Chapter 9 Betty
BETTY
The hovel door clicks shut, a sound no louder than a sigh.
It is the softest, most final sound I have ever heard.
The predawn air is a blade in my lungs, so cold it feels like breathing in powdered glass.
My small pack is a pathetic weight on my back: a half-loaf of stale bread, a skin of water that is already starting to freeze, my father’s old skinning knife, and the small wooden star I’d dropped, now tucked deep in my pocket.
It is not enough. It is not enough for me, let alone for him.
Threk stands beside me, a mountain of shadow in the blue-gray dark. He wears no pack. He is the pack. He is the weapon. He turns his massive head, and his red eyes glow, cutting through the gloom.
No one is here to see us go. The village is silent, huddled, and afraid. Hiding from the monster I have saved. Hiding from me.
A familiar, sick vertigo spins in my head. My hand, thick and clumsy in my mitten, wants to find my hair, to twist, to pull. I clench my fist inside the wool instead, my nails biting into my palm.
I am a curse. I am a fool. I have done it all again. I’ve brought the fire, and now, I’m running from it.
But this time, I’m not running alone.
"Come on," I whisper, my voice a white puff of air that the wind snatches away. "We have to go."
We move. I lead us past the last hovel, past the splintered, broken palisade that Threk’s fury saved. My feet are heavy, my boots crunching loud in the snow.
The mountains loom, a jagged black wall of teeth against the pale, bruised sky. They look like they could eat us alive.
This is a hopeless quest. Maeve’s “legend” is a desperate prayer, a story told by a woman who needed us gone. I am leading a wounded creature on a fool’s errand, all to soothe a guilt that will never, ever sleep.
I look back at him. He is still limping, favoring the leg that the raider’s blade bit. The wound on his shoulder is a raw, dark patch on his gray-green skin. He will die in the snow. I will find him frozen, just as I found him bleeding. And it will be my fault. Another one.
My breath hitches, a small, painful sob that freezes on my lips.
I turn my gaze forward, focusing on the grueling, uphill path. I am a ghost. A woman waiting for my penance.
But Threk… Threk is not a ghost.
As the weak, watery sun begins to stain the sky, I realize I am not leading him. I am just the one walking in front.
He moves with a purpose I do not have. In the hovel, he was a giant in a shoebox, all clumsy limbs and pent-up, vibrating mass.
Out here… he is magnificent.
He moves like a great, stalking cat. His massive, clawed feet, which should have been crashing through the snow, are placed with a silent, deliberate care.
He is still a mountain, but he is a mountain that glides.
His head is on a constant, slow swivel, his brutish face turning this way and that.
His nostrils flare, deep, rumbling inhales of the frigid air.
He is reading the world in a language I cannot speak. He is not a thing. He is a predator. He is in his element. The hovel was his cage. This… this is his home.
And I am the one who is clumsy. I’m the one who is weak. I am the liability.
He stops; more like he freezes.
In one half-step, he becomes a statue of granite and ice. His head is cocked. He holds up one massive, clawed hand. Wait.
I freeze, too, my heart leaping into my throat. "What? What is it?"
I hear nothing. Only the high, thin whine of the wind through the barren trees.
Threk’s growl is so low it is not a sound. It is a vibration I feel in my chest. He is not looking at me. He is looking past me, down the slope.
I am about to ask again when he moves.
It is a blur. He is not a predator now; he is a force. His hand, the size of a shield, slams into my chest. He pushes me, a non-verbal, urgent command that knocks the air from my lungs and sends me backward.
I cry out, falling, tumbling into a deep drift of snow behind a towering granite boulder. I’m half-buried, my face packed with ice, sputtering, a hot, angry protest on my lips.
And he is on me.
He looms over the drift, a shadow blotting out the sky. His other hand, vast and rough, slams over my mouth. His palm is calloused, scarred, and smells of pine and old blood. It covers my entire lower face, from my nose to my chin.
Terror. My heart hammers, a wild, trapped bird.
His red eyes are burning. Not with the red haze of battle. With a fierce, intelligent warning.
