The Last Hour of Gann (109 page)

No more than ten
meters away, the thuoch finally saw her. It froze and immediately assumed a posture of defense and threat, all its fur spiking out to make it appear double in size. At the same time, its lower jaw dislocated and dropped open in an unnatural gape that had creeped her out tremendously the first time she’d seen it.

The thuoch shook its fur and yowled at her, but Amber didn’t move. She kept her spear in her hand and ready, in case the beast should decide to charge, but she didn’t think it would. She could see the two tiny black beads tucked away behind the thuoch’s bristling flank that were the eyes of its half-grown cub. Those eyes were the reason the thuoch wouldn’t charge across the treacherous ice. They were also the reason Amber wouldn’t take home her third winter-white thuoch pelt to finish her coat.

The two females stared each other down, but eventually the thuoch brought its jaws together. It slunk rapidly away to the western slope, snarling, keeping itself between Amber’s spear and its cub until they were out of sight.

The wind b
lew stale snow into their footprints. Amber watched until all hope of tracking them down was gone. At last, with a final wistful glance at the road, she turned around and headed home.

Home. She’d have to stop thinking of it like that. She wasn’t even sure when she’d started, but she had to admit that the little cave, with all its crude amenities, already felt more like home than her memories of any of the apartments she’d shared with Nicci and their mother. So far, she’d been able to stop herself from thinking too hard about what was going to be ‘home’ after this endless hike was over, but she could feel it creeping in a little more each day. Meoraq, of course, refused to speculate too wildly until God told him what He wanted them to do, but they’d had too many snowed-in days for her not to know about his home—his House—back in the west.

It unnerved her to think of it too deeply. Not just a city full of lizardmen, but just the house itself. The place he described…a wedge of the entire city from the outer wall to the inner ring, housing hundreds of families, thousands of people. There would be servants everywhere and so many rooms he couldn’t count them for her. And as much as she did not want to be wandering in this rainy wasteland full of man-eating porcupines forever, the idea of living in a place like that didn’t seem like much of an improvement. It was possible to avoid thinking about it for as long as they were stuck here, but once they were moving again…

Meoraq had admitted that he didn’t know precisely where the temple was, but he seemed to think it wasn’t far, once over the mountains. “Half a brace,” he kept saying, which meant
eighteen days, give or take. Half a brace, unless something else happened, and he could finally stand there in his empty temple and meditate until he felt good about going home. Then she’d have to think about all those rooms and servants and lizardpeople everywhere she looked, but until then, she could still pretend she had options.

Until then, she could pretend they were leaving to look for Nicci.

The sun was getting low behind the clouds and the light was leaving at its usual alarming speed. Nocturnal mimuts were emerging from their craggy burrows, like furry footballs bouncing over the ice. Amber speared a few, drained them of the gross stuff, and tied them into a brace (
half a brace and he’ll hear what he’s come to hear half a brace and i’ll have to give up on her forever half a brace
) to carry them home.

Almost home.

Meoraq was by the fire when she came in, winding homemade sinew-thread onto a short length of stick. Restocking his mending kit, she was sure. Sometimes he went pretty far out of his way to keep busy, but this at least was something she could see the use of. Four sets of clothes made for a lot of sewing. There had been a good twenty-day stretch at the beginning when sewing, sex, and sleeping had been all they did. And fight, of course, but fighting had a way of turning into foreplay for Meoraq, which annoyed Amber no end if it was an argument she really cared about, so she’d learned to just let him be an arrogant ass…and he’d learned to let her be an unreasonable bitch, probably, but they made it work.

“Hey,” she said now, shrugging out of her furry swaddle.

He grunted a greeting and wound up some more sinew. “See anything?”

“There’s always something to see,” she replied, setting her brace of
mimuts down on the hearth beside him. “I went out to the road.”

He grunted again, noncommittally. She knew he didn’t approve, he knew she knew, no more was said. They’d had that fight already.

“There was a thuoch there.”

“You should have brought it with you.”

“It had a baby.”

“Ah.” He wound more sinew. He was almost at the end of it.

“It also had brown coming in on its face.”

“It’s warming
. We’ll have to finish your coat with turned fur.” He flicked his spines at her knowingly. “How was the road?”

“Still filled in pretty good.”

“Yes.”

“But I think we could climb over
it if we wanted to. With the snowshoes.”

He nodded
distractedly. Nodding was something he’d picked up from her over the winter and it still didn’t look quite normal on him. He finished with his sinews and set the finished spools aside so he could pull the mimuts toward him.

She watched him skin them, as easily as if they were wearing little fur jackets. Then she watched him finish the butchering she’d started. She handed him a skewer when he reached for one. She brought the pot over so he could stew the organ
s he liked, and the smaller pot for the brains to make the hide-cure. Mimuts didn’t have a lot of fur, but they’d be good to line her sleeves or something. She waited and he waited with her.

“You’re going to make me ask, aren’t you?” she said finally.

“Yes.”

“Big scaly jerk.”

He hissed through his teeth, but playfully. This wasn’t an argument, not yet.

“When are we leaving, Meoraq?”

“When leaving will not kill us, Soft-Skin.”

She sighed and sat down by the fire, pulling one of the
fresh pelts over her knee so she could start scraping. Now it was his turn to watch her.

“Are you angry?” he asked
after a few quiet minutes.

“Not really. But I’m not happy. Look,” she said, shoving the half-scraped pelt away and facing him. “I know you’ve given up on my sister. I know you don’t even consider her a factor when you think about us moving on. I can’t do that yet.”

He didn’t argue, didn’t say anything, just waited.

“I’m trying to trust you,” she told him. “I am trying. But one of these days, I’m going to leave without you.”

