Veyra Flintstep woke before the fire had died and knew she would walk the eastern pass again today. The dream had come back. In it, the mother's mittened hand was still reaching toward the ravine, four hundred paces from shelter, and the father's face was turned the wrong way in the wind. She had found them like that on her first patrol of the season, a family of four frozen inside sight of a sheltered gully they could not see through the storm. She had been correcting a dead traveler's map for a year already. It was not enough. What the Sujarru passes needed was a road — marked, roped, and known — and she meant to build one. She pulled on her hides and stepped out into blue morning light. Her raptor stood tied by the door, breath steaming through its fur-feathers, the barding already stiff with frost. She checked its harness and hitched it to the painted sled. Inside the sled she stacked cut poles, a coil of braided rope, and a bundle of blue-dyed cloth strips she had spent the winter cutting. Giloa came up the slope while she was tying the load. He wore the patched featherfur suit he had stitched himself and carried his small hunting spear across one shoulder. She had asked him, at the end of autumn, if he would help her. He had said yes before she finished the sentence. Thirty years of knowing each other had made most sentences unnecessary between them. "Eastern pass," she said. "Where you found them." "Where anyone would miss the turn." He looked at the sled, at the cloth strips, at her face. "Then we mark the turn." They walked the raptor up through the pines and out onto the open shoulder of the ridge. Veyra counted paces from the last cairn her old teacher had left. At four hundred she stopped. From here the ravine was invisible. A traveler in weather would walk straight past it and into the wind flats beyond, where the family had died. Giloa drove the first pole into the frozen ground with the butt of his spear. Veyra tied a blue strip to it. The cloth snapped once and held. They set the next pole within sight of the first, and the next within sight of that, until a line of small blue flags ran from the trail down to the lip of the ravine. At the ravine's edge she stopped and looked back along the marks. In a storm, a traveler could follow them hand over hand. "One turn," Giloa said. "Out of how many." "Hundreds." He nodded and shouldered his spear. Veyra untied the rope from the sled. The western ridge was three days off, and its face shifted under heavy snow. She had seen it move herself. That was the next mark to set, and the harder one.

By the time they turned the sled back toward the village, the last blue strip was tied and the last pole driven. Veyra counted what was left in the sled bed and found four poles and a short handful of cloth. The western ridge was three days off and needed hundreds of both. She looked at Giloa. He had already done the same count. "Not enough," he said. "Not close." They walked the raptor down the switchbacks in silence. The blue paint on the sled had chipped again where the runners scraped stone. Veyra kept turning the numbers in her head and getting the same answer. More cloth meant the shaman's dye pots. More poles meant cut timber from the village stores. Both meant asking the chieftain. They found him outside the great hall, the one built from bone and dinosaur leather that marked the center of the village. He was splitting wood with his shirt off, old and still corded with muscle. He did not stop when they came up. "Barren Meadow," Veyra said. "I need poles from the winter store. Forty. And dye enough for two hundred strips." He set the axe down and looked at her. "For the western ridge." "Yes." "Half the council wants me to send men to the low fields instead. Planting's short this year." He wiped his hands on his thigh. "Show me your work first. Then I decide." "The eastern turn is marked. Every pole in sight of the next. A blind man could walk it in a storm." He watched her a moment longer. "Go to the shaman. If she gives you the dye, you have the poles." Shahndiin's fire burned behind the hall, ringed by a frame of lashed sticks where finished cloths hung drying. The blue on them shifted from wet gloss to matte as the heat pulled the water out. She was painting a fresh strip across her knee when Veyra stopped at the edge of the ring. The blue lines on the shaman's skin caught the firelight the same as the cloth. "You want more," Shahndiin said, without looking up. "Two hundred strips." "The dye takes root from the ridgeline moss. The moss is thin this year. I have enough for eighty." "Eighty, then." Shahndiin set her brush down. "The forest above the moss beds has gone quiet. Something has moved through it. I will give you eighty strips if you tell me what you see up there when you go." "I'll tell you." The shaman nodded once and began pulling dry cloths from the ring, folding them into a stack. Giloa took the bundle when it was offered. Eighty strips. Forty poles. Enough to start the western ridge, not enough to finish it. "We go partway," Giloa said on the walk back. "We go as far as eighty takes us," Veyra said. "Then we come back for more."

