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“Niles!” Chekiss reproaches. “You’re being a nuisance. Just leave him alone.”
“I’m a nuisance?! Who’s the one that was gargling saliva in their sleep? I was so disturbed I almost cuddled up to man eater over there for some sweet relief!” Niles saunters off to pick up his argument with Chekiss.
“Hey, maybe we should tell Niles what Dessin did to Albatross for being annoying, huh?” I nudge Kane in the side with my arm.
He glances up at me after he finishes fitting everything in my bag. A considering smile rises, then falls. “That’s not funny,” he decides.
I start laughing. “Yes. It really is.”
After a while, we pick up our feet and begin our slow journey north. Kane tells the group that our continuous movement is merely to buy us time. Time to plan. Time to have together. But he leans in close, telling me he’s still looking for one Demechnef defect. A man he didn’t see among the bodies we found.
Kane and I lead in the front, taking on the brunt of the crisp blizzard winds, cutting through trees and running past our cheeks like razor blades. It only happens a few times. But I’m sickened by flashbacks. My entire body aching at the memories. The false time lapse. The beatings from Absinthe. The cramped cage digging into my shoulders and neck. I just want to forget. But it’s still fresh.
I spend the rest of the hike drawing the puppet in my mind.
Ruth requests for a few more stops than Kane and I would have taken if we were on our own. Her legs are shorter and unconditioned, but the altitude and frigid winds weigh heavily on us all. I run back to her many times to remove my gloves and place my warm palms on her rosy cheeks. Chekiss has never looked so pleased. He gazes at the highest branches of the trees overhead, watching them as they overlap and clap together. At cracks of lighting and the drumming of thunder, his mouth gapes open in an astounded smile. And for the first time, Niles says nothing. He looks up from his boots sinking into the snow and catches Chekiss admiring the beauty of the wilderness, and he makes no comment to ruin it for him. He smiles to himself and continues to trek on.
Kane points out a cave up ahead, a small dark hole barely visible through the mass of falling snow. He tells us that the storm is strong enough to keep any unwanted visitors away, at least for a little while. But something catches his attention through the heavy fog of falling snow. His feet stop crunching through the ice, his body an impassive stone.
The group follows his iron stance, straining our eyes to see what he sees, blinking away the flurries and melting ice.
DaiSzek snarls at my side, lowering his posture, hovering one paw in the air like he’s a moment away from breaking out into a sprint.
I open my mouth to ask Kane what’s going on but stop myself as he slides his glance to me. A look of darkness, gore, and violence. Not Kane. A quick, effortless switch. His look tells me to stay behind him no matter the cost. I can only nod. Because this isn’t the look of a man who is about to face another small army of men. This is a look of a man who knows he’s outnumbered.
The sound of feet stepping through cracking ice breaks my attention from Dessin, and through that blinding sheet of a blizzard, dark crunching steps get closer. Hunched. Crawling. And it isn’t the sound of their feet…
It’s the sound of paws.
Oh no. Beasts? They may be crouched low like DaiSzek, but their massive forms cannot be overlooked. A few are the size of an elephant, others are leaner, like a panther or jaguar. And as they inch closer, it becomes perfectly clear that we’re surrounded, at least ten of them closing in on our unprotected sides.
But DaiSzek notices this weakness before Dessin, falling back to cover Ruth at the back of the group. A monstrous roar bellows from DaiSzek’s chest, breaking frozen branches off of trees, vibrating the earth under our feet, stretching through heaven and hell.
But they keep advancing, fearless in their attempt to challenge a RottWeilen.
What do we do? They’re going to have a hard time protecting all of us.
Dessin fastens something across his chest, unsheathing a long dagger that could almost pass as a sword. “Here,” he says under his breath. “Take this.” He unhooks a small knife from his chest belt, the gift of weapons Garanthian gave him.
I take the knife and clutch the hilt in my fist. I don’t know how to use it. But at least I have something in case they overwhelm either one of my protectors.
“Everyone stay in this circle and don’t you dare move.”
Chekiss, Niles, Ruth, and I huddle closer together, holding our breath, reaching for the other’s arms, shoulders, or quivering hands as we watch them crouch low. Then, like a firework of fur and fangs, they attack.
DaiSzek is a dragon from hell, leaping high into the air, assaulting in a downward spiral from the sky, crashing down on top of two blond mountain cats. They don’t even have a moment to react before his teeth carve so deeply into their flesh, he’s ripping out full gushing arteries, flinging them to the snow.
Dessin moves nearly as fast as the animals. One the size of God’s fist charges him like a bull, but before it makes contact, Dessin is spinning, dagger lashing out, sinking into the neck of the gray beast. He’s a silent assassin, moving so quietly, so calculated, it seems choreographed. Each lashing of his legs, his dagger, his flips through the blizzard winds are those of an angel of death—a warrior god.
And for a moment, a brief blink of an eye, I’m certain they are more than capable of defending us from the pack. Two against ten. But Dessin’s specialty is with human combat. And I’m reminded that he is still a man, they might not be able to predict each move of an animal when a sharp set of jaws clamps down on Dessin’s arm.
He grunts, sinking his dagger into the neck of the large mountain cat. After it falls into the puddle of its own blood in the snow, Dessin continues to fight as if he hadn’t been maimed at all. Yet, blood rains from his forearm, sprinkling over the white ground with each movement, each gutting. It doesn’t slow him down until another mountain cat jumps on his back, biting into his shoulder.
I nearly fall to my knees as he roars in agony.
And this awful sound is enough to distract DaiSzek, getting him to look over for one fleeting moment, opening up a new weakness for three snapping animals to bombard him, toppling DaiSzek to the ground with the unexpected force.
No! It’s too much. Dessin is bleeding. DaiSzek is outnumbered and distracted by the scent of his family’s blood spraying through the arctic air.
