The Huntress: Storm

by Sarah Driver

  She clams her pipes, lacing her fingers around my waist again, and her touch makes me want to throw up. I’m sure she’s squeezing extra hard just to hurt me. Then I catch snippets of her bitter muttering, as we weave through the winds. ‘Tricked . . . why help me?’

  I have to bite my lip and swallow my fire-crackle to keep from challenging her about what she did on my ship. Just until we get into the Frozen Wastes. After that, there’s no telling what I might say – or do – to avenge Grandma.

  Crow’s a black scrap of ruffled feathers in the corner of my eye, hunched against the wind. There’s a gaping hole of nothing where the beast-chatter would be if he weren’t really a boy.

  Me and Crow pored over one of Leo’s worn old maps before we left and now I try to keep it conjured in my mind’s eye. We bear north, passing over the outermost tip of the Eastern Mountain Passes, then turn west towards the two rivers I know run between here and the southern shores of the Wildersea.

  Soon enough, we’re plagued by lightning slashes and hailstones that make sky-travel too perilous. I start to guide the draggle lower, my belly rolling as we dip through the sky.

  ‘What are you doing?’ screeches Axe-Thrower, clutching me even tighter.

  ‘We’ve got to land!’ I yell, bringing the draggle lower and lower. When we touch down in a snowy stretch of scrubland, I use my chatter to send the draggle home to Hackles. Then Axe-Thrower decides we need to shelter until the storm slackens. I nod, and from that beat we do everything in stony silence, shooting each other vicious glares. She scrapes together a hovel made out of packed snow, and we take shelter inside. Crow digs himself into a dip in the snow nearby, feathers fluffed against the wind.  He’ll be warmer in crow-shape, anyway.

  We break a small loaf of bread apart and share the staling innards. I check myself over and find little crescent moons dug into my palms by my nails, from gripping the draggle reins so hard. When I look up, the Fangtooth is watching me, face opened into something like softness. But as our eyes meet, her face tightens again, and her eyes narrow to glinting slits of black. I force myself to stay facing her and not to fall asleep, in case the wretch chooses to wring my neck.  I’m watching you, Fangtooth.

  When the storm’s grip loosens, I climb out into the open, check the compass Crow loaned me and trudge north-west towards the Wildersea, gesturing for Axe-Thrower to follow. She shoots me a look of scorn as she strides forwards to take the lead, like she thinks little of my navigating device.  Good. All the better to watch your movements, mutinous scum.

  Every few beats I stop and stare over my shoulder, skin tingling under all my warm layers. I keep thinking I’ve heard footsteps crunching behind us, but there’s no one in sight, except a faint black blur that tells me Crow is still flying. I catch the Fangtooth doing the same, and our eyes meet uneasily. Then she jerks her head roughly. ‘Come, keep up,’ she gruffs, breaking the long silence. ‘Someone is on our tail.’ I stumble after her, sudden fright squeezing my ribs. If she finds a chance to leave me alone out here, and disappear . . . either the cold will claim me, or the hunger, or whoever’s following us. This might be the stupidest plan I’ve ever had. But then I will myself heart-strong. She ent abandoned me, yet.

  Unless that’s just cos she’s waiting to gift me right into Stag’s clutches. Two words ring inside my skull, one for each footfall.  Hunted, child. Hunted, child. Even my heart sings it.

  My muscles are raw and screaming by the time we find a ramshackle inn on the edge of the Wildersea’s Black Beach, built into an overhang of cracked grey rock. We crane our necks to stare up at a lightning-scorched sign that swings in the wind. The Inn Between. Crow settles amongst the thatch, fluffing up his oily black feathers. We agreed that if we had to stop on the way, he’d stay in crow shape for feather-warmth – that way, he can safe-keep his energy. ‘Caw,’ he utters. I wrinkle my nose at him.

  ‘Come on,’ I tell Axe, stepping towards the door. ‘We’ll stay here a night.’

  She jumps, startled at my speaking. ‘I have nothing for payment,’ her voice stabs, nervously. Her face twitches as she chews her lip, flicking glances between me and the shadow of the Black Beach in the distance. Is she plotting something?

  I clench my fists.  I’m in control of this mission, and if she tries to move against me I’ll flaming well see it coming. ‘Lucky I brought silver, then, ent it?’ I tap my pocket, and the handful of silver ingots inside clink against each other.

