The Land of Broken Roads

Deep in the night, the wind blew and piled snow up against Socks’ back. It tossed flakes by the sack-full right over the top of him that swirled until they found Dirt, doing his best to hide inside Socks’ fur. It found his face and stuck on his nose, waking him up countless times during the night.

Even though he’d gotten dressed again before sleeping, the icy ground was too cold for him to lie on, and lying on top of Socks wouldn’t work in this weather either. If only Dirt had managed to bring his backpack, he might have something to lie on, or even just sit; but there’d been no time.

Morning came slowly, with Dirt waking early and not wanting to move because he was already cold where he was. He kept sniffling, which made him nervous. Yesterday, he’d thought it happened because he inhaled snow and it melted and dripped out, but that wasn’t happening here. He was leaking water. Was that normal?

The snow had piled up around him, huddled in a ball as he was, and the first thing he did once he was awake enough was push the snow away with his mind and summon an ember to warm back up. Hunger remained his most steady companion through the rest of the twilight. Fortunately, the sniffling stopped once the air warmed up.

Socks woke late, perfectly rested and in good spirits. He reached around and licked Dirt, then said, -Oops, sorry, that will make you cold.-

“If you only do it a little it’s fine,” said Dirt. The pup’s tongue had been surprisingly warm, actually. The thin layer of saliva, a little less so.

-No, I must take good care of you, or you will freeze. You had a bad night, didn’t you?-

“Yeah, the snow kept waking me up. It kept blowing over you and swishing down where I was,” said Dirt.

Socks made as if to lick him again, or at least nuzzle him with his snout, but thought better of it. He still had snow all over him. -Well, are your clothes still dry?-

“Dry enough, I guess.”

Socks raised his head and looked around. There wasn’t much to see, though. Just flat fields of snow. -So when did you learn to move things with your mind?-

“Just a couple days ago. I haven’t even had a lot of time to practice.”

-I wonder if you’re the first human to ever do that.-

“Probably not, but I’m not sure how someone else would have figured it out. I only did because I watched you so much. I was just playing around with a spell when I thought of it.”

-When we’re not running, we’ll have to think of some games to play, now that you can do it too,­- said Socks, his mind already rolling to come up with ideas.

“You’ll be way better at it. At first, anyway!” said Dirt, implying a challenge.

Socks looked back to give him a disbelieving glance with one eye, then snorted. Dirt grinned.

There was a pause, so Dirt asked aloud, “Home, can you make me any sap? Or are you too far away?” Several breaths later, the brace trembled slightly. Just a few tremors and that was all. So that was a no.

-Did you not eat much yesterday?- asked Socks.

“Not really. I had some sap in the morning, before the trees sent me over. That was a really long day,” said Dirt.

-Well, stand up so I can shake the snow off. Then let’s find you some food along the way.-

“Where are we aiming for first?”

-The place Father said to kill everything.-

“I thought so. You know I won’t be able to use the staff, right? Just my knife. So we’ll have to be careful.”

-I know.-

Dirt stood up and trudged a short distance away through the snow, which was up to his waist now.

Socks rose lumbering to his feet, clumps of snow bigger than Dirt was falling away and hitting the ground with a thump. The big pup shook from nose to tail and flung off all the rest, sending some of it flying quite a distance. Then he wagged his tail, pleased with himself.

Dirt nodded appreciatively and said, “It looks like that works better with snow than water.”

-I can fling the water off, too,- said Socks.

“But not as well.”

-I don’t get wet on my skin.-

“I do when I sit on you.”

-Only if you were already wet.-

Dirt pondered that for a moment. Was that right? They always got wet at the same time.

Socks examined his harness, making sure the flaps were closed and everything was in good order. He pulled this way and that, adjusting it into just the right position. Then he surprised Dirt by grabbing him and lifting him up for a lick. -Do you want to ride curled up in one of the pockets? I bet you could fit.-

“Maybe if I get too cold. But I like my spot.”

