In the morning, the mountains looked whiter. Meoraq prayed while Amber sat on a rock and pretended to be patient with him, but when he raised his head at the end of it, he still saw only the mountains…and the snow creeping down from its heights.

“Well?” said Amber, shouldering her pack and taking up her spear.

“This is where we cross,” he decided, but he was not at ease with the decision.

They began to climb, making their way steadily over the loose rock and deadfall that littered the base of the mountains. There was no sense of progress made. They seemed to struggle over the same hill again and again while the mountains themselves stayed just beyond it. Meoraq had to look back and see the plains below them—a rumpled brown blanket with patches of trees and the short, ugly scar left by the storm days ago—to feel for certain they were moving at all. Their distance halved and then halved again as the snowline began to drop.

It began as a few flakes, which Amber tried to tell him were just blowing down from the mountains. He didn’t bother to argue with her. In another hour, arguments were unnecessary. Their tracks were holes in dust at first, then depressions, then craters, and finally twin lines. By the time he called camp that night, they were in the white up to their knees and the snowline was lower than it had been even two days ago.

Amber held his pace without complaint, walking where he walked and taking no foolish chances over rough terrain. She learned quickly how to see softslides forming and where to put her feet on broken slopes, but he heard her fight for breath the higher they climbed. He felt the sharp tug of her hand on the back of his belt each time her footing slipped. He saw her cup shake when she drank her first swallows each time they stopped to rest. He felt the weakness in her arms when she put them around him at night.

The foothills could not go on forever. Already, the landscape was changing. The true mountains loomed over them: rock and ice and death in every misplaced step. The time was coming to make a decision. Meoraq put it off as long as he could, until at last, Sheul made it for him.

* * *

Meoraq crested a hill and when he saw what lay before him in the last valley before the mountains, he halted. Amber, bent nearly double to keep the stinging wind out of her fragile human face, promptly walked into him. She stumbled, her hunting spear at once tangled in his legs and hers, and probably would have fallen over if he hadn’t caught her by the arm.

“What is it?” she asked, squinting through the falling snow.

It was a cave, and if a cave had been all it was, it would not have drawn his eye for more than a moment. But it was a cave with a mouth large enough to allow a grown man to walk through and small enough for said man to easily craft a hide door to cover it. It was a cave positioned midway up a gentle slope, neither on the valley’s floor nor dangling unreachably over a sheer drop. The valley itself was wooded and well-traveled by mountain game, with a visible source of water and no evidence of past slides. Short of a second pillar of flame rising to heaven, the message could not have been more clear.

“Why are we just standing here?” Amber asked.

“We are done for now,” he told her as his gaze moved over her. She did not look well. Her skin had turned a bright pink wherever it was exposed to the air, all but her mouthparts and the thin flesh surrounding her sunken eyes, which had taken on a deep, bruised color. Part of it was surely the cold, which her human body could not seem to combat, but the endless days of walking had taken a heavy price as well. If she was not at her limits already, they were well within her sights.

“It’s hours until dark!” she argued, even as she weaved upon her feet.

“We are done.”

“The mountains are right there!”

“We are done.”

“Damn it, lizardman!”

“We—” He bent down to put their eyes directly on level, his face so near that he could taste her breath when he spoke. “—are done.”

“You don’t think I can do it, is that it?” she demanded.

Meoraq neither answered nor straightened up.

She swiped snow out of her face. “Fine. We’ll take a break, but—”

“That cave shall be our camp,” Meoraq said, pointing.

“That what?” She tracked the aim of his arm and scowled at the gift Sheul had given them. “A cave? I don’t want to stop for the whole night!”

“We will not stop for one night, woman,” he replied. “We stop for all of them.”

“What do you mean?”

“Sheul has provided our winter’s camp.”

She stared at him, water welling and steaming in her eyes. Then she snatched her spear back from him and yanked her arm from his grip. “Have fun, lizardman. I’m not tired and I’m not stopping!”

He watched her go, struggling against the wind at every stubborn step. If this were any other woman, her foolishness might carry her another hour before she came meekly back to him, assuming there were any dumaq woman who would refuse him. If she were a man, her pride might take her well into the night before reason brought her slinking back to his camp. But she was Amber, and so Meoraq went after her.

She tried to shake him off when he first took her arm, saying something about this not being a matter for discussion, which was very true. Meoraq did not bother to answer, however, electing instead to sling her over his shoulder with his travel-pack. He picked up her spear, gave her a whack with it to stop her drumming her fists on his back, then turned back along the path of his tracks, loudly praying for patience. He did not stop until he had marched himself into the cave Sheul had given him and could have this fight out of the weather.

“Where will you go?” he demanded, setting her on her feet and giving her a shove when she immediately attempted to storm out again. “How is it you think you will find Xi’Matezh without me?”

“Maybe God will take me there,” she said acidly.

“Sheul brought you here.”

“I…I…I don’t need to stop! I can keep going just fine!”

“Do you think I am making this camp for your sake?” he asked, incredulous. “I am a Sword and a true son of Sheul. I obey only His will. I do not ignore His direction for benefit of stubborn females without the sense to look after themselves. And if I did,” he went on, his temper fraying, “I would have halted this march long before now as you are plainly, plainly, killing yourself to make it!”

“I am not!”

He ripped his samr from its sheath and seized her. She fought him with embarrassing effectiveness, but in moments, he had roughly turned her and thrust its polished blade unavoidably before her face. He shook her once to stop her swearing and again to make her look at it instead of at him and then there was quiet.

“Leave me alone,” she said at last.

He snorted at the back of her stubborn head. “I am tempted to do just that altogether too often for a righteous man,” he told her and released her, unbuckling his harness rather than re-sheathe his samr. He strove for patience, found some, and turned his attention to his surroundings, where it should have been from the start. The cave was not as roomy as he would have liked, but had a natural bend to it which protected it nicely against the worst of the wind and would make it easy to hang doors. It had clearly been used by men in the past, to judge by a stone-ringed ashpit and a number of pots and basins too heavy or ungainly to carry over the mountains, even a small smoker and drying rack. Far more recently, it had sheltered animals; there was a scattering of small bones to tell him that a thuoch had been and gone at some point, but now it was a kipwe’s den. Perhaps even a mated pair of kipwe, to judge by the size of the nest of quills and shed fur before him. If they had not already descended to winter in the warmer climes of Yroq’s plains, their two hides would make fine doors to seal off the mouth of the cave and their meat would make a fair start on their winter stores…