Bloodraven (58 page)

The dog lunged forward, a nervous movement of thick legs that jostled his frozen body. Yhalen opened his eyes and saw Bloodraven pulling himself up onto the bank, hauling on the reins of Yhalen’s horse. Only one of the mules was still attached by the lead. The other was gone.

Bloodraven was wet up to the chest, the ends of his dark hair clinging together and dripping. He shook himself once, like an animal shedding water from its fur, then said something low and unintelligible to Vorja that made her abandon her guard over him. Bloodraven dropped to his knees next to him, one big hand touching his cheek. But there was no warmth there, Bloodraven having so recently come from the water himself. Yhalen half sobbed at the lack, wanting a cessation of this miserable cold so badly that it drove all other thought from his mind.

Bloodraven swept him up, holding him close to his own wet body and giving the dog some sharp command before reaching for the dangling reins of his horse and swinging up with Yhalen in his arms.

Bloodraven wrapped both an arm and the folds of his wet cloak around him, which did nothing to stave off the cold but did make a buffer between him and the wind. He felt sluggish and numb, and the sound of his heart beating was a slow, steady drum inside his head. He was going to die of the cold.

He felt he ought to warn Bloodraven of this, but the most sound that escaped chattering teeth was a hardly recognizable jumble of simple words.

“C-c-cold. So-c-c-cold.”

Bloodraven made no comment, reining the horse to a sudden halt and swinging them both down, one hand scrambling to catch his balance against the arm-thick boles of saplings that grew along a rocky incline and into the earth itself.

There was a grayness that bled to blackness in the back of the small cave. Vorja crowded past Bloodraven’s legs, busily investigating the depths. She made a quick circuit and apparently no living thing resided within, for she bounded back outside. Bloodraven sat Yhalen down, abandoning him to the cold hard floor and the shadows. He curled onto his side, body and limbs so heavy he couldn’t sit upright. Bloodraven was back in a thousand heartbeats—or a dozen, Yhalen couldn’t distinguish which—with the dry bedroll off the back of his own horse.

He yanked Yhalen up, working at the wet fastenings of his coat, and pushing it off his shoulders, then tossing it away. He started on the tunic and Yhalen panicked at the notion of his last layer of protection being torn from him, leaving him bare and naked in the cold. He lifted his good arm and perhaps babbled some protestation, both of which Bloodraven ignored as he tore the shirt off over his head. He last divested Yhalen of his boots and trousers before encasing him in the bedding.

It was dry, but hardly warm. Nothing could be warm enough to chase the chill from his flesh. He clutched the blanket to him, burrowing his head under it, only half hearing Bloodraven gathering dry deadwood from the corners of the cave and striking a fire close to one wall, out of the draft from the cave mouth.

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More rustling, while Yhalen lay waiting to expire from cold. The blanket was pulled back, exposing his flesh to the air. He whimpered in shock, and then Bloodraven’s large, bare body settled in beside him, rearranging the blankets, pulling him close and enfolding him in an embrace of arms and legs against flesh that seemed only marginally warmer than his own.

But soon enough warmth began to seep from Bloodraven’s flesh to his own, and it drew him like some addictive nectar. He nestled closer, wanting to lose himself in that welcoming heat. Bloodraven took his frozen hands and rubbed them between his own large ones, then brought them to his mouth and breathed hot breath upon them. Yhalen felt the bare fringes of the warmth, but even that made his skin tingle almost painfully. It was a welcome sort of discomfort though. As Bloodraven continued to warm his body, gradually the cold began to fade and drowsiness seeped in to take its place. He lay in growing comfort, cocooned under the folds of blankets and, pressed against Bloodraven’s heat with the crackling of the fire on his other side, Yhalen drifted to sleep.

It took a very long time for the tremors to leave Yhalen’s body, for the ghostly bluish tint to leave his skin. Bloodraven had seen many a small animal die from immersion in icy water, the cold seeping in to shock their insides and slow their hearts to deathly stillness. The stream was mountain-fed, coming from the frozen heights and holding as much icy death here as it did at its source. He was used to the cold, and still it had hit his own body like the strike of a hammer when he’d plunged into its depths after Yhalen.

