What had I not seen since awakening beneath the glacier? Long dead corpses used as robots, alligators hiding beneath the snow in search of prey, and towering mountains where flatlands once ruled. Once —when alive— I recorded my dreams in a journal for over a year, and neither the most drunken nor feverish of my reveries matched this: not this new world of ice and magic.

Pain alone brought the fantastic into focus. Pain was my reality, or at least my assurance of it. My ankle was broken, my head throbbing from the fall I had taken on the rocks. Weariness unto death stole over me, and all I wanted to do was close my eyes and let the cave I had crawled into hold me close until I could die once again. 

But there she was: a young girl in tatters. She had appeared, shivering, only a few rocks away. And she spoke my language! English fell from her lips as clearly as if a thousand years had not passed and we were greeting one another, tentatively, as strangers meeting on some deserted street.

She had said something about falling from the sky, and I didn’t know how to respond, for what was left of her clothing seemed charred and black against the chocolate coloring of her skin. Yet she was alive and unharmed. Unlike me; broken, wasted, and half wanting to die, the girl seemed lithe and youthful, not a zombie of the ice. She was alone and frightened to be sure, but with the exception of her charred clothing seemed as healthy as any young woman from my own age.

“I fell, too,” I said. “I’m tired.” After a pause I continued. “I’m hurt and can’t walk. Can you get help? Do you think someone would help me?”

She didn’t say much, but crept closer over an extended period of time. I would see her maneuvering around a stalagmite and keeping it close. Then I lost sight of the girl for a bit, but whether it was my mind fading in and out or the effect of her stealth, I could not tell.

I know only that I fell asleep, and when next I saw her, she was curled up beside me in the folds of my long winter cloak. I had presence of mind to place one arm about her and position the other as she might use it for a pillow. Though her weight bore uneasily against my leg and set my ankle to throbbing all the more, it could not keep my overpowering need for sleep at bay. Even as I felt the warmth of this young mystery named Maya begin to press against me, I was gone once more, and the girl, I knew later, was not hesitant to follow me into the land of sleep.

We remained in the lightless, undisturbed recess of the cave for some time. I could not tell you how long, but it was only a natural sleep, not again the thousand years that separated our old world from the new.

I woke before Maya, and as I did so a new discomfort stirred inside me. Be it one or two thousand years since I last felt the same, it made no difference: it was hunger. Before long thirst made its own urgent appeal. The throbbing in my head began again, and I was a mass of misery for all of it. If anything, my broken ankle made more urgent demands for attention than it had before, but those hours of sleep had given me one gift. I was determined, strangely determined, to live. My exhausted willingness to curl up and die, the overwhelming fundamental sense of that had vanished in the night. 

Now I had a partner in my misery, and another set of hands. I could not imagine this girl would take comfort in my presence, only to abandon me to my fate upon awakening.

And if she would be so callous and unconcerned, it was time to find out.

I touched the girl’s shoulder, beginning to pet her as I spoke her name. 

“Maya. Maya.” 

She drew close, her arms wrapped about my skeletal waist before she woke, and when she woke, it was with a start. Though I could not see the tears, Maya began sobbing almost as soon as she spoke.

“I lost them. I lost…”

“You look a little lost yourself,” I said, carefully forming each word. “Who did you lose?”

“Bear,” said Maya. “Bear is dead. Then my friends got lost. Skye and Erok went outside to look for them…”

“To look for who, Maya?”

“My parents,” she answered. “Mom said not to go outside. When the sky was falling. But I did anyway.”

“Sky falling. That was... long ago,” I ventured. “Where did you come from?”

“I heard Skye and Erok. I heard them! They were looking for my parents; I asked them to. When I tried to get free, the light, that light! I couldn’t see anymore and she didn’t catch me again, and I fell. It was so bright, and I fell until the trees caught me.”

As she spoke, Maya was sobbing, working herself into a frenzy of emotion, and the more she said, the less I understood. It was obvious to me a great many occurrences were spinning and blending together in her mind, but I was hearing enough to send chills down my spine. Had this girl, like me, been present at the moment the comet hit Earth? And if so, what circumstances explained her current state and our meeting together in this cave? 

Had she too been buried beneath the ice, her corpse called into servitude by the men in black, and like me chanced upon some encounter with a piece of that comet, a piece powerful enough restore her fully to life?

