by Moore, Gabi
The lazy tracks of something crossing the mountain’s rocky slopes scored the snow ahead, and Laova pretended to examine them. The seven of them were scattered across perhaps a quarter-league, within shouting distance. The closest was Taren, and he seemed to be quite remote in the dusky winter night.
Her night sight was good, better than many of her clan. The legends said the Elder Men could turn night into day; Laova wondered if that meant they could not see in the dark, as her people could. Even at such a distance, she knew the others could see her movements.
Worry poured in at that thought, and the chill breath of the mountain seemed to caress her face in affirmation of her doubts. They’d sent Nemlach to confront her, which meant they were growing desperate indeed. It was completely irregular to interrogate an initiate outside the ritual. She’d been depending on their acceptance of her lead, assuming that she’d be able to just swindle them right up the side of Star-Reach.
That was not possible, and Laova was trying hard to deny that fact. The thought of continuing alone was out of the question. How could she survive alone, up on that bare, white slope? Without firewood, without anyone to keep her sane and share the burden of warmth?
But she was always alone in the dreams.
A fear so clawing, so bone-snapping and resolute that it felt to be a living thing, bared its teeth and roared within her as she was forced to remember this fact. Laova padded onward through the long night, following meaningless tracks and digging herself deeper and deeper into troubling thoughts. For the first time, she worried about the time when she would lay down to sleep, tucked away in her shelter. She was afraid of drifting into the dream world, into the world where the mountain swelled beneath her feet as she climbed, and the trees passed thinner and thinner with her ascent, and the spirit lights bannered and watched overhead.
A stand of brush stood in the path of the trail, and Laova busied herself, looking over the branches mechanically, finding broken edges here and there and flattened boughs that told the passing of something big.
But before the dream, Laova recalled again with a shiver that had turned sweet and feverish, she would have Nemlach. After all her dreaming and wishing, it had been a moment of blind foolishness that had pulled him to her. Laova stilled, hardly seeing the darkness around her. She was lost in memory, reliving with acid clarity every touch, every look, every sound he’d made…
“Laova?”
She jumped and spun about guiltily. Taren was approaching, bow held loosely at his side; his face asked a clear question, and Laova nodded.
“Something… something’s passed here. I—”
“I see.” Taren nodded. Laova nodded. That wasn’t what he wanted to talk about, then, and Laova would have been swamped with relief, if she weren’t too busy dreading his true purpose. She almost wished he did want to talk about the hunt; after all, she and Taren knew each other too well.
“Laova, what were you doing with Nemlach today?” he asked, propping the point of his bow near his feet.
Annoyed, Laova scoffed. “You should know. You and Rell and the others put him up to it.”
Taren frowned. “I didn’t. They did.”
“The result is the same.”
“I meant, what did you do over there, out of sight?”
Yes, they were too perceptive, one to the other. Laova knew he’d seen, and Taren knew what had happened, but both of them knew the other would not breach the topic willingly. So Taren was taking an offensive.
“We talked. And then we kissed, some.”
Taren’s look thundered into something stony, something masklike. “Why?”
Why?
Laova just stood there, perhaps shocked or perhaps simply speechless. What a strange thing for Taren to ask. Her hair itched down her neck, but she’d have a hard time reaching it with her thick gloves and coat; it prickled in unwelcome imitation of their awkward little talk.
It occurred to Laova that for Taren to ask why, he must really not understand.
It was a thought that was so jarring as to be bizarre. Laova had lived with her desire for Nemlach for years. It was impossible to imagine the Taren had missed it all this time, when he knew everything about her, when he knew her favorite day and the birthmark on her inner arm and when she’d had a nightmare or when she started her woman’s shed or when… when anything. Laova realized that although she hadn’t told Taren in words what she wanted from Nemlach, she’d thoughtlessly assumed he would intuit it, as he did everything.
A sickening thought occurred. The only way, in fact, that Taren could have so completely mistaken her lust for Nemlach would be for him to have done so intentionally. The only reason he would have purposefully ignored or avoided the fact would have been because to do any differently would have been unthinkable; like a bird that does not move an injured wing, one must not touch a thing that hurts.
