The two volunteers were exactly what Zane had asked for: quiet and mean.
Bjorn was a mountain of a man, older, with a face like a cliff that had lost an argument with a glacier. He carried a notched axe and a heavy crossbow. He said nothing, just stared at Zane with eyes the colour of flint.
Kari was younger, whip-thin and tense as a bowstring. Her hair was shorn close to her scalp, and her eyes never stopped moving. She had two long knives at her hips and a coil of fine, steel-wire rope over one shoulder. She looked at Zane with naked suspicion, but also a sharp, intelligent curiosity.
They stood in the lower bailey, the blizzard howling around them, reducing the world to a swirling, white madness. The temperature had dropped so low that the air crackled.
Zane had changed. Over his clothes, he now wore a spare set of hardened leather armor from the keep's stores. It was too broad in the shoulders for him, but he'd cinched it tight. He had a Northern-style fur hood pulled up, his white hair hidden, only his amber eyes visible, glowing like banked coals in the gloom. On his back was a pack containing the "lots of rope" he'd requested—ordinary, thick hemp rope.
"You understand the mission?" Zane asked, his voice calm against the wind's scream.
"Kill Ogres. Find our people," Bjorn grunted. "Stupid mission. We die in this."
"Possibly," Zane agreed. "But if we're going to die, let's do it moving forward, not waiting for the walls to fall. Kari, you have the trail?"
The huntress nodded, pulling a wrapped bundle from her belt. It was a torn piece of leather, stained dark. "One of the taken hunters. His glove. The Ogres won't clean their prize. The scent is strong, even in this. They went for the high pass. There's caves there."
"Lead on," Zane said.
They slipped out of a postern gate, a small door hidden in the shadow of the main wall. The world disappeared.
The blizzard was a living, breathing entity of white noise and biting cold. Visibility dropped to ten feet. The wind stole sound, direction, and warmth. Kari moved like a ghost, head down, reading signs no one else could see: a disturbed patch of snow here, a broken branch there, the faint, lingering musk of Ogre beneath the clean scent of ice.
Bjorn followed, a solid, grumbling shadow. Zane brought up the rear, his movements eerily silent for a man in ill-fitting armor.
They marched for two hours, the cold seeping through layers, seeking the marrow. Bjorn and Kari were machines, conditioned to this. Zane just… kept up. His breathing remained even. He didn't stumble.
At the base of a steep, scree-covered slope, Kari held up a fist. They crouched behind a boulder.
"Up there," she whispered, her voice a thin thread in the wind. "Cave mouth. See the darker shadow? Smoke. They have a fire."
Bjorn squinted. "Guard?"
"One. Big one. Left of the entrance, under the overhang. Sleeping, I think."
Zane followed her gaze. His eyes seemed to pierce the swirling snow. "Not sleeping. Listening. Ogres have poor eyesight in snow, but their hearing is exceptional. The storm is our cover, but our crunching footsteps just told him company's coming."
Bjorn and Kari both looked at him sharply. How did he know Ogre senses?
"So we don't walk," Zane said. He shrugged off his pack and uncoiled the thick hemp rope. "We fly."
He tied one end of the rope into a complex, looping knot, creating a large, weighted lasso. He hefted it, judging the weight. "Bjorn. See that rock pillar above the cave mouth? The one leaning like a crooked tooth?"
The big man nodded.
"I need you to throw this loop over it. From here. One try. No sound."
Bjorn stared at him as if he'd asked him to sing a love ballad. "In this wind? Impossible."
"Good thing you're not a man who believes in 'impossible,' then," Zane said, offering the coiled lasso. "Put your back into it. Aim high, let the wind carry it left. Think of it as throwing an axe at a very tall, skinny target."
Muttering curses that were stolen by the gale, Bjorn took the rope. He tested the weight, eyeing the distant pillar, a dark smudge in the white. He took a deep breath, planted his feet, and with a mighty, controlled heave, sent the lasso spinning up into the blizzard.
The wind caught it, as Zane predicted, dragging it left. The loop snagged the tip of the rock pillar, slipped, then caught on a jagged edge. Bjorn gave a slow, steady pull. It held.
A look of pure astonishment crossed the big man's weathered face.
