by Jae Vogel
A scream cracked the air and bounced with almost physical force upward against the rising mountains around them. Laova’s blood chilled twice, first at the very real fear of snow-slide, and second, for the terrible whiteness of Taren’s face and redness of his blood as the wolf finally got its jaws around something solid.
Perhaps a snow-slide was coming, but there was no time to consider it. Bamet had arrived, and dealt a crushing blow to the wolf’s skull with his club. A valley wolf would be dead under such force; the wolves of the mountains were different creatures indeed, and this one did not seem any closer to death. It did yelp painfully, opening its powerful jaws and allowing Ghal and Khara to yank Taren to safety. He held in his screams, but it seemed to Laova that he was growing whiter, whiter…
And the Rell was advancing; her hand was on the hilt of the Scim, and Laova felt a shiver of something—something old, something deep inside them all—as the smooth surface of the Scim sliced out of its hide-wrapped home, tasting the night air.
It was a knife of some kind, Laova knew. But if you honed stone down so thin and so long, it would break. And the Scim could bend, it could flex like living thing. Rell held it steadily now, between herself and the wolf, between the wolf and Taren.
Laova took another running step, raising her bow, but the ground betrayed her. The snow bank crumbled too fast for her to even yell; her breath was knocked out of her against first a tree root curling upwards from the ground, then a rocky shelf that her back hit flat. She rolled off it and onward, picking up speed as she tumbled head over heels through the dark.
Her sense returned in spasms and Laova threw out all her limbs. After another few paces of half-hearted downward motion she finally landed on her stomach in the snow. A shuffling after-rush of loose snow and dirt ran over her, and Laova had to dig herself out when her breath finally returned in stopping, shocking gasps.
“Damn,” she muttered, collapsing beneath the hollow under-roots of a sturdy old pine. She was lucky she hadn’t snapped her spine in half against a tree trunk. Laova took a series of slow breaths, easing her bruised lungs back into working order.
Her bow was missing, and all but three arrows had fallen out of her quiver. Laova groaned. She might find a few while she trekked back up the hill, but her hopes were low. At least her bow would be relatively easy to find—three feet long and she had surely dropped it close to the others. Maybe they’d found it already. Maybe they’d already slain the wolf…
Laova froze; in the snow above her, something was walking.
She tried to control her breath; her chest protested, aching and burning and causing an impudent fuss. Laova calmed her heart and shrunk deep into the roots. Shrouded as such, still covered in snow and bits of icy dirt from her fall, her scent would not be easily detected. And to see her, whatever passed above would have to cross on this side of the tree. Surely, it would simply stride out into the night, away.
With a growl, the wolf leapt over the edge of the hollow and landed before Laova, gazing again into her with its eyes of living gold.
There could be no question; it saw her, and not only that, it had followed her. Taren’s blood still darkened its muzzle, and his two of his arrows still fanned out from its shoulders.
Not it. He. It was a ‘he’. Laova didn’t know how she knew, but she was certain. And now, he was advancing, and there was something clipped in his jaws…
Laova’s bow knocked against her knees and fell numbly to the ground. She stared at it, far from having the courage to move and try to pick it up. The wolf stared at her with eyes that glimmered and danced in the dark, and if Laova was not mistaken he was brazenly daring her to try, to pick up the bow and try.
Laova shook her head.
A low growl rumbled out and over her. Unless Laova was quite mistaken, it was a laugh.
And then the wolf moved on. It shook its massive shoulders out, and the two clinging arrows flew off into the snow. Laova sat there shaking as it turned, impossibly graceful, impossibly fluid, and melted into the forest.
Time continued with or without her; Laova just sat there, quivering, for some time. She was flushed with fear beneath her clothes, but as the high of hot-blooded motion faded the cold returned to settle in her bones.
She began to cry. They were hysterical desperate tears, and Laova struggled through them to get back to her feet. She picked up her bow, retrieved Taren’s arrows. By the gods, he might be dead, and she was sitting under a tree, shaking and crying in fear like a child.
