“Do it then. I’d rather it be quick than slowly freezing to death.”
Hunter stared at him. Like Lady Isabella, there wasn’t much of Hunter’s face to see other than a nose and two suspicious green eyes. Hunter turned abruptly and released Kelan, then pulled something from the saddlebag.
Was he getting a knife? Burn it all, Kelan! Why do you have to provoke everyone? Kelan fell backward into the deep drift on the side of the trail, and scrambled to his feet again. There was nothing he could do. He couldn’t run with his hands tied like this and he had nothing to defend himself with. Hunter did have a limp. If Kelan ran, he might make it down the side of the slope, until Hunter shot him with his deadly bow.
But Hunter returned, not with a knife, but with a thick fur blanket that he threw around Kelan’s shoulders. “I’ll never have it be known that I treated an animal poorly. Even a cursed one like you.”
Kelan yanked awkwardly on the blanket with his bound hands, pulling it tight around his shoulders. “You think I’m some sort of beast?”
Hunter pulled on the horse’s lead line, urging it along behind him through the snow. Kelan’s blanket fought back the winter and kept out the wind. Kelan wouldn’t die today, at least not from cold.
“How can you call me an animal when I look and act like a man?” Kelan asked.
Hunter didn’t answer.
Chapter 7
Sol
Sol sat heavily into a powdery bank of snow and let herself relax against the cold wetness of it. It had snowed heavily overnight, and while it was easier for the horses to travel through powder than ice, they had been climbing uphill all morning. She was as exhausted as any of them, but she still had to scout their trail for the afternoon. She closed her eyes. The cold bit into her bones and made her shiver. Her body ached all over. She was missing Solstice for this? A cut leg, a demon traveling companion, and a ridiculous noble charge? The gods were surely playing some elaborate joke on her.
She unwrapped her leg and checked the wound again. It hurt unbearably, and the stitching now oozed with puss. Sol grit her teeth as she cleaned it with more snow. Infected. That’s what she got for being a hero. She’d have to clean it properly tonight when she had more time.
“That looks bad,” Demon said.
Sol scowled at him, though half the look was lost inside her fur hood. He sat near her, wrapped in his blanket. She had given furs to the mages as well. There was no point in bringing them along if they were going to freeze to death, though Pa would’ve surely disapproved.
Sol hurriedly wrapped her leg once more and covered it with her wool legging. She stood and winced as she limped toward the other side of camp.
Lady Isabella had already settled into her furs, and one of her maids was heating a pot of food. It would be an hour before Isabella could be convinced to continue on, and at this rate, they were never going to make it out of the mountains.
The party sat on a bluff beside a cliff with Isabella in the center of everything. The wounded had been laid out in their stretchers beside the horses. The mages sat against the cliff face, and the demon stood on the edge of the slope, isolated from the rest of the camp.
Hopefully he’d try to run for it, so she’d have an excuse to put an arrow through his back.
Officer Poulsen gave her a nod as she headed off into the trees to scout. She passed between the pines, switch-backing as she limped her way down the slope.
She had made it a short way from the bluff when there was a loud thump behind her, as though a thick tree had fallen over in the snow. Sol turned and squinted at the peak above the camp. A crystalline slab of snow slid downward off the peak. The falling snowbank struck a ridge and shattered like broken glass, and ice and snow tumbled down the mountainside.
“Avalanche!” Sol screamed.
Her heart hammered in her chest and she ran, the pain in her leg forgotten. Snow roared as it raced toward their camp and over the slope behind her. She cut sideways, trying to get out of its path, but the snow picked her up and carried her with it. Sol swam frantically against the current, struggling to keep herself from getting pulled under.
The snow caught at her legs and dragged her beneath the snow, covering her face. She kicked and clawed at the relentless current, trying to find a way out, but she couldn’t be sure of up or down. The snow shoved her upward again and Sol gasped and coughed as she broke the surface. She kept above the snow, swimming upward and sideways against the flood as icy siren hands gripped her legs and tried to drag her under.