I had to know, but I wasn’t going to find out now, not through the storm front of her tears. I let her go for some time, merely listening and holding on before I began to speak again.

“Maya. Maya, are you a strong girl? Do you think you could help me walk, or find a stick I could use for a cane or a splint? You see I hurt my ankle. We can’t stay here. There’s no water, no food. Those burned clothes of yours need replacing, and I can’t help us if I can’t walk.” I didn’t mention the advancing zombie army that I had left only a day or so behind me.

As I said these things, and though she continued to sniffle with her tears, Maya drew away from me ever so slightly. Taking her hands from about my waist, she began to draw them slowly across my legs and down over my knees. There was a pressure in her touch, and I was about to protest, not wanting her to injure me further, but before I could speak, or even move to resist, the cave began to brighten.

The suddenness of the rising light stole away my attention, and I had to remove the night-vision goggles quickly or risk blindness. The walls of stone themselves were becoming florescent, fiercely aglow.

“Too much,” said Maya, glancing at the brilliant walls as though one thought had caused them and it required another to settle them down. “There. More like home.” Now that I could see, I observed she had settled both hands around the boot within which cowered my broken ankle.

“Wait! Wait!” I protested, but Maya pulled at the boot, sending me screaming back against the rocks as if she had taken a knife to my flesh. I must have thrown my head back, retreating so violently that once again my ancient skull met stone with enough force to steal my consciousness away.

In the Age of Discovery

Major Ulean DeVries

Bodica Arrives

Too much happened too quickly, even before the fearsome blue woman arrived. DeVries had defeated the assassin sent against him, but was certain he could not fend off a second such attacker, and he knew that only by the grimmest of luck had he overtaken the first. The Major was bleeding heavily, especially from the sword wound across his face. His exertions, combined with the loss of blood, made the world seem both weightless and shadowed in a way it should not be. He staggered badly in bending to retrieve his headgear. 

DeVries took a long, measured moment to brush a cold bit of mud from the crown and badge before returning the black cap to his head. It gave him time to think.

Skye and Erok, DeVries’ prize finds, had taken off without asking his leave, and with the locals facing them, DeVries could afford neither to restrain the pair openly nor beg them to stay. So, the metal giant and his feline companion had vanished into the trees. And that flash! What had caused so brilliant an eruption that it could push aside clouds and bend the treetops with its wind?

A heartbeat later and DeVries was forced to abandon all speculation. 

A blue woman sprinted past the natives on their left flank, her hands gathering fire as if she might hurl it upon anyone who stood in her way. The natives in their white breastplates and colorful woven caps had little reaction, as if a scantily-clad, blue-skinned sorceress running through the snow and stone-covered hills was nothing worthy of distraction.

By contrast, DeVries’ felt his heart leap into his throat. As if struck by a blow, he staggered back a pace. 

He knew her.

Directed by a gesture from their Color Sergeant, the line of riflemen behind the Major shifted their aim in a single, cohesive movement. Everyone, Ayelsford and native alike, could see the Major was the man toward whom the blue woman ran.

“Hold your fire!” DeVries shouted, glancing backward. “How many pissed-damned times do I have to say it?!”

As the blue beauty approached, the visible lightning coursing through her veins subsided, as did the fiery spheres around which the fingers of each hand had eagerly curled. 

Now, all DeVries could see was an angel’s face framed by lustrous red hair and the fullness of unfaltering green eyes.  The apparition slowed, turning this way and that, at last taking in all of her situation before coming to stand directly before the Major.

For too long it seemed there was silence, with the woman breathing heavily from her run and DeVries’ own breath still labored from the fighting. Yet both locked eye to eye, standing together in the no-man’s land between the rifles of the Ayelsford and the club-wielding warriors on the slope below.

“You’re a fool, Ulean,” said the woman, softly.

“Bodi, I didn’t start this.”

“What, the fight with that one?” she canted her head toward the fallen assassin, “or marching an army all the way into the North?  You have a wife and child at home to take care of, Ulean, don’t you?” In a much louder voice the blue woman cried out “Where’s your medical officer? The Major requires your attention.”

“Bodi, don’t, you know I can’t show…”

“That you bleed,” the blue woman interrupted. “A little late for that, Major. You’ve demonstrated that you bleed quite well. But you managed to knock down one of their doughty best in the bargain. They won’t doubt you now, these folk —not for backbone— even if you fall flat on your face this minute.”