Was it fear? Laova began her trip back up the slope. The question rotated, slowly, in her mind, as if to give her time to examine every angle. Was it fear? Was she afraid? Or was it the feeling of the world raising its walls against her? Fear she knew; was she afraid, or was she merely striking out on a path from which there could be no deviation? For the first time, Laova wondered. Why had the wolf come just as Taren tried to open his heart to her? Had she tracked it? Or…
Ahead, movement. Laova had picked up a few arrows on the treacherous, slick hillside, and now her quiver was at least a little less pathetic as she staggered over the last shelf. She approached her small party; they were making camp, having decided that here was as good as there to set up, and Taren didn’t have an excess of time to zigzag this way and that scouting.
“Help Bamet with the tent,” Rell ordered bluntly. Laova hopped to immediately; they needed to get Taren somewhere warm so they could take off his coats and shirts and treat the wound. Khara was striking a flint to the best brush and kindling they could find, trying to get a fire burning. Nemlach and Ghal both knelt on either side of Taren, keeping him awake. Rell was standing guard, still armed with the Scim, which still bore streaks of ruddy red where it had scored the body of the beast.
“Wake up, boy,” Laova heard Ghal teasing. “It’s your night to forage firewood, lazy ass.”
Laova’s breath caught as she helped Bamet string up the tent frame between tree trunks, waiting and hoping and despairing that Taren would not answer. But he did, weakly.
“Sorry.” His voice a creak of a thing, but it was there. “I figured you could just talk the fire to life. You talk everyone else to death.”
Ghal roared with laughter. “Is it that way? Well, you can just go on and fletch your own arrows, from now on.” Laova caught Ghal exchange a look with Rell. It was a good look, hopeful and optimistic. The Hunt-Leader smiled a little, relieved.
Laova smiled, too, and reached for an edge of the hide walls of the shelter. She and Bamet stretched it over the rope frame, while Laova let herself forget about things. For at least the moment, she let herself forget about the wolf and feelings of decided fate, about the hunt, about the dreams, even about Star-Reach. Even about Nemlach.
Taren was alive, her best friend was alive.
Once more she felt rather than thought that perhaps it was not really dark.
Not yet.
Chapter 5
The fire was burning quite well when Laova finally stepped out of the tent where Taren lay, naked from the waist up. The meat of his shoulder had been savaged a little, but his thick winter clothes had taken the worst of the wolf’s bite. It was miraculous, really. If the wolf had put just a little more gruff into it, Taren would be not only headless, but likely snapped in two. Bizarre and blessedly fortunate that his injuries were so forgiving.
And yet, something in the back of her mind whispered still… Perhaps the wolf had not meant to harm Taren. Maybe, it had only come to deliver a warning.
“Laova.”
Beside the fire, Rell sat cross-legged. She’d been cleaning the Scim; a soiled rag was in one hand, and she was scrubbing with care at the blade. It gleamed, now, catching the firelight. It shone like sunlight off water. Nothing Laova’s people made could compare, and Rell cared for it with deliberate and delicate caution.
Rell’s eyes dropped back down to the weapon. Laova understood her perfectly, and took a seat beside her at the fireside.
For the few minutes that L
aova waited, her stomach was sinking. She knew what was coming—what else could Rell possibly want to speak about? The fire crackled mockingly, and the wind sighed as if in reprobation. Laova tried and failed to recall how she had expected to explain herself, what she had planned to say.
Rell finished cleaning the Scim and sheathed it. But then she simply sat, staring at the firelight, catching it in her red hair and her stony eyes. Laova tried not to fidget. Ghal was in the tent caring for Taren. Khara and Bamet had watched first last stop, so now took the chance to disappear for the night into the second tent, wordlessly avoiding the conversation that approached.
Nemlach lurked quietly out of the firelight, whittling at the point of his spear. Laova saw him and felt something like relief. At least he was here with her; even he was certainly more ‘over there’ than ‘here’.
“What did you think would happen, Laova?” Rell asked finally.
