At the top of the mountain amongst the crisp white snow stood the statue of a powerfully built woman with a shaggy mountain goat skin draped across her shoulders. Her eyes were closed and she was covered in ice. Behind her stood a stone archway, through the archway was a meadow growing on top of white fluffy clouds.

‘W-w-well boys,’ Rhino-xi said through shivering teeth, ‘looks like we did it.’ Twin nosefang icicles had grown from Rhino-xi's nose and looked like chopsticks jutting from his face.

When Sparrow shook his head icicles fell from his hair and clinked on the ground.

‘With the gods nothing is ever this easy.’

As Sparrow’s footsteps approached the eyes of the statue flickered open, pupils of pure glacial blue stared out at them.

Sparrow began by bowing, ‘I'm Sparrow and these are my friends-’

‘-and w-w-we're here to enter the land of the gods,’ Rhino-Xi continued with the enthusiasm and foresight of a golden retriever, ‘we’re gonna find the stupid, moron of a god who created the horde and slap him silly until he tells us how to destroy his creation.’

The guard of the gate’s nose wrinkled, ‘So... my name’s Nola... and basically my job is to make sure idiots like you DON’T get into the land of the gods.’

Piggy, whose entire body was coated in a shell of ice and snow, groaned. ‘What my silver-tongued oaf of a companion is trying to say is that we humbly ask to be let through those gates. There's a god in there who we would very much like to discuss a few things with.’

Nola shook her head. ‘Again, this is the land of the gods. You have to be a VIP to enter this place. Worthless vagrants like you show up here all the time. I get it - you've got questions. Why did the gods invent spiky things? Why did the gods invent stinging things? Why did the gods make humanity so intelligent that they have the ability to change the very flow of rivers or reshape atoms to their purpose, yet also make them so stupid that they use those abilities to kill each other? Listen, these questions I do not have answers for. All I know is that if you want to get through that arch you have to be a god or be with a god. I'm kind of like the bouncer at a tavern, if you don’t pass the test to get in then I stick this serrated sword straight through your heart and saw a triangle out of your abdomen and leave your body here on the ice to rest in pain and suffering for all eternity.’

‘I’m not so sure that’s what most bouncers do...’ Rhino-xi said.

Sparrow and Piggy looked at each other, ‘Looks like there's no way forward, buddy.’ Sparrow said.

Piggy curled his arms under his armpits as shivers shook his body, ‘Maybe there's a god somewhere we can befriend and...

‘Sparrow’s a god,’ Rhino-xi announced.

The two friends glared at him. The muscles on Sparrow’s face tensed up as he whispered, ‘Shut up.’

‘He's definitely a god,’ Rhino-xi said even more loudly, ‘and he's not afraid to take your test, even if it means he'll suffer in the cold for eternity because he is a god.’

Piggy groaned, ‘You’re kind of being an asshole Rhino-xi and Sparrow’s not a god, he’s a-’

‘He's a humble god,’ Rhino-xi shouted at Nola, ‘The sort of god who doesn't like to flaunt his image or place temples on the corner of every block.’

‘Right,’ The gate guard said, hefting her serrated sword with edges with barbed edges capable of inducing the sort of pain a heart attack brings of, ‘Come on kid, you loonies have already wasted enough of my time. Let's see what you’re made out of.’

****

Nola’s feet moved like hawks on the wing. They danced in a pattern of rings in the snow. Sparrow was all knees and elbows, dodging this way, then that as Rhino-xi called out, ‘Good one Sparrow! Show her what you’re made of.’

The fight lasted all of five seconds. By the end of the flurry Sparrow’s two arms, still wrapped in stoneskin lay chopped off on the ground to either side of him. One of his legs had sailed down the mountainside like a broken boomerang, and the other Piggy was trying to dig out from a snowdrift. Nola, the gatekeeper lowered her sword to his chest.

‘This is going to be very long and painful,’ she said.

‘Listen, I-I'm not a god, I-I don’t want to fight.’

She drew her sword back, the white mountain light glittered off the serrated edge of her icy blade. And then Rhino-xi started to sing.

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Down by the stream

I first heard his hum

The stuff of legend

Was he to become

Rhino-xi's voice was low and scratchy and snot dribbled down his chin as he moved into the next verse.

We wandered mountains

Near and far

And fought a collector

Of things bizarre

Beside him Piggy was cringing, even Sparrow, who had just lost all four limbs, winced at the assault on his ears and hoped they would be the next bodypart to get chopped off. Nola, a being of pure ice put a hand to her forehead and yelled, ‘Stop that torturous wail before I stick this mute-ilator through your windpipe, heathen.’

Rhino-xi sniffed, ‘It’s his song.’ He bent down and picked up a sharp icicle from the ground beside him.

‘What?’

‘It’s Sparrow’s song. It’s the one everyone sings about him in taverns and on the road and when they put their kids to bed at night.’ Rhino-xi moved the icicle behind his back, clutching it like a spear.

‘And?’

‘And... not all gods get songs written about them.’

‘I see your point... but also literal eggs have songs written about them falling off walls. Songs don’t make you a god.’

‘What does then?’

