Snow-Walker

Twenty-Two

The dark death-shadow

drove always against them.

The smell of blood was in the forest.

Raising its dripping mouth from the pool the spellspun creature sensed it, the edges of its nostrils widening.

Blood. And more.

Men, horses, dogs. And more.

Anger.

The creature let the complex wash of fear and wrath into its mind. Excited, it roared and thrashed, tearing the branches from a young spruce, crushing the pungent leaves in one clenched fist.

Then it tossed them down and followed the scent. In these last days it had moved always upright, rarely crouching as at first. It walked, an eerie glimmer in the murk, and the birds fled before it. Pushing between branches it came to its high vantage point and looked down. About it the forest breathed and murmured in the breezy afternoon, the cold wind strengthening ominously. Gray heavy cloud gathered in the west. The thing sniffed, recognizing the signs of rain.

And there it was, something else, something faint on the wind, a new scent. Human. Not too far away.

Find it, the voice instructed firmly.

Stalking forward, the sending moved downhill. Its head was high now, tall among the trees. Clouds of whining gnats tormented it, so that it snarled and beat them off. Among the clefts and broken hillsides of the steep wood, it slid back to all fours awkwardly, snapping boughs with its weight, dragging out a shallow-rooted sapling in a shower of soil as it steadied itself. Far into the trees the noise rang, a cracking, splintering progress.

And then the rain came, silent at first, then a steady hard beat of drops pattering among branches, rolling from leaves and stalks. The wood dropped into a blurred, trickling place; the pelt of the rune beast clotted, became sodden, water dripping into its small eyes. Oblivious, it strode out of the trees onto the lakeside. Then it stopped.

Scents drifted, faint in the wet air. Rain fell on the water, dimpling the surface with millions of dancing ripples, appearing and disappearing so that the creature gazed, half-entranced, until the voice snapped at it and the sudden, sharp hunger made it turn away.

It moved around the lakeside to a place of rocks, clefts, deep rubble. This was where the scent was. Among these slippery, wet stones. In this cliff face.

A blur in the rain, the creature slipped between the boulders. Then it crouched.

Somewhere near, its prey breathed.

The creature turned its head, and saw a small, dark cleft, a cave with a narrow entrance.

In there.