Fenrir Moonscar's Arc

Chapter 2 of 8

Fenrir left the exile's den with a name and a direction. He got one day of clear sky. On the second, the tundra turned white. Wind slammed flat across the open ice and drove snow into his eyes. His fur froze stiff. He could not see the horizon he had aimed for. The cold reached his bones, and he knew it. Without shelter, he would die here, long before the black water east. The pup that had trailed him from the kill still followed. It stumbled now, half-buried at each step. Fenrir scooped it against his chest and pushed on. He needed walls. Any walls. He turned into the wind and searched the gray for a shape that was not snow. He found one. A blue glow leaked through the storm ahead. It was a hollow carved from old ice, its mouth ringed with hanging spears of frost. Inside, the walls curved smooth and clear, lit from within by their own faint light. Fenrir staggered through the opening and out of the wind. The roar dropped to a hiss. He set the pup down and pressed his back to the ice, shaking. Then he smelled another wolf. She came from the deep end of the hollow, low and quick, silver fur bright against the pale walls. A red scarf hung at her throat. Her claws were out. She stopped an arm's length away and bared her teeth. "This is my hollow," she said. "Southern wolves freeze outside." Fenrir did not back off. He had no strength left to fight, and no strength left to leave. "Then freeze me," he said. "Or let the pup live." He nudged the shivering pup toward her feet. The silver wolf looked at the pup. Something in her face shifted. She lowered her claws a little. Her eyes moved to his chest, where the storm had torn his wrap open. The crescent birthmark showed plain, ringed with black marks. She went still. "Where did you get that mark?" "I was born with it," Fenrir said. "It points east. To a drowned shrine." Her breath caught. She stepped closer and stared at the ring of symbols as if reading them. "I have seen these signs before," she said. "Cut into stone. Near the black water." Fenrir's chest tightened. She knew the place. She had been near it. The silver wolf stepped back and jerked her head toward the warm depth of the hollow. "Come away from the mouth. You are no use to me frozen." She named herself Frost Silvermane. She dragged a pile of dry moss from a shelf of ice and threw it at his feet. Fenrir carried the pup to the fireless nest and sank down. The storm still screamed outside, but it could not reach him now. He had his shelter. He also had a stranger who had seen his marks in stone, and who now watched him with a hunger he could not name.