Chapter 12
SEREH
Dawn came early the following day. They packed up their belongings quickly and stepped from their cave, eating a peat cake each.
Arrow loped along, untroubled by anything, her paws leaving indents in the snow because the night had been noticeably less cold.
Sereh wished she could forget her problems as easily as Arrow.
Arrow didn’t worry about where her next meal was coming from, or about where she would sleep.
Still, Sereh smiled to see her wolf-dog so free, but inside she was overwhelmed by growing dread.
She hadn’t been able to shake a feeling of imminent disaster.
Erann had picked up on her dark mood and lapsed into silence, their brief camaraderie of the day before disappearing as though ice beneath the sun’s heat.
She couldn’t bring herself to tell him she was angry with him.
But it was his fault they were heading in this direction and had returned to Vatna Jokull’s unforgiving surface, and were following it towards the cave she’d slept in all those days ago.
They were supposed to be going to the Library to deposit the priceless scripts, not venturing ever closer to Rankil’s steading.
It would be his fault if she were discovered and had to return to a life of perpetual toil.
They walked in silence, broken only by their heavy breathing and Arrow’s occasional yips and barks as she frightened some small creature emerging from its hibernation.
She never gave chase, happy to stay close by Sereh’s side as the surface became icier and icier, and the threat of crevasses beneath their feet grew.
Sereh was pleased to realise even more small animals were starting to wake from their long sleep.
She wondered what they were eating. There’d been no hint of a green shoot anywhere poking up between the snow away from the glacier.
What few trees and bushes she’d seen on her travels were stunted and hugged low to the ground, with no new growth to speak of, most weighed down by snow or ice that was yet to thaw.
She reminded herself it had only been nine days since the Long Day had risen, but it didn’t feel right.
Not when she suspected the Long Night had been so many weeks longer than usual.
They walked below one of the largest mountains enclosing Vatna Jokull, its peak too far away for her to glimpse from where she stood.
She could only see so far above her head.
She couldn’t remember its name and was loath to ask Erann because then she’d be the one starting the conversation, and really what she wanted was for him to apologise again for taking her in this direction.
Instead, as she walked, she invented names for the mountain in the hope one of them would feel ‘right’.
It was stupid, but passed the time as she followed the path Erann was taking around the glacier, keeping close to its edges.
In spite of herself, she couldn’t help but like the sure way he stepped out in his snowshoes, and the way he occasionally tossed his head to sweep back the lock of blond hair escaping his hood.
Suddenly, the solid ground seemed to shiver beneath their feet and a deep, growing rumble rolled downwards. She looked to Erann ahead, who’d stopped in his tracks, eyes fixed on hers. Her horror was reflected on his face.
Somewhere up above them, out of sight, a field of snow had ripped itself away from the mountain and was hurtling towards them.
She glanced up, hoping she’d see the avalanche tipping down one of the other mountains. But, near the edge of her vision, she could already see a trickle of loose snow lifting in tiny eddies, as if the mountain itself had sighed.
‘Run!’ she shouted. But there was nowhere to go – nothing but steep-sided mountains and the threat of the glacier’s heart surrounded them.
Regardless, she ran towards the edge of the glacier, Arrow racing along beside her.
She could hear Erann’s pounding feet just behind her.
Arrow streaked ahead, moving faster than Sereh could manage.
‘Please, by the Gods, let there be a cave to shelter in,’ she panted, forcing her legs to move even faster. Around her, chunks of dirty snow and ice-encrusted rock rained down. She swerved to avoid a huge rock that landed just in front of her.
With the flood of snow nearly upon her, she ran faster than she ever had, lungs burning, legs screaming.
Up ahead, she spotted the yawning mouth of a black cave.
Breath scorching her throat, she lunged towards it.
Better trapped than buried. If they made it inside maybe they’d be able to dig themselves out.
She didn’t slow, didn’t think. She just ran.
Her foot caught. Pain exploded as she landed hard, the wind knocked out of her, arms and legs in an untidy tangle, snowshoes crossed at the ankles, facing upwards. Panic surged as she lay there, unable to move, watching the snow above her come closer, closer.
Then hands grabbed her. She was yanked upright and thrown towards the cave entrance. She felt Arrow’s mouth around her arm, dragging her the rest of the way, into safety.
She scrambled to her feet, one snowshoe coming free in the hurry, and spun round, searching.
‘Erann,’ she screamed.
‘Sereh!’
He was nearly there, just outside the cave. He looked at her with anguished jade eyes, and something else she couldn’t quite place. She reached for him—
And then, right in front of her, he disappeared, swallowed in a surge of snow, ice and rocks.
The Long Day light was abruptly cut off.
She screamed again, ‘Erann,’ knowing it was pointless, but unable to stop herself.
There was no one to hear her. No one at all.