  The raging of the wind means I have to knock hard enough to tear a nick in my eelskin gloves. But finally, the door’s wrenched open.

  The common room swarms with whispered trade-tongues and strange smells and hard looks. We buy two bowlfuls of a scummy brown stew and take them to two chairs in the corner. I watch the room from the depths of my hood. Travellers play cards and blow colourful smoke rings.

  When I dip my cracked wooden spoon into the stew, it tastes like old bootlaces have been boiled in mud and a few stale grains have been thrown in, but at least it’s hot. Wish I had a few of Pip’s peppercorns to add flavour, though. A snuffling, slurping noise greets my ears, and I glance up.

  Axe guzzles her bowlful with an urgency that gifts me a strange heart-sadness. To her, this ditch-swill must be a hundred times better than the burnt, claggy old scrapings she was getting before.

  I push back my chair, ignoring her questioning eyes. I ent hungry, and I ent got time to feel sorry for the likes of her.

  Upstairs, I step into the heaving sleeping room. There’s just one huge straw bed, and a small hungry fire crackles in the hearth. Almost all the places in the bed are taken by snoring traders. I lie on the edge of the low, scratchy mattress and squeeze my eyes shut, my belly clanging with missing Thaw. Bed bugs scuttle across the bedding, Gasprunrunrunnobloodleftnibble?

  I toss and turn for a while. Then Axe’s shadow looms on the wall and hot, heart-stuttering panic clangs inside me. I tense my muscles to spring if she tries to attack me, but all she does is find a place in the bed, and soon her snore joins the others. But I can’t sleep. What if she’s just faking, and planning to steal away? The voices from the room downstairs have risen. A chair is scraped across the floor.

  I roll out of bed and step lightly from the room. Then I hide on the stairs, watching the grizzled old men rambling below. I’ve almost dropped to sleep on the stairs when an urgent voice makes me jolt awake and listen keenly again.

  ‘You’ve heard the tales, same as I,’ grunts a man, heavily ringed hands wrapped around a tankard, like he’s holding on for his life. ‘A king amongst the ice, face of a wolf. Loaning weather-witches to the Skadowan, in exchange for the safety of his own hide.’ He slurps his ale and bangs the table.

  ‘You daft old soak,’ scolds a fisherman with thinning hair and ruddy cheeks. ‘The Skadowan were stamped out – what? – hundreds of years ago.’ He drums his fingers on his belly. ‘If they ever existed at all. They’re just a story, used to threaten badly behaved children.’

  ‘Dark times bring dark tidings, and darker acts,’ warns the ale-drinker, in a slurred voice. He goes to wipe his mouth with the back of his hand and misses, tweaking his own nose.

  The room erupts in coarse laughter. I swallow, and it’s like some careless stranger is knocking the inside of my throat with a stick.

  The Skadowan? I remember when I was seal-pup young, and Grandma had to use threats to make me bed down.  Sleep, little demon-child, she would scold, even as laughter bubbled in her pipes.  Or the Skadowan will come for your skin!

  ‘Someone stop him ranting on, won’t you?’ pleads the innkeep.

  I turn and crawl back up the stairs.

  ‘Where did you go?’ whispers Axe. She’s lying on the edge of the bed, staring at me.

  ‘Mind your business,’ I tell her. ‘Why ent you asleep?’

  She rubs her forehead. ‘I cannot. I think too much of where we will go.’

  ‘The Frozen Wastes? Your home?’

  ‘Girl.’ She croaks out a low ch
uckle. I wince, but no one stirs. ‘That is not the name those lands are called by. Not by us that know them.’ Her voice has filled with longing.

  ‘Read a map,’ I tell her, yawning.

  ‘Map? Hah. Who made these maps? Not my people. My lands are wounded. But they have never been a wasteland.’

  I frown. ‘But I thought nothing lived or grew there,’ I whisper. ‘I thought—’

  ‘What would you know? Why would you think anything?’ she snaps. Then she breathes. ‘My home is the Moonlands.’

  I blink, unsure what to say to that.

  ‘They used to be called the Moonlands.’ She props herself up on an elbow. ‘A place of brightly glowing snow, a place of rich dreams and richer stories. A place with many names for ice and many ways of knowing.’

  ‘Shush your hole!’ someone warns.

  But it’s the love and homesickness in Axe’s throat that makes me step back. She’s gone home, in her mind. And missing home is a thing we’ve got in common.

