He plucked the crows and kept the feathers for kindling, spitting the birds and roasting them over his fire. The meat was dry and tough making him appreciate why crow was not considered a delicacy. As night came there was little to do but huddle near his fire until it burnt down then settle into his shelter. The door he had made was more use than the blanket but still the cold seemed to settle into his bones. His stomach growled but the wind howled ever louder, but still he heard no voices.
He had better luck in the morning, bringing down a snow hare. He was proud of the kill, the arrow catching the animal as it scampered for its hole. He had it skinned and cleaned within an hour and took a great amount of pleasure in roasting it over the fire, staring with wide eyes at the grease running over the blistering skin. They should call this the Test of Hunger, he decided as his stomach gave voice to another obscenely loud growl. He ate half the meat and stashed the other half in a tree hole he had chosen for a good hiding place. It was a good distance off the ground, he had to climb to reach it, and the tree was too slender to support the weight of a scavenging bear. It was a real effort to resist the urge to gobble all the meat at once but he knew if he did he might have to face the next day without a meal.
The rest of the day was spent hunting without success, his snares remained frustratingly empty and he had to content himself digging for roots from under the snow. The roots he found were hardly filling, and took a lot of boiling before they were edible, but sufficed to take the edge of his hunger. His one stroke of luck was finding a yallin root, inedible but possessed of a particularly foul smelling juice which would be useful in protecting his food store and shelter from prowling wolves or bears.
He was trudging back to his shelter after another fruitless hunt when it began to snow in earnest, the wind soon whipping the flakes into a blizzard. He made it back before the snow became too thick for him to see his way and wedged his door of woven branches firmly into the entrance, warming his ice cold hands in the hare’s pelt he had chosen to use as a muffler. He couldn’t light a fire in the middle of a snowstorm and had no choice but to sit it out, shivering, flexing his hands in the fur to stop the numbness setting in.
The wind was louder than ever, still howling, leaving its voices in the Beyond… What was that? He sat up, holding his breath, ears straining. A voice, a voice on the wind. Faint, plaintive. He sat still and quiet, waiting for it to come again. The shriek of the wind was continuous and infuriating, every change in tone seemed to herald another call of the mystery voice. He waited, breathing softly, but nothing came.
Shaking his head, he lay down again, huddling beneath the blanket, trying to make himself as small as possible…
“…curse you…”
He jerked upright, instantly awake. There was no mistaking it. There was a voice on the wind. It came again, quickly this time, the wind allowing only a few words to reach him, “…you hear me? I curse you! … regret nothing! I … nothing…”
The voice was faint but he could hear the rage in it clearly, this soul had sent a message of hate back across the void. Was for him? He felt cold dread grip him like a giant fist. The assassins, Brak and the other two. His shivers deepened but not through cold.
“…nothing!” the voice raged. “Nothing … have done has … anything! You hear me?”
Vaelin thought he knew fear, he thought the ordeal in the forest had hardened him, made him in some ways immune to terror. He was wrong. Some of the masters had talked of men pissing themselves when fear overcame them. He had never believed it until now.
“…I’ll carry my hate into the Beyond! If you cursed my life you’ll curse my death a thousand times…”
Vaelin’s shivers stopped momentarily. Death? What kind of Departed soul speaks of dying? A very obvious thought occurred to him in a rush of embarrassment he was glad no-one was there to see: someone is outside in the storm whilst I sit here cowering.
He had to dig his way out, the blizzard had piled a drift against his door fully three feet high. After a few moments’ effort he scrambled out into the fury of the storm. The wind was like a knife cutting through his cloak as if it were made of paper, snow pelted his face like nails, he could see almost nothing.
“Ho there!” he called, feeling the words vanish into the gale as soon as they escaped his lips. He dragged air into his lungs, swallowing snow, and tried again, “HO! WHO’S THERE?”
Something shifted in the blizzard, a vague shape in the wall of white. Gone before he could make sense of it. Drawing another breath he began to fight his way towards where he thought the shape had been, heaving his legs out of the freezing drifts. He stumbled several times before he found them, two shapes, huddled together, partially covered by the blizzard, one large, one small.
“Get up!” Vaelin shouted, prodding the largest shape. It groaned, rolling over, snow falling away from a frost encrusted face, two pale blue eyes staring out from the mask of ice. Vaelin drew back slightly. He had never seen a gaze so intense. Not even Master Sollis’s stare could pierce a soul like this. Unconsciously his hand closed over the knife beneath his cloak. “If you stay here you’ll freeze to death in minutes,” he shouted. “I have shelter.” He waved back the way he had come. “Can you walk?”
The eyes kept staring, the frost face immobile. My luck holds true, Vaelin thought ruefully. Only I could find a mad man in the middle of a snow storm.
“I can walk,” the man’s voice was a growl. He jerked his head at the smaller shape next to him. “I’ll need help with this one.”
Vaelin moved to the small shape, dragging it to its feet, drawing a pained gasp. As he pulled the figure upright a hood fell away to reveal a pale, elfin face and a shock of auburn hair. The girl remained standing for only an instant before collapsing against him.
“Here,” the man grunted, taking one of her arms and laying it across his shoulders. Vaelin took the other arm and together they struggled back to the shelter. It seemed to take an age, incredibly the storm was growing in intensity and Vaelin knew that if they stopped for even a second death would follow soon after. Reaching the shelter he scraped the already re-grown drift away from the entrance and pushed the girl in first, gesturing for the man to follow. He shook his head. “You first, boy.”
Vaelin noted the adamant tone in his growl and knew lingering to argue would be pointless, and possibly deadly. He crawled into the shelter, pushing the girl’s body deeper as he did so, cramming them both in as tightly as he could. The man followed them in quickly, his bulk leaving little remaining space, and jammed Vaelin’s door into the entrance.
They lay together, mingled breath clouding the confines of the shelter, Vaelin’s lungs burnt from the effort of struggling through the snow and his hands trembled uncontrollably. He put them inside his cloak, hoping to stave off frostbite. An irresistible tiredness began to creep over him, clouding his vision as he slid towards unconsciousness. He had a final glimpse of the man next to him, peering out at the storm through a gap in the door. Before exhaustion overtook him completely Vaelin heard the man mutter, “A little longer then. Just a little longer.”
He surfaced with a splitting headache, a thin beam of sunlight lancing through the roof directly into his eye provoking a painful yelp. Next to him the girl shifted in her sleep, one of her boots leaving a bruise on his shin. The man wasn’t in the shelter and a strong, distinctly appetising aroma was wafting through the entrance. Vaelin decided he would rather be outside.