Fresh snow crunched under Jormand’s boots with each step as he crept through the forest, serving as an unwelcome reminder that autumn was coming to a rapid close. The first snow falls had come earlier than expected this year, while leaves still clung to the limbs of trees. Even now, reds, oranges, and yellows peeked out from under the white with startling regularity.

The early arrival of winter had tendrils of anxiety seeping into Jormand’s thoughts. The more days that went by as he romped through the woods and the more snow that fell, the more worrying this reality became. Soon enough the ice floes would come down the currents from further north, making sailing dangerous. And here he was, wasting time hunting.

He left a trail of footprints snaking back that disappeared into the deep shade of the pines behind him. His were far from the only footprints to disturb the newfallen snow, but they were by far the most noticeable. No creature of the forest would dare to leave such a trail. But Jormand was no creature of the forest. His home was on the salty sea far from here. He felt no guilt at damaging the serenity.

Lana followed closely behind him, bundled up tight in a heavy coat and carefully stepping in the hollows left by his much bigger feet. Unlike him, she did not make a sound at all as she moved through the forest. Her bow was slung over her back in a case to keep it safe from the snow that still fell occasionally from those few remaining clouds and she ghosted through the trees like an experienced hunter rather than a child of Maerin’s streets. It was good that she kept quiet; it let Jormand focus on the task at hand.

For his part, Jormand kept his bow handy. Not every beast that called these woods home was defenseless, this he knew. Just because he was a hunter did not mean that nothing hunted him in turn. The seasoned wood in his hand brought him some small amount of comfort.

But there was only the rustling of the gentle wind blowing through pine needles to be heard. Their trail crossed those of hares, birds, and smaller feet, but Jormand was not interested in those. He hardly even noticed them; they bled to the edges of his consciousness where he quickly forgot about them entirely. He had to concentrate, just to keep himself from becoming frustrated by what was beginning to feel like a useless task.

More than once, a small creature froze in its tracks as they came creeping through the forest, surprised, but Jormand did not loose his arrow yet. The prey he sought would be no common squirrel or dormouse.

They had been away from Derranhall for nearly three days now, hunting. They ranged deeper into the woods every morning and returned to camp late every evening. He had seen scant trails of stags and wolves, even the leavings of a bear gorging itself before bedding down for the winter, but none of them had struck him the way he knew they ought to. So he kept his arrow in patience and continued. He had to be certain. His new weapon would not serve him well if he took the wrong animal, but it was taking too long.

The first day of the hunt, Jormand had gone alone. Lana had stayed at the camp with Gisela, Lyra, and that caravanner boy. They kept the stewpot full with small game and he would not complain about coming back to a hot meal, even if he found it strange that they had come. He often forgot to eat when he was out alone, strange for him, but his attention was elsewhere.

The second day Lana had followed him, hiding in the forest so that he did not even notice at first. She must have practiced because she managed to be as silent and unseen as a stalking cat, blending in with the underbrush and snowbanks. He had only noticed her on his way back to the camp when he passed her midway between two trees, crouched low to the ground as she dashed to cover.

She’d been chagrined and more than a little embarrassed to be discovered, but still she asked to accompany him today. Jormand had been reluctant at first. He moved faster alone. But what Lana lacked in experience, she made up for in dogged stubbornness. So he let her follow as long as she didn’t get in the way. They hardly spoke. It did not bother him.

He finally found a promising trail just after midday. It looked old, perhaps from the night before, but he felt that twinge he had been waiting for. If he did not follow this one, he would regret it.

Wide footprints that pressed only slightly on the surface with markings from claws that scratched the pristine coating of the snow. A lone wolf it looked to be, and a rather large one at that. Strange that one wolf would travel alone, especially this far south, but perhaps that was the sign he was waiting for. A wolf seemed a fitting inspiration for his mission. He would track down Vilde with the tenacity of a wolf, and when he found her this beast would lend him its ferocity for the battle that would follow. The thought brought a grin to his frigid lips.

