That night, Bullet slept fitfully despite his exhaustion. His dreams were a confused tangle. A hand clutched around a glowing shard, villages burning under a blood-red sky, screams echoing out of Province 269's jungle, faces he should know but didn't, names on the tip of his tongue that dissolved when he tried to speak them.
He woke several times, his scar burning, his hand instinctively reaching for the pipe. Each time he saw Shade across the igloo, speaking softly to Frosthawk in the shadows. Her hidden blade flashed in the light from time to time, and once, he could have sworn that she said, "track him to the cave...secrets."
The response of Frosthawk was too quiet to hear, though his eyes glinted in the dark, unreadable. The bone throne at his back seemed to grin with hollow sockets.
Bullet's scar pulsed. The trust of the camp was falling away, grain by grain, like sand through his fingers. The pull tugged at him northward, whispering that to stay was dangerous and movement the only safety he would ever know.
He kept the pipe in his hand through the rest of the night, wounds aching, unable to fully surrender to sleep.
---
The dawn came slowly, gray light leaking into the world through the translucent walls of the igloos. The aftermath of the skitterblade attack lay scattered in the gray morning...broken shells across the ice, steaming blood already starting to freeze, a few bodies dragged away for whatever passes for burial in this place.
Frosthawk found Bullet outside, standing at the edge of the camp, looking north toward the mountain. The leader etched a rough map into the ice with his spear; his voice was low and serious.
"Straight north to the mountain. You'll see it...you can't miss it. But the ridges between here and there are sharp. Watch your step, or you'll open up your feet to the bone." His scarred face held doubt, maybe regret. His eyes kept drifting to the bone throne. "I've sent good people up there. Strong people. None came back."
"I know." said Bullet.
"Do you?" Frosthawk studied him. "Because I don't think you do. The Ice Hound isn't like the skitterblades. It's not some mindless beast. It's ancient. It's tied to the ice wall itself, part of whatever power keeps this place frozen. And it doesn't just kill you...it unmakes you. The bones in my throne? Some of those were from climbers who made it to the cave. The Hound tore them apart and left just enough for the wind to carry back to us as a warning."
Bullet nodded slowly. He understood the warning. He just didn't have a choice about heeding it.
"Why do you do it?" Bullet asked. "The throne. The bones. Why keep that reminder?"
Frosthawk was silent a long while. "Because forgetting them would be worse." he said at last. "They trusted me to lead them somewhere better. I failed them. The least I can do is remember that failure every single day."
It was a feeling Bullet knew only too well. His own failures...Cowboy, Rivet, Shard, Spark, Patch, and all the rest, weighed in his mind with every step.
"Thank you." Bullet said. "For the shelter. The food. The warning."
"Don't thank me." Frosthawk said. "Just...if you somehow make it through, remember us. Remember that we tried to survive with some dignity." He paused. "And watch out for Shade. She's been whispering about following you, trying to get me to let her track you to the cave. Says there might be secrets worth knowing."
"Will you let her?"
"No. But that doesn't mean she won't try anyway." Frosthawk met his eyes. "Trust isn't something you can afford much of in this world. You already know that."
"Yeah," Bullet said quietly, "I do."
---
The igloos disappeared behind him as Bullet climbed into the ridges. Here, the snow was deeper, and his feet sank at each step. The ridges were precisely as sharp as Frosthawk had warned, jagged ice slicing through the already damaged skin of his feet and leaving fresh blood to crust and freeze almost immediately.
He rationed the sap Ember had given him, using it judiciously on the worst wounds. He drank melted snow when he could, though so cold it made his teeth ache. The pull was a fire in his chest, a constant and demanding ache driving him through the tundra's bite.
The mountain loomed larger with every step upwards, an ice-and-rock giant that tore the clouds asunder. Everything about it felt wrong...too tall, too sharp, just too much. As if it knew he climbed toward it.
Crystals jutted from the ice at odd angles, and several times his feet landed on them wrong, cutting deep into his soles. Blood froze in dark trails behind him. His leg wound from Province 391 flared with every step, a constant fire in his muscle. A new gash opened on his calf when he slipped on a crystal's edge, the pain sharp and immediate.
Static storms sparked across the tundra, electricity arcing through the air. One caught his cloak, jolting through his body, making his already damaged arm seize up. His shoulder wound burned like someone had pressed a hot iron to it.
Small avalanches cascaded down the mountain's slopes as he climbed, ice shards stinging his exposed skin. He dodged one major slide by throwing himself behind a boulder, ribs grinding painfully against the ice. Another time, he wasn't fast enough, and chunks of ice pelted his side, leaving fresh bruises atop old injuries.
The sentient crystals grew more aggressive the higher he climbed. One lunged at him...actually lunged, its entire crystalline structure shifting and striking like a snake. It grazed his side, leaving a burning cut that immediately started to freeze.
But with every step the pull blazed hotter. His scar pulsed in time with his heartbeat. The mountain wanted to stop him, but the pull was stronger, a force that refused to be denied.
He reached the summit finally, breathless and bleeding, and there it was...the ice wall.
It rose before him like a second mountain, translucent and pulsing with internal light. Miles wide. Miles tall. Beautiful and terrible. The cold radiating from it was intense enough that his breath froze instantly, crystals forming in the air.
It reminded him of the water block of Province 472, another huge impossible structure that defied physics and reason. But where that water block had been somewhat permeable, this felt solid, absolute.
Except for one place.
A cave yawned in the face of the ice wall, its depths dark despite the glow surrounding it. The opening was large, large enough for something massive to pass through. As Bullet approached, he could see that there were gouges in the ice around the entrance. Claw marks.
And the pull sang in his chest, urging him inside. This was it. This was the way through.
Bullet adjusted his grip on the pipe and went into the cave.
---
The cave was an icy maze, its walls reflecting Bullet's bloodied form in distorted patterns. The air was so cold it hurt to breathe, each inhale like swallowing shards of glass. His breath fogged in thick clouds. All his wounds throbbed in the cold...shoulder, arm, legs, ribs, everything.
The ground was slick ice. Treacherous, forcing him to move slowly despite the pull's urgency. The walls were smooth and crystalline, their surfaces formed by countless years of the cave's ancient presence.
Then the ground shook.
Three growls rumbled through the cave, echoing off of the walls, impossible to tell which direction they were coming from...And then the Ice Hound emerged from the shadows.
It was huge, much bigger than anything Bullet had ever fought. It stood as tall as the cave itself, which must have been some thirty feet at its highest point. Three heads rose up from a body that was covered in dense, white fur matted with frost and ice. Each head was about the size of a horse, with its jaws able to snap a man in two with ease.
Its eyes blazed with a crimson glow that cut through the cave's gloom, casting sharp shadows across the ice. The light was wrong, unnatural. It put Bullet in mind of the sentinels' eyes, of the skitterblades' focus.
The presence of the Hound filled the cave. It was standing between Bullet and the passage through the ice wall, and there was no way round. No clever trick, no detour. This was a fight, pure and simple.
The beast's scarlet stare cut to Bullet, and he could feel its recognition. It knew something was different about him, even if he did not know what.
Bullet muttered under his breath, adjusting the grip on the pipe. His leg wound made his stance unsteady. His strong arm was stiffened from the venom and cold. His shoulder was still seeping blood. His lungs rasped with each breath.
But the pull burned in his chest, and his scar flared hot over his heart.
The central head of the Ice Hound reared back, then struck.