Lone Werewolf Duology (bxb)

14. The Mountain

Volya's dreams always had this grayish tint, but this time, it felt natural. The fog mixed in with the wintery gray of bare rock broken up by fissures and the gray of the overcast sky. White splotches—snow and clouds—interrupted this backdrop, but it didn't have the blinding brightness. It was a heavier white, pregnant with the same gray. The great mountain towered ahead of him. Snow cloaked its peak, descended its sides half-way.

Volya didn't have to climb it despite burning in his legs or his lungs freezing with every dearly bought breath of thin air.

Yasuwa, Ushpi and the rest had to scale this foreboding giant. No wonder their black eyes burrowed into Karzhift's back! He got it why they glinted harder than flint above the frosted beards or from under the matted hair. The centaurs were on a pilgrimage unlike anything they had experienced before.

Karzhift alone walked with a spring in her step. If she was impacted at all by the altitude and cold, it was impossible to deduce from her posture. She even gained vitality. No, more. She was imbued by energy every time her foot connected with the ground and every time her chest drew in air. She was the Sjena's shaman. The frigid height was her place of power.

The weird sight of centaurs climbing the slopes in the manner of mountain goats was strangely relaxing. Honestly, Volya wouldn't have minded just watching it for the entire duration of his dream, but from experience, he didn't expect a frolic with a happy ending.

His slumber was only interrupted for gut-wrenching tragedy specials.

Soon, Karzhift came to a narrow ledge curving along the mountain's side over a sheer cliff like a highway to hell. It wasn't even a continuous ledge. The gigantic chunks of the path had plunged down on the rocks below, forming gaps a few feet wide. Even without these obstacles, the trail was dangerously narrow for anyone in their right mind to attempt it.

Volya gulped as Karzhift dashed along the dizzying walkway. She came to the first gap and cleared the emptiness in a huge leap. From the long jumps Volya had performed in phys ed, this seemed preternatural.

"Watch out!" Volya cried in his dream, millennia too late. One day he would accept that his vocalizations changed precisely nothing in the past.

Karzhift's heels hung in the air for one heart-stopping moment, before she lurched forward, away from the plunging drop. Boulders rained over the abyss in her wake, but she was completely unphased by her brush with death.

Her smile mocked between her frost-blushed cheeks when she whirled around to face the centaurs. "Why did you stop, People of the Horse?"

The People of the Horse acted as anyone with a modicum of self-preservation would have, Volya included.

They slowed down, stopped, backed off from the drop. Their stretched-out, single file line folded on itself, bunching into two or three centaurs abreast, the width of the ledge permitting. Those in the lead dallied, throwing suspicious glances at the mountain side and at the Sjena shaman.

Ushpi even hefted her spear, as if preparing to throw it at Karzhift.

"Surely, this jump is nothing for your mighty new form," Karzhift jeered. "If I could do it on my two weak human legs, you could jump twice the distance on your horse legs."

She pointed a toe, dragging up the hide pants leg to almost the knee to show how skinny her legs were. The gesture anticipated cabare, but the teasing wasn't underpinned by sultriness. It was a dare.

"The Spirits test us," Yasuwa said gruffly. "Their challenge equals their gift."

He backed off more, pressing his troops into an even tighter knot. That cleared him enough space to accelerate into the jump. To the hoarse cheers, he galloped for the breach.