Sivara Frostwhisper's Arc

Chapter 10 of 3

The bow was hers now, and the aim with it. But the stag ran where Sivara had never hunted. She stood at camp's edge and stared west, toward the frost belt's far reach. She had one cycle before the moons rose. She did not know the stag's range. Her time would bleed away in wrong ground while it grazed somewhere she never thought to look. She found Ike Frostthread checking a trap line at first light. He was the trapper who had seen the black stag two winters past, who had guided her to it once before. He knelt over a snare, freeing a tundrahare with quick fingers. He did not look up when she spoke. "I need the stag's range," Sivara said. "Not where you saw it. Where it goes now." Ike tied the hare to his belt. "Cold pushed it past the river." He stood. "It shelters in a cave by day's end. Feeds at the water in the light." "You've seen this?" "Twice this winter." He tipped his chin west. "I'll take you. One cycle's enough if we leave now." They crossed the frozen grasslands first, then a wide lake locked in glassy ice. Their soft boots made no sound on the frost. Ike read the belt the way his father had taught him, marking ridges and hollows Sivara could not name. Past the lake, a river wound in frozen curves. Cracked patches showed pale blue beneath the surface. Ike stopped at a bend and pointed across. "There." On the far shore a black shape moved. The stag lowered its head to a frostglow patch, cropping the glowing blades. Its antlers rose pale and forking, threaded with fine cool light. It stood forty steps out, downwind, unaware. Sivara sank low behind a snowbank. She drew an arrow from the rune-marked quiver and set it to the string. Ike went still beside her. She picked the shine on the stag's shoulder, the way Veyla had taught her. Only that. She drew the bow full. It pulled hard and held. The wind she had feared before was quiet here, blocked by the river's bend. She breathed out slow. The stag lifted its head. Its ear turned toward her. Sivara loosed. The arrow flew straight. It struck the shoulder deep and buried to the fletching. The stag lurched, staggered two steps onto the ice, and went down. Its light dimmed against the snow. The cropped grass glowed on beside it. Sivara stood. Her hands did not shake. She crossed the frozen river to the fallen stag and knelt. The antlers were cold under her palm, laced with faint light that pulsed and slowed. She had it. The legendary black stag, down by her own arrow, in ground she had never walked. Ike came to her side and looked at the shard-lit antlers. "Now the hard part," he said. "Getting it home."