by A A Woods
Carlette wondered if she’d ever know.
“Voka’s rebellion started with her own people,” Byrna continued. “The Ebonal tribe was the fiercest, the most violent. When they struck, blood ran from the Delasir mines in rivers. Her war began in summer and, by the fall, she’d taken the mountains back. Even before she was wolf-rider, Voka killed more soldiers and settlers than the rest of them put together. Or so they say.”
Carlette held her breath, remembering the exaggerated campfire stories about a wild creature on the back of a wolf, half-beast herself. In those fire-lit nights, Voka had been a demon out of Carlette’s nightmares. Feral. Ghostly. But Byrna’s Voka was different.
This felt real.
“When Tuleaux retaliated for the loss of their mines, Voka lost. Her tribe was turned back and scattered. She and one of her blood-sisters disappeared for three months. To this day, no one knows what happened during that time. But when Voka returned with the thaw of spring, she returned alone and on the back of Sairan. Her Amonoux.”
Carlette only knew a few words in Ebonal, but this one she recognized.
Freedom.
“While news of her power spread, the tribes united behind her. Sibilese nomads came on their rock lizards. Raebus clansmen marched over the pass. Ceillan chariots dropped from the sky like rain. Even the Moians joined. Every warrior who could reach the Peaks, by land or air, declared themselves for Voka. My father said it was a grand showing, a final stand against the Delasir invaders who had corrupted our home.”
Carlette felt a surge of sadness. She knew how this part of the story ended.
“Voka had a handpicked group that she kept close. They called themselves the Riders of Hyba and painted their hair with blood, like her. They were first through the gates of Tuleaux when the city fell. But the Magistrate at the time was a clever man. He waited for Voka to plunge into the city so he could cut off her retreat. When he gave the signal, Voka and her blood-sisters were surrounded.”
Byrna’s voice became heavy with disgust.
“One of the riders stabbed her in the side with a poison-tipped blade. Not enough to kill, but enough to stop the battle in its tracks. She lost her hold on the wolf. Her other blood-sisters were shot down. And, with the head of her army cut off, they lost.”
Carlette swallowed. She knew the rest. Voka was executed in the most brutal and public way the Magistrate could think of. This was where the sailors always stopped, blushing as they realized that the eyes drinking in their every word were those of children. But Carlette knew all too well what kinds of horrors Delasir could come up with.
“What happened after she died?”
Byrna laughed.
“Everyone went home, larva-girl. The Sibilese slunk back to their deserts. The Raebus clans rode over the pass and tried to close it behind them. And us…” Byrna hesitated. “Well, we’ve been limping along ever since.”
“And no one’s risen up? Tried to take Voka’s place?”
“What do you think Yokan’s doing, picking daisies?”
“She’s no leader,” Carlette snapped. “She’s a rabid dog.”
“At least she’s trying.”
Carlette bit back a sharp reply. She used to think that Yokan and her Bloody Paws had brought violence to Ferren. But Carlette was beginning to understand that violence was already here. It was a topsoil that Delasir had spread. A poison she’d been a part of.
As she listened to the thump of hooves on snow, almost inaudible over the deep, resonant breathing of the stags, Carlette tried to put the pieces of her life together. She was like shattered clay pot, dropped and then fired. Her pieces weren’t the same shape anymore. She couldn’t slide them into place.
“Bit of a different story than you’re used to, huh?” Byrna asked.
“If the Furix came,” Carlette said, thoughtfully, not quite in answer. “If she re-appeared, then what? What would the tribes do?”
“Well I suppose that would depend on how much of a dainty little bitch she was.”
“Will it always be a woman? Couldn’t there be a man out there who can enhabit an Amonoux?”
“You’d love that, wouldn’t you? An excuse to let a man take over?”
Carlette didn’t dignify that with a response.
“No,” Byrna said when it became clear Carlette wasn’t going to answer. “Power follows the female line. A man, no matter how strong, could never lead us to freedom.”
“And a hood?”
The beetle-speaker’s hands shook, clutching at Carlette’s stolen overcoat, but when Byrna spoke her voice held no sign of weakness.
