Borin Frostwalker's Arc

Chapter 8 of 10

The hunt was done by midday. Borin's men drove the pale, three-horned beasts against the stone walls and took four. Blood steamed on the ice. The tribe ate fresh meat that night and slept full for the first time in days. But Borin stood over the butchered carcasses and saw a new danger. Six days of travel lay ahead. Fresh meat would rot in a thaw or freeze into stone no knife could cut. Either way, it was useless on the ice. Thyra crouched beside him, wiping her spear clean. "We can't carry it like this," she said. "It spoils, we starve. We're no better off than before." Borin went to the sled where Gregor lay wrapped in hides. The old hermit had barely moved since the climb. He had led them here on a debt owed to Borin's father, and the journey had near emptied him. But his eyes still tracked everything. Borin knelt. "You know this country. How did your people keep meat on a long crossing?" Gregor's cracked lips moved. "Thin strips. Cut thin as a finger. Smoke them slow over a low fire." He coughed. "Takes all night. Dry it till it bends but won't break. Then it keeps a moon or more." Borin frowned. "We have no shelter for a fire in this wind." Gregor lifted one hand toward the ridge. Below the hollow stood broken stone walls, half-buried, old beyond memory. "The old colony," he rasped. "Walls still stand. Break the wind. My people used them." Borin walked down to the ruins. Weathered stone rose in cracked arches, roofless but solid on three sides. The wind died the moment he stepped inside. He turned and called his people. They worked through the night. Thyra and the women cut the meat into thin strips, as Gregor had said. The men gathered dried branches and built low fires inside the sheltered walls. Borin hung the strips on frames of lashed spears above the smoke. Ansel, the old man's grandson, carried water to his grandfather, then came to help Borin feed the flames. The boy watched each strip darken and curl. "Grandfather says I should learn it," Ansel said. "So your people won't need his old bones." Borin set a hand on the boy's shoulder. "Then learn it well." By dawn the fires burned low. Borin pulled a strip free and bent it. It curved without snapping, dark and dry. He tore it with his teeth. It held. He walked the rows and tested a dozen more. All cured. Enough to feed forty across six days of ice. He packed the dried meat into hide bundles and lashed them to the sleds. The crossing could go on. But Gregor had not risen from his furs all night, and his breath came slower now. Borin stood over the old man and understood. The hermit had given them the hollow, the hunt, and the way to keep the meat. His strength was nearly spent.