Veyra Flintstep's Arc

Chapter 8 of 14

The white shelf above them did not move, but Veyra watched it long enough to know it would. She pointed. Giloa looked, then looked at the sky. The clouds over the far peaks were low and flat and moving toward them. He did not have to say it. If the shelf came down while they were on the ridge, it would bury the sled and the poles and them with it. If a storm came in first, they would freeze before they could dig out. "We need a hole in the rock," Giloa said. "Somewhere to put the load. Somewhere to put us." Veyra thought of the old guard's routes. He had marked winter crossings for a reason. Somewhere on this slope he had kept a cache. She had walked past it a hundred times without seeing it. She turned the raptor off the trail and started up along the base of the cliff, one hand on the harness, the other trailing the stone. They found it a quarter mile on. A crack in the cliff, narrow at the mouth, wider inside. Old soot on the ceiling. Along the back wall, stone shelves cut flat into the rock, stacked with bundles wrapped in oiled hide. Dried meat. Hard bread. Two clay jars of water frozen solid. On the lower shelf, a bundle of torches and split wood and small pots of pitch, tied together and pushed against the stone. "He kept it stocked," Giloa said. He set his spear against the wall and touched one of the bundles. The hide was stiff but whole. "Someone else knew. Nobody took it." "Nobody knew," Veyra said. She looked at the shelves. Enough food for a week. Fire enough to dry clothes and thaw water and keep a body alive through a two-day storm. She unhitched the raptor and led it inside. The sled fit through the mouth if she tipped it on its side. The poles slid in flat along the wall. The dye bundles stacked under the shelves. Giloa lit a small fire near the entrance with tinder from the kit. The smoke pulled straight up along the ceiling and out. Veyra sat on her heels and watched it. Outside, the first flakes began to fall past the crack, thin at first, then thicker. "We wait it out," she said. "We wait it out," Giloa said. The storm came down within the hour. It pushed snow across the mouth of the crack and blanked out the slope. Veyra listened for the shelf. When it went, it went with a low sound she felt in the stone more than heard. The floor shook once. Then the sound stopped. She would have been under it. Instead she was warm, dry, and above the load line, with a cache she could restock and a shelter she could mark. The road had a first waystation. She would need to cut a door.