Scriber

by Ben S. Dobson

  By nightfall, we had reached the end of the ravine where the slide had happened. The ravine disappeared gradually, sloping upward until the steep cliffs relaxed into a gentle bowl, and eventually into two relatively level banks of bare stone surrounding the shallow stream all the way up to its source in the mountainside to the north. The weak flow of water did not come close to filling the entire riverbed—though it undoubtedly would in the spring, after the snowmelt—but it was clear and clean, and more than enough to fill our waterskins. We made our camp there that night.

  We ate a short meal around the fire, then pitched our small canvas tents to keep the snow out while we slept. When the time came to determine the order of the watch, I offered to take a shift myself. With the full company, it was never necessary, but given that there were only four of us, it seemed selfish not to do my part.

  Sylla laughed darkly at my temerity. “I don’t think so, Scriber. I’d like to live through the night. What would you do if something came? A history lesson won’t fend off a snowcat.”

  I scowled at her. “I would wake the rest of you if I saw something,” I said. “I just thought you three might like a bit more sleep. Can you ever forgive such a terrible mistake?”

  Sylla leaned forward with menace in her eyes, and again my fear overpowered my indignation. At some point during the night, she would be keeping watch alone while I slept; I would be at her mercy. I cast my eyes back towards the fire and shut my mouth.

  “There is no need to be rude, Sylla,” Bryndine said. “Scriber Dennon, your offer is appreciated, but we have trained for situations like this. Better you get a full night’s sleep.”

  In the end, they determined that Bryndine would take first watch, then Sylla, then Orya. Orya and I took to our bedrolls; Sylla claimed that she did not yet feel like sleeping and remained by the fire with Bryndine.

  Moments after she laid down, Orya’s loud snoring rumbled in my ears. I envied her the ease with which she found her rest. Even without the noise of her snores I would not have been able to sleep. Instead I lay awake, imagining our small party trapped in the mountains by a sudden snowfall, slowly succumbing to the cold.

  A short time later, I heard Bryndine say to Sylla, “He is quite terrified of you, you know.” I suppose she thought I had fallen asleep, because she was quite clearly talking about me.

  Sylla snorted. “Good. Someone needs to be able to shut him up.”

  “It is more than that, Sylla.”

  “I don’t like him,” said Sylla. “We never needed him before. Now all we do is follow him. All you do is follow him.”

  “The Kingsland faces a threat we know almost nothing about. If Scriber Dennon can lead us to answers, I will follow him wherever I need to. He is trying to help. Do not forget that he helped keep the company together after my uncle dismissed us.”

  “How could I forget?” The bitterness in Sylla’s voice was palpable. “It seems everyone loves him for it but me. It’s false hope, Bryn. As soon as he is done with us, we’ll be disbanded again, and worse off than before. How many of us will be dead or injured by then? I… I don’t want to see you hurt, especially not because of him.”

  “You told him about Gered.” I had heard Bryndine use that tone before; she was telling, not asking. “That is why he is so afraid; you told him that you killed your husband. Why?”

  “I was drunk.”

  “You wanted him to think you a murderer.”

  “Why shouldn’t he?” Sylla asked gruffly. “It isn’t as though I’m innocent.”

  “No. But you did not do it lightly or without reason. You would not harm someone who did not earn it.”

  There was a long pause before Sylla replied, and when she did, it sounded as though she was struggling to speak. “I know you think that. I know. You always think that I… that people are better than they are.” She took a deep breath. “But if scaring the Scriber is what it takes to keep him from putting you in needless danger, then I will scare him. And if I need to, I will harm him. I would kill him if I had to, to keep you safe.”

  A chill went through me at those words. I could tell by her voice how truly she meant them, perhaps more than anything I had ever heard her say.

  “I do not think I have anything to fear with you here,” Bryndine said, and there was deep affection in her words. “But I chose this, Sylla. You should not worry so much about me.”

  “Somebody needs to. You spend too much time worrying about everyone else.”