“I must not do that, Bodi. How the hell did you find us?”

“She’s right, Major.” This from Surgeon Raimi, who had taken the blue woman’s call as excuse enough to come forward. “You need attending, or you’ll scare the heart out of the troop just standing here.”

“Attend to him first,” DeVries commanded, pointing with unsteady hand to the man he had beaten. “That’s an order, Doc.” Seeing the tremor in his fingers, DeVries attempted to steady his hand by placing it against his chest, but it came away from the torn uniform soaked in blood.

“Oh, damn, Bodi, I didn’t want to find you like this. How much did it cost you, making that flash in the sky? Too far away and ill-timed for my good, but a hell-of-a piece of magic! And the fireballs in the hands. Quite a show. You do your sister proud.”

“Fire and lightning don’t come cheap,” answered the woman whose full name was Bodica Astaree, a free witch and purveyor of magic who had left the Ayelsford Republic more than five years past to make her living in the North. “But that sky burst wasn’t mine,” she continued. 

Then, as naturally as she could, Bodica reached out to grasp DeVries’ hand as if in greeting. “Play along, Major, and keep talking. While your surgeon stitches that boy you clobbered, I’ll see if I can keep you standing. Just play it as we’re old acquaintances, coming together unexpected like. Near enough the truth, eh?”

“Of course, of course,” DeVries said, clasping Bodica’s hands between his own. Instantly he felt a surge as if strong drink had hit his veins, along with a heat not unlike the muddled warmth of alcohol. It numbed his wounds and set a new steadiness to his legs.

“How much for that?” asked the Major, more than a little thankful.

“A full ounce of precious if I was charging,” Bodica answered. “I don’t suppose someone in your command was smart enough to bring along gold for trading? With this lot behind us it’s all handcrafts and nostrums. But there’s good medicine we’ve taken out of here, poisons too. How are you feeling?”

“Better,” DeVries admitted. Gingerly, he touched his jaw where beard and cheek had been cut by the sword. The feel of the wound was ugly and set his heart to pounding. “Stops the bleeding, does it?”

“Good as stitches. Yeah, more like two ounces I just wasted on you, Ulean.” Without betraying any outward sign of anger or brusqueness, Bodica released DeVries’ hand. In her eyes burned the same hurt he had seen there before his promotion and before his marriage to Thettits. Before Bodica herself had taken on the blue flesh of sorcery.

 “This is the wrong place for you and yours, Major,” Bodica said. “These natives are all about the Coming Day. It's their religion. They don’t think like the folk at Port Uzzel, to the north, or the Frost Queen, or even the Keltoi. ”

“But you get along with them, do you Bodi? You trade without getting hung up by your thumbs. How’s that?”

“There’s some practical to them, Ulean. You’ll always be excommunicate. From them and from me, I guess. But if you play it right, you might not get strung up by your thumbs, as you say, and your men likewise.”

“Play it right.” DeVries considered the words. “It’s good to see you Bodi. You always had a better way with people than me. I won’t make you any promises; you wouldn’t believe them. What you said though. It made me think I’m too clever sometimes.” He looked to the sprawled assassin, the man who at last was twitching under Surgeon Raimi’s ministrations. “That may have been unavoidable, regardless of the play, but now it’s time to show them who’s boss. Captain Reese!”

“Ulean, don’t!”

With his linguist beside him, DeVries half walked, half staggered down the slope toward the stocky leader of the locals. As they approached, he was struck by how straight and disciplined the little group maintained itself. 

“We’ll keep it simple,” DeVries said softly to Reese. “I don’t want any misunderstandings.”

“Aye, Major.”

To their right, the second of the assassins stood ready, as motionless as sculpted death. The regular warriors encircling the leader stood ready too, but fingered their war clubs nervously, their eyes glancing this way and that, with only the leader focused unflinchingly on DeVries.

“Signs,” said DeVries, and Reese translated for him. “Signs everywhere. A man of metal. The giant cat. Men astride beasts of war. A light in the sky.”

“Anta-lee,” the leader interrupted Reese in the midst of his translation. The tone was serious but not threatening. “Mareet et kelantra sub ate.” 

“What’s that?” DeVries squinted, trying to read intent in the leader’s worn, but impassive face.

