- Frostmaw to Timony Keep
- Twelve Dogs and a Runner
- Never in a Whiteout
The Timony Sledge
Timony Keep stands on an icy crag above a glacier, and no road leads cleanly to its gates. From Frostmaw Village the way there is across the ice, and the way across the ice is the Timony Sledge. It is a long, low freight sledge of bent ash and whalebone, drawn by twelve big sled dogs from the Frostmaw kennels, with a runner standing on the back to steer and brake.
Passengers sit wrapped in furs between the bundles, and the sledge runs from the snow domes of Frostmaw out onto the glacier, around the crevasses the runner knows by heart, and up to the foot of the switchback road below the Keep. It takes half a day in good snow. From there passengers climb the last stretch on foot to the fire hut by the gate. The runner names the fare by the weather and the weight, and a traveller who argues too long may find the sledge has left. She will not go at all in a whiteout, whatever anyone offers, and the dogs agree with her.
Passengers sit wrapped in furs between the bundles, and the sledge runs from the snow domes of Frostmaw out onto the glacier, around the crevasses the runner knows by heart, and up to the foot of the switchback road below the Keep. It takes half a day in good snow. From there passengers climb the last stretch on foot to the fire hut by the gate. The runner names the fare by the weather and the weight, and a traveller who argues too long may find the sledge has left. She will not go at all in a whiteout, whatever anyone offers, and the dogs agree with her.