Laova met her eyes; Rell’s were flashing and bright and hard, but Laova could meet them. At least she wasn’t stiff with fright, unable to react as she had been under the wolf’s stare. She took a deep breath.
“I was tracking the wolf,” Laova lied.
Rell did not move.
“I was looking for my ritual hunt to be… great. Maybe too great.” Laova watched Rell’s face.
“Taren almost died.”
“I know.”
“You almost died.”
“I know—”
“It is different to hunt something that will hunt us back.” Rell’s words were sharp as arrow-points, each one punched through the air. “Even an idiot can understand. Deer and elk will run away—that is what we all thought we were hunting. Because you said so.”
Laova swallowed; her throat was dry as grass in high summer. She waited to see if Rell had more to say, and in a moment more she apparently did.
“If that wolf had been part of a pack, we would all be dead. Did you ever consider that?” Rell snarled. “Did you consider the very likely possibility that the creature was returning to its pack? That we might come upon them any time?”
“Yes, of course…”
“So you meant to get someone killed?” Rell stood. “You meant to sacrifice one of your hunters so your kill could—could be a surprise?”
Laova opened her mouth, but found it mute. Tears sprang into her eyes, and she wished she had something, anything to say. But the only thing she could possibly offer in explanation was the one thing she felt sure Rell must not know.
“This is not how we hunt,” Rell’s voice lowered again, and Laova nearly wished it wouldn’t. She looked up at the Hunt Leader in dread. “As the wolf pack hunts, so do we. The wolf does not fool its pack-mates. The wolf hides nothing, because each wolf supports the next to survive.
“When you fool us, you fool yourself,” Rell hissed. “When you lead us to death, you walk into it yourself, as well.”
Laova trembled; she knew she wasn’t meant to speak, which was good, because she felt she could not.
“Would it have been you that brought his dagger back?” Rell asked quietly, staring down at Laova. “Would you have presented Taren’s weapon to his mother? What about Ghal? Bamet? Khara? Nemlach? Myself? Would you have walked back alone with your kill, and presented the tokens of our deaths to the tribe?”
What a cruel thing to ask. As Rell said the words, they took shape in her mind, and Laova could see herself return to the village alone. Explaining to first Rell’s family, as the Hunt Leader. Then Taren’s. Then the others. Then the next tribesman who asked her quietly, in private, what happened. And then a dozen more. Until everyone knew…
“Childish.” Rell spat. “Childish. Selfish. Foolish. “
She crossed around Laova and the fire and stormed into the tent where Taren lay. She did not come back out, and Laova was left alone by the fire, tears streaming down her face. She refused to sob. If it took all the strength in her, she refused to sob. Her vision blurred and blinded and the fire became a great smudge of white-orange against a world of muted black. Still, not a sound.
Laova had never imagined a day when she’d hate him doing so, but eventually Nemlach came to sit beside her. He sat near, and set a hand on her shoulder.
She’d almost gotten him killed, too, didn’t he understand? When that thought surfaced, Laova finally coughed out an ugly, gurgling whine, and she bit her lip shut tightly to prevent another one escaping.
“Laova,” Nemlach murmured with a sigh.
“Please,” she hissed through her teeth. “Just go. I’ll sit the first watch. Please go. I can’t… I just can’t.”
“I understand,” Nemlach nodded.
And go, he did. Laova relaxed, out alone in the dark night, in the biting wind. Would Taren have left her in peace with so little resistance? No. She would have had to fight and scream and force him away, which would have made her more upset still. Nemlach was wise, where Taren was not, and Laova cherished that wisdom.
Eventually her tears dried, or perhaps they only froze. The shadows around her did not move, and yet… at times, Laova looked into the woods and seemed to feel something there. It would send a chill down her spine, but she was only a little afraid. After all, she suspected she knew exactly what watched her.
Chapter 6
A guide. A hand to show you the way.
Laova felt the words, as if understanding the meaning of a language she did not speak. It was the same as looking into a pup’s eyes and seeing his happiness, seeing him ask wordlessly for a bite of fish. It was understood, communicated in graceful ease.
