The Winter King
Page 137
She lay there, stunned and motionless. All the air had been forced from her lungs, and her body seemed to have forgotten how to get more.
Breathe, Khamsin. Breathe.
Her mouth opened. Her throat worked. Seconds later, a long, painful wheeze scraped down the sides of her windpipe.
Deflated lungs refilled. Her eyes rolled back. With that one breath of air, all her other senses leapt back to life with a vengeance. Pain exploded along the hip and shoulder that had taken the brunt of her landing.
She pulled her legs up under her body and pushed up to her hands and knees. Grunts of pain interspersed with bouts of coughing and wheezing as she clambered slowly to her feet.
She wiggled her fingers in her mittens, and flexed ankles, knees, and hips with tender care. Everything was still working. Her nerve endings, especially. Although her hips and shoulder throbbed with each beat of her heart and the furrows down her back and side were dripping copious amounts of blood, she hadn’t broken any bones. That was an unexpected bit of good luck.
Kham hadn’t counted on surviving the gallop without injury. She’d not been certain she’d survive at all, for that matter. Her horse had been too terrified by Reika’s attack.
Kham looked slowly around, trying to get her bearings. She was standing in the center of a frozen pond. A thin layer of snow lay over the slippery surface. And all around the pond, snow was piled high, as if someone had cleared it away.
She frowned and scanned the area again. On the north end of the pond, a black cliff face rose up high above, and a frozen white waterfall spilled down its sides. At the bottom of the fall, a portion of the frozen icicles from the fall had broken away, revealing what looked like the dark entrance to a cave. Her brows lifted as she recognized her surroundings. The skating pond. The one Wynter had immortalized in his Atrium. The one he’d taken her to the day of the Skala-Holt avalanche.
She knew exactly where she was, despite all the circuitous riding she now suspected of being Reika’s attempt to disorient her and make her lose all sense of direction. All she had to do was find her horse, and make her way back down the mountain. The folk in Riverfall would offer her aid.
She scanned the white snowdrifts, trying to find the mare. A splash of dark color at the corner of her eye sent Kham plunging to the left. She slogged her way through higher drifts that had gathered at the base of the trees, trailing drops of blood from her wounded shoulder, and found the mare lying on her side, her neck bent at an odd angle. The horse wasn’t breathing.
Kham sank to her knees, brushing snow from the mare’s motionless face. Her mittened hands curled into fists, and a familiar, volatile emotion bubbled up inside her.
“Damn you, Reika. You’ll pay for this!” The snow clinging to Kham’s wool mittens melted and quickly evaporated into a cloud of warm vapor. Overhead, silvery clouds condensed, growing thicker and darker as heat and moisture gathered. She’d worked hard to keep her emotions in check since the day she’d summoned that blizzard that nearly killed an entire village. But the next time she saw Reika Villani, that winter bitch would learn just how fearsome Storm of Summerlea could be.
And then Khamsin heard the growl.
CHAPTER 21
Of Heroes and Harrowing
“The garm has doubled back again.” Wynter rose from the large, paw prints stamped into the snow along the cliff top and turned a grim eye on Valik and the other riders of the Great Hunt. “It’s following the cliffs, heading back down the mountain.”
The Wintermen’s expressions could have been carved from ice. They all knew what Wyn meant. If the garm was heading back down the mountain, it was heading back towards the valley—and the villages. Towards families. Women and children.
Wynter swung into Hodri’s saddle. “Let’s ride.”
He kicked his heels, and Hodri leapt forward. Chunks of ice and packed snow flew up in the wake of Hodri’s great hooves as the swift, sure-footed mountain horse raced across the treacherous cliff tops. Valik and the other riders followed close behind.
Wyn kept an eye on the garm tracks. The distance between paw prints meant the monster was moving swiftly. The beast knew they were on its trail.
Khamsin’s heart sank to the pit of her stomach, and sheer terror turned her blood to ice as she stared at the hideous creature coming towards her.
The description of the garm didn’t even begin to do justice to the monster’s huge, hulking evil. Though big as a horse, the creature’s dense white fur blended so perfectly with the snow-covered ground it would have been virtually impossible to detect—except for the eyes.
Bloodred and glowing with a malevolent inner light, those eyes looked like beacons to the gates of Hel.
She’d expected the garm to look like an impossibly large, very scary wolf. The paws, the rangy, furred body and shaggy tail did, but that’s where the resemblance ended. The same long, thick fur that covered its body also covered its neck and bulbous, earless head in a dense ruff, while a shorter nap grew around the creature’s eyes, mouth, and nostril slits. Long, thin, spiky hairs like a cat’s whiskers sprouted in abundance from both sides of its short, flattened muzzle and more sparsely on the sides and back of its head. But unlike a cat’s whiskers, the garm’s long, stiff hairs shivered and undulated with a life of their own. When a small bird took flight from a nearby tree, several of the hairs whipped around to follow its path.
