Ghost Hunter (9 page)

The pattering grew to a thunder. The Bright Hard Cold was roaring from the Up, snapping branches, pummeling the cub.

The Den. Get inside the Den.

Seizing his courage in his jaws, he made a dash for it.

Ha! The Bright Hard Cold couldn't get him in here! He heard it snarling, furious at not being able to reach him.

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The Den was only a bit bigger than he was, but at the back, that interesting smell was much stronger. The cub remembered it now.
Wolverine.

Wolverines are extremely fierce, but luckily, this one wasn't moving. The cub sniffed. He extended a wary paw. The wolverine was Not-Breath.

The cub was used to eating soft, chewable meat which his mother and father sicked up; he had to struggle to get his jaws around a part of the wolverine. The meat was so tough, it was like chewing a log, but after much gnawing, he tore off a chunk and gulped it down.

He ate till his jaws ached and his belly felt full. Then he rolled in the rotten smell and went to sleep.

When he woke up, the Bright Hard Cold was still pounding the hillside, so he ate some more wolverine and slept. And woke. Ate. Slept....

When he woke again, all was quiet.

In the Now that he'd gone to in his sleep, he and his pack-sister had been clambering over his mother, play-biting her tail while she nuzzled their bellies.

In
this
Now, he was alone.

He whimpered. The noise he made in the stillness frightened him, so he stopped, and gnawed some more wolverine. Then he padded to the mouth of the Den.

The glare hurt his eyes. No smells. The only sounds were a strange crackling, and the hissing of the wind.

Blinking, he saw that the willows lay broken beneath

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the Bright Hard Cold. The whole world lay beneath the Bright Hard Cold.

He ventured out. His paws shot from under him and he fell. He scrambled upright, digging in his claws.

Above him rose the white hill. Below him it swooped down, then up again. The cub didn't dare move. There was nowhere to move
to.
He lifted his muzzle and howled.

It was the strongest, least wobbly howl he'd ever managed--but no wolf answered.

Instead, a raven flew down, landing a few lopes away from him. Then another.

The cub lashed his tail and yowled with joy. These were
his
ravens, they belonged to the pack! Sleeking back his ears, he bounded toward them, slithering about on the Bright Hard Cold.

The ravens flew off, laughing. The cub didn't care, he was used to their tricks: they often pecked his tail and stole his meat. He raced after them--forgot about digging in his claws--and slid down the hill.

Still cawing with laughter, the ravens flew after him.

Crossly, the cub got up and shook himself.

The ravens lifted into the sky and flew away.

He barked.
Come back!

The ravens circled over him, then flew off again, waggling their tails as they disappeared over the hill.
Quork! Follow!

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The cub labored after them. When he reached the top of the hill, what he saw made him whimper in terror.

Above him rose the biggest rocks he'd ever seen; far bigger than even the boulder beyond the resting place.

Quork!
croaked the ravens.

The cub was terrified. But he didn't want to get left behind.

Narrowing his eyes against the wind, he started after the ravens, toward the Mountains.

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FOURTEEN

"How many day walks to the Mountains?" said Torak.

Renn shook her head.

They stood with the Forest at their back, staring over the rolling, snowbound fells. Far in the distance--yet dreadfully present--rose the shining peaks of the High Mountains.

Torak's spirit quailed. From where he stood, he made out thousands of tiny pinnacles. Any one could be the Mountain of Ghosts. And his only hope of finding it lay with the Mountain clans.

Renn seemed to hear his thoughts. "The reindeer will

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be heading for the shelter of the Forest. Fin-Kedinn says the Mountain clans always follow the reindeer. If we're lucky, we'll meet them."

Torak didn't reply. He wanted to crawl into the Forest and hide.

Wolf came to lean against him. Torak slipped off his mitten and sank his fingers into his scruff. Wolf licked his wrist: a brief flash of warmth, snatched away by the wind.

"And remember," said Renn, "she
wants
you to find her."

"But not you," said Torak. "And not Wolf, or Rip and Rek."

"She tried to separate us. She failed."

"She'll try again."

Together they stared across the fells. A howling wind sent spears of snow streaming toward them.
Go back, go back!

The ravens
loved
it. They swooped and soared in the fierce, cold, empty sky. Rek spun somersaults, while Rip folded his wings and plummeted onto a rise, landing in a puff of snow, flipping onto his back, and rolling down the slope. At the bottom he shook his wings, flew to the top, and started all over again.

Wolf gave a
wuff!
and bounded after him, but Rip hopped onto the wind and lifted out of reach. Wolf stood on the rise lashing his tail, gazing down at Torak. His

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fluffy pelt was spangled with snow, and his eyes were bright.
Let's go!
he yipped.

Their eagerness gave Torak courage. He turned to Renn. "I think we can do this."