“If a Furix came along with strength enough to unite the tribes, no one’s going to wipe their ass about what she’s wearing. Only a Delarese idiot would think a piece of clothing matters.”
Carlette nodded, but she couldn’t help but wonder if Byrna was wrong.
· · ─────── ·❅· ─────── · ·
The midday sun found the three of them straddling a narrow ridge. Byrna, black hair dusted with snow, crawled along the top as Carlette kept a firm hold on the two stags. Tuk was clutching his knees to his chest, taking deep, pluming breaths.
“How are you?” Carlette asked, not liking the blue tint of his lips.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been this cold,” he said with a shudder.
“Here, move closer to Nea.”
“I’ll stay over here, thanks,” Tuk said, eying the towering stag. Nea’s muscles bulged, her long fangs as white and deadly as the snow. Carlette laughed, careful to keep her voice low.
“She won’t hurt you, not with me here.”
“Still,” Tuk said. “I’ll keep my distance.”
Byrna slid down the side of the ridge, cheeks red with windburn.
“They’re here alright. Trap’s being set as we speak.”
“What’s the trap?”
“Gunpowder,” Byrna answered, brushing off snow. “I was supposed to help. The plan was to dust tree-beetles in gunpowder and use them to control the explosions. I guess they must have found another way.”
Carlette’s stomach twisted. “They’re going to cause an avalanche?”
“Several,” Byrna said, blowing on her hands. “Right up against the ridge. It’ll be easy to separate the infant and make sure the mother can’t follow them.”
“Will it work?”
Byrna’s black eyes glinted. “It did before.”
Carlette clenched her fists, feeling the spines ripple beneath the thick gloves she’d grabbed from Jemelle’s stores.
“I thought the Bloody Paws were trying to protect this place,” Tuk said, shaking his head. “What does killing puppies have anything to do with saving Ferren.”
“We all make sacrifices,” Byrna snapped. “But maybe a pampered Nuri prince wouldn’t understand that.”
“Stop it,” Carlette said. “We need to think. If we’re going to save the pup…”
“We’d have to stop the avalanche,” said Tuk.
“Or stop the wolves from coming through the pass,” Byrna cut in.
“Or incapacitate the hunters when the avalanche starts,” Carlette added.
She rubbed her forehead. It all seemed so impossible. They were just three teenagers; what chance did they have against fully trained Ebonal hunters, men and women who had lived their lives in this bitter landscape, breathing in its power?
“What we need,” Tuk said in a thoughtful voice, “is a distraction.”
Carlette turned to him, unnerved by the determination in his expression.
“Carlette, if we can give you an opening, do you think you could enhabit the she-wolf? Turn the pack around?”
Carlette swallowed. The she-wolf would be the toughest of all, her power dense and armored after years and years of consuming souls. Carlette couldn’t even imagine the pain of trying to withstand such fortifications.
But she remembered that day by the river, Tuk sprinting away, the wolves chasing after him.
<
br /> And Quaina’s familiar soul, inviting her in.
“I think so,” she said with more confidence than she felt.
“Good,” Tuk said, beginning to pace. “So if we keep the hunters busy, you can stop the wolves from walking into their trap.”
“Slow down, little daisy,” Byrna said, folding her arms. “What kind of distraction did you have in mind?”
Reaching beneath his heavy coat, Tuk pulled out the tattered, crumpled remains of the parachute.
Carlette’s eyebrows shot up.
Byrna snorted, shaking her head. “I would slice open my own asshole before I trust my life to that.”
Tuk grinned at Byrna, a taunting, devilish smile that Carlette recognized as bait.
“Who’s the daisy now?”
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Red Snow
The true insanity of their plan didn’t hit Carlette until she was crawling along the upper ridgeline, holding the molded mountain stag saddle to her chest, scanning the gulf below for the massive shapes of the Amonoux.
By that point it was too late to turn back.
