Frost-Wolves

Overview

Frost-Wolves are the pack hunters of the Frost-Bound, the commonest of its Ice-Stalkers. Their fur hides them against the snow, they hunt without a sound, and their bite freezes what it holds.

Appearance

A Frost-Wolf is larger than any wolf of Caeldon, heavy in the shoulder, with a thick double coat of white and blue-grey that lies flat and glossy like hoarfrost. Against the snowfields it is all but invisible until it moves. Its eyes are pale blue, its muzzle long, and its teeth translucent, like icicles. Frost gathers on its whiskers and along its back, and its breath hangs in the air as a fog that freezes and falls. It runs low and fast, with a gliding stride that barely marks the snow. It does not howl. The only sounds a pack makes are the faint crunch of crust under its feet and, close by, the click of its teeth.

Habitat and Range

They live across the snowfields and glacier tongues of the Frost-Bound, in packs of half a dozen or more that range widely after Ice-Beasts and other warm prey.

Behaviour and Temperament

A pack hunts by warmth and by sight together. It spreads out across the snow, closes on its prey from several sides at once, and strikes without warning; a traveller who hears a Frost-Wolf has usually already been bitten. They take the weak first and drag a kill away to eat it frozen. They are wary of fire, not because it burns them, since flames on the plane throw no warmth, but because fire means people.

Abilities

Their bite freezes. Flesh that a Frost-Wolf holds turns white and hard within moments, and a limb it has bitten may be lost to the cold even when the wound is small. They can run across thin crust that would break under a man.

Life Cycle

A pack keeps one breeding pair, and the pups are born in dens cut into glacier ice, white from birth. Nothing decays on the Frost-Bound, and a Frost-Wolf that dies on the open snow lies there unchanged until something eats it.

Uses and Dangers

Their pelts are the warmest the plane gives and are worn by the Frost-Born, who hunt them alone and count a Frost-Wolf hide a mark of skill. Their danger is the silent attack, and the frostbite that follows even an escape.

Lore and Belief

Travellers' tales give them a howl that freezes the blood, but those who have met them agree that the frightening thing is that they make none. In cold-country stories on Caeldon, a white wolf seen in a snowstorm is sometimes said to have come through a frozen lake from the other side, and the tale may be all that is left of such a crossing.

A beast-hunter's song from the high north tells of the white pack that came through a frozen lake one winter and took a village's herds and three of its hunters before the lake thawed and the survivors went back the way they came.

Where It Appears

• The Frost-Bound
• Writers' Guide: The Planes