Snow by Gina Inverarity

Author:Gina Inverarity
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: book, YFH, YAF017010
ISBN: 9781743057346
Publisher: Wakefield Press
Published: 2020-04-13T00:00:00+00:00

The passes

We left the shelter of our cave before daybreak. The hunter, his falcon wheeling in the sky, my bear and me. A strange party of travellers with no consensus of direction among us.

‘I want to head for the city and petition the council for my rightful inheritance,’ I told the hunter. ‘I’ll be of age at the end of the season. I think.’ In truth I weren’t exactly sure how old I was.

‘Your stepmother has the hills alive with bounty hunters, all after you. Ifen we leave this minute we can maybe keep ahead of them by headen for the high passes. But ifen we go toward the city we’ll be walking right into their arms. Stoat int interested in anything but the reward for your heart, cut for real this time, straight outta your chest. And he probably plans on dragging you alive all the way back to your stepmother soas she can see you kild for herself.’

‘We can go well west, round the great lakes, and come to the city along the coast,’ I argued. ‘You can find us the way, and Little Bear and me know how to travel.’

‘Still,’ the hunter shook his head, ‘it’s a risk, going any way north, even if it’s west too. I’d rather get well clear over the high passes where they can’t follow.’

‘Why can’t they follow? Ifen this Stoat person is as determined as you say, he’ll just be on our tail up and over and then where’ll we be? In the middle of nowhere, that’s where. There’s nothing on the other side, cepten more snow and forest. You said it yourself, I been up here too long already. It’s time I stopped hiding and set about claiming what’s mine.’

The hunter frowned when I said this, like it were something he knew to be true.

So leaving our cave in the chill before the long cloud-covered dawn, it were my opinion we put our backs to the pale light and go direct west as far as we could, keeping low and travelling fast. The hunter instead put us in the direction of south. He wanted to climb high and then follow the spine of the mountain range as it curved west, keeping out of reach of the bounty hunters who, with some luck, had less stomach for heights and cold.

The falcon were trained to call if she saw men, and with her sharp eyes looking out for us all morning we climbed higher. Once we were underway the hunter put me in the lead to set the pace. It weren’t long before I felt weakness in my legs and a trembling set in. I covered it by striding all the longer but by midday I couldn’t hide my weariness and we set down in the lee of a cliff for a break.

We’d been following a goat track stuck to the side of the mountain for a good while. The slope rose steeply on one side and fell away to the other, spindly clouds drifting in the valley below.

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