Abducted into the Cracks

Dirk van Houten does not wait for noon to break an oath. He comes two hours early, while the sulfur steam still hangs thick enough to swallow an ash spear, because a coward prefers to hunt when his target is busy carving fat. I sit on my basalt ledge with my knees pulled tight to my ribs, watching four pairs of seal-fur boots creep up the rock ramp. They have come for the thirty pounds of raw elk meat, the living coal in my bison horn, and to lace my wrists to a sled before I can spill either one into the mud.

Dirk carries three braided rawhide cords coiled around his forearm. Behind him, Roelof clutches a dried pine branch, waiting for a campfire to spark itself out of sheer pity. Dirk could not kindle dry moss if you soaked it in grease and held a brand to his beard, yet he acts as though an ember-horn runs on simple spite. To the clan, fire is just another chore you dump on the girl who refuses to freeze.

"Drop the skinning knife, Grietje," Dirk says. His voice scrapes through the steam, low and urgent. "Slide the haunch down the ramp. We take the horn now."

"Noon was the bargain, Dirk," I say. I do not stand. Standing gives them legs to sweep. "Your sun-mark is still two hands below the chimney rim."

"Bargains are for people, not witches," Dirk says. He reaches the lip of the shelf and yanks his ash spear free from the frozen pumice where he drove it this morning. He gestures with the flint point, motioning the two younger hunters to spread along the ledge. "You bed with the thing in the fog. Bram is dead in the scree, and you sit here gnawing raw elk like a feral dog. Hand over the horn, or we take your fingers with it."

My left hand stays clamped over the wooden plug of the bison horn, anchoring the shell against my ribs. My right hand slips into the slit of my wool tunic, finding the heavy flint spearhead I salvaged from Bram's kill-site. The knapped stone is cold, broad, and sharp enough to shave hair from hide.

"Come pry it loose," I say.

Dirk does not waste breath shouting. He nods at Roelof.

They rush the ledge together.

Roelof dives low to grab my ankles. Dirk lunges forward with the rawhide loop spread wide between his fists, aiming to drop the noose over my head and yank me flat.

I do not scramble backward. Backwards is a sheer wall of frost.

I throw my weight forward instead, dropping my shoulder straight into Roelof's chest. His balance breaks on the slick pumice. As he stumbles, I twist Bram's flint point out of my tunic and slash hard across his reaching arm. The knapped edge bites deep through his leather sleeve into the meat of his forearm. Roelof screeches, blood splashing hot and dark across my boots. He drops the pine branch and clutches his torn wrist.

Dirk's noose drops over my shoulders.

The stiff rawhide snaps tight, biting into my collarbones. Dirk leans back, planting his heels to drag me off the ledge.

The friction burns through my parka. Before he can cinch the knot, I thrust the flint spearhead upward, sawing the stone blade across the braided rawhide right beneath his fists. The thick cord pops with the sound of snapping sinew. The tension snaps, sending Dirk stumbling back into the gravel.

"Bitch!" Dirk roars. He recovers his footing, his face mottled red with fury. He raises his ash spear with both hands, aiming the stone tip directly at my right thigh. "Pin her to the stone! Take the coal!"

He thrusts the spear straight at my knee.

I twist aside, curling my chest over the bison horn to protect the shell from the basalt rock.

The spear point never reaches my leg.

The ragged breach in the ceiling darkens violently.

A wall of black fur and cracked bone drops straight through the torn stone into the sulfur smoke.

Wouter Heenk crashes down onto the ledge. The basalt shelf shudders beneath his weight, spitting cracks across the frozen floor. The blast of displaced air snuffs the cold draft instantly, replaced by the suffocating reek of hot iron, wet pelts, and slaughter.

Dirk's spear strikes Wouter's forearm. The ash shaft shatters into splinters against his muscle.

Dirk's jaw drops. His mouth opens to scream, but no sound comes out.

Wouter does not shout. He moves with sickening efficiency. His massive hand shoots forward, thick fingers clamping around Dirk's throat, crushing his windpipe. He lifts the clan elder off the ledge by the neck, swinging his boots clean off the ground.

With one brutal snap of his shoulder, Wouter drives Dirk sideways into the solid basalt wall.

The crack of shattered bone echoes through the chimney flue. Dirk's head snaps back at a horrific angle. His limbs go completely limp. Wouter drops the corpse into the pumice gravel.

Roelof scrambles backward on his elbows, trailing red streaks across the pumice. "Mercy—mercy, by the stars—"

Wouter does not even glance at him. He takes one stride forward and kicks Roelof in the ribs. The blow snaps bone with a sickening wet crunch. Roelof launches off the ledge, tumbling forty feet through the rising steam into the lower cavern. His scream ends in a dull, wet thud against the ash floor.

The two younger hunters drop their spears. They turn and scramble down the ramp, shrieking in mindless terror as they vanish into the dark vents.

Silence settles over the flue, thick and poisonous.

Dirk lies twisted at my feet, his blood steaming in the sub-zero air.

My chest heaves, each breath dragging sulfur into my lungs. My fingers are locked so hard around Bram's flint point that my knuckles ache.

Wouter turns toward me.

The void-cat skull sits low over his brow, yellow fangs dripping moisture in the cavern heat. Beneath the hollow eye sockets, his pale amber eyes lock onto mine. He does not breathe hard. Killing two men took less effort from him than snapping dry kindling.

He steps over Dirk's corpse, his massive hide boots crunching bone fragments into the pumice.

He stops an inch from my knees. The raw heat radiating from his chest scalds my face in the sub-zero air.

"Drop the stone," he rasps.

"Get away from me," I whisper. My voice shakes, but the blade stays level with his groin.

Wouter ignores the flint entirely. He bends down, his scarred fingers reaching under my parka. He ignores my bruised ribs and cups the base of the bison horn, feeling the curved bone through the leather wrap. A faint wisp of sweet gray smoke curls between his knuckles.

He grunts.

"Still hot," he says.

"Because I kept it hot, you animal," I spit. "Now back off."

Instead of backing off, his thick arm slides around my waist.

He hefts me off the basalt ledge with one arm, lifting my boots completely off the stone before I can kick. His grip pins my arms to my sides, trapping the ember-horn against my chest. With his free hand, he scoops up the thirty-pound elk haunch by the broken femur.

"Put me down!" I snap, wriggling frantically against his iron hold. "The sleds—the clan—"

"Dead cattle," Wouter says. He pulls me tight against his pelt-wrapped ribs, his jaw brushing my forehead. "They starve in the rime. You stay with me."

"I am the fire-keeper!"

"My fire," he growls.

He turns toward the broken rim of the chimney.

Beyond the basalt ledge, the rock floor drops away into nothingness. The second Star-Wound yawns below us: a colossal chasm of roaring sulfur steam, howling black wind, and endless volcanic fissures plunging into the planetary core. No paths lead down. Only sheer basalt teeth and boiling vents.

Panic grips my throat. "Wouter, no—"

He does not hesitate.

He clamps his forearm tighter across my ribs, cradles the meat against his hip, and jumps straight out into the smoking abyss.

Falling into the dark with an eight-foot butcher, I hold the fire for dear life.