As sleep overcame him, the snow fell thicker and heavier. When he awoke, he would set his face to the east and not look back.
Chapter 20
A Lakhoni Statue
Stars glistened like countless jewels on a blanket of midnight black. If he stopped for long enough, he could count each and every one of them in the night sky.
And then I would freeze. Somebody would find a Lakhoni statue.
The ridiculous thought fluttered away, stolen by the full-body shudders that slammed through Lakhoni’s body with terrifying regularity. He had been walking for so long that he no longer had to force his legs to move, carrying him forward through the pine trees that made up this new forest.
His tenth night in the frigid winter.
And I still have no idea if I am getting anywhere near Zyronilxa.
He wondered if he would ever be able to smell anything, or for that matter taste anything, again. His face felt carved from ice, despite the deer skin that covered everything but his eyes.
Lakhoni resisted the impulse to glance over his shoulder. Just keep going. Nobody’s there. Three days of raging snow had obscured any sign he’d left. Shivers took control of his body; numbness traveled down his fingertips. Hunger flared, fighting with his shivers. His meat had run out the previous day, despite all of his rationing. He had finished the last half of an apple this morning.
He had escaped the Separated, but he was beginning to wonder if he would simply die out here in the raw winter. As he walked, he watched for any sign of wildlife he might be able to trap or shoot with his bow. He had seen nothing for days, only sentinel-like pine trees, snow that rippled like a shaken blanket, and the vast sky. No paths. No animals. No sign of a village or any other human. He had to be the only creature that moved on the earth.
He would spend tomorrow looking for food. Tonight he had to find a place to rest: a large pine with wide, low-hanging branches like the first night. He found a tree that stood tall, as if it were the captain of the army of trees surrounding it. It would shelter him from much of the frigid wind and there was a thick bed of old, dried pine needles on the ground under such trees. Good fuel for a small fire.
He ducked low, trying to keep from knocking snow off the branches above down upon him. He lowered himself to the ground, putting his back against the rough tree trunk. Setting his bag on the ground, Lakhoni retrieved the spark rocks. He gathered dry pine needles and sticks, blowing carefully to coax the fire to life. He soon had a small fire crackling.
He leaned in close to thaw his face. After long minutes, he could finally smell the aroma of burning pine.
He built the fire higher, adding small, dry branches that were scattered among the dead needles under the tree. The heat hurt his frozen fingertips, the pain lingering for a long time. He didn’t dare remove his boots to check his feet, but instead moved them closer to the fire, hoping the heat would penetrate the frozen leather.
Opening the blanket and cloak he had wrapped around his body, he willed the heat of the small fire into his flesh.
His stomach rumbled, jealous of the slight comfort the rest of his body was enjoying.
Hunting tomorrow.
* * *
He lay curled in a ball, pine needles pricking his cheek. Black and gray ash, all that remained of his miniscule fire, scattered as he scrabbled into a seated position. The ache in his stomach felt like a spear digging and twisting, seeking his spine.
He gathered his bag, grateful to the canopy of pine branches that had kept the frost from covering it. And him. Two, maybe three mornings previous, he had woken and found himself covered in a fair dusting of snow.
Dangerous. Have to move.
On hands and knees, pointy needles under his palms, he crawled out from under the canopy, lurching to his feet in the soft snow that came up past his ankles.
Surely he wasn’t the only thing moving in the woods. He would find a deer, or a rabbit. Even a predator of some kind. Or maybe a frozen stream that would have sleepy fish wandering under a layer of ice.
He began to walk, coughing to clear his chest. This did not feel like a spear; it was more like a small animal chewing its way out through his ribs. His throat burned as well. He knew these were signs of winter illness. But there was nothing he could do about it. Mouthfuls of melted snow kept the worst of his thirst away. How long can a man survive like this?
He scoured the ground and trees for signs of life. Scattered snow at the base of a tree. Torn bark exposing a tree’s tender trunk.
