Ander - Part 6: Subchapter 123
123
Nilia knew, even before they crashed through the snow-speckled web of bushes at the edge of the basecamp, that something was wrong. She could smell it on the wind, the stench of smoke and blood. The sounds of many voices, broken by the storm into nonsensical fragments, rode the same currents. Weeping and shouting. Animalistic snarls and howls of pain. Screams half-begun, then cut off to nothing. The chaotic notes of breaking glass wound their way through the blizzard and suddenly a flash of flame shot up from between black bands of trees, blurred by layers of falling snow.
"Ander!"
He was just ahead, sprinting full out, crunching dead twigs underfoot and kicking up clumps of snow with every stride. The breath plumed from his lips in rapid, laboured bursts.
She reached out to him, wanting to stop him, wanting to tell him that they were being stupid, that they should wait for Sorrin and the others to catch up, but something stopped her. Maybe it was the scent of blood. Maybe it was the images that kept flashing through the darkness behind her eyelids every time she blinked, images of Hezzi and Mateo and Renna and everyone else, even those annoying twins she couldn't stand. She kept seeing them in the shadows flitting by on either side, in the patterns of the falling snow, in the grooves of the winter-blackened trees. Their faces, leaking the blood she could smell in the air. Their hands, reaching out to her, just like she was reaching out to Ander right now, wanting to stop him, needing to stop him before they reached whatever horror was at the end of this path.
It was already too late. They burst into the open circle of dead stumps surrounding the camp, gasping for breath. Nilia still had her hand outstretched, but even though Ander had stopped dead in his tracks, she couldn't close that final inch. Her hand just hovered there, frozen in place, and then slowly sank down like a wilting plant.
"What in the Cora's name?" She stepped up beside him, hating the sound of her feet crunching through the snow. It awoke a memory that should have been pleasant, but somehow wasn't. A memory laced with just as much guilt as hope, the memory of emerging from this very forest and first setting foot inside the valley.
An immaculate field of snow, white and pure, not even any winter weeds breaking the surface, just winding hills, catching the sunlight and throwing it back into our eyes in dazzling flashes... no footprints at all...
Ander stared. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out, only a thin wisp of breath. There were two thin, white streaks slanting back across his temples - tears, frozen into his fur.
We never should have come here...
The basecamp was in a state of utter chaos. There were packs of Wolves running through the rows, some chasing, some being chased. There were Wolves screaming at each other, cursing each other, threatening to tear each other apart. There were Wolves who had progressed beyond the exchange of mere words and were rolling around in the dirt, swiping their claws at each other, biting down on whatever limbs strayed too close to their frothing jaws, shaking their heads back and forth, tearing open stitches, ripping bandages, staining the ground with flecks of blood. One of them was standing by a fire, all by himself, hugging an armful of oil lamps to his chest. He chucked them into the flames, one by one, and watched as the fire roared into the sky, laughing and crying at the same time, completely detached from everything around him.
Nilia's eye drifted down and caught a single wooden bowl lying overturned in the dirt, surrounded by a puddle of half-congealed chicken soup. There was a single footprint in that sludge, and that footprint, more so than anything else, drove it home in an instant.
Footprints. Footprints in the snow. Their footprints. Our footprints. My footprints...
She reached up...
So white, so pure, so completely and utterly terrifying. I didn't want to set foot on all that white. I didn't want to come near it. I didn't want to touch it, but I had to. I had to...
... and touched the familiar curve of her mother's bear claw necklace.
I looked back and our footprints were there, like rows of teeth marks, rows of stab wounds, rows of flesh gouged out... violated, desecrated...
She squeezed it between her fingers, unable to look away. Pools of blood spreading through the snow, screams of pain and anger. She tried to lock it up, bury it deep inside, where she wouldn't have to feel it, but it was no use. She couldn't do that anymore. He had taken that luxury away from her. She was completely and totally exposed.
Footprints in the pass, enduring somehow, despite the storm raging through that throat of stone, turning death into life. Footprints fanning out into the dark, connecting with each other like the strands of a spider web, coming together to make something beautiful, something that could shine in the morning dew, a miracle so wonderful it was a folly to even try and understand it, something to just be a part of, something that could make a difference, something that could make it all right, something that could prove that I did_deserve to be here, that I had a_ right_to be here, that it was okay for me to be happy..._
That it was okay to leave footprints in the snow...
The bear claw was beginning to dig into the palm of her hand. Her fist was shaking.
A lone Wolf prowled along the edge of the basecamp, his nose low to the ground. He stomped through a slush of half-melted snow and sand, adding his own contribution to the layers of footprints that had come to trample that piece of earth before him.
Nilia didn't know it, but her upper lip was beginning to curl back into a snarl.
