Graceling (Graceling Realm #1)(45)
Author: Kristin Cashore

What she saw first was the slightest flicker, in the corner of her eye. A brown flicker up high in a tree, a flicker that curled and lifted, different somehow from the way a tree branch moved; and the limb of a tree that swung in an odd way – bounced, really, not as a wind would move it, but as if something heavy weighed it down.

Her body moved faster than her mind, recognizing predator and comprehending itself as prey. Instantly her dagger was in her hand. The great cat plunged, screeching, and she hurled the blade into its stomach. As she dropped and rolled away, its claws tore into her shoulder. Then the cat was upon her, great heavy paws slamming her shoulders against the ground and pinning her to her back. It came snarling at her, claws swiping and teeth bared, so fast that it was all she could do to keep her chest and neck from being ripped apart. She wrestled with its hopelessly strong forearms and swung her head away as its teeth came crashing together right where her face had just been. It slashed her breast savagely. When its teeth lunged for her throat Katsa grabbed its neck and screamed, pushed its snapping jaws away from her face. The animal reared above her and raked her arms with its claws. She saw a flash of something in its stomach, and remembered the dagger. Its teeth descended again and Katsa swung out, smashing its nose with her fist. It recoiled for the merest second, stunned, and in that second she reached desperately for the dagger.

The cat lunged again, and Katsa thrust the dagger into its throat.

The cat made one horrible hissing, bubbling noise. Then it col apsed onto Katsa’s chest, and its claws slid away from her skin. The mountain was quiet, and the lion was dead.

Katsa heaved the cat away. She propped herself onto her right elbow and wiped the animal’s hot blood out of her eyes. She tested her left shoulder and winced at the pain. She choked back an enormous surge of irritation that she should now have an injury that might slow them down; and she tore open her coat and sighed, disgusted, at the gashes in her breast that stung almost as badly as those in her shoulder. And other rips and tears, she realized now, as each movement uncovered a new sting. small er cuts, on her neck and across her stomach and arms; deeper cuts in her thighs, where the cat had pinned her with its hind feet.

Wel , there was no reason to lie around feeling sorry for herself. The snow was fal ing harder now. This fight had brought her injury and inconvenience, but it had also brought food that would last them a good long time, and fur for a coat that Bitterblue very much needed.

Katsa heaved herself to her feet. She considered the great lion that lay dead and bloody before her. Its tail – that’s what she’d seen lifting and curling in that tree. The first clue that had saved her life. From head to tail the cat was longer than her height, and she guessed it weighed a good deal more than she did. Its neck was thick and powerful, its shoulders and back heavily muscled. Its teeth were as long as her fingers, and its claws longer. It occurred to her that she had not done so badly in this fight, despite what Bitterblue would think when she saw her. This was not an animal she would have chosen to fight in hand-to-hand combat. This animal could have killed her.

She realized then how long she had left Bitterblue alone, and a gust of wind blew thickening snow into her face. She pulled the dagger from the cat’s throat, wiped it on the ground, and slipped it into her belt. She rolled the cat onto its back and grasped one of its forelegs in each hand. She gritted her teeth against the ache in her shoulder, and dragged the cat down to their cave.

———

Bitterblue ran up from the camp when she saw Katsa corning. Her eyes widened. She made an unintel igible noise that sounded like choking.

“I’m all right, child,” Katsa said. “It only scratched me.”

“You’re covered in blood.”

“Mostly the cat’s blood.”

The girl shook her head and pulled at the rips in Katsa’s coat. “Great seas,” she said, when she saw the gashes in Katsa’s breast. “Great seas,” she whispered again, at the sight of Katsa’s shoulder, arms, and stomach. “We’l have to sew some of these cuts closed. Let’s clean you up.

I’ll get the medicines.”

———

That night their camp was crowded, but the fire warmed their small space, and cooked their cat steaks, and dried the tawny pelt that would soon become Bitterblue’s coat. Bitterblue supervised the cooking of the meat; they would carry the extra frozen as they climbed.

The snow fel harder now. The wind gusted snowflakes into their fire, where they hissed and died. If this storm lasted, they’d be comfortable enough here. Food, water, a roof, and warmth; they had all they needed. Katsa shifted so that the fire’s heat would touch her and dry the tattered clothing she’d put on again after washing because she had nothing else to wear.

She was working on the great bow she’d been making for the past few days. She bent the stave, and tested its strength. She cut a length of cord for the string. She bound the string tightly to one end of the stave and pulled on it, hard, to stretch it to the other end. She groaned at the ache in her shoulder, and the soreness of her leg where the bow pressed into one of her cuts. “If this is what it’s like to be injured, I’ll never understand why Po loves so much to fight me. Not if this is how he feels afterwards.”

“I don’t understand much of what either of you do,” the girl said.

