BITTER ICE WAS killing him. A lone man, gray of eye and cruel of face staggered through a valley with no name, caged by towering peaks sheathed in the old armor of everlasting winter. He had not seen the horizon for days, and all the world’s color had bled to gray and white, save the black rock cliffs that engulfed the valley seldom glimpsed through eddies in the storm. Marching numbly through a grim blizzard that dogged him as surely as the wolves that trailed behind, it became ever harder to think, as if his mind were a river freezing over. At some point, the frigid winds tore reason itself from his dying fingers, and all that was left was the singular need to keep moving.

A keening, vicious scream swirled about him, driving knives into his ears, stabbing at every inch of exposed skin. He burrowed deeper into the rags he wore. The rotting skins were little comfort. He had pulled from a corpse he found huddled in a cave a week earlier. The bulk of his muscle strained against them, threatened to burst the crude gutrope stitching that held the garments together. Without them, he would die sooner yet.

Step by step, the man punched through the crust of hardening snow that coated the valley floor, taking no pains to mask his trail. He moved like a revenant, driving towards…something. Something that lay at the head of this forsaken place at the rim of the world.

Move or die. The faint echoes that whispered in his head left no doubt, no room for argument. They offered him no succor, no encouragement.

Only the grim certainty that hesitation here was death. He curled his hands around the ring on his finger, trying to draw on the warmth of its arcane inner power. He had carried it for long years, and it had sustained him through many horrors. Yet here, it was not enough.

A wolf’s howl went up, a solitary croon that he felt in his very bones: behind him, ever nearer, eager to feast on his hot blood before it too turned to another stone-hard lump of ice soon forgotten. More voices joined the wolfsong. He heard them encircling him, stalking just beyond the hem of snow. Glaring into the blizzard’s shifting curtains, he could make out nothing distinct. All was flat, featureless, uncertain. Perhaps the dark upright skeleton of a pine tree in the distance, or perhaps merely an impression of gray on gray.

The man thrust his head back, and let his own howl rip forth, venting his fury, his pain, up into the iron sky. The other voices cut off at this unexpected intrusion, suddenly suspicious. Yes, let them feel a little fear.

You are not the only killers in this valley, he thought savagely. Hot blood would fuel him anew, restore some vigor to his frozen limbs.

Can you even raise your blade?

The man nearly faltered. When had those echoes voiced such naked doubt in him? The ring on his forefinger often spoke of its own accord, a thread of whispers sliding across his mind. It judged him, every action weighed against those who had gone before. Had he not proved himself?

The man gnashed his teeth, splitting his lips in a feral grin that spilled blood down his bearded chin. It froze in an instant.

“Is it never enough?” he demanded. The wind stole away his words before they had passed his teeth.

When you die, came the answer. Then your measure will be known.

"Akale’s ashes!” the man swore, nearly twisting his ankle as his foot came down through the rime in an unexpected way. The ground was flattening, the snow suddenly shallower. He threw his arms out and caught himself, but only just.

“Who are you to judge me? Are you not dead?”

Are you not?

He laughed at that, a wounded, forlorn sound that would have sent lesser men running, had they heard it. It was colder than the valley, with all the humanity of a honed blade whetted in bright blood.

“Not yet.”

But his mind was eroding. He could feel it crumbling, like a cliff face beneath scrabbling hands. He shouted at ghosts now, argued with his own, blackest regrets. What the gales and remorseless blizzard had not scoured away was locked in ice at the very base of his soul. There was nothing left to give.

The wolves howled again, closer than ever. A feint. He heard the snarl of a charge and whirled, nearly sliding to his knee as he fought to free the long, heavy sword strapped to his back. Numb hands scarcely obeyed as he tugged at the hilt in vain. The sword was frozen in its sheath, and no amount of hauling would give way. The bravest of the wolves bounded at him out of the swirling murk, snapping and growling deep in its throat. It was black, no more than a shadow at first, plunging through ice and snow. It lunged, baring long yellow fangs that snapped for his neck.

The man caught it by the throat with one hand and slammed it aside. The beast yelped and kicked, trying to get free of him. Another emerged in a scrambling run, a brown and gray bitch. She leaped into the air, snarling.

The wolves come at last for the lion! the echoes raged, swarming into his mind like hornets. The she-wolf’s fangs sank into his forearm, punching right through the tattered hide jacket and tearing the rotting leathers like paper. He roared and brought his fist down on her head, snapping her neck. He curled his fingers, feeling the warmth of the ring, hot in its sudden wrath, and the pooling of blood. The black wolf was circling him, the glowering wedge of its head held low, waiting for him to move. The bitch lay at his feet, already dead.