  She turns over and budges up, making space for me. I don’t want to sleep. Not next to her. But sleep thieves my strength anyway.

  Next thing I know, Axe is wrenching me to my feet. ‘I will not wait for you,’ she growls, all traces of the heart-truth she showed last night withered and gone.

  Axe shoulders the door open and we step outside, into the blistering cold. Crow bolts from the thatched roof.  Fleeflyflyfree, he jabbers.

  I freeze. It sounded like a streak of beast-chatter flew from his beak.

  Axe pushes me in the small of my back and my legs start trudging before I have to force them to. I watch Crow in the distance, as he wheels around to follow us again.

  Even though we ent crossed the sea yet, these shore-lands have places to trade for polar dogs and sleds. Axe-Thrower stalks past packs of skinny dogs and heads into a squat wooden hut. I hang back. Then she bursts out of the hut.

  ‘What is it?’

  She eyes me, grinding her teeth. Then she lets out a rush of breath. ‘That man in there! He will not loan me a dogsled – he violates the ancient code of helping stranded Moonlanders reach home. And he did not take my word that I would repay him!’

  Her innocence startles me. ‘You expected a favour, cos of some old honour code?’

  She looks like she wants to deal me a slap. ‘If you want to get there, you’ll have to lend me the silver.’ Pressing her lips thin, she stretches out her hand.

  I put three silver ingots on her palm and she spins on her heel, back to the hut, trailing her shame and fury. I’m heart-glad the crew thought to send me on my way with some silver. Elsewise, we wouldn’t have got far.

  Axe haggles for a skinny pack of four dogs that’re so tall they reach her ribs, and a roughshod sled, bristling with splinters and lined with the rags of old furs. I hang back, scenting the dogs’ hunger on the wind.

  Axe gets the dogs tethered to the sled. The din they make is desperate-eerie, a banshee wail stabbing into my ears. They growl whenever they catch a whiff of my scent.

  I won’t move closer to the sled. In the end, Axe-Thrower’s rough hands bundle me onto it. ‘Hold on,’ she growls.

  She lashes the dogs. The sled jerks to life and I fall back, then quickly grab the wooden sides. Axe whoops, and the dogs run faster. The sled bangs and swerves, jarring my spine and knocking a mouthful of shock up my pipes.

  The cold carves me like a dagger-tip and thieves the strength from my bones. It grips my face in jaws of iron and shakes me dazed. I keep hold of who I am by watching the tattered black bundle in the sky, just behind us. The bundle of my friend, Crow.

  After a while, the Fangtooth barks a command and the sled slishes to a stop. Thirst to run fills the polar dogs until they wrench at their chains, jolting the sled. They snap at the diamond-dust that glitters in the air and then they snap at each other’s necks.

  Axe leans down and grabs my chin, shining her blubber-lantern into my face. Her lashes are baubled with ice crystals. ‘Show me your nose,’ she instructs, plucking at the cloth wrapped tightly over my face.

  ‘Get off me!’ I snarl.

  ‘You want your nose gnawed black by the ice-bite?’ She scowls. ‘Do you?’

  Eyeing her sullenly, I pull the cloth off my nose and let her check me for ice-bite.

  She nods, satisfied. ‘All is well for now.’

  To our right, Crow thumps into the snow. He pecks at the ground, sidestepping and cawing. She looks towards him and I use the chance to wriggle out of her grip.

  ‘At last!’ she murmurs. ‘Real belly-filling.’

  I jump onto her back as she lunges for my friend, toppling her, and he takes to the wing with a startled thwawk.

  Axe rounds on me. ‘Give me a reason not to leave you to die in the snow?’ she threatens, eyes bulging. And suddenly the sight of her is more than my belly can hold.

  ‘Because you killed my grandma!’ My words echo in the emptiness, ringing off the heavy sky.

  Axe-Thrower freezes. Then she curses, climbing back aboard and wrapping the reins tighter around her hands.

  I scramble back to the sled and thump onto the seat, heart banging wildly. Then I twist to stare at her.

  ‘No,’ she says, simply. ‘The killer is Stag.’

  ‘You helped!’

  ‘No,’ she repeats. She cries a command and the dogs run again, their shaggy white backs lumbering faster and faster. ‘You are wrong,’ she shouts over the slishing of the sled. ‘I had no choice. Believe me when I say – I had no choice at all.’ The jolting, thumping sled knocks the wind out of me. I fold my body forwards, clinging on for my life, tears seeping from my eyes and turning to ice.

