Chapter 14
The trolls are huddled behind a wall of overturned sleds. The crew stands in a ring around one figure lying flat on his back in the snow, eyes closed, hands folded on his chest, like a knight on a tomb. Trollmage. The crow sits on his chest.
looking up at the ridge where Sigvat's thin figure waits in the starlight.
Out of the dark pines come the hounds: long, low, wolf-shaped, made of the same grey as the erased village, with no eyes. Where their paws touch the snow, the snow loses its whiteness. Two dozen of them.
its eyeless head turning toward Trollmage, sniffing for the one who matters.
Marka and Bakasura hold the left flank together. She swings, he swallows, and hounds go flying or vanish into the maw.
Rougeina dances along the right flank, Swapping between hounds, never where they bite. Her silver-rose trails fill the dark like scratches on black glass.
Vigolas takes the centre with a burning branch from the dead fire in one hand and a fist in the other. He doesn't use COMPACT. He is saving it, and afraid of it, and both of those show on his face.
on top of a sled, firing round after round, Mingus at his feet.
A hound breaks through and lunges for Trollmage's throat. Kali catches it mid-air with both sickles and flings it into the dark.
She eyes the golden pulse line glowing along the bottom of his panel.
inhaling at Kompis. Her eyes flash gold: she has borrowed Subtick.
Nothing happens. The world doesn't freeze. She stands there, gold-eyed, completely normal, while a hound sails at her face. She ducks it by pure reflex.
nodding down at the dog leaning against his leg.
outraged, handing the sin back with a disgusted flick.
the moon crossing the sky panel by panel.
1 a.m.: Drekk and three trolls rebuilding the sled-wall as hounds tear it down.
2 a.m.: Marka bandaging a troll's arm with her own sleeve, anchor in her other hand.
3 a.m.: Smurjan and Bakasura back to back, steam rising off them both.
4 a.m.: Rougeina, bleeding, still Swapping, slower now.
And through all of it, at the centre: Trollmage, lying perfectly still, the crow asleep on his chest, his runes slowly brightening, one by one, like a city waking up.
exhausted, kneeling beside Trollmage.
The hounds stop. All at once, every one of them turns its eyeless head toward the ridge, called back. They pour away up the slope like water running uphill.
The crew stands in the ruined camp, swaying, breathing clouds. The eastern sky is turning pale grey.
Dawn. The sun lifts its first edge over the mountains behind the ridge, and silhouetted against it, tiny and enormous, stands Sigvat. He looks ancient now, white-haired and stooped, leaning on his staff, the hounds pooled at his feet. The longest scroll in the world unrolls from his hands down the ridge and into the valley like a black-and-white river.
He begins to read.
Below him, at the top of the valley, the grey begins.
The grey comes down the valley like a tide. Pines fade in rows. The river goes grey and still mid-flow. The snow loses its white, the rocks their edges and the sky its blue, all of it sliding toward the camp.
behind the sled-wall, holding each other. The smallest girl clutches Mingus, who is just a dog right now, licking her face.
standing up. He looks at his open hand. Green lightning flickers, and then he looks at the size of the valley.
putting a big hand on his shoulder.
opening. Violet. Full.
rising off his chest. The crow takes off.
The grey tide is a hundred metres from the camp and rolling closer. The crew stands in front of the troll children. Marka sets her feet in the snow, the anchor's chain wrapped twice round her fist, between the grey and everyone she loves.