Distantly, Ashok heard a deep-throated shout. He thought at first it was the wolves, but then he realized it was a human voice. The voice said something in a language Ashok didn’t recognize. A breath later, he saw Mareyn in his periphery, half running, half stumbling toward the wolf. The warrior jumped and landed on the snowfang’s back. She hacked with her sword at the creature’s flesh, finally penetrating its frozen hide.
The wolf jerked its head up and around, biting at the warrior. She gripped its flanks with her legs as if she rode a horse and kept striking, ignoring the cold that had turned her skin a wasted blue color.
A deep slash to its neck sent the snowfang into a frenzy. It broke Ashok’s hold and rolled away in the snow. The force of its retreat threw Mareyn off its back, and Ashok felt his own rib snap as the beast rolled over him and picked itself up. Gasping, he came up to his knees and held his arm up in front of him, showing the wolf the blood- covered spikes.
Ashok heard a loud howl from behind and above him. He turned just in time to see one of the other winter wolves leap from a ledge farther up the mountain. Ashok teleported out of its way and appeared near where Mareyn lay in the snow.
The wolf hit the ground and limped to the snowfang. It left a trail of blood in the snow.
“Did you … hit it?” Mareyn said. Her voice was weak from the cold. “Before you teleported?”
“I didn’t have time,” Ashok said. “I heard a voice-”
“Maybe it’s the caravan … catching up,” Mareyn said.
“They can’t be moving that fast.” Ashok willed his flesh to solidify, even though it meant succumbing to the biting cold. The snowfang, distracted, licked the other wolf’s wounds like a mother. Ashok considered his and Mareyn’s own injuries with a grim outlook. If they didn’t get warm soon, they would no longer be able to walk, let alone fight. Mareyn’s side wound still bled. Ashok didn’t know how she found the will to stay on her feet, but there she was, standing beside him again when finally his form became solid.
Ashok didn’t wait for the snowfang to finish its ministrations. He came forward again and struck the wolf a blow to the hind leg with his bound arm. The spikes laid open its flesh and exposed muscle, but there was not nearly enough strength behind the attack to cripple the beast. The snowfang turned and clawed Ashok’s breastplate, tearing into the bone scales. Mareyn attacked from the side but had to turn away when the other wolf struck her from behind.
We’re going to die, Ashok thought dimly as the wolf snapped at his face. The cold made his movements seem disconnected from his thoughts. He might as well have been watching the scene from outside his body. He registered the deep red stains in the snow, the weakening of the snowfang’s attacks. They wouldn’t lose the fight by much, but they would still lose.
A fire ignited in Ashok’s periphery.
He saw it reflected in the snowfang’s blue eyes. The nightmare had come back to life, shaking off the preternatural cold. His whole body burned, illuminating the scene in gold. A scream shook the air, and Ashok felt the torturous sound slam into him, jolting him back into his body.
“Take him,” Ashok growled.
The nightmare charged, eating up the distance between them in a breath. The stallion reared and brought his hooves down on the snowfang’s back. Ashok barely had time to roll out of the way before the snowfang fell. Pinned, the wolf got the full brunt of the nightmare’s fire. But the nightmare wasn’t done. The stallion sank his teeth into the wolf’s neck and tore at its flesh.
Ashok got to his feet and went to help Mareyn with the other wolf. The smaller one was weak from its wounds and was nearly dead when Ashok got to it. Mareyn leaned on Ashok for support, and together they watched the nightmare’s fire finally penetrate the aura of cold surrounding the snowfang. Its body caught and burned.
When the snowfang lay still in the snow, the nightmare’s fire died away to a dim blaze that Ashok felt even across the space between them. He started toward the stallion, but stopped when Mareyn resisted.
“Can you walk?” he asked.
She nodded. “I’m not going near … that one,” she said. “But I’m grateful.”
“His fire will warm us,” Ashok said. “If we don’t get heat back into our bodies, we’ll die before the caravan reaches us.”
Mareyn sighed and nodded. She let him lead her over to the nightmare but stopped before she was close enough to touch him.
“Gods, I can smell the blood on its breath,” she said. “But it is warm, at least.”
“I don’t notice the scent anymore,” Ashok said.
They stood in uncomfortable silence for a moment, absorbing the nightmare’s heat. As soon as she was warm enough, Mareyn moved away. She looked at the bodies of the wolves in consternation.
“The other one must still be around here somewhere,” she said. “It’ll have Les.”
“There are tracks here.” Ashok pointed to where the other wolf had come down from the snow-covered rocks.
They picked their way carefully up the slope and came eventually to a ridge that looked down on a bowl- shaped valley lined with jagged rocks and icicles.
Below them, hanging off a large rock, they found the body of the other winter wolf. Les lay in the snow beside the dead wolf, on what looked like an animal skin. A burly man crouched over the wolf with a skinning knife. He looked up when Ashok and Mareyn crested the ridge.
He had wild, red-blond hair and a tangled beard that half obscured his wrinkled face. A wolf pelt rode on his back. For a brief instant, he reminded Ashok of his father, a big man in hide armor, his hair shining red in the meager sunlight. The vision hit him sharply and made Ashok catch his breath. He recovered quickly and caught Mareyn’s arm when she started down the slope.
“We don’t know he’s an ally,” Ashok warned her.
“That’s why I haven’t put my blade away,” Mareyn said, but she was no longer looking at him. She fixed her attention on Les’s unconscious form.
As she moved down the slope, Ashok called out to the man in Common. “Well met. You have our thanks for killing the wolf. If you hadn’t, we’d be dead.”
The man’s gaze shifted from him to Mareyn. It was impossible to read his expression. He put his skinning knife away and pulled a length of rope from his belt. He used it to tie the wolf’s back legs together.
Mareyn had reached the boy. Ashok kept his weapon looped around his arm, but the man ignored Mareyn and stood up. He turned his back to them and dragged the wolf carcass up the slope in the opposite direction.
“Are you of the Rashemi?” Ashok called after him. He knew they must be nearly in the witches’ lands.
The man paused to look back at them. His expression reminded Ashok of Ilvani. He looked at them without seeing them, almost as if he inhabited another world entirely, and they were only shadows probing at the edge of his vision. Then the man turned away and resumed dragging his burden up the slope. Ashok watched him until he was almost out of sight.
“Ashok, we have to get Les down to the nightmare,” Mareyn said.
Shaken from his thoughts, Ashok bent to examine the boy. His leg was broken, twisted out awkwardly from his body, but otherwise there were no physical wounds. The wolf’s teeth had torn away most of his boot, but the flesh beneath was intact. The boy’s eyes were half-open, but he didn’t seem to recognize Mareyn, even when she spoke to him in a soothing voice.
She was right. Cold was the enemy now.
He ripped off some pieces of his bone scale armor to use as a splint. The snowfang had ruined most of the breastplate. He’d have to replace the rest. Mareyn took rope from her pack and together they worked on the boy’s leg.
When they tried to move him, Les came to life at last. The pain made him jerk and thrash about in the snow. Ashok took hold of the boy’s shoulders and pressed him down while Mareyn spoke quickly in his ear. After long minutes, she got him to know her, and he calmed. She took her cloak off and draped it over him, rubbing his arms and legs to warm him.
“Let’s go,” she said. “Take his shoulders. I’ll brace his legs so the pain won’t overwhelm him.”
They lifted him. The boy moaned but made no other complaint. Even so, it was a long, slow climb out of the small valley and back down to the nightmare. Ashok carried the boy over to the stallion and started to drape him over the nightmare’s back.
“You can’t mean to let that thing carry him?” Mareyn said incredulously. “It’s a demon, not a