He took that well, although he couldn’t quite prevent himself from rolling his eyes a little. When he’d more or less controlled himself, he nodded again and even gave her a two-knuckle nudge to the shoulder.

“I’
ll look at the road,” he said. “But if I say it isn’t safe, you will submit to my judgment. At least for a few days.”

“How many is a few?”

“Six.”

No surprise. It was his favorite number.

“All right,” she said, and resumed scraping. “But if the road does look good, we have to be out of here the next day, okay?”

“If possible. I think you underestimate how much time it takes to ready supplies, now that we have them.”

“I just don’t want you running up unnecessary delays, that’s all.”

“Mm. I do that,” he agreed mildly. “I’m always losing consciousness f
or days at a time and laming myself…or am I thinking of you?”

“I wasn’t lamed! I just limped for a few days!
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, lizardman, but there’s ice everywhere!”

“I’m not the one who wants
to walk in it.” He leaned toward her and rubbed his snout up and down along her throat, letting her know they could fight if she wanted to, but he was already winning.

“Maybe we should pack now so we’re always ready,” she suggested.

He glanced tolerantly around the cave. “Some things, I suppose. I’ll see what I can do about making another sled.”

“We can leave some stuff here, can’t we? I mean, we’ll have to come back this way,
right?”

“
I have not been curing hides all winter to leave them behind. Besides, the cold will last another brace of days at least in this corner of Gann’s world and you can’t hold your heat.”

“Yeah, yeah.
So what do you need me to do?”

He moved her hair and nipped suggestively at the scar he’d given her for a wedding present.

Amber heaved a sigh at him, but she was grinning. Every night with this guy. Twice, most nights. The only times he’d ever let her alone were when she was on the rag and he’d made it clear even then that he was humoring his silly wife by doing so. “Are we really going to do this now?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, hang on.”

At her gentle insistence, he released her and stood back while she moved the fresh hides and turned the roasting
mimuts over. “But seriously,” she said, untying her belt. “What can I do to speed things up?”

“
Speed is not a virtue in this undertaking, Soft-Skin.” He pulled his belt off, looped it playfully around the back of her neck and pulled her close for a quick nuzzle. Then it was all business—loosening ties, unbuckling bootstraps, peeling off outer layers, exposing inner ones. People in the movies made this part look so spontaneous, but it was actually something of a process when you were dressed for winter in the mountains. “It is not the snow that lies on the road that concerns me as much as the snow that still lies on the mountain.”

“What about it?” asked Amber, hanging up his coat.

“Ice on the ground can melt from beneath,” he explained, sitting down to work his boots off. “When that happens, the weight of the snow on top can cause it to break off in large packs and fall.”

“Yeah,
it’s already happening some places. So what are you saying? We wait until the snow falls onto the road and then we walk out over the top?”

He sighed, then beckoned to her and took off his tunic and dropped it on the floor. “This is a mountain thaw,” he told her, gesturing at it. “You see how it seems to lie flat, yet there are many folds and thin places over pockets of air that reach who knows how deep? Snow can smother a man quicker than you might think, or crush him, or cut him open.”

“We’re not waiting here until the snow completely melts, so forget it!”

“Calm yourself. What I propose,” he said,
gathering her against his bare body, “is that we climb out a little higher along the southern face, where the snow has already broken free, and travel on the cleared slope. It is not so safe a crossing as I would like, so I must limit the time we would spend in the open pass.”

“Meaning?”

“Patience, Soft-Skin.” He nuzzled at her shoulder again. “Patience is more than a word. It means that we will walk for every moment there is light, with little or no rest. It means we will not stop to hunt, but must have provisions to see us entirely through.”

“We may also need to conserve our energy while we’re traveling and not waste it frivolously having sex.”

“We may,” he said gravely, backing her toward the cave wall which Amber had privately dubbed ‘Meoraq’s screwin’ place’. “We’ll have to store up some of that, too. Do you want to show me your belly or your back?”

“You hopeless romantic, you.”

“Back it is.” He nipped her on the jaw and turned her around.

“
Oh fine, but I get the next round in bed.”

“I’ll consider it.”

“And take your panties all the way off this time. That thing is cold as hell on a lady’s ass.”

“Demanding creature.” But his loin-plate clanked to the floor and then his arms were a warm girdle around her middle. He nuzzled thoroughly at her neck, breathing deeply and managing not to catch too much of her hair in his teeth until he deemed she’d had enough foreplay (the concept was still fairly strange to him). Without further ceremony, he tugged her hips into position and pierced her, slipping at once into that
detached trance he claimed was a tribute to her overwhelming sensuality.

Amber closed her eyes against the sight of her hands splayed over the rough rock wall, letting the moan that wanted to happen just happen—a tribute t
o
his
overwhelming sensuality. Hearing it, the steady rhythm of his breaths broke in a dry laugh. “Try not to move.”

“I won’t.”

“You always say that.”

“I always start out meaning it.”

But she tried. Taking a few stabilizing breaths of her own, she squared her shoulders and pushed her ass back at him, doing her best to pretend she was an inanimate object while he set her on fire one stroke at a time. She forgot all about the mountains and the road and Scott and Nicci and the mimuts on the fire and just fell deeper and deeper into that moment.

Concentrate. His breath tickling the fine hairs on the nape of her neck. The scour of his rough hands chafing steadily at her hips. The slow, insistent press of his flat stomach against her upturned buttocks. The cold rock under her hands and feet. She held onto these things as long as she could, because when they fell out of focus, it was over. Without these little discomforts, she was nothing but how he filled her, how he moved in her, how he made her part of him.