"Anvil Rock is one of the highest points in the Shiverpeaks," Brechnar Ironhammer said proudly in his gravely wheeze after his single morning tankard of ale. "It is sturdy and it is beautiful. A perfect tool for the Great Dwarf's forge." He belched, nudging the giant mug aside to rest next to the stoneware plate he dined from regularly.

"So, the Dwarves only have one god?" Rayne asked him. She sat cross-legged, opposite the stocky, diminutive man, hands clasped in her lap and shoulders inclined toward him.

"Aye," Brechnar answered. "None of this polytheistic lunacy that you humans have. It's a wonder you all aren't so confused that you see backward."

"Imagine," Brother Mhenlo interjected, tattooed head swaying as he sat down in their small ring. "A single god. It sounds utterly foolish if you ask me. How can only one being be in charge of the cosmos?" Brechnar only snorted, inserting the small end of a long pipe into the corner of his mouth while rummaging through the side pocket of his fur lined coat.

The snow on that elevated peak was light and fluffy like pure white cotton candy, spun into drifts more than two feet deep in most places by the biting winds. They howled and mourned through the jagged crags of white—intense beauty and terrible awe converging to create this enormous landscape.

The Ascalonians had huddled together in the shadow of the anvil shaped peak for the past two nights, waiting for the last of their straggling convoy to catch up. The Dwarves had proved to be excellent guides through the mountains, bringing the remainder of the caravan Rayne's group had left behind within little more than twenty-four hours. And with them came word of a second caravan marching not far behind. Rurik had been informed and he had ordered them to wait that second day for the next group.

Rayne hadn't minded the decision too much. She had agreed that staying for the second party would be for the best, but the insufferable cold combined with the delicate quiet of the powdery snow dusting the already frozen land was almost enough to drive her crazy. No one spoke much, all of them too afraid of shattering the spun-glass-silence to start a lengthy conversation. All there was to do was freeze.

Brechnar was probably the only one among them that didn't seem wholly disconcerted by this fact. The Ascalonians' hushed fear seemed too conveniently juxtaposed to his almost reverent silence, which had prompted Rayne's question and the subsequent discussion that morning.

"Opinions are like asses," Brechnar said at last, using his thumb to press the pipe weed into the end. "We've all got one and all of 'em stink."

Deciding it would be best if she left before she got pulled into a religious debate between the monk and the Dwarf, Rayne got to her feet, stamping her feet to get the circulation back down to her nearly frostbitten toes. A fine layer of white dust coated her warm weather clothing, testament to how long she had been sitting still.

She left them, high stepping her way through the massing drifts with her hands tucked securely into her armpits, making her way over to the other side of the camp where she knew she'd find Devona. After the confrontation between the two dwarf factions the other day, she had left the fates of the children that had snuck along in the hands of her warrior friend.

There were five of them all together, three boys and two girls each around ten years of age, standing in a row with their hands clasped behind their backs and their heads bowed sheepishly as Devona stomped along in front of them. Cynn and Ashe were standing off to the side, Cynn watching with great amusement in her sky blue eyes.

"You all could have been killed." Devona was shouting at them, ponytail flicking from side-to-side angrily. None of the kids said anything, shuffling uncomfortably under the murderous glint in their judge's eyes. "I've thought hard about what's to be done with you and I think I've finally come up with something." Each of the kids held their breath, sucking in one last gulp simultaneously while they waited. "The five of you are going to be in charge of cleaning up the camps and helping with one wagon each."

A couple of them were groaning under their breaths at the first half of the judgment, but by the time the last word had passed Devona's lips, four of the five were protesting against the 'unfair' sentence. Remaining stoically impassive to their outbursts, Devona simply pointed, gesturing for them to march back into camp.

"I hate doing it to them," she said turning to Rayne as the kids trooped along. "But they need to learn." Rayne nodded to her absentmindedly, but was paying more attention to the retreating heads over her shoulder. More specifically, the white-blond pigtails bobbing against the ears of the last girl in the line. "Something wrong?"

"Hmm?" Rayne's attention snapped back to her friend, raising her eyebrows in a quick question, before subtly shaking her head. "It's nothing." She looked back over Devona's shoulder, rocking back and forth nervously on her heels. "Hold on just a second," she continued, holding up a hand to halt Devona before she could say whatever it was that was on the tip of her tongue. She sidestepped her friend and trudged through the snow after the retreating children, taking hold of the blond haired girl's wrist to stop her.

