Down a steep hill I went.
Tumbling. Rolling. Screaming.
Earth, snow, rocks...
No sense of up or down. I pitched sideways and caught a glimpse of Huck falling next to me. All I could do was scrabble the ground with flailing hands, trying to slow my fall, until I blessedly slid to a stop, slamming my hip against the trunk of a tree.
Pain shot through my bones. All my muscles seized, and if I couldn’t force them to stop, I feared I’d die. I needed air in my lungs. I needed everything to stop hurting.
Come on, I told myself. Breathe, lungs, breathe....
I heard something in the distance. And again, this time clearer:
“Banshee!”
My lungs spasmed. I coughed up dead leaves and gasped for breath—sweet relief! After a few painful inhalations, I managed to get my stinging palms flattened on the ground and pushed myself up. We’d landed in a sort of valley or gorge between two foothills. I couldn’t tell how wide the gorge was, but there was another river here; I could hear it, flowing much more rapidly than the stream above.
“Huck!” I coughed out weakly.
I needed to move. My legs worked. Nothing felt broken, just a lot of scrapes and various pains that felt destined to become bumps and bruises. Still had my beret, amazingly, but not my satchel.
Pebbles tumbled past me. I squinted up the hill to the ridge above—Dear God, I fell that far?—and spied three wolfish shapes picking their way down. There was a strange, almost humanlike manner in the way they were descending. Valentin’s wolf story flickered inside my head, and a fresh wave of panic washed over me.
“Huck!” I shouted, desperate.
“Banshee!”
“I’m over here!”
Branches snapped, and then I spotted him, stumbling toward me. “Where are ya, Theo? Talk to me!”
“Here!” I said, pushing to my feet with a groan.
“Thank God,” he said, grasping my shoulders, touching my arms as if he didn’t believe they weren’t broken. “Are you all right?”
I nodded, metering out my breath.
“Found your satchel way over there,” he said, holding it up and gesturing loosely. “Christ, banshee. Scared me to bits. I saw your life flashing before my eyes.”
“We have bigger problems, up there,” I told him, pointing to the descending shapes as he handed me my satchel. “They’re following.”
“Mother of God,” he mumbled.
“We can’t outrun them,” I said, turning toward the river. It wasmuchwider than the stream above. Impossible to cross on foot. We’d have to swim it, and even if we made it across, how long would we last tonight, roaming the mountains in freezing, wet clothes? My wet feet were already numb.
But I spotted something else in the distance. Something beside the river.
A building.
“There!” I told Huck, pointing. “Shelter!”
“Thank the saints—c’mon!” he said, grabbing my hand.
Stumbling through the snow, we barreled toward not just one but several rough-hewn wooden cabins that lined the riverbank. They were half-timbered with shaggy, thatched roofs and wooden shutters blocking all the windows. No smoke in their stone chimneys.
They looked chillingly dark and deserted.
“Hunting cabins?” Huck said between huffed, strained breaths and the sound of our feet racing across the snow-swept ground.
