The Chilling Wind (Part 1)

The early morning suns of Garrietta beam down on Agnes as she labors through the thigh-high snow blanket covering the wilderness to the far North. Each knee lift and sinking foot fall temporarily paints the picture of presence on a blank winter canvas set against a breathless, blue sky. Agnes stops just long enough to take a 360-degree survey of her surroundings, her shoulders sag with the results. She had interacted with few people in the three full cycles of Tribute since she had left "Pappa's" farm.

There was the man in the port town that one of the boys she met called "Dockmaster Earl." He was not a nice man. He knocked the same boy who called him by name upside his head with a small piece of timber. "Put that poor boy's lights straight out," Agnes shivered as she spoke. Perhaps it resulted from the extreme cold covering her, but more likely it was the memory of the blood spattering at her feet. "Ya Fuck'en kids betta get off meh docs!" Earl yelled. It dawned on Agnes as she thought back, words probably were not Earl's first language - Perhaps clubs were. Agnes used the confusion of the fracas to slip unseen onto the deck of the "Chilling Wind," a merchant ship bound for the one port city on the northern continent of Zora Nel.

Agnes was able to hide down in the hold among the crates of dried meats and peel-ripened fruits. It was in these cramped quarters she met Kafa. A young hill dwarf who said he was fleeing north to escape standing trial for murder. The runaways spent the next few days telling the other about the lands they were from and the things they would miss the most from the life they each left behind. Agnes recounted the fragrance of the flowers that grew near the lake around back of "Pappa's" farm. Kafa told her about the truffle chocolate cake his mother would make for him and his brother. "Your flowers smelled sweet, of that I have no doubt, but nothing is sweeter than mama's chocolate cake," Kafa smirked at Agnes before taking a belabored bite out of some of the meat jerky. The two youngsters fell asleep the first night regaling each other about the sweetness in their pasts.

Agnes did not ask Kafa who he was accused of murdering, but she remembers Kafa talking through his sleep on the second night. He seemed agitated at someone named Maka. "I didn't ... You should've ... brother ..." Kafa's broad frame and shoulders shifted violently as he "rested." Agnes wondered whether Kafa had been tasked with watching Maka. Had he failed to keep safe a younger sibling too. The sound of a little girl giggling in the holds far corner snatched Agnes's attention away from her stowaway-mate. "Mora ..." Agnes fell silent mid-word as her wide-eyed gaze met with still darkness -- Then a scurrying large rodent digging at a crate. Agnes's focus drifted back to the restless shoulders of her friend. Unfortune for him those broad shoulders would be his end.

Dwarfs, it would seem, are too wide to fit between the massive ship’s wooden bulkhead and a large crate of jerky-ed ham. Fortunate for Agnes she could. Kafa's death was not pleasant to hear. Agnes had heard that sailors often threw stowaways overboard. What she had NOT heard was the practice of tossing them overboard piece by piece. "Captain Fargh," as Agnes heard the sailors call him, said that the god he worshipped enjoyed receiving their sacrifices in chewable mouthfuls. "Ya see, meh Drowned Mistress don't want to risk chokin' on ruff dwarf carcass. Neh! She wants to savor such chewy meat!" The crew did as the captain demanded, tossing chunk after chunk from Kafa's still screaming rest. The pain of a single tear freezing against her pale cheek brought Agnes's attention out from the memory of the "Chilling Wind" and back to the barren landscape of her present.

Agnes allowed her early-teen frame to sink into her surroundings. The thought numbing cold that was the snow now went as far as her upper thigh. If not for the seal-skinned wader boots, and the "snow-bear" pelts she had stolen from one of the sailor's lockers on the "Chilling Wind" she would be dead. "I hope they all do fff-fucking freeze," Agnes spit out the angry words ... she had begun to like Kafa.

Agnes focused her weary eyes out to the snow-blinding horizon and two faint peaks. "A jagged snow mountain, and a smaller sibling peak." A curious palm reader had told Agnes this after she built up the courage enough to ask her where to find the mages of the Glacial Wastes. "Mages?! Huh!" "Why would you want to call them that?" Grey-and-black locks of hair covered the woman's face up to the bridge of her nose. Was she blind? Or was she staring at Agnes with obscured eyes? The Second eldest of the five sisters rifled around in her pockets. She had just two pieces of fruit and one sliver of dried jerky remaining. Agnes would have to make it to shelter tonight. The youth remembered reading somewhere that the predators of these lands were primarily nocturnal. She pushed from her mind the even colder realization that she had not brought any camping gear with her. She was determined, she would find the Glacial Wastes, and its residents.

The teenager arrived at the foot of the smaller peak just after late afternoon. "Where are you, you bastards?" Agnes spoke her thoughts allowed as much as possible. Partly to keep her vocal cords in use -- she feared losing an unused voice to such brutal cold conditions. The other reason was to keep her ears and brain use to hearing a person's voice, even if the voice heard was her own. Agnes had been taught by her mother that the mind dulled as the body succumbed to the cold. Hearing, as well as awareness, would fade to nothing from a person as their life force did the same. Agnes allowed herself to slump into a seat on a boulder near the smaller mountain's base, she pondered where to go from here. Just as she raised her gaze to search for her next move, her now shocked eyes locked with someone she never expected to see, or be seen by, ever again. Baby Morgan smiled over to her elder sister from an outcrop that led around a blind corner. The Toddler Pigknuckle, dressed exactly the same as the last time Agnes saw her, gestured for her big sister to follow her around the bend.

“Morgan!” Agnes had been quiet to this point, no need to wake up any sleeping beasts, she thought earlier. The sight of her lost little sister, the reason for her exile to begin with, was enough to cause Agnes to abandon all caution. The Teen shot to her feet and rubbed the fatigue from her eyes then looked again. Agnes remembered from her studies that people exposed to the extreme cold would suffer false visions as their bodies shut down, she suspected that this was that. But she was going to go along with this delusion anyway if that was this. It was little Morgan! From the same dingy-white summer frock that she wore near the waterside that fateful day to the "heart-shaped" ruby necklace that always dangled from her neck. A final gift to the youngest daughter from their mother. "Mama ..." Agnes mumbled under her breath. No sooner had she spoke the word than a giggling Morgan darted around the bend and out of sight.

Agnes had been following young Morgan for over ten minutes now. More like she was chasing her youngest sister, who remained several dozen feet out in front of the elder the entire time of the pursuit. "Morgan, wait!" Agnes ran after Morgan through a glacier-carved overhang that unfolded into a flat opened area. She was so surprised by her sister's sudden appearance that she failed to notice that the deep snow-covered paths had been replaced by the firm bedrock of the mountains. "Morgan! Please stop running! Where have you been?! How did you get here?!" Morgan stopped and turned back to her sister at the edge of the clearing. The sudden change was enough to stop Agnes in her tracks as well. The elder sister just stood in the middle of the clearing, visibly panting her breath out into the more and more frigid dusk air. Morgan, whose always jovial expression was absent - wiped clean by a fresh look of concern - pointed over just to Agnes's left side. The attack on Agnes swung in from that direction. A spark of blood-red light followed by a fading sideways view of the clearing floor before ... darkness.

To Be continued ...