One Girl, A Pack Of Beasts novel · Chapter 17 of 32

Chapter 17: The Blizzard Cave

We roped ourselves together at the edge of town.

Ten feet of line, his belt to mine.

By the time the river trail turned uphill, I couldn't see him at the end of it.

The snow came sideways, thick as wool.

It filled my eyes and my mouth.

I walked with one hand on the rope, gauging his stride by the tug.

For the first hour, the tug was steady.

By the third, it was slow.

By dusk, I was pulling him.

The valley mouth was a broken shelf of black rock where the high valley spilled down toward the river.

Steam came up out of cracks in the stone and froze in the air.

"Here," Kell said behind me.

His voice was thick and slow.

"Kell, the caves first."

"Here. Look."

He was crouched in the snow, pointing.

I saw nothing.

Then I saw two black eyes and a black nose, ten paces away, in a drift that was exactly the same color as everything else.

A white fox, curled nose to tail in the lee of a rock, sheltering from the storm.

I didn't breathe.

"One wound," Kell whispered. "Left of the eye. He'll run right."

I drew my knife.

The fox lifted its head.

I threw.

It ran right, the way he said, straight into the knife.

It dropped without a sound.

I went and picked it up. The blade had gone in clean beside the eye.

There was one drop of blood on the snow, and nothing on the white fur.

"One," I said, and turned around, grinning.

Kell was lying on his face in the snow.

I don't remember dropping the fox.

I remember his weight, and the rope, and the steam ahead of me.

I swore at him the whole way, every word my father ever taught me and some he hadn't.

The cave was low at the mouth and opened up inside into a room of wet black rock.

At the back, water welled up out of the stone into a long pool.

It steamed.

I put my hand in it.

Hot. Bath hot. Hotter at the far end, where it bubbled.

I didn't think about it.

I pulled off his cloak and his boots and his shirt and his breeches.

I rolled him into the shallow end and held his head on my arm above the water.

He was so cold the water smoked around him.

"Come on," I said. "Come on. You said hot water. Here's your hot water."

Nothing.

Then his fingers twitched.

Then his chest moved, deep, the first real breath I'd seen him take since the Hall.

His eyes opened.

They were gold and clear, and the pupils were round and wide in the dark.

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