A little horrified, Laova tried to lose the feeling that she was responsible for hurting someone she cared for very much. Not as a husband, perhaps, but at the least as her brother.
“Taren…”
How could she speak to him, now? They had always spoken candidly. And now, Laova had her finest friend’s pain to bear on her shoulders as well, as if this situation was not difficult enough.
Dumbly, Laova found herself retracing a day in their youth when they’d run alone through the forest around the village in the summer, careening through the extra hours of the fading sunlight and daring to caper out further and further from the safe wreath of their settlement. Purple twilight had descended as they played, children barely ten winters old, and they’d forgotten, in their giggling bravery and exploration, to pay attention to where they were going.
Dark began to settle, as did the fear. Nothing had ever frightened Laova so much as the darkness drawing close to her side as a child back then. Like a terrified animal, she’d lost caution and the ultimate result was a badly turned ankle.
“Go on without me,” she’d wept at Taren, cursing as fiercely as her child’s words could form. “Go! You have to make it home.”
In the whispering of the forest, Taren’s reply had been so low Laova hadn’t heard, and had to ask him, shaking and stammering, to repeat it.
His face was red as a sunrise as he replied in a mutter. “The clan is our home. If one of us is lost, we are all lost. We’ll both get home; the clan’s life, our life. Together.”
Relief and immaturity had made it impossible for the full impact of his words to sink upon her, but as she stood here now, in her twentieth year in the dark shadow of Star-Reach, Laova heard them again and again and again.
The clan’s life. Our life. Together.
Similar words were spoken at every major ritual, every life event. The welcoming of a new child. Coming of age. Even in death, the deceased held the hands of their family, their community, as they moved on to meet the Waiting God. But these words in particular Laova would not hear for another several years, long after that shivering night in the open that she and Taren had waited. Eventually hunters had ranged out and found them safely, and Laova forgot to remember when marriage season arrived in the turn of another moon, Taren had already spoken a portion of the words to her.
Even then? Laova stared at him in the here and now, aghast. She had known he felt this way, but even as children? How could he have possibly known back then—how could he have an inkling—of how their lives would unfold? How could he have decided for them both back then what should await?
“Laova… I don’t want you and Nemlach…” Taren sighed and cursed quietly. “I mean, I want for you, and I…”
“I know what you want, Taren,” Laova answered for him.
“Then don’t take him.”
“That isn’t fair,” Laova hissed. In another moment, she would have unleashed a torrent of the situation’s injustice at him. How could you put this on me? How could you force me to bear responsibility for plans you laid all on your own? How can you gaze at me so sadly, as if you have any right
to hold me accountable to your wishes?
In another moment, all this and more would have come rolling off her tongue, and Laova would have likely regretted it. But neither of them were offered that next moment, because in the brush at her back, Laova heard movement. Not the rustle of the wind, this time.
This time, it was something solid. Something big.
“Laova…” Taren whispered. She didn’t need his warning; the size of his dark eyes, the slight crouch he dipped into, and the slow, the ever-so-slow rise of his bow spoke everything Laova needed to know.
What were the tracks she’d been pretending to follow? Laova closed her eyes as the brush of warm breath oozed over her back. A low grumble knackered out into the night, rattling off the inside of her skull. Laova gripped her own bow tight, but she’d never have time to lift it. She’d been following a solitary set of paws, big ones, with claws and the purposeful lope of a predator’s stride. Laova hadn’t expected to find their owner.
A lone set of wolf tracks rarely led to something living, breathing. But over her shoulder, the hot exhale of something very alive and very close told Laova that she’d been quite mistaken.
Laova’s eyes locked on Taren’s, all thoughts of Nemlach long fled. In silent agreement, they made a plan together across the air between them. If it had been anyone else, Laova may have felt lost. But Taren knew what she wanted done, and she understood what she had to do. If it had been anyone else, she’d be afraid of a misunderstanding. But Taren always knew…
Seconds only had passed, and the grumble was escalating into an undulating growl.
Desperately, Laova whirled and brought up her bow across her chest. In a simultaneous blur, the great gray body of a mountain wolf lunged out of the scrub. With all her strength, Laova thrust the sturdy wood of the bow into the wolf’s jaws, past the gnashing teeth, as far back as she could get it, over the flatter back molars and gums.