The rushing current slowed and fell still, leaving an eerie silence in its wake. Sol’s breaths came in gasps and shudders, and her heart pounded loud in the sudden stillness. She lay back against the snow, thanking all the gods she was still alive.
The avalanche had buried her to her thighs in snow, and a sharp panic overcame her when she tried to kick herself free. She couldn’t move. The snow was as thick and immobile as granite. She hurriedly dug herself out, scooping away the snow with frozen fingers. But the work was slow and tedious. Her hands shook as she worked, and it was several minutes of digging before she could crawl out of her icy prison.
Her snowshoes were gone, as well as her hat, and Sol yanked her hood over her long, frozen hair. Now that the adrenaline had worn off, her leg ached more than ever, and she was exhausted. Fighting the avalanche and digging herself free had stolen all her strength, and the cold sapped whatever life was left in her. Winter seeped into her bones, and she was past the point of shivering. The snow on her body had melted, soaking her wool leggings and tunic, and ice had formed a crust on the exterior of her fur coat. She stood in a daze, gazing at the mountain above her, her mind fogged from the bitter cold.
The others would need help. She couldn’t have been the only one half-buried by the snow.
Sol crawled up the slope with leaden limbs. The snow still shifted in places and she proceeded cautiously, wary of any movement. Each step was painful, and she was forced to use her frozen hands to drag herself up the hill. Her body resisted each effort, demanding that she stop and rest, but the only thing keeping her alive was the warmth that each movement forced through her blood.
When Sol crested the hill, all she saw was white.
The camp was gone.
Chapter 8
Kelan
Kelan opened his eyes. Cold whiteness pressed in around him. He tried to move, but it felt as though his body had been encased in stone. He could see nothing but white.
His heart raced and his breathing grew panicked and frantic. He screamed, and when he sucked in a breath, the snow pushed against his mouth, pressing in on him, drowning him with the closeness of it.
“Help!”
He wriggled his body, trying to break free, but he could move nothing but the tips of his fingers. He waited in silent panic, listening, praying.
But there was nothing. No one to hear him. No one to save him.
Only snow.
And silence.
Chapter 9
Sol
Sol clambered forward in a numb daze. The avalanche had covered the mountain and buried the bluff and the slopes all around it. The mountain had been torn and ravaged, trees ripped from its face in a long, white scar.
She sank to her knees and covered her mouth with her gloved hands. Gone. All of them.
Thirty people had been buried by the snow, and she had no way of knowing where they were. They could’ve been dragged down the slope like she was, or buried in snow where they had sat against the cliffs. Even if she had the strength to dig all night, she wouldn’t be able to reach them.
She had to find Lady Isabella. If Isabella were dead, there’d be no Cassian Army to come to Tokkedal’s aid next spring.
Without her snowshoes, Sol sank deep into the newly settled snow as she climbed the mountain. When she stopped at the top of the mound, she turned slowly, searching for signs of movement, or evidence of their camp, but there was nothing before her except snow, and more snow.
; There must be some way to find them and save them. But she could think of nothing. Her mind was as thick and frozen as the snow beneath her, and the cold muddied her thoughts.
Sol swallowed a sob. She was alone now, alone in the Ulve Mountains with nothing but her soaking clothes and the knife at her belt. How would she survive? She had no means of making a fire to warm herself, no way to melt snow so she could drink it, and nothing to eat. She didn’t even have her bow to hunt with. Sol would be as dead as the rest of them when she froze tonight.
Something caught her eye, a slight movement in the snow. Pale fingertips wriggled in the ice, grasping for freedom.
Sol stumbled toward the hands, her heart catching in her throat. A survivor. Thank the gods.
She dropped to her knees and gave the fingers a squeeze. “I’ve got you,” she whispered. “I’ll get you out.”
They were men’s hands. Officer Poulsen?