They loaded the sled at first light. Veyra set the four spare poles and the bundle of blue strips under a hide, then tied a spear across the top for Giloa. The western ridge would wait. Without the rest of the shaman's dye, forty poles and eighty strips would only mark a stretch and stop. Better to earn the full two hundred first. She led the raptor out past the last houses and turned it uphill, toward the moss beds and the forest above them. "Long way for a favor," Giloa said, walking at the raptor's shoulder. "It's not a favor. It's the price." "Same thing, uphill." The raptor picked its way over frozen scree, its thick feathers ruffed against the wind. By midday they reached the great patch of lichen that fed the shaman's dye pots. Blue and pale green crusted the boulders in wet, velvet layers. Veyra crouched and pressed a thumb into it. Thin. Shahndiin had not lied. Above the patch, the ground rose into dark pines standing close together, their crowns black against the sky. They tied the raptor at the tree line and went in on foot. The grove swallowed sound. No birds. No small game moving in the needles. Giloa stopped once and pointed with the butt of his spear at a track pressed into old snow. Wider than a bear's. Three toes. He looked at Veyra and said nothing. They followed the tracks a hundred paces. The prints crossed a second set, then a third, all moving in the same direction along the slope. Whatever it was traveled in a group and traveled often. Veyra counted six clear prints before she stopped counting. At the edge of a clearing, she found a pine stripped of bark from the ground to twice her height. Long gouges ran down the wood. Sap still ran. "Fresh," Giloa said. "Today fresh." She stood there a long moment, watching the shadowed spaces between the trunks. Nothing moved. But something had, and would again. She backed out of the clearing the way she had come, keeping her eyes on the trees until the raptor was in sight. They did not speak until they were down past the moss beds. The sled runners chattered on the stone. "The ridge waits longer now," Giloa said. "She needs to know before anyone else goes up for moss." Shahndiin was at her fire when they came in. Veyra set it out plain: the stripped pine, the tracks, the count. The shaman's hands went still on the cloth in her lap. "How many?" "Six prints I was sure of. More I wasn't." Shahndiin folded the cloth and set it aside. "Then the moss harvest stops until I know what walks up there. No one goes to the beds. Not my gatherers. Not you." "I need the dye." "You'll have none until the forest is safe." She looked up. "You brought me a bigger problem than you were sent to find." Veyra was silent a moment before answering, “Perhaps we should ask the Chieftain to ready warriors.”

Shahndiin stood as soon as Veyra spoke. She set her cloth aside and pulled a hide over her shoulders. "Then we go now. Before he eats and closes his door." They crossed the village in the last light. The chieftain's hall rose above the other houses, its roof spined with old tusks and hung with dyed banners. Two carved posts flanked the door. Veyra had stood before them a dozen times in her life and still felt small at the threshold. Shahndiin did not slow. She pushed the hide flap aside and went in. Barren Meadow sat at the low ceremonial table, a bowl in front of him and a spoon in his hand. He was old. He was also broad in the shoulder and thick in the arm, and he set the spoon down without hurry when he saw who had come. His second stood behind him against the wall and did not move. "Speak," Barren said. Shahndiin nodded at Veyra. Veyra stepped forward. "There are beasts in the high wood above the moss beds. Big ones. Three-toed tracks, wider than a bear's. They travel in a group. They stripped a pine to twice my height today." "How many." "Six prints I counted. More I did not." Barren looked at the shaman. "You saw this?" "I saw what she brought back. I stopped the harvest. No one goes up." Veyra pressed on. "We are asking for warriors. Enough to clear the grove. If the beasts come down, they take the moss beds first, then the lower pens. If we go up now, we choose the ground." Barren picked up his spoon. He turned it once in his hand and set it down again. "No." Veyra waited. He did not add to it. She said, "Chief—" "No warriors go up the high wood." He looked past her at the door. "I have men meeting in houses I was not invited to. My own blood among them. If I send a war party out of the village now, I come back to a new chief in this hall." "People will die if—" "People will die if I lose the village tonight." His voice did not rise. "The harvest stays stopped. Post a watch on the moss beds. That is what I give you." Shahndiin's mouth thinned. She said nothing. She knew a closed door when she heard one. Outside, the cold hit Veyra's face and she stopped in the packed snow. The forty poles were still promised. The dye was not. The road west would not be marked this season. Something large walked between her and every route she had left to open. "I need Giloa," she said. "And I need to see those tracks again before the snow covers them. If the chief will not send warriors, I will learn what we are dealing with myself." Shahndiin looked at her a long moment. "Then I go with you."

