I did not last as long as Shun had. I told myself it was because I was smaller and had to lift my feet higher at each step to push my way through the snow and work against the drag of my coat. Shun took the lead again, when I had slowed beyond her patience, and led us on along a widening vale. I hoped desperately for a shepherd’s cottage or a farmstead. But I saw no chimney smoke rising and heard only birdcalls. Perhaps sheep or cattle pastured here in summer but had been herded home to their pens for the winter.
The shadows of the hills began to creep across us as the sun moved and I realized we’d been traveling east. I tried to decide if that meant we were closer to Withywoods but I was too tired and my hunger had begun to creep back, setting claws in my belly and up my throat. “We should look for some kind of shelter soon,” Shun announced.
I lifted my eyes. I’d been looking only at the backs of her legs. There were no evergreens here, but to the south of us I saw bare-limbed willows along a watercourse. They were gray and twiggy and the snow had penetrated to lie shallowly on the ground beneath them. “Perhaps under the willows?” I said, and “If we find nothing better,” Shun agreed, and we walked on.
It began to get darker, and the clear day that had seemed almost kind now seemed crueler as the cold seemed to descend from the sky. Ahead we could see the brushy line that indicated another watercourse would soon cut our path.
We had good fortune. Evidently that stream ran wild and raging in the spring, for it had cut a deep path through the meadow. Now it ran quietly under the ice, but along the undercut banks, roots of trees trailed down and there were hollows in the earth behind them. They dangled like ropy curtains. We beat the clinging snow off the lower parts of our coats before we pushed the roots aside and forced our way into the earthy darkness.
This is good. Settle here and be safe. I felt Wolf-Father relax inside me.
“I’m still hungry,” I said quietly.
Shun was settling herself. She’d pulled her hood well up over her head and had sat down and pulled her feet up inside her coat. I copied her.
“Go to sleep. At least when you’re asleep you don’t think about food,” she told me.
It seemed good advice and I followed it, resting my forehead on my knees and closing my eyes. I was so tired. I longed to take my boots off. I fantasized about a hot bath and my deep feather bed. Then I slept. I dreamed of my father calling me. Then I dreamed I was home, and meat was roasting on the kitchen spit. I could smell it and I could hear the noises flames make when fat drips into them.
Wake, cub, but make no sound. Untangle yourself. Be ready to run or fight.
I opened my eyes. It was deep night. Through the droop of my hood and the screen of the roots, I saw flames. I blinked and it was a little campfire by the edge of the stream. A spitted bird carcass was propped over the flames. I had never smelled anything so delectable. Then the silhouette of a man passed between me and the flames. A Chalcedean soldier. They’d found us.
I could have slipped quietly from our den and very slowly crept away but instead I put my hand into Shun’s hood and softly patted her lips, and then covered her mouth more fully as she came awake. She struggled for an instant and then abruptly stilled. I made no sound as she pushed her hood back from her face. The firelight reached to paint stripes of shadow on her face as she stared. She leaned over and put her mouth to my ear. “It’s Kerf. The one that said he would help us.”
Caution, Wolf-Father warned.
“I don’t trust him,” I breathed back.
“Nor I. But he has food.”
She tried to be quiet as she pushed her feet out of her coat, but Kerf turned toward us. “I know you’re there. Don’t be scared. I’ve come to take you home. Back to your family. Come out and eat something.”
His voice was deep and gentle, despite his accent. Oh, how I wanted to believe him. But Shun gave me a small push to show that she could go first. She pushed past our root curtain and then stood straight. “I’ve a knife,” she lied. “If you even try to touch me, I’ll kill you.”
“I’m not like that,” he assured her. “I don’t rape women.”
She gave a short, ugly laugh. “You’re saying you’re not a Chalcedean? Or that you’re not a man?” Her words were edged. Oh, I didn’t want her to make him angry. Couldn’t we pretend we trusted him until after we’d eaten that bird?
“I am both,” he admitted. His laugh was uglier, bitter, and old. “Though my father might agree with you. He says I stayed too long with my mother, that I should have been removed from her care when I was seven, like his other sons. But he was away at the wars, and so she kept me until I was fourteen. Neither she nor I was happy to see him come home.” He was quiet for a time. He went down on one knee by the spit and turned it a bit. “For five years, I have shamed and disappointed him. He sent me off with my brother, on this raid, to make a man of me.” Kerf shook his head.