The wind was a constant presence. No matter where Bela and her crew went, its roar was a blurry, vibrating noise that rasped in their ears. No matter where they looked, it met their faces with a slapping chill—spinning up in cloudy waves from the far white sea below, raging down from the far white heights above, or churning in drift-forming gales that wrapped around the sides of the mountains as if to grasp the slopes in its cold embrace.
For days they’d been fighting against those winds. Just seven black dots, dragging a single supply-laden outboat up into the valley Bela and Oni had seen from below, trudging in silent file during the day and sleeping shoulder to cold shoulder beneath the overturned hull at night. Storm and terrain had pushed them back again and again, but at last they’d found a path that carved across the lee slope of one of the higher peaks. They’d made good but tiring progress, steadily climbing higher and higher as they’d wound around the slopes of the great mountain, angling across icy chutes that led out into chasms filled with nothing but snowy, roiling cloud.
The crew was tied together in two teams as they labored, attached to each other by the same familiar lines of rope that they’d used coming across the frozen sea. Everyone knew that a long plummet off the edge of the mountain was only a false step away. More than once, a slipping woman had been grateful to be tied to the others.
To help protect their stores, Bela had attached their remaining length of rope to the single surviving harpoon. The other end of the rope had been tied to the end of the pulling line, just behind the harness-loop of the lead woman on the boat. This gave them an extra line that could be anchored hard to the ice if needed. Since the lead woman of the pulling team was now carrying the harpoon, both swords were given to the free team, who used them to cut a path through the larger drifts they encountered in the frozen terrain.
Put together, it was a good plan, Bela had thought.
The only problem had been the teams. She’d wanted the crew to remain in their two previous teams: Neka, Sanyu, and young Tew alongside her, and Oni, Malaika, and Eshe in the other. But from the day they’d set out from the cave along the shoreline, Neka, Sanyu, and Malaika had insisted on tying themselves to one another, leaving no room for a fourth.
It was a small defiance, and Bela had waved Oni off when her maiden wanted to enforce her will. But it was a defiance nonetheless.
So Bela wasn’t surprised when she heard the wind carrying the grumbles of Neka across the wide, smooth chute of ice and snow that they were trying to cross. The big woman was in the lead of the free team out front. Bela, too, was at the head of her team, using her one remaining hand to carry the harpoon-anchor ahead of those pulling the supply boat behind.
Bela had been watching Neka and Malaika as they’d been digging hard with the blades out front, trying to scratch and claw their way past a crusted bank of snow that barred further progress off the dangerous slope. They’d been taking turns chipping into the impediment, but now they’d stopped, exchanged a couple of words with Sanyu, and turned back to face the others.
“That’s it,” Neka said across the chute. The big woman’s face was flushed and sweaty despite the cold. “We’ll not go farther.”
The three of them started to come back across the chute, and Bela walked carefully on the sloping ice to meet them, mindful of the reach of her line. “We’ll switch off,” she said. “You’ve been in the lead all day.”
“No,” Malaika said. “We’re done.”
“We want to go back,” Neka said.
Bela glanced back toward the others. Tew was tied behind her and had made it about halfway across the chute. Oni and Eshe were behind him, their hands guiding the outboat. None of them appeared to have any idea what was going on. They just looked tired. “We’ve been pushing too hard,” Bela said. “We’ll slow down. Or find another route.”
Neka stepped around Sanyu. “We’ll push no more,” the big woman said.
“We’re done,” Malaika repeated. “We’re going back.”
They were only a few long steps away. Tewrick was halfway back to the outboat. Bela glanced down the slope to where it disappeared into the yawning chasm of foggy space. “I don’t think we should make rash decisions,” she said.
“Rash?” Malaika, standing behind the other two women, was incredulous. “Rash was sailing north before full spring. Rash was packing our way across the ice sheet with no hope of supply or rescue. Rash was coming up here to die like fools when we had food and shelter and warmth enough at the cave.”
“I don’t like your tone.”
“We don’t care anymore,” Sanyu said.
“You’re under my command.”
“Your command is under the ice with the dead,” Neka said. There was genuine hatred in her voice and disgust upon her face.
“You can join them for all we care,” Malaika said.
Neka’s grin was feral. “Join them now,” she said, and she came forward, swinging her sword with both hands.
Bela stumbled backward across the ice, but she managed to get the harpoon up to block the blow.
Neka was bigger. Stronger. And she had two arms. It was a fight Bela knew she couldn’t win.
Somewhere behind her, too far away to help, Oni screamed.
Neka’s blade rose up and slammed back down against her defense, and the best Bela could manage was to deflect it down and away. But it spun her off-balance. And Malaika had shoved her way up, too, passing Sanyu and swinging with the other of their two swords.
Bela twisted away from the second strike, contorting her body in the small hope that Malaika would miss. But the woman was a fighter, experienced in arms.
Bela gasped as the blade scythed through her sealskins and the thick wool layers beneath them, running a line across her ribs. There was a sudden new chill as the frigid air met her torn skin. Instinctively, she rolled with the blow, arching and twisting her body as she shifted her weight away. For a moment, the move, more instinct than controlled thought, was successful.
The blade didn’t carve deep into her side, and then Malaika’s swing was free and moving away, the danger passed for a moment.
The next heartbeat, though, Bela’s weight had shifted beyond the grip of her boots on the smooth terrain. Her feet kicked out from beneath her. She began to slide.
The others were yelling and shouting. The ground shook. Bela thought she could hear a distant rumble as she skittered down the ice, arms flailing as she tried to dig the harpoon into the cold. The line that tied her to Tewrick and the others repeatedly jerked and kicked, and each time she could feel the weight of her body bucking against the line. But it didn’t stop. She was skidding toward the emptiness below. Faster and faster.
There was a noise above her. Like the roar of the breakers that she remembered from a youth long before she became Belakané, the curling waves that crashed like falling trees into the black rocks protecting the harbor. Only louder. And far, far more angry.
In desperation, Bela kicked herself onto her side and lifted herself off the speeding ice just long enough to plunge the harpoon into it with every last measure of strength she had. It stuck and was ripped out of her hand. Slashing down the ice, she looked back up the slope, and she saw it receding away at the end of the rapidly uncoiling rope that was attached to the pulling line. She saw, too, the spinning, twisting forms of Tew and Oni following her down the chute.
And behind them, moving faster than they were sliding, already having swallowed Eshe and the boat and all the others, was a wall of snow that blocked out her sight of the great peak above.
Bela saw her maiden for only a moment before she disappeared into the white. A half-second later and Tew was gone. She started to shout something, started to curse the Mother and the mountain and even the books that had given them this pointless, fruitless mission, but then the roaring wall hit her, too, and her screams were swallowed up by the cold dark.