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.

Veyra ran downhill through the pines with her axe at her side. The small beast had a head start and a slope of packed snow to carry it. The moss beds lay below. Past the moss beds lay the pens, and past the pens, the houses. She could not let it reach any of them. "Cut left," Giloa called behind her. "The gully forces it left. We can meet it at the deadfall." He knew this slope. She trusted him. She cut left across the grade, her soft-soled boots biting into the crust. Shahndiin ran past her on the right, faster than Veyra had thought possible, blue tattoos bright against her bare arms. The raptor tore ahead of them all, low to the ground, feathers flat. "Turn it," Shahndiin said. "I will hold the ground." Shahndiin stopped and knelt. She pressed both palms into the snow. Veyra kept running. She did not look back. They came out above the deadfall, a spill of old pine trunks across the gully. The beast was already there, limping hard, dragging its back leg. It saw the raptor and turned uphill to break past. Its feet skidded. The snow under it slid sideways, as if the slope itself had shifted a hand's breadth. The beast stumbled. Giloa threw his small spear. It went into the side of the neck. The beast screamed and lunged at him. Veyra swung her axe two-handed into the base of its skull. The scream cut off. The body went down against the deadfall and stopped moving. They stood over it, breathing hard. Below them, through the trees, Veyra could see the smoke from the village hearths. Close. Too close. "Half a bowshot more," Giloa said. He pulled his spear free and wiped it on the beast's flank. "It would have been in the pens." Shahndiin came down through the pines. She looked tired now. "The ground is quiet again," she said. "All four." They dragged the body down on the blue sled behind the raptor. Veyra wanted the village to see it. She wanted the chieftain to see it. The hall stood at the center of the village, its bone tusks curved above the doorway, its dyed cloths hanging still in the cold air. Barren Meadow came out onto the stone step. He looked at the beast on the sled. He looked at Veyra. "Four?" he said. "Four," Veyra said. "This one came for the pens." Barren Meadow was quiet a long moment. His hand rested on the beaded belt at his waist. "You did what I would not," he said. "The grove is yours to work. Take the poles. Take the dye. Mark your road." He turned and went back inside. The door shut behind him. Giloa looked at Veyra. "He gave you the western ridge," he said. "He gave me the supplies," Veyra said. "The ridge I still have to earn." Then she turned to Shahndiin. “How quickly will the moss patches recover with this blight cleansed?”

