DogForge (8 page)

She pushed through the drifts and saw the first corpse. The dog lay with a sheet of snow covering his hind quarter. The caribou straps were severed and the sled flipped over. “Krunk,” she whispered.

The snow gave her cover, but things seemed to jump out of the wall of white. With every gust the snow shifted and danced around her. Where it was once light it was now dark. Billows and drifts grew up and created things that didn’t exist. Her foot stumbled on something and she dreaded to look down, but when she did it was a metal claw. Dead.

A howl sang on the wind. Someone was still alive, and close.

Denali snapped her ears high, bit tight on the cylinder, and followed the howl.

The drifts grew before her in mounds that scraped her stomach. In a matter of steps, her paws ached with ice driven between her toes. Clumps of snow melted and refroze on her ankles. Her eyes darted after each drift but still, she didn’t see another dog.

A snarl ripped through the air. A clang and a hiss followed a thud and a sizzle. Through the snow a shape emerged, a heaving back of silver and black, that barreled through the drifts.

Wisps of steam rose from Karoc’s mouth. “Come!”

Denali turned and fell in place behind the larger dog. Karoc plowed a fresh path through the drifts and trudged his way down the slope. Stripes of red marked the passage as the shaman bled.

“Where are we going?” Denali barked over the howling wind.

“We’re leading them away.”

“What?” Denali snapped back. She looked behind her. Silver shapes glinted through the sheets of snow. “Away where?”

“There!” Karoc barked and turned to stand.

The slope ended abruptly in a wall of white. Beyond was nothing but the swirling snows falling deeper into the valley.

“Hold them here! Let them come, we’ll drive them down.”

“What do I do?” Denali asked, her voice trembling.

“Let them go over the cliff. Help me to toss them over,” Karoc said as he looked at her. “Prove them all wrong.”

Denali turned with Karoc. Her tongue came out past the cylinder and she panted. She was so cold, and yet warm with fear. The animal side of her wanted to flee, while the conscience side knew she had to stay. Prove them wrong, she set her mind, she’d do exactly that.

The first shape materialized in the winds and charged forward. It was lost on a gust for a moment and appeared again almost on top of them. The skelebot powered through the drift and leapt for Karoc.

The larger dog deftly stepped aside. The skelebot flailed with its pincered hands and fell off the cliff into the white maelstrom. He grinned at Denali.

“Use it against them! They don’t think.”

Denali turned into the wind and tensed. The next shape came out and suffered the same fate. Then two more. Each rushed through the drifts and charged mindlessly.

“Spit that damn thing out,” Karoc said, after tumbling one more into the valley.

Denali shook her head and felt the snow drop into her ears. “I need it for the trial!”

Karoc laughed and spat blood. “That’s the spirit!”

Three more came and the first two ran straight for Karoc. The third hung back and watched.

The first slammed into Karoc and the second came in close behind. Karoc ripped his massive jaws into one skelebot and thrashed it into the other. The second skelebot lunged out with a claw and latched onto Karoc’s front leg.

Denali charged in and suddenly realized she had no idea what to do. So instead of doing nothing, she slammed the canister against the skelebot’s leg. There was a clang of metal on metal, a hollow sound, and the skelebot screeched.

Karoc tossed the first skelebot off the cliff and savaged the second. The skelebot flailed and sailed into the white.

The wind drove the snow in a gust that shattered against their fur. Denali stumbled and tucked her head low.

The gust stopped and, as quickly as the storm came, it left. The wall of white marched down the slope and into the valley. Denali turned and was amazed, the clouds above the storm were nearly black. Above her was an icy blue with the shell of a broken moon high in the sky.

“No,” Karoc growled.

Denali spun back around. Her heart thumped loudly in her ears, it was the only sound she heard. Then the adrenaline flowed.

The entire valley, from the broken structure down, was flooded with skelebots. And they were all headed straight for Denali and Karoc.

“Run child! Run!” Karoc howled. He stood rigid, his back rising with his head proud in the air. His medallion, a mark of his station, was long lost to the snow.

A skelebot, the same that had watched, stood impassively and waited.

