by S. W. Clarke
Ahead, the river had grown to a roar, and Veda had lost her sense of place on the map; she didn’t know whether they were near the bridge at all. But Agnar knew—he ran as a streak, bringing them toward the river. The sound of it came on them fast, and soon she could hear the water itself. Here, too, the water hadn’t yet frozen from the cold; she couldn’t see that far ahead, but she heard the massive pieces of ice shifting downstream, creaking and crashing against one another.
This was her best chance. She reached over her shoulder, swung her cloak up and over the gem-end of the staff. At once, the light snuffed, the whole world gone dark in the cloudy night. She was blind again, and the suddenness of it came terrifying, especially with the clinking still on her left. Her heels drove hard into the hestur’s side—a sharper pressure than the first time—and within a second, they were flying.
Veda closed her eyes, could only hold tight to the mane and trust, trust, trust. Somewhere under the river’s roar, Sarai’s sweet voice floated through the darkness. Somewhere Wilt’s returned. She felt the hestur descending, leaping. A chill wave of air rose to meet them—the water, the river—and the hooves clacked across ice. No bridge—they were on the river. Sometimes he bobbed, his balance shifting, correcting before he made his next jump. On they went, and every time she expected them to land in the hypothermic water, to end up washed to the far end of Issverold as blocks of ice.
But he never failed. The hestur leaped again, and again, aloft almost as soon as he’d landed. They crossed for what felt like an eternity, but—as the hestur’s hooves hit the soft dirt of the far bank—she realized it had only been fifteen or twenty seconds. She no longer heard clinking, or Sarai, or Wilt; she knew the wargs weren’t cut out for ice crossings. Only Veda, the hestur, and nature itself remained.
At the end, Agnar carried her up to level ground, breathing so violently she thought he might collapse beneath her. When his nameplate appeared, his health had dropped to 30/60. She cast her heal, the light from her hands almost painfully bright in the darkness, to bring him back to full. The hestur seemed to perk a little, and she prepared to dismount and allow him to drink, but Agnar swung his head, brought them around so that they faced into the southlands. He could only walk, and that was what he did. He walked and walked into the southwest.
Twenty-Three
By deep night they had encountered nothing and no one except the cold, which had become to Veda a creature itself. It puffed its cheeks, blew icy breath onto her face right down to the bottom of its lungs. At some point she had uncovered the gem, wrapped the cloak tight around her body. The sky poured soft and then icy snow, coating her and the hestur so well that when she looked down at herself under the green light, she hardly recognized her own hands in the snow, the compass with the barely-visible needle still pointing southwest. Already she had healed herself three times, felt certain her nose was frostbitten anyway. Her health sat at 75.
She resented Galen. She resented Amy, Eli, the villagers, Sarai, Wilt, Jess, Herathor, Agnar, Prairie. Most of all, she resented herself. She had ridden alone into the dark, and she had chosen wrong. Step by step she it carved her into a statue, bits of her shrinking and falling away, and still she allowed the hestur to carry her forward. Still she followed the compass in her hand. She’d been brave, but she hadn’t been smart.
She’d learned enough in formatory to know that the problem with heroism was this: most heroes died. And the ones who died weren’t written about—or at least, not often. They didn’t overcome the odds, didn’t outwit. Maybe they did for a time, but in the end, they walked through the snow until they fell in it, and then they had an inglorious and quiet death.
That was what had happened to Prairie. It was what would happen to Veda.
She had never heard of a blind hero, much less a heroic dupe. And she understood from the times she was mistaken for human—back during the years she carried a cane—that no one admired disability so much as tried to ignore it, and if they weren’t allowed to ignore it, then they pitied it.
She encountered this most often in crowded places, where voices fell into whisper as she came near a staircase or an escalator. There she was, a blockade, and she knew from her sister’s starkest moments of truth that it was most often about finding the least awkward way around the girl with the cane that tapped, tapped in search of the start of those steps. She knew it was true: she heard their steps slow and then quicken around her. Sometimes people offered assistance, and she had made it her life’s goal never to accept help—which sometimes came at the cost of slipping on a step, that sudden vertical drop, the brief chaos.