“Ah, the birds, Major. Those red-headed birds that flitted through here when the winds came on. Big stuff, apparently. More sign than all the rest. Mareet birds.”

“Good or bad sign?” DeVries asked.

Captain Reese shrugged slightly. “Sorry, Major. He doesn’t seem to think of it that way, good or bad.”

“Of course, of course. Mareet,” DeVries said. “You see Mareet and I have an army following me. A column of a thousand rifles with a general who makes his own damned signs, or thinks he does.  Rifles that would be best pointed at your enemies on the Coming Day, eh?”

At this point, while Reese was in mid-translation, DeVries turned slightly toward his own men and asked, “Color Sergeant Connel, do you see the forward tree to my left flank, about as thick as a bollard post with an elbow curve about four feet from the ground?”

“Yes, Major!” Sergeant Connel barked in reply.

“Every rifle on it. Center on that elbow. You too, Color Sergeant.” A moment of hesitation was followed by a flurry of action as the troop followed their venerable sergeant’s lead.

“Ready, Sir.”

“Well, Color Sergeant, the Troop has wanted to fire at something all day. And not a one of them better miss. Cut it down.”

“Sir?”

DeVries breathed one long, impatient breath, enough to give him the strength for the order he had wanted to give during all that same long day. 

“Fire! You mangy sons of…” But the last of DeVries’ words disappeared in the thunder of more than a dozen percussion caps erupting into a dozen barrels full of powder and well-formed lead projectiles, all at once.

The small tree wavered as if hit by a maddened bear. Its wood splintered and flew to join a rough cloud of smoke drifting toward it from the rifles. A moment later its own weight did the rest. Succumbing to the blow of Ayelsford riflery, the tree cracked and collapsed, falling into its neighbors before coming to rest on the frozen ground.

“My compliments to the troop, Color Sergeant.”

DeVries had not bothered to glance at the target, but kept his attention on the tight group of natives before him. The massed gunfire had startled most, even the cool assassin - all except for their leader, in whose gray eyes DeVries saw the will to launch his men even against Ayelsford rifles.

Without being told, Color Sergeant Connel gave the order to reload.

DeVries turned to Reese. “Tell him the tree was, what did they call it? Skepta.”

Upon Reese’s translation the leader’s lips parted into an unexpected smile, a smile leading to a most unexpected laugh.

“Tell him this,” DeVries continued. “We leave to God what is God’s and no Ayelsford will do less but respect his ways and his signs. We build roads, feed those who have not enough for themselves, bring medicine and fire. Only the wicked need fear us.”

Then, in a moment of inspiration, DeVries called for his own rifle, and Sergeant Connel quickly had one of the troopers bring it to him. For some time now, DeVries’ rank had prevented him from having much use for the weapon, and he knew that should he ever need a firearm on the field of battle, there would inevitably be one or more for the picking, soon enough.

A gift from his wife before the campaign began, this cold weapon was more ornate than it need be, with touches of gold that could do little more in battle than bring unwanted attention.

“Give it to him,” DeVries ordered, indicating the lean assassin he had defeated in combat. With hands to head, the native was now sitting up but bore a dazed expression, looking more and more like the boy of less than twenty that he was. Shivering, the warrior tried to brush Surgeon Raimi away as he forced himself up and into a fighting stance, but all he accomplished was to stagger uncomfortably into her arms instead.

Trooper Niamh, the young woman who had taken her first wound in their skirmish with the Keltoi and was hardly older than the native warrior, now stood before him, holding out DeVries’ gold-trimmed rifle.

Having seen the tree cut down by the smoke and flame of ordinary guns, the boy could hardly imagine the power of such a gleaming object, and for a moment visibly wondered if whatever hell it could unleash was about to be directed upon him.

At DeVries’ instruction, Captain Reese explained that the weapon was a gift and that the warrior would be taught how to use it for the good and protection of his people. The boy was stunned by the news, taking the rifle from Niamh with all the hesitation and desire of the first man who, by Ayelsford legend, had accepted a flaming brand from the devil.

Holding it at arms length, the boy set his eyes upon DeVries, and the Major knew what was expected of him: a sign of some sort. By touching right thumb to cap and nodding ever so slightly, DeVries gave the warrior the respect he needed and confirmed the amazing gift.