Swallowing her fear, Carlette crouched low, carving a moat through the white powder as she scuttled along a sharp crest of obsidian. She could sense the Bloody Paws below, their owl-like silence ominous and wrong, a scar on the otherwise beautiful vista. She soaked it in. From this vantage point in the clouds, the world fell open below her like a storybook. The Peaks snaked away on either side, reaching for the coast on one end and curling south towards The Hasach on the other. Adenai and Hyba—the tallest mountains—loomed above them, impossibly huge. It was no wonder the natives had named these two, sisters in size and shape, after their gods.
Or was it the other way around?
Carlette was shivering, damp cold leaking through her stolen overcoat. As she settled in to wait, she wondered idly who had last worn this jacket. A trader, perhaps, or a Collector? It made Carlette cringe to think that she was wearing anything that might have touched one of those loathsome brutes.
We all make sacrifices.
For the umpteenth time, Carlette checked on Byrna and Tuk. They were in place, on the other side of the gigantic V between the mountains. She could sense Tuk’s exasperation, Byrna’s acidity, and their total mismatched antagonism even through the feather-touch link.
She shivered again and wished she was over there with them. At least then she wouldn’t be freezing to death by herself.
For endless, frigid minutes, Carlette squatted in the snow. All her senses were open, the doors to her mind thrown as wide as Mya’s windows on a warm day. She could feel the Snow snakes burrowing deep in the crevasses, waiting for unsuspecting prey. A herd of mountain stags picked their way south for the winter, fleeing the cruel winds of the ice plains the Ebonals called home. The natural world around her moved like clockwork, a silent march that never stopped.
Cocooned in a palm of rock, surrounded by infinity, Carlette felt impossibly small. No matter what happened to her, this cycle would continue. It was an endless orbit of life and death, indifferent to the squabbles of mankind.
The thought was strangely comforting.
Her musings were interrupted by the brush of a gigantic power against her mind.
She twisted, peering over the ridgeline. The Ebonal warriors below her had disappeared. Even their stags were nowhere to be seen. Carlette could sense the hunting party, crouched in dug-out holes behind mounds of snow, but their minds were carefully blank and empty.
Carlette leaned out further, holding her breath, eyes adjusting to the painful brilliance. She clutched the saddle closer to her chest, trying not to shiver.
There.
Moving with the confidence of apex predators, the Amonoux pack emerged like a part of the landscape. Their fur was as white as the snow around them, their eyes glittering even from this distance.
No matter how many times she saw them, she would never get used to their size.
Once, Carlette had overheard a Delasir veteran telling stories about the war, about how Nurkaij met them in battle. He’d spoken of airships, of course, but also of the elephants. For months after, Carlette and Quaina had pestered every sailor and settler they could find for a better description of the continental monstrosities. Their young minds were electric with the idea of lumbering beasts the size of houses with armored tusks and beady eyes. According to what little they’d gathered, the size of these animals made them slow. Their feet—each one at least as wide around as a wagon wheel— moved with a plodding certainty that made Carlette think of glaciers.
The Amonoux were nothing like that.
They hinted elegance and speed with every twitch of the tail, every ripple of musculature. Even though the she-wolf matriarch was easily as large as a Nuri elephant, Carlette knew which one would be more terrifying to face in battle.
No wonder Voka’s name is still spoken in whispers, Carlette thought as she stared at the she-wolf and the pup trailing behind her massive tail. No wonder people are still afraid.
Carlette prodded for Tuk and Byrna. She could taste the beetle-speaker’s terror as Tuk strapped them both into the parachute. Through Byrna’s ears, she heard Tuk hissing frustrated reassurances that the snow was thick, the wind was steady, they weren’t going to die, no they probably wouldn’t break their legs.
Through Tuk, she felt Byrna elbow him in the gut.
Carlette swallowed a half-hysterical laugh before it could betray her.
The she-wolf moved into the shadow of the mountain, her pack close behind. For a moment, everything was silent, quiet.
And then the Ebonal hunters burst from the snow like dolphins.
“BYRNA, NOW!” Carlette heard Tuk shout, felt Byrna’s gasp.