She didn't object when Rayne spun her around, half leading and half dragging her back through the compacted footprints to where she had been standing during Devona's admonition. "You can use magic, can't you?" she asked the girl once she was in place, facing the small group of onlookers. Rayne herself could not see the expressions, but neither did she want to.

"Does it make a difference?" The girl blinked innocently, tilting her head to one side. A thin, almost iridescently white scar traced a crescent around the corner of her right eye, standing out even against her lily white skin. The paleness of her features was enough to make her seem as cold as the mounds of snow around them, but the gentle cadence of her misty soprano voice made Rayne doubt her initial impressions.

"Not really, no, but I wanted to thank you for your help the other day, if it was you," Rayne replied. "I don't think I would have done half as well without you helping protect them." She pointed at the trail of footprints to indicate the kids.

The girl looked at all of them, hazy gray eyes lingering on the four faces for a couple of seconds before looking away with a shrug. "If you want to thank someone, you should thank Adam. He told me that I should help you."

"One of the boys?" Devona asked, taking a step forward with a crunch of snow underfoot to stand beside Rayne.

"No," the girl replied dreamily. She twisted to reach the pouch she had slung across her hips, carefully opening it and pulling out the contents to show them. It took all of Rayne's willpower not to recoil when she saw the human skull lightly gripped in the girl's hand. "Adam," she said with a slight hand twitch to indicate the skull. "He's my friend."

"Ugh," Cynn groaned quietly from somewhere to Rayne's right. "Necromancer…" The girl either ignored Cynn's comment or she didn't hear it, but Rayne was more disturbed by the fact that she was looking directly at her with an expectant glint in her eye. It took her another second to realize that the girl was waiting for her to thank 'Adam'.

"Umm…thanks…" she mumbled at last, hesitantly directing the comment in the direction of the skull to avoid upsetting her. Apparently satisfied, she replaced the skull inside the pouch, doing the clasp once again.

"What's your name?" Devona asked once the thing was out of sight once again.

"Eve."

Rayne had opened her mouth to ask her a question of her own, but stopped when the creaking of wagon wheels struggling in the snow reached her ears from the east. She touched Devona on the shoulder once and, with a head nod from the older girl, set of at a loping pace to intercept the newcomers.

The wagon train cresting the rise in the mountains was larger than the one she had been traveling with by several families, but as excited as she was to know that others were coming, the man plowing ahead of the column brought the first relieved grin to her face in weeks.

"Captain Osric!" she shouted, waving brightly to the thin man headed straight for her. He was a man whom she had known since the days of her father's service, and one of the very few who had not lost any regard in her mind since her own induction into the service. His lean, sinewy build and closely trimmed beard that framed the legendary smile had not changed a bit.

"Dalca!" he called to her, bouncing through the remaining drifts like a march hare, sending snow skidding up as high as her chest in his final bound, which drew a chuckle and a playful scream from her. "Boy, are you a sight for sore eyes. Nothing around here but white, white, and a little bit of gray where the white hasn't quite settled yet. That and I know that if you're here, Rurik can't be far off."

Rayne chuckled again. "What makes you say that?"

"Oh, well." Osric suddenly looked uncomfortable, shiftily looking off at the rising, snowbound peaks in the distance. "Nothing in particular. I guess it's just nice to see the promises from a deep friendship being upheld." As if realizing he had just said something he should not have, Osric smacked his lips and took a deep breath. "So…ah…how've thing been…here?"

"Good," Rayne answered warily. "For the most part. C'mon. I'll lead you back."

After several arduous minutes of coaxing the oxen to make the last leg of the trip and repairing the axel of the last wagon after it went over a particularly uneven patch, the second caravan trundled into the camp. Once parked, the owner of the wagon hopped down from his perch on the driver's seat and shuffled up to her, hands pressed together in front of his chest and shadowed by the plain brown robe. She couldn't see his face shadowed as it was by the large cowl, but that didn't stop her from gasping the second he opened his mouth to thank her.

"Cale?" she asked incredulously, leaning closer to him, tilting her head to try to peer into the inky depths under the hood. He laughed and jerked his head hard enough to throw off the cloth, grinning wickedly with that mischievous aura he had. "Shoulda known it was you causing trouble."

"Aww, come now, little Rayne. Why wouldn't I be here, taking part in this momentous excursion?" He smiled wider at her scowling face, making her want to punch him.