The garm had no ears, but it was clear those hairs sensed the vibrations of movement and sound. And with them, the creature literally had eyes in the back of its head.
Breathe, Khamsin. Breathe.
Her mouth opened. Her throat worked. Seconds later, a long, painful wheeze scraped down the sides of her windpipe.
Deflated lungs refilled. Her eyes rolled back. With that one breath of air, all her other senses leapt back to life with a vengeance. Pain exploded along the hip and shoulder that had taken the brunt of her landing.
She pulled her legs up under her body and pushed up to her hands and knees. Grunts of pain interspersed with bouts of coughing and wheezing as she clambered slowly to her feet.
She wiggled her fingers in her mittens, and flexed ankles, knees, and hips with tender care. Everything was still working. Her nerve endings, especially. Although her hips and shoulder throbbed with each beat of her heart and the furrows down her back and side were dripping copious amounts of blood, she hadn’t broken any bones. That was an unexpected bit of good luck.
Kham hadn’t counted on surviving the gallop without injury. She’d not been certain she’d survive at all, for that matter. Her horse had been too terrified by Reika’s attack.
Kham looked slowly around, trying to get her bearings. She was standing in the center of a frozen pond. A thin layer of snow lay over the slippery surface. And all around the pond, snow was piled high, as if someone had cleared it away.
She frowned and scanned the area again. On the north end of the pond, a black cliff face rose up high above, and a frozen white waterfall spilled down its sides. At the bottom of the fall, a portion of the frozen icicles from the fall had broken away, revealing what looked like the dark entrance to a cave. Her brows lifted as she recognized her surroundings. The skating pond. The one Wynter had immortalized in his Atrium. The one he’d taken her to the day of the Skala-Holt avalanche.
She knew exactly where she was, despite all the circuitous riding she now suspected of being Reika’s attempt to disorient her and make her lose all sense of direction. All she had to do was find her horse, and make her way back down the mountain. The folk in Riverfall would offer her aid.
She scanned the white snowdrifts, trying to find the mare. A splash of dark color at the corner of her eye sent Kham plunging to the left. She slogged her way through higher drifts that had gathered at the base of the trees, trailing drops of blood from her wounded shoulder, and found the mare lying on her side, her neck bent at an odd angle. The horse wasn’t breathing.
Kham sank to her knees, brushing snow from the mare’s motionless face. Her mittened hands curled into fists, and a familiar, volatile emotion bubbled up inside her.
“Damn you, Reika. You’ll pay for this!” The snow clinging to Kham’s wool mittens melted and quickly evaporated into a cloud of warm vapor. Overhead, silvery clouds condensed, growing thicker and darker as heat and moisture gathered. She’d worked hard to keep her emotions in check since the day she’d summoned that blizzard that nearly killed an entire village. But the next time she saw Reika Villani, that winter bitch would learn just how fearsome Storm of Summerlea could be.
And then Khamsin heard the growl.
CHAPTER 21
Of Heroes and Harrowing
“The garm has doubled back again.” Wynter rose from the large, paw prints stamped into the snow along the cliff top and turned a grim eye on Valik and the other riders of the Great Hunt. “It’s following the cliffs, heading back down the mountain.”
The Wintermen’s expressions could have been carved from ice. They all knew what Wyn meant. If the garm was heading back down the mountain, it was heading back towards the valley—and the villages. Towards families. Women and children.
Wynter swung into Hodri’s saddle. “Let’s ride.”
He kicked his heels, and Hodri leapt forward. Chunks of ice and packed snow flew up in the wake of Hodri’s great hooves as the swift, sure-footed mountain horse raced across the treacherous cliff tops. Valik and the other riders followed close behind.
Wyn kept an eye on the garm tracks. The distance between paw prints meant the monster was moving swiftly. The beast knew they were on its trail.
Khamsin’s heart sank to the pit of her stomach, and sheer terror turned her blood to ice as she stared at the hideous creature coming towards her.
The description of the garm didn’t even begin to do justice to the monster’s huge, hulking evil. Though big as a horse, the creature’s dense white fur blended so perfectly with the snow-covered ground it would have been virtually impossible to detect—except for the eyes.
Bloodred and glowing with a malevolent inner light, those eyes looked like beacons to the gates of Hel.
She’d expected the garm to look like an impossibly large, very scary wolf. The paws, the rangy, furred body and shaggy tail did, but that’s where the resemblance ended. The same long, thick fur that covered its body also covered its neck and bulbous, earless head in a dense ruff, while a shorter nap grew around the creature’s eyes, mouth, and nostril slits. Long, thin, spiky hairs like a cat’s whiskers sprouted in abundance from both sides of its short, flattened muzzle and more sparsely on the sides and back of its head. But unlike a cat’s whiskers, the garm’s long, stiff hairs shivered and undulated with a life of their own. When a small bird took flight from a nearby tree, several of the hairs whipped around to follow its path.
The garm had no ears, but it was clear those hairs sensed the vibrations of movement and sound. And with them, the creature literally had eyes in the back of its head.
