Flesh Against the Blizzard

The ceiling of the basalt chimney cracks with the sound of a snapping femur.

A sheet of freezing slush dumps straight toward my bedroll.

I throw myself sideways across the stone shelf, covering the bison horn with my chest before the icy runoff can reach the rawhide seal. Slush spatters across the back of my neck. Cold water trickles down my collar, stinging like boiling grease.

Inside the horn, the living coal gives a faint, smothered hiss.

Not here.

I scramble onto my knees, my teeth knocking together hard enough to rattle my jaw. If water drowns the vent quill, twenty-nine people down in the lower flue freeze before dawn. Dirk van Houten would probably expect me to rekindle their hearth with my own spite.

I reach into my belt and yank Bram's snapped ash spearhead free.

The knapped flint is broad, black, and razor-sharp. I drop to my belly and drag the stone point through the packed soot and pumice, carving a deep furrow along the edge of the shelf. My knuckles scrape against rough volcanic glass. Skin tears, but the cold kills the sting before blood can pool.

The gray flood finds the trench. It swerves around my dry fur roll and pours over the ledge, splashing down the rock slope toward the lower vents.

To brace the trench, I wedge the empty dire-elk bladder against the rock seam.

It forms a crude dam. The runoff curls away, spitting harmlessly into the lower vents.

Competence is a bitter trade. It only buys another minute to freeze.

The basalt ceiling shudders above me.

The gale tears the fissure wide open. A slab of frost-cracked shale breaks away, tumbling down the outer chimney with a dull boom. The white squall punches straight through the gap. Granular sleet screams into the nook, shredding the rising sulfur steam in a blinding swirl.

The cold does not enter like wind. It strikes like a club.

In seconds, the red basalt beneath my knees glazes over with slick rime. My fingers turn the color of lard. I tuck the horn under my wool tunic, curling into a tight ball against the back wall, but the draft finds every seam in my coat.

Down in the lower cavern, the clan is blind to the sky. Up here on the shelf, the sky has teeth.

Then a shadow blots out the whiteout.

The wind stops shrieking above me. It is choked off as something massive drops through the torn rock.

Heavy hide scrapes against raw stone. Two boots the size of sled runners slam down onto my shelf, shattering the fresh frost into powdery dust.

Wouter Heenk crouches before me.

The horned skull of the void-cat sits low over his brow, yellow bone gleaming in the blizzard's glare. His broad back creates a wall against the downdraft, barricading the narrow shelf like a dropped portcullis. Behind his shoulders, the storm beats uselessly against his matted bear pelts. On my side, the screaming gale dies to a dead hum.

I grip Bram's flint point with both hands, aiming it at his chest.

\"Get back,\" I say.

My voice rattles with frost, thin and miserable.

Wouter does not back away. He drops to his knees. The stone shelf groans under his bulk.

He crawls forward on all fours, crowding me into the sharp corner of the rock. The shelf shrinks to nothing. His scarred chest traps me against the basalt, blocking the last sliver of gray light from the ceiling.

Cold rock at my back. Smoldering bone at my ribs. A butcher in my lap.

He reaches out. His hand is broad as an ash shovel, scarred by old frostbite and corded with thick muscle. His heavy fingers close around my wrist, pinning the spearhead against the stone before I can drive the point into his throat.

He does not twist my arm. He simply holds it down, effortless as an ox leaning on a wicker fence.

\"Drop the flint,\" he says.

\"Get off my shelf,\" I say.

His grip does not loosen. His knuckles press my knuckles into the stone until my numb fingers open. The snapped spear clatters against the pumice.

His other hand slides under my parka.

Panic spikes in my throat. I kick out, my heel slamming hard against his armored shin. It feels like kicking a frozen pine trunk. He does not even blink behind the cat skull. His thick fingers bypass my wool tunic and close around the curve of the bison horn, checking the bone quill.

A wisp of fragrant birch smoke curls out, brushing his palm.

He nods once.

\"Alive,\" he says.

The word vibrates through his ribcage, rattling the stones beneath our knees.

\"Of course it is alive,\" I spit, jerking against his grip. \"Now back off before you break the shell, you brute.\"

He does not move. Instead, he folds his massive body lower, collapsing his bulk around me like a cave-in.

His heavy forearms bracket my shoulders, pressing into the rock on either side of my head. His thick chest comes down flat against my front, pinning me tight to the warm volcanic stone. The raw heat radiating from his bare throat hits my face in a suffocating wave. He smells of old tallow, pine needle smoke, and fresh iron.

My chest shivers, leaning into the warmth before my brain can stop it.

Traitors, every bone in my body.

\"The crack lets the frost in,\" Wouter says. His lips move close to my ear, his rough skin scraping my cheek. \"The wind will eat your spark.\"

\"The wind was doing fine until you dropped through the roof,\" I say.

The hollow eye sockets of the void-cat loom inches from my face. Deep within the black bone cavities, two pale amber eyes gleam in the dark, fixed unblinking on mine.

\"The cattle below are freezing,\" he says.

\"They have their sleds,\" I say. \"They have their furs.\"

\"Furs rot,\" he says. His voice drops into that slow, grating rhythm that sounds like stones grinding in an ice floe. \"Meat cools. The whole plain is dead carrion waiting for rime.\"

His thumb leaves the horn and brushes my jaw. His skin is calloused like cured hide, but burning hot. He traces the curve of my cheekbone down to the hollow of my throat, heavy and deliberate.

I do not pull away. There is nowhere left to go.

\"Why are you here?\" I ask.

\"To keep the fire,\" he says.

\"The fire belongs to the clan.\"

He leans closer, his chest crushing mine against the wall until every breath takes work.

\"You keep the fire,\" he says. \"I keep you.\"

His thumb presses under my chin, lifting my face toward the horned skull.

\"You burn,\" he rasps against my hair. \"You are the only warmth in the crater, little spark.\"

His massive weight settles heavier across my ribs, sealing out the blizzard with his own blood and bone.

I lie trapped in the dark beneath an apex butcher, listening to the gale howl against his back.

He is not leaving.

Neither am I.