“Do you have fireflies up here?”
“What?”
“Little insects. They flash light as they fly about.”
“No. You might have seen a babyghost, though. They glow like little fires in the trees before they float up and are eaten by the stars.”
“They—”
“There! Up ahead.”
The snow had mostly stopped, but for a moment, Chih had no idea what Si-yu was speaking about. Then they saw the tilted roof of the way station as well as the faint gleam of a lantern glowing in the single oil-paper window.
As if picking up on her rider’s excitement, Piluk snorted, hurrying up the road.
“Usually this is Bao-so’s watch,” Si-yu explained. “He’s a friend of my mother’s, used to ride with the corps until his knees gave out. You’ll like him.”
Chih was about to say that they were sure they would, but a low and thunderous growl started up on their left, and then on their right. A deep and jagged snarl erupted from behind them, like something tearing through the stretched and scraped skin between the world of the flesh and the world of the spirit. Piluk bugled with alarm as Si-yu swore.
It was as if the mammoth they rode were the world, and the world had gone stock still with fright beneath them.
Then Si-yu’s lance flew down to smack solidly along Piluk’s side and the mammoth lurched forward.
Chapter Two
“HANG ON, because I am not coming back for you!” Si-yu roared, and Chih hunched down behind her, wrapping their arms desperately around Si-yu’s waist. Their legs cramped from clinging as hard as they could to the saddle. They suddenly regretted turning down the straps.
Whatever that is out there—
“Tiger,” Si-yu chanted. “Tiger, tiger, tiger . . .”
More than one, Chih realized, seeing the streak of dull orange on one side and then the other.
They’re not pack animals, they don’t hunt together, they had time to think, and then Piluk crested the final rise to the way station.
“There’s a barn, we can get ourselves in and Bao-so . . .”
Chih could see the slope of the barn’s roof beyond the way station itself, but between them was a figure—no, two figures—on the ground, they realized after a moment.
On his back, face obscured by the hood of his sheepskin coat and arms thrown out as if he had hoped to catch himself, was Bao-so. A stocky naked woman bent over him, and she draped her arm over his belly with a casual ownership, immune to the blistering cold. Bao-so’s hand twitched and the woman reached down, looking for all the world as if she wanted to hold it.
Chih froze in horror, but Si-yu only gave Piluk another hard whack, sending her lunging forward with a squeal. The mammoth’s speed was ponderous, but it was like a mountain had started to move. If it was coming for you, you didn’t care how fast it was coming, and that was apparently what the naked woman thought as well because in two bounds she was away and lost to the shadows.
Chih cried out when Si-yu vaulted off the side of the mammoth, throwing herself down to dash her brains out on the road, but then they realized that they were looking at the sole of Si-yu’s boot, the rest of her dangling down over the side of the saddle. Si-yu’s foot was caught in one of the leather loops hanging from the saddle, flexed to hook her into place.
The moment stretched out, and Chih’s training forced them to notice that the soles of Si-yu’s boots were stitched with faded sinew that had once been dyed green. Then they leaned over to see that Si-yu had grabbed up the man on the ground, hanging on as best she could while shouting a command to Piluk. The mammoth’s head spun around, her trunk came lashing back, and Chih flinched as the muscular trunk connected with Si-yu. For a moment, it looked as if the blow had sent Si-yu and her burden flying, but then Chih saw that it had helped Si-yu regain her seat and drag the terribly still man with her.
“Grab him!” Si-yu yelped. “Cleric, help me!”
That broke Chih out of their daze. They helped drag the man, surprisingly light, more like a bundle of twigs in a sheepskin coat than a man, up across the mammoth’s back. Somehow, he ended up facedown over Chih’s lap. The saddle horn would have dug terribly into his belly if he had been conscious, but he wasn’t, and then Si-yu was sending Piluk racing for the barn, the mammoth bellowing the whole time she went.
Piluk shivered and shook underneath them, and Chih winced when she tossed her head from side to side, trying to face the growls that filled the twilight. Their fingers ached from hanging on to the man Si-yu had rescued, but Chih clung as best they could. They could not fall.
The barn was a hefty thing, built of notched logs and open on one side. It was big enough that Piluk could fit into it with room to spare, and tall enough that they and Si-yu could fit under the roof with only a slight duck. By the time they reached it, Piluk was moving at a dead run, ears flared out to either side and squalling furiously.
For just a moment, Chih caught a glimpse of gleaming round eyes in the dark, and then they saw the tiger dash out of the barn, as low to the ground as a python, neatly avoiding Piluk’s broad feet.
“They won’t rush Piluk or any mammoth head-on,” said Si-yu. “They wouldn’t dare. We’d be as safe as keppi eggs if we had another two scouts with us. Even Uncle and his Nayhi, that’d be enough, they would never.”
A quick command got Piluk turned around with remarkable speed and dexterity, whirling about so quickly that her iron bells jingled and her long fur swung. Chih, a little taller than Si-yu, didn’t duck a rafter fast enough. There was a sickening rash of pain at their temple, and then it was only cold and wetness and a light-headed determination to hang on as tight as they could.
A moment later, everything was still, and the world in front of the barn was empty, silent. A nuthatch’s soft whooping call gave the twilight a strangely normal feeling, and Chih swallowed back their panic with a gulp.
Of course it’s normal. Tigers have dinner every night they can, don’t they?
Si-yu waited for a moment, and when no tigers appeared to menace them, she nodded. She leaned forward, far enough that Chih thought she might fall despite everything, and she grasped Piluk’s ear, whispering something into it.
Chih’s fingers tightened reflexively into Bao-so’s coat as the world seemed to rock underneath them, but it was only Piluk settling down, first on her hindquarters and then with her forelegs stretched in front of her, knees bent so that her round feet were flat on the ground.
Si-yu slid down to the ground, and Chih, as carefully as they could, lowered the unconscious man across their lap after her. Chih was shaking so much that it took them several deep breaths to finally unwind their leg from the saddle horn and to make their way to the ground. They let out a sigh of relief when they were free of the saddle, but then there was a flash of orange out of the corner of their eye, there and gone again in the foliage beyond the barn. In another half hour, probably far less, it would be full dark, and they wouldn’t even see that.
“They’re still there,” Chih hissed, shrinking back against Piluk’s hairy side even as Piluk shifted restlessly.
“It’s fine for now. Well, not fine, but they won’t rush us while Piluk is facing the entrance.”
Si-yu was calm enough that Chih decided to be calm as well, and they came to kneel opposite Si-yu on the other side of the older man’s body.