The Book of Many People

Damn Bloody Alfeyakiin: Alternatively, Rhyme Hates the Weather, Part 3

Rhyme quickly decided that she hated snow.

It was cold, it stung her cheeks, and it got in her collar, no matter how tight she pulled it around her neck.

I need a scarf, she thought to herself ruefully.

It was the afternoon of the third day of marching, with twelve days left to go and thirteen days until they actually saw battle. General Valdri was extremely grateful for her horse. It was a good horse, a stallion if she remembered correctly, but it wasn't the horse she normally rode. That horse had been shot and killed at Impasse.

"Damn bloody Alfeyakiin," she muttered to herself, remembering this.

"Wuzzat?" Beside her, Sonne jerked awake. The lieutenant was as big as a bear and twice as scary, but she never passed up an opportunity for a nap.

"Did you fall asleep again?" Asked Girre, as if on cue. Sonne denied this, of course, and Rhyme's two lieutenants devolved into a pair of bickering, squabbling ninnies.

They rode at the head of the formation, that could only be called that through liberal use of creative license, which was beginning to resemble a miserable huddle of very large and very cold penguins. Chill winds and chillier snow battered them from every angle possible, but because it wasn't a total whiteout, Rhyme kept them marching. The tundra underneath their feet crunched with each step.

Compared to their destination, the Invisible Bridge, they were on high ground. Some of the soldiers swore that when the sun came out they could see it glinting off the mass of white marble and silver that was the bridge. Rhyme couldn't. It was likely a load of horse dung, but it was harmless, and keeping morale slightly off rock bottom to boot, so she allowed it to continue.

Wait. Hold up. What was that?

A faintest glimmer of sound warbled on the winds. Rhyme's sharp hearing determined that it wasn't just the ordinary sound of a snowstorm.

"Oh dear," she said to herself, and summoned her lieutenants with a signal. The bickering pair immediately straightened themselves out and trotted up beside her.

"What is it?" Asked Sonne.

"Is there any credence to those stories of yetis on the tundra?" Rhyme said.

Sonne and Girre considered this for a moment. "Yes," they said, nearly simultaneously.

The sound came again, and this time Rhyme could tell that it was definitely some sort of roar.

She made a quick decision. "There is a large, angry beast out there," she told her lieutenants, "and we seem to be getting closer to it. You two go ride at the head of your divisions. Prepare your soldiers for a fight."

"Sir," they chorused, and headed off.

Just then, the head of the scouts rode up with his people, waving a red flag. "Yeti!" He shouted. "Huge, stinking yeti!"

Rhyme turned to her troops. "Arms!" She hollered. "Form up, form up!"

Men and women scrambled to their positions, blades and whatnot drawn. The lightly armored scouts galloped to the
back of the strike force, prepared to run interference if necessary.

Interference, of course, meant riding their horses around the yeti and dodging between its legs to confuse it.

The yeti in question lumbered up to see what all the commotion was, and found a bunch of tiny animals waving shiny things all formed up in rows. He grunted in surprise. It was a very loud grunt, as this yeti was about the size of a two-story building.