through the snow.
I nuzzle my face close to the tough web of clamouring raindrops, and through the drifting whiteness a long-limbed girl has appeared, swamped in a cloak of brown feathers.
Her copper hair is bundled on top of her head like a tangled nest and her long red skirts billow around a pair of fur-trimmed boots. There’s something bare about her gaunt face; the flash of raw hope she wears is the only light on the mountain.
She steps nearer, then catches herself and glances around sharply, face turning dull and closed. She fits wooden snow-goggles over her eyes and melts into the snowstorm.
Lunda scrunches towards us. The raindrops slowly unravel into a thread that slides away along the ground and slurps into her staff.
Me and Crow thrash upright, pulling up our hoods, and watch as the riders leap off their draggles and hurry towards a row of statues etched into the rock-face. Reckon they must be likenesses of their sky-gods – human-bodied, eagle-headed, terrodyl-clawed. The riders kneel, muttering prayers.
Other figures battle through the snow to unsaddle their beasts. Then the draggles wheel around and soar into the air. Huntsniffbloodquickscurrytheybitetheywaitheartsbeatbeatbeat, they whisper, lips stretched into gruesome grins. Their huge shadows pass overhead, together with the sweet, damp stink of their fur.
‘Don’t tell anyone your name!’ I whisper to Crow. He nods.
‘What happened back there, Spearsister?’ a man calls to Lunda, as he turns from muttering his prayers.
‘Cloud-freeze is not part of the barrier,’ says another. ‘We could have been frozen to death!’
‘We must make more appeasements to the flicker-gods,’ says a woman, twirling her blade in her fingers.
‘When did you last see their lights? Even the gods have turned their backs,’ retorts the first man, lifting his gaze to the scrap of sky pinched between the mountain’s leering jags. More tribesfolk pipe up, their grumblings swelling louder.
The flicker-gods? I think of the white and green sky-fire that my Tribe call the fire spirits. Instinct makes me tip back my head to look, but there’s no sign of life.
Lunda glares a warning look. ‘Everything is under our control,’ she hisses. One by one, the tribesfolk fall silent.
‘Welcome to Hackles,’ says Lunda, hand on hip as she watches us along the length of her pointed spear. A gloat bubbles onto her face. I tense my muscles to run, though there’s nowhere to go.
Other riders prowl to join her, staring at us with narrowed eyes.
I show Lunda the quiet and stormy look Grandma said could seek out all a person’s secrets. Grandma would take no nonsense from these slither-wings, so I hold tight onto the heart-strength that she stitched into my bones and shine it out at the girl. For a beat, Lunda’s fierceness is startled away.
Then she snarls, knocking me over the head with a spiny knuckle ring. I crouch, cursing and clutching my head.
Pangolin unwraps her raindrop headdress and stoops to touch Sparrow. I leap forwards with a growl but Crow grabs my wrist.
‘Arm’s broken,’ says Pangolin, brushing back her knot of thick braids. She watches Lunda’s face like a mongrel begging for scraps.
‘A pantry-squidge could tell that much, Pangolin!’ snipes Lunda, making the other girl flush. She straightens and peers around. ‘Pika! Hey! Over here! Pika! ’
I follow her stare. To our right is a stone hut, smoke huffing from its chimney. Up ahead a run of steps is carved into the mountain, leading to a set of wooden doors crowned with two crossed spears. A tall boy with white hair and cinnamon skin unfolds himself from the steps and slouches towards us. ‘I heard you.’ His dark eyes sweep Lunda’s face. ‘Half the mountain’s heard you. Think an avalanche must be brewing.’
‘Stopper your beak,’ declares Lunda. ‘Take the cripple to the sawbones’ nest while me and Pang get the other sea-creepers to their cells.’
Crow scowls.
‘You ent taking him anywhere without me!’ I hiss.
‘The draggles are hunting.’ Pika folds his arms wearily. ‘I have to be ready to stable them when they return, and the caves are a mess after you left in such a clamour.’
‘Do not defy me, apprentice, or I’ll have you mucking out the draggle-dung well past midnight!’ Lunda spits, flicking her stubby white braid off her shoulder.
The boy snorts but he does as she says. He bends to pick Sparrow up and my brother’s head lolls like his neck’s gonna snap. He looks smaller than it’s even possible to be.
‘Don’t take him! We stay together!’
‘Mouse,’ mutters Crow. ‘Just let them help him.’
‘Help him? You seen this place, slackwit?’
He wipes his sweaty brow with the back of his hand. ‘She told that boy to take Sparrow to the sawbones – that’s another word for healer. Know any other healers round here?’
The heart-truth of his words melts away my fight. But when the boy turns his back to carry my brother away, a hollow pit tears open inside me. ‘I’m coming with him!’ I shout. Then a wave of sky-sickness makes me so dizzy I can barely stand.
I pull away from Crow and bend forwards, gulping for air, as Sparrow’s carried towards the stone steps in the mountain. I straighten in time to see him vanish from sight.
Then there’s just all these pairs of strange eyes fixed on me. And no friend but Crow; a boy who not so long ago I couldn’t trust a stitch. Feels like my blubber’s been turned inside out.
Crow’s telling me something but his face swims before my eyes and his voice is stars away. Then everything blurs, and hands grab us. Thaw-Wielder pokes her head out of my cloak and nips at a rider.
‘Oohhch!’ the rider squeals, sucking the blood from her finger. ‘I think we’ll be having you, hawk-sister!’
Hah! Bad-blubber not have Thaw! shrills my hawk, dodging and spiralling off into the sky.
We’re forced apart. Crow’s fighting, I’m hurling threats, but we’re lost in a tangle of fists and spears and shields. ‘Mouse!’ Crow bellows. The wind roars, slashing snow into my eyes, and when I can see again he’s being shoved under the crossed spears and through the wooden doors.
I’m pushed to the right, towards a doorway etched into the hulking flank of the mountain. Shivering figures shovel snow, others snap icicles from overhanging rocks and there’s a clatter-clang-clatter as they drop them into cauldrons for melting. One lingers to warm his hands over the steam, and a rider cracks a whip, knocking him to the ground.
I’m dragged through the door and up a spiral stairway cut straight into the rock. Then I’m pushed forwards and made to climb higher, higher, higher into the mountain. ‘Please, tell them my brother gets shaking fits,’ I gasp in the thin air.
Hot breath burns my frozen ear. ‘Were you given leave to speak, sea-creeper?’
‘Please! Just tell them!’ It gets even harder to breathe, cos now the thin air stinks of rotting eggs, musty pelts and damp. ‘We made a potion of violet root but I didn’t get the dose right and—’ I’m shoved into a crooked stone passageway, my words oofed away into the bitter cold.
Grubby moon-lamps are strung along the ceiling, dimly showing how the passage weaves around a bend and out of sight. Moonsprites wail inside the smeared glass, making the lamps flare.
Letoutletouttrappedtoolong! Grrrrrrfizzlefearhelphelphelp!
Our footsteps ring against the stone. The cold stabs up through the soles of my boots. I stumble, and the tip of a spear digs into my back, jolting me forwards. The