Ivalu Snowstrider's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Ivalu Snowstrider stood at the front of the marching line and knew he was leading two hundred people toward death. The elder songs promised a warm valley past the ice. But the songs gave no route, only fragments—a bent tooth of rock, a river that ran the wrong way. Ivalu had memorized every verse. None of them told him which way to walk today. Behind him, mothers carried children. Old men leaned on spears. They trusted his white hair and dark eyes to find the safe path, and he did not have it. The ice ahead groaned. Ivalu raised a fist, and the line stopped. He crept forward and pressed his palm to the surface. A crack ran under the snow like a black thread. One more day of guessing and the whole line would step onto breaking ice. He needed a true direction, not a song. His wolf reached the crack first. The pale beast with crystal eyes sniffed the seam, then backed away, ears flat. Ivalu trusted that warning more than any verse. But a warning was not a road. "You're reading the ice like it's a page." The voice came from a ridge to his right. A young woman stood there, white-haired like him, a bow of pale aspen wood already strung. Silver-tipped arrows rode her back. She loosed one before he answered. It cut the air and split a chunk of loose ice, showing the water beneath. "The ice lies. It's thin where it looks thickest." Ivalu had never seen her, but he knew the look—one of the wandering hunters who tracked the herds across the floes. "I have songs," he said. "You have arrows. Neither points the way." Frost Silverspear climbed down. She did not bow to him like the others. She studied his face as an equal. "Songs are useless out here. But my grandmother carried something." She pulled a brass compass from inside her furs. Its face was old and scratched, the needle red and worn. "She said it always points to the warm place. I thought it was a lie. Then I met people chasing the same lie you are." Ivalu took the compass. The needle swung, then held steady—away from the cracked ice, toward a low gap in the far hills. He looked at the black thread splitting the surface. If the songs were right, the warm valley lay past that gap. The needle agreed. The ice did not. "If this thing lies, we die out there," he said. "If we stand here, the ice takes us anyway," Frost said. Ivalu turned to his people and lifted the compass high. "New heading," he called. "Follow the wolf, not the ice." He set his boot toward the gap in the hills. The line moved after him. He had a direction now. He also had no idea if the needle told the truth—and every step forward made turning back impossible.