“Its gone.”

That was the expeditions resident apprentice skald and Silvermane agent Snorri. Sneaking out into the blizzard that enveloped the convoy an hour ago he’d returned with bloodshot eyes, frost webbing his clothes and a broken axe head.

“The whole thing?”

“The whole damn thing, can’t even find a trail… like the sky ate it.”

“The chains?”

“Chain and rope both broken, in the snow I couldn’t tell how sorry boss, looked like it might have been roughly cut? But if so, the same thing cut both the rope and the chain at the same time…”

“That would be weird right?” Asked Erika, warming her hands by the runic heater that Katlin had in her wagon, even just the short walk from her wagon to Katlin’s had managed to steal her breath and scrape at her skin.

“Very.” Said Alvis leaning back and looking at the ceiling. “…A whole damn wagon… gone.”

Erika shifted uncomfortably, as did the others who had been gathered for the importune conference. Sigurn was still storming along at the front as the vanguard and Alvis had his reinforced command cart at the very back, but just a few hours ago a driver had noticed the chains linking the expedition’s wagons go slack and a few moments later the alarm had gone up.

Something or someone had snatched an entire wagon from the middle of the line and carried it away unseen, the now constant snowstorm filled the air with clogging blinding whiteness enough to conceal a marching army let alone a single Wold beast. There were far fewer creatures now, Erika wasn't needed as a turret up on the roof, but those few that survived in the hungry cold? Those were the stuff of nightmares.

“We need to move back to our ranges, the last few outriders have been called back in, everyone is locked in tight.” Reported Snorri as a runner handed him a few tablets.

Next to his Katlin nodded distractedly, her huge inhuman eyes never stopped moving, constantly checking every wall and corner for danger. “Yes yes… we are… read to activate the runes, shield and warding… should keep us safe for the final push into the storm.”

“…Why didn’t we do that before?” Asked Erika, her tone biting.

Alvis just sighed, sounding suddenly old. “We’ve have loved to lady vitki but the runes aren’t like your magick, they take time to charge up and can only hold a specific volume of odium within them… and the wood of the carts can only hold two runes thanks to its quality… if we activated the defences during the first snow they would fail during the final push.”

Erika settled back, mollified by the answer, as Gothi began to chant. The resonant hymns and epistles to the gods got louder and louder until the walls seemed to shake with more than the rocking of the wheels and the air hummed with power. With a crack like a lightning bolt the metal plates set into the wagon’s timbers began to glow, shedding a burning golden light.

Outside Erika heard something… something huge and close by, howl in pain.

Alvis smiled a tight smile. “We now have four hours to make it into the Fimbulwinter itself,” he said simply. “If we are still in the deep Wold when the runes fail… we will all die.”