The women straggled at one end of the fish-shaped lake, the ancipitals grouped at the other. The women made frightened and uncertain movements; the ancipitals were motionless. Even in their surprise, the women responded individually; the phagors could be seen only as a group.
It was impossible to make out the number of the enemy. They merged together with the late afternoon mists filling the hollow, and with the scarred greys and blues of the scene. One of them gave a thick protracted cough; otherwise they might have been lifeless.
Their white birds had settled on a ridge behind them, at first with some jostling, now spaced out regularly, with heads submissively on one side, like the souls of those departed.
From their frosty outline, it could be determined that three of the phagors—presumably the leaders—were mounted on kaidaws. They sat, as was their habit, leaning forward with their heads close to their mounts’ heads, as if communion was in progress. The foot phagors clustered against the flanks of the kaidaws, shoulders hunched. Nearby boulders were not more still.
The cougher coughed again. Aoz Roon threw off his spell and called to his men.
They climbed along the crest of the ridge, to stare at the enemy in dismay.
In response, the phagors made a sudden move. Their strangely jointed limbs geared themselves from immobility to action with no intermediate stage. The shallow lake had checked their advance. They had a well-known aversion to water, but times were changing; their harneys said “Forward.” The sight of thirty human gillots at their mercy decided them. They charged.
One of the three mounted brutes swung a sword above his head. With a churring cry, he kicked his kaidaw, and mount and rider burst forward. The other brutes followed as one, whether mounted or running. Forward they dashed—into the waters of the shallow lake.
Panic scattered the women. Now that their adversary was almost on them, they ran hither and thither between the ridges. Some climbed one side, some the other, making small sharp noises of despair, like birds in distress.
Only Shay Tal remained where she was, facing the charge, and Vry and Amin lim clung to her in terror, hiding their faces.
“Run, you fool woman!” bellowed Aoz Roon, coming down the ridge at a run.
Shay Tal did not hear his voice above the shrieks and the furious splashing. She stood firm at the end of the fish lake and flung out her arms, as if gesturing to the phagor horde to halt.
Then the transformation. Then the moment that ever after in the annals of Oldorando would be referred to as the miracle of Fish lake.
Some claimed later that a shrilling note rang through the frosty air, some said a high voice spoke, some vowed Wutra struck.
The whole group of marauders, sixteen in number, had entered the lake, led by the three mounted stalluns. Their rage drove them into the alien element, they were thigh deep in it, churning it up with the fury of their charge, when the entire lake froze.
One moment it was an absolutely still liquid, lying, because undisturbed, unfrozen at three degrees below freezing point. The next moment disturbed, it became solid. Kaidaws and phagors all were locked in its embrace. One kaidaw fell, never to rise again, The others froze where they were, and their riders froze with them, hemmed in ice. The stalluns behind, brandishing their arms—all were trapped, held in the grip of the element they had invaded. None took as much as one further step. None could fight free to gain the safety of the shore. Soon, their veins froze within their bodies, despite the ancient biochemistries that coloured their bloodstream and protected it from the cold. Their coarse white coats became further sheathed in rime, their glaring eyes frosted over.
What was organic became one with the great inorganic world that ruled.
The tableau of furious death was absolute, carved from ice.
Above it white birds wheeled and dipped, crying with gaping beaks, finally making off to the east in desolate flight.
Next morning, three people rose up early from a skin bivouac. Powdery snow had fallen during the night, giving the wilderness a peppery appearance. Freyr ascended from the horizon, casting watery purple shadows over the plain. Several minutes later, the second faithful sentinel also struggled free into Wutra’s realm.