Borin Frostwalker's Arc

Chapter 4 of 10

The storm broke at dawn. Borin crawled out from under the tree and stood in the hard light. White stretched flat in every direction. He pulled the map from his pouch and turned it in his hands. The tree was not on it. He could not tell where he stood or which way led back to his grandfather's line. One wrong step would drop a man through hidden ice. "We can't guess," he said. "Guessing kills us." Thyra knelt beside him. His sister had carved the first path back to the cabin days ago. She trusted her feet more than his maps. "Then we climb," she said. She drove her spear into the trunk and started up the branches. "High ground shows the ridge." Borin climbed after her. The boughs bent under his weight. Near the top he clung to a thick limb and looked out. The glare stung his eyes. Then he saw it. Far off, a dark shape leaned against the snow. A cabin, old and sagging, its timbers gray. He knew that roof. His grandfather had sheltered there on the mapped route. "The cabin sits on the line," Borin said. His chest loosened. "If I fix the cabin on the map, I fix us." He pulled the hide out and found the cabin mark near the crossing's middle. He traced the angle from the tree to the cabin with his eye. Now the tree had a place. Now the safe ridge had a direction. They climbed down. Borin roped the tribe together again and took the lead. He pointed his staff at the far cabin and stepped off toward it. Every stride he punched the staff into the snow first. Twice it broke through into empty black. He marked each pit with a branch and swung the line wide. The walk took most of the morning. Children lagged. The old ones leaned on the strong. Thyra pushed the stragglers from the rear and kept the rope tight. At last Borin reached the sagging porch. The steps had fallen to broken planks. He laid the map against the cabin wall and lined its crossing mark to the real wall under his hand. The angles matched. He was back on his grandfather's route. "We're found," he told them. The tribe sank down in the cabin's shadow and breathed. Thyra leaned her spear against the timbers. "So we march the ridge again?" Borin looked at the map, then at the thin sacks of food on his people's backs. The seven-day path still stretched ahead. He had meant to ration for the storm, not for a lost day under the tree and a morning spent probing ice. He counted the sacks in his head and came up short. "We're found," he said again, quieter. "But we won't eat all the way across."