Carlette watched as they launched from their vantage point, leaping into the open air with a battle-cry. The sound echoed. Snow broke off, tumbling into the gulf. Screaming like a demon from the underworld, Byrna lifted her slingshot and fired. A Bloody Paw cried out and fell. The Amonoux were rearing. Gut-deep, bone-shuddering snarls reverberated in the very stone.
It was Carlette’s turn.
Praying that her death would be more dignified than a sledding accident, Carlette dug her toes in and threw herself on top of the snow, jamming the saddle between her body and the powder. Almost immediately, she was rocketing down the mountain with the speed of a loosed arrow. Snow sprayed up like ocean mist, coating her eyelashes. She couldn’t see.
But she didn’t need to.
Turn back! Danger! Run into the mountains!
Carlette threw the messages like daggers, but they fell uselessly against the she-wolf’s power, the impenetrable barrier wrapped her mind. Too far down to reconsider, Carlette continued to batter against that cairog-thick shell as she hurtled onward, hoping the wolves wouldn’t see her as the threat and decide to meet her halfway.
Danger! This is a trap! A trap for your baby!
Carlette picked at the kinked wires of magical defense, but each one sliced her. Kept her back. She couldn’t get through, couldn’t meet the wolf in a way she would understand.
Stop!
And then Carlette’s mind brushed against a wire she knew. A familiar essence, braided into the wolf’s.
Quaina.
All at once, Carlette understood Voka’s story.
She and one of her blood-sisters disappeared for three months. To this day, no one knows what happened during that time. But when Voka returned with the thaw of spring, she returned alone…
But Voka hadn’t returned alone.
Not really.
Carlette didn’t stop to think. She was more than halfway down the mountain. The other wolves were growling, snapping at the rebels.
Twining herself into that familiar mental thread and blinking against the frozen tears on her eyelashes, Carlette followed Quaina’s soul into the recesses of the Amonoux. The she-wolf was ten times more powerful than the juvenile Carlette had enhabited in the Bloody Paw cave, but, as Carlette went deeper, she was overcom
e by that same sense of otherness. She saw through seven eyes, felt the ground through paws larger than her whole body. The wolf’s bond with her pup became Carlette’s bond; the ironclad command of her pack heavy and somber in Carlette’s human hands.
Go back, Carlette said, plucking Quaina’s thread. Please, there’s a trap here. They’re after your pup. Go back or they’ll kill him.
The she-wolf’s essence curled out towards her like smoke. It was majesty. Wilderness. Both cruel and kind, wise and wild. Carlette fought the urge to cringe away from the size of it.
Quaina bubbled up to her, offered by the she-wolf like an apology.
Carlette had almost reached the bottom. The she-wolf was turning, her snarls so low that Carlette could only hear them through the Amonoux’s own ears. Time slowed. Tuk fell, Byrna howled, the Bloody Paws fell under bulls-eye attacks.
And then, without warning, the mountainside exploded.
The force launched Carlette’s body across the gulf. She slammed into the snow on the other side of the valley, sinking in so deep that for a moment she didn’t know where the sky was. The ground seemed to pop and crackle.
No!
Clawing her way out, Carlette scrambled to reach the air. But the cracks of breaking snowdrifts were already vibrating like the battle-cry of Hyba herself.
Carlette reached the surface, scrubbed snow off her face.
The scene before her had shifted, dizzyingly fast.
Ebonal hunters chased the Amonoux pup on their steeds. The snow above them loosened and toppled, ominously slow. The she-wolf snapped out, jaws clamping around a stag. Ignoring it’s piercing, equine scream, she tore it in half, slamming its rider into a pile of rocks. With a whip of her giant head, the she-wolf sent the remainder of the stag flying, knocking two other hunters off their mounts.
But the pack was surrounded.
What could she do?
Byrna and Tuk had landed in the snow. The beetle-speaker continued to fling chunks of ice at the Bloody Paws, undaunted by the avalanche gaining speed as it raced down the mountain. Tuk wrestled with an Ebonal man almost twice his size. With a flash of power, Carlette knocked the warrior unconscious.