Misha looked up from the maps spread out on his desk when the door of his office opened without a warning knock. "Good afternoon, George," he said, and immediately began assessing the jackal-man's mood. What he saw in his boss's body language suggested it wasn't good. "Why do I have the feeling this isn't a social call?"
George glanced back to make sure no others were in earshot, and then shut the door behind him. "Why did you agree to let Snow and Marcus go along to Ice Lake?" he asked without preamble. "The less attention we draw to that area, the better."
The question was not unexpected, and Misha was ready for it. "I didn't have much choice where Drift was concerned. Raven showed up while Laura, Finbar, and I were still planning the mission, and said that the mission would fail if I didn't send him along. As usual, she didn't say why. Laura has very specific orders not to expose Redoubt's location in any way, shape, or form. And, if worse comes to worst, I do trust Drift to keep his mouth shut."
George nodded slowly, not liking it but acknowledging the impossibility of saying no in that situation. "What the Ice Queen wants, she gets, and she usually has a very good reason. And Marcus?"
This time Misha didn't have as quick and ready an answer. After taking a few moments to decide how to phrase his reply, he said, "Xavier Marcus is problematic as a personality, but I wanted his weather talent along both for prediction and for power. This late in the season, the weather up there can turn foul in a heartbeat and I don't want them getting surprised by a sudden storm. He's also along as insurance: I've encountered Marked of Akkala performing a Task before, and they seem to draw complications like flies to honey. Since snow, cold, and the weather are the big enemy up there, I wanted a mage along who is good at dealing with them. Admittedly, Marcus would not have been my first choice if there were any others of similar training and availability for assignment, but there aren't, so I had to make do. If necessary, I can ask the Duke to swear him to secrecy. Xavier Marcus may be prickly about his family stature, but I know he's a man of his word when it's given."
George pondered that for several long moments and finally nodded. "All right," he said, "but when they come back, I want it made absolutely certain that they either know nothing about Redoubt or that they are sworn to secrecy about it before they leave Long House. They are not to leave until one or the other happens. We did not spend all that time and effort building and concealing the place just to risk some civilian telling everyone about it."
"Agreed," Misha replied. "Now, if you have a moment, I'd like to get your opinion on the next month's scouting patrols..."
"Drift?"
Xavier Marcus, after considerable internal debate, had reached a conclusion. He had decided that the most difficult part of their journey to this gods-forsaken valley in the middle of nowhere had not been surviving the avalanche, or accepting that Drift and he were stuck apart from the group with only the witless beast that had gotten them into trouble in the first place for further company and aid.
"Drift?"
Nor had it been crossing the three waterfall-fed streams that had so far barred their path to Ice Lake. It hadn't even been accepting his injuries. Yes, his head still hurt and his ribs still ached, and his balance was still suspect at best, but his condition was improving. Slowly. No, the most difficult challenge he had yet faced on this trip was something that by all rights should have been simple...
Getting Drift to stop.
"Drift!"
"What?" Drift called back, without slowing. He hadn't slowed down since they'd dug the Longs' supply drop out of the snow, slogging implacably through the thigh-deep snow. Even knowing how obsessively Drift took his morning runs, Xavier was still impressed by his endurance. Still, even that had to have limits...
"I think you should stop and rest for the evening. It's nearly dark."
"I'm not tired."
Xavier didn't need to see his friend's face to recognize the stubborn set of his jaw. As admirable as the leopard found it in some circumstances, at times like this, he found it the samoyed's most annoying flaw. Still, it could be managed. "Well then have pity on those of us with smaller bladders and emptier stomachs," he retorted. Rather more petulantly than he had intended, he added, "Also, stop making me yell to get you to listen to me. It hurts. A lot."
This finally got Drift to slow down and angle toward the trees, which had started to close in from the sides as they got closer to Ice Lake. "Sorry," he said once they'd finally reached the cover of the forest's edge. "I just want to get back to the Longs as soon as possible. I don't like being nearly alone in unfamiliar territory."
"You and me both," Xavier agreed, borrowing Drift's battlestaff for a prop so he could walk to the cover of a nearby bush without falling over from dizziness or having to ask for help. "I just want to go home, settle down in front of a warm fire with some incense laid on, savor a nice glass of Pyralian wine, and listen to Tessa play something nice and relaxing on her harp."
"Flaunt your wealth much?" he heard Drift mutter, but let it slide. He was a nobleman: he had no need to justify himself to a lower class member, however likeable.
