I’d only ever ridden horses, and I’d only gone bareback once. But if I was going to get out of this place, I had to move fast. How much harder could it be to ride a caribou bareback?
The snow fought me for every inch, and the wind tore at my breath. Another silver flash burned the scene into my eyes, and I clambered onto a rock and lunged for the caribou. My hands caught thick fur, and my chest struck its side. For half a breath, I was on, but then it pulled me off the stone, and I slid, my feet and legs plunging back into the snow. Shaking with the cold and struggling to catch my breath, I knotted my fists deeper in the fur and hauled myself up.
It glanced back at me as if this was the most normal thing I could be doing, and then powered on.
Shit! This was nothing like riding a horse. The caribou was at least six feet tall at the shoulder, its movement low and rolling, with fur so thick and slick it was hard to get a grip. My legs flailed and caught on the torn straps before I clamped them as tight as I could on the slick fur and locked my arms around its neck. “Okay—okay. Thank you. Don’t leave me.”
Silver flashed at the edge of my vision, and an ice imp launched toward us, its body flaring white. I screamed and kicked out, my sneaker connecting with something hard and unyielding. Pain shot up my leg.
The cackling imp sprang again at the back of the caribou. The animal kicked it squarely in the chest and continued upward, moving onto a jagged ledge of rock as the snow beat down on us harder and the wind howled.
KRRACK.
A sound like a gunshot rang out overhead, and my head snapped up. The caribou didn’t slow, but it angled sharper uphill, its hooves biting into the packed snow and stone along the mountainside as it moved steadily upward. I flattened myself against its back and held on for dear life.
The crack sounded again, deeper and close enough that it seemed to sear through my chest. The stone beneath us shuddered as the caribou shifted its weight and continued upward as if it knew exactly where we were going and that we had to get out of this pass. I glanced over my shoulder, straining to take in the scene as the ice imps bolted and the soldiers tried to keep moving forward. The ground shook like an earthquake, and a deep rushing thunder filled the air.
Acid burned my throat. Shit. An avalanche?
My hands fisted deeper into the caribou’s fur as a sense of helplessness swept over me. Memories from my time skiing in Colorado shot through my mind. I’d learned that, if you were caught in an avalanche, you needed to move to the side, swim to the top, create an air pocket, conserve energy, and keep your feet downhill. But that was what to do if you were caught in it, not what to do before it hit you while you were bareback on a caribou.
This caribou seemed to know what it was doing, and I had no chance if I got off, so I held on tighter.
Another crack split the air above me and to my left. Sound tangled in the narrow space, echoing strangely between rock walls I could sense more than see. The noise grew, swelling from the left, then rushed lower, downward through the pass like a river raging below.
Were we clear?
The caribou angled upward again, still climbing and moving laterally along the wall.
Its stride steadied. The scraping and testing of its hooves smoothed into a faster rhythm. My body bounced with the change, and agony exploded in my stomach where the horn had bruised me. I tightened my grip without meaning to, the pain in my fingers burning and then fading into a dull, distant ache.
The vibrations lessened.
Pressure in my ears eased a fraction despite the roar still moving fast below us. The caribou kept up its hard, ground-eating pace. There was no rise and fall like a horse, and no moment of weightlessness to steal a breath. Every stride shoved forward through its shoulders and into my chest, rattling my ribs and clacking my teeth together.
The edges of the agony blurred together until I couldn’t tell what hurt most. The cold was no longer sharp, just wrong and distant. I tried to flex my toes and couldn’t feel them move as the wind tore at my face.
My heart pounded.
Without the scarf, the wind cut straight across my mouth and cheeks, burning my skin raw. My lips split again, and I tasted copper as warm liquid ran down my chin. My breath came fast and shallow, little clouds torn away before they could warm my face. I tried to slow and deepen my breathing and couldn’t make my chest obey.
The caribou shifted direction slightly and quickened its pace.
“Hrrrooooh—rrruuuh!” A deep rolling call sounded through the storm to my left.
My caribou lifted its head and tilted its antlers back to the point they brushed the top of my head. “Rrrroohh—hrrruuh!”
The change threw me off balance, and my stomach lurched hard. Panic flared, hot and bright, cutting through the fog in my head. I locked my arms tighter around the caribou’s neck and squeezed my thighs until they burned.
A little farther away to my right, a third responded with a similar call. Additional responses cut through the wind, as if the herd was signaling to one another that they had survived.
We’d survived the avalanche, but I probably had only minutes before I lost all dexterity. My brain was slowing, and thinking was hard.
My head dipped forward and bumped the caribou’s neck. The dull impact barely stirred anything but a vague sense that I should lift it again if I didn't want to fall asleep and slide off. If I fell, I’d probably be dead within minutes.
“Hrrr’KAH—rruuk! Hrrr’KAH!” The call came from a little to the left, a harsh bark.
The caribou stopped beneath me so abruptly that my chin hit its neck. Its spine went rigid, breath blasting out in a sharp burst that steamed against my cheek. The calls fractured, the rolling contact calls breaking into harsh, clipped notes that cut through the wind as the caribou barked back and forth, the sounds driving straight into my skull.
