Krayzor's Arc

Chapter 11 of 16

The wind shifted while he sat in the brush, and the warmth went out of the air in one long breath. Krayzor felt it on his wet sleeves first. A cold front, sliding down off the high stone country. He looked at the kitsune. Her lips were going gray. On the open rock ahead, a thin vine glittered with sudden frost and shattered when the wind touched it, branches breaking like glass. He had hours, not a night. He lifted the sled and pushed on, following a faint warm thread he could smell in the air. The ground rose, then dropped into a bowl of dark rock where pale steam curled up from small pools. Heated water. Mineral stink. He dragged her to the largest pool and stacked loose stones on the windward side into a low curved wall, just tall enough to break the worst of the gusts off her body. Wood was thin out here, but he found dry roots and dead brush along the bowl's edge and broke them down with his good arm. He struck a fire close to the stone wall so the heat reflected back onto her. Then he took off his own cloak — the heavy one he had worn since the first cave — and tucked it under and around her until only her face showed. He fed the flames slow. He kept feeding them. Her breathing steadied near dawn. The shaking eased. Krayzor sat against the stones with his blade across his knees and watched gray light climb the rim of the bowl. She had lived through the cold. But the fire was a beacon any tracker could read for miles, and the smoke was already rising straight up into a clear, windless sky.