-Me too. It feels weird not having you there since I’m so used to it. When I was with Father and my siblings I kept feeling like I dropped something.-

The pup deposited Dirt on his back and Dirt lay down and snuggled in for a run. The clouds were breaking up, making the landscape an uncanny contrast. Unbroken, perfectly flat white ground as far as he could see, even from up here, ending in a horizon so flat he could’ve drawn it with a ruler. The sky made a startling contrast, even just the pale whitish-blue of the low horizon. Above, the clouds had very little gray in them, making it look like clumps of snow still hung overhead waiting to fall.

-Keep an eye out for birds. I’ll let you know if I smell anything else worth hunting.-

Socks left at a good run, then picked it up bit by bit until Dirt said the wind was getting too cold. Then he slowed slightly, and that was the pace. Dirt mostly lay there, enjoying the warmth and the smell of the pup’s fur. He watched the land and sky out of the corner of his eye, but there wasn’t much to see and he found himself nodding off.

When he woke a short time later, they were going much faster and the snow was almost blinding beneath the sun. Socks had figured out he could shape his mental shield around himself and direct the air away from Dirt. He even put a wedge shape in front to toss away the top layer of snow, making it easier to run in. Looking back, Dirt found a long furrow, with the snow disturbed ten paces to either side and a trail of big paw prints coming down the middle.

With absolutely nothing to look at, they had plenty of time for mental games. Riddles where the purpose was to pry the answer out of the other’s mind instead of solving them. Imagination games where they sent an image back and forth with a single modification each time. Chatting, joking, and so on.

Dirt spent most of the morning laying on his back, since without much wind, the sun helped keep the cold away and he didn’t need to hunker down. He spotted the bird before Socks did, because it was coming up from behind, way up in the sky.

Just a black spot at first, which Dirt watched eagerly as it grew bigger and bigger. It was coming right for them, and with any luck, it would fly close enough for Socks to grab, and Dirt could eat it.

But it kept getting bigger and Dirt realized it wasn’t a regular bird. It was far too large for that, and it was carrying something. Not a gryphon, either, which was the largest flying thing he’d ever seen. This might be even bigger, all black; or so it looked from down here.

“Hey, Socks, what is that?” he asked.

The pup slid to a stop and looked up, but he couldn’t see as well at a distance and had no answer. They waited until it passed by, not quite overhead, and headed roughly the same direction they’d been going. It came in range of their mind-sight, and its mind was very bird-like, but awfully clever. It lacked that ‘almost smart enough’ quality the gryphons had, its thoughts complex and colorful. It was probably as smart as Dirt was.

It saw them with perfect clarity despite the distance, and it knew what a wolf was. Once it was confident that Socks was watching it, it cycled its thoughts between several images of nests, each in different directions and found in different scenery.

-It doesn’t want me to know where it’s going,- said Socks. -It must be going home to eat.-

“Can we chase it?” asked Dirt, hunger gnawing at him. He really needed to learn how to make his own sap.

As if in reply, the bird angled sharply in a different direction, its huge black form cutting the air like an enormous knife. It glided low to the ground and flapped hard, sending it racing forward.

-Want to? I think whatever it was carrying is alive. I didn’t get a good look at its mind because it was too far. But maybe it’s food and we can steal it.-

“Well, we haven’t seen anything else to eat. Let’s go!”

Dirt rolled to his stomach and grabbed onto the harness, so at least he wouldn’t pull Socks’ fur if he was about to get tossed.

The pup raced forward with a surge of mana, so fast that Dirt’s feet floated in the air until he got himself back under control. Socks kept the wedge-shaped wall of force in front of him, and it seemed that made running easier. For reasons neither of them were sure about, it kept the air from pushing as hard against him.

The bird certainly didn’t make itself easy prey. Flying low was almost enough to lose them—if they’d been just a bit slower, it would have escaped out of view over the horizon. Even so, Socks had a hard time keeping up. It kept turning, hoping to lose them, and flew so low to the ground that it left feather marks in the snow in some places.

