Snow-Walker

Four

The fen and fell his fastness was,

the marsh his haunt.

The forests were endless.

Ranks of motionless trees stood weighted with snow, deep in unprinted drifts. Far above, the pale sky was streaked with cloud, unmoving, as if claws had scored it.

Crouched in a snow hole, the rune creature watched with its pale eyes. It watched a small, white thing with a scampering run. The creature had no name for it. Stiff with hunger, it let the nervous, furred thing run nearer and pause.

The stoat lifted its head and blinked. It turned, eyes alert, but before it could even tense, the claws struck, killing it without a sound. Blood splashed onto the snow, sinking in, melting.

The creature ate greedily. Warmth moved in its throat; a welcome fullness flushed momentarily inside it. When it moved away, it left nothing but small bones and the stained, trampled snow.

Now it slid and slithered downhill, into a small valley where a stream ran deep under the ice. Smashing through the thick, bubbled lid, the creature bent and drank, crystals of ice forming instantly on its lips, thin icicles that snapped as it raised itself and roared. It tore berries from bushes, twigs and needles from pines, chewing them and spitting them out. Thought stirred in it; it crouched and scrabbled at the roots of a tree, flinging snow aside, but the topsoil was frozen deep and nothing lived in it.

The rune beast hugged itself, rocking silently. Snow from the branches above drifted down on it, dusting its limbs and shoulders. It was growing stronger. Slowly, meal by tiny meal, it was hardening, becoming less a web of runes and shadows, more a thing of hunger and teeth and frost. The voice in its head spoke endlessly to it, sometimes comforting, sometimes mocking.

Reluctantly the creature gathered itself and stood, swaying. It staggered on, always south. For long hours it trudged through the aisles of trees, torn at by brambles, soaked with falling snow. Somewhere far ahead was something it must have, a distant tugging at its nerves.

Only when the noise came did it stop.

The noise was strange, and the smell that drifted with it made the creature whimper with excitement and pain. It crouched in the snow, clenching and unclenching its long, clawed fingers. The sound was high, an echo, a clang. Not a tree murmur, not one of the feathered whistlers. In all the leagues of its journey the shadow maker had heard nothing like this. Silent, it dragged itself to a tree and stared around, clutching the mossed trunk.

It saw an animal, large, four-legged, gray-white. Branches sprouted from its head. The sound came from a tiny round thing that clanked and jangled on its neck. There were others too, behind, tearing lichen from the trees with their long, quick tongues.

This is good, the voice told it, laughing. You must strike now. You must feed. This is your strength that has come to you.