After a few minutes of privacy, he returned to find Drift had untied himself from the travois and was sharing with Cloud Walker some of the strange, fatty sausages that the Longs had tossed down to them. Xavier exchanged Drift's battlestaff for one of the sausages and settled down on the travois blanket with a pained sigh, his ribs protesting every movement he made. "So," he said in a gambit to draw his attention away from how minimal in taste the provided food was. "How did you get roped into this?"
"It's my first Task of Akkala," Drift replied simply. "Apparently, I've been loaned out to Artela to make sure this mission succeeds."
Xavier twitched. "Wonderful," he said, ears half-flattening in sarcasm. "I wish someone had warned me that the gods had taken interest in this: I would have come prepared for things to go drastically awry."
"If you hadn't been 'too busy' to attend the briefing at Long House, you would have known that," Drift replied levelly.
Xavier took off his spare set of spectacles and pinched the bridge of his muzzle between thumb and forefinger. Yes, that snub had been a mistake, he admitted, one he should have known better than to commit. And speaking of mistakes... He replaced his spectacles and took a deep breath to wash the disrespectful tone out of his voice before the gods decided to take offense. "All right. So this isn't the colossal waste of my talents that I thought it was. If it's that important to get a pack of dire wolves out here, then I'd better see what I can do to improve our chances." Xavier always carried a set of eight metal rods hooked on his belt, each about a finger's width and about six inches long. He had lost two during the avalanche, but he slid the other six from their belt loops and examined them with his magesight. "Good," he said finally. "It's a bit closer than I'd like, but they still have enough of a charge for what I have in mind."
Drift eyed the leopard askance. "It always worries me when you say things like that." Cloud Walker, too, looked slightly alarmed.
Xavier ignored them both. After taking a moment to weave a spell around the metal rods, he held them out to Drift. "Here," he said, "take these and place them end-up in the snow, equally spaced around the camp. We'll have no need to worry about intruders tonight: any who try will get a most unpleasant surprise. Cloud Walker, I want you to dig a pit in the snow for a fire. Do you understand me? We're not going a second night without one."
Cloud Walker sat down where he was and stared back at the leopard without moving.
Xavier waited a few moments, returning the stare, and then scoffed. "Wonderful. He doesn't understand a word, does he, Drift?"
"Yes, he does," Drift replied as he stooped to place the second lightning rod, "but he's not going to do what you say. If I understand him right, he's convinced there's something out in the woods and we'd be better off not attracting its attention."
"Leave that to my wards," Xavier argued, and his face twisted into a pained grimace when he had to pause for a bout of coughing. When he finally finished, he spoke fast and in short breaths, trying to reduce the strain on his ribs. "We need a fire. You're hurt, I'm hurt, I still can't see much beyond ten feet, I'm freezing cold, there's a storm coming," he jabbed a finger toward a bank of lowering clouds just starting to wisp their way around the mountains to the west, "and I want warmth that doesn't smell of dog. I swear before Kammoloth himself that if I wake up one more time with that wolf lying on me, I'm going to shock him into next—"
Drift finally lost his patience with Xavier's complaints: Xavier, at least, had not dragged a travois and load through thigh-deep snow all day with a shoulder out of joint, nor been up all the previous night cutting the materials for said travois out of the trees with just a dagger and some rope. "What is the matter with you, Xavier? You've been bad-tempered and snarly ever since—"
"What's so hard to understand?" Xavier winced, his ribs protesting his raised voice, but he continued anyway. "I've been drafted, dragged out to the back end of nowhere to be a glorified weather vane, avalanched off a cliff—"
"You've been bad-tempered and snarly ever since your last visit home. Why?"
"That's none of your damned business," Xavier snapped. "Finish placing those wards already. It's getting late."
"No. I'm not placing even one more until you tell me what's going on."
"Fine. Get eaten!"
"Fine! I think I will!
"Fine!"
"Fine!!"
Cloud Walker eyed the quarreling Keepers as if they were each slightly mad, then heaved a sigh and got to his feet. Jerking the metal rods from Drift's hands with his teeth, he placed each in the snow precisely as Xavier has instructed. Then the dire wolf walked over to Xavier, knocked him down with a forepaw swat, and lay down across his waist. When Xavier raised a hand to shock him, he growled once and showed teeth, and then laid his shaggy head back down when the leopard thought better of it.
"Huh," Drift said, and Xavier scowled at him for not even trying to keep the amusement out of his voice. "I guess he's smarter than you thought."
"Oh, be quiet," Xavier retorted, and got growled at again when he tried (without success) to push Cloud Walker off.
"The only question that remains, then," Drift continued, "is 'are you smarter than he thinks you are?'"
"Cute, Drift. Very cute."
