Chapter Thirty-Five: Storm

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Our new buna lay further north. We made our camp beside a frozen tributary of the Poritas called the Shadow River on account of its many shoals and mudbanks, which in warmer months made it challenging to navigate. Where water ought to have flowed, I could only conjure a course of fleeting shadows slipping between its frosty banks, and the vision sent a shiver through me. I’d never known cold like that which stole in with the Burning Month. Bundled with scarves over our faces, tears froze in the corners of my eyes, and ice crystals formed inside my nose. Prepping our horses for the field, we groomed a place on our horses’ wooly backs for saddle cloths and mounted up. 

We had often ridden the watch in the wind, the rain, and the dark of night to patrol for reavers. This morning we stood in a silent snowfall, our fur-lined coats bound tight around us, the flaps of our pointed caps snug over our ears. There was nothing to see but falling white and only the dampening silence of the light but steady snowfall. Even the next rider’s approach was masked by the flurry and muffled by the soft down underfoot. 

I distrusted the hush. Camp was unsettled enough. Siran’s thigh wound had festered since the night he attacked me, and he’d fallen into a heavy fever, unable to ride. Despite the scratch I still bore from his blade, more than a few spoke of dark forces at work, and fingers pointed my way. 

As we pushed through dense drifts, the steam from the horses’ bodies and breath crusted to the surface of their thick winter coats, forming an armor of ice over their bodies. Our clothes, too, became masked in this way. We shivered and froze at first in the frigid morning, but as the ice began to encase us, we soon settled into the chill and warmed inside our ice armor. Otherworldly creatures, we became a crystal army on the march through a frozen world of white, caught in the light of the low sun rolling across the horizon, scattering its gold over the snow before us.

Ahead on the steppe, a solitary wolf darted across the bare white expanse, rushing to I knew not where, and my breath caught in my throat as I halted my horse and raised my arm to point, ice shattering from my encrusted sleeve. I turned to glance at Aric. Had he seen? His eye was now fixed on the grey shadow as it disappeared over the horizon. The men had reined their horses in beside us. 

“In my homeland,” I said, “a wolf running through the fields warns of a coming storm.”

“It is the same with us,” Bornon, standing beside me, said.

“Perhaps we should head back,” Stormai looked to his brothers, “and warn the others?”

Aric squinted at the gently falling sky, then at the empty horizon where the grey shadow had vanished. He nodded. “The wolf never lies.”

At night, our clothes dripped over the hearth. Though our beds lay only inches from the frozen ground, a few layers of reeds, dry grass, and good, thick felt beneath kept us warm and dry. 

All night the storm buffeted the tent. I was sure it could never hold. No house of wood or stone—much less a tent of poles and felt—could withstand an assault of such winds, ice, and snow as hurled by the tempest. Most of all, I feared for the horses. How would they fare with no shelter, and would they flee in the fury of the storm? Hunkered beside the hearth, I didn’t sleep but only listened and imagined the worst.

“My people are the children of this plain,” Aric said, “made of its earth and stone, its wind and water. We know all its tricks. It gave us birth; we were made to endure its storms.”

I wasn’t sure what good that did me. But Aric said his people had built tents like these since the beginning of time. Or, if not that long, for long enough to have survived worse storms than this. And the horses, too, had endured the open plain long before the first man arrived. One blizzard would not be their end.

The tent somehow passed the night intact, though we had to dig ourselves free. It was midday before the snows subsided, and we could venture out, only to discover that the herd had been spooked by the violence of the storm and run off seeking shelter. I went in search of them, following the river through an eerie landscape of mist, ice, and the refracted light of the noon sun. Branches, twigs, and winter berries were all encased in a sheath of ice. A towering, centuries-old tree had snapped in two under the weight of the shimmering ice, the ground littered with its crystallized limbs.  

All around this wasteland at the forest’s southern edge, limbs lay strewn beneath the scattered trees. More like a battlefield than a woodland, more like a war than a storm, the destruction was immense. I worried, inexplicably, for the trees that remained. They bore the weight of all that ice in silence, and none could tell the point at which they might crack. That their brittle branches could bend so far and not break seemed miraculous. 

But apparently, the horses were happy for something new to gnaw at, stripping bark from the toppled trees. I found them there, at the edge of the wood, nibbling on fallen branches.

