Chronicles of Ancient Darkness
Chapter 142 : A flash of lightning showed him the wattle door weighted shut with a stone. Thrusting

A flash of lightning showed him the wattle door weighted shut with a stone. Thrusting it open, he threw Rip inside and crawled after him.

With the door closed behind them, the wind's screams lessened a little, but the ice hammering the walls was deafening. The shelter was empty, but by the look of the fire, whoever had built it hadn't gone far.

And they had known what they were about. As Torak brushed the ice from his clothes, he saw that the fire had been set on a platform of sticks to keep it off the cold earth, and ringed with stones to stop it escaping. Wood was stacked on one side, while a quiver and bow hung to dry but not too close to the flames and a bag of snow, improvised from a jerkin, dripped water into a half-full pail.

Rip was pecking eagerly at the sleeping-sack. It moved. Rek peered out. The ravens greeted each other with much gurgling and holding of beaks. Torak's belly turned over. Why was Rek in here?

That bow. That jerkin.

Renn.

This was her shelter. Her quiver, her arrows. Over there were the crumbs of the salmon cake she'd left for Rek. And being Renn, she'd raven-proofed the rest of her food by weighting her pouch with her axe.

She'd left her weapons, which meant she couldn't have gone far.

Fear trickled down Torak's spine. In winter, you don't need to go far to die in a storm. Every clan has its stories of people lost in a blizzard, whose frozen corpses are later found just a few paces from camp.

Beside the wood-pile, Renn had stacked some stubs for use as torches. Torak jammed one in the embers to wake it. Then, leaving his gear and the ravens inside, he seized his axe and threw himself out into the storm.

'Renn!' he yelled.

She could have been right beside him and he wouldn't have heard her.

Branches flew at him as he began to search. Doubled up against the onslaught, he circled the shelter. His torch died. He could hardly see a pace ahead.

He made another round, widening the search. Still nothing.

On his third pa.s.s, lightning flickered in the fallen holly, and through the branches he glimpsed a flash of red.

Dropping to his knees, he tore at the branches. 'Renn!'

TEN.

Renn didn't seem to be breathing. Her eyes were shut, her lips tinged blue. It was only when Torak got her into the shelter and felt her throat that he detected a tremor of life.

He shouted her name. She didn't respond. The cold had sent her deep inside herself. It would kill her if he couldn't get her warm.

Her clothes were stiff with ice. Torak pulled her parka over her head, then yanked off his own parka and jerkin. The birdskin was warm from his body, he got her into it fast. Drawing off her outer leggings, he bundled her into her sleeping-sack, checking her face, hands and feet for the waxy flesh of frostbite, but finding none.

With a stick, he rolled a hot stone from the edge of the fire and wrapped it in his empty waterskin. Then he reached inside her sleeping-sack and placed it on her belly. After that, he unrolled his own sleeping-sack and put it round her shoulders, rubbing her back, willing her to wake up.

Her eyelids flickered. She looked at him without recognition.

He dropped another hot stone in the water pail, raising a hiss of steam. Then he emptied his medicine pouch, scooped up some dried meadowsweet, and tossed it in. Tipping some of the steaming brew into his drinking cup, he held Renn's head and trickled a few drops between her lips. She spluttered. He made her drink more. She started to s.h.i.+ver. His dread lifted a little. s.h.i.+vering was good.

The shelter was low and cramped, so he had to sit hunched, with one arm around her. As he made her drink, faint colour stole into her cheeks, and her mouth lost that terrifying blue tinge. Now when she looked at him, she knew who he was.

'You're going to be all right,' he told her. He needed to say it out loud. To make it true.

Her gaze took in his bandaged head. 'You found me,' she mumbled.

'And you built the shelter. Rip led me to it.'

Hearing his name, the raven stretched his neck and fluffed his chin-feathers.

Torak did his best to sc.r.a.pe the ice off their parkas, laying Renn's on the other side of the fire to dry, and pulling on his own, chill and unpleasant against his bare skin. Then he shared out some salmon cakes.

Renn gave a corner to the ravens and solemnly thanked Rip for guiding Torak to her. Then she began to eat, holding her cake in both hands, like a squirrel. She was sitting up now, with the sleeves of Torak's jerkin flopping over her hands. Her face was flushed, her hair a ma.s.s of fiery tendrils. Torak felt that he could warm himself simply by her nearness.

The fire had burned low. He fed it more wood. Outside, the ice storm battered the Forest. He began to shake. The storm had nearly killed Renn. It had nearly killed Renn.

He told her he was sorry for leaving her, and she gave him an unreadable look. Then she told him how things had been after he left: about the shadow sickness, and Fin-Kedinn going off on a secret journey of his own. When Torak couldn't delay it any longer, he told her about the eagle owl attack, and the deaths of Darkfur, Shadow and Pebble.

Renn took that in appalled silence. 'All three?' she said at last.

He nodded. 'I don't know how Wolf will bear it.'

'All three,' repeated Renn.

But she was not Fin-Kedinn's kin for nothing, and Torak could see that already she was pondering what this meant. 'The owl,' she said. 'There must be something wrong with it.'

'I saw its eyes. They were empty.'

'Ah. So not a demon.'

'I don't think so.'

'I wonder what Eostra did to it.' Her tone was that of one Mage a.s.sessing the craft of another, and Torak admired the speed with which she'd recovered. 'You say it flew south?' she said.

'Yes. It took Pebble, I think to decoy Wolf away. He's out in the storm. If he's still alive.'

Renn met his eyes, and now she was more girl than Mage. 'He's alive,' she said. 'Wolf knows how to look after himself.'