"Finally." Laura breathed a sigh of relief as the valley's end came in sight. The trail widened slightly as another mountain ridge loomed up on their right, but it didn't cut all the way across and the cliff to their left had been petering out all day. The Longs had finally reached the lowlands around Ice Lake and were now, by Laura's best estimation, less than a day from Drift and his crew. Slowing to a stop, she peered into the woods to their left and then up at the mountains to the west, behind which a wall of dark gray clouds was building, and the wolves and the rest of the scouts slowly gathered around her. "All right, people. We have an hour or two before those storm clouds arrive. Let's set up camp here for the night." She pointed to where a large bank of snow had drifted, curling off the lee side of the ridge. "We'll dig caves there for shelter. Watch shifts are 1 hour each. I want us well-rested in case we have to push through a fresh layer of deep snow tomorrow morning."
While the dire wolves fanned out into the forest to scout the area, the Longs spread out along the trail and started to settle in. Padraic walked back and forth a few times along the curling drift before deciding on just the right spot to start digging. A few minutes work resulted in a small cave dug into the snow, with a small entrance just large enough for the rabbit morph to fit through. After a foot or two of tunnel, though, he expanded it until it could easily hold two people. That done, he then carefully tunneled two small air vents, one at the top and another just to the left of the opening so he could plug the tunnel against wind without sacrificing airflow.
By the time Padraic got his shelter set up to his liking, Ralls and Allart had finished their own shelters and had started gathering wood for a cooking fire. Merideth, his ursine frame needing even less shelter from cold than the wolves, had already cleared a patch of bare, frozen ground in a sheltered nook, and now he and Arla were stripping twigs and bark from the wood Allart was bringing in, piling them up for tinder and kindling. He was about to join them when Laura called him away.
"Here, help me with this, would you?" she asked, struggling to lower a large, heavy bundle on a rope hanging from a tree with the Long Scout insignia painted in black resin on its bark. "Finbar left us all dinner, and I don't want to drop it."
"So what did the ferret leave us?" Padraic asked as he held up his arms to catch the lowering bundle, and then 'oof'ed under the weight. He opened it while Laura climbed down and rocked his ears, impressed. "Wow. Finbar's team certainly didn't skimp on this, did they? Any bets on who made the kills on the venison?"
Laura smirked at him as she started unpacking the bundle, setting aside a pair of extra blankets and a roll of bandage cloth for Ralls. "No more bets until you pay Merideth and Allart what you lost to them betting that Snow wouldn't reach the valley mouth today," she said. "You should know better: even I've heard of his morning runs. Also..." She leaned in close, dropping her voice so it wouldn't carry over the rising breeze. "No more jokes about those three until we're sure they're safe. Arla is still pretty shaken up about the avalanche. I didn't stop you or the others before because I felt it would be a good morale boost, but it's time to rein it in."
Padraic nodded. "Yes, ma'am. I didn't realize she was taking it so hard. If you don't need any more help sorting out that supply cache, I'll let the others know to ease off, too."
"Thank you, Padraic."
Dinner was excellent. For the Longs, venison jerky and dried vegetables cooked into a stew, hot tea sweetened with honey from a small jar hidden in the center of the bundle to keep it from freezing, and a sweet bread baked thin and flat and stuffed with cranberries and chopped walnuts. For the wolves, enough dried venison for all and an assortment of deer bones to chew afterward. All of this was eaten slowly, savored while they huddled around the fire. The clouds they had seen building behind the mountains swooped down to bring biting wind and fresh snow, but the ridge and the snow drift where they had made their shelters shielded them from a majority of both and they were able to eat in peace. There was little conversation but what there was centered on trying to cheer up the uncharacteristically quiet Arla.
It didn't seem to help much. Finally, Padraic couldn't take it anymore and asked her outright what was wrong. She replied with a quiet voice, but what she said was a bombshell.
Arla didn't say anything for a few moments, just setting her food aside and folding her hands in front of her. "After this mission, I'm retiring from the Longs."
"What?" Laura asked as exclamations of surprise and dismay rippled around the circle of firelight. "Why?"
The collie woman dipped her ears in a shy, slightly embarrassed smile. "Skylos and I want to have children, and I've come to realize that I can't go risking myself like this anymore. Not if I want to be a mother." Looking around at her fellow Longs, she dipped her ears further. "I'm sorry... I've been trying to work up the nerve to tell you all for nearly a week now." Stunned silence fell on the camp for a few long moments, broken only by the popping of the fire, and then the congratulations and the obligatory advice began pouring in.
