‘Lahp.’ He looked up at the Seron warrior. ‘Did you do this?’
‘Lahp hep Sten,’ he repeated like a mantra.
‘You did, Lahp.’ Steven shuddered as the full implication of his situation sank in. ‘You saved my leg.’
The big man laid a huge hand on Steven’s shoulder. ‘Lahp hep Sten.’ Then he pointed excitedly along the river and said, ‘Lahp a Sten Orindale.’
‘Right, Orindale – but first, we need a fire.’
Steven rested against a pine trunk while Lahp quickly built a gigantic campfire; the heat was intense, but Steven welcomed it. The Seron ran back and forth to the river to fetch several skins of water as Steven finally sated his thirst, then he wrapped the injured leg back up in a fresh layer of querlis leaves. This time Steven thought he could detect a slight tingling sensation as they began their work, a warmth that penetrated his skin and soothed his muscles.
Feeling drowsy, he wondered if the leaves contained a mild opiate; though he endeavoured to stay awake, to watch out for his friends and to learn more about his new companion, it wasn’t long before he was fast asleep.
Lahp patted him on the shoulder and drew the cloak back over the sleeping man.
Steven awoke to the mouthwatering smell of roasting meat and the crackle of hot fat spitting in the flames. Lahp had positioned two thick steaks on a rock at the edge of the fire; all of a sudden Steven felt ravenously hungry. He couldn’t remember when he had last eaten.
Lahp gave Steven a crooked grin. ‘Grekac,’ he said, pointing at the slabs of meat.
‘Grettan?’ Steven was taken aback. ‘You eat grettan?’
‘Sten a Lahp grekac,’ he said, and made a show of gesturing at both of them as if proud of the fact they would finally share a meaclass="underline" travellers and friends.
‘I don’t know if I can eat grettan, Lahp.’ Steven felt his stomach tighten; he was starving, so maybe he could eat grettan. ‘I guess the last one did make quite a production out of eating me!’
‘Na grekac,’ Lahp grinned again and tapped Steven’s leg gently with the end of one stubby finger. ‘Sten grekac.’
‘This is my grettan? The grettan that attacked me?’
Lahp’s smile grew even wider.
‘How did you kill it?’
‘Lahp na.’ He shook his head emphatically before pointing at Steven. ‘Sten.’
‘Not me, Lahp. I didn’t kill the grettan,’ Steven said wryly, ‘I passed out. It was still very much alive then.’ The fire burned bright, crackling away comfortingly.
Lahp stood up and walked over to the stretcher and picked up Steven’s hickory staff. ‘Sten ahat grekac.’
Steven hadn’t even thought about the staff; he found himself pleased to see it again. It looked like that length of wood really had saved his life.
They were still many days’ travel from Orindale, but Lahp planned to build a raft to take them down the river once they had passed through the northwest end of the valley that Steven, in a moment of sentimentality, had dubbed Meyers’ Vale. He was quite sure old Dietrich Meyers had hiked through many a similar valley in the Tyrol as a young man. The keys to the known world. Was that where all this had started? Ghosts of dead bank tellers, gigantic ravenous beasts, life-sucking demon creatures and the threat of evil’s ascendancy in Eldarn…
And where was Hannah? Malagon had told him she was lost and alone in Praga. If that were true, was that what he was supposed to work out from Lessek’s dream?
If Hannah was in Eldarn, he hoped she had discovered a way to blend in, to bide her time while searching for a way back to her own home. He was little good to her now; embarrassingly, he envisioned her waiting for him when he arrived in Orindale. She would have mastered the cultural differences, charmed a small army of Pragans into assisting her, chartered a ship and sailed the Ravenian Sea to Falkan to rescue him. Her arms folded across those exquisite breasts, she would shake her head at him as his raft floated aimlessly into the city. That would be a sight.
Steven smiled as he remembered the faint aroma of lilac that drifted about her, the delicate line of her neck that, already perfect when she looked directly at him, grew nearly impossible in its beauty when she turned away.
‘Lahp.’ He was afraid to ask the question. ‘Lahp, do you know where my friends are?’
‘Na.’ He chewed a piece of grettan, then gestured up the mountain behind them. ‘Lahp fol Sten Blackstone. Sten hep Lahp. Lahp fol Sten.’
Steven had helped Lahp – probably saved his life – so the Seron had followed him through the Blackstones, shadowing him until the grettan attack. When Steven left his friends in the forest to search for Hannah, Lahp had moved ahead as well.
‘I want to wait here,’ Steven said, more a request than a command. ‘I believe they are coming this way.’ There was no response, so he tried again. ‘Maybe just for a day or two.’
He expected Lahp to argue with him and was surprised when the Seron merely nodded in agreement.
Warm, well-fed – the grettan was surprisingly tasty once he’d overcome his initial reluctance – and comfortable, Steven let his head fall back against the tree trunk and closed his eyes. Slowly, he tried to bend his leg, to lift it from where Lahp had it wrapped so thickly in the coarse blankets. After a few moments, he felt it respond. It would not be long before he was walking again.
Always do a little less than you know you can and in the end you will go much further. Steven planned on sticking to the runner’s rule; tomorrow he would bend the leg all the way, maybe even try to stand, but tonight, he would bundle up near the fire, tuck his embarrassed tail between his legs and hope for an opportunity to beg forgiveness from his friends.
He saw the hickory staff, leaning against a tree. He had no idea how he had managed to kill the grettan. ‘Maybe I’ll pick that up again tomorrow as well,’ he said. ‘Hold on, Hannah, we’re coming.’
The patch of grey moved back and forth across the darkness, a thin film superimposed over an obsidian night. Curious: for no light existed here, only cold and darkness.
And then cold began to give way, little by little. His legs were empty vessels, his torso a shell, his arms hollow, and all cold, cold as ice, cold as the breath of the Fimbulwinter, cold as Death… but his arms were growing warm and his chest moved in a ragged breath. Still cold, though… he could not see, except for the grey patch that moved across his field of vision, but where there is no light, there is no sight.
No grey should exist here, but there it was again, and there should be no warmth in this bitter chill, but the impossible warmth intensified as the cold dissipated. He was growing warmer, from the inside out. His empty legs filled, flesh and bone encroaching on the empty space, stinging as the frigid cold was pushed out from bone and sinew and flesh.
His torso next, as air filled the shell, and arms close behind as his body took shape and substance.
He was warm, warmer than he could ever remember being, and still the grey patch floated just out of reach, out along the edge of his vision.
Mark Jenkins woke with a cry. Night had fallen. He closed his eyes again, expecting to open them to inky darkness, but there was the dim grey patch. Not hallucination, but real, almost tangible, a shade lighter than the night, it floated there. Mark felt around himself. He still wore his pack and was sitting against the pine tree he had chosen. This was supposed to have been the perfect place to die, but he appeared to be alive. He needed to take stock.
He was buried almost to the chest in freshly fallen snow. Wrapping an arm around the tree, he hefted himself to his feet and brushed snow from his clothes.
But there was something amiss.
‘I should be dead,’ he said, staring into the night. ‘I might have been dead. Might still be dead. Oh God!’ He thought he heard someone approaching and snapped to silent attention, but after several seconds he decided he was alone. All he could hear was the softly falling snow, the creak of weighted branches and his own frantic breathing.