Borin Frostwalker's Arc

Chapter 9 of 10

The cured meat was lashed to the sleds by dawn. Borin had food for six days now. But he stood at the mouth of the hollow and saw the harder truth. The stone walls that trapped the caribou had also walled off his way out. He had come in from the glacier's edge, led by Gregor. The mapped route across the ice ran somewhere beyond the ridge. Between it and the hollow stretched open snow, and under that snow waited crevasses deep enough to swallow a man whole. He spread his map on the sled furs. The lines showed the path from the glacier's edge to the hollow. They did not show the path from the hollow back onto the safe route. One wrong turn would drop a child into the dark. Borin knelt by the old hermit's sled. Gregor lay wrapped in hides, his grey beard crusted with frost, his breath thin. The old man had guided them this far on a debt owed to Borin's father. Now his eyes opened slow. "You need the way out," he rasped. It was not a question. "I have the way in," Borin said. "Not the way back to my grandfather's route." Gregor's hand trembled toward the ridge. "Climb. Find the cabin. Line it up with the hollow. The safe path runs between them, straight as a thrown spear." He coughed hard. "Walk that line. Probe every step." Thyra was already moving. She drove her spear into the frozen slope and climbed, furs tight against the wind. Borin followed. At the top they faced the white glare. Thyra shaded her eyes and pointed. "There. The chimney smoke. The old cabin." Borin found it, a dark smudge far across the ice. He turned and looked back down at the hollow's mouth. He fixed both points in his mind and drew the line between them on the hide. That line was the safe route. He marked it in charcoal while the fix held. They came down. Borin hitched the sturdy wild ponies to the fur-lined sleigh where Gregor lay. He took his staff and led. Each step, he drove the staff ahead and felt for the hollow ring of hidden ice. Thyra walked the rear, pushing stragglers into the single file. Young Ansel led the ponies, one gloved hand on the sleigh rail, watching his grandfather's chest rise and fall. Twice the staff broke through to empty air. Borin backed up, shifted along the line, and found solid footing. The column crept forward on the charcoal path. By dusk the dark smudge had grown into stone walls and a thread of smoke. Borin planted his staff on the old mapped ridge and knew it. He was back on his grandfather's route. Forty people stood on safe ice with six days of food. But when he turned to the sleigh, Ansel was weeping. The old man's chest had gone still. Gregor had given his last breath on the ridge he'd pointed them toward.