Katsa stood and pulled experimental y at the string. She reached for one of the arrows she’d whittled. She notched the arrow and fired a test shot through the fal ing snow into a tree outside their cave. The arrow hit the tree with a thud and embedded itself deeply. “Not bad,” Katsa said. “It wil serve.” She marched out into the snow and yanked the arrow from the tree. She came back, sat down, and set herself to whittling more arrows.

“I must say I’d trade a cat steak for a single carrot. Or a potato. Can you imagine what a luxury it’s going to be to eat a meal in an inn, once we’re in Sunder, Princess?”

Bitterblue only watched her, and chewed on the cat meat. She didn’t respond. The wind moaned, and the carpet of snow that formed outside their cave grew thicker. Katsa fired another test arrow into the tree and tramped out into the storm to retrieve it. When she stamped back again and knocked her boots against the walls to shake off the snow, she noticed that Bitterblue’s eyes stillwatched her.

“What is it, child?”

Bitterblue shook her head. She chewed a piece of meat and swal owed. She pulled a steak out of the fire and passed it to Katsa. “You’re not acting particularly injured.”

Katsa shrugged. She bit into the cat meat and wrinkled her nose.

“I’ve been fantasizing about bread, myself,” Bitterblue said.

Katsa laughed. They sat together companionably, the child and the lion kill er, listening to the wind that drove the snow outside their mountain cave.

CHAPTER THIRTY

The girl was exhausted. Warmer now in the hide of the cat, but exhausted. It was the never-ending upward trudge, and the stones that slid under her feet, pul ing her back when she tried to go forward. It was the steep slope of rock that she couldn’t climb unless Katsa pushed her from behind; and it was the hopeless knowledge that at the top of this slope was another just as steep, or another river of stones that would slide down while she tried to climb up. It was the snow that soaked her boots and the wind that worked its way under the edges of her clothing. And it was the wolves and cats that always appeared so suddenly, spitting and roaring, tearing toward them across rock. Katsa was quick with her bow.

The creatures were always dead before they were within range, sometimes before Bitterblue was even aware of their presence. But Katsa saw how long it took Bitterblue’s breath to calm and grow even again after each yowling attack, and she knew that the girl’s tiredness stemmed not only from physical exertion, but from fear.

Katsa almost couldn’t bear to slow their pace even more. But she did it, because she had to. “It’s no use if our rescue kill s him,” Oll had said the night they’d rescued Grandfather Tealiff. If Bitterblue col apsed in these mountains, the responsibility would be Katsa’s.

It snowed hard now, almost constantly, and so now when it snowed, they kept moving. Katsa wrapped Bitterblue’s hands in furs, and her face, so that only her eyes were exposed. She knew from the map that there were no trees in Grel a’s Pass. Before they reached that high, windy pathway between the peaks, the trees would end. And so she began to construct snowshoes, so that she wouldn’t find herself needing them in a place with no wood to make them. She planned to make only one pair. She didn’t know what terrain they would find in the pass. But she had an idea of the wind and the cold. It wouldn’t be the place to move slowly, unless they wanted to freeze to death. She guessed she would be carrying the child.

At night Bitterblue sank immediately into an exhausted sleep, whimpering sometimes, as if she were having bad dreams. Katsa watched over her, and kept the fire alive. She pieced together slats of wood, and tried not to think of Po.

Tried and usual y failed.

Her wounds were healing well . The small est ones barely showed anymore, and even the largest had stopped losing blood after a few hours.

They were no more than an irritation, though the bags she carried pulled on the cuts and the half-constructed snowshoes banged against them. Her shoulder and her breast protested a bit every time her hand flew to the quiver on her back, the quiver she’d fashioned with a bit of saddle leather.

She would have scars on her shoulder and her breast, possibly on her thighs. But they would be the only marks the cat left on her body.

She would make some sort of halter next, when she was done with the snowshoes. In anticipation of carrying the child. Some arrangement of straps and ties, made from the horse’s gear, so that if she must carry Bitterblue, her arms would be free to use the bow. And perhaps a coat for herself, now that Bitterblue was warmer. A coat, from the next wolf or mountain lion they encountered.

And every night, with the fire stoked and her work done, and thoughts of Po so close she couldn’t escape them, she curled up against Bitterblue and gave herself a few hours’ sleep.

———

When Katsa found that she was shivering herself to sleep at night, wrapping her own head and neck with furs, and stamping the numbness out of her feet, she thought they must be nearing Grel a’s Pass. It couldn’t be much farther.

Because Grel a’s Pass would be even colder than this; and Katsa didn’t believe the world could get much colder.

She became frightened for the child’s fingers and toes, and the skin of her face. She stopped often to massage Bitterblue’s fingers and her feet. The child wasn’t talking, and climbed numbly, wearily; but her mind was present. She nodded and shook her head in response to Katsa’s questions. She wrapped her arms around Katsa whenever Katsa lifted her or carried her. She cried, with relief, when their nightly fire warmed her.