The moss beds would recover by spring, Shahndiin said. Veyra took that answer back to the drying racks behind the hall, where the new dye strips hung in rows above a low fire. The wet cloth was dark and glossy near the flame, then paler and softer as the heat pulled the water out. Two hundred strips. Forty poles stacked against the wall. Everything she had asked for, all of it stacked in one place, and none of it yet on the ridge. Giloa stood by the poles with his arms crossed. He lifted one, then set it back down. "Too much," he said. "For two backs." Veyra had already done the count in her head on the walk down. Forty poles. Two hundred dyed strips. Rope. Mallets. Food for four days on the western ridge. She could carry maybe eight poles at a time on her shoulders. Giloa the same. Five trips up a slope that took most of a day to climb. The first snow was already past. The next storm would close the high traverse for the season. "We lose the ridge if we walk it," she said. "Then we don't walk it," Giloa said. Shahndiin came around the drying ring, brushing ash from her palms. "The raptor pulled the beast down from the deadfall," she said. "It pulls better than it carries." Veyra looked at the raptor. It stood at the edge of the fire ring, feathers puffed against the cold, watching the meat scraps by the hall door. It had hauled the dead beast down the gully on the blue sled without slowing. The sled was built for a body. It could be built for cargo. "We widen the sled," she said. "Longer bed. Runners under the wheels for the drifts. We load the poles flat and lash the cloth on top." Giloa nodded once. "I can do the frame tonight." They worked past dark. Giloa split fresh sticks and lashed them across the old blue frame, doubling its length. Veyra bound the poles into two tight bundles with the rope. Shahndiin painted the new wood with the last of the wet dye so the sled would stay one thing, one color, one marker if it was ever lost in snow. The raptor watched them from the fire. At dawn Veyra harnessed it. The lengthened sled sat heavy behind, poles flat, dyed strips bundled and tied down under hide. The raptor leaned into the harness. The sled moved. It moved easily. Giloa walked beside her with his spear. Shahndiin watched them from the hall step and did not follow. They took the lower trail toward the western ridge with a full load on one trip. Halfway up, where the trees thinned, Veyra saw the ridge face above them. A long white shelf of new snow hung across its upper third. It had not been there a week ago.

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.

The storm broke on the second morning. Veyra pushed the sled aside from the mouth of the crack and looked out. The slope had changed. The shelf was gone, spread down the ridge in a fan of hard snow. The trail below was buried. The way up was open. She turned back into the cache and counted what they had used. Two torches from the bundle. One jar of pitch, half gone. A quarter of the dried meat. A handful from the salted sack of lingonberries and pine nuts they had opened the first night. The frostward vial Shahndiin had pressed into her pack sat untouched on the shelf. She had not needed it. The next traveler might. Giloa came up beside her and looked at the shelves. "Thin," he said. "Thin," Veyra said. What the old guard had left would not carry a stranger through a storm like the one they had just sat out. Not now. If she loaded the sled and rolled out with what remained, the next person who crawled into this crack would find bread and no fire, or fire and no food. They would die a foot from the wall. She sat on her heels and worked it out. They had climbed the ridge to plant poles. The poles were still stacked along the wall, forty of them, and the dye bundles under the shelves. That was the work. But the work would kill someone if she left the shelter bare behind her. "We split the load," she said. "Half the poles go up. Half stay. We come back with more." Giloa did not answer at once. He looked at the sky through the crack. "Season's short." "I know." "Twenty poles won't mark the traverse." "Twenty poles will mark the worst of it. The rest waits." He thought about it, then nodded once. He began pulling poles off the stack and setting aside twenty for the sled. Veyra opened her own pack. She set out the strips of dried meat she had carried for the climb and stacked them on the shelf. She set the sack of lingonberries and pine nuts beside them. She placed Shahndiin's vial upright against the wall where a cold hand would find it. Giloa watched her without speaking. Then he unslung his own pack and added a coil of tinder and a folded hide. They harnessed the raptor and tipped the blue sled out through the mouth of the crack. The load was lighter now. The raptor took the grade without straining. Veyra looked back once at the dark seam in the cliff. It held enough for one traveler through one storm. That was what a waystation was. She would need to come back before the season closed. She would need more than she had. But for now, she needed to clearly mark the half-hidden entrance with the blue strips. No one would die in that crack this winter.

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.