Padraic didn't pay attention to much of it. He didn't understand why somebody would give up a great job like this. Stay at home and take care of a squalling baby instead of going on an everlasting hunt? That sounded like no fun at all. Merideth had kids and he didn't stay home. In fact, he often said it was good to get away. But there the bear sat, agreeing with the rest of them that going on training duty (boring) or switching to desk work (even worse!) would be a good choice. He supposed it was better than leaving the Longs entirely, but here was no way he would be giving this up.
Still, if it's what Arla wanted, he was okay with it. Seeing that the other Longs were more enthusiastic, although each was still sad to see her go, he decided to claim weariness and get some early sack time before his turn on watch later that night. Making his excuses and pausing to wish Arla well, he climbed through the entrance to his snow cave and started laying out his bedroll. He was about to close up the entrance when one of the younger dire wolves stuck its nose in, sniffed once, and then wriggled past him into the shelter. It was the yearling Swift Shadow, her slim adolescent build just barely small enough to squeeze through without collapsing the entrance. "Hey! This isn't an inn! Go get your own place!" he protested, but the she-wolf had settled in already and just gazed at him with soft, golden eyes. He was suddenly aware of the fact that he was now sharing his little cave with over a hundred pounds of fur, which would not such a bad thing on a night that promised to be as bitterly cold night as this one. "All right," he said finally, wrapping himself in his blanket and snuggling up against her. "But you'd better not snore."
Nearby, Laura watched her team come to terms with Arla's plans to retire and smiled, but her satisfaction was mixed with concern. She was worried about Drift, Xavier, and Cloud Walker, and the warning the young wolf had given. If Arla's translation was true, those three were in serious danger. She prayed that the Longs would get to them before trouble did.
Hang on, you three. Help is coming.
"Okay, Drift said, pausing his pacing around the campsite, "that's impressive." The storm-brought wind and snow swept down from the mountains around them... and parted around Xavier's wards like... well, like magic. The metal rods marked the base of a protective bubble, a perfect hemisphere of absolute calm beyond which the trees swayed and the snow swirled, but within which not even a hint of a breeze stirred. Even Cloud Walker lifted his head to look, wagging his tail in hearty approval.
Tired as he was from the long day of travel, lying on the ground half-buried under blankets and a dire wolf for warmth, Xavier still had the energy to sound smug. "I tethered a miniature rainstorm to you and Wolfram," he said, pausing to cough and to pull his blanket tighter around him, "and you think a little wind is beyond me? You damn me with faint praise."
"I praise you with faint damns," Drift countered, stretching his right hand out beyond the ward's limits to marvel at the sharp line between where the wind whipped his fur and where the calm laid it flat, pulling his hand back and then stretching it out again just to marvel at it. "As in 'that's damn impressive'."
Mollified by the compliment, Xavier changed tacks. "You should stop pacing and get some sleep, Drift. You look terrible."
"I feel terrible, Xavier. My shoulder hurts so much that it's pace or scream, and I prefer to pace."
"You're making me dizzy."
"Then stop watching. What would your girlfriend think if she heard you'd been staring at my butt all day?"
The cat didn't miss a beat. "My girlfriend would laugh and ask if the view got monotonous. Your girlfriend, on the other hand, would sit down, smile, and—"
"And want to hear all the details," Drift finished for him. "I know. Though it's fiancée, not girlfriend."
"Of course. My mistake."
Something in the tone of Xavier's voice made the samoyed pause. It almost sounded like... disapproval. But hadn't he been pleased back at the Harvest Festival? Before Drift could comment on it, though, Xavier's wands sparked to life with a crackling hum. "What—"
"Drift! Get back!" Xavier yelled, but it was already too late. The wards fired, linking together with a chain of lightning before lashing out. Every hair on Drift's body stood out straight as the ward nearest him fired almost directly upward. The bolt smashed into a falling tree limb the size of the taur's upper bicep, shattering it into pieces before it could breach the ward circle. It then arced away to blow another limb off a nearby pine tree before blasting away an inch-wide strip of bark all the way back down to the ground.
Blinded and deafened, his nose full of the sharp reek of ozone and the smell of smoldering pine pitch, Drift staggered back from the wards and sat down with a thump until his head cleared. Over the ringing in his ears, he could dimly hear Xavier asking him if he was all right. Rubbing at his eyes with the back of his wrist, he replied, "Congratulations, Xavier. Those evil trees will never threaten anyone again."
The leopard snorted and rolled his eyes. "You're fine."
Unfortunately, that was the last of the humor for the night as they all settled down as best they could. Xavier finally yanked his legs out from under Cloud Walker and spent the night with his back against the young wolf, his shivering and coughing getting worse as the night progressed. Drift spent the night pacing and occasionally chewing on a thin tree branch, which seemed to help a little. Maybe. Of the three of them, only Cloud Walker managed any meaningful sleep, half-curled around Xavier to keep him as warm as possible, and even he was often jarred awake by the leopard's coughing fits. In short, it was a very long and uncomfortable night.