In the blue-gray stillness of her dream, these impressions sunk through her flesh, into her heart, and she heard movement in the trees. She looked and saw the black shape of a shade prowling at her side, although she could not discern its features. Perhaps fear would have been prudent, but she did not feel it. She knew clearly, this shape in the dark was not here to hurt her. It had come to show her the way.
This was not necessary in her dream. The way was clear; it lay before her feet, closer than ever before. Laova took step after step, looking up at the shimmer of the god lights over the crags of Star-Reach. The sheets of snow at the summit were pristine and blank, untouched by mortals. Untouched, perhaps, by anyone.
Laova trudged onward. The snow was still thin and put up no resistance to her boots, but it was growing deeper. It had swelled gently around her ankles before. Now, it was midway up her calf. If there was one thing Laova understood, it was snow; before long, it would be up to her knees, and further still.
Was it cold? Laova couldn’t feel it, although she was certain it should be. She was far from the peak, but the mountain stretched downward behind her to the shapeless valley far below. So high, and she could feel only a breeze, a hint of a chill. It was odd; in her waking hours, Laova would fear she’d taken a nasty frost, perhaps bad enough to lose fingers. Perhaps bad enough to die from.
If she’d taken a frost, she’d feel tired and warm. Laova felt neither of these. She was energized, or at least moving on momentum. As for warm… Laova felt nothing. No cold, no heat. Nothing.
Upward, ever upward. The cut path in the snow before her grew fresher, as if she were drawing near to the feet that made it. The thought was a little daunting, but not enough to slow her. After all, this was the way she was meant to go. Fear or hesitation could not stop her now. Guilt could not stop her now. Rell could not stop her now.
The night seemed to grow brighter the higher she climbed, and Laova knew why. The trees were thinning, leaving greater spaces of white snow to bounce back the colorful, wheeling lights overhead. The air should have felt thinner, as well, but of course in her dream Laova felt no different. She didn’t gasp for breath. She didn’t struggle.
And finally, when she chanced to throw her eyes forward farther up the slope, her persistence was rewarded. It took her by surprise. Obviously someone had to have been ahead leaving the footprints for her to follow, but it was jarring for Laova to finally look up and see the tiny
, moving figure of another climber, ascending Star-Reach just barely within her sight.
And like a passed message, a voice carried back to her in the shifting mountain wind. It spoke one word, and one word only, just barely audible.
Laova.
***
Rell crawled out of her tent the next morning, or what passed for morning. The sky was clear today, a brilliant black-blue speckled with glittering stars. It peered down through the tree branches, through needle and bough that were quite used to the dark.
The fire was still burning, tended now by Nemlach, who was turning a series of meat chunks on a spit over the fire. The traps that Khara had set the night before must have been successful.
“Morning.”
Nemlach glanced at her with his eyes only. He mumbled something that might have been a greeting without moving even one muscle more than necessary.
Rell sighed and let him be. She wandered out for a moment into the forest to attend nature’s calling, came back to find Nemlach still intently cooking the rabbit, or fox, or whatever had stumbled across the trap. After washing briefly with a cup of melted snow, and checking over her gear, Nemlach was no more talkative. Not that she expected him to be; with another low, slow sigh, Rell sat beside him at the fire and watched breakfast as it sizzled and browned.
Nemlach waited with patience. Not many men were as patient, as gentle, as he. Even fewer could balance that gentle nature with an ability to be fierce, to answer the call for action when it came. He was unique in that. Rell’s well-missed husband had been no such creature. He had died three winters ago when he was injured on a hunt and froze before she could find him; Rell often wondered if he’d made a mistake, just a foolish mistake, on account of his sometimes foolish nature. Sometimes foolish, and childish. But she missed him still.
Not Nemlach. Rell knew he’d never die of a silly error, nor let anyone else perish of needless or negligent cause. He was protective towards those he cared for, even more for those he loved, which was probably the reason that he was giving her the cold shoulder this morning.