So here she was, alone, unassisted. She had chosen this, and now she was the one who would die in the cold, about whom Amy and Eli might talk for a time until they were overwhelmed by the great and stunning, streamable victory of Wilt and Sarai Waters, two cutthroats indeed. Veda was bitter. She was bitter, and she was—deeply, achingly—cold.
She’d at least kept Agnar’s health topped off—here was the creature she owed her survival to, who still carried her forward. After some time he fell into a trot and then a canter. He persisted even when she slumped to his withers, her numb face pressed into his coat. Veda might have dreamed, or she might have hallucinated she saw her sister there, the cornsilk hair in the wind. She wore a feathered black cape, the hood blown back, the tail of it nearly horizontal. Prairie, she thought, what are you doing here?
And her sister laughed in that infectious way. I never left, Veda.
The hestur brought them closer, but her sister seemed always to stand at a distance—it had always been like that: Veda nearing, Prairie drawing away.
Why didn’t you leave?
I couldn’t, she said. From her back she drew a recurve bow, set her fingers to the catgut string.
Come with me, Veda thought. She reached one hand out into the wind, though her sister was no closer than before. Something buzzed against her waist; it buzzed so loud she couldn’t ignore it.
What’s that? Prairie asked.
Veda looked down, reached into her waist pouch. The compass. It was spinning in her hand. It does this when I think of you.
Why? Prairie said, lifting the bow. She pulled the string to her face, aiming right at Veda. Heads up! And she loosed the arrow with such speed that it grazed Veda’s cheek before she processed that it had been released.
Veda woke. Her eyes wouldn’t open; the lids were stuck together. She was on her back, and she couldn’t lift her fingers. Even as she lay in the snow, her mind worked. The Compass of Finding. It was silent at her waist, but she could still hear the buzzing, the sound of it spinning, spinning, spinning.
She knew what it meant; it was so obvious Veda wanted to kick herself. “She’s here,” she said, though no one but the hestur was present to hear. The words came out slurred and hoarse. “She’s still here.”
“It’s okay,” came a voice. Her ears were too plugged to recognize it.
“Who’s there?” she asked. “I can’t see you.”
“You’ve got hypothermia.” Fingers rubbed at her eyelids, unsticking them. “Can you heal yourself, Veda?” In her interface, her health blinked at 8/125.
When she opened her eyes, Galen’s face hovered in the green light above her, snow falling onto his hair and the hestur, who swayed with his muzzle close to the ground. Galen’s lips had turned blue, his nose and cheeks purpled with frostbite.
“I found you,” she said.
“I think your horse found me,” he said, and she sensed hands beneath her, lifting her, carrying her. Soon an overhang blotted the snow, and she heard the hestur’s hooves echoing over stone. “We’re in a cave. Remember these?” Galen said. He walked far enough that the snow and wind no longer reached them, and set her sitting up against the cold wall.
“I already used the staff’s effect,” she tried to say, but she knew she was nearly incomprehensible. Her head slumped, and Galen pulled off his cloak, set it over her. “Pull off my gloves,” she said, ca
reful and slow. She threw all her effort behind lifting one hand, and her first two fingers went up. How strange: she didn’t feel cold so much as nothing at all, as though her whole body had fallen asleep.
Galen lifted her hand, tried to slide the glove off, but her fingers were stuck in the same curl she’d used to hold Agnar’s mane. “I can’t,” he said, rubbing her palm and wrist between his bare hands, “they’re still frozen.”
The hestur stepped closer, his velvet nose touching Veda’s cheek. He snorted, and the hot, fragrant breath wafted over her. The heat off him made her lift her head. “I’ll heal myself with them on,” she said. “Put my hand on my chest.”
