North Dark | Chapter 9 of 21

Two Crows stares at the man—older, tired, hungry. His face is sallow, grizzled and his eyes are sunken, affrighted.

The open tundra gives way to small indications of previous civilizations. Scraps of metal litter the snow floor. An old streetlamp stands among the trees. Foliage grows through the rusted frame of an iron carriage.

A fat blue army tank sits dead in the trail, its six thin cannons cast upward like organ pipes. Two Crows rides wide around, examining it as he passes. A small light glows in the shadows of the upswung frozen hatch. Curious.

He slows and stops the dogs, dismounts, and stalks over to the frozen vehicle. No sound to hear in the still air. He climbs up onto the icy metal body and peers within. A thin man sleeps inside the dark enclosure. His sleeping face is lit by a short standing tallow candle. He silently opens his eyes on Two Crows staring down at him and the skin of his face contracts in quiet fear. Not Thrall.

Two Crows stares at the man—older, tired, hungry. His face is sallow, grizzled and his eyes are sunken, affrighted. Two Crows gestures for the man to climb out. The man exhales slowly, unfolds himself and climbs from the portal. Two Crows steps aside and allows the quiet man by. The man eases himself down into the snow and looks back at Two Crows. Now what?

Two Crows gestures him on. Walk away.

The man walks backward, slowly, eyes on his evictor. Finally, defeated, he turns and walks out into the wilderness. Two Crows’ dog team barks at the man as he passes.

Two Crows lowers himself into the body of the tank and explores the home the man had made for himself. He scavenges the tallow candles, a glass bottle half filled with what looks like water, three bullets, a ball of kitestring, and the skin of a red squirrel. He takes up the man’s blankets and climbs out of the tank.

At his dogsled, he rolls the blankets and lays them atop his sledpack. He mushes the dogs on through the woods and out into territory littered with half destroyed communes and keeps, a soaring cement overpass freestanding and sleeved in ice.

---

Two Crows senses that he is indeed being followed. He turns around and sees, very clearly, a rider with a powerful team of dogs coasting on the tundra behind him. The sled driver is openly chasing him.

Two Crows’ heart booms and his blood quickens; he rides on and alters course. He heads for a low series of broken stone buildings standing like fat cubes of salt stacked on the snowy landscape. This was once something. He can find some cover in here.

He rides toward the structure and abandons his dogs. He runs into the ruin of a sandcolored tower. Broken sections of wall hang open. He takes up his crossbow and scans the area for the most defensible location. His baffled dogs bark after him.

He runs up the stairs and takes up a position against a column of stone. He looks out of a gap in the wall and watches the rider approach. The rider slows his dogs and dismounts. It is a man in a dark parka and dark goggles. He lifts his goggles and examines Two Crows’ dogs. The rider is Pond, Two Crows’ brother.

Pond wears a crossbow across his back, but he unslings it and leaves it in his sled. He takes off his parka and draws a length of chain from his pack. He wraps it around his wrist up to the elbow and lets the remainder hang slack. It jingles in the cold, still air. He calls up into the structure, “Two Crows!”

Two Crows makes no answer.

Pond walks into the building and looks up the stairs at his brother. He gasps when he sees him. “Two Crows… how can you even stand?”

Pond.

“You need to come back with me. I’ve come out here to get you.”

I’m not coming with you. I’m going after Thrall.

“Please. Please come with me. We can talk about what happened with Dad. You’re not in your right mind. You are very, very sick. You’re injured. I can help you. Just come down the stairs.”

You’re costing me time. Go away.

“I’m not leaving. I’ll take you back against your will if I have to, Two Crows.”

Two Crows tightens his grip on his crossbow.

“Are you going to shoot me?”

No. He is not. Two Crows drops the crossbow to the ground with a clatter.

“You know you killed Dad,” Pond says.

Two Crows runs down the stairs while Pond waits for him. Pond swings the chain and Two Crows raises his iron and the chain wraps around it. Pond pulls the iron from his hand. Two Crows steps forward, inside the sweep of the chain, and thrusts the flat blade of his knife through the material of the parka, between two of Pond’s ribs. Pond gasps and drops the chain. He takes hold of his brother’s neck with both of his trembling hands and brings their faces very close together as Two Crows stabs him again and again in the ribs.

Pond grunts, his knees buckle and his body slumps to the ground.

Two Crows stands over him. Where is our brother?

“Ramscoat is coming for you. Ramscoat will kill you,” Pond says, clutching his wounds.

Two Crows walks over to his fire iron and takes it up. He drops the chain beside Pond. He checks his brother’s pockets for anything useful, any clues about Ramscoat. Pond, not yet dead, grabs Two Crows wrists and headbutts him in the face, audibly breaking the bone in his nose.

Two Crows stands up and kicks his brother in the head at the temple, and then again. Pond draws in a breath and does not do so again. His eyes cloud. Two Crows stares at his brother’s dead body. He wipes the blood away from his own nose and mouth with his hand and walks upstairs, retrieves his crossbow, then walks outside into the world of wind and snow. Pond’s dogs, howling as though in agony, seem to know that their driver has just been murdered.

Two Crows takes the strongest four dogs from his brother’s team, but when he tries to release the first from its harness, the dog snaps and withdraws. The team barks and yaps and jumps in place. Panicking, none of them will go with him.

Fine. Stay here and freeze then.

Two Crows takes supplies from his brother’s sledpack, steps onto his own sledrunners and throws out his whip.

The wind shrieks across the land, creating a small airy vortex of snow and light before him.

At his next camp, he assembles Pond’s shell tent and sleeps within, close to the fire. Backlit by flame and projected onto the skin of the tent, the tall shadow of his Obsidian returns to his camp. This time the dogs do react, barking, huffing, snorting, and panting at the new presence.

Two Crows opens the flap and steps out. He nods to Obsidian, wrapped in his snowy wolfskins. He is older now, no longer a boy but a full adult, his skin very dark.

“Your nose is broken,” Obsidian says.

I know.

“You’re falling apart.”

I know.

“Dusk is close now. You’ll arrive tomorrow. You’ve not overtaken Thrall yet.”

Not yet.

“You will.”

I have to.

“What happened with your brother?”

He’s dead now. Pond is dead now.

“He was trying to stop you. Trying to take you from your appointment with Thrall. You did the right thing.”

I’ll do it again if Ramscoat tries to stop me.

“Ramscoat is a different story.”

Maybe not.

“You know you cannot defeat Ramscoat. He’s a far more capable man than Pond was. Ramscoat will have no trouble putting you down. I think you know this.”

I’m not the man I once was. He’ll find that.

Obsidian looks him over. “Yes. He will find that.”

At noon he sees a crisscross of runner lines in the snow before him. Smoke ahead. The warbling, glimmer of a city there on the horizon. Close now. He will be there soon.

He passes a stake from which two birds’ skulls hang and rattle in the wind.