  Bryndine laughed at that. “Then I suppose I should thank you for taking on that burden.”

  “You never have to thank me for anything,” Sylla said. Then, a moment later, in the closest thing to good humor I had ever heard from her, “But if you want to, I don’t mind.”

  Their conversation turned to lighter fare after that, and eventually I blocked out the noise. But I did not fall asleep for hours, kept awake by the images playing out in my head. I could still see us, snowed into the mountains, freezing to death. But it was never the cold that killed me. No, the way I saw it, Bryndine died first, her skin grey and frozen. My death came after, delivered on the edge of Sylla’s sword.

  * * *

  I dreamed of the Burnt surrounding their burning fireleaf, but it was strange, different. I was not among them, but far away, atop a distant hill. I could see the tree burning against the night sky, and the figures circling it, silhouetted in flame, but the voices were quiet, with little power behind them. When those distant whispers commanded me to burn, no flames engulfed me. There was no pain, just fear—deep, gut-wrenching fear.

  I woke with a shout and sat up without thinking, my head colliding with the low ceiling of the small tent. Disoriented as I was, I panicked, and soon I had pulled the tent pegs from the ground and thoroughly tangled myself in canvas.

  “What’re you shoutin’ about, Scriber?” Orya asked, not bothering to hide her amusement. “Seems to me you hit first. The tent was just defendin’ itself.”

  The sound of her voice calmed me somewhat, helped me remember where I was. If Orya was on watch, it must have been early morning, sometime around dawn. With all the dignity I could muster, I freed myself from the remains of my tent and looked around.

  The ground was blanketed in snow and flakes filled the air, shockingly white in the grey pre-dawn glow. We knew the snows were coming, I told myself. It was only a matter of time. But I had dreamt of the Burnt—they must have known where we were, and I could not escape the feeling that they were striking out at us. If they could call down lightning, why not snow?

  “How long has it been snowing like this?” I asked.

  “Started not a half-hour ago,” Orya replied. “Thought I’d give it a bit, see if it stuck before wakin’ you all, seein’ as the snows so far ain’t lasted long.”

  I looked up at the dark grey sky for a long time, then said, “I don’t think it’s going to stop. Help me wake the others.”

  It did not take long to rouse Bryndine and Sylla, and when everyone was awake, I told them about my dream, and about my suspicion that the Burnt might know our location.

  “We have to return to the camp,” I said, though a part of me hated myself for admitting defeat. I wanted desperately to find Fyrril’s books, and every Scriber’s instinct I had screamed that I had to keep looking, but self-preservation won out. “We can still escape the mountains before the trails are blocked.”

  Bryndine tapped her fingers against her leg, her brow furrowed with thought. “You are not certain that the Burnt caused this snow, though?”

  “No, but—”

  “If they did, we can assume it will not end; it will grow worse if anything. If that is so, we are already too late, and there is little purpose to retreating. If it is not their doing, then the snow may still relent long enough for us to find what we came for—we are less than a day from the spot Fyrril marked. We must keep going.”

  Sylla could not have looked more appalled. “Bryn, it’s not safe. We need to go back. The Scriber is rig
ht for once”

  “You want to let a bit of snow scare us off?” Orya asked incredulously. “Why’d we come at all if we’re just turnin’ tail now?”

  “I’m worried about more than just catching a chill,” I said. As though taking my words as a challenge, a sharp gust of wind blew a torrent of stinging snow at me, and I hunched inside my greatcoat, pulling it tighter around me. “If we stay, we’ll die.”

  Bryndine turned her gaze on me, and I was startled to see a glint of anger in those grey steel eyes. “And if we turn back, is our fate any better, Scriber Dennon? We have seen what the Burnt can do. Can you watch them tear down the Kingsland knowing you might have been able to stop them? My women have shed blood for this, died so we could get this far. Their deaths mean nothing if we turn back now. If you can live with that, I will not force you to stay, but I cannot. I will go on.”