The next day dawned cold and clear, and this time Drift didn't waste time watching the sun come up. The moment he thought it light enough to see, he bundled Xavier onto the travois, where the leopard promptly curled up and tried to go back to sleep. Next, the samoyed taur got Cloud Walker to help him tie the rope harness in place, the wolf's teeth standing in for his useless left arm. All he had to do was follow the river upstream to the lake until the Longs found them. He was sure of it. "All right, Walker," he said once they were finally ready to go. Xavier was in no shape for another night like the last, Drift thought grimly, so anything in his way was just going to have to be out of luck. "Come on, Walker," he said as he set out for the last time, tousling the wolf's headfur. "We're getting out of here."
With the rocky canyon floor giving way to smoother soil, they couldn't avoid the forest any longer. It closed in on both sides, bringing with it dense underbrush that Cloud Walker tried to scout for paths. Drift, however, had been awake for two days straight and was working on his third, and he was in no mood to wait. He plowed through the brush as inexorably as he had pushed through the snow the day before, bulling his own path and snapping off or stomping down anything he didn't absolutely need to go around. It actually brought a small smile to his face; the driving power of the taur form. Sure, the branches tore up his clothes and tugged at his fur, but they were small annoyances compared to what he had endured already and were easily ignored. Drift's friends were his family. He would not lose his family again, whatever the cost.
By the time an hour had passed according to his internal clock, he had decided that, however many worried glances Cloud Walker sent his way, the noise his passage made was a good thing. The forest was quiet except for the cracking and crunching he caused, which suggested to him that any forest animals had taken warning and cleared out of the way. This suited him just fine. If he was lucky, the noise might even draw the Longs if they were—
Despite his confident thoughts, Drift was exhausted. That's why it took him just a moment too long to recognize the red-flagged danger signals in what he had just stumbled upon: a half-eaten moose carcass in an area of already-trampled-down brush, freshly killed and lightly covered in snow. His gut tightened in alarm, but it wasn't until Cloud Walker's shrill yelp of terror and a crash in the brush that the answer clicked in his mind. By then it was too late. A living mountain of shaggy gray fur and long black claws slammed into him from behind and to the right, smashing the canine down in the snow. He heard Xavier yell in pain when the travois flipped, and then Drift's world exploded into agony as his weight and the bear's landed squarely on his bad shoulder.
For a moment, all he could do was try desperately not to pass out. Clawed blows rained down on him like an unrelenting summer hailstorm, and his throat went instantly raw from screaming. Thick fur was only a marginal defense against strength like that, and putting his one good arm up to shield his head got his forearm bitten down to the bone. Dimly, Drift could feel Xavier still struggling to get free of the overturned travois through the ropes tangled around his back legs, and that was enough to jar him out of his shock. If the bear killed him, it would go after Xavier next... and he would not allow that. He would not let anyone take his family away again. Not ever.
If your teeth are in my arm, you ugly bastard, then your paws aren't in a spot to block this! The insight burst upon him in a flash of icy fury and, by the time it was finished, Drift's fangs were slashing across the bear's nose. The bear bawled and let go, wheeling to swat at Cloud Walker directly behind it. At the same time as Drift had bloodied its face, the young dire wolf had leaped in and bitten it hard on the flank. He now backed hastily away, turning to run while the bear gave chase.
Drift finally got a good look at his attacker. "Where in the hells does a bear get bone armor?!" he protested to the world at large. Ridges and plates of bone protruded through the fur on the bear's face, shoulders, flanks, and spine, formidable natural armor on a beast that outmassed Drift and was nearly double Cloud Walker's size in all dimensions. Never mind where it got it, he thought, snatching for his dagger, just kill it!
Ignoring the blood running freely down his arm Drift sawed frantically at the rope tying him to the travois. There was no time to undo the knots, and he swore afresh over not having had Xavier resharpen the blade after he'd used it to cut the limbs for the travois. It was badly dulled, and he wasted precious seconds gouging it through the rope while Cloud Walker desperately dodged and weaved around the infuriated bear. The moment the rope parted enough for him to get loose, he flung the dagger at the bear to get its attention away from the overmatched Cloud Walker, and then grabbed for Whirlwind. The dagger bounced ineffectively off a bony plate, but it distracted the bear long enough for the young wolf to dodge into a clump of trees too closely spaced for the bear to easily follow.