  Now that the words are out, my head aches and my throat feels sore. I can’t believe I kept it in for so long. ‘Everyone’s always got a choice,’ I say. But my breath loosens. I feel light as the air after the breaking of a storm.

  After a thickened, furious snow flurry, the sky clears. I blink, sunk in a fug of dreams. Wait – it can’t be . . .

  ‘The great dog of the sky has sent up her howl,’ mutters the Fangtooth. ‘The lights come.’

  The fire spirits.

  Their white flame wisps up out of the darkness, the only other creatures out here with us. At first they look like another puff of polar-dog breath, feathering into the sky. Then the flame spreads up and sweeps over our heads.

  They’re an untamed silver spill. One beat they’re a twine of hair, then they’re a flurry of fish, next a silver thread with a pale green tinge.

  As the sled hurtles along, I think of Vole’s fresh-baked, wise-faced little bab.  We need your help to find her namesake.

  I watch the shapes in the lights flicker and shift, focusing on the bab. Clumps of ice weigh my lashes down – I can see them when I blink. I watch the fire spirits for pictures of animals.  Fire spirits, I pray.  Let there be a world left for the bab. Let her grow and learn and howl and dive and be joyful. I will fight to keep her safe if you’ll just gift a name for her.

  My eyelids are gluing shut and this cold burns fiercer than any I’ve ever known. I thought I knew cold aboard the Huntress, and among the Sky-Tribes. I was wrong.

  But I can see just enough to watch as the shapes in the sky turn spiky, like the spines of a snuffling creature of the undergrowth that I remember Grandma telling me is called a hedgehog. I store the name away at the back of my mind.

  Axe-Thrower lashes the dogs again and the sled lurches forwards, throwing me hard against the side.

  Soon, a shadowy bulk of wood hazes into view. Men with guns lounge atop a wooden gatepost. They swig from silver flasks, coarse laughter steaming from their mouths.

  I twist in my seat. ‘What’s that?’

  Axe growls under her breath. ‘The checkpoint. Hide your weapon.’

  I stash my longbow under some furs and pluck at the scarf on my face, trying to make sure it don’t slip, but my hands are stiff and clumsy, and I snag the cloth. The wind claws my scar and I know I must’ve exposed it. A
re the guards gonna know about the hunt for a scarred child?

  ‘Slow down!’ I hiss at Axe, but my voice is weak. I turn to look at her and flap my hand. We’re almost underneath the checkpoint.

  The guards train their guns on us. ‘Who goes there?’ one demands, swiping snow from his eyes.

  Axe commands the sled to a sharp halt. Then she swings herself off it, catching my arm and pulling me roughly with her. I struggle in her grip. What’ve I done? How could I have been so stupid? She’s gonna turn me in, and I’m leagues from Da, or anyone that can help me.

  Crow soars above my head, his faint shadow blotting the snow.  Don’t shape-change, I pray, squeezing my eyes shut.

  ‘I am the daughter of the Moonlands Chieftain,’ she calls to them. ‘This is one of my slave boys.’

  ‘The what ?’ one says, nudging the other, a mean, mirthful look playing across his face.

  ‘We don’t honour that name’, says the second guard, a portly, black-bearded man with unblinking eyes.

  She hesitates. ‘I do not unders—’

  I tug her sleeve, heart punching my chest. ‘Call him the Fangtooth Chieftain,’ I hiss out of the corner of my mouth.

  She glances down at me and brings her hand up as though to strike me in the face. ‘Quiet, slave!’ she yells, proper loud. But instead of hitting me, she yanks my scarf higher up my face, hiding my scar.

  Then she turns to stare up at the guards again. ‘I am the daughter of the Fangtooth Chieftain,’ she calls. ‘And a faithful servant of Stag.’

  My head swims. Which of the two is a lie, and which a truth? Is she claiming to be a chief ’s daughter just to get us through the checkpoint? And oh, gods. I bet she is still a servant of Stag. What’ve I done?

  They lower their guns, but they still don’t let us pass. ‘Prove it,’ says one.

  She pulls down her sleeve and flashes a glimpse of Stag’s Hunter mark – it matches the one etched into my own skin. The guards spring into action, each one twitching their cloak aside to show Stag’s mark printed on their necks.