Curse Of Blood: Gods & Monsters

Chapter XXXVIII - Roth

Scree tumbled from the lip of the ridge as the men picked their way carefully around the scars across the mountain's brooding face. It was uncanny the expression these ranges wore — so like his brother's dour features, Roth thought.

He paused behind Søren who had halted to stare down the precipice into the jagged valley of stalagmitic ice, his cousin's mouth compressed as he nudged another rock over the ledge and watched it as it fell.

Roth ruffled Søren's flaxen hair as though they were not the same age, and his cousin, likely resenting the gesture as condescending, ducked his head from under the hand that was nearly the size of his head and continued on. Renic had taken the lead and Roth the rear as the five of them traversed the peaks and glaciers.

Brimstone saturated each breath as the men inhaled of the fridge air and, as such, were ever mindful of the sleeping giants they were passing beneath. They were like ancient gods, dormant and watchful; it would be by their grace alone that the men were vouchsafed passage through this hostile terrain and into the next travail.

No sooner had the notion struck Roth than he heard the malefic groan of rock and earth as the mountains yawned and shuddered.

"Get back!" Renic shouted suddenly, already shoving his grandfather back whence they had come.

"This way!" Roth began to sprint back towards the gabbroic mantle-shelf they'd passed moments ago, Søren struggling to keep up.

They ran as the ground shook ominously under them, Roth peering back only once to make sure that the others had not been bludgeoned by the ferrous hail and sheets of snow that had begun to plunge down the mountainside.

As he reached the cover of the boulder shelf that jutted out overhead, he spun around and urged each man faster. Grabbing Søren's hand as his cousin cleared the shelter, he shoved him flush against the wall of rock and then instantly thereafter held his hand out for Ragnar, wincing as another sharp stone bit at his wrist.

"Where is Renic?" he said, his voice raised above the fatal din.

His grandfather had just collapsed against him, the elder's face bloody from the head wound he'd sustained, but otherwise he seemed hale. "He was right behind me!" Ívarr replied, glancing around in confusion.

Four pairs of eyes glared keenly through the maelstrom of rock and ice, but of Renic there was no sign.

"Perhaps he took shelter..." The rest of Søren's words were swallowed up by the roar of the rockslide.

Roth's growl of anguish pierced the salvo as he lunged forward with maddened purpose, but the avalanche had become a deluge of iron and he was prevented from leaving their refuge, lest his head be rived athwart the cliff face. "Renic!" he bellowed. There was, however, no reply.

When the earth was calm once more, he bolted out from under the boulder and, skidding across the altered landscape, he shoved at rocks, shouting his brother's name with an intensity that terrified even himself. His family had also begun to poke beneath the rubble and their anxious voices immediately joined Roth's.

"Roth," said Ragnar, resting a heavy palm across his nephew's back, "he cannot have..."

"No!" Roth moved away from his uncle's unwanted comfort. "He is alive." He called out to his brother some moments more as the sun slunk piecemeal from its vertex, its awful downward progression imbuing a sense of panic in Roth that he despised, but could not help. Turning on his uncle, he said, "Do you not think I would know if my brother was dead?! He is my other half, uncle!" Then quietly he subjoined, "I know he lives."