Direbound (The Wolves of Ruin #1)

Chapter 9

CHAPTER NINE

T he rest of the climb up the ice wall is sheer torture.

My face throbs from the multiple beatings it’s taken today.

My muscles are screaming at me; Venna explained before we got going again that I was probably depending too much on my strong upper body muscles, when experienced climbers draw strength from their legs and their core.

How helpful of her to share that tidbit now.

It’s probably a few more hours by the time we finally reach another resting place, but it feels like it’s been days. We’ve reached the ridgeline of the mountain, though not the true peak—that I can still see rising above us, shrouded in cloud.

The ridge is made of more than just ice, though, thankfully—a few scattered trees offer some slight shelter from the relentless wind, and we crouch next to one, inhaling pieces of hardtack ration and a few more strips of jerky from Izabel’s pack. We all carefully gauge how much water is still in our skins, then drink just a bit.

Venna and Izabel confer for a few minutes, defaulting to signing with their hands, while I let my eyes close, trying to take a few minutes of rest. When I open them, Izabel is biting her lip, and Venna’s staring down at the ground.

I crook an eyebrow at Izabel and she sighs. “It’s one thing to know that this was going to be difficult. That we would have to watch people fall to their deaths, to know just how many people would be sacrificed on this climb. It’s… it’s different, knowing the numbers, and…”

I clear my throat. “Actually seeing people die?” She’s put into words exactly what I’ve been feeling.

Izabel nods and swallows, and we both stare into the distance.

I wonder how much more death Izabel and Venna will have to see—have to deal —during their quest to become Bonded.

If I weren’t so cold, and tired, and desperate for this to be done, I would probably find the view beautiful. We’re high enough that we can see the Bonded City’s spires, the castle rising up above the sprawl of roofs around it. The forest we trekked through yesterday looks like a long black smudge on the landscape; beyond the castle, more smears of black must be trees and fallow soil, broken up occasionally by the thin lines that I realize are the king’s roads south and west and east, to other fiefdoms.

The mountain we’re climbing is by far the tallest in the range, but there are other mountains stretching out to either side of us, each draped in sparkling snow and ice, starkly beautiful against the clouds.

Izabel’s hands are dancing again, responding to something Venna tells her. “She’s right of course,” Izabel says, halfway to herself.

“Like usual,” Venna retorts. I raise my eyebrows in inquiry.

“This is what it means to become Bonded,” Izabel continues. “We have to harden ourselves, have to be strong. Only the strongest deserve the Bond.”

“You guys are a special kind of crazy, you know that, right?” I shake my head, unable to fathom how someone would walk into this hellscape with eyes wide open. “I meant what I told you, I don’t want to bond. I just want to save my sister.”

The words slip out of my mouth in my exhaustion. I hadn’t shared anything with them yet about why I’m actually here. Hadn’t wanted to open the wound.

“Your sister?” Venna asks, hesitant.

I lean back into the tree, reassured by the press of the rough pine bark through my coat. “Saela.” The shape of her name scrapes against my throat and I realize I haven’t said it aloud since I left the commoner side of the city—only two days ago, though it seems like a lifetime. “She was taken. The Nabbers. That’s why I’m here, so I can save her.”

Venna and Izabel are frowning in confusion. “Nabbers?”

I huff out a laugh, my breath swirling up in ribbons of steam. “Of course you wouldn’t have the Nabbers in the Bonded City. Of course.”

As I tell the two of them about the disappearances in Eastern and all around Sturmfrost, about the horror of finding my sister gone in the night, snatched right under my nose, their faces grow grave.

“That’s horrible, Meryn,” Izabel says. “I’m sorry it’s happening. And that we didn’t know about it. I can’t imagine what I’d do if my sister was taken. We do everything together. Always have, ever since the day we came out of the womb, and?—”

Izabel is cut off by a punch in the shoulder from Venna, and she rolls her eyes.

“Sorry. Everyone says I over share.”

“Everyone is right,” Venna says, laughing quietly.

Movement catches my eye to the right of us, and I spot another group cresting the ridge, heading away from us—looks like they plan to dip down into the valley between us and the peak and then climb straight up.

I recognize one of them. Henrey, the commoner who was determined to forge a bond. He pauses to help someone from his group get down a tricky drop.

It’s nice to see he’s made it this far. I find myself rooting for him to get to the end.

Venna stands to stretch, and then clearly sees something she doesn’t like in the sky. She turns to us, face troubled. “Storm’s coming,” she says flatly. “Coming fast. We need to get moving. Now.”

Instead of following Henrey’s group down into the valley, we move along the ridgeline, which eventually curves back toward the climb to the peak ahead of us. A less direct route, but for at least a little while we’re on our feet instead of hanging off a sheet of ice, so I’m not complaining.

We go faster than caution would dictate, but there’s panic underlying Venna’s swift movements, and I’ve already grown to respect her instincts enough that I know whatever is coming is an even worse danger.

