'And we can't have a fire, or the ravens will smell it.'
Renn bit her lip. 'You do know that you can't have anything to eat? To go into a trance, you need to fast.'
Torak had forgotten that. 'What about you?'
'I'll eat when you're not looking. Then I'll make the paste for loosening your souls.'
'Do you have what you need?'
She patted her medicine pouch. 'I gathered a few things in the Forest.'
His lip curled. 'You planned this.'
She didn't smile back. 'I had a feeling I might need to.'
The sky was darkening, and a few stars were glinting. 'First light,' murmured Torak.
It was going to be a long night.
Torak huddled in his sleeping-sack, and tried to stop shivering. He'd been shivering all night, and he was sick of it. Peering throught the slit in the snow cave, he saw the half-eaten moon shining bright. Dawn wasn't far off. The sky was clear and ravenless.
In one mitten, he clutched a scrap of birch bark containing Renn's soul-loosening paste: a mixture of deer fat and herbs which he was to smear on his face and hands when she gave the word. In the other, he held a small rawhide pouch fastened with sinew. What Renn called a "smoke-potion" smouldered inside. He'd asked what was in it, but she'd said it was better not to know, and he hadn't insisted. Renn had a talent for Magecraft, which for reasons she never went into, she tried to ignore. Practising it put her in a bad mood.
His belly rumbled, and she nudged him with her elbow. He refrained from nudging back. He was so hungry that if a raven didn't come soon, he'd eat the squirrel.
A thin scarlet line had just appeared in the east, when a black shape slid across the stars.
Again, Renn nudged him.
'I see it,' he whispered.
A smaller shape glided after the first: the raven's mate. Wingtip to wingtip, they wheeled over the kill then flew away.
Some time later, they came back for another pass, flying a little lower. At the fifth pass, they flew so low that Torak heard their wingbeats: a strong, rhythmic 'wsh wsh wsh'.
He watched their heads turn from side to side, scanning the land below. He was glad he'd buried the gear beside the snow cave, which Renn had made into a featureless mound, with only a slit for air and observation. Ravens are the cleverest of birds, with senses sharp as grass.
Yellow fire spilled over the edge of the world, but still the ravens circled, spying out the "kill".
Suddenly, one folded its wings and dropped out of the sky.
Torak slipped off both mittens, to be ready.
Silently, the raven lit down on the snow. Its breath smoked as it stared at the shelter. Its wingspan was wider than Torak's outstretched arms, and it was utterly black. Eyes, feathers, legs, claws; like the First Raven herself, who woke the sun from its winter sleep, and was burnt black for her pains.
This raven, however, was more interested in the squirrel, which it approached at a cautious, stiff-legged walk.
'Now?' mouthed Torak.
Renn shook her head.
The raven gave the carcass a tentative peck. Then it hopped high in the air, landed and flew off. It was checking that the squirrel was really dead.
When the carcass didn't move, both ravens flew down. Warily they walked towards it.
'Now!' mouthed Renn.
Torak smeared on the paste. It had a sour green smell that stung his eyes and made his skin prickle. Then he unfastened the pouch and sucked in the smoke-potion.
'Swallow it all,' Renn whispered in his ear, 'and don't cough!'
The smoke was bitter, the urge to cough almost overwhelming. He felt Renn's breath on his cheek. 'May the guardian fly with you!'
Feeling sick, he watched the big raven tug at the frozen innards. A sharp pain tugged at his own insides and for a moment he felt a surge of panic. No, no I don't want to . . .
. . . and suddenly he was tugging at the squirrel's guts with his powerful beak, slicing off delicious tatters of frozen meat.
Swiftly he filled his throat-pouch; then pecked out an eye. Enjoying its slippery smoothness on his tongue, he hitched his wings and hopped onto the wind, and it bore him up, up into the light.
The wind was freezing and unimaginably strong, and his heart swelled with joy as it carried him higher. He loved the coldness rippling under his feathers, and the smell of ice in his nostrils, and the wind's wild laughter screaming through him. He loved the ease with which he rode upwards, twisting and turning with the merest tilt of his wings he loved the power of his beautiful black wings!
A slippery 'wsh' and his mate was at his side. As she folded her wings and rolled off the wind, she gave a graceful twitch of her tail, asking him to sky-dance. He slid after her and locked his icy talons in hers, and together they drew in their wings and dived.
Through the streaming cold they sped, through a blur of black feathers and splintered sun, exulting in their speed as the great white world rushed up to meet them.
Of one accord they unlocked their talons, and he snapped open his wings and struck the wind, and now he was soaring again, soaring towards the sun.
With his raven eyes he could see for ever. Far to the east, the tiny speck of a white fox trotted through the snow. To the south lay the dark rim of the Forest. To the west he saw the wrinkled ice of the frozen Sea. To the north: two figures in the snow.
With a cry he sped off in pursuit.
'Cark?' called his startled mate.
He left her, and the white land flowed beneath him.
As he drew nearer, he swooped, and in an instant that burned into his mind for ever, he took in every detail.
