The Winter King

by C. L. Wilson

  The cold of its ice breath chilled her spine through the thick fur of her coat. She didn’t dare slow enough to look back. She could feel the garm behind her. A freezing void closing in on her, draining the warmth from everything around it.

  Just ahead, a pile of snow-covered boulders lay tumbled in her path. Six feet behind it, the branches of a large spruce stretched out.

  Her legs pumped as she raced for the tumble of rocks. For months, she’d chased after Krysti, trying to emulate the effortless way he scrambled up and down sheer cliff faces and treacherous mountain terrain.

  Of course, bounding up cliffs and over obstacles with Krysti had been just a lark. A fun way to pass the time.

  Now, her life depended on it.

  She scanned the boulders as she ran towards them, calculating the distances, the inclines, noting all footholds and determining the path most suited to her own reach and abilities.

  There was no time for fear or doubt and no room for error. She could only decide her path, commit to it, and pray she completed a successful run on the first try.

  Khamsin put on a burst of speed and leaped towards the first rock. Her foot came down, angled perfectly against the incline. Her right sole made contact. She bent her knee to absorb her momentum and immediately pushed off, springing up and left towards the next rock in the pile. Leaping from foot to foot, rock to rock, she bounded up the pile of boulders and launched herself into the air. Her arms stretched out, gloved hands spread wide.

  She caught the spruce branch with her fingertips and kicked up and out to swing her torso over the top of the branch. She pumped her legs again, planted her feet on either side of her hands, and leapt up to grab a higher branch overhead. She scrambled up the branches of the spruce, then paused to see what the garm would do next.

  Below her, the garm leapt for the tree trunk, flexing long, curving claws. Kham’s eyes went wide. “Halla help me! The cursed thing can climb, too?”

  Sure enough, the garm was scaling straight up the spruce’s broad trunk, its six-inch claws digging into wood as easily as they sliced through ice and frozen ground. The beast had almost reached Khamsin before she collected herself enough to jump for the next highest branch.

  “A giant ice wolf, they called it,” Kham muttered as she scrambled up the tree. “Ice wolf, my ass. Show me one wolf—just one!—that can climb a tree!”

  The branches grew thinner but more plentiful the higher she went. Hopefully, the thicket would slow down the garm—or, if she was lucky, stop it altogether. Khamsin cast a glance over her shoulder and promptly swore the air blue.

  “You have got to be joking.”

  Not only did the garm run swift as a wolf, breathe freezing mist like a frost dragon, and climb trees as effortlessly as a squirrel . . . but when the spruce branches threatened to keep the garm from its prey, the beast just chewed through them like they were breadsticks.

  She scrambled higher, climbing faster, praying as she went.

  The crevasse lay in Hodri’s path, a long, deep chasm gouged out of the underlying mountain. The crevasse was easily twenty-five feet wide—too far for a horse and rider to jump without considerable risk—but the garm’s tracks raced directly to its edge.

  The gap might be a risky jump for horse and rider, but apparently not for the garm. As he reined Hodri in at the chasm’s edge, Wyn could see the disturbed snow on the opposite side where the garm had landed after leaping the distance. The tracks continued on from there, still heading directly for the valley, where a thunderstorm was brewing.

  He started to turn Hodri left, intending to ride along the chasm’s edge until he found a safer place to cross, but a breeze blowing up from the valley brought him up short.

  His head reared back, nostrils flaring at the distinctive scent of magic on the wind. Weather magic.

  Storm magic.

  Khamsin.

  Fear struck hard. Wynter’s hands clenched around Hodri’s reins, knuckles turning white.

  She was down there, in the valley. Wyrn only knew what madness had driven his reckless, imprudent wife to ignore his warnings and ride out into the forest during a Great Hunt, but she had. He knew the taste of her magic better than he knew his own.

  Kham was down there. And the garm was heading straight for her.

  For all he knew, it might already be upon her.

  He wheeled his mount around and rode back a short distance. There wasn’t time to find a safer place to jump. The slightest delay could mean the difference between reaching Khamsin before the garm did, or finding her remains scattered across a blood-soaked field.

