Sarah Driver - Sky

I squint at him impatiently. ‘Beast-chatter?’

‘Aye. That’s the one.’

I listen again, hard, but there’s a silence. I shake my head.

‘That’s what I thought,’ he whispers. ‘They’re shape-changers, not wolves.’

I stare at Crow as his words wash a memory over me – when he was Stag’s spy, hiding aboard our ship in bird form. If I listened for his beast-chatter there was just emptiness, cos he weren’t really a beast at all.

We lock eyes in the gloom and I quickly look away, watching the sky-wolves for as many beats as I dare while Crow’s gaze burns my skin.

The fog’s closed over us like a shroud, poking up our noses and worming into our lungs. Far below, slices of land and sea chink through it, then vanish again. Our path curves to the right, towards a wall of blackness. Storm clouds? My gut twists, but soon we’re close enough to see that it’s not cloud at all.

We’re headed for a bulk of pure, solid mountain.

A mountain range that makes me know that others I’ve seen were just hills. This mountain is a place so huge, of so much old power, that I’ve never felt so small in all my life.

The wolves howl, one by one, ’til their voices join into a long, throaty wail. They lope through the sky, snouts carved open into eager snarls. Their eyes are a mix of blues and greens and greys. Human, like Crow said.

Suddenly one lunges from the mist to the right and snatches a draggle and its rider clean out of the sky. The rider plummets towards the valley below with a strangled scream, and the sky-wolf shakes the draggle by the wing, like a rag doll. The rest of the flock shrieks and swerves, and I’m dimly aware that I’m screaming with them. Crow reaches for my hand. His cheeks are blotched red with fright.

Just as another sky-wolf springs, a bone-splitting BOOM throttles the sky and echoes off the mountain, almost shaking my spirit loose.

‘Riders, low! Hackles is spewing!’ yells Lunda. The draggles swoop suddenly and our net falls through the air for a beat.

Then huge ice-boulders slam overhead. They smash the front ranks of the sky-wolves to pieces of mist, leaving only the splintered ghosts of their howls.

The sky-wolves fall back, becoming a grey, snarling wall behind us. And when another marrow-shattering boom rocks the sky, they turn tail and race away, the rear ranks torn apart by massive clumps of ice. Shock tugs at my mouth.

We’re dragged higher and higher still, until we’re level with the clouds. Crow turns grey and cradles his head in his hands.

The mountain looms.

Sparrow moans, soft as a bone pipe, but when I call to him he don’t open his eyes and shakes wrack his body.

‘Stay in the waking world, too-soon,’ I murmur in his ear. My little brother was born before he was baked proper. I ent letting him leave me too soon as well.

The mountain is a black wall blotting out the world beyond. A great wound in its side oozes ice. A churning sound buzzes in the air, and I can feel a bowstring-tenseness that tells me it’s waiting to spew again.

We dip and swerve to the right, towards a chink in the rock. Behind us, ice boulders thunder through the air, spat out by the mountain range.

Then we’re hovering, trapped between the ice-bombs behind and the bleak cracked mountain ahead. The gap in the rock is packed with raging winds and swirling snow.

Lunda and the other riders shout into the wind and raise their arms high. They urge their draggles through the gap in the mountain. I squeeze Sparrow’s hand as we fly between two of the mountain’s jags, through a mass of cloud.

We’re only halfway through when the cloud begins to freeze around us, tightening, icing our garb to our skin, squeezing . . .

Up ahead, the riders shout panicked words that are lost in the storm.

Then we’re through the gap and the storm’s behind us and we can breathe. When I look back, there’s just a broiling mass of lightning, fog and frozen cloud.

The mountain echoes with the high shrieks and open-throated grunts of eagles. Inside my cloak, Thaw hisses.

There’s no trace of the world we came from.

We plunge downwards. My belly flips. I peek through a gap in the raindrop net and the ground is rushing closer. Closer. Closer .

I squeeze Sparrow tight and tuck my face into his neck, bracing for the hit. Crow grabs onto Sparrow too, and our wide eyes fasten together in panic.

Snow squabbles in the air. A snowflake pastes onto my eyeball – I scrub it away – and when I look through the net again there’s a smoky shape pressing up through the snow. My heart clambers into my throat.

The mountain is a jagged, ring-shaped fortress surrounding a settlement, like a bristling beast squatting gleefully over a kill. Spiny turrets are chiselled into the rock.

We thud into a snowdrift that guzzles sound. The net sags heavily onto us, sticking to our faces. I reach up to push it off, scraping my scar, and curse, sucking my teeth against the pain. Wind rushes overhead, snagging the raindrops in its grip, as the draggle flock glides past to land nearby. ‘Did the storm-barrier keep them out?’ calls a fretful voice.

‘Of course!’ snaps Lunda.

Crow wrestles with the net. ‘Help me get this thing open.’ He pushes his fingers between the raindrops and wrenches open a small hole.

As soon as he’s made it the hole shrinks, so I tug a merwraith scale out of my pocket and try to snick a proper cut. The raindrops buzz and rush to knit back together. ‘Bleeding cockle dung,’ I mutter.

I take Sparrow’s face in my cold-numbed fingers, whispering to him. He moans, but he won’t wake up. I tighten his cloak around him and pull his hood over his face. Then my ears twitch, and a prickle spreads up my neck. Boots are crunching through the snow.

I nuzzle my face close to the tough web of clamouring raindrops, and through the drifting whiteness a long-limbed girl has appeared, swamped in a cloak of brown feathers.

Her copper hair is bundled on top of her head like a tangled nest and her long red skirts billow around a pair of fur-trimmed boots. There’s something bare about her gaunt face; the flash of raw hope she wears is the only light on the mountain.

She steps nearer, then catches herself and glances around sharply, face turning dull and closed. She fits wooden snow-goggles over her eyes and melts into the snowstorm.

Lunda scrunches towards us. The raindrops slowly unravel into a thread that slides away along the ground and slurps into her staff.

Me and Crow thrash upright, pulling up our hoods, and watch as the riders leap off their draggles and hurry towards a row of statues etched into the rock-face. Reckon they must be likenesses of their sky-gods – human-bodied, eagle-headed, terrodyl-clawed. The riders kneel, muttering prayers.

Other figures battle through the snow to unsaddle their beasts. Then the draggles wheel around and soar into the air. Huntsniffbloodquickscurrytheybitetheywaitheartsbeatbeatbeat , they whisper, lips stretched into gruesome grins. Their huge shadows pass overhead, together with the sweet, damp stink of their fur.

‘ Don’t tell anyone your name!’ I whisper to Crow. He nods.

‘What happened back there, Spearsister?’ a man calls to Lunda, as he turns from muttering his prayers.

‘Cloud-freeze is not part of the barrier,’ says another. ‘We could have been frozen to death!’

‘We must make more appeasements to the flicker-gods,’ says a woman, twirling her blade in her fingers.