"Excellent throw," Zane said, as if he'd expected nothing less. He tied the other end of the rope around his own waist. "Now, I'm going to go say hello to the guard. You two wait for my signal, then climb. Kari, when you're up, secure a second line for our retreat."
"Signal? What signal?" Kari asked.
Zane's amber eyes gleamed. "You'll know it."
Before they could protest, he grabbed the rope and, using just his arms, began to haul himself up, hand over hand, into the blinding snow. He moved with absurd, simian grace, his body barely swinging. In seconds, he was swallowed by the white.
Bjorn and Kari exchanged a look. It was the look of people who had just realized they were following a wolf in man's clothing.
Zane climbed until he was level with the cave mouth, but thirty feet to the left, hidden by the curve of the rock and the storm. He could see the guard now—a hulking, fur-clad brute nearly nine feet tall, with mottled blue-grey skin and tusks protruding from its lower jaw. It wasn't sleeping. Its head was tilted, massive ear turned towards the slope below. It held a crude club of stone and wood.
Zane secured his rope, then did something impossible. He pushed off from the cliff face with his feet, swinging out on the rope in a wide, silent arc through the blizzard. The wind caught him, adding speed. He swung past the cave mouth, a dark blur in the white, high above the Ogre's head.
As he reached the apex of his swing, directly over the Ogre's position, he let go.
He dropped, silent as a snowflake, landing behind the Ogre, on the very edge of the overhang.
The Ogre grunted, hearing the faint scuff of boots on stone. It began to turn, raising its club.
Zane didn't give it the chance. He stepped forward, not with a warrior's shout, but with the casual precision of a man closing a door. He brought his arm around in a short, vicious arc. There was no weapon in his hand. Just the heel of his palm.
It connected with the Ogre's temple, just below the ear.
The sound was a wet crunch, like a frozen melon breaking. The Ogre's eyes rolled back. It shuddered once, its massive form going limp, and collapsed forward into the snow without a cry.
Zane caught the club before it could clatter on stone, lowering it silently. He crouched, checking the beast. Unconscious, not dead. A trickle of dark blood melted the snow beneath its head.
He straightened, looked down the slope towards where Bjorn and Kari were hidden, and waved.
The two Northerners, who had seen the shadowy swing and the silent fall, climbed the rope with frantic speed. When they reached the top, panting, they saw the unconscious Ogre and Zane standing calmly beside it.
Kari's eyes were huge. Bjorn looked at Zane as if seeing him for the first time.
"You... killed it with your hand?" Bjorn breathed.
"Temporarily discouraged it," Zane corrected. "Less messy. Now, the cave. They'll have heard the body fall, even in the storm. Expect company."
As if on cue, a roar echoed from within the cave. It was answered by others. Thunderous footsteps shook the ground.
"Plan?" Kari hissed, knives leaping to her hands.
Zane picked up the Ogre's massive club. It was grotesquely heavy. He hefted it like it was a walking stick. "We say hello."
Two Ogres burst from the cave mouth, squinting into the snow, clubs raised.
Zane took one step forward and swung the stolen club.
It wasn't a skilled swing. It was simply fast. Brutally, impossibly fast. It hit the lead Ogre in the chest with a sound of shattered ribs and sent the creature flying back into its companion, both of them tumbling into the cave in a tangle of limbs.
"Now we go in," Zane said, and walked into the darkness, dragging the huge club behind him.
Bjorn and Kari, after a stunned second, followed. They were warriors of the North. They had seen death in many forms. But they had never seen anything like this casual, overwhelming violence.
The cave was wide, stinking of wet fur, blood, and burnt meat. A fire pit smoldered in the center. Around it, the remaining Ogres—five more, including the one with the rusted iron crown—were rising, grabbing weapons. In the corner, three ragged, frozen shapes lay tied: the missing hunters, alive but battered.
The Chieftain roared, pointing a taloned finger at Zane.
Zane dropped the club. It hit the cave floor with a thud.
He looked at the Ogre Chieftain, then at the terrified hunters, then back at the Ogres.
He smiled.
It was not a nice smile.
"Alright," Zane said, his voice echoing in the cavern. "Who's first?"