Veyra Flintstep's Arc

Chapter 5 of 14

They left the village at first light. Veyra harnessed her raptor to the blue sled and packed it with rope, spears, and a bundle of poles wrapped in oiled hide. Giloa met them at the last house, his small hunting spear across his back, his patched featherfur suit pulled tight at the collar. Shahndiin came behind him, bare arms blue with painted names, a hide slung over one shoulder. She carried nothing else. She said she did not need to. "You keep up," Giloa told the shaman. It was not a question. "I will keep up," Shahndiin said. The raptor pulled the sled up the packed trail to the moss beds and past them, into the high wood. The trees closed over the trail. Veyra found the tracks again where she had left them, still crisp under a thin dusting of new snow. Three toes. Wider than her hand spread. Shahndiin knelt beside the deepest print and pressed her palm flat into it. She closed her eyes. "Four," she said. "Not six. Two are small. One is hurt in the back leg." "How do you know," Giloa said. "The ground told me." Giloa did not argue. He unclipped the raptor from the sled and set the harness on its back so it could move free. The bird lowered its head and made a low sound in its throat. It knew hunting. They followed the tracks uphill through the pines. Shahndiin walked at the front now. She stopped twice and turned her head as if listening to something Veyra could not hear. The second time she raised a hand. "Close," she whispered. "Behind the rise. They are eating." Veyra crouched. She could see nothing through the trunks. Then she heard it, a wet cracking, the sound of a bone opened. Shahndiin drew a line in the snow with two fingers and pressed her palm to it. The wind shifted. It came down the slope now, into their faces, carrying the smell of the beasts away from them and toward the ridge. The raptor lowered itself flat. "Go," Shahndiin said. They came over the rise together. Four creatures crouched around a torn elk. Long necks. Feathered backs. Three-toed feet. The nearest one lifted its head and screamed. The raptor hit it in the throat before it finished the sound. Giloa drove his spear up under the ribs of the second. Veyra took the third across the face with her axe and felt bone give. The fourth, the small hurt one, broke and ran downhill. Downhill. Toward the moss beds. Toward the village. Shahndiin was already running after it. Veyra pulled her axe free and ran too, the raptor tearing past her, Giloa's boots hitting the snow behind. The grove was theirs. But one was loose now, and it was heading home before them.