Denali snapped her head back. She couldn’t leave, not from the pack, he was an elder. “No,” she whimpered past the canister.

“That one,” Karoc stated, “will die first.”

“I can’t leave!” Denali cried out.

“Go now, for the love of man, go!” Karoc pleaded. He turned his head with his large drooping eyes focused on Denali. “Go,” he said once more. He turned in the snow, raised his hackles, and charged.

Denali stood and felt a chill down to her bones. Stretched out in the distance, like a steel wedge, the skelebots approached. Karoc, a lone warrior, charged through the drifts and tore into the first skelebot with a thunderous crack.

The sound snapped her out of the moment and she ran. Her cold feet pumped through the drifts and she aimed herself along the knife edge of the ridge. Farther down, she saw a line of dogs covering the pass.

Karoc howled after shredding the first skelebot and stood atop the steel corpse. A skelebot with a lance attacked next, followed by a trio with bare hands. His teeth flared in the icy air. Waves of steam rolled off of his wet fur. He turned, snarling, and attacked the next. The lance struck and he was down.

Denali stopped. No, she thought, no! She turned, and almost started to run.

He stood once more, a wounded beast, and tore the lance from his breast. That wave of skelebots fell beneath his steely maw, but more came. More, and more. Until finally the skelebots moved past the spot where he once stood. All Denali saw was a dark form surrounded by red snow.

The icy air burned her eyes as she ran. Her teeth chattered past the icy cold cylinder. A stark sadness hit her. The same sadness as when Sabot had died. For a moment she wondered if they’d blame her for Karoc, too.

A rise of gray stone and ice loomed before her. She sprinted around the edge and stopped in a clatter of stone. She yelped and dropped the canister.

Waves of skelebots pursued the disappearing dogs. The leading edge savaged the dogs. Fur met with steel, but it wasn’t enough. The remnants of the defenders littered the snow and scree. Pockets of red snow were the only witness. Farther down, and nearly to the treeline, the rest of the pack fled. Pups, females, adults, with a ragged line attacking and covering the escape.

“No!” Denali barked. She couldn’t let them go, not because of her, she knew she did it. It was the canister!

She grasped it in her mouth and felt her tongue against the frosty metal. Was this what they wanted? Did they all hunt for this? She remembered when she struck the skelebot and how it reacted.

She dashed over to a fallen skelebot. Her eyes watched the descending horde of skelebots and then she slammed the canister down.

The skelebots on the rear edge turned and stared up the slope. The wails sang through the crisp wind. Skelebots on the battle line stopped the assault and looked up to the mountain.

“Come!” Denali barked and slammed it down again and again. Only when she could see them all moving up the slope did she stop.
What did I just do?

The skelebots screeched. It was a mournful sound, a wail of loss and regret tinted with violence. Beneath they scrabbled through the rocks like savages, climbing one on top of the other. Even the treaded monster fought up the slope in a cloud of debris and shattered rock.

Denali leapt over drifts of broken snow and clambered across the scree
.
Duty drove her. She didn’t care where she ran, as long as the skelebots followed.

The line of skelebots climbed higher. Some floundered in the deep drifts while others moved with an animal intensity. They shifted, stumbled, but never stopped.

She stopped on the backside of a drift and stared down at the valley. She could see the other dogs, like fleas on the white, moving into the safety of the trees. Her heart rose. Safe. She could almost pick out Grat and the line of pups with him. He’d never leave his pups, never.

The thought hit her and she felt lost.
Now what do I do?

A snowy pass, like a ragged gouge in the mountain, peaked high above. Rivulets of snow danced and clumped before falling down the slope.

She wondered how well the steel bodied bots could pass through deep snow. For that matter, she wondered how well
she
could. On the other side was the sea, and eventually the valley where the pack was going. Her pack. Her family.

“Denali!” Samson cried out.

Denali spun around and looked at Samson with wide eyes. The canister almost fell from her mouth.

Samson ran toward her and nearly fell with every stride. He clutched his front paw tight to his chest and blood matted his fur. His tail tucked tight to his legs, his eyes wild with fear.