He’d taken a chance, going after the horse and the mules, endangering both himself and Yhalen with every second spent immersed in the water, but the packs held things vital to a small body surviving the cold. Herbal teas and spices and extra layers of clothing and bedding, though the latter was damp, even through the protection of oiled canvas covering. What they had lost with the second mule, he didn’t know, nor had he taken the time to look. The wolves most likely had strewn it far and wide by now, if they’d managed to track the mule to wherever the beast had washed to shore.

He had Vorja on guard at the mouth of the cave against further attempts, but he doubted the remaining members of the pack, even driven down from the heights in hungry desperation, would attack them again.

Yhalen was limp and quiet against him, only the very crown of his damp hair visible from the folds of blanket. His skin was still cool, but no longer had the feel of frozen, half-dead flesh. If the wolves had hemmed him in for five minutes longer, Yhalen might have gone the way of the second mule, dragged under the ice by the grip of the slow current and swept away. The notion sent a pang of unease through Bloodraven’s chest. A curling dread in his belly that was a new and perplexing sensation.

He carefully slipped out from the bedding and went naked to feed the fire and turn the clothing he had hastily flung to the ground near it. He’d have to go and fetch wood from outside the cave soon if he hoped to keep the fire strong, which meant donning damp clothing and trekking out into the snow that made the daylight coming in from the mouth of the small cave seem gray and muted. An uncomfortable, but not a daunting prospect, save that he dreaded the notion of leaving Yhalen unprotected after he’d failed so miserably to protect him at the stream. His to protect, and he’d almost lost him to the simple grip of nature.

He crouched next to the fire and frowned, suddenly doubting his own reason in bringing a soft southern-bred human into the savage heights. It had been nothing but his selfishness and need to have Yhalen within his reach.

He called himself a fool in his native tongue, then broke a dry limb across his knee and shoved it into the fire, casting up sparks in his wake. He retreated back to the blankets, slipping into their warmth and shifting Yhalen against him to his liking, without so much as a sigh of protest from his little human. Yhalen simply adjusted, molding against him and pressing his cheek into the crook of Bloodraven’s shoulder as he curled his arm around Bloodraven’s upper arm. There was a bruise on his shoulder that had not been evident before. As big around as Bloodraven’s palm and purplish pink around the outer edges.

Carefully Bloodraven felt the integrity of the shoulder, feeling for swelling or misalignment that might hint at a disjointed limb or break. The bone seemed sound, though the flesh and muscle would undoubtedly be sore for many days to come, unless Yhalen used the magic Bloodraven knew him capable of and cleansed himself of the wound. The thought of that didn’t make him as uneasy as it should have. In fact he rather hoped for it, for it would make travel for the next few days easier on 182

Yhalen, and Yhalen’s comfort had become a thing that mattered to him He watched the fire-spawned shadows dance upon the uneven walls of the cave, listening to the muffled sounds the horses made outside, those mountain-bred animals that he’d been assured were well capable of enduring the worst of northern weather. He listened as well to Yhalen’s even breathing, and drowsed a little, himself.

His sleep was light during the depths of the night and later, in the midst of the afternoon. He barely grazed the surface of true slumber and roused easily when some while later, Yhalen moved.

His human was awake and peering about the small cave from the shelter of the blankets.

“The fire’s dying,” Yhalen commented softly, voice still filled with the lethargy of sleep. And so it was, having eaten its way through dry deadwood quickly. Yhalen raised himself onto an elbow and winced, bringing a hand up to touch the bruised shoulder. He made no complaint of it, looking over Bloodraven’s bulk to the gray light at the mouth of the cave and the tumble of snow that had been driven onto the sheltered ground within.

“The snow’s heavy. Is it the storm from up north?”

“Yes. It’ll be thigh high to you, come morning. If we’re lucky we may be able to travel by afternoon.”

“Where is this?”

