again when the uneven ride caused him to lose his lunch on the snow below. The Skoll ran like a madman and started howling as he did, until he lost breath as well.
If Vigg hadn’t been so terrified, out of breath, shaken and battered, he would have realised that the Skoll was crying with fear, whimpering like a puppy, it’s muzzle contorted in horror. As it howled in desperation once more, it followed its captive’s lead and left yellow marks in the snow.
After a period Vigg couldn’t measure two other Skoll started running parallel to his captor. They were at least as big as him. One of them carried something large, flat and brown in his teeth that flapped behind her as she ran, and in a chill flash, Vigg realised it was a reindeer pelt. The three whimpering Skoll suddenly made halt at the brim of the same chasm Vigg and his companion had been following. It was only further ahead, how far Vigg couldn’t tell. On the other side of the chasm rose a steep slope of pure ice, somehow black, as if it had formed over basalt. At the edge of the chasm was a crude ice lozenge, decorated with skulls.
An altar.
Vigg screamed even louder as the Skoll hurriedly rolled him into the pelt and secured it hastily with a leather thong. Two of them held him down while the third, the leader turned toward the chasm and howled mournfully, repeatedly bowing towards it. He kept up the Skoll version of ululating for a long time, while Vigg lost his breath and lay sobbing. Then, the ground started to shake. A huge shadow moved down the slope. A shadow as tall as a house. The Skolls turned tail and ran as if all the beasts of Tartarus were loose.
Vigg, struggling to get out from the stinking pelt, couldn’t break the thong. He frantically tried to get out on the side, and had barely succeeded to poke out his head when he saw it. A giant shape in the form of a Skoll, but a Skoll of dark ice, as if calved off a glacier. Its head was the size of a kota tipped over, and in its two cavernous eye sockets burned blue-black balefire. Its jaw opened and closed, filled with icicle stalagmites and stalactites for teeth. As it laboriously crawled down the slope, its huge paws cracked and ice broke off from them, just to reform as its body sucked up new ice from the glacier with creaking sounds.
Vigg lost his voice as the lumbering Mokkurkalfe leaned over the chasm as a reindeer over a cooking fire, and found it again as the huge jaws closed over him. He was pulled up and away inside an icy cave, rolling back and forth, as the ice golem walked up the slope back towards where it came from. It was then that the laws of fiction finally applied to reality, and Vigg mercifully lost consciousness.
Twilight walked around the fallen Skoll, checking their icy breath and their sluggish pulses, and was relieved that they all seemed to be still alive. She then set about to ensure they remained that way by means of very basic first aid. She wished she had brought a book on the subject.
“What - what are you doing?!” said Alva.
“Saving my enemies,” Twilight said, a tourniquet in her teeth.
“What - why?!” said Alva, aghast.
“It’s the right thing to do,” said Twilight. “Moreover, it is necessary to save us in general and Vigg in particular.”
“Should I help you?” said Spike.
“No, help Alva,” said Twilight. “Wait, you can do something else. Get me the medicine bag I made when I worked with Zecora. It’s in my pack.”
Spike stopped warming Alva for a moment, panting as he did so, and fetched the bag for Twilight. She was kneeling by the huge female Skoll that had frozen Alva’s leg. The badly hurt Skoll looked up at the pony with fear, its eyes dull as in pain.
“I’m using you, ma’am, because I’m pretty sure you can’t bite me,” Twilight murmured.
“Are you gonna use a location spell?” said Spike.
“Maybe later, but this is a different one,” said Twilight and started scattering paraphernalia around the Skoll, who started to panic and squirm.
“You’re doing some kind of Zebra adaption stuff… what, that one?” Spike was incredulous.
“It was made for situations like this,” said Twilight, and started her magic. After some un-unicornian chanting with her horn glowing, she ended by bowing over the frightened Skoll and gently prying her jaws apart. Twilight rubbed her ear against the tongue of her captive who had passed from fear into confusion.
Then Twilight rose up, wiped off the Skoll drool from her ear and whined, barked and grunted to the wounded ice-warg. Her eyes widened and she nodded towards Twilight. Twilight barked reassuringly, the walked a bit away, sat back on her flank and howled towards the sky for a long time.
“What did you tell them?” said Spike. As a way of explanation, he turned towards the confused Alva. “She just learned to speak Skoll. It looks disgusting but is really useful.”
“That we have taken care of their wounded, that we wish them no harm, and that they can come and get them here,” said Twilight. “If the Skoll don’t care about their pack members being saved… I count to eleven hostages. I think I can negotiate a deal, especially since I expect the herd back fairly soon.”
“Why?” said Alva.
“An educated guess,” said Twilight. “They scattered, so Saga and Tuva will only find a few of them. The rest will soon be back here, since they are skilled at this thing and will try to regroup, while those Saga and Tuva find will try to rescue Vigg.”
“I hope you’re right,” said Spike. “Are you strong enough?”
“I’ve had coffee,” said Twilight. Then she grinned. “I also have a plan. You should take a message to Princess Luna, with a copy to Princess Celestia. They should know this.”
Vigg came to and felt himself enveloped by something hair and smelly. He panicked and kicked out, and threw off a very ancient blanket. He was lying in an ice cave, the inner walls sculpted to form shelves and niches. He was lying on a heap of old, felted-together blankets in front of a fire. In the fire, skis, sleds and spear-shafts of ancient design burned merrily, melting the ice around it. A wooden jug with melted water was sitting next to him. Vigg rose gingerly to drink, and realised somedeer - someone, he thought - had washed him off and tended to his scratches and swellings. When he Looked at the room, he saw the small traces of magic there, of spirits, just like a reindeer leaves a shape in the snow when it has rested.
Then he heard hoofsteps. He realized there was an entrance to the cave in the direction of his legs, a dark forbidding corridor of ice. Hooves - and something else - clicked against the ice. The other thing sounded like an icepick. Vigg’s heart grew cold and he looked around for something to defend himself with. He settled for pulling an old spear out of the fire. It was burning, and the still attached point was red hot.
A dark shape walked slowly into the cave. It mostly looked like a reindeer, but almost all its hair had been torn out, and the naked skin was grey and swollen, crisscrossed with scars and stitches. One of its hooves had been torn off and replaced with the point of a spear-staff. The grey flesh and hide seemed to have grown around the polished wood and rusty tip. It made the Thing limp. Its antlers were nailed to its head with fat bronze nails, and one eye, bloated and grey, hung out its socket. The other eye-socket was empty, and a ball of balefire burned in it, a dark blue. The Thing’s lower jaw seemed broken and hung down. It’s tongue lolled obscenely swollen.
Nothing of this grotesquery could compete with what you Saw if you had the Sight and Vigg’s Sight to boot. The Thing’s soul was a roiling cloud of anger, despair and hatred, tinged with madness. Only three small sparks of white occured now and then in the middle of it, rotating like the Thing’s heart like bees around a hive.
It stopped at the other side of the fire and looked at Vigg… and Looked at him as well. Vigg tried to swallow and failed badly with the burning spear in his mouth. The Thing shook its head and seemingly by sheer willpower got its lower jaw to snap back. It wriggled its tongue and spoke. Its voice sounded like it only spoke, Vigg thought, with its tongue, and not with its lungs, and he realized it wasn’t breathing. The voice was cracked and old and spoke in a Poatsi that was closer to the Moose tongue, or perhaps Ancient Cervine. Yet it was also the voice of an old stag holding back tears.
“Sampo… my son… is that really you?”