The pack materialized at the very edge of his sight. Their eyes flashed in the dark, and he heard their hungry growling like grinding boulders below the somber dirge of the northern wind. The wolves watched him, slowly circling out. He snatched at a memory, dull as his fingers, of a knife in his boot. He tugged it free: a thin shard of iron nearly as long as his hand. A memento of another life, in a city that had never known snow or ice, where he had fought and bled on the sands of a fighting pit. It was hard to hold the knife, difficult to keep his hand in a fist. Blood dribbled down his arm, spattering the snow, the only blossoms of color for a hundred miles. Weak as his flesh was, nearly frozen through, he carried the indomitable spirit of the savage. Even here, with fanged death circling him, he stood bravely, for such a man had no other choice. Furious, he circled in turn, waiting, a bloody song on his shredded lips.

Having tested him, the wolves gave way for something new. The man shifted, falling into the old fighter’s crouch, shoulders hunched and knife held loosely before him, though his keen ears were alert for any hint of movement behind him. They would not dare it, now. He had shown himself to be no weakling, no easy prey. The beasts were wary of him, and by the unforgiving law of the pack, the honor of the kill fell now to their leader.

He came forward at a lope, this lord of the mountain, this stalker of the wild deeps. His coat was heavy, made up of layered blacks and whites. Snow clung to his fur, but he seemed totally ignorant of the cold that was sapping the man. Such a creature was above the cold, and yet an indivisible part of it, like some fragment of winter itself. One of the wolf’s ears was torn away, and his muzzle bore heavy scars. Twice as large as the others, nearly the size of a pony, this great beast moved with the easy confidence of an old killer. The man had only ever heard stories of such a breed, but there was no mistaking it for aught but a dire wolf. Some part of his mind, still clinging to dim memories, knew his father would have wept at the sight of this magnificent creature.

The dire wolf stopped twenty paces from the man, steel eyes shining with winter fire, watching. Weighing the man as one warrior judges another with its uncanny, wolfish intelligence.

“Come then,” the man snarled, baring his teeth. His hour had come. There would be no one to witness it, to carry the song, but he would meet his end on his feet. He would go to the halls of the dead with honor. “Take it, if you can!”

The dire wolf lowered his head, slavering. He bared his great black fangs, each longer than the man’s fingers, and his eyes smoldered with a vicious pride. He made a savage sound like a bark. And then he betrayed the man. The wolf turned his back and retreated into the storm.

“No!” the man raged. His mind buzzed, nearly mad with the denial. “I won’t die like this!”

But it was too late. For all his bulk, the beast was already gone, vanished again into the cloaking snow. The others waited a moment, and then they too faded like wraiths into the blind gray skirt of the storm. The man charged forward, smashing his way through the drifts of knee-high snow, stumbling where his own path made for uncertain footing.

They were gone. He panted, misting breath slowly sheathing his beard in ice, and felt the ring beginning to go cold. Was it too abandoning him, leaving him to this miserable fate?

He swore with concentrated fury when he realized the knife had tumbled from lifeless fingers, and knew he there was no hope searching for it.

The bitch’s corpse lay cooling, and already the snow was beginning to bury her.

Gall scorching his throat, impotent fury boiling out through gritted teeth, he clamped a hand over his bleeding arm, and it soon froze in place. He had to push on, had to move forward, get to the head of the valley. To stop was to allow the blood itself to freeze, and he could feel it retreating already, seeking the warm parts of his center and abandoning his extremities. Going forward was all he had left. He could not remember why, but he knew he must. Angrily, he stamped his feet, trying to summon warmth into them, and failing.

The savage had taken but twenty paces when something shifted below him, like a bone breaking deep in the earth. Old instinct made him leap aside, and there he froze, wondering if he had evaded a foolish death. For a moment, all the valley was still. Then, horribly, the man heard a thunderous grinding and crackling all around him as the very ground itself began to give way.

Knowing it was too late, he sprang forward like a mountain cat as the ice buckled and black water surged up like the fires of hell.

He hit the ice a few paces away from the main break, but not far enough. Already compromised, it could not hold his bulk. He smashed through, instantly submerged in a scorching cold that burned like nothing he had ever felt. He gasped and felt his lungs fill with frigid water. Desperate now, he clawed for the surface, and met resistance. Shimmering bubbles wreathed his head as he hammered at ice hard as iron overhead. To no avail. He was too weak to break through. The ring was inert, dead metal on his finger, the echoes withdrawn like the embers of a forge banked and cold at long last.

Darkness dragged him down, embracing him as a lover with bitter death.