  The latter possibility was unthinkable.

  “Come on, boy,” he urged. “We can do this. We must. She needs us.” He touched his heels to Hodri’s side, and the stallion launched instantly into a fast gallop. Great hooves flashed, kicking up clods of packed snow as they raced towards the edge of the cliff.

  Wyn heard the approach of Valik and the others as they crested the rise behind him, but he didn’t pull up, and Hodri didn’t slow.

  The gaping chasm loomed before them.

  “That’s the way, boy,” Wynter murmured. He bent low over Hodri’s neck and gave the stallion his head.

  “Wyn!” Valik gave a shout. “Stop! It’s too far!”

  Wynter’s only response was to urge Hodri to run faster. The drop-off loomed large before them, the twenty-five-foot gap looking more like fifty, but Hodri never faltered. At the very edge of the abyss, when one more step would have sent them plunging to their deaths, the stallion planted his rear hooves, gave an explosive release of power from his massive hindquarters, and leapt off the edge of the cliff.

  “Wyn!” Valik cried.

  Wyn hardly heard him. Horse and rider soared through the air like one of the mythic Valkyr, the fierce warrior-spirits who rode the winds on ghostly steeds, gathering souls for Eiran, the goddess of death. They came back to earth with a jolt, landing hard on the far side of the crevasse, a scant six inches from the edge.

  Roars of victory erupted from the Wintermen gathered on the far side of the chasm.

  “You frost brain!” Valik shouted. “You nearly got yourself kill—”

  A loud, booming crack split the air. Valik’s scold broke off, and the Wintermen fell abruptly silent.

  “Wyn!” Valik cried. His voice had gone from angry to alarmed. “Get out of there!”

  “Hodri!” Wynter leaned hard over the saddle, digging his heels into Hodri’s side and giving the stallion plenty of rein. “Run, boy! Run!”

  The ground beneath Hodri’s hooves began to shift as the underlying shelf of ice crumbled and fell away.

  The stallion scrambled for purchase, barely managing to find solid ground before an enormous lip of ice tumbled down the mountainside.

  On the opposite side of the crevasse, Valik and the others brought their mounts up short. What had been a risky twenty-five-foot jump was now an impassable forty-foot-wide chasm.

  “We’ll have to ride ’round, Wyn. Stay there. We’ll cross at the first passable spot.”

  “I can’t. Khamsin’s in trouble. Catch up as soon as you can.”

  “Wyn! Wyn, damn you! Stop!”

  But Wyn and Hodri were already galloping away, down towards the valley, towards Khamsin, following the large, platter-sized tracks of the garm.

  Kham clung to a thin branch near the top of the spruce and screamed down at the still-climbing garm. She didn’t dare go higher. The branch she was standing on was already bowed beneath her weight—and had started to make alarming snapping sounds.

  The storm her unruly weathergift had summoned wasn’t helping any. Powerful gusts of wind sent the treetops swaying in all directions, and Khamsin, clinging to the uppermost branches of the spruce, was whipping back and forth through the sky like a ball on a spring. Branches from her own and surrounding trees slapped at
her as the spruce swayed, raising welts and scratches on her exposed skin and threatening to knock her from her perch. To make matters worse, freezing rain was rapidly coating the tree branches in layers of slippery ice.

  With each passing moment, her perch became more precarious.

  A sudden, hard gust of wind bent the top of her spruce tree sideways and smacked her into the branches of a nearby fir. The blow knocked her back. Her feet slipped out from under her, and her mittened hands lost their grip on the slippery, ice-coated spruce branch. She began to slide down the branch, which bent beneath her weight the farther down its length she slipped.

  Luckily, she managed to wedge one foot against a knot on the branch below and use that foothold to stop her slide. She clung to her new position and took several deep breaths to calm her racing heart.

  As the daze of adrenaline faded, another gust of wind sent the fir and spruce smacking against each other again, their branches tangling together for several seconds, then pulling back apart.

  The scowl faded from her face.

  An idea blossomed.