Galen nodded, gingerly bent her arm so the heel of her palm and the fingernails of her curled hand touched her breast. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath and another. Her lungs resisted. When she cast the heal, the warmth started at the center of her, spread like a fire through her veins until it reached her frozen hands. At once the fingers uncurled, and her eyes opened fully. In her interface, her health had stopped blinking, now sat at a less dire 27/125. Everything hurt now, which she guessed was better than no feeling at all. And she didn’t feel drunk.
She sensed the grey light of morning at the cave’s entrance, and her eyes flicked to the countdown. 00:44:13. Forty-four minutes. “We have to go,” Veda said, trying to pull her feet under her. They responded with a half-hearted bend at the knees. “We have to go now.”
“Why?” Galen said, pressing her back down at the shoulder. “Do you know what the countdown means?”
“Forty minutes until autumn.” She enunciated each word with care, fighting the lethargy. “If we’re exposed, we’ll freeze in two minutes.”
“Shit. I misjudged that one.”
“You didn’t know?”
“I’ve been wandering in the snow for five days. I thought if I just survived—”
She shook her head. “No, the cold will fill this place.” Veda pointed to the hestur. “Do you have water?”
Galen nodded, pulled a water skin from around his back. He stepped to Agnar, slipped off a glove to allow the hestur to scent him. But the creature stood unresponsive, his head low. He swayed.
“No,” Veda said, rolling to her hands and knees. She came to Agnar, pulled her gloves off and set her hands at either side of his muzzle. His nameplate appeared in her interface:
“He’s dying.” Her voice cracked, and she closed her eyes, set her forehead to his. When she cast her heal, the warmth swept through the three contact points into him. His health rose to 13/60, and he nickered, the veiled eyes opening.
She had 128 mana left. Veda looked over at Galen, who was at 40/150. She would pour six more heals into the hestur, one into Galen, and the final cast into herself. That should keep them all alive.
While she healed, Galen set his shield on the floor of the cave, poured the ice water into it like a bowl that Agnar emptied almost as it filled. Only 40 minutes remained. Veda cast as fast as she could, but the spell always refreshed at the same speed—it was only on how quickly she could refocus. And it was hard to focus with her mind pulling at solutions, forming and tossing ideas. They had crossed the river once, but she didn’t think the hestur could do it with Galen riding, too. And she no longer had any idea where they were on Brynhild’s map.
But there had been something else on her map—a place in the southlands. People.
That was the key.
When she had depleted her mana, Veda stood, pulled the compass from her jacket. The needle still pointed toward Galen.
“Is that Amy’s compass?” he asked, standing close.
She ignored him, closed her eyes. She didn’t know if it would work—
When Veda opened her eyes, the needle had swung, now pointed northeast. “Get your cloak and shield,” she said, sliding her gloves on. “We’re leaving.”
The countdown read 30 minutes.
She led the hestur out of the cave, stepped into a driving and merciless snowstorm. She fastened her hood, and when she turned, Galen had thrown on his cloak, was staggering up behind her. “This is crazy.”
“Everyone keeps saying that.” She set her hands on the pommel and center of the saddle, her foot in the stirrup. She swung up, reached one hand down for Galen. “But no one has a better plan.”
He took her hand, and the hestur danced left as Galen set his foot in the stirrup, pulled his weight up. He set his hands at her shoulders.
“Hold my waist as tight as you can,” she yelled, and he complied. As soon as she felt his hands there, she snapped the reins, and with a whinny, the hestur fell into a trot. She let him out to a canter, guiding him in the direction of the compass needle. The snow blew from the south, pressing them north, slanting into her face. She let the reins out, allowing Agnar to slip into a gallop. He bore them through the sightless blizzard, and Veda curled her face into her chest with the pain.
They rode. The countdown read 20 minutes, and then 10, and still there was nothing except falling snow and the thick-covered ground.
That was when she heard the growl. It wasn’t a creature—not a warg or a yeti or anything with lungs. “What the hell was that?” Galen yelled into her ear.
“I don’t know.” It had sounded from everywhere, like the world itself had spoken. And the hestur’s ears were pinned straight to his head. It was bad.