He saw two figures straining to haul a sled. He saw Wolf strapped to the sled, unable to move. As he strained to catch the least twitch of a paw, the smallest flicker which would tell him that Wolf was still alive, he saw the bigger man pause, pull his parka over his head, and loosen the neck of his jerkin to let out the heat. He saw the blue-black tattoo on the man's breastbone: the three-pronged fork for snaring souls. The mark of the Soul-Eater.
From his raven beak came a horrified croak. The Soul-Eaters. The Soul-Eaters have taken Wolf.
He flew higher, and the sun blinded him. The wind gave a furious twist, and threw him off.
His courage cracked like thin ice.
The wind screamed in triumph.
A sharp pain pierced his insides and he was Torak again, and he was falling out of the sky.
SEVEN.
Torak woke in the blue gloom of the snow cave with the wind's angry laughter ringing in his ears.
Renn was kneeling over him, looking scared. 'Oh, thank the Spirit! I've been trying to wake you all morning!'
'All morning?' he mumbled. He felt like a piece of rawhide that had been pummelled and scraped.
'It's midday,' said Renn. 'What happened? You were breathing in snow, and your eyes had turned up inside your head. It was horrible!'
'Fell,' he said. With each breath, pain stabbed his ribs, and every joint screamed. But his limbs still obeyed him; so no broken bones. 'Do I bruises?'
She shook her head. 'But souls get bruises too.'
He lay still, staring at a droplet about to fall from the roof. The Soul-Eaters had taken Wolf.
'Did you see the trail?' said Renn.
He swallowed. 'North. They headed north.'
She sensed that he was keeping something back. 'As soon as you went into a trance,' she said, 'the wind blew up. It sounded angry.'
'I was flying. I wasn't supposed to.'
The drop landed on Renn's parka and lost itself in the fur: like a soul falling to earth.
'You shouldn't have done it,' she said.
Raising himself painfully on one elbow, Torak peered through the slit. The wind was blowing softly, but the ghostly snow-fingers were back.
'I don't think it's finished with us,' said Renn.
Torak lay down again, and drew his sleeping-sack under his chin. The Soul-Eaters had taken Wolf.
He couldn't bring himself to tell her at least, not yet. If she knew, she might insist that they went back to the Forest for help. She might leave.
He shut his eyes.
'But who are the Soul-Eaters?' he'd once asked Fin-Kedinn. 'I don't even know their names.'
'Few do,' Fin-Kedinn had replied, 'and they don't speak of them.'
'Do you know?' Torak had demanded. 'Why won't you tell me? It's my destiny to fight them!'
'In time,' was all the Raven Leader would say.
Torak couldn't make him out. Fin-Kedinn had taken him in when his father was killed; and long ago, Fa and he had been good friends. But he rarely spoke of the past, and only ever revealed what he thought Torak needed to know.
So now all Torak knew was that the Soul-Eaters had plotted to rule the Forest. Then their power had been shattered in a great fire, and they'd gone into hiding. Two of the seven had since met their deaths and thus, under clan law, couldn't be mentioned by name for the next five winters. One of them had been Torak's father.
Deep in his chest, Torak felt the familiar ache. Fa had joined them to do good; that was what Fin-Kedinn had told him. That was what Torak clung to. When they'd become evil, Fa had tried to leave, and they'd turned on him. For thirteen winters he'd been a hunted man, raising his son apart from the clans, never mentioning his past. Then, the autumn before last, the Soul-Eaters had sent the demon bear that killed him.
Now they'd taken Wolf.
But why Wolf, and not Torak? Why, why, why?
He fell asleep to the moaning of the wind.
Someone was shaking him, calling his name.
'Wha?' he mumbled into a mouthful of reindeer fur.
'Torak, wake up!' cried Renn. 'We can't get out!'
Awkwardly he sat up as far as the low roof would allow. Beside him, Renn was struggling not to panic.
The slit in the shelter was gone. In its place was a wall of hard-packed snow.
'I've been digging,' she said, 'but I can't break through. We're snowed in. It must have drifted in the night.'
Torak noticed that she said "it drifted", rather than "the wind did this, burying us while we slept".
'Where's my axe?' he said.
Her face worked. 'Outside. They're both outside, where we left them. With the rest of our gear.'
He took that in silence.
'I should have brought them inside,' said Renn.
'There wasn't room.'
'I should've made room. I should've thought.'
'You were looking after me, it's not your fault. We've got knives. We'll dig ourselves out.'
He drew his knife. Fin-Kedinn had made it for him last summer: a slender blade of reindeer shinbone, slotted with leaf-thin flakes of flint. It wasn't meant for digging in wind-hardened snow. Fa's blue slate knife would have been better; but Fin-Kedinn had warned Torak to keep it hidden in his pack. He regretted that now.
'Let's get started,' he said, trying to sound calm.
It was frightening, digging a tunnel with no idea how far they had to go. There was nowhere to put the hacked-out snow except behind them, so no matter how hard they worked, they remained trapped in the same cramped hole. The dripping walls pressed in, and their breath sounded panicky and loud.