Sarah Driver - Storm

‘I ent no little ’un,’ I hiss, rolling my eyes at my crewmate Crow, who’s sat on the other side of me. The former ship-wrecker boy gifts me a grin.

A door bangs and we turn to stare as Leopard – seven hundred and seventy-seventh in a great line of Protectors of the Mountain – leads five Sky Elders through the crowd. Leo looks worn to rags by exhaustion, but she’s wearing her goat headdress and a cloak of gold-dipped feathers, and she’s standing arrow-straight.

I straighten my own spine at the sight of her, and in the corner of my eye catch Lunda scowling at me. The pale-haired Spearsister – one of the Protector’s best trained warriors – still don’t like outsiders. She throws the spear of her fright even surer than her spear of iron.

The Elders are a mix of draggle-riders and Wilderwitches – enemies until one full moon’s turn ago, when I freed Leo from the possession that Stag and the mystiks were wielding to control her and her territory. The Wilder-King remains our enemy, swearing fealty to Stag even though storms have been trying to throw his iceberg forest flat and Hackles would be safer for his people. But some Wilderwitches fled to Hackles and Leo welcomed them heartily.

I watch as the Elders tread behind Leo. They’re draped in flowing sky-blue robes spun from ice worm silk and sewn with berg owl feathers. Orca teeth hang from their hems.

They carry offerings to the Sky gods – in their cupped palms sit crystal jars filled with tiny forests, dragonflies and spark-spluttering miniature storm clouds. They reach the dais and turn to face the benches.

Silence drops. The might of Hackles presses down on us – seems like even the ancient stronghold is straining to listen. Everyone says the Elders only utter a squeak when their pipes have seriousness to spill. And folks are proper desperate for them to gift words of certainty while chaos is sweeping through the world.

Chaos like how the trees can’t summon their life-blood from the sealed earth, and winter won’t thaw. Like how the land has erupted into riots, since the fires lit by Stag destroyed the Icy Marshes. Famine has seen more tribes joining Stag’s side, or taking to crimes that have long been outlawed – raiding and slave-trading. Others are divided, like the Wilderwitches, and fighting amongst themselves.

Leo addresses the hall. ‘Unity is our aim. Let us remember – our mountain was born from the sea, and the wind carved the rocks. Here is the birth of a mountain!’

‘And here is the birth of an iceberg!’ drone the Wilderwitches.

‘May swift feathers bear your Sky-Tribe glad tidings,’ I mutter along with the rest of them.

‘Let us hear the latest reports from the Sneakings,’ says Leo grimly.

Shoulders sag, mutters rise, boots stamp the floor impatiently. ‘Can’t we just hear the Elders, and get it over with?’ someone whispers behind me.

The Sneakings. Leo’s draggle patrols that slip into the world when no one’s looking. Leo promised I can join the next one, and I’m counting every beat until we fly cos the next Sneaking will be for a Tribe-Meet. Besides, it’s too long since I roved.

‘We have flown to the furthest corners of the land, Protector,’ says a lean woman with wind-burned cheeks. ‘The whole of Trianukka is blotted in the shadow of frozen cloud. Winter will not end. Fangtooths are leaving the Frozen Wastes and spilling across the ice, terrorising all in their path. They have raided the Bay of Thunder and the fishing villages along the Black Coast.’

Another rider stands. ‘Our spies have heard that the creeping ice has already spread as far south as the Giant’s Backbone; a stack of hovels teetering twenty deep upon an ancient ribcage, on the edge of Nightfall.’

Crow turns his head and our startled eyes meet.

As the reports go on, the despairing news weighs heavy on my spine and I feel my chest grow tight.

After the final report has rung through the hall, the Elders creak to their feet. Thick silence plunges once again.

Leopard nods to the Elders, then sits at the edge of the dais, opposite me. She twists her thin hands in her lap. Her lips move, and I can just hear her prayers. ‘Wakening’s Dawn, please come to us, please melt this ice and wake the sun.’

The Elders hook a cauldron over a fire, then pinch powder inside and feed lumps of resin to the flames. Sparks race each other into the air. The Elders make a circle, linking hands.

Steam noses over the edge of the cauldron, coiling up to the damp cavern that yawns over our heads. The Elders crane their necks to see the shapes made by the steam.

I scrunch my toes inside my boots.

‘A darkness spreads across all the sea, sky and land . . . the great wheel of Midwinter has turned, but new life fails to wake in the earth!’ croaks an Elder. ‘It is as we feared. The age of the Withering has befallen us!’ She rakes her wide, watery eyes through the crowd. Then she spits. ‘Sky-gods save our souls.’

The fire claws at the sides of the cauldron. The steam thickens and writhes.

Draggle-riders are a goat-hardy, wind-sculpted folk. But still their frighted whispers leap into the air like sparks from a stabbed fire.

‘My granny always warned of a Withering – why weren’t we ready?’

‘The fear was lost . . . we turned our backs on the demon!’ comes the hissed reply.

‘It’s the gods that turned their backs, on us !’

‘A Withering means no food, yet we take more stragglers in! Where will it end?’

Pika, the tall, cinnamon-skinned draggle-keeper boy, buries his face in his hands. ‘All my life, I’ve been taught to fear the Withering,’ he whispers. ‘I can’t believe it’s here.’

‘What is it?’ I ask, leaning forwards to see him, sitting on the other side of Crow.

‘Death of light,’ he answers absently, eyes roaming the hall. ‘A long, cold night of dead things. If no life stirs, there’ll be a food shortage even worse than the one made by war.’

The Withering. I try to picture it in my mind’s eye, but it’s hard to imagine a thing so vast. Not long ago – but exactly when , no one can agree on – dawn failed good and proper. Now we’re stuck in a grainy light, like a nightmare.

The steam from the cauldron twines and shifts, until I see grim faces with stretched eyes pulling upwards and swarming through the air.

One of the Elders throws a jug of water over the fire, smothering the flames. The steam dissolves slowly, the gaunt eyes fading into nothing. Something terrible is coming. Something worse than a Withering. Something even worse than Stag. I can feel it.

Leo stands. ‘We must focus our energies on the fight ahead!’ she calls. ‘A destructive force is gaining power, taking full advantage of the peril of our world – a marching movement of evil, with Stag and the mystiks at its helm. They control the devastated Icy Marshes and have dug their claws into the Frozen Wastes and the city of Nightfall. We must not let them claim further territories.’

Sickening thoughts knuckle my skull. Thoughts about what Stag is to me, now there’s a link that I’ll never be able to cut. He fathered me. He ent my da but my bones are threaded with his poisoned blood. How could Ma have chosen such a gruesome mate? Was he always the same, or was he different when she met him? I stub my toe against the floor. I hate wondering about him!

‘You say they take advantage,’ says a stout old rider called Coati. ‘But Stag is offering shelter to those in need. He has opened Nightfall as a refuge, just as we have here.’ A furious clamour rises. My fingers tighten on the bench. ‘Hear me,’ Coati calls gruffly. ‘They say he distributes food in the territories he controls. I am yet to see how we know he intends war.’ He sits down, puffing out his ruddy cheeks.