Suddenly Socks stopped and sniffed the air. -I’m going to let it think it got away, and follow by scent. If it stays low, I can follow right to its nest, and if it flies high, you can spot it.-

“And maybe if it realizes we’re still chasing it after that, it’ll drop its food and we can eat it.”

-You will not want to eat it.-

“Why not?”

-Because it’s carrying a human female. I can smell her. Young. An adolescent. She is not well.-

That changed the whole mood of the hunt in an instant. For Dirt, at least. Socks wasn’t too concerned, which was understandable. “Where did it find a human?”

-Father showed us where to find human places, but none of them are close. I wonder.-

Dirt sent a mental nod and sat up so he could watch the skies, keeping a firm grip on the harness. Humans were pretty far down the list of priorities, but if they found one, they’d have to take her back, wouldn’t they? And maybe she came from somewhere Father didn’t know about, if that was possible.

Socks waited a bit longer than Dirt thought was necessary, then ran forward again. Not as fast this time, because he had to make sure he didn’t lose the scent, and that also kept him from using the mental shield to block the air. Which made Dirt’s face awfully cold. Dirt changed his mind about keeping a constant eye upward and chose instead to just peer around every now and then to keep his cheeks out of the wind.

The first scenery came into view. Socks ran past a group of ragged trees with no leaves. The snow melted in the sunlight and dripped down from them like rain, but there was still plenty in the branches. It’d be a few more days until they were bare again. After seeing those trees, they found more. A few pines here, a few tall, bare ones there. And some hills, finally, to break up the landscape. Some dips and curves. With all the snow, though, it was hard to get a sense of what the area looked like normally.

A row of short mountains came into view, slowly rising from the horizon like a pale bubble as they got closer. Socks lost the scent, but there was no doubt anymore where their prey had ended up.

It was really just a few large hills, perhaps too small to be called proper mountains. Three or four of them in one clump, all with flat tops of differing heights. Trees grew up and down the sides but left the tops bare.

-This is where Father told us to go kill everything,- said Socks, taking quick notice of his direction sense.

“I guess we got lucky, then. We should probably go slow and sneak up on them, but I want to go fast and see if we can save that girl,” said Dirt.

-It’s probably already eating her. I bet it fed her to its young, if it has any.-

“Then we’ll surprise it mid-meal.”

-Okay. Hold tight.-

Dirt didn’t need to be told, but he gripped the harness even harder anyway. Dirt filled himself with mana, sending it to strengthen his skin and bones until he needed it for something else. Socks filled himself with mana as well and ran forward in a wild flurry, kicking up snow ten paces in the air behind him.

They spotted the great bird’s mind at the same time, and it wasn’t alone. There were four more, and from their minds, it seemed none were hatchlings. Socks dashed up the canyon between the two closest flat mountaintops, which was really more of a long, sloping hillside with plenty of open area devoid of trees. He slowed once he realized the ground was all boulders under the snow. He looked with ghost sight to keep from slipping and snapping a leg, and that’s when the birds noticed their approach.

All five of them flapped and flew upward into view, shrieking at deafening volume. To Dirt’s eyes, they were hideous. They weren’t all black like he’d thought; their feathers were only black at the tips, but lightened to a dingy yellow-gray near their bodies, with bulbous lumps of red flesh around their necks and ankles. Their heads were bare of any feathers at all, showing skin that was the blackest part of them. Their eyes were quick and sharp, with beaks like gryphons. The girl was on the ground somewhere farther in, if she wasn’t in their stomachs already. Probably just one stomach, since any of them looked big enough to eat Dirt whole. Just one wing was longer than Socks’ body, including his tail.

One shrieked, facing them directly, and Dirt saw a wave of force shoot from its mouth faster than a sling shot. It knocked him clear off Socks’ back and twenty paces back down the boulder-strewn canyon, where he bounced twice before landing against something hard and stopping.