The trail became slightly clearer as Jormand followed it. The wolf had been moving slowly, stalking small prey. It wound around trees and through thickets, even passed the remains of what had once been a hare—the wolf’s most recent meal—but it pointed steadily northward.

It was rare that wolves would range so far this early in the year. Perhaps this one had been forced to by this early winter and the lack of food that it brought or by its own pack. Jormand felt some kinship with that. He would rather be somewhere else right now, chasing down his sister wherever she hid. Not stalking through the forest wasting time. But it was necessary. A soulforged weapon would serve him far better than any common piece of ironwork. He would need that just to be on equal footing with Vilde. A distasteful thought, but he was not so foolish as to underestimate her. Still, it chafed. How had he let himself be saddled with this?

He would almost regret taking this wolf’s life. No doubt it wanted to be here just as little as he did, so far from its homeland.

Necessity makes victims of us all… He thought to himself, shaking his head and redoubling his attention on the hunt.

The trail ended abruptly in the hollow of three tall boulders. They stood in opposition to the flat landscape around them, like the three pillars that remained of an ancient temple, and though they were dwarfed by the trees around them, they dwarfed the creatures that scurried about them in turn. Jormand and Lana included.

There, Jormand found his wolf, already dead and desecrated, resting in the shade of those rocks like the sacrifice upon the altar. Its blood painted the snow in a wide arc around, and crusted on the boulders. Clearly it had fought hard for its life. But that struggle had been for naught.

The ribs stood out like teeth where the wolf had been disemboweled and the skull was crushed, the brain missing. Otherwise it was untouched, the bloodsoaked fur was mostly intact and there was enough meat to feed a whole flock of scavengers left behind. This kill had not been made for food.

The larger, clawless tracks that encircled the stone pillars gave away the victor. A snow lion, most likely come down from its den to ambush the hapless wolf, then punish it for violating the lion’s territory. The wolf, separated from its pack and unable to defend itself, was hopelessly outmatched. The lion would never have dared attack the whole pack, but one wolf, alone…

Jormand paused a moment in respectful silence. His hunt would continue, but for this wolf it was done. Silently Jormand vowed to himself that his hunt would not come to a similar end. He would find Vilde and bring her to answer for her treachery.

And so he and Lana continued on. She did not question his leaving the carcass behind. He could have salvaged some bone from it, but it did not feel right to scavenge from another hunter’s kill. Besides which, the kill was old, those bones would do him no good.

They took a break not long later to rest on a patch of bare earth beneath the boughs of a wide spreading fir. There they ate a meager meal of rye bread and goat’s cheese in the quiet of the woods.

It reminded Jormand of his childhood, as nearly everything did now. He had eaten many a small meal beneath a tree like this while on his way to fight on his family’s behalf. Only back then he had had a throng of companions, landsmen from Derranhall, and Galier too more often than not. There was no silence with them, but then, he did not want to talk now. He wanted vengeance. He wanted to hunt.

Lana took longer with her meal. She didn’t seem able to focus on it at all with her attention constantly flitting between the most mundane of things. A squirrel running across a branch or an odd tree that had grown intertwined with one of its neighbors. The forest kept her attention

Not for the first time, he wanted to ask her why she had come along. This hunt was not hers, but she always found a reason to stay. Here was a person who had seen him at his very lowest. On whom he had relied to make the journey from Maerin. On those few occasions when she turned to him with anger heavy in her voice, he just knew she was thinking about those times. She knew his weakness like few ever had. He was reminded of it every time he looked at her and it was a threat that he could not overcome. His strong arm wouldn’t help him here. He could not cast the danger aside with his hammer. Why did she stay?

So he looked at her, and in the deeper parts of his mind, he was afraid. He feared that she would tear him down to his fragile bones with a word. Hiding behind her curious smile was the power to shatter his world. Those eyes that twinkled ice blue in the cold sun had seen the depths he could not allow others to know.

“Can you eat them?” Lana’s voice stopped Jormand’s trudging mind and pulled him back to the surface.

“What?” She had been talking, but he had heard not a word of it.