They’d fled here for what little shelter they could find. The grease in their thick winter coats could repel the rain and snow, but it provided a scant barrier against the hard-biting wind. There was no shelter from it but to huddle near the edge of the sparse wood and turn their tails. With little natural defense against the wind, horses in the open often take turns using their bodies to shelter one another throughout the day and night.

As I checked the herd, the horses nuzzled me, rubbing their faces on my thick coat. I found Sakha, Aruna, and Vatra among them. Tying the ropes I’d slung over my shoulder into a makeshift bridle for Sakha and halters for the others, I swung aboard and turned for home. 

Dark falling now, the wind had caused the snow to drift. I was uncertain of the path I had taken but tried to retrace my footsteps back over the nearest rise to camp. We walked among the other horses, parting the herd as we passed. A few followed, and some ran ahead, eager to return to camp.  

The moon froze to the face of the snow, icy and indifferent. The loose horses trudged through the drifts around me, following and leading me home. From the rise, I could see a depression spreading over the valley floor at its base. The horses broke into a trot, racing down the slope toward the bottom, and my stomach fell, a wave of sickness spreading over me. I remembered this place before the storm and knew where they were running. The frozen river at the valley floor lay blanketed in snow, invisible now in the aftermath of the storm. I didn’t trust that the ice would hold under their weight. If we ran after them, we’d only push them there faster. But perhaps we could outrun them and head them off before they reached the bottom. Dropping my other leads, I put my heels to trusty Sakha’s ribs and galloped ahead, riding wide of the herd, trying to cut them off. Some began to rush alongside us as we raced along the valley floor, but we’d nearly passed the lead horse. I prepared to rein Sakha around in front of the rushing herd and turn them back before reaching the depression. Then I heard it. The terrible, unmistakable sound of cracking ice.

I lay gasping and shivering on the snowy riverbank. How I managed to pull myself out, I didn’t know. I remembered the crackling of the ice. Then watching helplessly as the horses plunged one by one into the waters. The frozen river, concealed under the snow, gave way under their weight. Unable to reach them, unable to move, I shrieked until I thought I’d burst my lungs. Then, the ground broke beneath Sakha, and the icy waters closed in. Now my body writhed and shook on the snowy bank, numb and confounded with cold. 

Where was Sakha? Had he managed to climb ashore as well? We’d turned away some of the charging horses before the ice gave way. But all was silent now. Gaping black holes stared up from the snow-covered ice. No horses were in sight, only deep tracks in the snow down the riverbank. My heavy, sodden coat, warbelt, and weapons lay on the snow beside me, though I didn’t recall removing them. My skin burned and my muscles cramped. But I just wanted sleep. I lay there huddled on the riverbank, with the wind howling, the faint stars winking overhead, and closed my eyes. 

Shouts, torchlight, and the crunch of snow under a small army of hooves and boots filtered into my awareness. 

“Have you gone mad!” Aric roared as he sprang to my side, pulling me to my feet. He tore his fur-lined coat from his back and wrapped it around my shoulders, almost knocking me over again in his haste to cover me, holding its folds tight in his grip. He stood close, staring into my face as I looked away, my teeth chattering uncontrollably, and tried to forget the numbness in my hands and the half-dozen men sitting before us on their horses, gaping faces aglow in the torchlight. I couldn’t even raise my head to look him in the eye. He took me by the arms and shook me. Then slapped me across my face. My senses roused briefly, but then I dropped to the ground, my form twisting involuntarily into a knot.

He dragged me to my feet again and sternly spoke my name. I tried to ask about the horses, but the words came out all wrong. His expression morphed from one of authority to one of alarm. Then his face blurred before my eyes. He scooped me up and carried me to his horse. 

“Can you ride?” he shouted into my ear.

I nodded, though I had no idea if I actually could. My limbs quaked, and I could barely stand without support. Aric slung me up onto his horse and vaulted up behind me. At a brisk canter, we set off for camp, his arms around me. 

The moon rose above us and turned the snow an eerie blue, though I noticed little but icy wind clawing at my face, warm horseflesh beneath me, and Aric holding me tight to him so I would not fall.

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Chapter Thirty-Six: Warm

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