  I should have known that Bryndine Errynson would not give up, would not betray the Promise she held so dear. A part of me had known, even as I was asking her to turn back. So her reaction came as no great surprise.

  No, what surprised me was that I found myself unwilling to abandon her. I like to believe that it was courage, or honor; I did not want anyone’s death to be in vain. But I have never been brave. It may have been little more than fear of trying to find my way back alone. Whatever the reason, though, I knew that I would go where she led.

  “If you intend to keep going, I will come with you,” I said, though I was quite certain the journey would end in my death, either by the cold or by Sylla’s sword. “But when we freeze to death, remember that I warned you.” I did not admit it aloud, but in truth I was relieved; I yearned to continue the search, but I could never have mustered the courage if Bryndine had not taken the decision upon herself.

  Bryndine nodded stiffly. “I will not forget.” She allowed a slight smile to raise her lips. “And if we live, I will remember that you came in spite of it.”

  The snow did not relent; as we travelled east along Fyrril’s route, the weather grew worse. Soon the wind and snow had painted the entire world white—not just the ground, but the air itself. I could see only a few yards in any direction, and I had to squint against the chill bite of the wind to do even that. The women would have been invisible to me except that the dark brown of their leather armor stood out against the whiteness in the air. If we had been forced to climb, I think we would all have died; even Orya could not have scaled any kind of incline in those winds, blinded by snow, fingers frozen and clumsy. But the path did not lead us higher into the peaks, and there were no cliffs to scale. Though I was all but blind, I could tell we were descending, and I could only hope it meant that Fyrril’s hidden valley was near.

  As we trudged through the ever deepening snowdrifts, I thought I heard voices whispering. I could not be certain—they were impossibly faint, and the howl of the wind as it blew through the rocks made discerning any other noise difficult. Even so, it put my nerves on edge, and I could not rid myself of the feeling that the Burnt were watching us.

  We walked for what felt like an eternity; in reality it was closer to five or six hours. The snow was up to my knees in some places, and my legs ached with the effort of each step. I was ready to collapse when we finally entered the small valley.

  At first, we did not realize that we had reached our destination—we simply trudged onwards until we met the east slope of the valley, unable to see the sharp upward incline until we were already upon it. When Bryndine noticed the ground climbing beneath our feet, she called for us to halt.

  “This must be the place,” she shouted over the sound of the wind. “The cave should be here somewhere.”

  “If we can even find it under all this snow,” I yelled back, but excitement was building in my chest. The greatest collection of lost knowledge and history left in the world might have been right beside me even as I spoke, and despite the very real chance that we would die looking for it, I could not suppress the thrill I felt.

  Then, from the corner of my eye, I saw a flash of movement. I barely had time to react; I could see little through the snow but a slight shadow, a ghost of a form leaping at Bryndine’s back.

  Somehow, Sylla already had her sword drawn, was already moving. “Bryn!” she shouted, throwing herself between her Captain and the pale form as it pounced.

  A flash of red spattered across the snow; Sylla was knocked from her feet. I heard her grunt in pain, saw her sword rise and fall as she grappled with her attacker, and then a heavy gust of snow hid her from sight.

  Orya’s sword was bared now too, and she started towards the place where Sylla had fallen. “Sky and ruttin’ Earth, what was—” Another white shape struck her in the chest, cutting off her words and pulling her down.

  Sylla had struggled to her feet and was circling warily, holding her sword out in front of her. I could just barely make out the shape of the thing that had attacked her—it was pure white, almost invisible through the blizzard, prowling atop the snow on four legs.

  I was not sure of what I saw, but I yelled my best guess as warning. “Snowcats!”

  Bryndine, I saw, had armed herself and strapped on her shield. A white shadow lunged at her and she yanked the big metal disk into its path, only partially deflecting the attack. Claws tore along her right forearm. She stumbled backwards, blood dripping onto the snow at her feet, and swung her sword. The blade cut nothing but snow.