The sled ran easy down the ridge. Veyra held the raptor's harness and watched the pole line shrink behind her. Twenty poles across the worst turn. Four blue strips on each. A cache stocked in the cliff crack below. She had come off the mountain with work done. She should have felt lighter. She did not. Giloa walked at her shoulder through the low pass. He noticed her face before she spoke. "You're chewing on something," he said. "If I fall in a crevasse tomorrow, no one finds the line." He walked three steps. "No." "The poles are up. The cloth fades in two winters. Who knows the order after me? Who knows the shelter is under the third pole from the shelf?" "I do." "And if we both fall." Giloa did not answer. That was answer enough. They reached the village by dusk. Veyra did not go to her own fire. She went to the shaman's hut and stood at the door until Shahndiin waved her in. Shahndiin sat cross-legged by a low flame, mixing something in a clay bowl. The blue names on her arms shifted in the firelight. "I need ink," Veyra said. "The kind that holds. And a hide. Something that won't rot." Shahndiin set the bowl down. "For what." "A map. Every pole. Every turn. The cache in the crack. The bad snow on the west face. If I die, someone else walks the road." Shahndiin studied her. "You have kept it in your head." "My head burns with me." Shahndiin rose. She took a folded skin from a shelf and a stoppered horn from a hook. She laid both in Veyra's hands. The horn was heavy. "The ink does not fade," Shahndiin said. "Draw once. Draw true." Veyra worked at the chieftain's long table that night, because the light was better there and because Barren Meadow let her sit without questions. Giloa sat across from her and named turns as she drew. The eastern pass first. The marked bend with its poles and cloth. Then the western ridge. The shelf. The worst turn. The twenty poles in order, each one numbered. The cliff crack, three paces east of the third pole. The bad face above the traverse. The line she had not yet marked, drawn as a dashed track waiting for spring. She finished near dawn. Her hand cramped around the reed. Giloa rolled the hide and tied it with a cord. "Two copies," he said. "Two," she agreed. She would draw the second tomorrow. One for the chieftain's hall. One for her own pack. The knowledge was out of her skull now. It lay flat on hide, in ink that would not fade. If she fell in the spring, the road would still be there. The line waited to be finished, but it would no longer die with her.

Veyra drew the second copy the next morning at the chieftain's table. The hide was smaller than the first, but she fit every pole and turn onto it. When the ink dried, she rolled both maps and tied them with cord. Then she sat back and stared at her hands. Two maps. Two people who could read them. If she and Giloa went into a crevasse together, the ink would still be there, but no one alive would know what the marks meant. She found Giloa outside splitting kindling. "The maps aren't enough," she said. "Someone else has to walk the road with us. Learn the poles. Learn the cache." Giloa set the axe down. "Who." "I don't know yet." She went to the shaman's hut first. Shahndiin was outside, tying a fresh bundle of herbs above her doorway. The blue names on her arms caught the low sun. "I need a second reader for the map," Veyra said. "Someone who knows the mountain. Someone who'll live past me." Shahndiin did not turn around. "Not me. My road is the forest and the pool. I would forget your poles by the second snow." "Then who." "Ask the chief. He knows every young back in the village." Veyra crossed to the great hall, the bone arches over its door casting long shadows on the stone. Barren Meadow sat inside on a low bench, oiling a strap. He did not look up when she entered. "I need a warrior," Veyra said. "Young. Steady. Willing to learn the road with me before spring." "For what." "So the road doesn't die with me and Giloa." He set the strap across his knee. He thought for a long moment. She braced for a refusal. He had refused her warriors before. "Take my grandson's second boy," he said. "Nendo. He hunts with Giloa's cousin. He can read a marked trail." Veyra almost asked why. She did not. She saw the answer in his face. The old man was setting a piece of his line outside his own house, away from the meetings his grandson was holding against him. He was moving something he loved to safer ground. "He'll walk the whole road with us," Veyra said. "Both passes. The cache. Every pole in order." "Take him in the spring." Barren Meadow picked up the strap again. "He leaves when you leave. He comes back when you come back." She left the hall with the second map under her arm. Giloa was waiting by the wind chimes at the village shrine, the crystal rods clicking above him in the cold air. "Well?" he said. "We have a third," Veyra said. "The chief's great-grandson. Nendo." Giloa nodded once. "Good." Then, quieter: "He's the chief's blood. That's not free." Veyra looked back at the hall. "No," she said. "It isn't."