Turning back to the landsmen, the Major caught the first glint of jealousy as it entered their leader’s eyes. However hard the winters of the north had made this gray-eyed fanatic, he was human after all. The glint of the gold trimmed rifle had done the trick. Now the second card in DeVries’ hand could be played.

“Bring me the child!” DeVries ordered. What half an hour before might have been a death sentence for the babe now struck the Major as the best part of his inspiration. When Surgeon Raimi came forth holding the infant in its warm swaddling, her eyes asked the question she was all too ready to voice.

“Of course,” DeVries said softly before Raimi could speak, “it’ll be all fine, Doc. I have this bastard by his nose now.” Taking the child from Raimi he turned to the leader and presented the babe with as much ceremony as he could muster, waves of pain and dizziness fogging his vision even as he thought of what to say.

“Major,” Reese whispered urgently. “They’ll kill that child.”

“No, they won’t, Captain,” answered DeVries. “Now, tell them as I say…”

“We were wrong to hold the child away from you,” Reese translated carefully as DeVries delivered the words. “Good intentions or no, it was wrong.”

DeVries pressed the colorfully wrapped package into the leader’s arms, who held it stiffly and whose lack of finesse had the babe crying out once again for its mother.

“Your people are your people.” DeVries continued. “We beg your mercy and ask forgiveness for the clumsy way in which we blundered into your holdings.”

Again DeVries watched the man’s eyes, waited as the old woman who had tried to sacrifice the babe came forward so that the squirming charge could be eagerly conveyed to her. The leader whispered something to the matron, something which brightened her countenance and gave her a renewed interest in the crying infant. In the leader’s eyes, the jealousy dimmed.

“Safe now,” DeVries said to Reese, lowering his voice in a signal that translation was unnecessary. “We’re safe and so is the kid. Hopefully it’ll soon be in its mother’s arms.”

“I don’t get it, Major.”

“We rewarded the bravest of them, a great honor to them all. And the little general, we gave him something more than a fancied up rifle. We acknowledged the bastard’s right to hold sway over every life under his jurisdiction, even the child.” DeVries laughed lightly. “Harming that babe now would be like breaking the gold rifle over his knee, just for fun. He’d be throwing away the respect we just showed him in front of his own people. Same if he attacks us now.”

Reese pulled his cap down tight and sniffed at the cold air. “Pardon, Major, are you makin’ that all up?”

Another commander might have felt a flash of anger at such impertinence, but DeVries only smiled. Without a trace of sarcasm, Reese had placed an honest question on the table. The captain was looking forward to the day of his own command. 

“Captain, at this point I’ve officially lost count of the moves I have going in this game. Ever hear of a pastime called chess?”

“No, Major.”

“Of course, of course. A senator’s game. Lots of pieces on a board. Moves back and forth all over the place. But the only thing that counts is when you corner the king. We just cornered the king, Captain. We surely did.”

The stocky, gray-eyed leader, dressed in his armor of white shingles, his head topped in a colorful, woven cap, had stepped away from the group. Turning to the trees and the sky, he began to address a series of sing-song phrases to no one in particular.

“Avani Lingrapiim-gguq. Erernqaa-pagtuk-takala-pagtuk, saay.”

DeVries had no need of a translation: the man was conversing with his gods, and putting on a good show about it too.

“I barely understand my wife’s upper-Ayelsford accent ,” DeVries said softly, “let alone that pagtuk-pagtuk, but I’ll bet you a week’s pay there’s an invitation to dinner in all that playacting. The gods would want it that way.”

“No betting against you, Major, not by me,” said Reese. “I’ll only wager on the quality of the meal, and how bad the liquor might be!”

In the Age of Discovery

Skye and Erok

The Column

Even as the forest closed in about them, covering ground was little challenge for Skye and Erok. At seven feet in height, Skye had a long stride, easily clearing much of the undergrowth, while his deep-set crystal eyes offered a peripheral clarity unavailable to the living world. No root could reach up to trip him, no burrow cauht at his quick steps. Erok moved still faster, and keeping up with the big cat was a matter of Skye pushing his metal frame close to its limits.

 No natural feline had ever achieved the size or grace of the big cat. Skye himself stood only to Erok’s shoulder, and when she ran her big frame twisted effortlessly through each turn, avoiding collision with trees and the oddly placed glacial boulder with sinuous ease.

Night came and went without notice. They ran on, observed only occasionally and with suspicion by glittering eyes behind walls of cold, thin leaves. Not even the wolves sought to run them down.

