Irbis Chuluun's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

Irbis sat by the dead beast until his breath slowed. The carcass lay on its side in the snow, one yellow horn jammed into the ground, the other pointing at the sky. His chipped stone blade was still wedged in the skull. He pulled it free and the tip broke off in the bone. The blade had carried him over eleven peaks. He set the pieces in his palm, then tucked them into his coat. Stone was honest. It had told him it was finished. He needed a new tool before he climbed another step. He picked up a flat river stone from the edge of the path and knelt by the beast's head. He set the stone against the base of the standing horn and struck. He struck again. On the fourth blow the horn cracked clean at the root and rolled into the snow. It was longer than his forearm and curved like a hook. He weighed it in his hand. Heavy. Solid. No splits. He dragged the carcass off the trail and looked for shelter to work. A quarter mile up the valley, tucked against the lee of a crag, he found an old hunting yurt. The hide walls were stiff and patched. The wooden door hung crooked on leather hinges. Inside, a cold fire pit, a low bench, and a rack of bone scrapers left by hunters who had not come back this season. He hauled what he could of the beast inside, piece by piece, until the snow outside was dark and trampled. He worked through the night. He skinned the wool coat off the beast in long strips and laid it over the bench to dry. He cut the meat into slabs and hung them from the rafters above the cold pit. He split the leg bones with the river stone and shaped four spikes, each as long as his hand, each ground to a point against the yurt's whetstone. He saved the horn for last. He sawed the broken end flat, hollowed a socket, and fitted a length of bench wood into it for a grip. He pinned the grip with two bone pegs. He honed the inside curve against the stone until it caught the lamplight and held an edge that bit his thumb when he tested it. A khukri. Curved, weighted forward, made to chop and to skin and to drive into a skull if it came to that again. At dawn he stepped out of the yurt with the new blade at his hip and the bone spikes wrapped in the wool at his back. The carcass behind the yurt was already half bone, picked at by something small in the dark. He left it. He walked back to the trail and found the path climbing again toward the high crags. Somewhere up there was the peak he meant to wake. He set his hand on the horn grip and started up.