So. Much. Snow. It was an oppressive weight on the world, smothering, suffocating. It did not fall, it drove sideways like an attack that could not be dodged or parried. While the day was bleak, there was so much snow that the glare was blinding and the cold was burning. It burned her ears, and caused her to cry milky tears that froze in a salty trail down her face. The wrap around her nose had frozen solid from the moisture in her breath. She had begun this trek with the sane idea that if she kept the wind at her back it would point, if not the way, then a way, but it skittered and mocked and kept her turning. She forced her mind away from the idea that if the wind kept turning, then she was doing nothing but walking in circles. It was a terrifying idea, but turning into it, braving it, was more difficult.
She shook her head, scattering ice and snow as she did so. Her only remaining companion growled, his ears swiveling, and his glare dire. A lesser beast would be whining, sniveling by now, but he expressed his rage by growling, snarling, and snapping razor sharp teeth at the wind, at the snow. "I know." She breathed, and he shook his ruff of hair. "Go!" She tried it again, pushing against his massive weight with a shoulder, but the wolf did not budge. "Go!" She hissed, and his only response was to let loose his first whine of the disaster. He compounded the misery by planting his face in her armpit, comfortingly pushing his weight back against hers. Perhaps if she could convince him to go, he would survive this, but she doubted both. He had been hers since he had been a pup, all ears and paws. He would not desert her, even now, when all was lost, he would uphold his end of the bargain. He had lost a great deal of blood from the attack, even now his tracks were dotted with red although she had done all she could to staunch the bleeding.
"He is yours. He promises to be great and huge." A gift, a mark of favor, and he had indeed grown to be great and huge, and he died here on the brow of the world. The thought choked her and she embraced him, burying her face in his dense coat. He was all she had left. If he died, there would be nothing else but this place of death waiting to take her as well. "Gwallen." She murmured and he wagged his tail at his name. "We die here."
He snarled again, pinning his ears back and ravaging an eddy of snow with his teeth. She sighed, again turning her back on the biting, sandy wind as it shifted yet again. It was as if the very air conspired against her, as if the wind itself hunted her, coursed her. It was a terrifying place to consider dying in, and rarely had she considered that she would die alone. She had gone to war so many times before, shed her blood on grass, on the decks of boats, bare stones, and the hottest of sands before, but now she died alone. She died without true honor, shedding no blood. "Behold! A Champion of our people!"
But that was so long ago, and seemed a lifetime ago. Had it actually even happened? Had she been called such, her name taken up in the throats of hundreds, thousands? Perhaps not, her mind was beginning to wander off on its own paths, seeing things that vanished when she approached, hearing things that never materialized. Perhaps it was all just a hallucination. Surely the memory of someplace that was warm, or even more more incomprehensibly, the memory of a place which was too hot were just figments of her imagination. There could not ever be someplace which was warm enough, there had never been anything but this biting, chewing cold.
"No. I remember." She growled with the same malice as the wolf. "This is not all that is. There is more. I remember." She remembered laughing as a young one, full of hope and promise. Standing proud on the edges of battlefields, her visage enough to sway all but the bravest of enemies to flee her vicinity. Her black hair fell in her face, and tried to freeze there, stuck to the ice of her breath.
She knelt, although the remnants of her sanity screamed dissent. Getting down was bad, it meant she had to get up again, to stand on leaden, trembling legs that screamed against each step she took. She dug into the snow until she could not move the solid ice anymore and then spread her fingers on the sheen armoring the ground from her touch. "I beseech you, great spirits of the world. Spirits of the sky, of the wind, show me the way forward. Lead me back."
The breeze mocked, and the sun had fallen low on the horizon, and there was still no answer. It had been so long since she had felt such emptiness when she called, such cold deadness as if she had already ceased to be. "Damn you!" She snarled, pounding the heels of her gloved hands against the ice. "I know you hear me!"
Gwallen whined again, his yellow eyes planted on her. She had gotten him into this. This was all her fault. He was fourteen, old, he should be at home, asleep under a sun which did its duty, unlike this pale mockery which slid along the southern horizon and never gathered enough effort to rise in the sky.
"I don't want to die here like this. I deserve better." Her heart cried, as she struggled back to her feet. She deserved to die in battle, glorious, meaningful battle. Not this grinding pathetic death. Any fool could freeze to death.
Gwallen sighed, lying in the snow and licking at the bloodied lengths of wool and leather she had bound around his paws to keep them from being cut on the ice shards that littered the ground. That did not concern her nearly as much as the other wounds he'd received in the attack. He had tried to worry those in the beginning, but had ceased when she had sharply berated him for it. She let him have this little comfort, staring out over nothing but an expanding dark. That dark was death.
"I don't understand, Gwallen." She breathed, wishing he'd get up again, but loathe to try and make him. The scourge had attacked her patrol, that she understood all too well. She'd run into them many times before, before she'd been sent forwards to the lines in Draenor, they had been what she fought. "They let me go."