Sol dug where she imagined his face would be. He needed air, and quickly. His fingers wriggled frantically in the snow, begging her to work faster.
He was buried deep, and the snow was thick and dense where it had settled around him. Her aching body resisted the effort she expended to dig him out, but she persisted. She couldn’t give up. She wouldn’t.
As soon as she scooped the snow free of his face he gasped and coughed. “Air,” he croaked. “More air.”
Sol scraped his face clean, then gasped and scrambled away.
The demon.
She shivered violently, both from the cold and from the horror of touching him.
“Hunter?” he asked blearily.
Sol stood and stepped away from him.
He twisted his head beneath the snow. “Hunter, please. You can’t leave me here. I can’t move!”
She ran from him. If the demon had survived under the snow, surely someone else had as well. He couldn’t be the only one.
“Hunter!” Demon screamed. “Hunter come back!”
Sol cringed and scrunched her shoulders against her ears. She didn’t have time to waste digging him out if she was going to help the others.
She walked around the base of the avalanche, looking for any signs of movement. A hand. A foot. Anything.
Demon continued to call her name as she traced the edge of the slope. He screamed it and whimpered it, and she ignored his pleas.
She spotted a splotch of dark amid the white snow. She limped toward it and dug at it to discover a horse’s flank, but its body had grown cold already. Dead.
Had someone been holding its lead line? She dug with her frozen hands, two icicles attached to her body. Her teeth chattered as she worked, but she couldn’t stop, not now. She was running out of time to find people.
Most had probably suffocated by now.
She dug out most of the horse. There was no sign of anyone else near it, and the avalanche had carried the horse far down the slope before dumping it at the base. The horse had broken its neck in the fall.
Sol sat back and stared at the dead horse. She wasn’t going to find any others. Officer Poulsen was dead. Lady Isabella was dead. The wounded soldiers, the mage prisoners, Isabella’s maids, the Tokken soldiers she had been joking with this morning.
One minute here, the next gone, buried under the snow.
“Please,” Demon shouted, “I can help you. Hunter!”
Sol paused. With his manacle on, the demon couldn’t use his pyra, but he wasn’t helpless. Demon was considerably taller than she was, and broader and stronger. If he took her unaware, he could overpower her.
She turned back to the horse and its saddlebags. Hopefully those packs carried food, and flint and steel. Or a bow. Then there’d be a chance for her to survive. She would mourn the others later, but if she didn’t get warm soon, she’d be too dead to care.
She yanked the packs off the back of the horse, though one was still trapped underneath the horse’s body. She was too cold to dig it out.
Five of Isabella’s ridiculous, flimsy dresses were in one of the bags. Useless. They weren’t even good for warmth.
Sol squeezed her eyes shut. Lady Isabella was dead. There was no reason to insult her memory.
Another smaller pack held a bit of jerky. Enough for four days, if she was careful with it. There was a single bedroll of animal skins and furs, and a hat, which she immediately stuffed on her head. There was a bow, but it had been snapped clean in half and the bowstring and arrows were nowhere to be found. The water skin the horse had carried would be useful, if she could find a way to melt snow to fill it. But there was nothing to start a fire with. Any materials the mountains could give her to make a fire were buried in snow.
She fished inside the pocket of the saddlebag and brought out a key. She held it in her hand and stared at it. The key to the demon’s shackle, the one with the emberstone embedded in it.
She could take the demon’s emberstone. Her pa’s emberstone was small and weak, but the emberstone the demon had was large, large enough to be used in battle. If she used the emberstone she would survive; it would heat her blood and warm her numb hands and feet. She closed her hand around the key, her body yearning for warmth.
Death surely was preferable to corrupting herself with its evil magic, wasn’t it? But her mind was clouded by the cold, and though she clung to this thought, her determination was slipping.
Sol hauled all of the useful items toward a rocky outcropping where she planned to make camp.
“Hunter,” Demon whimpered, his voice weak. “Please. If you’re going to leave me here at least kill me quickly. I can’t die like this.”
