AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Kabyl smiled but headed for the dog pens. “We are going to need to bring the sled. I can carry one person out, but I can’t carry you as well, Elioth. We are also going to bring Kana so we can show her what peacekeepers do.”
Elioth smiled. “Kana, today you are going to meet the dogsled.”
The dogs were strapped up, food and water for them and the peacekeepers were stowed in the foot of the sled, Kana was bundled into the cargo cradle, and they were off.
Elioth controlled the dogs, and the barking continued for a while before the dogs realized they were at work. Then, it was all business.
They shot across the landscape, and Kabyl’s dragon soared toward their destination. A wolf joined them on their run. Elioth leaned down and murmured, “Peacekeeper Ambermarle.”
She nodded from her cocoon of wraps. Above the mountain, Kabyl was flying a repeating pattern, searching the hillside. The sled moved up the hill, and eventually, the dogs couldn’t pull them higher. They stopped, and Elioth drove in a spike.
Kana got out of the sled and helped to feed the dogs, giving them plenty of scratches as they recovered from their efforts.
The frost dragon slowed her search and landed next to them.
Mander transformed from wolf to human and asked, “Any signs?”
Kabyl looked up the slope. “Too many trees. Every heat sign I saw scampered off, and I am too big to get through the trees.”
Elioth gave her a look and then glanced back at Kana. “Kana, can you find heat signatures?”
Kana blinked. “Um, of course. What am I looking for?”
“Human size but a few degrees colder.”
Kana nodded and looked around. “How big a space?”
“This side of the mountain. He was last seen here.”
Kana sucked in her breath and took a few steps away from her group. She focused on a fan of seeking that swung up the mountain and beyond. There was a lot of interference through the trees, so she found a rock and knelt on it, sending the search through the mountain.
Tiny heat sources, bunnies, voles, those she ignored. The deer walked over the rocks, they didn’t shelter in them, so she was able to look past them and the wolves as well.
A moose was startled by the search, but it was the man-shaped object in a cave, slowly getting colder was her target. “I think I have him.”
Kabyl said, “Describe where he is.”
Kana lifted her head and exhaled through pursed lips, melting a path through the snow and up the mountain toward the cave.
The silent whistle was for show. The ground was melting the snow in a thick path.
Kabyl nodded. “That will work.”
She sprouted wings, her father changed to all fours, and they were off along the path.
Kana slumped, and Elioth was going to help her when she held up her hand. “No. Please. I don’t want to take your heat. If you can start a small fire or just gather some wood, I can take care of this.”
He was efficient. He got a small blaze going, and she took a tiny bit from it to spark her inner furnace again. It was strange to be able to take such a little bit and turn it into something that got her back into fighting form.
“Thank you. So, what do we do now?”
“We wait. Kabyl can bring them back here, and then we will use the dogs to get them to the ranger station.”
“Why not use Kabyl?”
“If he is not hypothermic, she might put him there, and if he only has cold to worry about being heated, you are a better bet than she is.”
“And if he needs medical help?”
