A Cold Winter’s Night
Written by J-Haskell.
Takes place in late 505 A.E.D. In the dark of Dutoria’s polar night, a young soldier patrols north of Aurora. Content warning for some violence, but no death.
. . .
Beneath a black sky, a lone soldier urged his borg mount onward.
The clouds of snow that swirled around them were dyed blue by the dim moonlight, interrupted only by the sputtering orange glow of the lantern that hung from Sören’s saddle. He clutched at the edges of his heavy coat with a mittened hand, as if that would succeed where layers of fur and wool had failed to keep bitter fangs of cold from biting through his skin.
He had no intention of turning back, though. Sören had arrived in Aurora just a few weeks ago, a fresh recruit from the forest province. If he returned to the Remark now, he would be proving the other soldiers right—that he was just a soft boy from the south, and that he did not belong in such a harsh place. He’d been too young to fight in the War, yes, but he could handle a simple patrol.
Sören blinked and shook his head. It was far too easy to get lost in his thoughts, with no one but a borg and the moons for company.
He stared out into the dark, puzzled until he realized that they had stopped.
“Kari?” Through the heavy leather of his saddle, Sören felt the way the borg’s muscles quivered with tension. The dog’s eyes were fixed at some unknown point ahead of them, cropped ears pricked. He followed her gaze, the cold forgotten as unease settled in his chest. The world was blanketed in snow as far as the eye could see, broken solely by the distant shimmer of light on the Moonglow Sea.
There was nothing out there.
“C’mon, girl,” Sören leaned down and patted the borg on the shoulder. Kari started, flicked her ears, and then continued on, a lumbering step at a time. He cast a last glance over his shoulder; the clouds shifted and the glimmer of far-off water faded. He sighed and returned his attention to the path ahead.
The next hour of their patrol passed quietly, the only noises were Kari’s paws crunching through iced-over snowdrifts and the muffled sound of his own breathing.
Sören straightened up in his saddle as a tall crag of black stone loomed ahead of them, and beyond it a small hill. They were nearly at the furthest point of their route; Kari, seemingly recognizing that, hastened into a trot. As they ascended, the gentle wind picked up, blowing clouds of loose, powdery snow into Sören’s face.
He leaped off of his borg’s back at the top and sank up to his ankles in the snow. Ahead of them, crimson fabric grey in the dim light of polar night, a flag jutted out of the ground to mark the end of their path. One hand raised to keep the wind out of his eyes, Sören stopped beside it to gaze out across the Moonglow Sea.
He was never sure what he was meant to be keeping watch for on his patrols. The war had ended over a decade ago, and beyond their northern shores lay the uninhabited Frozen Gates—visible from here as a thin, shining band of ice fanning out from horizon to horizon. The waters between were mostly frozen over, flecked sparsely with black where the pack ice hadn’t yet sealed the sea away. Nobody was coming for them, at least not from here.
Perhaps that was why they’d entrusted him with the task.
Sören stood there for as long as he dared before the thought of returning to Aurora, of his warm bed and a hot drink, drew him to Kari’s side. He climbed into the saddle and whistled softly for her to head home, eager despite the hours-long journey that lay ahead of them.
Kari did not react. The borg stood as stiff as though she were frozen, the fur along her hackles bristling as she glared at something large and white along the path that he hadn’t noticed on the way up.
A bear.
Sören’s breath caught in his throat, then came out as a ragged laugh when it did not move. “It’s just snow, girl.”
It took some urging to get her to continue down the hill. Despite his reassurances to the borg, Sören flashed the mass a wary look as they passed. In the weak light cast by his sputtering lantern, it was clearly no more than a heap of oddly-shaped ice.
He sighed and rubbed at his eyes, increasingly aware of how badly he needed rest.
They had gotten a few paces away from it when the night exploded with sound. An ear-splitting howl picked up behind them, so loud that Sören clamped his hands over his ears. Kari let out a whimper and bolted, lunging forward so suddenly that he was thrown from her saddle and into the snow.
The cold dug its talons into him and he gasped. He scrambled upright and stiffened at what he saw. The heap of snow, he had been certain it was snow, had moved. A jagged beast formed from spires of blue-tinged ice scented the air with massive jaws, then turned its eyes, glowing like distant stars in its pitted face, toward him.
Only when it started to approach with the same predatory gait as a hunting polar bear did Sören find himself able to move. He scrambled away, then fell into one of Kari’s massive footprints.
The creature’s steady gait quickened and Sören was barely able to roll out of the way and to his feet as it barrelled toward him. He ran blindly toward the outcrop of stone that they had passed and did not dare look away, not even when the ground shook as his pursuer closed the distance.
He almost shouted in joy at the sight of a narrow crack that ran through the rock. Sören put on a burst of speed and shoved himself into the narrow slot, not stopping until sharp spires of rock stabbed into his cheeks.
He had barely enough room to turn his head but managed to watch as the monster slammed into the rock. The entire structure shook.
The creature began to claw at the entrance. The jagged pieces of ice that made up its taloned “paw” splintered against black rock as it tried to reach him, but the crag that Sören had squeezed himself into was just deep enough to keep him safe. He shut his eyes and tried to ignore the grating sound of snow against stone, mouthing a prayer to Blóm that the creature would soon grow bored and wander off in search of other prey.
Instead, the snarl of an angry borg cut through all else.
Sören snapped his eyes open just in time to watch Kari lunge at the monster, and then they were both out of sight. He heard two sets of growls; the low rumble of the borg’s, and an odd, glassy howl that Sören knew had to be the creature’s.
He remained still, the jagged stone pressed against either side of him, until he had to squeeze his way out. For a panicked instant he thought he had wedged himself in too tightly to move, but slowly, inch by precious inch, he made his way toward the entry. When he fell out onto the snow he knew precious relief, even if the cold bit painfully into the small gashes on his face, and then he looked up and saw that Kari and the monster were still fighting.
The borg had not yet been wounded, but Sören knew it was a matter of time. Kari panted, threads of drool hanging down from her jaws, but the creature did not seem to have tired at all. Was it even possible for a creature made from nothing but ice and snow to feel exhaustion?
Soren’s heart fluttered erratically in his chest, so hard his hands shook, but he wouldn’t sit by and watch her get killed. Sören cast his gaze about desperately for anything that might help, and that was when he saw it.
There.
Sputtering weakly a few feet away from him was the lantern that had been tied to Kari’s saddle. Soren leaped towards it. The hot glass hurt to touch even through his thick mittens, but he stumbled forward to throw it as hard as he could at the monster.
It shattered against the beast’s face.
Hot oil hissed against ice, and the scream that erupted from the creature was like nothing Soren had heard before, high-pitched and keening.
It took Kari nearly trampling him for him to stop standing there. Sören grabbed onto her tack and dragged himself into the saddle. Even as he thumped her shoulder and urged her to run, shouted the command until his throat began to ache, he heard nothing beyond the ringing of his ears.
He looked back.
Behind them, the creature still pawed at its face, jaws agape in some impression of agony. The cuts on Sören’s face stung bitterly in the cold, but he could not help the slightest stirring of pity in his stomach.