Head down, Sunbright slipped and slid across lumpy glare ice.

The ice was old, he decided, probably old snowpack left from last winter. He found it hard to believe it had lasted the summer, but this granite-walled pass was deep and the bottom shadowed. And this evil unceasing wind had polished everything as smooth as glass.

He didn't mind the ice so much, for a tundra barbarian lived with it eight months a year. But the screaming wind he couldn't face for long. Thus he trudged, skidding every which way from high to hollow, paused to squint into the wind, seeing little with watery eyes, then moved on. He'd tied his blue blanket around his shoulders and face to better breathe. He kept both hands free in case he fell, so he could land lightly. It would be death to break an arm or even fingers.

Then he did slip, and it saved his life.

He'd been leaning into the gale when suddenly it lessened directly in front of him. Caught off-balance, he stumbled headlong, tried to correct himself, and lost his footing, crashing on his bottom as his long shirt rode up.

Skidding, swirling around like a top, Sunbright had a glimpse of twin columns of icicles flash by. Icicles thicker than his leg, and jointed.

And moving.

The young man fetched up against the second column of icicles, felt them twitch at his touch. Above him, he found, was an arched ceiling, starting at three feet and rising to…

… a round, flattened head as big as a musk-ox carcass, with a snarling mass of glittering icelike teeth and mandibles and whiskers.

And twin eyes like glowing blue lamps that craned down to see him, there under the creature's belly, trapped between columns of jointed legs like a wicker fence.

Remorhaz, the barbarian's mind flickered. Ice worm.

He'd never seen one, only heard adventurers speak of them. They infested ice plains in the far west and north, and crushed entire dog teams and musk-oxen in their clashing jaws. Not formed of ice, really, the stories went, but with a solid carapace like an ant's only white, with blue-white slush churning inside.

But no one had hinted that they moved so fast!

Fumbling his blanket off his head, Sunbright had barely snatched his sword from its back scabbard before the remorhaz drove a bushel of glittering, icy mandibles at his chest. The mandibles were as long as Sunbright's arms, backhooked and jagged so fiercely he could barely tell one end from another. Too, the wicked wind was still sizzling, keening a song of death, hissing between the forest of legs and around his head, making his eyes sting and impeding his vision. He saw no way to shear those mandibles or even deflect them, so he simply whipped the sword directly in front of him, locked his elbows, and hung on.

Harvester's hooked point lodged into that nest of shining evil and fetched tight with a clunk, as if he'd struck cordwood. The beast's immense head brushed the sword backward like a twig, and Sunbright went with it.

As the great jolt struck his arms, his head and back slammed a trio of the beast's legs. The tips resembled ski poles so much that part of Sunbright's brain wondered if man hadn't copied monster. The chitinous legs expanded to mushroom shapes, that the beast might cross snow, but underneath formed points as hard and sharp as ice axes, which they were. Two of these legs gave way before Sunbright's body, and he slid clear of them, out into the open, icy stretch of canyon.

The beast had retracted its head rather than tie itself into a knot. The boy half spun and thumped a granite wall. Instinctively Sunbright scrambled to rise and defend himself, but the ice might have been oiled. Paddling uselessly, he fought down panic, tried to think how to survive.

Use what you've got, screamed instructions burned into his brain.

Ideas flashed. The beast could maneuver; he couldn't. Why? Because it had ice axes for feet. So if he…

Acting, Sunbright juggled Harvester to one hand and with the other snatched out his flint knife. Striking hard, he stabbed the ice enough to gain hold. Gingerly, warily, he scooted his feet on either side of his hand. He might look foolish, he thought, but at least he wasn't sledding on his butt.

Chipping ice, swirling in a circle as gracefully as a dancing horse, the remorhaz turned to face its foe-or meal. Sunbright marveled at the size of it, fully as long as a fourteen-dog team and sled and as many-legged, higher than he could reach with the tip of his long sword. How could he kill something like this? Or even strike it? Given a choice, he would have run, screaming if necessary, but he was a cripple on ice and the beast was at home.

Yet again, his mind shrilled, why was this monster so far from its native land? Were the gods playing with him again? Or was everything he'd heard of the beast wrong?

The one thing he did know was not to strike its back. The old tales agreed that the ice beast managed to funnel all its body heat out a vent behind its head, a slot as scorching as any natural hot springs, hot enough to melt a sword. So…

The warrior watched as the horror rippled, arched its long back like a rainbow, and lunged from on high. The slashing mandibles clashed for his head.

Yet keeping cool, Sunbright managed two things. He kicked at the granite wall behind him while hanging on to the steady flint knife, then released it. He couldn't have done it on earth or grass, but on the slick ice he fairly flew in a full circle. One second he was facing the creature; the next he was sprawled full length pointing toward it, sliding into it.

The great head smashed down where he'd been. Closing mandibles scarred the ice. But Sunbright was skidding on his side toward the first triplet of legs. His sword was ready, and as he closed on the columns he rolled and swung.

Before the keen steel, the sturdy but hollow legs snapped like thick reeds. Three of them were shorn; then Sunbright's feet rapped into the opposing column, which flinched. Clapping his feet around one woody leg, he reached high over his head-blinding himself with his own shoulders-and chopped chopped chopped wherever he felt resistance.

His efforts worked too well.

With half a dozen legs cut from under it, the undulating bulk of the ice worm, its belly as smooth and white as a snake's, sagged to the ice-pinning Sunbright underneath. At the same time, the foot he'd been clinging to lifted and slammed down on his belly.

Smothered by an icy insect carapace, Sunbright still screamed at the pain. The ice-axe foot ground into his guts like the club of a frost giant. And now the blistering cold of the monster's belly stuck to his warm skin, stuck and burned like fury, then ripped skin when it lurched. The barbarian was being suffocated and crushed at the same time, and despite the white-hot agony lancing through him, he knew it would only get worse as the beast settled.

He wasn't going to escape this trap.

Desperately thrashing his arms and legs yielded nothing, for there was nothing to strike but tough carapace. Somehow he retained his sword in a death grip, but could apply no leverage, hit nothing. And his vision was fading, swirling flashes like the northern lights exploding in his eyeballs.

The great weight of the creature settled further, and Sunbright heard his ribs snap, snap, snap, like pine trees freezing and splitting on the coldest winter days. His own screams were loud in his ears.

Then he heard nothing.