He grunts again, a sound of pained stiffness, and moves.
He pulls his arm from me, and the loss of his heat is immediate and shocking, like being plunged into a frozen lake. He shoves himself forward, his wounded shoulder scraping against the rock entrance with a sound that makes me wince.
He is outside, a ten-foot shadow against the new, gray world.
I scramble to my feet, my body protesting. "Threk? Is it... is it over?"
I stumble out of the cave after him, my eyes watering at the sudden, blinding whiteness.
The world is remade.
Everything is gone. The path, the trees, the rocks—all of it is buried under a pristine, undulating blanket of deep, white snow. The sky is a low, oppressive, bruised-gray ceiling. And the silence. It is a heavy, dead thing. It is the silence of a graveyard.
Threk stands, his back to me, his massive head turning, sniffing the air. He is a dark, brutal, living thing in this perfect, dead world.
We are alive. We survived the elves. We survived the blizzard.
A small, hysterical bubble of a laugh rises in my throat. We survived.
Threk goes still.
His head snaps up. He draws in a deep, rumbling inhale, his nostrils flaring wide. His entire body locks, a statue of coiled muscle.
"What?" I whisper, my laugh dying. "What is it?"
He lets out a growl.
It is not the growl teeming with hate he gave the elves. It is not the possessive-rumble he gives me. This is a low, guttural, animal sound. It is a challenge.
And then I see them.
They are shadows on the snow. Gray shapes gliding between the few visible rocks, their movements too fluid, too fast.
My heart stops.
One, two... five. Five of them. They are huge. As large as ponies, but they move with the predatory grace of cats. Their fur is a matted, dirty gray, their bodies lean and ropy with muscle.
Worgs.
One of them stops, its head raised, its gaze locking on us. It has no eyes. Only two points of pale, glowing, green light. It opens its jaws, and a snarl rips through the silence, a sound of pure, intelligent malice.
My blood turns to a frigid tide. Magic wolves.
The stench hits me. A wave of wet dog, old blood, and a musky, territorial rankness.
They are circling us.
They are not just dumb beasts. They are hunting.
My hand fumbles at my belt, my numb fingers finding the hilt of my father's skinning knife. It is a toy. A toothpick. My hand is shaking so violently I can barely hold it.
The Worgs are drawn by the blood. Threk's wounds. The open, weeping gashes from the raiders. We are a beacon of food in this frozen wasteland.
Threk roars. It is a blast of pure, defiant fury.
But he doesn't charge.
He moves. He shoves me.