She opened her mouth to protest.

"All we've got to do," he said, "is find the reindeer."

She pointed at the fells. "How?"

"We've got a wolf, two ravens, your Magecraft, and my tracking skills. We'll find them."

They didn't.

For three days they labored over the fells without seeing a single hoof print. The flat white light made it impossible to judge distances, and the Mountains got no closer, while the fells proved even more formidable than they'd looked. They were seamed with gullies, frozen lakes, and iced-up thickets, some chest-high, others only ankle-deep, but always forcing them into a zigzag course. In places, they floundered through snowdrifts, while on ridges, the wind had blown away the snow to the pebbly ice beneath.

They tried to keep east, steering by the sun and the stars, but clouds defeated them, and they were led astray by what looked like reindeer, and turned out to be boulders.

They survived because of what they'd learned in the Far North. They wore masks against the glare,

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and rubbed their faces with Renn's marrowfat salve to prevent windburn. They dug snow holes for shelter, and snared a ptarmigan and ate it raw, saving whatever twiggy firewood they could gather for melting ice. They kept their gear inside the snow hole so it wouldn't get lost in a drift, and their waterskins in their sleeping-sacks, to stop them from freezing. Nights were cold. They dreamed of stacks of beautiful, dry wood.

On the third day, they spotted people in the distance, and hurried to meet them--only to find a man made of turf. He was bearded with icicles and his outstretched arms were antlers, supported by a spear in either hand. He didn't feel threatening, just oddly welcoming.

"Some kind of guardian?" said Renn. "Maybe the Rowan Clan's--they build their shelters out of turf."

"Then they made him last autumn," said Torak. "There's moss on those antlers." He scanned the fells. The Forest was long gone. All he could see were white hills. Beneath his boots, snow hid the ice which sealed off the land. Eostra had not relaxed her grip. And she was watching him.

"Dusk soon," said Renn. "We need to stop."

They camped under the gaze of the turf man, in the lee of a hill by a frozen lake ringed with scrub. Renn said she would dig a snow hole, then try a finding charm for the Mountain clans. Torak went to set fishing lines and snares. Their supplies were down to a handful of hazelnuts, and

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so far they'd only caught a single ptarmigan.

Wolf trotted off to hunt, followed by Rip and Rek, who clearly thought he had a better chance than Torak.

On the lake, Torak hacked holes with his axe, then fed in juniper hooks on pine-root twine he'd brought from the Forest. To stop the holes from refreezing in the night, he plugged them with twigs and covered them with snow. Then he planted his knife beside them to deter Rip and Rek, who were quite capable of hauling in the lines with their beaks, and stealing the catch.

Back on shore, he circled the lake. The land felt empty, but his hunter's eye told him it was not. He spotted splayed wing prints where a gray owl had punched into the snow after a lemming. Farther on, a cluster of shallow hollows, each with a tiny pile of frozen droppings, where willow grouse had huddled together for company. And a web of ptarmigan prints, although no sign of their beds; ptarmigans like to fly high, then dive into soft snow to make a snug, invisible burrow.

They also love birch twigs, so Torak broke off some ankle-high branches of dwarf birch, rubbed off the ice, and stuck them in a patch of snow to make a tempting cluster, in which he hid snares of looped twine. He did the same with willow for the grouse.

Farther up the slope, he found a hare trail. Following it to a windy ridge, he set his snare just before the point where the hare would have to leave the safety of the

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scrub and cross open ground. It would be preoccupied, and so less likely to notice a snare.

By now, Torak was giddy with hunger. All that awaited him at camp was his share of the hazelnuts. The sky was a deep, cold blue, strewn with stars. The moon was not yet up, but he made out the fanged blackness of the Mountains--and above them, faint and far, the red star of winter. The eye of the Great Auroch.

When the red eye is highest,
Fa had said as he lay dying,
the demons are strongest.

The Eagle Owl Mage and her minions were vivid in Torak's mind; but Fa's face was a blur. With a shock, Torak realized that he'd become a different person since his father had died. Maybe Fa wouldn't even recognize him. Maybe that was why his spirit had fled from him at the Raven camp.

"Fa," he said into the dark. "It's me. Torak. Where are you? How do I find you?"

The only answer was the hiss of windblown snow.

Huddled in her sleeping-sack, Renn listened to the whispering snow.

She was hungry and tired, but she knew she wouldn't sleep. The finding charm had been worse than a failure. A wall of ice had slammed shut in her mind.
Turn back,
commanded the Eagle Owl Mage.
None can hinder Eostra.

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Renn had been left dazed, clutching her pounding head. She felt so bad that when Torak returned, she had to ask him to sprinkle the earthblood around their snow hole. It wasn't a line of power, only a Mage could do that, but it was better than nothing. And maybe the turf man would help keep the tokoroths away.