The Wolf looked up and saw them standing among the stumps. "Hey! Hey, you!" he called, pointing at them with something sharp. As he came closer, Nilia saw it was a wooden tent peg. "Well, if it isn't Nilia and Ander! Heroes of the Foxes! The great backrollers!" He raised the peg above his head like a dagger. "Let's see how tough you are without your bleeding wall, you -"
Nilia smashed her forehead against his nose and he went down like a sack of stones, blood spurting from his nostrils in twin jets.
"UNGRATEFUL SON OF A BITCH!!" she yelled and gave him a good kick in the ribs. Her necklace swung before her eyes on its string as she reared back and kicked him again for good measure, but there was no pleasure in that kick, no joy, not even the satisfaction of venting some anger. He was already out cold, so why was she still kicking him?
"We could have left you to die, but we made so many footprints to save you, to give you a second chance, and these are the footprints you choose to leave behind!?"
Nilia kicked him one last time, but he simply wobbled a bit and lay still, blood still pouring from his shattered nose in filthy dribbles.
"Ander, what do we -" She didn't bother to finish the question because Ander clearly wasn't in any condition to answer. She could tell just by that single eye, staring out at the destruction unfolding before them. The Wolves tearing at each other. The fires scattered into dozens of flaming logs, casting golden scythes upon coagulating puddles of blood. Everything he had worked so hard for, fought for, bled for, every chance he had taken, every risk he had made, every hope, every dream...
It was all going up in flames.
He began to move, walking like a spirit in the night, almost gliding, looking at everything around him, his mouth slightly agape, his lip trembling, his arms hanging limply by his sides. Fresh tears darkened the shred of cloth Kiana had tied over his injured eye. On the other side, they were free to roll across his cheek and fall to the frozen ground.
"Damn it, Ander..." Nilia angrily rubbed the frozen tears from the corners of her eyes. If Ander was going to pieces, it was her responsibility to stay in control. She ran after him and placed a hand on his shoulder. It was like touching a moving corpse. "Hold on. We should wait for Sorrin and the others. I don't want to go into this mess without any backup."
He did not look at her or acknowledge her in any way.
"Ander?"
He just kept walking, his eye transfixed on some arbitrary point in the distance.
"Damn it, Ander! Pull yourself together! They can't be more than a few minutes behind us, so just wait!"
He kept walking. Nilia really didn't want to drag him back by force, but the way things were going she might have no other choice. It was either that or let him wander into a battlefield and get himself stabbed in the back.
"Ander, if you'd just -"
"What is that?" he cut her off, pointing to something ahead. "Nilia, what is that?"
She looked to where he was pointing, but couldn't see anything of interest. Just a mess of footprints in the muck. A row of tents. A streak of blood. That lonely bowl of soup. Ugly grey clumps of snow and ash.
He turned sideways and squeezed his way between two of the tents and into the basecamp proper. The urge to just grab him and drag him back to the relative safety of the woods was almost unbearable, but then he knelt down in the path, staring at something on the ground with such horror that Nilia couldn't help but follow after him.
"What is it, Ander? It isn't safe here!"
As if he couldn't hear her, Ander reached out to that overturned bowl on the ground, but stopped himself at the last second, as if it were some kind of holy object and his touch would only profane it.
He's losing it. He's losing it so hard right now...
She reached for the scruff of his neck, intending to yank him back to his feet like a stubborn pup, but then she realized it wasn't the bowl or the chicken broth splattered over the dirt he was staring at.
It was the single footprint cast inside the stiffening chunks.
He traced it with his finger, not quite touching it. "This is Kiana's."
"That could be any Fox's."
He bent down low and gave it a sniff. "This is Kiana's."
"All I smell is chicken and salt."
Ander stood up and looked around, panic dancing inside that single eye. He raised his head and yelled: "KIANA! KI -"
Nilia slapped both hands across his mouth. "Are you crazy!?" she hissed into his ear. "They'll hear us, you idiot!"
Ander ripped her hands away and opened his mouth again, ready to signal to every low-life Wolf this side of the mountain that the Lords of the Backrollers had returned.
"Listen to me, Ander!" She grabbed his face and pulled him down so they were eye to eye. "I do not need hysterical panicky I-am-losing-my-mind-and-therefore-of-no-good-to-anyone Ander! And neither does Kiana! Who we need right now is calm logical I-can-think-of-any-solution-to-any-problem-because-I-am-oh-so-smart Ander! That's the Wolf we need right now, and that's the Wolf you'd better be, or so help me I will slap you again! Now calm down, take a breath, and be smart Ander, okay!? Be smart Ander, damn you!"
He stared at her as if she had gone insane. She could feel him shaking like a leaf beneath her palms. Even his eye was shaking in its socket.
