The Frosttaken had them in its —their?— thrall.
That hollow pull surged, sudden and sickening, and then I heard it. Not close. Not yet. But unmistakable.
The sound Drift Wolves made when they scented living prey on still air.
Low. Rhythmic. Almost gentle, if you didn't know it was the sound of death that carried on the wind.
“Wolves,” Larana said flatly, already drawing her blade.
“No.” The word came out before I'd decided to say it. I stopped walking. “Don't.”
“They’ll be waiting for?—”
“For them.” I didn't look at her. I was watching the curve of the town wall to our south, where the sound was coming from. “Not us. They can't smell us yet. We move north now. We'll be downwind.”
“Keep the gate open.” Nicco’s voice was low but steady, saying the words I hadn’t been able to say myself.
The heaviness of the silence meant everyone understood, and no one wanted to.
We moved fast and low, hugging the wall as we cleared the gate. Behind us, the first sounds of the Drift Wolves reaching the townspeople, not violence, not yet, just the soft, investigative sounds of animals that couldn't understand why their prey wasn't running.
I kept my eyes forward.
The snow outside the walls was untouched. Clean, the kind of clean that showed nothing had passed through it in days. Our boots broke the surface in a series of dark holes heading north, and I watched them appear one after another, my hand tight around my staff, trying not to think about what we were leaving behind.
Then the ripple came.
I turned automatically, not even thinking of my actions.
A slow, glassy spread moved outward from the town walls, thin as a skin of new ice, passing under the gate and across the snow in a wide, widening ring.
It reached for us gently, without force or threat, just... awareness.
It knew we were leaving.
I held my breath.
The ripple slowed, stopped, then pulled back.
I waited, my heart thumping in my chest, to see whether the Frosttaken had decided we were worth the cold it would spend to catch us.
“Keep moving,” Nicco said quietly, just behind my shoulder.
I was already doing that. I’d been taking small steps back as the ripple spread.
The sound from inside Skallfen changed as we put distance between ourselves and the walls. The wolves were louder now, and beneath that… nothing.
No screaming, or the sound of voices. Just the wolves, and the silence underneath them, patient and permanent.
“We need to move now,” I said with determination. “Quietly. With as much speed as possible. And we don't stop.”
“We can't just—” one of the soldiers started.
“We can't fight the Drift Wolves and whatever is in that town.” Nicco turned to look at him then, and whatever was on his face was enough to stop any further protests. The soldier closed his mouth.
“If we draw the pack's attention, we're the easier prey. We're warm, we're moving, and we're not…that.” I looked back at the gate where the townspeople remained beyond. Remembering the boy with the carved horse. “They won't feel it.”
I hated that I knew that. I hated that it was a mercy to leave them to the Drift Wolves.