There would be something. There had to be.
Hours passed. His legs moved of their own accord. Eventually he would get there. Somewhere. Zyronilxa was a large city. Would he pass it by?
Cold had seeped so deeply into his body that he felt he might crack apart if he bent his legs or arms too far.
Branches clothed with deep green winter gowns filled his vision. Trunks, dark and rough, wandered through his sight as he walked. Yellow bumps of frozen sap dotted the bark and whorls showed where old branches had fallen off. Other splotches of lighter brown were interspersed with the sap and whorls.
Lakhoni slowed to a stop.
Lighter brown splotches. A tingle shot from neck to feet. Swallowing the newly melted water, he pushed through the snow to the tree trunk. He bent close, examining the uneven scarring on the trunk’s bark. Not sap. Not empty spaces where branches had been.
This had been an animal eating tender bark. Hours old at the most. Questing out farther from the tree, he found deer droppings. He crouched near the pile of round pellets. Wrapping part of his cloak around a hand, he brushed a small layer of snow away from the area surrounding the droppings, seeking hoof prints in the snow.
Nothing.
Lakhoni began walking in ever-widening circles around the tree trunk and deer scat. Twenty paces from the original tree, he found signs of another patch of foraged winter moss. Tiny, light green flecks colored the dark earth.
Shivering violently, bent close to the ground, he followed the faint signs of deer southward. With a brief, regretful glance to the east, Lakhoni focused on his hunt.
Afternoon light was dimming toward evening when Lakhoni realized that the light brown shape he had been looking at was not a tree. He immediately crouched, estimating the distance. Nearly a hundred paces. Standing behind a tree, he slid his bow off his shoulder, quickly stringing it. He tested the stinging wind, then moved carefully to the right, downwind of the buck.
With its antlers, it stood taller than his father, taller than even Gimno.
Giddy eagerness filled Lakhoni. Food. He tried to tell his stomach to stop complaining so loudly as he quietly stalked nearer the deer.
He pulled an arrow out of his quiver. Now he was grateful for the feather-light snow. It muffled sound perfectly.
Sixty paces now.
He ghosted forward, staying low and doing all he could to blend in with the trees.
As he approached within thirty paces, Lakhoni chose the spot he would shoot from. A thick pine tree, its lowest branches forming a widely spreading tent over the ground, stood less than twenty paces from the deer. He angled himself so that the tree was directly between him and the buck. Reaching the tree, he contorted himself between branches, careful to not disturb snow or make any kind of noise. Any sound would carry a long distance in this frozen landscape.
Thanking the First Fathers, Lakhoni set his arrow to the bowstring. This would be a direct shot, but the distance was greater than he preferred. The arrow would have to fly perfectly. He caressed the fletching on the arrow, hoping to make it even straighter. He stepped to the right of the pine trunk, standing tall between two large branches.
There. He could aim just over that branch.
The buck moved forward, still digging through the snow on the ground.
Composing mental prayers to the First Fathers, Lakhoni raised the bow, drawing the string slightly back. He brought the bow up just enough so that the tip of his arrow pointed right at the buck�
�s shoulder. A long distance. He expanded his chest, fighting to control his breathing and stretching his left arm forward as his right arm pulled backward. Too shaky.
He relaxed the pull, taking long, deep breaths.
Again he raised the bow and pulled the string back. His right hand was at his cheek. He sighted down the arrow. One breath in, then out. He pulled the string back more, his right hand going behind his ear.
A sharp crack stunned Lakhoni. At the same moment that he watched the buck jerk up, then bound away, a flash of burning pain erupted on his right ear and cheek.
Despair rolled over him in a dark wave. He sank to his knees. He didn’t have to look to confirm what he knew had happened.
Something inside roiled up into his throat. The guttural shout of despair burst out of him, grinding through his chest and throat. The pine tree branches threw the shout back at him.
