Borin Frostwalker's Arc

Chapter 5 of 10

By midday the tribe stopped marching. Borin felt it before he saw it. The rope behind him went slack. He turned and found them clustered on the ice, arguing. A few men pointed past the ridge, toward the flat white that cut four days off the crossing. Hunger put a hard edge in their voices. "Your seven-day path starves us," one called. "The fast way is right there." Borin opened his mouth to answer and had nothing to fill their bellies. Thyra pushed through the crowd, spear in hand. "The fast way has no map," she said. "It kills." But Borin saw the doubt even in her. The sacks were nearly empty. Words would not hold these people another day. He had to show them something real. The cabin door creaked open behind them. An old man stepped onto the broken porch, leaning on a worn stick. His beard was full and gray, his furs patched and ancient. He squinted at Borin a long moment. "You've got your grandfather's shoulders," he said. "And your father's stubborn jaw." This was Gregor Whitlock. He had shared this cabin with Borin's father, years before Borin was born. Borin lowered his staff. "You knew my father." "Knew him. Buried him in my memory." Gregor's eyes moved over the thin, shivering tribe. "You're hungry. I can hear it in how they talk." He thumped his stick on the planks and pointed it past the cabin's far wall. "There's a tree back there your grandfather fed from. Tall as three men. Bears fruit even now." Borin followed where the stick aimed. A huge shaggy pine stood against the snow, its boughs heavy with spiked pods. Some had split open. Golden nectar dripped from the white flesh inside. At the tree's roots grew a cluster of purple flowers, soft-petaled, their seed heads pale and round. "Those too," Gregor said. "The purple ones. Roots fill a stomach when nothing else will." He stepped off the porch. "Your father ate them the winter he waited out the ice." Borin walked to the tree and twisted a pod free. It cracked in his hands. He tasted the flesh. Sweet, rich, real. He turned and held it high so all could see. "Food," he shouted. "Here, on my grandfather's own path. The old man kept it for us." The tribe surged forward. Men cracked pods. Children dug the purple roots and ate them raw. The argument died in their full mouths. No one looked at the fast route now. Thyra came to his side, chewing. "You held them," she said. "He held them." Borin nodded at Gregor. Then his gut tightened. One tree would not feed forty people across six more days. He turned to the old man. "How far to the next food on this line?" Gregor's face went still. "That's the trouble," he said. "This tree's the last one standing. The rest burned three winters back."