  A desperate, stupid, reckless idea, granted, but at this point, she was out of options. If she wanted to live, she was going to have to jump. As in let go of the spruce branch she was clinging to for dear life and leap through the air, eighty feet above a boulder-strewn ground, into the branches of one of the nearby trees.

  And pray to all the gods that (a) those branches would be strong and supple enough to bear her weight, and (b) that she would actually be able to grab and hold on to them instead of plunging to her death.

  Khamsin heaved out a breath. “Well, Kham, you may die either way, but as Roland always said, ‘It’s better to die swinging your sword than cowering behind it.’ ”

  She glanced down at the rapidly approaching garm, then up at the dark, roiling sky. She fed the storm a little more power, only this time she tried to use that power to direct the storm’s gusting winds. Not an easy task. Wind had a mind of its own.

  Whether because of her effort or in spite of it, the wind shifted direction again. The fir tree that had knocked her out of the spruce now smacked into her once more.

  At the same time, a loud growl sounded below her. Icy cold shivered down her back, and the spruce needles on either side of her suddenly crackled and went white with frost. The branch beneath her feet shuddered.

  Her time was up. The garm had reached her. If she didn’t jump now, she wouldn’t get a second chance.

  The trees were already springing apart, the distance between them widening rapidly. She released the spruce and pushed off with her feet, diving towards the fir.

  The garm screamed.

  Waves of paralyzing sound enveloped her. Her feet and calves lost sensation as the scream’s accompanying vapor made contact. The freezing effect crept rapidly up her body, overtaking her thighs, her waist, her chest. It took all the effort Kham could muster to fight off the brain-scrambling effects of the garm’s scream and will the fingers of one hand to close around a thin fir branch. She held on tight as the fir sprang back and yanked her beyond the reach of the garm’s freezing cloud.

  A furious howl burst from the monster’s throat.

  Khamsin clung to the fir with all her might, but as the tree straightened, her branch cracked. She fell, crashing through the nest of the thin branches near the top of the fir. Her arms flailed, and she clutched at any and every thing within her reach. A branch caught her behind the backs of her still-frozen knees and flipped her upside down. Another smacked into her shoulder and spun her right side up. Tumbling helplessly, she crashed down through the thicket of branches towards the ground.

  A last branch caught her thighs and spun her around. Then there was nothing but air and a thick, white blanket of snow rushing up to meet her. She landed hard on her back. All the air left her lungs on a painful whoosh, and she lay there, dazed and aching and gasping for breath as a hail of ice chips, bark, and fir needles showered down upon her.

  Get up, Kham. Get up! Move or you’re dead.

  Kham rolled to her knees, pushed herself to her feet, then nearly fainted when a stabbing pain radiated up her right leg. Her skirts were ripped near her thigh, the edges of the fabric dark with blood.

  She pulled the ripped edges of her skirts apart with trembling hands, afraid of what she would see. A deep, six-inch furrow scored the flesh of her thigh. Blood dripped down her leg.

  A loud rustle and the sound of snapping twigs in the trees overhead made her glance up.

  She swore again, this time choosing one of Krysti’s more colorful and inventive curses. The garm had leapt from the spruce to a nearby fir and was quickly making its descent.

  Khamsin scanned her surroundings with desperate eyes. She had no weapons. Between her sprained ankle and the wound on her leg, she couldn’t run, and standing her ground was out of the question. Even if she stoked the storm overhead, she’d lose control of it before it became powerful enough to be of any use to her. Her only chance was to reach the caves behind the frozen waterfall, scuttle deep into the narrow tunnels, and pray the garm couldn’t chew through rock the way it did tree branches.

  She took off at a fast hobble towards the frozen lake. With each ungainly step, pain shot through the entire right side of her body. Shadows and stars swirled at the edge of her vision.

  As she reached the edge of the skating pond, a heavy thud sounded behind her. She glanced over her shoulder. The garm had reached the ground and was racing after her, its enormous legs eating up the distance between them. A trail of brilliant scarlet drops stained the snow behind her.