“Can you eat them, those mushrooms.” She pointed to a patch of moss at the base of the tree. It coated a little valley between the ridges of two roots and clustered around a trio of mushrooms, each no bigger than Jormand’s thumb with bulbous stems and tiny brown caps. The kind he used to forage in his younger days. They made a delicious stew, but these were far too small for that.

“Oh, yes they are.”

Lana peered at the little mushrooms with her nose wrinkled. “I’ve never seen mushrooms like that before…” She said, her face so close to them that she nearly bumped them. “The ones in the city all have floppy hats, like old blood ladies.” She raised her hands to pantomime one such hat, adopting a snooty look to perfect the picture.

Jormand couldn’t help but smile. Everything Lana saw was something new for her, but she approached it all with a curiosity and exuberance that Jormand would have never thought possible from the frightened waif he had met in Maerin.

As much as she was a danger to him, he couldn’t let her go. Who else would be there to hold his hand when he couldn’t keep the edges aligned any longer? Once it had been Galier, but their paths had diverged. His age old friend was a different man now, who lived in a different world. His home was made of silk and silver while Jormand’s was forged of pitted bronze. But Lana knew what it was to struggle, more even than Jormand. He did not know much about her life before, but he’d heard stories about what happened on the streets at night. He’d spent his fair share of walks in the dark ignoring the cries that came from narrow alleys.

“Ready to go?” Jormand asked gruffly, standing and wiping the crumbs from his lap. Lana nodded and sprang to her feet.

And so they continued on deeper into the woods, silent once again.

Another trail did not take so long to find. Near a berry bush, its leaves encrusted in layers of thin, clear ice, were scattered the impressions of heavy hooves. The same force pulled him to follow this trail too. He couldn’t say what it was, but he knew that he had to. It was a welcome distraction too.

He focused on the task at hand, always vigilant so that he would not miss anything. It kept his head clear. Lurking in the outer reaches of his mind were the same thoughts that were always there these days. The rabid urge to chase his sister out across the water. The shame that he had let her get away. Other stranger thoughts too, unknown to him as of yet but kept at bay. For now.

This trail was newer. The hoofprints pressed all the way through the snow with nothing to fill them yet. It was a much more promising lead.

He let himself get lost in the process of trekking onward until no trace remained, then finding the trail again, and on and on until there was no more trail. He stood between the trunks of two young pines, hidden in their shade, looking out into a brilliant white glade.

Against the pale snow, the stag stood in stark relief, its silhouette unmistakeable. It did not notice Jormand as it chewed on one mouthful of frozen, withered leaves. Then another.

Those antlers twisted and branched like none Jormand had ever seen, their pattern so intricate and conflicting that he thought it must be a trick of the light at first. It was magnificent, and truly enormous. At its shoulder it stood nearly as tall as Jormand did and, although it was far off yet, he could tell it was a ferocious animal. He drew his bow.

The arrow rattled against the wood of the bow as his muscles, stiff from the cold and from keeping ready for so long, finally pulled. But before he could make a full draw, the stag turned its head to regard him.

Jormand was met with a grisly sight. Lodged in those antlers like a rotten fruit still clinging to the limb was another head, half cleaned of flesh and gleaming white with exposed bone. The two were intertwined to create a hedge of antlers like nothing Jormand had ever seen with prongs and branches pointed every which way, some pressing back into the living buck’s own skin where spots of blood and pus marked them.

The weight of it kept the stag’s neck turned at an awkward angle, twisting it to the side. But it was no hindrance to the creature.

The arrow slipped from Jormand’s fingers, landing harmlessly in the snow several paces away from his quarry. He did not even notice. His gaze was fixed on the beast that confronted him, an icy cold hand gripping his heart.

It snorted, stamped a hoof, and leapt towards him, spraying snow from its powerful jump. It covered the distance as quickly as any arrow but Jormand could not even move to get away. He watched it come closer, those wicked thorns of bone, both living and dead, coming to tear into his flesh.

