Jaleigh Johnson - Unbroken Chain - The Darker Road

Mareyn kept her sword in front of her and backed away from the snowfang, but the creature came after her, its claws raking deep gouges in her breastplate. Off balance under the weight of the attack, Mareyn collapsed. Her sword was her savior. She slashed wildly, protecting her body, and instead of biting her, the wolf retreated.

She didn’t escape unscathed. The wolf tore a long gash in her side. Blood ran down her leg and pooled in the snow. She cupped the wound with her left hand, but Ashok doubted it would be enough to stop the bleeding.

Ashok planted his feet and struck out from a distance with his chain. The snowfang had grace, but it couldn’t dodge the speed of his attacks. Keeping the chain always moving in deadly arcs, Ashok drew the monster’s attention away from Mareyn to give the warrior time to recover.

The wolf hissed a breath that carried more ice and snow. Ashok went down in a crouch and whipped his cloak in front of his face to protect his eyes from the attack. The numbing cold enveloped him again, and when Ashok recovered enough to bring his weapon up, he misjudged the strike and slashed his own cheek with his weapon. Warm blood dribbled down his face and returned some of the feeling to his deadened skin.

Inspired-or desperate-Ashok wound his chain around his arm as Vlahna had done. He had no hard leather to protect him, so the spikes pierced his flesh. The action went against Uwan’s edict that the shadar-kai must not weaken themselves by marking their own flesh, but Ashok had no choice. There was a greater threat here than the fear that he might diminish himself. He had to be able to fight through the cold, or he, Mareyn, and Les would die.

In the wake of its icy breath, the snowfang lunged at him. Ashok knew he couldn’t get any colder, so he stretched out his arms, absorbed the wolf’s weight, and let it drive him into the snow. He hugged the creature close to drive the spikes into its flesh. The wolf howled and snapped at him. It sank its teeth into his other forearm and shook vigorously. Ashok heard his armor tear. The wolf crushed the bone scales and punctured hard muscle.

Burning pain shot up Ashok’s arm, restoring life to him even as the draining blood threatened to take it back. The snowfang had no idea that it helped Ashok by inflicting these wounds. He hugged the monster tighter and felt a rib crack as the wolf tried to tear his arm off. Neither would let go of their prizes.

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.