When the storm lifted, as abruptly as it had begun, the landscape had changed. They stood at the base of a long, even, snow-covered slope, clear of vegetation, the wind catching ice crystals on its surface and dancing them up into the sky. Some distance ahead, two black crags towered to the left and right. The slope rose to pass between them.
The whiteness was blinding, the sky so close and so searingly blue that Bitterblue held her hand up to block her eyes. Grella’s Pass: No animals to fend off, no boulders or scrub to navigate. Only a simple rising length of clean snow for them to walk across, right over the mountain range and down into Sunder.
It almost looked peaceful.
A warning began to buzz, and then clamor, in Katsa’s mind. She watched the swirls of snow that whipped along the pass’s surface. For one thing, it would be a greater distance than it looked. For another, there would be no shelter from the wind. Nor would it be as smooth as it seemed from here, with the sun shining on it directly. And if it stormed, or rather, when it stormed, it would be weather befitting these mountaintops, where no living thing survived, and all that had any hope of lasting was rock or ice.
Katsa wiped away the snow that clung to the girl’s furs. She broke pieces of ice from the wrapping around Bitterblue’s face. She unslung the snowshoes from her back and stepped into them, wrapped the straps around her feet and ankles, and bound them tightly. She untangled the halter she’d constructed, and helped the child into it, one weary leg at a time. Bitterblue didn’t protest or ask for an explanation. She moved sluggishly. Katsa bent down, grabbed her chin, and looked into her eyes.
“Bitterblue,” she said. “Bitterblue. You must stay alert. I’ll carry you, but only because we have to move fast. You’ve got to stay awake. If I think you’re falling asleep, I’ll put you down and make you walk. Do you understand? I’ll make you walk, Princess, no matter how hard it is for you.”
“I’m tired,” the child whispered, and Katsa grabbed her shoulders and shook them.
“I don’t care if you’re tired. You’ll do what I tell you. You’ll put every ounce of strength into staying awake. Do you understand?”
“I don’t want to die,” Bitterblue said, and a tear seeped from her eye and froze on her eyelash. Katsa knelt and held the cold little bundle of girl close.
“You won’t die,” Katsa said. “I won’t let you die.” But it would take more than her own will to keep Bitterblue alive, and so she reached into her cloak and pulled out the water flask. “Drink this,” she said, “all of it.”
“It’s cold,” Bitterblue said.
“It will help to keep you alive. Quickly, before it freezes.”
The child drank, and Katsa made a split-second decision. She threw the bow onto the ground. She pulled the bags and the quiver over her head and dropped them beside the bow. Then she took off the wolf furs she wore over her shoulders, the furs she’d allowed herself to keep and wear only after the child was covered in several layers of fur from head to toe. The wind found the rips in Katsa’s bloodstained coat, and the cold knifed at her stomach, at the remaining wounds in her breast and her shoulder; but soon she would be running, she told herself, and the movement would warm her. The furs that covered her neck and head would be enough. She wrapped the great wolf hides around the child, like a blanket.
“You’ve lost your mind,” Bitterblue said, and Katsa almost smiled, because if the girl could form insulting opinions, then at least she was somewhat lucid.
“I’m about to engage in some very serious exercise,” Katsa said. “I wouldn’t want to overheat. Now, give me that flask, child.” Katsa bent down and filled the flask with snow. Then she fastened it closed, and buried it inside Bitterblue’s coats. “You’ll have to carry it,” she said, “if it’s not to freeze.”
The wind came from all directions, but Katsa thought it blew most fiercely from the west and into their faces. So she would carry the child on her back. She hung everything else across her front and pulled the straps of the girl’s halter over her shoulders. She stood under the weight of the child, and straightened. She took a few cautious steps in the snowshoes. “Ball up your fists,” she said to the girl, “and put them in my armpits. Put your face against the fur around my neck. Pay attention to your feet. If you start to think you can’t feel them, tell me. Do you understand, Bitterblue?”
“I understand,” the girl said.
“All right then,” Katsa said. “We’re off.”
She ran.
———
She adjusted quickly to the snowshoes and to the precariously balanced loads on her back and her front. The girl weighed practically nothing, and the snowshoes worked well enough once she mastered the knack of running with legs slightly splayed. She couldn’t believe the coldness of this passageway over the mountains. She couldn’t believe wind could blow so hard and so insistently, without ever easing. Every breath of this air was a blade gouging into her lungs.
Her arms, her legs, her torso, especially her hands – every part of her that was not covered with fur burned with cold, as if she had thrown herself into a fire.
She ran, and at first she thought the pounding of her feet and legs created some warmth; and then the incessant thud, thud, thud became a biting ache, and then a dull one; and finally, she could no longer feel the pounding at all, but forced it to continue, forward, upward, closer to the peaks that always seemed the same distance away.
The clouds gathered again and pummeled her with snow. The wind shrieked, and she ran blindly. Over and over, she yelled to Bitterblue. She asked the girl questions, meaningless questions about Monsea, about Leck City, about her mother. And always the same questions about whether she could feel her hands, whether she could move her toes, whether she felt dizzy or numb. She didn’t know if Bitterblue understood her questions. She didn’t know what it was Bitterblue yelled back. But Bitterblue did yell; and if Bitterblue was yelling, then Bitterblue was awake. Katsa squeezed her arms over the child’s hands. She reached back and grasped the child’s boots every once in a while, doing what she could to rub her toes. And she ran, and kept running, even when it felt like the wind was pushing her backward. Even when her own questions began to make less and less sense, and her fingers couldn’t rub and her arms couldn’t squeeze anymore.
Eventually, she was conscious of only two things: the girl’s voice, which continued in her ear, and the slope before them that she had to keep running up.
———
When the great red sun sank from the sky and began to dip behind the horizon, Katsa registered it dully. If she saw the sunset, it must mean the snow no longer fell. Yes, now that she considered the question, she could see that it had stopped snowing, though she couldn’t remember when. But sunset meant the day was ending. Night was coming; and night was always colder than day.
Katsa kept running, because soon it would be even colder. Her legs moved; the child spoke now and again; she could not feel anything except the coldness stabbing her lungs with each breath. And then something else began to register in the fog of her mind.
She could see a horizon that lay far below her.
She was watching the sun sink behind a horizon that lay far below her.
She didn’t know when the view had changed. She didn’t know at what point she had passed over the top and begun to descend. But she had done it. She couldn’t see the black peaks anymore, and so they must be behind her. What she could see was the other side of the mountain; and forests, endless forests; and the sun bringing the day to a close as she ran, the child living and breathing on her back, down into Sunder. And not too far ahead of her, the end of this snowy slope, and the beginning of trees and scrub, and a downhill climb that would be so much easier for the child than the uphill climb had been.