Nola gestured to a shard of ice sticking up from the ground beside her. The pure ice warped the world behind it.

‘In order to be a god you must have followers – people who believe in you and pray to you for things like protection, good fortune and gold. Many achieve god-rank – have the same strength as a god, but to have someone devote their inner thoughts, their worst nights, and greatest burdens to you. That is not something to be taken lightly and that is why your friend must die for pretending to be one.’

‘And what does the icicle have to do with all this?’ Rhino-xi asked while Piggy kicked him in the back of the leg.

‘Rhino-xi, shut up! She’ll kill us too. You okay Sparrow?’

‘No, I can’t feel my leg.’

Piggy pushed Sparrow’s leg he’d dug from the snowdrift further under his coat, ‘Don’t worry buddy, I’m taking good care of it.’

Nola hefted her sword and walked over to the pillar of ice, ‘This is no icicle, this is Frevenorth, frozen from the seeing water of the Yonderbane. With this icicle, you can see everything.’

‘Bet you can’t see this!’ Rhino-xi said, hurling the razor-sharp icicle he’d been hiding at her back with all his might.

The icicle should’ve pierced her skin. It should’ve gone through her heart and sliced it in two. But the lump hit her back and shattered into pieces.

Rhino-xi's face dropped. Silence apart from the whistling wind. Sparrow tried to move his head, but his frozen blood glued it to the ground.

‘Hey, hey Piggy, where’s my leg?’

Piggy was shaking. Nola still hadn’t turned around. Her fists were balled and her back hunched. She was going to kill them all and leave them to rest in pain and suffering forever.

‘I-I’ve got your leg Sparrow,’ Piggy managed, ‘I-I’m taking good care of it.’

His eyes turned to meet Rhino-xi's. They wore matching holyshit expressions. Neither moved their feet.

Nola spun and Sparrow’s two companions whimpered, throwing themselves into the snow to avoid the stroke of her sword.

But no sword whistled through the air. No fists choked their throats. No feet stamped their heads into the snow over and over until they asphyxiated.

Nola’s feet crunched through the ice and snow. She bent down to Piggy and he whimpered as she tried to take Sparrow’s leg from inside his shirt.

‘Please,’ he said, with snot freezing on his upper lip, ‘Please, Sparrow needs his leg. I said I’d take good care of it.’

She tugged harder but Piggy wouldn’t let go. Nola stood and dragged the leg, with Piggy still clinging to it across the snowy mountaintop. Icicles and snow bit into his skin.

‘I told him I’d take care of it. And I will!’

Nola collected each of Sparrow’s limbs, then marched over to his mutilated body. She knelt down, attached his leg to his hip, and with a finger traced a line across the cut she’d made. Ice spread from the tip, burrowing into Sparrow’s flesh and knitting the two pieces of his body together.

She repeated the process with his remaining leg and arms and then with a flick of her hand all the ice surrounding Sparrow disappeared.

Sparrow sat up. Rolled his wrists and flexed his knees, ‘Woah... no pain.’

He looked down at his right leg, which Piggy was clinging to with all his might, eyes shut and breath trembling. Sparrow reached down and laid a hand on his friend’s head.

‘Piggy, I’m okay.’

Piggy looked up at Sparrow through a veil of tears. A smile slowly dawned on his face, ‘Your leg’s back!’

Sparrow nodded, ‘All thanks to you buddy.’

‘I told you I’d look after it!’

‘You did a great job.’

Sparrow stood and brushed a few snowflakes from his chest. Once again Nola was standing at Frevenorth, peering into the depths of the icicle. When she turned to look at him there were tears in her eyes. She dropped to her knees and bowed.

‘My lord I am sorry, I have failed in my duty.’

Sparrow wiped a hunk of snot from his nose on the back of his sleeve, ‘Um, are you talking about me?’

Nola nodded, ‘I considered you to be a mere vagrant, but Frevenorth has shown me the truth – you are the GOD of the vagrants!’

Sparrow took two steps forward and peered into the icicle, in it was a young, scruffy-looking tramp with a nosebleed and two matching black eyes sizzling a pot of beans over a campfire. The first spoonful of the young man’s beans went into the bow of an old pine tree.

‘For Sparrow!’ he said and dipped his head.

The icicle blurred to show two men with rags on their backs, between them was a stag they’d just gutted, they took the stag’s heart from its corpse and dug a tiny hole in the mountain path they were standing on.

‘For Sparrow, the god of the road.’

Blur... then snow. Lots of snow falling all around a caravan of carts and oxen, each of the oxen’s feet sunk deep into the snow coating the road.

Inside the carts noblemen rubbed golden fish and prayed to Caltal and Rutmere, the gods of merchants and the road. The cart driver rubbed the end of his whip and sent a silent prayer up to Rockfein, the god of the drivers.

And tucked away on the edge of the caravan, not a part of it, but following its light and its warmth was a vagrant. Shivering blue and wishing he’d stuffed more straw into the boots on his feet.

He took a copper penny from his pocket, rubbed it in his frozen palm until it shone, then tossed it backward over his right shoulder.

‘Help me Sparrow,’ he whispered, ‘just help me through this storm.’