Chapter 5
SEREH
The next morning dawned chill and late. By the time Sereh was standing and had managed to work the kinks from her neck caused by sleeping on the hard ground for two nights in a row, Arrow was leaping ahead out of the cave with an impatience that made Sereh laugh.
The sound was loud, echoing back to her from the depths of the cave.
Quickly, pulling her backpack back into position, Sereh joined her wolf-dog on the vast glacier of Vatna Jokull, eager to set off despite the raging hunger in her belly.
She could stop to eat later. It was important they took advantage of the short daylight.
The sun was low in the watery sky. A slight warmth sizzled in the air, noticeable on the frozen terrain with the cessation of the wind.
The view greeting her was of dazzling pure brilliant silver in every direction, uninterrupted by any sign of habitation.
No one wanted to live here; it was too barren in the short Long Day and too wind-wracked in the Long Night.
Legend had it that in the deepest depths of the Long Night, the air was filled with hideous shrieks and groans.
How anyone knew, Sereh was unsure. Certainly, she’d heard nothing during the night aside from the wind, which had disturbed her momentarily, but not enough to fully wake her.
No one would be on Vatna Jokull during the Long Night.
It was rare for anyone to risk its dangerous surface during the Long Day.
She’d only gone this way because she knew the journey would be quicker. That, and it meant there was no chance of encountering Rankil or any of his vile mercenaries. She was free from him and had no intention of returning to his yoke, even if the chosen path was incredibly dangerous.
With Arrow at her side, Sereh was more confident they’d stay in the safe areas of the glacier.
While Arrow had fallen down countless snow holes on the ridge above their heads, she was now showing an uncanny ability to know where dangerous precipices dropped off and was avoiding them.
More than once, Sereh nearly stepped into the gaping chasm just to her side.
It sent her heartbeat crashing in her chest. It was hazardous, but Arrow was being careful, even with her more fleet movements.
These last few days in the wilderness had only served to strengthen Sereh’s confidence in the wolf-dog’s abilities.
Sereh’s mind was abuzz with the dangers and beauty of Vatna Jokull as she trudged through the energy-sapping snow drifts gathered on top of the glacier, pooling and dipping in response to the fierce winds which had whipped the surface snow into swirling masses, either during the previous night or at any point in its recent history.
It was slow going. The pack on her back grew heavier with each step.
She was pleased when darkness began to fall, even though it felt as though they’d not travelled for long, and Arrow found another cave for them to shelter within to escape from the building wind.
She slept that night, her belly growling with hunger, but warmed by the knowledge each day took her further from Rankil.
She was as eager to get going the next day as Arrow was, and she stepped, blinking at the brightness of the day, onto the glacier.
In front, Arrow darted all over the place, sniffing and scent marking as she went.
Sereh was so caught up in her thoughts and exertions, she didn’t notice Arrow’s ears pricked to attention.
The wolf-dog stopped dead in her tracks, tail between her legs.
A low whine escaped her, and Sereh blinked from her reverie and rushed to her side.
She reached out and stroked Arrow’s immensely soft, grey neck with one hand and tweaked an alert silvery ear with the other.
‘What is it, girl?’ she panted, peering around. She couldn’t see anything, but welcomed the brief respite. Her chest burnt with her exertions and her breath was hot as it swirled into her face.
Following Arrow’s line of sight, Sereh scanned the horizon.
She could see nothing that worried her. The vista remained untouched and untroubled by animal or human presence.
Puzzled, Sereh wondered what had unsettled the wolf-dog.
And then she heard it – a low agonised cry that sent a shiver up her spine.
An animal must be trapped nearby. She shuddered. What could it be? Surely not a wolf?
‘Is that it, girl? Is that what’s made you stop?’ Sereh queried, her voice still breathless. Arrow paced forward warily, her grey ears pressed flat and her black tail firmly down between her legs.
Sereh hesitated to move towards the awful noise, but neither did she want to be left behind. She was curious. What could scare Arrow so much, yet still compel her to seek it out? She’d rather have turned in the opposite direction.
Arrow was four wolf lengths in front already.