Both Skye and Erok were possessed of vision that welcomed moonlight and used even the snowy reflections to great effect. 

Though they forged on, calling out with great energy for their mother-goddess, at last, near morning, the pair slowed and came to a halt above a wide, shallow stream.

“She does not hear us,” said Erok, breathing hard. “I have no sense of her now, no feeling at all.”

Even as the saber-tooth spoke, the sun glinted above the peaks to the east, turning the stream before them into silver ribbons. The expanse of water was twenty or more yards wide and only a few inches deep. Many small rocks poked above its crystal surface, while occasional boulders sat like imposing sentinels in the whispering stream.

The forest ran close along this side of the water, while across the way a wall of evergreens rose up only after some distance. The whole of the far side was blurred by a haze of rising dew. Altogether it gave the impression of a wide, clear swath of land cutting from north to south across the valley floor.

“What are we going to do?” asked Skye, somewhat desperately. “How will we find her?”

Padding out into the shallow water, Erok lapped up the welcome, icy flow. 

“Come, wash my shoulder, will you?” Erok asked. “I’ve made it hurt with all this running.” 

Skye obliged. He could feel the ache in Erok’s shoulder, the heat and the aggravation of it. As easily, he experienced her wonderful ease when his cupped hands delivered a wash of icy relief to the spot.

It felt good to have something to do, and he continued, carefully cleaning the wound Erok had sustained in their tussle with the spear throwers. He could see that a stitch or two supplied by the surgeon had broken and others were stretched. There was a little bleeding, but overall the cuts Erok had sustained were scarring nicely, the flesh healthy and pink. 

“Don’t you wish we were home?” Skye asked.

“Sometimes,” Erok admitted. “I was never hungry there. Never hurt.”

“I liked seeing stories of outside,” Skye admitted, “more than being outside.” Indeed, it had been fun to watch the flickering tales of adventure as they crossed the walls of their cavernous home. But none of those tales had taken place upon the fierce ice of the glaciers, nor deep within the cold maze of a forest. There had been no spear throwers in the land of Maya’s early memories.

“I wish,” said Skye, “we had a fire to sit beside again.”

“You never had a fire at home.”

The metal man ran his hands briskly across his shoulders and upper arms. Running did not bring the same fierce heat to him that Erok enjoyed. “It was never cold at home.”

Erok growled. “We’ll get you back, then. But it is more than a week’s walk, and there is no straight path to follow. You’ll have a story of your own then, better than any of the old tales, before we’re home again. Won’t that be something?”

“But Maya won’t be there,” the metal man remembered. “Will it be home still, without her? And what if the bad men are there?” Slowly, Skye remembered uncomfortably more. “Bear is gone, too.”

“I can find our way back to the caves,” Erok said bravely. In a more somber tone she added: “But I can’t find a way back to before.” She splashed a paw across the cooling waters.

“Do you see the little curls in the water?” She asked, “the way they go around the stones?”

“The eddies, you mean,” said Skye, focusing on one of the boulders where the water doubled back upon itself, forming a distinct whirl in the rising, silver light.

“The eddies,” Erok confirmed. “Watch them come and go. Do the same ones ever find their way back again, or is each one different, new to itself?” There was a long pause, a consideration during which Erok’s heart hung heavy with the weight of loss. They both felt it. “It can never be the way it was before, Skye. Yesterday won’t come again. Not for us. Not tomorrow.”

“I guess not.” Skye walked to the place where the whirlpools formed, splashing until his great feet displaced them and new eddies formed around the gun-metal curves of his ankles. 

“I like this place, though,” Erok admitted, pulling in a deep breath through flared nostrils. “If Maya came out here, then maybe we’re not supposed to go back home.”

“What then, find the soldiers again?”

“Find the whole world!” Erok roared out the words. “Find the whole world and Maya in it. Not quit now because our bellies hurt and the wind steals the heat from our backs. Our mother’s voice: it was going the way of the water when it crossed the sky. We follow the water, then. Come!”

And all that day and into another night they tracked along the stream, keeping to its edge. Shortly after mid-day, Erok spotted a creature almost as big as herself, wading in the tall grass across the water. The thing had long legs, a humped back, and a little tail. A flap of fur-covered skin hung freely under its chin. Its large ears cocked Erok’s way, followed by the turn of a wide, droopy nose and overhanging lip. Eyes far less keen than Erok’s own took no notice of the big cat.

