Guild Wars_ Edge of Destiny - J. Robert King [4]
Garm sat down to watch the show.
These warriors had no idea what they had unleashed. Eir was no mere sculptor. That was no little prayer she’d spoken. It was an invocation, channeling the powers of the boreal forests to make her art.
And they did.
Out of that thunderhead of swinging steel, an axe dived down to shear away the bark from one edge of the bole. The other axe followed like a thunderstroke, stripping the opposite side. The blades rose again, spinning, and fell. The broad bole grew slender. Already, it was taking on the lines of the man.
Sjord no longer posed, but gaped.
Eir circled the fir bole, axes slicing down in rhythm, cleaving away all that was not Sjord Frostfist. Halfway through this ecstatic dance, the axes slid back into the belt, and the hatchets came out. They chopped at the form, flinging off chips and rounding the wood into the figure of the man.
“Straighten up!” she reminded without stopping.
Sjord jerked back into his noble pose.
And just in time, for the daggers and chisels were out now, fitted to sleeves on her fingers that brought them to bear with intricate care on the wooden form. Now it was down to shavings, curled ribbons of wood cascading around the rough figure.
“It’s me,” said Sjord breathlessly.
And so it seemed, the bole taking the shape of the man.
“Bear, guide my work.”
And then it was not knives and chisels in her hands but living claws, long and sharp, sliding along every contour of the figure. And it was not the lashing brawn of a norn warrior beneath that apron but the ancient muscle of a grizzly. The artist had been transfigured in her art.
Then she stepped back from the figure, the bear aura melting away. She was Eir Stegalkin once more, artist and warrior, slumping on a nearby bench and staring at what she had made.
It was magnificent. The sculpture was the man—Sjord Frostfist in wood. Indeed, the man and the statue stared at each other with such unrelenting amazement that few could have told them apart.
The swaying brothers began to chant, “Sjord! Sjord! Sjord! Sjord!” They hoisted the man who would lead them into doom.
“Not me!” Sjord protested, laughing. “The statue! The statue!”
The men lowered their friend to the ground and snatched up the carving. “Off to the market! Off to the market!” they cried joyously. “Sjord will stand forever in the market!”
“And nowhere else,” Eir murmured as Garm loped up beside her. She was spent. These ecstatic moments of creation always left her drained. She looked down at Garm and said bitterly, “He can’t save us. He can’t even save himself.”
That night, Eir couldn’t sleep. Garm had seen many such nights. The spinning in the bed, the pacing, the muttering, the sketching. She was imagining something, conceiving it as other women conceived children.
Garm rose from his blanket and trotted over to the workbench and looked down at the page where she drew.
It was an army of wood and stone.
For a week, she didn’t carve but only sketched in her workshop or paced through the courtyard or stared past the bridges that joined Hoelbrak to the Shiverpeaks all around. Garm had seen this look before. Eir was waiting for something. He knew by the way she sharpened her blades and oiled her bow.
A fortnight later, as the cold sun descended into clouds, the sentries of Hoelbrak began to shout.
“Invasion! Invasion! Icebrood!”
Eir turned from a sketch and strode to the wall where her battle-gear hung. She dragged off her work tunic and strapped on a breastplate of bronze. She girded herself and threw on a cape of wool, strapped on boots, and slung a quiver charged with arrows. To these, she added also her carving belt.
She looked to Garm and said, “Today, I carve Sjord Frostfist—again.” Lifting her great bow, Eir headed for the door. “Come.”
Garm followed his alpha out into the courtyard, where the shout of sentries was joined by the thud of boots.