Torak did not reply. In his mind, he heard his pack-brother's howls. Wolf hadn't sounded as if he cared whether he lived or died.

As Torak crouched in the flickering gloom, he fancied that amid the roaring of wind and weather, he heard wild laughter. 'This storm,' he said. 'Eostra sent it. Didn't she?'

Renn's raven eyes gleamed. 'She holds the Forest in a grip of ice.'

Together they listened to the trees fall.

'After you left,' said Renn, 'she sent signs.'

'I think I saw one. Like a spiky bird, gouged in a yew.'

Renn hesitated, and he sensed her deciding what to tell him and what to keep back. She said, 'The sign means that Eostra has made her lair in the Mountain of Ghosts.'

The Mountain of Ghosts. Torak had never heard of it, but the name made him feel cold inside.

'Fin-Kedinn told me it's sacred to the Mountain clans,' Renn went on. 'He says if we can find them, they might help us find the Mountain.'

With part of his mind, Torak heard her voice; but another part was thinking, there will be caves. The knowledge dropped into his heart like a stone. Twice in his life he'd ventured into caves: once in the time of the bear, to find the stone tooth, and once in the Far North, to rescue Wolf. Both times, the Walker had warned him. 'Once you've gone in,' the old man had said, 'you'll never be whole.' The Walker was mad, but now and then, he showed flashes of sanity. His warnings had force. Torak had a sudden presentiment that if he ignored them if he ventured again into a cave the jaws of the earth would snap shut on him for ever.

Renn spoke his name, and he was back in the shelter.

'Are you all right?' she said.

'Yes,' he lied.

She took his hand. Her fingers were thin and warm. He drew strength from them.

'Torak,' she said. 'I don't know what Eostra means to do in the Mountain. But I know this. She wants to keep you apart from me and Wolf. She wants you alone. She won't succeed.'

They sat side by side while the ice storm fought the Forest with unabated fury. Presently, Renn slept, but Torak remained awake. For now, he and Renn were safe. Wolf was not. It seemed to Torak that the bond between them was a fragile thread stretching through the night and that Eostra's icy hand was reaching out to sever it.

ELEVEN.

The Bright Hard Cold was savaging the Forest. It was crus.h.i.+ng trees and hurling birds from the Up. It was attacking Wolf with freezing claws.

Let it. He didn't care what happened to him.

He'd been running for ever, casting for the scent of the eagle owl, trying to catch the least whimper from his cub. Nothing. The Bright Hard Cold had eaten hope.

He came to a hill of roaring pines where a boulder hid a small Den. Without pausing to sniff for bears, he ran in and slumped onto broken bones and ancient scat.

He knew that Tall Tailless was seeking him, but not even the thought of his pack-brother could rouse him. Darkfur and the cubs were gone. Wolf longed to be with them but they were Not-Breath. He didn't understand how this could be. Darkfur and the cubs were . . . not.

Wolf shut his eyes. He wanted to be not too.

Torak was woken by silence.

He was cold the fire was half-asleep and the shelter had sagged till it was only just above him. His breath was loud in the stillness, frosty on his face.

The door had frozen shut. He hacked it open, waking Renn, who sat up before he could warn her, and banged her head.

Bracing himself against the cold, Torak crawled out into a piercing glare and a Forest turned to ice.

The storm had beheaded trees and transformed what remained to glittering spikes. It had flattened entire groves to mounds of twisted crystal. Tree, branch, leaf: all were caught fast in Eostra's prison of ice.

Slowly, Torak got to his feet. He took a few steps. The ice beneath his boots was hard as stone. The cold seared his lungs and crackled in his nose. The glare was a knife in his brain. Everywhere he turned, ruined trees flashed and glinted. The shattered Forest possessed a terrible beauty.

'Can you feel their souls?' Renn said behind him.

He nodded. The air s.h.i.+vered with the spirits of dead trees seeking new homes.

'They can't get into the saplings,' said Renn. 'The ice is keeping them out.'

'What will they do?'

'I don't know. Let's hope the thaw comes soon.'

Torak didn't think it would. A dead, windless cold lay upon the land. The hand of Eostra.

Shading his eyes with his palm, he saw a reindeer calf on the slope below. It wobbled on spindly legs, frightened by this treacherous new world, while its mother, hungry for lichen, chopped at the ground with her sharp front hooves. She couldn't break through.

Torak thought of lemmings trapped in frozen burrows; of beavers sealed inside their lodges.

He thought of Wolf.

Rip and Rek flew out of the shelter and perched on a bough, loosing a clinking cascade of shards. The echoes took a long time to die.

Renn called Torak's name, her voice shrill with alarm.

She was crouching ten paces away in the lee of a boulder, peering through the tangle of a spruce that had fallen against it. As Torak approached, she warned him back. 'Wait. Don't look-'

He shouldered her aside. Between the branches, he glimpsed a patch of grey fur tipped with black. Wolf fur.

Renn was pulling his arm. He shook her off. He tore at the branches, desperate to reach to reach what lay entombed beneath the ice.

Renn wriggled past him and got there first.

Torak's world shrank to that grey fur under the rock.

Renn's voice came to him from far away. 'It isn't Wolf.'

She crawled backwards, clutching a band of wolf hide in her mitten.

It was about the width of a hand: rolled up, frozen stiff. 'It was staked in place,' she said. 'We were meant to find it. It's been tanned, the edges pierced for sewing. Looks like what's left of someone's clan-creature fur.'

'It is.' Torak took it from her, and tried to unwind it. The frozen fur cracked, and something fell out. The world tilted as Torak picked up the little seal amulet. He knew the turn of its sleek head. He'd often counted the tiny claws on its flippers. He said, 'It belonged to my father.'

Renn stared at him.