the extra frozen as they climbed.
The snow fell harder now. The wind gusted snowflakes into their fire, where they hissed and died. If this storm lasted, they’d be comfortable enough here. Food, water, a roof, and warmth; they had all they needed. Katsa shifted so that the fire’s heat would touch her and dry the tattered clothing she’d put on again after washing because she had nothing else to wear.
She was working on the great bow she’d been making for the past few days. She bent the stave, and tested its strength. She cut a length of cord for the string. She bound the string tightly to one end of the stave and pulled on it, hard, to stretch it to the other end. She groaned at the ache in her shoulder, and the soreness of her leg where the bow pressed into one of her cuts. “If this is what it’s like to be injured, I’ll never understand why Po loves so much to fight me. Not if this is how he feels afterwards.”
“I don’t understand much of what either of you do,” the girl said.
Katsa stood and pulled experimentally at the string. She reached for one of the arrows she’d whittled. She notched the arrow and fired a test shot through the falling snow into a tree outside their cave. The arrow hit the tree with a thud and embedded itself deeply. “Not bad,” Katsa said. “It will serve.” She marched out into the snow and yanked the arrow from the tree. She came back, sat down, and set herself to whittling more arrows. “I must say I’d trade a cat steak for a single carrot. Or a potato. Can you imagine what a luxury it’s going to be to eat a meal in an inn, once we’re in Sunder, Princess?”
Bitterblue only watched her, and chewed on the cat meat. She didn’t respond. The wind moaned, and the carpet of snow that formed outside their cave grew thicker. Katsa fired another test arrow into the tree and tramped out into the storm to retrieve it. When she stamped back again and knocked her boots against the walls to shake off the snow, she noticed that Bitterblue’s eyes still watched her.
“What is it, child?”
Bitterblue shook her head. She chewed a piece of meat and swallowed. She pulled a steak out of the fire and passed it to Katsa. “You’re not acting particularly injured.”
Katsa shrugged. She bit into the cat meat and wrinkled her nose.
“I’ve been fantasizing about bread, myself,” Bitterblue said.
Katsa laughed. They sat together companionably, the child and the lion killer, listening to the wind that drove the snow outside their mountain cave.
CHAPTER THIRTY
The girl was exhausted. Warmer now in the hide of the cat, but exhausted. It was the never-ending upward trudge, and the stones that slid under her feet, pulling her back when she tried to go forward. It was the steep slope of rock that she couldn’t climb unless Katsa pushed her from behind; and it was the hopeless knowledge that at the top of this slope was another just as steep, or another river of stones that would slide down while she tried to climb up. It was the snow that soaked her boots and the wind that worked its way under the edges of her clothing. And it was the wolves and cats that always appeared so suddenly, spitting and roaring, tearing toward them across rock. Katsa was quick with her bow.
The creatures were always dead before they were within range, sometimes before Bitterblue was even aware of their presence. But Katsa saw how long it took Bitterblue’s breath to calm and grow even again after each yowling attack, and she knew that the girl’s tiredness stemmed not only from physical exertion, but from fear.
Katsa almost couldn’t bear to slow their pace even more. But she did it, because she had to. “It’s no use if our rescue kills him,” Oll had said the night they’d rescued Grandfather Tealiff. If Bitterblue collapsed in these mountains, the responsibility would be Katsa’s.
It snowed hard now, almost constantly, and so now when it snowed, they kept moving. Katsa wrapped Bitterblue’s hands in furs, and her face, so that only her eyes were exposed. She knew from the map that there were no trees in Grella’s Pass. Before they reached that high, windy pathway between the peaks, the trees would end. And so she began to construct snowshoes, so that she wouldn’t find herself needing them in a place with no wood to make them. She planned to make only one pair. She didn’t know what terrain they would find in the pass. But she had an idea of the wind and the cold. It wouldn’t be the place to move slowly, unless they wanted to freeze to death. She guessed she would be carrying the child.
At night Bitterblue sank immediately into an exhausted sleep, whimpering sometimes, as if she were having bad dreams. Katsa watched over her, and kept the fire alive. She pieced together slats of wood, and tried not to think of Po.
Tried and usually failed.
Her wounds were healing well. The smallest ones barely showed anymore, and even the largest had stopped losing blood after a few hours. They were no more than an irritation, though the bags she carried pulled on the cuts and the half-constructed snowshoes banged against them. Her shoulder and her breast protested a bit every time her hand flew to the quiver on her back, the quiver she’d fashioned with a bit of saddle leather. She would have scars on her shoulder and her breast, possibly on her thighs. But they would be the only marks the cat left on her body.
She would make some sort of halter next, when she was done with the snowshoes. In anticipation of carrying the child. Some arrangement of straps and ties, made from the horse’s gear, so that if she must carry Bitterblue, her arms would be free to use the bow. And perhaps a coat for herself, now that Bitterblue was warmer. A coat, from the next wolf or mountain lion they encountered.
And every night, with the fire stoked and her work done, and thoughts of Po so close she couldn’t escape them, she curled up against Bitterblue and gave herself a few hours’ sleep.
———
When Katsa found that she was shivering herself to sleep at night, wrapping her own head and neck with furs, and stamping the numbness out of her feet, she thought they must be nearing Grella’s Pass. It couldn’t be much farther.
Because Grella’s Pass would be even colder than this; and Katsa didn’t believe the world could get much colder.
She became frightened for the child’s fingers and toes, and the skin of her face. She stopped often to massage Bitterblue’s fingers and her feet. The child wasn’t talking, and climbed numbly, wearily; but her mind was present. She nodded and shook her head in response to Katsa’s questions. She wrapped her arms around Katsa whenever Katsa lifted her or carried her. She cried, with relief, when their nightly fire warmed her. She cried from pain when Katsa woke her to the cold mornings.
They had to be close to Grella’s Pass. They had to, because Katsa wasn’t sure how much more of this the child could endure.
An ice storm erupted one morning as they trudged upward through trees and scrub. For the better part of the morning they were blind, heads bent into the wind, bodies battered by snow and ice. Katsa kept her arm around the child, as she always did during the storms, and followed her strong sense of direction upward and westward. And noticed, after some time, that the path grew less steep, and that she was no longer tripping over tree roots or mountain scrub. Her feet felt heavy, as if the snow had deepened and she must push her way through it.