Sol approached and drew her knife, the one etched with oak leaves. He was right. She couldn’t leave him like that.
Demon’s hands were clasped in front of him, his fingers sticking out of the snow. She had excavated his face and neck, but nothing else, and he had been able to do nothing but shake his head and knock more snow into his face.
She stared at his hands, at where his emberstone was buried beneath the snow. Her heart hitched. Survive and curse herself? Or freeze and die?
Pa had been brave, but she could never be like him. She’d take Demon’s emberstone and survive. Somehow, she had always known it would come to that, which was why she had taken the emberstone with her when she had left Hillerod. Pa would’ve been so disappointed.
She’d kill the demon first, then take his emberstone. Sol knelt over him and he stared at the knife in her hand.
“You’ll make it quick?” he asked quietly.
A few of his black curls clung to his wet face. He was Tokken, like she was, but his eyes were turquoise, the color of Bruun royalty. His lips were blue, and his teeth chattered.
Sol gripped her knife tightly. He wasn’t human. He was a rabid dog, and the only thing that could be done to help a rabid dog was to kill it.
“You won’t suffer,” she said.
His eyes widened. “You have the key to my cuff?”
Sol closed her fist around the key, hiding it from view.
“Please. I can help you. You’re freezing. I can build you a fire.”
Sol hesitated. If he built the fire, she wouldn’t have to use the emberstone herself.
“If you save my life, I’ll owe you a blood debt.”
“I don’t trust a demon,” she growled.
“I swear in Maja’s name I won’t hurt you.”
Sol sat back. She could take the manacle off him for a little bit, just long enough for him to make a fire to warm her with. She’d keep him tied up and he’d be her prisoner.
The Tokken Army would reward her for bringing in a Flameskin lieutenant. This trip wouldn’t have been for nothing.
“You swear it?” Sol asked.
“I swear it.”
Chapter 10
Kelan
The cold pressed in around Kelan, constricting his chest and his movement, and turning his body to ice. It took every bit of will power not to scream.
“If you kill me, you’ll be lost,” Hunter s
aid. “I’m your only way off this mountain.” Hunter’s voice was slurred and labored.
“I won’t hurt you,” Kelan said.
He’d never forget what it was like to be buried in the snow, to have it press into his face, his mouth, his nose. To know that there was no one to hear him scream. He would do anything to get out. He’d sell his soul to his pyra to be freed.
Hunter glared at him, then slowly dug at Kelan’s hands. Kelan let out a ragged breath. Free. Free to move. Free to breath. He resisted the urge to cry.
“If you take off the manacle, I can melt the snow.”
Hunter hesitated. Hunter’s lips were blue, and his clothes were covered in ice. Every movement Hunter made was jerky and uncoordinated, and it took several tries for Hunter to insert the key and unlock the shackle around Kelan’s wrist. Kelan took a ragged, grateful breath as the emberstone fell free. Hunter pocketed the manacle and sat back with knife in hand.
“Well?” he demanded in his gravelly voice, frowning at Kelan in the snow.
Kelan groped mentally for his pyra. There it was, a tiny spark of flame. He had never felt it so small or so weak.
“Come on,” Kelan urged, prodding at it. He needed warmth. He needed fire.
Hunter stared at him expectantly.
“It needs time to refuel.”
Hunter sighed and started his jerky digging again. “Some demon you are.”
Kelan scowled at Hunter, and his pyra swelled, feeding on Kelan’s anger.
“Yes!” Kelan said, his anger turning to joy. “Make me angry. Insult me.”
“What?”
“My pyra feeds on emotions. Make me angry and it will grow faster.”
“They say never to make a demon angry,” he said in a slurred drawl. “But you aren’t a threat to me. No wonder they stuck you out here in the middle of the woods. Is that where they send their most useless soldiers?”
Firefrost: A Flameskin Chronicles Novel Page 3
