Kushiel's Justice - Jacqueline Carey [265]
The fifth day was the worst.
That was the day it snowed. Not so hard that I couldn't see, but heavily; steadily. Big, white flakes, falling straight downward, drifting through the air. Adding another layer to the soft blanket of whiteness.
Obscuring Berlik's trail.
I managed to follow it throughout the day, but the impressions his massive paws had left were growing more shallow. The edges were soft and blurred. I could no longer make out the sharp gouges of his long claws; the claws that had laid open my flesh. That had slain my unborn son. I thought about the day I had met Berlik. I'd asked him what would happen if I challenged him for the mannekin trinket. Berlik had showed me his claws. You do not wish to do that. He'd tapped the croonie-stone around my neck and bade me accept his oath. Told me that I might be grateful for it one day.
"You were wrong about that," I said aloud.
I hated to make camp that evening, but his trail was growing too faint. There was no way I could follow it in darkness, not even by feel. With my dagger, I made a gash in the bark of a pine tree, indicating its direction. I tossed a few hunks of frozen hare into pot with a handful of grain. There hadn't been a lot of meat on the hare, and I was nearly out of grain. The arrow with which I'd shot the hare had gone clean through it and embedded itself in a tree trunk. When I'd tried to wrestle it loose, the shaft had snapped.
That left me with a hunting bow and two arrows. I'd watched Urist make arrows on the island where we were shipwrecked, carving points and hardening them in the fire. But there had been no end of birdlife there. We'd gathered feathers on the beach for fletching, then plucked better ones from the birds we shot. I didn't have that luxury here.
I tossed my lone dagger end over end, catching the hilt. Joscelin had taught me to throw, of course, and I was a passing fair shot at twenty paces. Mayhap good enough to bring down a hare. Mayhap not.
By my best guess, I wasn't more than three or four days' ride from Miroslas. I'd ridden for a long, long time, but I'd been crisscrossing the land, looking for Berlik. Still, on foot, it was another matter. It might take me weeks. And I might well miss it on my first pass. If I did, it could take days to find it or reach the village beyond.
I should have shot the deer.
Fat snowflakes fell, sizzling where they landed on the embers of my campfire. I sheathed my dagger and stirred the embers with a long stick, then laid a few sturdy branches on the fire. I watched the flames rise, licking at the dry wood. Snow fell, catching in my hair, gathering on my shoulders. Melting on my cheeks like tears. I watched the fire. Showers of sparks, snapping and rising. Golden flames. I thought about Sidonie standing in a shaft of sunlight, her golden hair backlit. Tangled on a pillow. Her eyes, black as a Tatar's, filled with tears.
Just come home.
"I'll try," I murmured. "Swear to Elua, I'll try, Sun Princess.”
The silent snow continued falling.
I slept fitfully and woke to a world of pristine whiteness. Somewhere in the night, the snow had ceased. Tall pines stood shrouded in white, the dawn breaking over them. The world seemed hushed and sacred. I could understand why a god would seek to build a kingdom here.
There was no sign of Berlik's trail.
It was gone, gone so thoroughly it might never have existed. I shrugged off my snow-covered blankets. I built the fire back up from its embers and boiled the last of my grain, eating it methodically with my fingers. Melted snow and refilled my waterskin. After a few errors, I found the tree I'd marked and brushed off the snow covering my mark. It pointed deeper into the forest, all of which was covered in a dense blanket of snow.
Trees and snow, nothing else.
I sighed, shouldered my pack, and began trudging.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
There were no tracks, but there was bear sign.
As a boy in the