Kyle focused on what sounds he could make out. Other than the moaning, gusting wind, all he could hear was a distant cracking and booming, accompanied by the occasional crash as of rocks falling.

‘Those are the sounds of the great ice-tongues,’ Fisher said. ‘Some name them frost-serpents.’

Stalker tilted his head in agreement. ‘Yeah. That’s right. But what’s strange is that we shouldn’t be able to hear that above the roar of the stream that comes down here.’

‘I hear no stream,’ Kyle said.

Stalker’s moustache drew down. ‘Yeah. Something’s odd. Wait here.’ He gestured Badlands to the right and he took the left. They disappeared into the roiling sheets of mist. Cal-Brinn signed for the Avowed to form a defensive perimeter. Kyle nodded a greeting to Leena, who winked back.

After a brief time, the two figures came jogging back through the fog. Their boots crunched on the stones and gravel as they closed. Stalker stood breathing heavily, his breath steaming. He smoothed his moustache while he shook his head in wonder. ‘It’s gone,’ he told Fisher. ‘The run-off stream is dry – well, muddy, but free of any flow. Can’t figure it.’

‘I can,’ Fisher answered, grimly.

‘And?’ Badlands prompted.

The bard scowled as if he regretted saying anything. Finally, he offered, ‘The ice has awakened. There’ll be no spring or summer.’

Badlands laughed aloud. ‘Ha! You’ve sung too many old sagas, Fisher. Such things no longer happen.’

Fisher gave Kyle a long-suffering why-do-I-even-try look. Kyle hid a smile and thought that perhaps he now understood something of the bard’s reticence.

‘We’ll cross then climb the ice-serpent, though it will be treacherous with crevasses,’ said Stalker, and he gestured to invite them onward.

They followed what was essentially a shallow empty riverbed of green-grey silt flats and broad gravel patches, all punctuated by boulders that emerged from the mists like sentinels. The way led them upslope. The wind was punishing now – a blasting current of cold that was oddly dry and desiccating. It carried the cracking and popping of the massive hidden field of ice. The eruptions burst as loud as the explosive munitions of the Moranth.

Stalker raised a hand to call for another halt. He came crunching across the gravel to Fisher, motioning for Cal-Brinn to join them. ‘You lot can carry on until you reach the foot of the ice. Badlands and I will check on our friends. We’ll re-join you upslope.’

Fisher and Cal-Brinn curtly nodded their agreement. Stalker waved for Badlands to accompany him and they set off jogging down the gravel bars and silts of the riverbed. In places they hopped from rock to rock as they descended.