Sterling Forge's Arc

Chapter 14 of 31

Sterling woke to snow on his face. The fire was low and the wind had turned. He sat up and saw the river below them gone gray under a sky that had dropped in the night. The first hard flakes came sideways. Within minutes he could not see the far bank. Linny was already up, packing. The chipmunk hid in her collar, its pink ears flat against her neck. She shook snow from her hat and looked at him. "We can't cross in this," she said. "No." He fed the fire the last dry twigs. The wind ate them. The flames leaned, guttered, went blue at the edges. He knew what that meant. In an hour the coals would be dead and the cold would come inside their coats. "Shelter," he said. "Now." They climbed away from the river, back into the frostwood. The trees stood close and white, branches bent under old ice. Snow fell heavier. He could not feel his fingers on the blade. Linny walked ahead with her head down. She kept stopping to check the chipmunk, warming it under her jaw. "Forge." She had stopped. She pointed low, between two roots. A dark mouth in the slope. A cave. He crouched and looked in. The smell hit him before his eyes adjusted. Wet fur. Old meat. A packed dirt floor, and along the back wall a hollow worn smooth by a large body. "Bear," he said. "Is it in there?" He listened. Nothing but the wind at his back. "No. But it lives here." She looked at the storm behind them. The trees were already vanishing. "Then we freeze out here or we sleep in there." "It could come back." "So could the storm end. It won't." He drew the good blade. "Inside." They crawled in. The wind cut off like a closed door. He set the blade across his knees, facing the entrance. Linny broke sticks from the ceiling roots and made a small fire near the mouth, close enough that the smoke pulled out. The chipmunk crept from her collar and sat on her wrist, watching the dark. "I don't want to leave," she said. Not about the cave. He knew what she meant. The hill was close. The door was close. The magic she had chased for years was one river away. "I know." "But we have to." "Tonight we stay." She was shaking. He saw it now, the way her jaw would not sit still. He opened his coat and she came under it without asking. Her back against his chest. The chipmunk between her hands. He kept the blade across his lap and his eyes on the cave mouth. "If it comes," she said, "wake me." "I will." Her breathing slowed. The fire held. Outside the blizzard closed the woods. Sterling watched the dark and listened for a heavier tread beneath the wind, and did not sleep.