North Dark | Chapter 4 of 21

The man, a heavy adventurer with a shaved head and a white beard, hunches down over Two Crows and cracks his mouth with his fingers.

Two Crows cannot stand at his sled correctly. His entire body has been seizing in pain for hours and his brain feels like cold slush slumping from one side of his busted skull to the other as he rides. He is deeply troubled in all ways. The wheel dogs notice. They run slow and glance back at him frequently.

The arcing towers of the Ribs stand on the horizon. Sunlight glints off the dull and dirty spires. The hood has come here, he knows, because there is nowhere else to go. Though his jaw is totally numb, fierce pain slides into the rest of his head. His nose has been bleeding for hours and the blood has frozen to his face in a glassy mask of red as rich as candlewax. His starving and dehydrated body shakes in pain. His vision fades in and out. He brings his hand to his head and presses his gloved palm against his forehead. When he returns his hand to the wicker handle of the sled, he overshoots and follows his hand over the side and he cannot stop himself from falling.

He hears his own dead impact as the dumb weight of his body flumps facefirst into the snow. Teeth break in his mouth. His dogs speed ahead; their load suddenly lightened.

He does not know who has turned him over but he knows that there are two of them. They have propped him up on a snowbank carved by the runner of his own sled—where are his dogs? His rescuers stand over him. When he flutters open his eyelids, it helps little. In his extreme pain and the pale sunglare, he cannot make out very much of these two other than their stocky silhouettes standing like blackened columns in the wintry daylight.

“What’s wrong with your face?” one of them—a male—asks.

“He’s hurt,” the woman says.

“We brought your dogs back,” the man says. “They were half way to the Ribs. These are your dogs, right?”

The dogs stand not far off, panting.

“What should we do?” the woman asks.

Two Crows lifts a weak hand. He does not know what his own gesture means. Stay? Leave?

“Get him some water,” the man says.

The woman pours him cold water from a skin. Two Crows does his best to slurp it down. His mouth makes a sucking noise, but most of the cold water chutes down the tightened skin of his chin and throat.

The man sighs. “Let’s stay with him a little bit. See if he comes around any better.”

It takes a long time for him to come around any better. By evening, it becomes clear that the man and woman have to decide if they are going to build a fire and stay with him or leave him to die of exposure. They bring their sled near and work up a small fire. They have little food to share which is fine because Two Crows cannot eat any of it. When he sits fully upright, the man says, “I don’t have a wealth of medical skill, but if you want I can take a look at that mouth.”

Two Crows nods.

The man, a heavy adventurer with a shaved head and a white beard, hunches down over Two Crows and cracks his mouth with his fingers. He feels along the loose jaw bones and whistles. “Shoot, how’d this happen? Feels like you got a bag of rocks in your face instead of a chin.”

Two Crows shoves him off.

“You need to see a real doc,” the man says. “You’re gonna have to replace that bone with something. That’ll never heal.”

Two Crows looks over at the woman wrapped against the cold in a dirty muskox cloak. Her eyes are shy and quiet.

“How fresh is that injury?” the man asks.

Two Crows does not answer.

“Sorry. Guess you can’t say. You’re heading into the Ribs?” the man asks. “There’s not much there. Refuse. Refugees. You won’t find a doctor.” The man will not stop staring at Two Crows’ broken face. “What happened to you?” he whispers.

Two Crows sighs.

The man’s eyes light with intelligence. “Wait a minute,” he says, standing and walking over to his sled. “Can you read and write?”

Two Crows nods and the man returns with some book, bloated as though it were once waterlogged. He hands Two Crows the book and an inkpen. Two Crows looks at the book. A dictionary.

“Write,” the man says.

Two Crows opens the book and writes FUGITIVE on the inside cover.

The man looks at what he has written. “You are one or you’re looking for one?”

Two Crows cups his hands around one eye, pantomiming a telescope. Looking for one.

The man looks over at the woman, then back at Two Crows. He shrugs and says, “Sorry. Can’t help you.”

Two Crows writes: injured on his side

The man says, “What’s his name?”

dont know

The man nods grimly, then glances back to see if the woman is listening, then whispers, “Skinny guy? Short brown hair? Fresh bolt wound right here?” He touches his side with a finger.

Two Crows’ eyes illuminate. He nods yes.

“Yes, he was in the Ribs. But he’s not there anymore.”

It is everything in Two Crows not to lean forward, grab the man by the neck and throttle him until he says all he knows about the hood. Two Crows sits forward.

The man asks, “Why are you looking for him? Plenty of fugitives to hunt in this world. Why him?”

Two Crows writes: where is he now

The man smiles. “He’s the one broke your jaw, isn’t he?”

The woman lifts her head, “What is he writing?”

“He’s writing that he needs food. He wants our food.”

The woman says nothing.

The man chuckles and looks at Two Crows, whispers, “I can only tell you where your fugitive is for a price. What have you got to offer me? Bloody teeth? He’s a good man. I’m not helping you. Bust you up further, maybe.”

The woman asks again, “What are you saying?”

The man turns to her and says, “Nothing. Be quiet.” When he turns back his head, Two Crows jabs his index and middle fingers into the man’s right eye. The man shouts out and slams his hand to his face. Two Crows grabs the adventurer’s wrist and turns him over, piles himself atop him and draws the man’s knife from his belt. He stabs him in both thighs, one, two, jumps to his feet and springs at the woman. She stands to run away but he lunges for her and knocks her out cold with one strike from the butt of the knife.

He saws off the woman’s hair and uses it to bind her wrists and mouth. The adventurer watches helplessly as his legs bleed out into the snow. Two Crows removes the woman’s boots and socks and exposes her thin, pale feet. The man curses, spits and scrambles to get up but his legs work improperly so deep are his wounds.

Two Crows stands over him.

The man says, “You’re a coward!”

Two Crows kneels at the man and slashes a line in his calf. The gray stuffing of his snow pants puffs out from the fabric. The wind carries the bloody tufts away. The man hisses in pain, then spits at Two Crows.

Two Crows inclines his head toward the woman. Her?

The adventurer’s face stiffens. He spits again. “His name is Thrall.”

Thrall. Two Crows squares his face at the man. I’m listening.

“He’s going to Rexroat. Now let us go.”

Why Rexroat?

“He’s looking for someone. That’s where he’s going. Now let us go.”

How do you know?

“I told him to go to Rexroat. I owed Thrall a debt and helping him find who he’s looking for was my payment.”

Two Crows looks out around the snowy desolation. He looks down at the man and the woman. They have nothing more for him. He walks over to their sled and searches it. He finds three knives, skins of water, a single drinking horn, a potato sack filled with mismatched bullets, a single crossbow and twelve bolts. He moves their pack to his sled and rides on.

The man screams after him, but after a short while he stops.