Anyu awoke at the sound of a booming crash that seem to vibrate through the very ground. In a split second she was outside of the tent and squinting in the direction that the sound had come from: the forest.
Her eyes rested on Tavra's glacier just in time to see it collapse in on itself. Fear slowly replaced Anyu's drowsiness as she watched. First a large sheet of ice detached from the top of the structure, falling to the earth with a resounding crash that echoed in Anyu's ears even from the considerable distance between them. The rest was hard to make out through the thicket of the trees, but a huge puff of ice and snow exploded into the air as the rest of the giant chunks of ice came crashing down.
The noise was incredible. Anyu could only compare it to the sound of two gods clashing with each other in battle. She could only remember hearing anything like it once before in her life: the avalanche that had killed her mother. It wasn't a memory she liked to think about often.
At this point, the noise was far too loud for anyone to possibly sleep through. There was a muffled commotion in the tent as Kano burst outside, his eyes panicked and hair disheveled, to witness the last seconds of the destruction.
"We need to move," Kano announced needlessly; Anyu was already packing up all of their last minute supplies, tearing down the tent as fast as possible, and making sure a very disgruntled Shesh was awake.
"What happened?" Anyu asked in a frenzy. Kano helped her to tighten Shesh's saddle and secure all of their equipment. He kept shooting nervous glances towards the forest, making him fumble the straps.
"Siku's caught up to us," He muttered.
"What?" Anyu swung onto Shesh's back and grabbed ahold of the reins. "You mean she's here? Right on our trail?" She spared a glance back towards the forest, expecting a giant woman with crazy eyes to come running out at any second.
"No," Kano grunted as he climbed onto Shesh as well. As soon as he was seated, Shesh tore ahead with a burst of speed, almost knocking Kano off the saddle until he grabbed onto Anyu. "She wouldn't deign to come deal with us herself." He turned to look at the spot where a glacier had once stood not two minutes ago, where now there was nothing but a fine dusting of snow slowly dissipating into the air. "But if she sent who I think she did, then I don't much like our odds."
Anyu gripped tightly to Shesh's reins as he sped up. The wind rushed past her ears and stung her eyes, and she leaned forward in her seat to minimize the friction. Shesh had always been the fastest colt in his herd. It was something that Anyu had always been proud of, had bragged of to the other village children since they were little, and never did she felt more grateful for it than when they were outrunning death. She would have returned to the river of souls many times over if it hadn't been for her trusty reindeer's fast feet.
"Damn," Kano swore under his breath. "Can't he go any faster?"
Anyu grit her teeth in annoyance. Didn't he understand that Shesh was carrying two people and all of their equipment? She turned her head to the side to tell Kano just that when she saw what had prompted his comment. Far behind, racing out from the edge of the forest, someone was following them. And they were gaining.
She spurred Shesh to go faster despite knowing that he was already close to his limit. Anyu offered up a silent prayer that he could keep it up until they figured out a way to lose their chaser.
Anyu kept glancing over her shoulder to peek at their pursuer. They were too far away to make out anything except for the fact that they were riding a sleigh pulled by six dogs. It was to their advantage, allowing them to glide smoothly over the icy terrain and pick up speed. Anyu judged that they had maybe thirty minutes until Shesh started to slow down, and after that it would only be a matter of time until the sleigh caught up.
Taking a deep, calming breath, she forced herself to think. They were back in the tundra region that split the forest in two, what Kano had called the Amlei. That meant they were a three days' journey away from any woods, with only wide-open space as far as the eye could see. How on earth could they lose someone in this kind of environment? Anyu felt a renewed frustration at her unfamiliarity with her surroundings.
"Any bright ideas?" She asked. Kano at least knew the geography of the place; perhaps there was a convenient cave nearby where they could hide.
Kano had to shout over the wind to be heard. "One," He said. "But you'll have to follow exactly what I tell you."
"Fine, fine," Anyu replied hurriedly. "Spit it out already."
He pointed to the right, slightly north of their current trajectory. "Lead Shesh that way," He said. "Northeast for about five miles... Can he make it?"
Shesh's breathing was labored, but steady. It would be a test of his endurance, but Anyu had confidence in him. "He can make it," She assured Kano.
It didn't take much longer for them to travel the distance, but it felt like hours to Anyu. Every second she feared that Shesh would collapse on the spot, too weak to go on. But somehow, they pulled through. The sleigh behind them was growing ever closer. A cloaked figure was now clearly distinguishable riding the sled, although it was still too far to possibly identify them.
"Alright," Kano said. "There should be an inuksuk about a mile up ahead. After that, we should start to see a large patch of lichen growing. Have Shesh go around the lichen very carefully; do not let him step on it, no matter what."
"Watch out for the inuksuk, mind the lichen. Got it."