Come on, Ander. Snap out of it.
Ander swallowed. He closed his eye, took a breath, and opened it again. The shaking lessened. He seemed a bit flustered, but at least that frantic look was gone.
"Ander?"
"Yes?"
"Which Ander am I talking to? Panicky Ander or Smart Ander?"
"Smart-but-also-worried-out-of-his-mind Ander."
"Good enough. Now instead of running around like a pair of lunatics, how about we use our heads and figure out what's going on?"
Ander nodded. He closed his eye and a deep frown spread across his forehead. The shaking slowed even further, until it was almost gone.
Nilia looked over her shoulder to make sure nobody was sneaking up on them, and when she turned back, Ander's eye was open again.
"This is wrong, Nilia. Something's off."
"Wow, you think?"
"Where have all the Foxes, gone? They're not here."
Nilia blinked in surprise. She looked around, seeing this chaotic place with new eyes for the first time. She had been so focussed on quickly spotting and identifying potential threats that she never even noticed there weren't any Foxes around, living or dead. Not a single one. All the fighting they've seen thus far...
"By the Cora, it's Wolf against Wolf, isn't it?"
"The medical tent, that's the logical place for everyone to gather," Ander said. "It is the place most worth defending, but it is also the place most worth attacking. Rufio is definitely there, which means that Bethany and Layla will probably be there. And Kiana..."
"Then we'll check there first. Come on." Nilia started down the path, but Ander made no move to follow. He was still looking at that wooden bowl in the dirt.
"Ander?"
"It's facing the wrong way," he said, his eye glued to the ground.
"What? The footprint? Assuming it even belongs to Kiana - which it mightn't - she's probably left hundreds of footprints all over the place tonight, going in every direction. Everybody has."
"This one is still fresh," he said, squatting down on his haunches. "The soup hasn't completely dried yet."
Nilia looked around, not liking this one bit. There were too many shadows in this place, too many gaps between the tents, too many shouts and screams and cries for help coming from every direction. If Kiana really was stuck out here...
Ander bent down and picked something up off the ground. It was a tattered shred of green cloth, exactly like the one tied around his head. His breath hitched in his throat as he brushed away the snow and laid it across his splayed fingers, staring at it as if he had just uncovered Kiana's severed head.
A sharp pang of unease shot through Nilia's stomach. There was no real reason to feel that way - the cloth didn't have blood on it or anything like that - but she couldn't shake the feeling. There was something about the way those torn edges rippled in the wind that just gnawed at her insides, and now it was her turn to take a breath and re-evaluate the situation. She was worried about Mat and Hezzi, and she was worried about Kiana, too. But most of all...
She was worried about Ander.
She's known this for a long time, but now, more so than ever before, his greatest strength was also his greatest weakness, and that weakness was his heart. If his heart belonged to Kiana, and if Kiana was in danger...
Nilia put a hand on his shoulder, but he didn't even notice. He was too busy trying to keep himself together. "Ander."
He tore his eye away from the scrap of cloth and looked up at her with an eye teetering on the brink of madness. "Nilia?"
"Here's what we're going to do." She crouched down beside him. "We are going to follow Kiana's trail. We are going to find her. Then, if it's safe, we'll all go back to the medical tent together and help out however we can. You can check up on Hezzi. You know him, maybe he's already awake by now." We also need to warn everyone that Banno is still alive out there, she thought, but didn't say. "Does that sound good?"
Ander swallowed and gave her a little nod.
"All right, let's go."
They set off together, with Ander bent over double and his nose close to the ground, following a trail that was practically invisible to anyone else. Nilia followed close behind, watching their backs, her fingers anxiously hovering over the dagger tucked away in her belt.
She looked back down the path towards the centre of the basecamp, at the raging fires casting their long shards of shadow across the trampled mounds of snow, at Wolves darting back and forth across the light, screaming and howling, nothing more than pitch black silhouettes wreathed in golden outlines, and wondered at the lack of Foxes in this once hopeful place. More specifically, at the lack of Fox bodies. There were no bloody red and orange corpses lining the pathways, no dead and staring eyes, no throats ripped open with fang and claw. But conversely, there weren't any Wolf bodies lying around either. Some unconscious ones, sure, (she was even responsible for one of them) but there were no dead Wolves sprawled facedown in the dirt with a dozen crossbow bolts sticking out of their backs, no frigid carcasses entombed in drifts of snow. There was pure chaos unfolding all around them, and yet no casualties? What on earth was going on in this place? What happened while they were away?
Were Mateo and Hezzi and all the others still okay?
Nilia lightly dragged her fingers across the haft of her blade, ready to pull it from its sheath at the first sign of danger.
She had a very bad feeling about this.
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