“A cave. Not far downstream from where the wolves attacked. I saw it as we rode.”

“Ah. I went in the water.” Yhalen lowered himself back onto the blankets, flexing the arm with the bruised shoulder. “I didn’t know such cold existed.”

“The stream’s fed from the frozen heights. It holds their bite, even in high summer.”

Yhalen shivered, no doubt remembering. Shivered again and rolled close to Bloodraven, then murmured, “The fire should be fed, or we’ll lose it.”

“Easy enough to make another. You have that skill in particular.”

Bloodraven felt the flinch that traveled across Yhalen’s skin.

“I’ve a talent with flint, yes,” he said softly.

Bloodraven lay for a moment, indulging himself in the pleasant sensation of Yhalen’s body yearning for the heat of his own. Then he pushed the blankets away with a sigh, and rose to search out his clothing while Yhalen clawed for the covers he’d displaced. Sent into the storm as if Yhalen were the master and he the slave to do his bidding. It amused him marginally more than it chaffed. And he would take his retribution when he returned by relieving the chill of his skin with Yhalen’s warm body.

He tromped out into the storm, Vorja bounding up from her post just inside the mouth of the cave to join him. Flakes of snow immediately gathered upon his coat, as well as his hair and lashes, landing on his skin and lingering but a moment before they melted. The two horses and the mule were huddled together in the lee of the steep slope where the cave mouth nestled. There was shelter there for them, between the rocks and the trees, but not knowing how much more snow the storm would dump upon them before morning, he thought it best to built them a more substantial shelter.

He used the axe to cut limbs and saplings enough to make a hasty, slanted lean-to that would shelter them from the worst of the wind and the snow. In his haste to get Yhalen inside and warm, he hadn’t bothered to unburden them of packs or tack. He did so now, hauling the lot of it inside the cave where he might sort what the water had spoiled and what not at his leisure. He portioned out damp grain from the pack, but neither horses nor mule seemed to mind.

Finding seasoned wood was no problem. There were ample fallen trees hidden under the blanket of snow. He had to wander no further than forty feet from the cave to find fuel for the fire, and he hauled it back over the course of several treks through snow that already reached mid-calf.

The exertion drove away the cold, as much as his determination to ignore it. Despite a damp coat and boots and the heavy snow, the temperature was mild compared to the weather of the higher reaches. Other than immersion in mountain-fed streams, he could prosper in such weather. It was only southern-bred woodsmen, like Yhalen, who held such intolerance for cold weather. It wasn’t yet true winter and Yhalen’s body complained, even if his words did not. He’d never survive true winter in the heights. Bloodraven had no intention of inflicting that upon him, for if all went well, they would be on their way back south towards Elvardo’s vale before the depth of the cold season.

He stomped snow off boots and legs before feeding the fire with the driest of the wood he’d gathered. He stacked the rest out of reach of the snow, then took off his coat and laid it out to dry on the rocks near the fire. Finally, he pulled out the various items that had been in the packs of the one 183

surviving mule. Half the grain had gone to the river, including as a good portion of their dried food as well as the remaining meat from Vorja’s kill. Extra clothing had been lost as well, which meant they had better take care of what they wore until they reached a clan friendly enough to barter for new ones. The tea was still intact in its oiled leather pouches, as well as the pot for brewing it. Bloodraven gathered what needed drying on the floor by the fire and laid it out, put clean snow in the pot and sat it at the edges of the coals to melt for later, then disrobed.

Yhalen was a quiet lump under the blankets, having drowsed off again while Bloodraven labored in the snow, so he had little hesitation in sliding under the blanket and drawing Yhalen close to his chilled skin. Yhalen roused abruptly, with a little yelp of surprise, wriggling instinctively to distance himself from the cold of Bloodraven’s flesh. He was prevented by Bloodraven’s frigid hands upon his torso and Bloodraven gained some dubious amusement from pressing his palms to those areas most sensitive to the cold.

Yhalen writhed and tried to push his hands away, breathing hard and gasping with what might have been strangled laughter.