He picked himself up piece by piece, making sure nothing important was broken. The mana he’d stored up only moments before had saved him, but it had been close. He was almost completely drained of it now. Just enough to strengthen one arm and pull himself out from in between the boulders where he’d landed.

Socks was more than they could handle, though, at least so far. He ripped all the feathers from the wings of that closest one, yanking so hard with his mind that his body shook, and they almost didn’t come out even then. But they finally tore free and Socks leaped on it and twisted its neck so hard its head came off in his teeth. He spat it out and growled.

A giant bird dove at him, beak first until the last second when it extended its black claws. A second bird dove in from another angle, and only when Socks jumped away from the first one did Dirt see why. It was a trap.

Dirt yanked his dagger free and flung it at the second bird, straightening the throw and pushing it faster with his mind. Despite spinning wildly, Dirt scored a lucky hit on its neck near the breast. The dagger sank in past the pommel and Dirt lost sight of it, but it startled the bird enough to disrupt its dive, right for where Socks landed.

Socks struck it with his mind, using that tree-piercer that Father had shown him. Despite the bird’s bulk, it was flung upward and to the side, but not killed. Punctured and bleeding, but not harmed enough to slow it down. Dirt could feel it—they used mana to protect themselves.

The other two birds staggered attacks at Socks, one coming on the tail of the other, but this time Socks was ready for them and jumped out of the way each time. They tried to trip him with their minds, but Dirt had done that way too many times for the pup to keep falling for it.

Socks picked up a boulder from under the snow and tossed it upward. It struck its target, but the bird just pushed off with its claws and was flung higher, unharmed. The boulder crashed down so hard it shattered.

The one with Dirt’s dagger in its neck struggled to get airborne again, and perhaps Dirt had done more damage than he thought. The bloody wound made seeing his dagger impossible anymore, so there was no chance of getting it back until the thing died. “I’ll get this one,” said Dirt, indicating mentally which one he meant.

Socks turned his attention back to the other three, two of which were repeating the staggered dives.

Dirt bounced up the canyon like a bug, filling himself with more mana as he went. The injured bird saw him coming, but it wasn’t expecting the sudden explosion of speed. Dirt planted both feet on a boulder and jumped with all the force the mana would give him, and he shot like an arrow right past Socks and hit it near its injury.

He grabbed a flap of red, bulbous skin with one hand and poked his fingers into the wound with the other. The bird shrieked and hopped, unable to get its talons high enough to get him off. It reached down with its beak to bite him, but Dirt pushed the sharp tip away and made it bite itself.

Dirt dug his teeth into the skin around the gash and tore it wider open with his other hand, then reached into the wound. His arm went in all the way to the elbow before he found his dagger.

Fortunately, he found the hilt end and not the blade. He closed his fingers around it, turned the blade outward, and yanked it out, slicing as he went. The ancient dagger cut a wide gash, slicing through the flesh like it was hardly even there.

The bird collapsed to the ground, trying to crush him beneath its bulk, but Dirt knew that trick as well from playing with Socks. He dove away and was lucky to land on a hidden boulder big enough for both feet.

The bird struggled to get back up, largely due to its bulk and the unwieldiness of its wings. Dirt tossed the dagger again and directed it right into the creature’s black eye. He dug his feet in and pushed the dagger with all his mental might. He felt the transferred weight driving him down with such force that his feet started slipping out from under him, but not before the dagger exploded out the other side of the bird’s head. It fell dead.

Socks was having a bit more trouble with the other three. They’d taken to attacking him all at once, and even though they hadn’t gotten away unscathed, neither had he. They’d managed to get at least one talon past his fur, up near his spine, leaving a spot of blood the size of Dirt’s fist.

Dirt pulled the dagger back with his mind, then grabbed it out of the air and hopped like a bug over to where Socks was fighting. The pup saw him coming and tossed him high into the air, above even the birds circling for another dive.