The world disappeared as her back and head were ground into the thick snow; Laova blinked back into consciousness, fighting to hold the bow and to hold herself out of the limp blackness of a hard sleep.
The wolves of the mountains were not like their smaller cousins in the valleys, near Laova’s home. Wolves were grudging neighbors, and pests when they raided food stores or chased away game. Sometimes they killed children who wandered away. For the most part, they were a part of life, a dangerous part, but manageable.
The mountain wolves were different; they stood bigger than an elk, their hulking shoulders as tall as a man. Their jaws were easily wide enough to swallow a human skull, and strong enough to crush one in a few grunting bites. Thankfully they lived in the high places, and were few. But even a pack of four or five mountain wolves were death to any hunter caught alone.
Laova thanked the gods she was not alone. Several thick-throated whistles shook the stillness and the writhing monster, whose teeth were inches from her nose, shuddered and roared from deep in its belly. Laova clung to the bow, bracing her shoulders against the ground; her arms felt like they were about to break, and the ravaging claws of the wolf kept raking closer and closer to her sides as it scrabbled the snowy ground for purchase.
Taren had fired four arrows, one after the other. Drawing a fifth, he seemed to hesitate—in the back of her mind, Laova was well aware why. Taren had set out on the hunt with twelve arrows; he’d lost one in a bad shot for an elk that bounded away to live another day. He’d used a few since, bringing down rabbits and foxes for their meals, but he’d been able to recover and reuse them.
Now, this beast held four arrows sticking like crests out of its coarse gray fur, and if it bled at all, even Laova, struggling beneath it, couldn’t see. If Taren wasted any more arrows, they were both dead.
Shouts could be heard, now. The others were coming. The frozen mountain night seemed hot and sluggish as Laova’s heart stuttered overtime, crowing blood into her head and hands and eyes. She looked over at Taren; he asked a silent question.
It seemed outside her reach, but Laova tried anyway. Her bow was creaking in protest; it might already be damaged beyond use, but soon it would snap under the pressure. One last task for you, friend, Laova thought grimly.
She let her left arm crumple to brace an elbow against the ground. The wolf’s head tilted with it, still trying to dislodge the bow and get to Laova. Her other arm shot upward, and with the jaw of the beast now brushing her own cheek, spit flying, its rotten breath choking her, Laova nodded to Taren.
Now, the wolf’s head was squarely turned for an easy target.
Taren whipped up his bow and drew an arrow back to his ear.
Laova held her breath, knowing that if the shot was bad, she’d die in seconds, and even if it was good, she might still die soon after.
In the breath that Taren spent aiming, the wolf let out a growl and turned its eyes to Laova’s.
She gasped. They were gold, shimmering, shining gold. They glowed and rippled and… waved… just as the spirit lights.
Confusion and terror erased Laova’s sense, but at that moment, the shrieking war screams of her fellow hunters filled the night.
Suddenly, the wolf was gone, away from her, and Laova lay there breathing the clean ice of the forest night air. Was she alive? Was she unhurt?
In another heartbeat, none other but Nemlach himself was over her, asking exactly those questions. She’d never seen him so afraid, and it took a moment to connect that his fear was for her. His blue eyes searched her face, then her clothes for signs of blood, her body for signs of injury. It took seconds, and there were only seconds to spare, because the fight was not through.
“I’m fine,” Laova heard her voice claim. It sounded a little like a question, to her own ears.
Nemlach offered a hand; she gripped it like a lifeline and was dragged out of the snow.
Life roared back through her. She was back on her feet, all seemed right. Nemlach thumped her shoulder, shaking loose a fall of clumped snow from her coat and hood. He gave her a smile, raised his spear, and leapt into the fray with their fellows.
Before she joined, Laova gauged the situation.
Over the nearest rise, a figure was sprinting closer; Bamet, the last to arrive, had probably been ranging further away than the others. Around the wolf, five small human shapes darted and danced the dance of survival, of something very like savage determination to endure.
This was why she was a hunter, Laova knew in her soul as she surged forward across the sloping forest floor. She was made for this. She lived for this.
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.