"Hey, ugly!" Drift rolled to his feet and broke out in a tooth-baring grin as his battlestaff snapped into form. Biting down on the center, he twisted it to deploy the javelin spikes from either end and raised it like a spear aimed directly at the beast's heart. "I'm not through with you yet!" He charged.
The bear turned to face the new threat, but the taur was faster. Sheering away to the right to counter the bear's turn, he stabbed Whirlwind into its side. "Bite me, will you?" he snarled. "I've got sharper teeth!"
The samoyed may have had 'sharper teeth', but the bear had better armor. The javelin point skipped off a broad rib and gouged a long, bloody furrow down the bear's side rather than spearing the beast's heart as intended. Roaring in pain, the bear whirled, and Whirlwind tangled in its shaggy fur. His hand slick with his own blood, Drift lost his grip as he galloped past, and the bear twisted to pull the staff loose with its jaws and trample it into the snow.
Drift nearly panicked, but immediately shoved the loss out of his mind. Work now, panic later! Turning just a bit further, he skidded to a stop, braced, and lashed out backward with both hind feet. The impact of both on its jaw rocked the bear back on its heels. It sat heavily, shaking its head back and forth and squalling unhappily.
Cloud Walker, seizing the opportunity, leaped in to try another bite at its flanks. He barely avoided having his skull crushed by a backhand swat and leaped out again without biting, tail tucked and wary. Drift took advantage of the respite to turn and face the recovering bear. Hoping to keep its attention on him and not on Cloud Walker or Xavier under the travois, he beckoned it with both hands and taunted, "Come on, you fat fleabag! I haven't got all day!"
The bear finally shook off the double back kick and rose onto its hind legs, winding up to slap Drift's head from his shoulders. The taur reared up to match it. "I can do that too, you ugly bastard," he snarled, trying to put every ounce of intimidation into it as he could. He was out of options, and if he couldn't get it to run... Actually taller than the beast when reared up full, he lunged forward, forefeet lashing out at the bear's plated chest, his good arm up to ward against the bear's teeth. If he could just push it back enough to grab Whirlwind—
The moment his forepaws made contact, Drift felt his fur rise on end. Not again! He shut his eyes and flattened his ears just before the flash and concussion hit. It wasn't the most powerful bolt Xavier had ever conjured, but it was enough. Lancing into the bear's right hip, it collapsed both back legs. The beast toppled forward with a bellow of pain and fear... right onto Drift's injured arm. Not onto the one that it had bitten, but onto the one in a sling against his belly, painfully dislocated at the shoulder for nearly three days. Drift's vision went black-rimmed with agony and the last vestiges of his control shattered like a thin sheet of ice dropped on a cold stone floor. Fear, frustration, exhaustion, and pain all swirled together in an instant and exploded into a firestorm of rage.
Drift's savage snarl widened Xavier's eyes, flattened Cloud Walker's ears back, and sent the bear scrambling into retreat on still-numbed legs, for it made a promise every creature there could understand: brutal, bloody, implacable death. With a furious roar, Drift lunged forward to close the distance and hammered the side of the beast's muzzle with fist and elbow in a single rapid motion. Broken teeth gouged furrows in his flesh, but Drift was beyond caring. Uncoiling from the waist, he whipped his fist back through the bear's muzzle from the other side, and more teeth flew. The beast reeled, staggered into a turn, and tried to flee.
Before it had taken three steps, Drift's arm snaked around its neck, choking and hauling upward. "That hurt, you son of a bitch!" The bear tried to twist out of the taur's grip, but this was Drift's smithing arm, buttressed by rage and taurform power and as much leverage as he could muster. "Break!" he growled through gritted teeth, feet working fast to keep up with the bear's thrashing and flailing. "BREAK, DAMN YOU!!"
It wasn't enough. If he'd had both arms to use, or even one that wasn't torn and bloodied, it might have worked. Instead, he was outmatched: the bear started to break loose. Its neck bones had popped, but they hadn't cracked, and blood loss was starting to weaken Drift's grip.
He found a better one with his teeth... and then pulled.
Blood splashed hot crimson on his muzzle and chest when he ripped its throat open. The bear screamed and writhed out of his chokehold, bolting for the trees, but it didn't get far. With a drunken stagger, its hind legs buckled again and it collapsed into the reddening snow, its forelegs feebly twitching as if still trying to crawl away.
Spitting out the ragged, dripping chunk of flesh and fur and fat, Drift wiped his muzzle with his already bloodied arm and snatched a quick moment to catch his breath. "Oh, no... you don't get away," he panted, and went hunting for his staff. Where had he dropped it? Oh, there it was. When he found it, he spun it once to clear it of snow, and Whirlwind's pierced ends sang for him, a mournful death-song. He relished it. "You don't get away," he repeated and advanced on his prey with a snarl. "You're mine."