Taking careful aim, Dirt threw the dagger downward toward the back of one’s head. He steered with his mind, but Socks saw it as well and yanked it downward so hard it went right through its target and got lost under the snow.

Dirt pointed at a different bird and Socks pushed him that direction. Dirt landed on its back, knocking it a bit lower in its flight. He started punching and biting and ripping out feathers, doing all the damage he could with his bare hands and teeth. It wasn’t much, but it probably hurt, because the bird twisted in the air to fling him off.

Socks saw his chance and grabbed its beak with his mind and twisted its head the other direction. Dirt heard more than one loud pop and they fell to the ground together. It didn’t move after that.

Fed up, Socks called an enormous swarm of sparks around the remaining one, focusing so intently that he held his breath and stopped moving. It sensed the danger it was in, but it was too late. With a flare of heat that singed the front of Dirt’s hair, Socks enflamed the sparks into a booming inferno. It only burned for a few seconds, but that was enough. The last bird fell, and the pup finished it off by snapping its neck.

The two of them paused for a moment, both panting hard. Before he forgot, Dirt retrieved his dagger, finding it by the hole it made in the snow.

-We have plenty to eat now,- said Socks. -We can leave the bodies in the snow until we want to eat them. Cold preserves meat. Father taught me that.-

The big pup would be smiling if that was a thing wolves did. It had been a great hunt. A long one, over a great distance, with a fight at the end against a new enemy.

Dirt hopped over and hugged Socks around the snout and patted his forehead. They nuzzled their heads together, despite the hilarious size difference.

They noticed at the same time—she was still alive. The faint light of her mind was still glowing, although she was unconscious.

-Don’t get too excited. She probably won’t last long.-

“I know. Come on,” said Dirt. Socks picked him up and leaped more nimbly across the boulders than he could, and a short distance farther they saw down into the circular-shaped canyon between the flat hills.

It contained almost no snow, strewn instead with endless heaps of logs and branches, and great quantities of packing material like grasses and old feathers. The whole thing was a nest, one which the giant birds all shared. It was far too large for all of them together, but Dirt supposed his villa was bigger than he needed, so who was he to judge?

They only found her by scent, since she’d been placed in a little gap that was invisible until they were about to step on it.

She was dressed far more warmly than Dirt, bundled in thick furs almost from head to toe. They hid her shape so well that if Socks couldn’t smell that she was a girl, Dirt might not have known. She was taller than him, and thicker. Probably at least Èlia’s age.

The poor girl was injured, too; that much was obvious. The bird had carried her by digging in its talons so she couldn’t wriggle away. Deep puncture wounds on her legs and torso oozed blood, which dripped down through the tangle of branches beneath her and disappeared. Her breathing was raspy and wet and quick.

-Take her clothes off so I can lick her wounds. Hurry, while she’s still alive,- said Socks. He lifted her gently from the nest and held her in the air, carefully turning her while Dirt struggled to figure out what to untie to get her coat off. Finally, he gave up and just started cutting the cords with his knife and soon enough the front opened, revealing a much thinner undershirt.

Socks pushed that out of the way himself with his tongue and licked her wounds. There was a bad one on her stomach, deep enough to show purple guts inside. The one up near her shoulder was bloody and deep, but didn’t seem as dangerous. After that, they closed her coat to keep her warm. Her pants were easier to remove, since belts were straightforward, and both legs had been stabbed right through, in the meaty part of the thigh. It was a wonder she hadn’t bled out already.

After her wounds were closed and starting to heal, Socks lay down and kept her floating in the air. The ground here didn’t look particularly comfortable. Dirt sat down atop the pup’s front paws and surrounded her with embers to warm her back up. Then they waited.

And waited.

She lived. The girl opened her dry eyes and didn’t seem to see Socks at all. She saw Dirt, though, and whispered, “Stammi luntanu da mè. Sò maleditu.”

Dirt grinned. He should have seen that coming. In mild exasperation, he told Socks, “Uh oh. We’re doing this again?”