Veyra could not wait for spring to find out if the chief's great-grandson would live on the pass. If he broke a leg on the western ridge in thaw, she would be burying him with her own hands. She wanted him tested now, on ground she could still turn him back on. She found the boy at the pens, splitting a frozen haunch for the dogs. He wore a blue fur-lined robe and carried his stone axe on his hip. He was seventeen and built like a hunter already, but she had never watched him climb. "Tomorrow," she said. "One night out. The lower eastern pass. You, me, Giloa." Nendo set the axe down. "Why now." "I need to see you walk before I promise your great-grandfather I can bring you home in spring." He did not argue. He nodded once and went to pack. They left at first light. The raptor pulled the blue sled with a light load, a fire kit and a sack of lingon nuts and pine kernels for the night. Giloa walked point. Veyra put Nendo behind the sled and watched his feet. He was quiet on the flat. On the first steep pitch he shortened his stride without being told. He tested every rock lip with the side of his boot before he set weight. When the raptor balked at an ice sheet, he stepped around to its head and hummed at it until it moved. "Who taught you that," Giloa said. "My great-grandfather's dogs." At the marked turn, Veyra stopped him. She pointed at the poles and the blue strips. "Read it." Nendo looked. "Path bends left. Drop-off right. The double strips mean the worst step." "How did you know double meant worst." "You wouldn't waste dye." Giloa almost smiled. They camped in a stone hollow below the ridge. Nendo built the fire without asking where. He set the torches from the fire kit upright in the snow at the mouth of the hollow, points out, so a night wind would not take the flame. Veyra had not shown him that. He had watched someone do it once and kept it. She passed him the nut sack. He ate a handful and passed it back. "You knew I was watching," she said. "Yes." "You didn't perform." "No point." She slept an hour and woke to check him. He was already awake, feeding the fire on a schedule she would have set herself. In the morning they walked down. Nendo took the sled rope on the last pitch without being asked and braked it clean on the ice. At the village edge Veyra stopped him again. "Spring," she said. "Both passes. The cache. Every pole." "I'll be ready." "You already are." She walked to the great hall to tell the chief. She would take his boy in the thaw. She was no longer guessing whether he would come back.

Veyra left Nendo at the pens with the raptor and the sled and walked to the great hall alone. She wanted to speak to the chief before the boy came in. Praise landed differently when the subject was not in the room. The hall was warm. Barren Meadow sat by the low fire with a bowl of broth balanced on his knee. He looked up when she came in and did not stand. He rarely did anymore, though he still could. "You took him out," he said. "One night. Lower eastern pass." "And?" Veyra pulled off her mitts and held her hands to the fire. "He read the markers without help. Shortened his stride on the steep before I told him to. Set the fire torches at the mouth of the hollow so the wind wouldn't kill the flame. I hadn't shown him that." Barren Meadow set the bowl down. "He knew I was watching," she said. "He didn't perform. He fed the fire on the schedule I would have kept myself. He braked the sled clean on the last ice pitch without being asked." The old man's jaw worked once. He said nothing. "You should be proud of him," Veyra said. "He's already a guard. He just hasn't walked the western ridge yet." Barren Meadow looked into the fire. "His father won't hear this from you." "His father isn't why I came." "No." He nodded, slow. "Take him in spring. All of it." "That was the promise." She turned to the door and called Nendo in. He came through carrying his axe on his hip and stopped a pace inside, waiting. His eyes went to his great-grandfather first, then to her. Veyra unslung the pack from her shoulder and drew out the second map. It was the copy she and Giloa had spent the night making at this same table, ink dark on cured hide, every pole and cache and hazard on the road marked in her own hand. She held it out to Nendo. "This is the second one," she said. "Giloa has the first. I keep the original. If I go into a crevasse in spring, this is what keeps the road alive." Nendo took it with both hands. He did not unroll it in the hall. He folded it against his chest, under the robe, against skin. "I'll learn it before thaw," he said. "You'll learn it with me on the ground. The map is so you don't forget after." "After what," he said. "After me." Barren Meadow watched them both. He did not speak. Nendo held the map tight under his robe and looked at her. "Then I need to know who else has seen it." Veyra stopped. She had not thought of that yet. Three people now knew the road. One of them was a boy whose own father watched him from across the village.