Dimly he heard Lana shout at him from behind but he did not hear the words. Something about this creature kept him rapt. A putrid mixture of awe and disgust filled him as it neared and he stared into the pair of eyes in the center. One milky and dripping but still very much alive, the other just a ragged hole. Small chunks of decaying flesh were flung from the corpse head as it was tossed about, then it came to a sudden and sickening halt as both sets of antlers collided with the trunks of the two pines.

The gap between the two tree trunks was hardly wider than Jormand’s shoulders, and they kept the beast at bay. The buck’s own antlers lodged firmly in one tree while those of the head lodged in that bramble of bone dug into the other, holding it fast.

He faced the creature and looked into its savage eyes. Froth spilled from its mouth and a foul liquid dripped from one eye. One prong of its defeated foe still pricked the stag, digging its way between skull and glassy eye as it moved.

Still, it seemed more enraged than in pain. It fought to no avail with the trees to reach Jormand and though it tore bark and gouged wood, it could not make it through.

Jormand heard a swish from over his shoulder and turned as the beast bellowed an inhuman scram, an arrow lodged in its shoulder.

Jormand turned to find Lana standing tall among the trees, bow in hand and another arrow already ready to fire.

The afternoon sun cut a path through the canopy of needles to light a blaze around her and turn her pale hair into a halo of light that mimicked the glittering snow at her feet. Her breath puffed to mist before her and her hood was thrown back to reveal her face which was set with a frown of concentration.

Again she shouted something at Jormand but he could not hear over the sound of a sudden wind that blew through the woods, disturbing the delicate piles of snow that clung to the needled canopy and showering everything with a glittering mist.

The stag cried again and thrashed its antlers against the trees, trying to extricate itself from the wooden prison. Prongs tore deep gashes into the wood but the creature could not budge. Its eyes rolled in fear as the wind picked up, drowning out even its loudest bellows and screams.

Jormand had to brace himself against it too, lest he be thrown to the ground from its sudden force.

Icy fingers of wind sliced at his face through the opening of his hood and tendrils clawed their way into his coat and shirt to chill his core.

The wind felt wrong, coming out of a cloudless sky on a still day and it carried with it the musty smell of moss, mushrooms, and decaying wood. It caught like rot in Jormand’s nose and made him feel clammy underneath all his clothes. It made him profoundly uncomfortable. He knew these woods, this land, and he had never felt something like this.

A sharp crack broke through the rushing of air and Jormand spun to see the stag limp its way out from between the two trees, its head twisted to its left shoulder now with one antler torn free.

The discarded antler lay on the ground on a patch of earth bared by the violent wind along with the rotting head, antlers and all, that had once decorated that impressive crown.

Lana rushed towards him, her eyes still set on the fleeing beast. She lowered her bow as the stag crossed the field and returned the arrow to the quiver at her hip, then wrapped her coat tightly around herself once again.

“What were you doing?” She demanded, turning up to look him sternly in the eye. Little clouds of fog puffed from her lips.

The cold nipped at her nose and cheeks, giving them a pink tinge. Shivering, she pulled the hood of her fur trimmed cloak up to cover her head.

“You should pay better attention.” She muttered. Her footsteps hardly made any noise in the show as she padded over to the bare patch of earth where their meager prizes lay.

Jormand however, did not let his eye leave the fleeing stag. It crossed the field and leapt into the forest beyond but as it crossed the treeline, Jormand saw a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye.

The frightened stag was pinned to the ground by a mass of pale fur and claws that tore into its flesh. Once more, for the last time, the buck screamed. It was cut off a moment later by the powerful jaws of the snow lion.

“Lana…” He started, kneeling beside her to grab the discarded antler.

She looked up at him, annoyance starting to fade from her face at the worry in his voice.

“What?”

“Run.” Jormand hissed, then turned and dashed back into the woods back the way they had come. “Run!” He shouted over his shoulder to her.

She hesitated only a moment to pick up that grisly trophy from the ground before following on his heels. She shot glances back towards the field and as she caught up to Jormand he saw realization dawn upon her face.

“What is that?” She asked fearfully between breaths.