A part of her said run. Leave him. For all he’s done to you. But then another part, the part that defined her, told her to stand. He was, at the most basic level, still her pack-brother.

His eyes were thick with tears and red foam circled his mouth. “We need to go!”

She turned and began to lope away. The pass was beginning to cloud up once again.

“What about me?” Samson barked. The fear cracked his voice and he sounded almost like a normal dog.

Denali stopped and dropped the cylinder. “Just don’t tell anyone.”

Samson dropped his eyes to the snow and followed her.

The two struggled through the drifts and would have halted if it wasn’t for the warming sun. Sheets of sticky wet snow slid down in cascades and creaked to a halt. 

Denali turned. She watched the silver reflections sparkle beneath her. She ignored Samson and waited until he passed her up the slope. She settled on one of the skelebots and watched his progress.

He was slow. Almost plodding. His claws fought for grip and he stopped every few steps to slam down the heavy snow. He looked almost like a supplicant praying to some strange god every time he leaned over to pummel the snow. The others were all like him. None stopped.

“Move faster,” she growled.

“Where are we going?” Samson stopped.

“Up there,” Denali said and climbed past him. She wanted to trust him with the cylinder, her jaw ached and the cold was drying out her throat.

“What then?”

She stopped and looked down at him. “There is no
what then
, we’re saving the pack.”

“What!” he barked and leaped closer. He collapsed on his lame paw and scrambled to catch his grip. The snow seemed to wrap him up and he came to a tense rest.

“Get up. We’re going over the pass.” Denali turned and left him on his back.

Samson hobbled higher and stumbled next to Denali. The pair pushed past boulders and lines of rock that was like the layers of the earth shown to the heavens. The rock changed from a dull gray cut with lichens to a harsh black, gritty and old.

“Slow down,” Samson growled and leaned against the stone.

Denali stopped and gently set the cylinder down. Her chest burned now. Every breath was a labored ordeal, and she just couldn’t seem to slow her breathing.

The cold hit her hard. A wind off the top side of the slope sang down. The air was moist and it told of snow and rain. She worried about more snow.

“We need to go,” Denali said.

“Look at them.” Samson smiled down the mountain.

The skelebots struggled even more on the steep slope. A single skelebot clambered on top of a lichen stained boulder. It paused, shifted on the slick surface as if to take in the view, and tumbled off. The clatter rang up and Samson laughed.

“We’ll just wait.”

“No.” Denali picked up the canister and stared up, looking for the best route.

Samson rolled onto his side and licked his paw. Sinew and flesh was a harsh red in the thin mountain air. “They can’t get up here.”

“Yes.” Denali nodded down below. “They can.”

Samson snapped his head to the side.

A pair of the skelebots scaled the boulder, one acting as a ladder while the other found a crevice and locked himself in. The next skelebot went higher and higher.

“Karoc never told us that they’d do this,” Samson groaned as he stood.

Denali shook herself. “Let’s move.”

The higher they went the smaller the rocks became and the slope peaked up before them. The grain of the mountain changed. The black edges, almost raw below, were now smooth and worn, like pebbles on a beach. With every meter they gained, the footing became more difficult. There was barely a paw’s width to work with at every step.

Denali fell first. The rock slapped her stomach as it broke loose and she rolled. She gritted her eyes tight and stopped, hard, against a flat stone. The wind howled over her and she waited until there was a drop in the gust. It felt like she could tumble off at the slightest nudge.

She opened her eyes, Samson was moving higher. She clamped tighter on the cylinder, and fought to scramble higher.

Samson paused, turned to look below, and his back legs shot out. He slid with his stomach against the rock. His front legs scrambled but did little to slow his descent. “Help!”

Denali picked a path, leaped across one shelf to the next, and braced herself. She tucked the cylinder into a gap in the rocks.

Samson slid through a gap between two dark rocks. The moment he slid next to her, she clamped down on his furry neck.

Her back legs came off the ground and she dropped her chest onto the cool stone. And then, to her relief, Samson stopped. 

He looked up at her with eyes that were in a feral place. Denali could smell his fear. The sparkle in his eyes faded and he looked away. Denali helped him up onto the shelf and snatched up the cylinder.