Leagues farther to the north, in another tiny camp, three other men were waiting, also. Still farther on, in an ice-locked harbor, the good ship Felix rode day by day, the little company of its crew watching the slow passing of the hours, with every ear attuned to catch the first voice returning from the south that should tell of success, or of defeat and death.
And were that tale of success, those on the ship nursed a heavy sorrow, that would turn into bitterness all the glory of success. A glorious maid and two men who had been of their company had strayed from the ship and perished in the wilderness.
Silence.
As far as the eye could reach, a dull wilderness, stretching wearily under a leaden, sunless sky. A rolling plain of lusterless snow, cut sharply here and there by crevasses, gashed at intervals by rifts of unknown depths and tortuous gulleys. North and south seemingly without bounds; east and west, many a mile of bleak fatigue between low, sullen hills of gray.
A land without sound, without life, and without hope.
Yet, among the ridges in that dead and twilight chaos, something stirred. A dark speck crawled on and on, writhing along the brinks of the crevasses, skirting the yawning rifts, twisting in and out around the hummocks, like the course of some wriggling vermin across the cracked and gaping skin of a white, unholy corpse.
Northward, ever northward, the blot dragged its crooked way. Nearer would it resolve itself into two wearily plodding beasts, tugging, slipping, stumbling, but going on, the creaking straps of their leathern harness pulling a sledge with a heap of skins upon it. Still nearer—a fur-clad, haggard man with hollow blazing eyes glittering through an unkempt shock of golden hair and a gaunt gray dog with drooping tail picking their way with soundless feet through the white reaches, dragging their sledge; like a fantasy passing across the white and silent dream of the cold end of the world.
Once the dog had looked up into the face of the master, the dumb eloquence of sacrifice shining through its eyes, an age-old fire. The massive jaws slipped apart, but closed again; only a sigh was breathed from the beast's broad chest.
"Aye, Marcus, I know," muttered the man. "I know that you'll die on your four feet, if you can, and in the straps. And I, Marcus," his voice dropped to a whisper, "I'll die, too, Marcus, as you will—for the Rose—all for the Rose—But not yet, Marcus; for the Rose yet lives, and death is slow for the very strong."