Snow and ice and gravel crunch underfoot, our crampons still helping us not to slip but also kicking up clods of dirty ice as we half-walk, half-run through the rocks and trees.

Inevitably, the trail turns upward again, at first just a rocky barren slope that we scramble up using our hands, and then the patches of sheer ice become more and more frequent, until we once more take out our ropes and fumble to tie ourselves together.

On this next climb, the storm hits us.

It’s brutal in its speed, the air turning thick and white with snow in mere moments. Izabel taught me signals that she and her sister use when climbing in adverse conditions—tugs on the safety rope, different numbers to signify different messages, for when the snow is too thick for us to hear each other.

We advance slowly, our pace at a crawl.

Several times I wonder if I should speed up, try to catch Izabel, who’s leading once more, and convince her to move more quickly—this slow pace is hell on my body, and I’m honestly not sure how much longer I can keep it up.

Each time I get close to attempting it, though, another scream of a falling climber filters through the storm, coming from nowhere and everywhere, the sounds scattered and distorted by the swirl of the blizzard.

I don’t know if it’s Izabel’s knowledge of the route to take or just sheer luck that saves us the same fate. And I don’t want to push it.

Time crawls.

Ice crystals blur my eyes, and I blink over and over to clear them, and to keep my eyelashes from freezing together.

Every so often—three tugs on the rope from above. Izabel is still okay. I give three to confirm that I’m here, I’m alive, I’m still climbing. Venna does the same.

We climb.

My whole body is pain. Every single muscle aches. I ignore it.

I know it’s dangerous to lose focus, but my mind keeps slipping out of this place and into memory.

Training with Igor. Reading to Saela. Cooking dinner for my mother, mixing her medicine in with her food on the days she refuses to take it straight. Kissing Lee. Lee’s strong, bare body pressed against mine. Warmth. Anything but icy pain.

Then, finally, four tugs: Izabel can see the top.

The line goes slack from above a few minutes later—Izabel has reached a summit and tied off her part of the rope, which now gathers more slack as I continue my climb. I heave myself up, scramble back from the edge, and Venna follows close behind me.

I can’t tell if we’re at the top—the fall of the snow is too thick to see much at all. So when a shape comes toward me through the snow, at first I think it’s one of the twins.

A huge, meaty hand grabs me by the throat, and then another pair of arms comes from behind to wrap around my front, trapping me in place.

It’s Jonah, I realize as I fight for air. That bastard from this morning. The one who wanted to kill Izabel.

That asshole was probably waiting up here, hoping and praying he’d have a chance to get his revenge.

“Gutter slut,” Jonah growls, his hand tightening on my throat, and I see spots of white. “You’re just a nasty common whore.”

My vision starts to dim around the edges. Use it, Igor’s voice says in my head, and I slump against the man behind me, faking defeat. Just like in the ring.

Jonah’s not so easily fooled. His hand is still a vise on my throat, but the man behind me loosens his grip, just enough to give me room to move again. I slam an elbow back into his gut, and his grunt of pain distracts Jonah enough that I can rip myself from his grasp, slamming my head backward, hearing the satisfying crunch of a nose breaking.

The only time today it’s not my nose breaking, I think wryly, already moving again, sinking into one of Igor’s combinations, one he designed specially for the fights where I take on two opponents at once.

My limbs are a blur of movement, reserves of energy coming from somewhere I didn’t know I had. I revel in the satisfying crunch of the metal spikes on my feet into someone’s leg, dancing back.

A slash of pain—I wasn’t far back enough. Of course, because it’s not just street knives I’m facing here—someone’s wielding their ice pick as a weapon against me.

The pain makes me see red, and after that, the fight moves fast. My second attacker takes off after being on the receiving end of my fist a few more times, and I let him go.

Jonah comes at me with the ice pick again but I’m ready for him this time, dancing back and to his left, sweeping his feet out from under him and stomping on his hand, forcing him to drop the pick. He swivels around and looks like he’s about to come at me again, and I deliver one of my favorite training combinations, feinting twice and then spinning to land a brutal roundhouse kick.

He stumbles backwards just as the storm picks up again, and the snow swallows him.

My blood pounds in my ears as I stare at the place where he disappeared. Is he gone? Did he run?

Did he fall?

Did I kill him?

I don’t know if I should be ashamed that I hope the answer is yes.

Breathing hard, I struggle to hold on to the adrenaline rush that was keeping me moving. Keeping me alive.

Izabel stumbles out of the fog and snow, Venna just behind her. Venna’s coat is ripped at the shoulder, and a wound there is weeping blood. She leans on Izabel.

She doesn’t look good.

“Are we close?” I say under my breath to Izabel, and we both look at each other silently, understanding. Venna’s not going to be able to climb much longer, not with one arm basically out of commission.

“We’d better be,” Izabel says grimly, and leads the way into the swirl of gray. “Come on.”

We’ve made it this far. I may not want to bond, but I’m not about to let Izabel and Venna fail now.