His father had taught him better than this. “Always rub your string in your hands before shooting in winter,” he had said. “It’s a deer tendon, so it will break because of the cold.”
Lakhoni fell against the tree trunk. He put a hand to his face. No blood, but the tension in the string before it broke was sure to have left a red mark on his face and neck.
He held the bow up before him and watched the two broken lengths of tendon swing gently in the wind. He wished he could take back the prayers of gratitude he had offered only moments before.
He was going to die out here. Probably under this tree.
Chapter 21
Soup
He lay on his back in the middle of a sunny clearing. He could hear the daily noise from his village, somewhere just beyond his sight. Laughter, sharp voices, the noise of someone chopping wood. The warmth felt so good, as if it were a friend he had not seen for years. Or like his bed after a long day hunting with his father and Lamorun.
He tried to push himself up to go and join his village, but he couldn’t move. It was not so much that he was paralyzed, but that his limbs were too heavy for him to lift.
That was okay, it was warm here and he was comfortable.
But his family. He hadn’t seen them in a long time. They needed him home. Perhaps for dinner. He had to go to dinner.
He still couldn’t move, although his stomach twisted tightly.
He had to get up. Had to see his mother and father. Lamorun and Alronna.
No, Lamorun had died in one of the king’s useless wars on the Usurpers.
At the thought of the Usurpers, an image came to him of a footprint outside of his family’s hut. What did that mean?
He struggled to make connections. If only he could stand, he could walk to the village and someone there would help him.
His body refused to move. The ground held him in a tight embrace. He was frozen, unable to stand.
Frozen.
Consciousness invaded. A dream. As he thought the word, he became instantly aware of the frigid temperature that wanted to absorb him and the tiny nugget of warmth in his middle. He had fallen asleep under the tree.
He had to move. Had to get up.
Groaning in pain, he forced himself to roll off his side onto his knees. When he put his hands down on the ground to steady himself, pain lanced through his fingers. His fingers and hands were pale in the dim morning light that filtered through the canopy of pine branches. At least I can still feel them.
Pain means I’m not dead yet. But one more night like this last one and Lakhoni wasn’t certain he would make it through.
“I have to make it,” he grunted as he dragged his things with him. He pushed his body to a standing position. Aches and stiffness forced him to try several times to straighten his back. “It can’t be that far.” He reached down to pick up his bag and bow. His movements were slow like an old man.
Pale, lifeless silence spread across the world. The sun shone brightly over the mountains. Where was its heat? The frigid wind had died too; perhaps the clouds had taken it with them as they departed.
He leaned toward the sun, willing his legs to catch him before he fell. Shudders coursed through him with every step. He caught his cloak tighter around his body—or at least as tightly as it would go now that he had to carry his bow tucked under his arm. As he walked, he tried to jamb his hands under his arms while still holding the cloak. He angled his breathing alternately up and down, first into his leather face mask and then down into his tunic. The moment of warmth each respiration gave fled too quickly in the face of the cold.
Every few minutes, he would say it aloud again. “It can’t be that far.”
The morning passed slowly and quickly. Each step lasted an hour or more, but when he looked up into the sky, the sun was behind him already.
Hunger pangs struck hard as afternoon dimmed into the evening.
He had been scouring the terrain as he walked, moving between patches of forest and open ground. He had seen no sign of any other living thing or anything edible.
Darkness fell quickly. Only minutes before the sun’s glow faded completely, Lakhoni found another sheltering tree. Branches large and small littered the bed of brown needles under the tree.
After several tries, he had smoke coming from a pile of needles. Blowing gently, he added small twigs, then branches.
The fire’s heat and warm glow kindled greater hunger in him. How long had it been? Two days? Three? If only he could eat leather.
He held still, trying to catch a stray thought. Eat leather. Leather came from a deer.
