Chapter 16: The Coming Storm
The three of them remained around the broken caravan, not moving far from each other. The forest had become strangely quiet, the kind of quiet that comes before heavy snow.
Danny sat on a broken crate, his breath making small clouds. The thin prisoner was picking at his frozen sleeves, trying to find any warmth left in them. The grey-haired man stood, looking toward the sky through the gaps in the pine trees, his injured arm held tight against his body.
Dark clouds were slowly gathering above the trees, thick and low and grey-purple. The wind that had been still was now starting to move the tops of the trees, making a low hissing sound.
The grey-haired man narrowed his eyes.
"We can’t go to our destination anymore," he said, his voice flat and final.
The thin prisoner looked at him, confused. "Why not? The road is that way. If we walk for two days we can still make it to the border checkpoint-"
The grey-haired man cut him off and pointed toward the dead eyeless wolf, its huge body already getting dusted with fresh snow, its blood turning dark.
"Because if an eyeless wolf is here, its pack is probably somewhere nearby. These things don’t hunt alone when they’re young. This one was a scout. Small. The big ones stay with the pack."
The thin prisoner’s forced smile from earlier completely disappeared. His face went white, like the snow.
"You mean there could be more? Like... how many more?"
"Most likely. Five, six. Maybe ten. They follow blood for miles. And we have a lot of blood here."
Danny looked toward the deep forest, toward the dark shadows between the trunks where the light didn’t reach. He didn’t like the sound of that at all.
One eyeless wolf had nearly killed all of them, had made the grey-haired man bleed badly, had been fast enough to almost catch Danny even when he ran. If there was a whole pack, if they came at night when they couldn’t see...
They wouldn’t stand a chance. Not with one chipped sword and chains on their wrists.
A deep, low rumble suddenly came from the distance. Not a monster this time. From the sky, rolling across the forest.
The ground seemed to tremble slightly, not from feet, but from wind pressure building.
Danny looked up. The sky had grown much darker in just minutes, the clouds swallowing the weak sun.
The grey-haired man’s expression became serious, more serious than when the wolf was chasing them.
"And there’s another problem. Worse than wolves."
The three of them looked at him.
"A snowstorm is coming. A big one. The kind that buries caravans and men whole. You can feel it in your teeth."
Another rumble echoed through the forest, this time louder, and a cold gust hit them suddenly, making Danny shiver hard inside his thin prisoner rags. The gust lifted loose snow and threw it in their faces.
The thin prisoner stared at the sky, hugging himself, his teeth already chattering. "So what are we supposed to do? We’re stuck! We have nothing!"
"We need to prepare," the grey-haired man said, pulling his coat tighter.
"For what?"
"For survival. Not travel. Survival."
The grey-haired man turned and looked at the remains of the caravan, at the scattered boxes, torn bags, dead horses half-buried in snow and blood.
"Food. Water. Warm clothes. Fire wood. Anything that can help us survive two, three days trapped here under snow. We can’t travel through a snowstorm like this in these clothes. We’ll freeze before we get half a mile. The snow will be up to your chest, kid, and you will not get up again."
The thin prisoner sighed loudly, annoyed but scared, his breath shaking. "And after the storm? Then what? We just walk out like nothing happened?"
The grey-haired man looked between them - at Danny’s small, shaking frame, at the thin man’s useless hands.
"After the storm, if we live through it, we’ll decide where to go. North back to the road is suicide now, with the pack. South is deeper forest, unknown. We will need a plan and strength."
He pointed toward the wreckage, giving orders like he used to before everything broke, like a mercenary captain again.
"You two check the caravan. Every corner. Under the floorboards. Inside every dead man’s pockets if you have to. Don’t waste anything that might be useful - even a scrap of cloth, even a broken knife, even string. Everything matters now. Everything is life."
"What about you?" the thin prisoner asked quickly, not wanting to work in the cold.
"I’ll check the horses and the area around the camp for anything the others dropped when they ran. And I’ll try to make a shelter from the caravan side before the wind takes it and we have nothing."
He paused and looked hard at both of them, his eyes stern.
"And stay close. Within shouting distance. Do not go past those three pine trees there. Do you understand?"
The thin prisoner frowned. "Why?"
The grey-haired man just looked at the dead wolf again, at its nose pointed toward the trees.
"Because of the wolf. Its brothers will smell its blood first. And they will come from that direction."
That was enough to silence him completely. He swallowed hard.
Danny stood up slowly. His legs were still weak, like jelly, but he forced himself to move. If he sat longer, the cold would get inside him and not leave. He knew that feeling from his village winters.
He walked toward the broken caravan, his chains clinking softly, the sound muffled by the falling snow. Snow crunched beneath his feet, now louder because everything else was quiet.
He climbed over a piece of broken wood and began searching through the wreckage, using his chained hands to pull away heavy cloth.
A torn bag, soaked in blood. Empty, only a broken spoon inside.
Another one, crushed under a wheel. Nothing, just wet flour now frozen into a hard clump.
He continued searching, fingers going numb fast despite him blowing on them.
The thin prisoner was doing the same nearby, complaining under his breath, throwing useless things away loudly, making too much noise.
For once, neither of them spoke to each other. There was nothing friendly to say.
The wind began to grow stronger, whistling now through the broken caravan, lifting snow off the ground and spinning it in little circles.
Danny looked toward the sky again. The clouds were becoming darker, almost black in the middle, moving fast now, like they were being pulled.
Snowflakes began falling. Big, heavy ones.
One landed on his hand and melted instantly because his skin was still warm from running.
Then another on his sleeve.
Then another on his tribal marks on his forearm - just normal black arrow marks from his village, nothing special, just cold now and covered in dirt.
Then ten more. Then twenty. Then it was snowing steadily, hard.
Danny clenched his fist around the spoon he found. It was not much, but it was something that could hold water or food.
They didn’t have much time before the sky fell on them completely.
Whatever they could find to live... they needed to find it now, or they would die not from monsters, but from cold, which was slower and worse.