  Terror gripped me and I dropped to my stomach, trying to hide myself. Snow worked its way under my coat, cold and damp against my skin; I barely noticed, just burrowed deeper, trying to stay beneath the animals’ notice.

  This was not right. I had read about snowcats; they were solitary hunters, not pack animals. I could not tell how many there were, but it had to be at least three or four, and even two would have been unnatural. And then I heard the voices, realized with stomach-churning dread that they really had been there all day, whispering behind the wind, and now they were saying, “BURN.”

  I felt… something. Not the pain I expected. It was as though my skin wanted to burn, but could not quite catch. Instead of agony, a strange clarity washed over me. When I raised my head, I could see every snowflake in the air individually, and the shape of the wind that carried them. I felt half-mad, and yet the world made more sense than it ever had before.

  The white shapes of the snowcats should have been impossible to follow, camouflaged in white, never still for more than a moment. I saw every movement they made. Five cats crept silently through the blizzard, striking swiftly and darting away, driving the women apart. Separating them for the kill. The women were blinded by the blizzard, their movements restricted by the knee-high snow drifts. They could not fight what they could not see, and if they could not fight, they would die.

  Without knowing why, I rose to my knees, turned my eyes upwards. Cold flakes of snow landed on my bare face. “Please,” I whispered, and the word felt powerful on my tongue, sounded foreign in my ears, like I was speaking to the Sky in a language I did not know.

  The snow ceased.

  I did not know how or why, and the clarity I had felt faded almost instantly, but I was sure of one thing: I had asked the snow to stop, and it had stopped.

  And whatever I had done, it had been noticed.

  Five pairs of dark predatory eyes fixed upon me as the snowcats turned. I felt the Burnt behind those eyes. They knew what I had done, could sense it the same way they sensed my fear, or found me in my dreams. There was a faint whisper—“Death”—and then the cats were in motion, racing towards me with single-minded ferocity, my companions completely forgotten.

  Her vision no longer obscured, Bryndine severed a snowcat’s spine the moment it turned its back. Sylla chopped halfway through another’s neck, and Orya threw herself onto the back of a third, savagely stabbing her sword down through its ear and into its skull. The animals did not bleed as they fell.

  The last two snowcats closed the distance towards me almost faster than I could see. On
e came from my right, breaking away from Bryndine; the other approached from directly ahead, Sylla and Orya slogging futilely behind it. The women could not match the beasts’ speed, not with more than a foot of snow on the ground; the snowcats were born for this, running atop the drifts so lightly that they barely left tracks.

  They converged on me from both sides, but the one in front of me leapt first, claws outstretched. Ten yards away, Bryndine put her whole body into a mighty swing of her sword, though she appeared to be striking at nothing. A flash of grey in the air, a glint of metal, and the leaping snowcat jerked sideways, crashing to the ground with six feet of steel buried in its ribs. I stared for a moment, unable to make sense of what I had just seen.

  “Get down, Scriber!” Bryndine shouted as she surged forward through the snow.

  Startled into motion, I threw myself flat against the ground, barely ducking beneath the last snowcat as it pounced. Sharp claws raked at my back, tearing my greatcoat and the clothing beneath, but finding no purchase in my flesh. The beast passed overhead, failing to disembowel me by a margin no thicker than my underclothes.

  It landed behind me and to my left, the momentum of its jump carrying it a short distance away. When I looked back, it was already skidding to a halt in the snow, reversing direction. My feet slipped on the packed snow beneath me as I tried to stand, and I fell on my stomach, forcing the breath from my lungs. The cat would be on me in an instant, I knew. I did not want to die with my back turned. I rolled over just in time to see the sleek white animal descending. It was so close that I could smell the rotting meat on its breath. Sharp claws raked the air inches from my face.

  They never reached me.

  Bryndine slammed into the snowcat in midair, holding her shield before her like a battering ram. The force of the blow carried the beast to the side, its claws missing me by inches. Bryndine fell heavily on her hands and knees beside me; the cat landed on its feet, close enough to take my head off with one swipe.