Consequently, Gyre heard the thing coming long before he saw it, a rattling sound of bone on rock. He glanced at Kit, who drew her saber at once. Gyre pulled out his long blade and took a long step away from her, giving her room to fight.
The plaguespawn came into view a moment later, scuttling around a boulder. It was a big one, the size of a pony, with a mismatched collection of a dozen legs rising and falling on either side of its body in weird, synchronized waves. Like all plaguespawn, most of it consisted of yellow, splintered bones and ropy red muscle, the organic wreckage of several creatures stripped and repurposed by dhaka. Bits of its past prey remained intact—its head was a pair of goats’ heads partially fused together, mouth horribly extended, four horizontal-pupiled eyes blinking in unison.
It came straight at them, legs rising and falling. Gyre intercepted it, darting forward to deliver a slash across its snout that left a flap of wet flesh hanging loose, dripping dark blood. The creature came after him, goat teeth snapping, and he danced backward, slashing at it whenever it got too close.
Kit came in behind the thing, delivering a heavy downward cut to its rear with her longer, heavier blade. Three legs fell away from one side, twitching spastically on the ground, and the thing staggered off-balance. It screeched and chattered madly, trying to turn, but Gyre slammed his long knife into its throat, putting all his weight behind the blow. As it reared, trying to bite him, Kit reversed her saber and brought it straight down through the center of the creature’s body. Blood gushed from its underside, and all its legs twitched violently, then went limp.
“Nicely done,” Gyre said, putting his foot against the monster’s skull and pulling his knife free. Something crunched wetly under his boot.
“I’ve had a lot of practice,” Kit muttered. “At least up here they’re mostly goat. You wouldn’t believe how big they can get down in the tunnels with only bats and rats to eat.”
“Did you ever ask your friend Naumoriel why the ghouls created the plaguing things?”
“He claims they didn’t,” Kit said. “But trying to get straight answers out of a ghoul about the war is … challenging. You’ll see.” She wiped the blood off her saber on a cloth, then frowned at the rag and tossed it away. “Assuming we get there. And that they don’t kill us immediately when we do.”
“So many wonderful possibilities,” Gyre said.
A few more plaguespawn turned up before nightfall, but nothing nearly so large. The smallest of them could be crushed under a boot or dispatched with a kick, like twisted rats but with none of a rat’s natural intellect or caution. As far as Gyre knew, no one was quite sure where new plaguespawn came from, but the popular theory was that smaller monsters periodically budded from larger ones.
That night they didn’t light a fire. Gyre double-checked his alchemical alarms before retiring to the small, single-person tent he carried in his pack, little more than a raised frame to protect his bedroll from wind and rain. Once again, nothing disturbed them, and in the morning they turned away from the valley of the Brink and started climbing into Goatskull Pass.
The pass was barely worthy of the name. Really, it was just a narrow saddle of ground between two mountains, the bottom of a ravine dotted with boulders. It sloped upward, enough that patches of snow appeared on the rocks. Here and there a drift blocked the way, remnants of an avalanche. It was enough to make Gyre glance upward nervously, shading his eye against the glare.
Two days went by as they worked their way along the pass. Here and there, they found evidence that humans had been this way before, a few steps carved into a particularly difficult section or boulders arranged into rough stepping-stones. For the most part, though, they might have been alone in the world, aside from the ever-present plaguespawn. The air grew thinner and colder, and Gyre slept with every blanket he had.
Eventually, Kit had told him, the pass would crest and then start downward into another valley. Before that point, they would branch off, following a narrow shoulder of ground to a hidden tunnel entrance. On the fifth day out of Deepfire, Gyre’s legs were burning long before the sun had reached its height. Kit slogged at his side, relentless and uncomplaining, and once again he found himself wondering how so much strength fit in such a slight frame.
“We’re going to need to rest soon,” Gyre managed as they edged around a boulder and kicked through another patch of snow. Kit looked at him sidelong, and he gasped out a laugh and amended, “I am going to have to rest soon.”
“Wimp.” But she slumped against the boulder eagerly enough, digging her canteen out from under her coat and taking a long swallow. “You should come up here in winter.”
“Have you been?”
“No, but I heard stories from a scavenger who tried. And he was short an ear, three fingers, and seven toes, so I’m inclined to believe him.”
Gyre snorted and looked upward. The clouds were heavy and low, masking the sun, like when Deepfire’s fog pulled in tight. Something brushed his eye, and he blinked.
“Hmm,” Kit said. She held out a gloved hand and watched as several fat flakes landed on her palm. “This could be a problem.”
*
It turned out to be more than a problem.
At first they’d pushed straight on, but the clouds grew lower and more threatening and the snowfall intensified as the wind picked up. It wasn’t even properly dry snow, either, but a mix of snow and half-melted sleet. Sprays of white whipped down the throat of the pass, picked up by the wind from the slopes of the mountain, and blasted Gyre’s face with stinging grit. In no time, he felt like his weight had doubled, inner garments soaked and outer layers crusted with snowfall.
“We have to get out of this!” He had to grab Kit’s arm and pull her closer before she could hear. “Find somewhere to put up the tents!”
She shook her head. Her eyes were the only part of her visible under layers of cloth.
“Put them up where?” she said.
“Somewhere out of the wind.” Gyre looked around desperately for a convenient boulder, but with the darkness and blowing snow, he couldn’t see much farther than the end of his arm.
“Got a better idea. Just a little farther.”
“What is?”
“’S a cave.” Kit had trouble getting her voice out between chattering teeth. “Used it last time. Might even still be some supplies there.”
“Are you sure you can find it?”
“Nope!” He couldn’t see her smile, but he could hear it, even through the wind. “Come on!”
Each step felt like he was passing further into a nightmare, but Gyre plodded along in Kit’s wake. His fingers went from painfully cold to ominously numb, and he wasn’t sure he could move his toes inside his boots. The slush was building up on the floor of the pass, and the rocks became slippery underfoot. Kit stumbled several times, and Gyre caught her, hoping like the plague that his own footing would hold.
Just when he was starting to think that Kit couldn’t possibly find her own nose in the murk, much less a cave she’d used a year before, she gave a triumphant cry and hurried ahead of him. He followed in her footsteps, boots heavy with wet, clinging snow. She ran up to the rock wall of the pass and, sure enough, there was a gap in it, just wide enough for a person to slide through. Kit shrugged out of her pack, slipped inside, and pulled it after her. Gyre followed suit and found himself in absolute darkness.