Veyra Flintstep's Arc

Chapter 10 of 14

The sled rolled out of the crack lighter than it had gone in. Veyra had left half the food from her own pack in the shelter. The blue sled held forty poles and the full bundle of dye strips she had carried up the ridge. Two hundred strips. Enough cloth for four times the poles she still had to plant. Giloa checked the harness on the raptor. The animal shook out its feathers and leaned into the traces. He looked at the sled, then at the sky. "Light load," he said. "Light load," Veyra said. "It’s good to carry more cloth than we need." "We already are." She walked around to the front of the sled and counted the poles again. All forty. She counted the bundles of blue strips. Nearly two hundred, besides the few she had already used to mark the crevice as shelter. She had come up the ridge planning to mark a full traverse and she wasn’t planning on leaving without doing so. The cloth could save someone’s life. "How far do we go before we turn?" Giloa asked. Veyra looked up the slope. The new snow had settled after the storm. The high face was quieter than it had been two days ago. She could see the shape of the traverse now, the shelf where the worst turn cut across the ridge. She had climbed to plant forty poles along that line. Twenty would cover the turn itself. The rest of the line should be easier by comparison. "To the far pass," she said. "We plant every pole along the way, keeping a knotted rope of the cloth marking the drops of the turn. Double the cloth on each. Then we go home." Giloa nodded. He did not argue about the season or the distance. He knew what a marked turn was worth. They worked the raptor up the slope through the morning. At the shelf Veyra drove the first pole into the packed snow with the butt of her axe. Giloa tied four strips of blue cloth to it instead of two. The wind caught them and they snapped out straight. She could see that pole from a hundred paces down the ridge. They planted poles across the worst of the turn. Each one carried four strips. When the last pole was set, Veyra stepped back and looked at the line. It held. A traveler in a storm would find one pole, then the next, then the shelter in the crack below. They needed now to clear the last ridge. Giloa coiled the harness. Nearly a third of the dyed cloth still sat on the sled, unused. "Spring," he said. "Spring," Veyra said. She turned the raptor's head downhill. The traverse was marked. The cache was stocked. She would come back with more poles and finish the western line, hopefully before another traveler needed it.