The bear's skull made a brutal crunch when he speared Whirlwind through it. Repeatedly. So did its ribs, shoulder, forelegs, and neck. A red haze fell on his sight, and he stabbed... and stabbed... and ripped... and tore...
Someone was yelling at him, and he heard something crashing in the underbrush. Multiple things. He didn't care. Let them come. Once he finished off the bear, he'd kill them, too. Something grabbed at his arm, and he nearly took its head off with a backhand swing. Teeth bared, he followed up instinctively with a foreleg swipe, and then brought his arm up to spear—
"Drift!"
Arla stood before him, hands raised, blocking a strike that would have pinned the rabbit Padraic to the ground. "Drift!" she said. "It's okay! It's over!"
For a moment, the red haze persisted. He almost swung on her. But then the moment passed. She gently touched his nose, and the contact grounded him in reality again. The Longs had arrived, as had the wolves, and he felt the shock behind every staring eye. "I..." The air around him felt cold again and he shivered... and then he saw the blood. His right arm dripped with it, and Whirlwind shone red to the grips. The spear-staff slipped from suddenly nerveless fingers, and his legs went wobbly and uncertain. "I think I need to sit down," he said, and landed with a thump as his strength left him.
It wasn't just his arm that was bloody. His entire front was splattered with blood and gore and the bear, or what was left of it, stained the snow red for at least an arm's length in every direction. His hands started shaking as the enormity of it sank in. He couldn't have done that in just three strikes. How long had he...?
"Damn, Drift," Padraic said as he picked himself up off the ground, and his voice carried a note of admiration that made the samoyed's stomachs roll. "When you kill something, you don't mess around!"
Drift shut his eyes and tried not to throw up. He put his hand to his nose to try to block out the coppery smell all around, a futile gesture that heaved his stomach and brought bile to his throat. Oh, Eli...
Her eyes soft with compassion, Arla took his hand and lowered it. "Let's get you cleaned up," she said and beckoned him away for the bear's nearly obliterated carcass. Supporting him while he got back to his feet, she led him away to clearer air and scooped up some clean white snow. Gently scrubbing at his face and hands, she urged with a glance for Padraic to help him out of his bloodied, shredded vest.
The rabbit carefully lifted Drift's dislocated arm out of its makeshift sling, and the pain of that motion was like a bucket of water in the samoyed's face. Drift gasped. "Xavier— is he all right? He's—"
"Ralls is seeing to him."
"He hit his head and he's not seeing right and I think he's sick and—"
Arla cupped the chin of the hysterical samoyed and gently drew it down to get his attention back on her. "Drift, it's okay. We'll take care of him. Just relax."
"But I have to-AAARRRGH!!" Drift took a step forward just as Padraic twist-and-pulled his arm back into socket. Pain flashed through him like Xavier's lightning, sharp as a knife for a moment but fading quickly into a numb, residual ache. Darkness closed in around him, tried to pull him under, but he fought it back. He had to see... "Have to see," he whispered to himself. Ignoring their protests, he pulled free of Padraic and Arla, shouldered them aside, and staggered over to Ralls. The medic had Xavier's head in his lap, carefully dabbing a salve on the cut across his patient's scalp.
Xavier opened his eyes and smiled. "Good job with the bear," he wheezed.
Drift managed a weak wag of relief, exhaustion falling on him like a leaden cloak. "Thanks." His vision swam, and he had to put extra effort into his words to keep them intelligible. "Ni... nice leg shot."
True to form, Xavier turned grumpy again. The leopard's ears flattened and he scowled. "I was aiming for his head," he groused.
Drift's mouth twitched in a hint of a smile, now certain that his friend would be okay. "Make sure they're nice to Walker," he said. "We'd have been dead without him." Concentrating harder than he ever had in his life, he shifted back to his two-legged form, a moment of blissful relief after so long trapped on four feet. The tradeoff in balance was worth it, he decided. As the darkness closed in again, he politely added, "Don't let them take apart the travois. They're going to need it..."
Then the ground rushed up to meet him and he knew no more.
Misha frowned at Laura over his desk at Long House. Her group had arrived back at Metamor nearly a week overdue, and now she brought him this news on top of it. "You took them to Redoubt, in spite of very specific orders not to do so," he said, encapsulating in one sentence what she had just told him.