“Snow lion. Same one that killed that wolf I’d wager.”

“Will it follow us?”

Jormand didn’t respond but he had to bite his tongue to keep it quiet. Only if it's hungry, he wanted to say, but he needed his breath.

They had been walking since the very early morning and though they had been moving slowly, they were still miles away from the camp. Not that the camp would be much safer if the snow lion decided to follow them. Another bow or two might help. Maybe. Jormand just hoped that Gisela still had a fire going. Fire might scare it away. It was a small hope.

They charged through the forest, following their own tracks from earlier in the day at reckless speed, arms pumping and breath clouding in front of them. Jormand’s throat began to burn from the cold but every sound he heard could have been footsteps and he did not dare look away from the winding trail.

So he ran, Lana keeping pace by his side with the rotting stag’s head cradled in the crook of her arm. Behind them, the wind had returned in full force, tearing at their backs with its unshakeable wrongness. It made Jormand shiver and not only from the cold. No wind changed direction so quickly. No wind he had ever known.

But it blew them onward and Jormand was thankful for that. Even though it smelled like rancid flesh and fetid mold. Even though he could have sworn that he heard voices whispering on that wind, around the currents of rushing air. It gave him another reason to run.

The camp was far, but they ran fast, faster than Jormand thought possible. He did not know for how long they ran, but when they burst into the clearing where their low tents were pitched around a firepit, shouting and waving arms like an angry ghost was on their tail, Jormand was happy to see a fire roaring in the middle of their camp.

Little Allur tended to it quietly, occasionally poking at the flaming logs with a stick. He didn’t seem to notice them approaching at all.

Gisela however, who stood watch at the edge of the camp with her bow in hand, did. She had an arrow nocked and drawn in an instant and her eye was trained on the forest behind them. In the trees something was moving, but it never broke the cover of the forest.

“What is it?” Gisela asked when Jormand came to a stop beside her, never letting her bow relax or taking her attention away from the forest. Her voice was calm and did not waver. The practiced calm of a warrior.

“Snow lion.” Jormand said between gulps of freezing air. His legs burned underneath his heavy clothing and sweat was already dampening his trousers, but his lungs and chest stung from the cold.

Gisela loosed her arrow. The twang of the bowstring was quickly followed by a pained cry from the forest and the sound of crunching undergrowth. Her lips quirked into a satisfied smirk.

“It's injured.” Gisela said, lowering her bow but keeping an eye on the forest.

Jormand nodded and made his way as best he could towards his tent to find his hammer. It wouldn’t do much good if the lion came back but… It didn’t matter, he needed to pack his things anyway.

***

Lana couldn’t bring herself to look away from the forest. She had heard about lions before, but she had always thought that they were creatures from the old continent. Massive cats with tan fur and teeth as long as her hand. It was said that they could bite right through the best forged armor with ease, making hunting them incredibly dangerous. The stories most often came from the old blood, but that creature fit their description, even if it was the wrong color.

From the stories, Lana had expected something resembling the city cats she had encountered in Maerin, many times larger, but… That thing had been as large as a horse! Well, a small horse, but still. Nothing like the cats she was familiar with. But it was fast, like a cat. Those teeth and claws made quick work of a deer with the same efficiency that smaller ones might butcher a rat. Lana shuddered to think what they could do to her. She couldn’t believe that Gisela’s arrow had done much more than anger it either…

Jormand stumbled back over, still panting from running and with his antler thrust through a strap that held something onto his wood-framed pack. He grasped his hammer in his hand now, as if ready to batter the creature away himself. Lana doubted it would do much good against the lion.

“We’re packing up,” He said, “I want to be five miles gone by nightfall.”

“I’d rather it be ten.” Gisela grumbled, but she didn’t waste a second in moving to break down the little tent she and Lana shared.

“Do you think it’ll come back?” Lana asked as she knelt to help Jormand take down his own tent. It was really just a canvas tarp slung across a line strung between two poles and staked out to provide shape. It hardly fit his blanket roll and pack, much less anything else.