He searched the ground and found a rock that was about as wide around as his hand was long. It was flat on one side, but had a shallow cavity in it. He found another rock and started scraping at the cavity in the first rock, hoping to make the cavity deeper.
Stupid. He would make no difference.
He put the cupped rock right next to the fire, then sidled to the right, leaning out far enough to pick up two handfuls of snow. He placed the snow in the cavity of the rock. The snow melted almost immediately.
Lakhoni pulled his knife from its sheath and carefully cut a tiny chunk of his cloak off. This he placed in the water in the cavity of the rock.
He sat for as long as he could, feeding the fire. One side of the small amount of water began to bubble after a while. He left it for a few minutes longer, then used his cloak to protect his hands as he eased the rock away from the fire to cool down.
Taking the rock in leather-wrapped hands, he lifted it to his mouth, slurping the hot liquid up. A faint hint of deer meat filled his mouth. He chewed the cloak leather. It was tough, but he could almost believe he was chewing on a very tough, overcooked piece of venison. His stomach rumbling, he chewed, praying that even this small bit of nourishment would keep him alive. His eyelids grew heavy.
Shaking his head, he repeated the process of making leather cloak soup. As he did, his thoughts turned to the buck he had tried to take . . . How long ago was that? Was that yesterday?
He didn’t know how deer did it. They managed winters fine. He thought back to the buck pushing its nose through the snow, seeking food. They ate winter moss throughout the season, but was that all they ate?
Winter moss. If it could feed a deer, could he eat it too?
Lakhoni pushed himself away from his small fire. He scrabbled out from under the branches of the pine tree and, with the darkness nearly complete but for the stars and a rising moon, searched the woods for a tree without needles or leaves. It didn’t take him long. Finding one, he fell to his knees and dug through the snow at the base of the tree with leather-cloaked hands.
Moonlight illuminated the winter moss, making it pale and ghostly. Lakhoni pulled some and brought it to his nose. The smell of green things filled him, sending images of spring into his mind. He touched his tongue to the moss. No flavor. He took a bite. It was rich and heavy, like he was chewing earth. Not the flavor of a poisonous plant. Lakhoni broke the moss into tiny bits and added it to the already hot water in the cavity of the rock.
Lakhoni snapped a thin b
ranch and fed it to the fire. Waiting for his leather moss soup, he looked inward for the rage that had filled him so many months before—the anger that had fueled him.
Alronna had been taken from the village, along with something else that came from under his mother’s sleeping mat. Something about the size of a new baby—if that baby were in a square container of some kind. His village was gone, his people murdered.
He could not find it. No storm roiled in his soul anymore. Instead, he found a banked fire, its heat and glow nearly gone. He couldn’t call it rage or fury. He didn’t know what to call it, but it felt like the gently glowing coals of this fire were not wood coals but were something stronger, harder, and hotter. Like they were stones heated by a mighty force and made to glow in darkness, lighting the way through a journey.
He reached for his miniscule amount of soup and brought it to his mouth. The rock’s heat penetrated his leather-covered hands, sending tendrils of warmth up his arms. The soup’s flavor was stronger this time. Leather moss soup was not delicious, but it was better than nothing.
As he lowered the rock, the heat gave him another idea. He found more rocks under the tree and put them all just on the edges of his mid-sized fire. Then he sat there, chewing leather, feeding the fire and resisting the urge to make more leather moss soup. If he wasn’t careful, he would eat his entire cloak.
Just before sleep took him, Lakhoni arranged the warm rocks along his body, curling around them. His stomach still rumbled. His toes still felt as if they were steadily freezing. But a feeling of relief filled him, as if he had successfully crossed some kind of horrible chasm.
He wasn’t finished yet. Not going to die under this tree either.
***
Lakhoni came to a stream early the next morning. Ice and snow covered it. With a hook and line or a net, he might catch a fish. Shrugging, Lakhoni walked several paces to the right and crossed the stream. Orienting himself on the sun again, he left the stream behind.
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