Instead of doing that though, she folded her arms across her chest, scraping the sole of her boot along the top layer of snow while she thought. "Where's Aika?" she asked finally. The white pigtails of her childhood friend popped up from inside the wagon, staring out at her with recognition in her eyes, but no apparent desire to acknowledge it verbally.

"There. See. I'm a good mentor," Cale answered defensively. Rayne rolled her eyes and took the nearby Osric by the elbow, leading him away from her old friend. They crossed the rapidly swelling camp until Rurik's small tent was in sight and Rayne banged on the canvas until the prince pulled aside the flap and crawled out into the open air.

The two embraced like brothers when Rurik noticed Osric, thumping each on the back in greeting. Rayne stood awkwardly by, trying her best to avoid looking like The-Younger-Sister-Of-The-Third-Friend-That-Was-Not-Present, which she was in all actuality. It was touching to see the two good friends reunited, but now more than ever, she wished that Gai was there too.

"You know," Cale said from somewhere behind her right shoulder, "your brother would be so upset to see you reminiscing like that."

"Shove it," Rayne grumbled, but with very little emotion in what she was actually saying.

"I'm so glad that the king did not withhold you for long," Rurik said to Osric. "It warms my heart to know that there are those willing to follow me, even through my time of folly."

Captain Osric saluted, posing himself with as much dignity as possible in the sudden gust of wind that whistled through the empty crags around them in a reverberating moan. "The people of Ascalon would follow you to the ends of the earth and back again, be it folly or not, my prince. That is our promise, here and now."

"I'm not a prince," Rurik said with a casual sigh. "At least, not anymore. I am but a citizen, much like the rest of you."

"You shall always be our prince, sire," Osric insisted, "whether His Majesty acknowledges it or not."

How Cale could move through the snow banks so subtly was something that drove Rayne crazy as the light kiss of his sleeve fluttered against her arm. She immediately shied away from the touch, but was thwarted by his hand wrapping around her shoulder farthest from him to pin her in her steps. "Funny thing, promises," he said, his lips only centimeters from her ear so that she could feel the warm puffs of breath as he spoke. The sensation sent chills of fear and mild revulsion shuddering through her. She shrugged off his hand and, with one last scowl at his antic, beaming smile and Aika's stonily stoic expression beside him, stormed away to rejoin the prince and the captain.

Rurik and Osric had dragged their freezing boots a couple of feet away from Rurik's tent so that the prince could point out places for the members of Osric's caravan to camp for the night. With a motion of his hand and a quick word that he would return shortly, Osric tramped off just as Rayne planted her feet into the compacting icy-snow. Rurik sighed audibly, slowly swiveling back and eyes widening when he noticed how close she was.

"Osric said something about a promise and a deep friendship," she said, resisting the urge to place her hands on her hips. "Please… Tell me what's going on." He was taller than her normally, but her words seemed to wither him like a potted plant left too long in the cold, until he seemed as frail and rigid as a porcelain doll.

"I…" he mumbled, picking up one foot off of the ground and quickly replacing it in the exact same spot, switching feet every time. "That is, your brother and I…."

He never had the chance to finish.

Aidan bounded over the lips of the mounds of white powder with the grace of a mad hare, feet barely dipping down in the fluffy top layer before he was springing forward again. "Milord!" he shouted, drawing Rayne's papier-mâché colored face and Rurik's quivering moustache to himself. "Dwarves are crawling over the pass to the south. They're flying crimson banners with a winged serpent emblazoned."

From somewhere close to her right elbow, a diminutive figure appeared as if from nowhere, leaping into the middle of their ring to take command of the situation. "Stone Summit," Brechnar howled as the wind picked up. "Blast! The Frost Gate is the only pass safe enough to lead wagons through for miles."

"Then we cut through," Rurik said, instantly drawing all of the attention upon himself. He was back standing fully upright, clenched right fist pressed adamantly into his cupped left palm. "Send for Captain Osric and any members of the Vanguard that have made the trip with us," he directed at Aidan, who bobbed his head respectfully with a hurried salute before bounding away again.

"We'd better move it," Brechnar cautioned, "if we're to buy enough time for your people to make it through." The Dwarf set off the way Aidan had come at a surprisingly quick trot. Without hesitation, Rurik set off after him, coming to an abrupt halt only once he heard the loping strides of the girl following behind him.

"No, Rayne," he said, holding up a hand that caught her on the left shoulder, shoving her back. "Stay here."

"I'm coming with you," she replied stubbornly.

