The Weight of Souls Prologue - Chapter 3: The ice walking Blair Renfrof was soon behind, his big black steed of battle snapping impatience. That animal was the wrong ride for a patrol in the tundra - too heavy, too noisy, demanding forage that did not exist - but try to say this to the mystical warrior who could multiply in twelve and control whole swarms. Gared closed the rear, grunting for himself as he advanced, his hands firmly stunned in the reins. Twilight deepened. The cloudless sky took a deep tone of purple - the color of an old black stain, like those who covered the left arm of Gared since the battle of Nere - and then dissolved in black. The stars began to emerge, dotting the vault like the sparks of a dying bonfire. A half-moon lifted up on the distant peaks, and Will felt gratitude for the light. "We can certainly move forward than this," Blair said after the moon was thoroughly rose, his voice calm but with a thread of impatience. "With this horse, no," Will said. Fear had become insolent. "Maybe my lord wants to take the lead?" Blair Renfro did not deign to respond. Somewhere in the tundra, a wolf howled - not a common wolf, but one of the great gray wolves that hunted the north plains as high as a gravel as they rose on the rear paws. Will took his small horse down from an old and nodous iron tree - one of those rare survivors of the past eras, his twisted trunk as a sick member - and dismounted. "Why did you stop?" Blair asked. "It's better to go the rest of the way on foot, sir. The place is just after that hill. Blair took a momentary break, his blue-green eyes fixed on the distance, his face thoughtful. A cold wind whispered through the gray grass tufts. His worter mantle was stirred on his back as a half-way. "There's something wrong here," Sared murmured, his ears shining red under the hood. The warrior dedicated him a disdainful smile. - Is there? "Did not you feel, sir?" Asked Gared. Listen to the darkness. Will felt. In four years on the wall, he had never been so fearful. It was not the common cold, nor fear of wores or wolves. It was something else. A tension in the air, as before an ice storm - but the sky was clean. - Wind. Grass noise. A wolf. What sound will you feel so much, sired? As Sared did not answer, Blair slipped gracefully from the saddle. Safely tame the battle street to a low branch - well away from the other horses, for the beast was biting - and removed the sword from the sheath. It was not a common sword. The blade was a dark steel, almost black, which seemed to absorb the moonlight instead of reflecting it. In the fist, small rubies gleamed as insect eyes. Will doubted that weapon had ever been used in real battle. "The land is treacherous here," Will Prevent. This sword will disrupt him, sir. A knife is better. "If you need instructions, I'll ask you," Blair said, and for the first time Will heard something hard in his voice. "Gared, stay here. Keep the horses. Gared dismounted, the joints popping. - We need a fire. I'll deal with it. "How foolishness has this head, old man?" Blair arched a clear eyebrow. "If there are enemies in this tundra, a fire is the last thing we want. The fire attracts as much as it removes. "There are some enemies that a bonfire will keep away," Sared insisted. - Giant wolves, snow bears ... and other things. Things come from the black hole. Blair's mouth turned into a hard line. "There will be no fire. Gared's hood swallowed her face, but Will could see the lasts lasts in the warrior's eyes. For a moment, he feared that the older man pulled the sword - that short and ugly blade, with fleet faded by sweat and doned donut for much use. Will would not give an iron pendon for Blair's life if he was unpainted, but he also knew that Blair was not a common nobleman. Turn you fight. Finally, Gared looked down. "There will be no fire," he murmured almost inaudibly. Blair took it as acquiescence and turned. "Indicate the way," said Will. Will wove a way through a tuft of high grass, then climbed the low hill slope where he had found his watchpoint, beneath a sentinel tree. Under the thin snowcover, the soil was wet and muddy, slippery, with rocks and hidden roots ready to cause stumbling. Will made no sound while climbing. Behind him, he heard the soft metallic brushing of Blair's black plates - lighter than the knitted quota that the common patrolmen wore, forged by Panunor artisans in the depths of EMEC forests - and The rejection of leaves as skewers clinging to the other man's skin mantle. The large sentry tree was on top of the hill, exactly where Will knew he would be, the inferior branches no more than thirty centimeters above the frozen soil. Will slid down, with his belly resting in the snow and mud, and looked at the empty clearing below. The heart stopped on his chest. For a moment, he did not dare