Sereh hurried to catch her, putting her hand on Arrow’s soft neck for reassurance once more.
Arrow didn’t seem to notice her touch and continued onwards, sniffing the ground, growling softly, body trembling.
Sereh could see no prints in the snow. She couldn’t understand how anything could have survived through the winds of yesterday evening.
The idea that something had made her shiver.
What sort of creature could have endured for so long in the below-freezing conditions? Maybe the rumours were true, after all.
A lump appeared in the snow directly in front of them.
If not for the shock of blond on the otherwise purest of white snow, she’d have missed it.
Her grip tightened on Arrow’s back, as shock ricocheted through her body.
She jolted as the lump quivered and Arrow ran straight towards it, nose to the ground.
Simultaneously, an agonised groan rippled through the air, most definitely human and very, very feeble.
‘Wonderful,’ Sereh sighed, the tension leaving her body as she trudged towards Arrow.
This was no nightmarish creature but a person.
Most evidently wounded on Vatna Jokull. Of all the worst luck.
And, of course, Arrow had found them. Sereh stopped, peering all around, but there was nothing, and no one else to see as far as her vision allowed.
They were alone. Her. Arrow. Whoever this was.
How the person had come to be here, she didn’t know.
It felt crazy to realise someone else had made the same decision she had.
To trust their lives to the precariousness of Vatna Jokull. Were they as desperate as she was?
Arrow sniffed at the slumped figure, looking immensely pleased with herself when she turned to face Sereh.
‘Yes, yes, well done, girl, but now we’ll have to help them. We’ve little food for ourselves, and we need to be somewhere else,’ Sereh informed the wolf-dog acerbically. Arrow offered an unrepentant look.
Perhaps Sereh should have appreciated Arrow’s instinct to hunt a little more.
That had been her role in Rankil’s steading.
Their friendship had begun after Arrow was wounded in an altercation with another hunting wolf-dog.
It had fallen to Sereh to nurse her back to health.
She remembered how Rankil persisted in goading her, saying how Arrow was more useful than she was.
The words had stung, but only until Arrow had licked her hand in thanks and thawed Sereh’s grief-stricken heart.
Sereh bit her lip beneath her scarf as understanding dawned. She’d need to lie to whoever this person was. She couldn’t tell anyone of her true identity or where she was escaping from until she made it to Estrith’s steading, which she hoped would be soon. The next day. Perhaps two more?
Sereh bent to appraise Arrow’s find. The stranger’s fur-trimmed hood was pulled low over their face.
What she could see looked tormented and frozen against the pale snow and ice.
Male or female, she couldn’t tell. All she could say with certainty was that they looked like they were on the verge of death.
‘Just what we don’t need,’ she huffed once more.
‘They’re probably dead anyway, Arrow.’ It sounded harsh, even to her ears.
She’d spent too much time with Rankil. Everything with him was measurable, even life.
Even death. ‘Stop it, Sereh. You can’t think like this.
If you were out here, you’d want the only person to pass you by to stop and see if you were alive, at least.’
Hesitantly, she brushed the blond hair and hood back from the face. She gasped, scarcely able to believe it. Arrow snuffed closer, looking between her and the man quizzically.
‘I know him,’ she gasped. ‘It’s Erann Ramonsson.
’ She placed her ungloved hand over his mouth to determine if he breathed, for his eyes remained firmly closed, and she was sure his eyelashes were almost frozen to his cheeks.
Hot air washed her hand, weak and slow. ‘Come on, we can’t let him die.
’ She’d have laughed at her abrupt change of mind, if not for how cold he was, how shallow his breathing. How close he was to death.
‘What should we do? We need shelter,’ she announced, standing to scan the unforgiving landscape.
There – a dark opening in the wall of the nearby rocky mountain slope.
It didn’t look too far away. She leapt up, grabbing the man’s backpack from where it lay abandoned on the ground, and raced towards the cave, as quickly as she could manage, with Arrow following close behind.
She tried to keep her feet, but slithered down the steep surface more than once, even while Arrow seemed to fly over them.