He presses a single, black, dagger-sized claw to his own misshapen lips.
Shhh.
Then he turns, flattening his massive, wounded body against the rock face. He becomes a wall of gray-green stone, his bulk a living shield in front of me, hiding me from the path.
And then I hear it.
Creak-squeak.
The sound of wet leather armor, straining in the cold.
The sound of metal. Not the rough iron of a raider's axe. The sharp, clean sound of steel.
My blood turns to ice. My breath stops behind the wall of his hand.
They appear.
Three of them.
Dark Elves.
They walk down the path, graceful and silent as death.
They are tall, slender, and so beautiful it hurts to look at them.
It is the beauty of a predator, of a perfectly-made weapon.
They wear armor of gleaming, black steel, fashioned to look like an insect’s carapace.
Long, white hair, pale as bone, is braided down their backs.
My body is a single, screaming nerve. They are here. They are here. The fire, the screams, my mother... Gods.
"The trail is cold," one of them says. His voice is music, a cold, clear, perfect chime. "The Urog is wounded. It cannot have gone far."
The second one sneers. "Lord Larda is impatient. He wants his pet." The word is a whip-crack, an insult. "And the human female."
My stomach plummets.
They are hunting me, too. Why? Didn’t they left him for dead?
I can feel Threk. His body, pressed against the rock, is vibrating. The growl in his chest is a low, subsonic thrum of pure, unadulterated hatred. It is a sound that I feel in my bones, in my teeth.
He is a coiled spring. He is a bomb. He is fighting every primal instinct in his body, fighting the red haze, fighting the urge to lunge and tear them apart.
He is staying still.
For me.
The elves stop. They are so close. Twenty paces, no more. The leader, his face a perfect, cruel mask, lifts his head and sniffs the air.
My heart stops. I am going to be sick. Does he smell me? Does he smell the blood?
Threk’s hand presses harder against my mouth.
"The wind is from the north," the elf says, his musical voice full of disgust. "It carries nothing but the stench of that human filth-pit. They went west, toward the pass. Come. We will find it, and Lord Larda will have his prize."
They move on.
They glide down the path, three black, beautiful monsters, and disappear into the trees.
Silence follows.
I am trembling so hard my teeth ache. I am drowning in Threk’s hand, breathing in his scent.
He does not move. Not for a count of ten. Not for a count of fifty. He waits, a statue of patient, controlled fury, until the last clink of their armor is swallowed by the wind.
Slowly, he pulls his hand away from my mouth.
I gasp, a raw, shuddering inhale of frigid air.
He looks down at me. His red eyes are still burning, but the hate is banked, the red haze held back by a force of will I never knew he possessed.
I stare up at him. His brutish face, his tusks, his glowing eyes.
He just saved my life.
Not with a roar and a slaughter. With stealth. With control. With thought.
He smelled them. He heard them. Minutes before I, the "civilized" one, had any idea. He knew to hide. He knew to be silent.
In the hovel, I was his keeper. I was the healer. I was the one with the mind.
But now, I am the liability. I am deaf and blind.
He is not my pet. He is not my penance.
He is my protector.
He grunts, a low, soft sound, and reaches down, his massive, clawed hand wrapping around my arm. He pulls me to my feet as if I weigh nothing.
I'm still shaking, my legs weak. "They... they're hunting us," I whisper, the words stolen by the wind.
Threk doesn't look at me. He looks at the gray, oppressive sky, his nostrils flaring wide. He seems… anxious. His growl is low, uneasy.
Then I feel it.
The wind. It’s not just a whine anymore. It’s a wall.
It screams. A high, thin, monstrous sound that pierces my clothes, my skin, my bones. The temperature doesn't drop. It plummets. It is a biting slap that steals my breath.
A single flake of snow, hard as a pebble, hits my cheek. It stings. Then another. And another.
Within seconds, the world is gone.
The mountains, the path, the black trees... even Threk, standing five feet away... all of it dissolves into a roaring, suffocating, blinding white.
The blizzard is here.