The Icebound Land

Evanlyn wakes up at an uncertain time of day and decides that they need to keep moving. She allows herself to use some of the snow as a water source and saddles the pony. She convinces Will to walk to preserve the pony’s strength. After traveling for some time, Will, who has been moaning for much of the walk, collapses in convulsive shivering, and Evanlyn is forced to give him more warmweed, accepting that she will have to wean him off it. She is devastated as she watches her friend lose himself again to the drug, but he eventually recovers, and they move onward.

By the end of the day, Evanlyn finds the cabin, nearly buried and indistinguishable in the snow. She ties up the pony and explores their new home; it is humble and musty but well stocked with firewood and some supplies. She finds a lean-to and some grain to shelter and feed the pony. Evanlyn boils snow and makes food for herself and Will, settling in with peculiar optimism and unwittingly echoing Halt’s words by saying, “It isn’t much, but it’s home” (220).

Halt and Horace are summoned to dinner the night after the knight’s challenge. They have a plan to defeat Deparnieux; Halt stops Horace before they enter the dining hall to ensure that Horace doesn’t jump the gun on their plan since challenging Deparnieux will work only if done in front of witnesses. They eat the meal while Deparnieux continues to harass his servants; the warlord has decided that Halt is not a threat and that Horace is someone to embarrass. As is his custom, at the end of the meal, he rudely dismisses Horace, but this time, Horace says no. Deparnieux grows annoyed, and Horace issues a carefully worded, official challenge—or the beginning of one—and demands that Deparnieux summon his men to make it official. Deparnieux is annoyed even further by their demands for chivalry—calling Halt a lawyer rather than a sorcerer—but he agrees to honor the challenge. Horace lays out the terms but is not the one to hit him with the glove; instead, Halt startles Deparnieux by pulling out a hidden glove and issuing the challenge, which the warlord now cannot back out of.

Evanlyn wakes up from where she had been sunbathing with Will standing above her, pleading for another dose of warmweed. She has been successful in slowly weaning him off it, although his personality has not fully returned. She goes to the place in the stable where she hides the drug—disguised in the wall so that Will cannot find it and binge—and takes back a minute supply of the weed for him, knowing that she must make it last until he breaks the addiction. She gives it to him, and he smiles; to her surprise, looks at her and says, “Good.” She welcomes him back, but he gives no response, once again lost to the warmweed’s grip.

Horace helps Halt “practice” with his bow and arrows by carrying a padded helmet on the end of a lance; every time Halt shoots, he hits between the slits in the helmet. Halt asks if Deparnieux is watching them train, and Horace confirms that he is but is confused about why Halt is giving up so much of his strategy. Halt just says that practice is important and refuses to elaborate. He reassures Horace that maybe he’ll just get lucky in the battle.

Horace voices his other concerns, relating to chivalry; after Halt issued the challenge, Deparnieux refused, insisting that he was not obligated to honor a challenge from a forester. Halt then immediately snapped that he was sixth in line to the throne of Hibernia and thus deserved honor from Deparnieux. Unable to avoid this claim, Deparnieux accepted the challenge. Horace is concerned because Halt is lying, thus negating chivalry. (Unknown to him, Halt is not lying, although this will not be revealed for several more books and many more years.) Halt reassures Horace that chivalry only works as a system when it is upheld by good men who respect it, and Deparnieux is not one of them. They must defeat him, even with trickery, to uphold chivalry.

Evanlyn attempts to use a small hunting bow to kill an arctic hare, but she cannot fully draw the bow and hurts herself with the string when she fires. The hare flees, completely unharmed. Evanlyn returns to the cabin, disappointed and aware that winter is more than halfway done: They are running out of time to recover and move onward before the Skandians come to the mountains to hunt. She finds Will in the same position she left him in; he is completely unable to do basic tasks without compulsion from her. She tiredly begins to make food for them but nearly drops the food when she realizes that Will has moved of his own volition to unstring the bow.

Deparnieux rides his horse out onto the prepared field on the day of the combat, dwelling on what he now knows of Halt: He is a skilled archer but not a sorcerer, and Deparnieux is confident that he can defeat him. Halt also rides Abelard out onto the field, wearing minimal armor and attended by Horace; Deparnieux grows more pleased at the idea of killing Horace after Halt, particularly in front of everyone in the castle.

Halt reassures a nervous Horace that he has a better chance of surviving than Horace believes. He tells Horace to take Abelard away from danger. Halt then puts three arrows in his boot. Horace realizes that Halt has given him no instructions about what to do if Halt loses. The combat begins; Deparnieux gallops toward Halt, who fires an arrow that Deparnieux easily blocks with his shield. Halt fires a second arrow moments after, which Deparnieux blocks more narrowly. Deparnieux gallops harmlessly past Halt and wheels his horse around; Halt shoots again, hitting him in the shoulder between the plate mail. Deparnieux changes tactics, switching from a lance to a broadsword and slowing down his approach, which makes Horace nervous. Halt shoots two more arrows, and Deparnieux, anticipating that the second one will go for his helmet, lifts his shield, allowing the heavy-headed arrow to sink directly into his breastplate and pierce through his ribs, killing him.

The castle inhabitants react in shock to Deparnieux’s death. Although most are happy to see him gone, they are not optimistic since Halt could prove to be an equally tyrannical overlord. Three of the guards advance to attack Halt, but Horace intervenes, and they back down. Halt instructs Horace to fetch Deparnieux’s horse and calls for the captain of the guard. The captain, a man named Philemon, approaches, uncertain, and Halt explains that he intends to ride for Skandia and never see any of them again. Except for some supplies and the battlehorse, Halt leaves the castle and everything in it to Philemon with only two instructions: The cages must be removed, and any of the castle employees are free to leave. When Philemon begins to protest, Halt informs him that he will easily offer the same deal to his successor. Philemon accepts, realizing that most of the servants will stay anyway.

Evanlyn carefully crafts a scrap of supple leather into a sling; while she cannot learn to use a bow in time to feed them, she learned to use a sling as a little girl before her father forced her to become a proper lady of the court. She grows dismayed as the sling struggles to take shape, feeling useless, although her stubbornness is what is keeping them alive. After giving a still-catatonic Will some water, Evanlyn tests the sling and sets out into the woods to hunt.

Evanlyn finds a rabbit and successfully kills it, but as she cautiously moves through the woods, she senses a nearby horse and pauses, saving her own life in the process. She sees the horse and nearly steps forward, thinking it is Tug, but she quickly realizes that the horse only looks similar and that the rider is fur-clad foreigner, neither Skandian nor Araluen. Evanlyn flees back to the cabin after the rider gallops off.

Will, meanwhile, wakes in a haze. He picks up the hunting bow but quickly dismisses it. He tries to remember what has happened to him, but his memories are gone after reaching Hallasholm. Will realizes with a jolt that he has no idea where Evanlyn is or if she is alive. As he stands to search for her, she opens the door, searing the image of her surrounded by sunlight into his mind for the rest of his life. Will, overjoyed, reaches for her, calling her by name. She begins to cry, confusing him.

Horace bids Halt to look behind them at the smoking keep of Montsombre as they ride toward the mountains. Halt coyly implies that he has left a burning pile of oil rags in the keep, which will burn it; while the rest of the castle and the stone walls of the keep might survive, the interior will not, which collapses the center of power in the castle. They ride on, pleased with themselves and determined to rescue Will.