The woman didn't flinch, sitting at attention across from him and replying in her most formal debriefing voice. "I didn't believe that Lord Marcus would have survived a direct return to Metamor, sir. Between the concussion, the broken ribs, and the developing pneumonia, he desperately needed medical care of a higher level than we'd have been able to provide in the field. For that matter, I wasn't sure that Master Snow would have made it, either... He was absolutely exhausted and I wasn't sure if Lord Marcus' illness was catching. They were both unconscious when they arrived, and I had them kept in one of the small rooms near the entrance to maintain the illusion that they were in an emergency supply cache and shelter."
Misha couldn't quite manage to restrain a wry twitch of his mouth at her choice of phrase. "Which they were..."
"Which they were," she agreed, acknowledging the humor. "I also made sure that, once they'd recovered, they were led out blindfolded and that our tracks and scent trail were erased before they were allowed to take their blindfolds off. I sincerely doubt that they gained any clue of Redoubt's true size and scope."
"Good. That fortress is Metamor's ultimate fallback position, and it absolutely, categorically, must remain secret."
"I already swore them to secrecy, sir, though they think it's for the pack's sake."
"It is," Misha replied. "Two birds, one stone. They get a place to rebuild their numbers, away from hunters and away from Nasoj's forces pressing them into war, and we get an extra layer of protection and misdirection for Redoubt. I'll make sure to press home that oath of secrecy on Snow and Marcus myself."
"The dire wolves know about Redoubt."
"What?"
"Cloud Walker—" She paused and corrected herself. "Excuse me. Long Walker refused to leave their sides until he was certain they were all right, and he figured it out pretty quickly. Arla said he could smell it on a draft of high mountain wind that had coursed down from the lookout tower."
Misha put his thumb and forefingers to his temple and forehead, trying to ward off the headache forming there. "Wonderful. And what did Crooked Jaw think of that when he heard?" He knew without question that the pack leader would hear of it. It was their way.
"He understood the reasoning, and promised to keep it secret and hidden."
The fox's remaining ear pricked in momentary surprise. "Well... that is a bit of good news. After all the news so far, I'd almost expected that they'd want to move in, or at least be annoyed at not being told."
"Arla said his exact reply was 'You protect your pack with a second den. We understand this. Not so different, you and us.'"
"Huh," Misha said, leaning back in his chair for the first time. "Philosophy from a dire wolf. Who would have thought it? What else did he have to say?"
For the first time in the debriefing, Laura met his eyes directly, and her gaze was troubled. "He said 'keep close watch on your Snow Storm.' He said he smelled trouble brewing. I've noticed it, too. There's something... unsettled about him. Several times during our trip he woke himself with nightmares."
"After an encounter with a cave bear and a berserker episode? That wouldn't surprise me at—"
Laura shook her head. "Not just after, Misha. The night before, too, though he tried to pass it off as rolling onto a sharp rock in his sleep. Xavier, I have no worries about now that he's under a professional healer's care, but Drift? He worries me."
Misha leaned forward again and propped his fist against his chin. "He worries me, too. I know the family he's from, and they did not bend well under stress."
"'Bend well', sir?" Laura asked, puzzled by the strange turn of phrase.
"'A willow survives storms that an oak does not'," Misha quoted, his eyes ranging back through memory to some of the storms in his own life. "Drift tends to put his head down and power his way through troubles. It's an attitude that has taken him far, but it can leave him brittle when the stress becomes too much." He paused for a few moments to bring himself back into the present. "Send him in when you leave, please. I'll have a talk with him, and ask him to spend some time with Father Hough as well." He knew that last one was a longshot, but Madog had said that Drift had made his peace with the priest...
"Yes, sir," Laura said, straightening to attention once more at the hint of a dismissal. "Will there be anything else?"
"One thing: do not mention the nightmares to anyone, nor what the dire wolves said about Drift. It's personal, and we'll keep it personal. That goes for Arla and anyone else who overheard, too."
"Yes, sir."
"All right. You are dismissed."
Somewhere far away, Agemnos leaned back from his scrying pool and smiled. Here was the lever for which he'd been looking. Resting a favoring hand on the head of the one who had brought him this news, he said, "Well done, dear Thestilus. Your ambition serves you well. I know just the person to capitalize on this."
"And Alexastra?" the imp asked.
The Lord of Avarice stroked his silver-bearded chin for a moment, silently pondering. "Tell her nothing," he said finally, his voice carefully pitched to convey a tone of concern and pity. "She has been a useful tool to me: let her have her moment in the sun. Tell Linafex that I have deemed his cause worthy of my personal attention and that he is to wait patiently for my direct assent and instruction before making his move, on pain of forfeiture of contract and exposure to the Lothanasa herself."
"Yes, my lord. It will be as you say."
Agemnos smiled. "Of course it will."