breathe. The moonlight gleamed on the clearing, on the ashes in the bonfire pit, on the snow-covered shelter that the worts had built with gray grass and rigid feathers, over the large dark rock, on the small frozen creek. Everything was like a few hours before. Except that the bodies had disappeared. All eight worts. Males and females. The orange and purple feathers, the glazed octopus eyes, the pelican spurt winged - all. Gone. - Gods! He heard someone say behind him. A sword struck a branch when Blair Renfro reached the top of the hill. He stood beside the tree, black sword in his hand, skin cloak in his back blown by the wind that rose, nobly outlined against the stars so that all saw him. "Lower yourself, sir!" "He secreted Will urgently. There is something wrong. Blair did not move. He looked at the empty clearing and gave a low laughter - not a sound of humor, but something colder. "Looks like your dead rose camp, Will." Will's voice abandoned him. He looked for words that did not come. It was not possible. His eyes ran down the abandoned camp back and forth and stopped in the broken horn. Still fallen where he had seen him for the last time. Untouched. A valuable weapon, even for a wore. "Standing, Will," Blair ordered. "There's no one here. I do not want to see him hidden under a bush. Reluctant, Will obeyed, his legs shaking. Blair looked at him with open disapproval. "I will not return to Tispner with a failure on my first patrol as a commander. Let's find those worts, "he glanced around. "Under this tree." Be fast. Look for any signal. Smoke. Movement. Anything. Will turned without words. It was not worth argument. The wind moved, piercing it through the three layers of wool. He turned to the sentinel tree and began to climb, his fingers stuck in the rough bark. Soon he had the sticky hands of sap and was lost among the branches. Fear filled her stomach as a meal that was unable to digest. He murmured a prayer to the forest unnamed gods - the ancient gods that the first thed settlers had brought through the emptiness - and freed the dagger of the sheath. He put him between his teeth to keep his hands free for the climbing. The taste of cold iron in the mouth comforted it. Underneath, Blair suddenly shouted, "Who comes there?" Will heard uncertainty on the call. Stopped climbing. Heard. Observed. The tundra gave response: a restrower of grass leaves, the cold stream of the creek, the distant pio of a neves owl. But there was something else. A deeper silence that spread like an oil stain. The convicted did not make any sound. Will saw movement with the corner of the eye. Pale shadows sliding through the tundra. He turned his head, saw a white shape in the darkness - loud, thin, erect as a man but not a man. Soon after she disappeared. Wooden branches stirred gently in the wind, scratching each other with wooden fingers. Will opened his mouth to yell at a warning, but the words seemed freezing in his throat. Maybe it was wrong. Maybe it had been just a bird albine, a reflection in the snow, a trick any of the moonlight. After all, what turns? "Will, where are you?" - called Blair. "Do you see anything?" The warrior described a slow, cautious sudden circle, the black sword in his hand. He must have sensed them, as Will had the sensition. There was nothing to see. - Answer! Why is it so cold? And it was cold. Cooler than it should. A cold that did not come from the wind, but from within, as if something was sucking the warmth of her bones. Tremendous, Will grabbed his perch. He pressed his face against the tree trunk. He felt the sweet and sticky sap on the cheek, and the cold to turn it on ice. A shadow emerged from the darkness of the tundra. He stopped in front of Blair. It was high - more than two meters - dismaled and hard as old bones, with a pale meat like chopped milk. His armor seemed to change color as he moved: here as white as the newly fallen snow, there black as the shadow of an abyss, all the side speckled with the deep green gray of the iron trees. The patterns ran like the moonlight in the water at every step that gave. They were not worst. They were not men. They were something else. Something will never turn around, but who had heard whisper in the darkest corners of the barracks - stories that the old patrolmen told when the mead was generous and the longest night than the custom. Stories about what lived on the other side of the Black Hole. About what the SHONT system had awakened. Will heard the exhalation leave Blair Renfro in a long hiss. "You do not advance more," warped the warrior. The voice was broken like a boy's. He threw the skin cloak of worts back over his shoulders in order to free his arms to the battle, and took the black sword with both hands. The wind had stopped. It was very cold. And then the pale shadow smiled. --- continues ...