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“You should be solid” He had found men dead in the snow before, their lier “You’re no part of what is right,” Snorri told it “This is Hel” He lifted his axe, knuckles white on the haft “But you didn’t come from there, and this won’t send you to the river of swords”

The deadat it, without the wit to dig

“Even the frost giants would want no part of you” Snorri struck the man’s head fro the clean snoith rotten blood, sluggish and half frozen The air held a strange chemical scent, like lamp oil, but different

Snorri wiped Hel’s blades in the snow until all trace of the creature had gone, then walked on, leaving the body still twitching in the drift

• • •

By the ti but a world in shades of white for day upon day He will have walked upon ice sheets and seen no tree or blade of grass, no rock or stone, heard no sound but that of his own loneliness and the mockery of the wind He will believe there is in all the world no placeAnd then he will see the Bitter Ice

In places the Bitter Ice ht scale a mountain In other places the ice shelf towers in a series of vast cliff faces, so clear depths When the ht sun shines on such faces, it reaches in and hints of shapes are revealed as if the ice has sed and held great ocean whales, and leviathans that dwarf even these, all trapped for eternity beneath a lacier For the Bitter Ice is just that, one huge glacier, spread across a continent, always advancing or retreating at a pace that makes men’s lives seem brief as mayflies

Snorri couldn’t believe the Broke-Oar would allow hiht infect the Islanders with their dead men Greed drove Sven Broke-Oar; he would accept risk, but never suicidal risk Ar the ins of the ice cliffs, low on food, as nuhouls’ poisons

When Snorri first saw the black spot he thought it part of dying, his vision failing as the wilderness clairew as he staggered on And in time it became the Black Fort

• • •

“Black Fort?” I asked