“It might.” He muttered, but he seemed distracted.

Lana suppressed a shiver. Fear was all well and good at a time like this, but she couldn’t be letting it get the better of her, not when they had no time to waste.

“I hope it doesn’t,” She whispered, not really meaning for him to hear.

Jormand chuckled softly. “Me too.” He said with a grin, then busied himself with winding up the lines that tied the tent to its stakes. Lana didn’t see how he could find humor in a beast such as that hunting them. She kept looking over her shoulder, expecting it to be crouching just out of sight… But if he could be calm, maybe she did not need to worry so much.

She had to force herself to focus on packing up the rest of her things. It was not an easy task. Her fingers trembled as she tied her bags onto the wooden frame and every sound from the crackling coals of the fire to the faint wind put her on guard. Images pushed their way into her mind. The stag being devoured slowly while it still twitched to flee, its lifeblood leaking out to color the snow. Its pitiful cries and vain struggling as the massive predator pinned it to the ground. She held no illusions that she could escape the same fate if the snow lion came back.

She found herself staring at the putrid, rotting deer skull she had grabbed back in the woods. She hoped it would serve for Jormand’s purpose because she certainly never wanted to go on a hunt like this again, and she didn’t want him going either. She forced those thoughts down and busied her hands tying the skull atop her pack with the twine that remained.

Luckily it seemed to be frozen solid and did not stink nearly as much as it should have. Still, she tried to carve away as much of the rancid flesh that remained as possible with her knife. It would thaw eventually and she wouldn’t want to smell it then.

Lana let the others take care of taking down the camp. It was second nature for Jormand and Gisela, Lana would only get in the way. But she watched them. The two warriors worked in perfect tandem while speaking hardly a word. They said that with enough practice, anyone could do the same, but they had more experience with it than Lana ever wanted. Just thinking about the stories they told was chilling.

The two of them spoke of war more and more frequently as of late. Jormand often wore a scowl when he did, but Gisela clearly still relished those memories as much as she always had, her eyes shining in the firelight. She hadn’t been able to take her lute with her from the caravan so there was no music in the evenings now, no singing, only their stories.

Much worse than the stories however was the complete silence from the two caravanners, Lyra and Allur. The boy in particular hardly ever spoke a word, but from time to time Lana caught sight of silent tears running down his cheeks. He wiped them away quickly, but he couldn’t so easily hide the sorrow in his eyes.

Lyra did her best to console him when she could, but Lana saw the same look in her eyes. She was young, perhaps even younger than Lana. She wasn’t ready to care for the boy, but he recoiled whenever anyone else touched him or even came near to him. Especially Jormand. They huddled together most nights, listening and watching like Lana did.

Lana saw something of herself in both of them, or at least something of the haunted waif she had been once. That girl that still lurked somewhere within her, hidden behind a hastily built wall.

Both caravanners looked ready to jump up and fight or flee at a moment’s warning. The crack of a twig was enough to have Lyra reaching for the knife that hung from her belt now. She must have found it in Derranhall because she’d never carried a weapon before.

Now Lyra took down their tent while Allur continued to stare into the fire, stock still and shivering but he did not close his coat or pull up his hood. Were it not for the fact that he flinched whenever someone spoke, Lana might have believed that he did not hear anyone at all anymore.

Before long, the only evidence left of their camp was the slushy remnants of snow and the smoldering logs.

Jormand looked up at the sky. The sun was already starting its descent. The days felt painfully short here and the nights far too long and bitter cold besides.

“We only have a few hours,” He mumbled to no one in particular. “We’d best be going.” He pulled his hood close, blocking Lana’s view of his face. He was worried the lion would come back and he didn’t want the others to see it. But before it was entirely hidden, Lana caught a glimpse of that tightly set jaw.

“Where will we go?” Lana shouted after him, hurrying to catch up to his long-legged stride.

“To the monastery.” He said, his tone dark

“What monastery?” Her words did not reach him. He just pushed his way ahead through the snow, leaving dragging footprints for Lana and the others to follow in.