“Veda,” Galen said, “there’s something coming.”
She turned her face into the snow, squinting against the flakes that caught her in the eyes and cheeks. He was right—it was…a sandstorm of ice. Autumn had come early. God damn, it had come early. She thought, with starkness she didn’t know she possessed: survive. I want to survive. Great whorls of snow rose, pressed toward them with wild speed, faster than the hestur could run. It enveloped them like a thrown blanket, and she understood.
She understood what Herathor had meant by autumn.
Veda couldn’t breathe. The cold struck down her throat and into her lungs, paralyzing her. She tried to speak, but nothing came from her mouth. Only the snow and wind went in. Shards of it grazed her cheeks and forehead, and she knew if she could have felt them each would have meant searing and bloody pain. Galen’s weight pressed hard to her, and she couldn’t tell whether he was bracing or slumping.
But Wa’s gift still shone. The green light was still around them. The hestur still ran. They weren’t done. She set her hand to Agnar’s shoulder, and when her heels went out, they drove into his sides with all the force she could muster, pressing there, not letting up.
And the hestur felt it.
They burst from the storm with such speed that her hood fell back from her face. She gasped, icy air moving in her chest. She glanced back; the storm followed them, churning on Agnar’s heels. This. This was what they had to survive. The hestur’s breathing was addled, hoarse in his chest. He coughed, stumbled, caught himself. He leapt with new and fearful ferocity ahead of the storm, and she thought: when we’re past this, I’ll never make you run so hard again. I promise. I’ll deserve you.
“Veda, there’s a light,” Galen whispered. She leant forward in the saddle, and there it was: a faint and distant planet floating ten feet above the ground. As they drew nearer it formed into a lamp, glass edges protecting a precious flame. Another sprang into view, and another.
They had arrived at a house.
Agnar skidded to the side of it, his hooves thumping the wood. The storm swept over them as soon as they’d stopped, and Veda fell off the hestur, Galen hitting the snow behind her. On her knees the snow was nearly to her face, and she struggled to her feet and along toward the door. It was a massive thing, the knob bigger than her head. And because she couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe, she just pounded on it. She pounded and pounded while her health ticked down in her interface.
And then the door opened.
Twenty-Four
The two of them clapped to the wooden floorboards through a massive doorway, Ve
da’s cheekbone too numb to sense the impact. She saw—dreamily, distantly—that her health had fallen to 4/125. And even if she could have moved her arms, she didn’t have the mana to heal herself even once. She didn’t have the desire, either: a potent lethargy had come over her, a disassociation from the young woman who lay on the threshold of the southlands cabin.
She felt herself being yanked through the doorway while behind the storm’s thunder swept in, whistling through the door in a tighter and tighter stream until the thing was slammed shut and bolted and footsteps sounded over the fur rugs.
Here it was so warm and dry the place didn’t even seem real. In the silence, an understated fire crackled.
Through the gauze of her hair her eyes opened to the foot of a boot so large she couldn’t take it all in without turning her head. The boot wrinkled at the toe as one knee dropped, and Veda was being turned onto her back. Above her, a vaulted ceiling of dark and sanded wood.
“Are they sprites?” came a quavering old voice.
With one huge finger the man above her tucked Veda’s hair aside from her face. “Wee humans—midlanders, looks like,” he said. In her delirium, she imagined the grizzle of his beard was a silvered Christmas garland. These were giants. Brynhild’s family. They had made it, she and Galen, except—
“Agnar,” Veda said. It came out more like an exhale.
Strands of the man’s white hair touched her face as he leant one ear down, a hand cupped around it. “Say that again, lass?”
She took a few quick breaths. “Agnar,” she rasped against the glass in her throat.
“The girl said Agnar!” Veda lifted her eyes to where the old woman—still bigger than any human, her white hair a wild mass—had now made her way to the shutters. She ventured to open one, and at that moment the wind hit the panes like a fist and the whole cabin shuddered. “Love, there’s a hestur fallen in the snow. Looks much like Brynhild’s Agnar, it does.”