‘Where’d it go? Where’d it go?’
‘Never mind about that, it’s not important. Let’s get this straight, according to the legend it was five moons-’
In Klatch they take their mythology seriously. It’s only real life they don’t believe.
The three horsepersons sensed the change as they descended through the heavy snowclouds at the Hub end of the Sto Plain. There was a sharp scent in the air.
‘Can’t you smell it?’ said Nijel, ‘I remember it when I was a boy, when you lay in bed on that first morning in winter, and you could sort of taste it in the air and-’
The clouds parted below them and there, filling the high plains country from end to end, were the herds of the Ice Giants.
They stretched for miles in every direction, and the thunder of their stampede filled the air.
The bull glaciers were in the lead, bellowing their vast creaky calls and throwing up great sheets of earth as they ploughed relentlessly forward. Behind them pressed the great mass of cows and their calves, skimming over land already ground down to the bedrock by the leaders.
They bore as much resemblance to the familiar glaciers the world thought it knew as a lion dozing in the shade bears to three hundred pounds of wickedly coordinated muscle bounding towards you with its mouth open.
‘… and … and … when you went to the window,’ Nijel’s mouth, lacking any further input from his brain, ran down.
Moving, jostling ice packed the plain, roaring forward under a great cloud of clammy steam. The ground shook as the leaders passed below, and it was obvious to the onlookers that whoever was going to stop this would need more than a couple of pounds of rock salt and a shovel.
‘Go on, then,’ said Conina, ‘explain. I think you’d better shout.
Nijel looked distractedly at the herd.
‘I think I can see some figures,’ said Creosote helpfully. ‘Look, on top of the leading … things.’
Nijel peered through the snow. There were indeed beings moving around on the backs of the glaciers. They were human, or humanoid, or at least humanish. They didn’t look very big.
That turned out to be because the glaciers themselves were very big, and Nijel wasn’t very good at perspective. As the horses flew lower over the leading glacier, a huge bull heavily crevassed and scarred by moraine, it became apparent that one reason why the Ice Giants were known as the Ice Giants was because they were, well, giants.
The other was that they were made of ice.
A figure the size of a large house was crouched at the crest of the bull, urging it to greater efforts by means of a spike on a long pole. It was craggy, in fact it was more nearly faceted, and glinted green and blue in the light; there was a thin band of silver in its snowy locks, and its eyes were tiny and black and deep set, like lumps of coal.[24]
There was a splintering crash ahead as the leading glaciers smacked into a forest. Birds rattled up in panic. Snow and splinters rained down around Nijel as he galloped on the air alongside the giant.
He cleared his throat.
‘Erm,’ he said, ‘excuse me?’
Ahead of the boiling surf of earth, snow and smashed timber a herd of caribou was running in blind panic, their rear hooves a few feet from the tumbling mess.
Nijel tried again.
‘I say?’ he shouted.
The giant’s head turned towards him.
‘Vot you want?’ it said. ‘Go avay, hot person.’
‘Sorry, but is this really necessary?’
The giant looked at him in frozen astonishment. It turned around slowly and regarded the rest of the herd, which seemed to stretch all the way to the Hub. It looked at Nijel again.
‘Yarss,’ it said, ‘I tink so. Otherwise, why ve do it?’
‘Only there’s a lot of people out there who would prefer you not to, you see’, said Nijel, desperately. A rock spire loomed briefly ahead of the glacier, rocked for a second and then vanished.