Kano was right. A small but clearly marked inuksuk soon rose up out of the permafrost in front of them. Inuksuks, the little piles of stones that served as markers out in the featureless tundra, were stacked in such a way that they would appear like a natural formation to anyone who didn't know what they were looking at. But to a trained eye, the formation was obvious. Two separate small stacks of stones, connected by a longer stack, and topped off with another small pile: the shape of a human body. Inuksuks weren't a common sight around Anyu's tribe; most hunters, Anyu included, already knew the surrounding wilderness like the back of their hand, so any guides or signposts were unnecessary. The inuksuks only began to appear once you started to venture outside of the tribal hunting grounds and into the unknown. They were meant to warn of dangerous, uncharted territories. A signal to be careful or turn back.
They shot past the stack of stones without any reservations.
The lichen appeared immediately. There were several large patches of it all around, always forming large, uneven circles in the earth. Heeding Kano's advice, Anyu tightened her hold on Shesh's reins and made sure that he never strayed too close to the small, shrub-like plants. It cost them speed to navigate their way around the circles, but Kano assured her that it wouldn't matter if his plan worked. Shesh, at least, seemed grateful for the slight rest.
"Okay, this is far enough," Kano said after they had been maneuvering through the lichen field for about ten minutes. "You can tell Shesh to stop running."
Anyu looked back towards the sleigh. It was very close now. If they stopped, it would only be a matter of minutes before it was upon them.
"Are you sure?" Anyu asked, glancing back at Kano uncertainly.
He nodded emphatically. "Trust me." He patted Shesh's flank. "He's done his job. He deserves a good rest."
She certainly couldn't argue with that. Anyu pulled back sharply on the reins, signaling to Shesh that he could stop. She and Kano barely managed to slide off of his back before he collapsed to the ground, almost immediately falling asleep. Anyu knelt by his head and stroked his nose, like she used to when Shesh was young.
"That was amazing, Shesh," She told him. She could tell that he heard her by the way his ears pricked up and his lips seemed to curl into a drowsy smile.
"Look."
Anyu lifted her head towards their pursuer. It should have been possible to distinguish some of the rider's features by now, but the figure was hooded and wore ivory snow goggles over the top half of their face. The sleigh had just zoomed past the inuksuk and was approaching the lichen fast, without any sign of avoiding it. As soon as the edge of the sleigh crossed the lichen, the earth in the circle flew up into the air as if there had been an explosion, obscuring their view of it for a moment. When the earth settled down, there was no sleigh anymore.
Anyu stared at Kano, silently demanding an explanation.
"Pockets of gas in the earth," He explained. "Almost like a reverse sink hole. When they're disturbed, they explode outward and then drag down anything nearby."
Anyu raised a brow. "Not a bad plan," She admitted.
Kano flashed a grin. "I try."
Waking up Shesh, they slowly made their way to the spot where the sleigh had gone down. As they got closer, they could make out the six dogs that had been pulling the sled sniffing around the lichen tentatively, unharmed. They'd apparently snapped the harness connecting them to the sleigh before it had gone under. Strong dogs, Anyu noted in her head. She narrowed her eyes at the animals as they got closer. They were also unusually large for dogs, with much larger snouts. Even stranger, there appeared to be seven of them instead of six, even though she clearly remembered only six dogs pulling the sleigh. Anyu froze as the realization hit her. It's because they weren't dogs at all; they were wolves.
"Great," a gravelly voice muttered. "Was it really necessary to ruin my sled?"
The largest of the wolves stepped forward, the one with pitch-black fur, and in a split second it had shifted into the irritated form of Tavra.
"Yes, entirely necessary," Kano replied, sounding even angrier. "We thought you were one of Siku's servants on your way to kill us!"
"Oh, I'm sorry," Tavra said hotly. "It was only my home that was just attacked by her little envoy searching for you."
Kano blanched. He had the decency to look somewhat guilty, and he stared at the ground rather than meet Tavra's eyes. "I know," He said. "I mean, I assumed when we saw..."
"Saw my home crumbling to the ground?" Tavra asked. Anyu noticed that his bright eyes were red around the edges. "Thanks for leaving me for dead, by the way. I should have told her exactly what you're planning, you little-"
"Did you?" Anyu interrupted. "Tell them anything, I mean."
He turned to stare at her, as if he'd just noticed that she was here and not just a part of the scenery. "Of course not," He retorted. "She doesn't know about the tamga. At least, not from me she doesn't."
"Who was it?" Kano interjected, sounding agitated. "Who attacked you?"
Tavra smirked, an expression that made him look like a mischievous little kid more than ever. "I think you know," He said slyly. He looked pleased to be teasing Kano, like it was an old, familiar habit. "It was Sakari."
Kano let out an exasperated groan and sat down on the ground with a thump while Tavra snickered smugly.
"What?" Anyu asked, looking back and forth between the two of them. "What is it?"
"Nothing," Tavra answered between laughs. "Kano's just afraid of his ex-girlfriend."