  She gritted her teeth and hobbled faster, slipping and sliding across the ice. The frozen waterfall lay before her. Behind the glittering crystalline icicles, she could see the black stone of the cliffs and the darker shadow of the cave opening.

  The thick ice covering the lake groaned and cracked as the garm leapt onto its silvery surface and ran towards her.

  Desperate, Kham dove for the cave opening, sliding across the last few feet of frozen pond. She grabbed at chunks of ice and stone with her left hand and kicked at the pond’s frozen surface with her right foot in an effort to drag herself to safety. Rivulets of icy water dripped down on her from the waterfall, soaking her hair and the skin of her neck as she passed beneath it. She pulled and kicked, dragging and propelling her body farther back into the long cave where Wynter and his brother had played as children.

  The garm had reached the cave’s mouth. Khamsin rolled on her back, plugged her ears, and kept pushing with her good leg to shove herself deeper into the cave as the garm shrieked, spewed its freezing vapor, and ripped at ice and rock in an effort to get to her.

  Her boots went white with frost, and she lost all feeling in her toes. She screamed and kicked at the garm’s nasal slits, its eyes, its jaw, trying desperately to land as many blows as she could while avoiding the rows of deadly, gnashing teeth.

  “Get away from me, you Hel-cursed monster!” she screamed. “Get away!” She slammed the heel of her boot into the beast’s nasal slits and pushed off. Her good hand closed around a sharp edge of stone. Warm blood filled her palm as the stone sliced her skin, but she tightened her grip and yanked herself a few more inches deeper into the caves.

  Suddenly, the garm went still. The sensory hairs on the back of its head flattened, pointing in the direction of the cave opening. It tried to turn, but the cave mouth was too small for the garm to maneuver, so with one last snarl and a halfhearted attempt to bite her feet, the beast began backing out of the cave.

  Kham heard a roar—deep and furious—then the garm jerked and screamed like she’d never heard anything scream before. Its eyes rolled. Its head, chest, and forelegs shook and writhed. Then a frothy, blue liquid gushed from its mouth and nasal slits, and it collapsed, tongue lolling across rows of razor-sharp teeth.

  A moment later, the garm’s body started s
liding backward as someone or something dragged it out of the cave. Light flared briefly, then a new shadow blocked out the filtered sunlight shining through the cave’s mouth.

  “Khamsin? Are you there? Are you hurt?”

  Wynter. Khamsin collapsed, shaking, on the damp stone floor.

  “I’m h-here,” she tried to say, but to her embarrassment, her voice cracked, her throat closed up. A sob broke past her lips. Horrified, she clapped a trembling hand over her mouth to stifle the sound, only to sob again in complete mortification at the feel of warm wetness trickling from the corners of her eyes.

  She was crying. Crying! Like some weak, spineless coward.

  In front of him.

  The shame of it burned like a fiery spear to the heart.

  His cool hands ran gently up her legs, pausing briefly as they encountered the bloody wound on her thigh. “I have to get you out of here. Tell me if I hurt you.”

  He gripped her hips and pulled her towards him. Each bump and scrape across the uneven stone floor made her wounds throb with pain, but Khamsin would die before making another sound. As he pulled her towards the mouth of the cave, she hastily scrubbed away her tears and flung an arm over her face to hide her reddened eyes and blotchy skin. The thought of Wynter’s seeing her so weak and weepy was more than she could bear.

  With such gentleness he nearly made her cry anew, Wynter checked her bones for breaks and inspected the wound on her thigh. She heard rustling followed by the distinct sound of ripping. Curious, she peeked out beneath her arm and saw him using his hunting dagger to slice long strips of leather from the bottom of his vest. He braided the strips into a multistrand leather rope, then sliced a long rectangle of fabric from his linen undershirt. He folded the linen into a pad and placed it over her wound.

  “Forgive me, min ros. This may hurt, but that cut is deep. I’ve got to stop the bleeding.”

  Wynter slipped the braided leather rope under her leg and tied the makeshift bandage securely in place. The pressure on the wound sent pain spearing up Kham’s leg, and her body jerked in instinctive recoil. Then the stab of agony passed, and her multitude of wounds began throbbing again.