“The moose can’t see you,” Skye said simply. “Wind’s wrong for it. Do you want to…”

“No!” Erok growled, anticipating Skye’s thought. Her guttural cry sent the cow skittering back up slope and into the covering forest. Though her hunger grew, the idea of hunting gave Erok pause. Meeting an enemy in battle was one thing. Chasing down a fellow creature, one frightened and fleeing, was another. 

But soon, the big cat knew, her hunger would demand a hunt. 

“Not today,” said Erok. “Maybe there is else to fill my belly. You should know these things. The plants everywhere, are none of them food?” 

Skye too sensed the thing that had stayed Erok’s hand, the unease the big cat felt at the thought of slaying living meat. These creatures in the world, they were like her!  The same earth supported them as lifted her paws from one footfall to the next. The same cool air which only moments before had been in the breath of the moose might now be coursing through her lungs, connecting them directly. Kin to kin.

True, blood, death, and torn muscle held no appeal for Erok, but the maelstrom of emotions in the big cat went beyond simple revulsion.

For the taste of flesh from the oxen had been good. 

Following the stream they walked all of another day, stopping at last as night fell for the big cat needed sleep now as much as food. Requiring neither, but miserable with the cold, Skye stood guard over his friend until well past dawn. By midday, Erok could think only of her hunger.

Turning her head in a gesture of frustration encompassing the whole of the landscape, Erok clawed angrily at the water. “Aren’t there supposed to be fish in here?”

“I don’t know,” Skye answered sadly.

“Think! Think on it for me. I have to find something.”

Calling on deep memory, Skye managed to recognize a thicket of young salmonberries growing near the margins of the water, but these proved as useless in allaying Erok’s hunger as the icy waters of the stream. 

Then, a godsend: Erok spotted a large hare sitting upwind of their approach, its back to the stream, its ears and eyes scanning the distant wall of trees from which the wolves might come.

Though she saw it first, Erok did not move. Nor did Skye say a word at the moment the hare came into his view. There was nothing to say. It was a decision for the big cat, and it was not coming easily.

But there was no choice, other than to starve. Erok exploded into a run. Skye started up after her and the pair of them, huge and monstrous as they were in the world of ice, thundered down upon the position of the hare, upon a small, clover eating mammal no larger than one of the saber-tooth’s paws.

The big-eared prey bolted while yet a dozen yards separated the hunters and their target. It zigzagged and careened through tall grasses and down along the edge of the steam, running faster than many an eye could follow, but Erok held to the blur of motion. Flat out, the big cat was at least ten miles per hour faster than the hare, and Erok closed the distance in the space of three great breaths.

“Forgive me,” Erok said, hoping the quick, darting heart coming up beneath her could somehow hear and understand, just as Skye and Maya always could. The claws of her right, front paw extended for the kill.

So focused on the flight of the little beast had Erok become that she did not hear Skye’s warning shout as they rounded a turn in the stream. So close had Erok come to her prey that she saw only the swipe of her paw as it missed the desperate, twisting hare before her. 

Down the shallow center of the splashing water it bolted. Into the mud of a steam which faded abruptly, becoming little more than a wetland stretching out across a broad expanse of boggy grasses.

It looked as though the hare would escape after all, but it was then that things went very wrong. An eruption of water picked up the bounding rabbit and threw it toward her in an explosion of light, water, and blood.

The event startled Erok, momentarily blinding her. Dozens of miniature geysers tore up from the soaking ground in a clap of thunder, followed by excited shouts.

Her momentum carried her on. Even as she flew past the inexplicable cascade of water she tried putting on the brakes, turning not toward the threat ahead but after the tumbling body of the hare.

It was Skye, close behind, who was able to take in the whole of the scene dispassionately.

A line of red-coated soldiers stood like a bulwark across the open ground ahead. Behind them stood hundreds and hundreds more, and with them oxen and wagons, tents on wheels, flags held on high staffs, and lines of mounted cavalry winding along the flanks. Altogether there were more than Skye could count without thinking about it. It was the leading rank that had opened fire, delivering a warning shot. But now they had dropped to their knees and the next rank of troopers moved into position for a second volley.

The main column of the Ayelsford expeditionary force in the North had arrived.