From the other campfire, we heard short bursts of screams. The men mocked Odessa, whooping along with her. Shun’s grip on my shoulder began to shake. “We have our lives,” she whispered angrily. “That’s what we flee with.” I could tell she could scarcely get breath into her lungs. She was terrified. And trying to save me.
I could not take my eyes off the huddled luriks. Dwalia was a standing silhouette against the firelight. Abruptly she moved. “Ellik!” She shouted his name angrily into the night. “We had an agreement! You gave us your word! You cannot do this!” Then, as I saw the two men he had left watching the luriks move toward her, she shouted at them, “Do not block my way!”
“That’s … stupid.” Shun’s voice shook out of her body. “We have to run. We have to get away. They’ll kill her. And then there is nothing between them and us.”
“Yes,” I said. I listened to Wolf-Father. “We must leave no fresh tracks. Move where the snow is trampled already. Get as far from the camp as we can while they are busy. Find a tree-well, a, a place under an evergreen where the branches are heavy with snow and bent down, but the ground around the trunk is almost clear. Hide there, close together.”
I’d reached up to take her by the wrist. She let go of my collar and abruptly I was the one who was leading her, away from Dwalia and her paralyzed luriks, away from the campfires and into the dark. Odessa’s screams had stopped. I refused to wonder why. We moved furtively, until we were at the edge of our campsite. Shun was not speaking. She simply followed me. I took her to the trail the horses and sleighs had made through the snow when we first arrived. We were moving steadily, both of us breathing raggedly with fear, backtracking the trail of the sleighs and horses. The forest was black, the snow was white. I saw a game trail crossing our path. We turned and followed it, leaving the runner tracks behind us. Now we moved as deer did, ducking our heads to go under low-hanging, snow-laden boughs. “Don’t touch the branches. Don’t make any snow fall,” I warned. On a rise to our left, I saw a cluster of evergreens. “This way,” I whispered. I went first, breaking trail through the deep snow. I was leaving tracks. We couldn’t help that.
The snow will be shallower in the deeper forest. Go, cub. Do not hide until you are too weary to run any farther.
I nodded and tried to move faster. The snow seemed to clutch at my boots and Shun made too much noise. They would hear us running away. They would catch us.
Then we heard Dwalia scream. It was not shrill, it was hoarse. And terrified. She screamed again and then shouted, “Vindeliar! Come back to us! Vinde—” And her voice was cut off, as swiftly as one quenches a torch.
I heard frightened voices, a chorus of them, some shrill. Questioning, like a flock of chickens woken in the dark of night. The luriks.
“Run now. We must run now!”
“What are they doing to her?”
“Vindeliar! He must help us.”
Behind us in the night, I heard Dwalia’s voice rise in a desperate choked cry. “This must not happen! This must not happen! Make it stop, Vindeliar! It is your only chance to return to the rightful path. Forget what Ellik told you! It wasn’t true! Forget Ellik!” Then, in a desperately hoarse voice, “Vindeliar, save me! Make them stop!”
Then a different kind of scream cut the night. It wasn’t a sound. It hurt me to feel it; it made me sick. Fear flowed through the air and drenched me. I was so terrified I could not move. Shun froze. I tried to speak, to tell her we had to get farther away, but I could not make my voice work. My legs would not hold me up. I sagged down in the snow with Shun falling on top of me. In the wake of that wave, a deadly silence filled the forest. No night bird spoke, no living thing gave voice. It was so still I could hear the crackling of the fires.
Then a single shrill, clear cry. “Run! Flee!”
And then the hoarse shouting of men. “Catch them! Don’t let them steal the horses!”
“Kill him! Kill them all! Traitors!”
“Stop them. Don’t let them get to the village!”
“Bastards! Traitorous bastards!”
And then the night was full of sound. Screams, cries. Men roaring and shouting. Orders barked. Screeched pleas.
Shun was the one to rise and drag me to my feet. “Run,” she whimpered, and I tried. My legs were jelly. They would not take my weight.
Shun dragged me through the snow. I staggered to my feet.
We fled from the rising screams into darkness.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Red Snow