"No!" Her mouth shrank into one puckered thin line, brow knitting together as her previously anxious expression hardened into blatant defiance. She was going. "I need you to lead the people through the pass for me. They need someone to follow." She stubbornly took another step closer, earning a light shove from him and an insistent gesture for her to go back. "Do it for me."

She quailed under the ferocity of his pleading, bowing her head in resigned defeat. When she didn't make another attempt to follow him, Rurik whipped around again, setting off after the already invisible Dwarf. "I will see you again, right?" she called after him. It was such a lonely sight, she decided, watching his broad shoulders framed only by the wintry sky retreating into the distance. "On the other side?"

"Don't worry," was all she heard to accompany the halfhearted wave he passed over his shoulder before the horizon of frozen rain drops swallowed him whole.

But she did worry. Rurik was a man of his word, but there was something stirring restlessly in the back of her mind. An agitation perpetuated by a qualm of emptiness that kept her eyes always drifting to the far off horizon. It was only after they weren't there beside her that she realized just how much she had been relying on her friends to be her crutch.

The refugees moved quickly to keep up with her frenzied pace. She led them over the warped stone landscape, always feeling like she had to look back at them struggling along several paces too slow, urgently coaxing them all onward. But these were all the elderly, the sick, and the women with children that were now following her. The rest of the able-bodied men and women had already sped ahead to aid Rurik in opening the Frost Gate.

The grating of steel and shouts of battle sent tremors through the precariously molded snowy hills as the caravan drew close. Rayne scampered up the nearest hill, clambering on all fours as the terrain shifted under her, and peered out with one hand shielding her eyes from the glaring sun overhead. Down below, the iron slabs of the Frost Gate were standing agape with no one manning the draw chains to close them. Rurik and his fighters had pressed the Stone Summit to one side of the path, presenting a clear road from the other direction.

"Down that bank!" Rayne shouted back to the wagon train, pointing to the sloping path on their right. "Get the children and those who can't help in the wagons and make your approach from the side." It was kind of lengthy considering the situation, but they weren't exactly the people on the forefront of her mind. She could see them all down there. Her friends, buying her time to get the rest of the refugees down and safely into the pass.

While the wagons trundled down the safer route, Rayne leaped over the edge, digging the rough soles of her shoes into the snow to skid all the way down the shallow slope. She was standing on the brink, between the wagon train and her friends. The desperation was almost too much as she flipped her head around to look at each of them repeatedly.

Rurik seemed to have noticed their arrival as pairs of two Ascalonian fighters would drop back from the fight every so often to accompany the caravan members through the pass. Rayne would grin weakly to each set as they passed by her position directing the traffic, but her gaze continued to drift over to the eastern half of the beaten path where the fighting was still going on. The prince hadn't made an appearance by her yet—almost as if he was deliberately sending everyone else ahead of him. Don't be an idiot, she begged mentally.

The second the rear axel of the last wagon in their caravan crossed the excavated burrow that the iron gates had created in the frozen earth, she scanned the area one last time and found herself drawn away toward the fighting in the east. It was only Rurik left now, dueling the last vestiges of the Stone Summit Dwarves all on his own. In a flurry of flaming swords and axes, Rurik was spun around, eyes settling on her running in his direction.

Everything seemed to come to a standstill, hushed in the waiting anticipation of what was to come—Rayne tearing across the snow laden ground toward him with her arms outstretched, the triumphant dwarf shouting his name, Dagnar Stonepate!, to the sky, and Rurik's muddy eyes falling on her with an apologetic grimace.

"Go. You can't save me," he mouthed to her, as the axe of judgment fell with a note of finality. Rayne almost stumbled over her own feet the second the swish of metal imbedding itself into flesh rent the air, catching herself only seconds before falling flat on her face. "I'm sorry."

Her scream was even more chilling than the endless mountains of frost and snow as the now lifeless body tumbled down in a heap. She couldn't deny death. She had stared it brutally in the face too many times to ever suffer from denial. She couldn't move. If the strong pair of hands hadn't dragged her away forcefully from the sight, she would have been the Stone Summit's next victim.

Into the pass Rayne and her savior, Captain Osric, fled. Over the trails of pure white, which no longer seemed to be a color in her eyes anymore. White was no different than black. Both were empty voids bereft of something worth living for. It was loss…

It was my fault, she thought dismally at last, tear strained eyes absently watching the flurries of drifting snow. In the end, adhering to duty could not save family and friends. In the end, it was duty that had ruined everything.

****************************************

There is no soul that can quite comprehend,

The plight of those that can't be saved,

That there is no help left for the damned.