No. They had forced her to go, systematically killing those around her and leaving her untouched. And then, with grating, mocking laughter, they had just vanished into the driving snow. They did not even grant her the respect of a decent death, as they had given those who traveled with her. Why? Had she done something dishonorable in their eyes to make her less than her patrol? Something to make her deserve this sort of death? "It's going to be dark soon." She muttered, and he grinned at her as only a wolf could. "We should keep going."
Go was one of the words he knew, and he stood without outward complaint, looking to her for a lead for which direction he should move in. Poor loyal fool. Look where it had gotten him. She grimaced, perhaps it was not all bad. He was past his prime, she was just coming into hers. He'd sired litters of pups, his blood carried on. Hers did not. This was truly the end.
"Behold, a champion of the people." She mocked, forcing a step, and then another. Some champion, her snot freezing deep in the fibers of the wrap around her face.
The lengthening shadows made it easier to find the rock outcropping, the only feature in this desolate waste which offered even the slightest shelter. "I guess this is it." She said, and Gwallen waved his tail in response, sniffing at the rocks. It was poor shelter indeed for a pair who had once deserved the finest, welcomed with open arms wherever they passed, but it would have to do now. "Best you're going to get, boy." She sighed, and he plopped himself down in the shelter of one of the rocks, apparently content with it. She wished she could be as happy, resting a hand on one of the stones. It had been scrubbed smooth by the winds, by the snows, glassy on the side which the wind came from now. This was the backbone of the world, free of the armor of ice, and she called again, her lips moving beneath the wrap covering her face. "Come to my aid, great spirits of the land. Bring us forth from this. Bring us home...."
Gwallen glanced back, that tone usually brought results and he waited for something with the same bated breath as she did, but again, there was only silence. "Damn." She hissed, and he whined at the anger in her voice. "Nothing, boy." She soothed without thought, and he grinned again. "This place is so forsaken that even the spirits themselves have abandoned it."
He went back to licking his paws while she fought to untie the frozen knots on her pack with numbed fingers. Try as she might to brush it away, that idea terrified her. What happened if one died in a place that the spirits did not frequent? She had been taught that she would be watched over by the spirits of her ancestors when she left this world. When she had traveled away from those spirits in search of glory, destiny and loyalty, she had been told that the spirits of those she fought with would guide her way. Those kindred battle spirits had touched every scrap of rock and grass she'd encountered, until now. What would she become if she died here, like this?
"No one dies alone, little one. We are always there with you."
She stared around. That was a lie. A lie. There was nothing here at all, but an exhausted and dying wolf. And even he died alone, for she had not seen even the smallest animal spirit in days. This was truly a dead land, fitting home for the Scourge who traveled it with impunity.
She finally worked the knots and unfolded skins which cracked and popped like trees in the spring. The ground was steel, too hard to plant the poles, so she fashioned a shelter by using the heavier items in her pack to hold the corners down and pulling it over the deepest part of her hole.
Gwallen crawled in and she embraced his warmth. Although she could not see him, she could feel him grin, and he snuggled his face into her chest. Still, after all this, he was happy. She envied him.
It was too cold to sleep, and she steeled herself for the longest night of her life...if she lived through it.
She slept, and dreamed. She dreamed of her younger years, well before she'd been struck by her own destiny, before she heard the voices of the wind, the grasses, the rocks and the creeks. Back when she had only been herself, untainted by the honor of her life. She'd been happy then, loved, accepted, a part of a family, a community. She'd been home then, and that had been so long ago. It was all gone now, that home, that family, that community. Even the unconditional love and acceptance was gone. Her people then had known her name because they had stood and celebrated when she was named, a bundle in her mother's arms, not because the heralds labeled her Champion. Her people had known her when she clung to their knees and stared beseechingly up at them when she had caught them carrying a particularly fine treat she wanted a part of. These were the people who had picked her up when her childish legs failed her, and planted her back on her feet with an affectionate swat to her rear to get her going again. They had fed her from their own fingers and snuggled her as if she was born to them. That had been the true glory of her life, and since then she had been trying vainly to find it again. She sought a home, belonging, and had failed to find it. The more glory she had heaped upon her head, the farther away from it she traveled. Held above meant held apart, and now it was too late to go back.
She woke slowly, and wished she had not. Almost everything hurt, and that which didn't had no feeling at all. Every breath was agony, and the great wolf who had done nothing but snap and snarl his defiance yesterday when he had been awake, whined like a puppy in his sleep. "Poor Gwallen." She peeled back a corner of the tent, and was assaulted by a blinding light. She yelped, replacing the corner. At her voice, the wolf shifted, growled, and came awake. He lay for a heartbreaking moment, panting and whining, before nudging her again with his face to greet her. "Yes, I know. It's bad." She grumbled, cracking the flap again. It was miserably bright and shiny outside. The wind had stopped, and there was nothing but miles of pure white desolation. "Bah. Here." The waterskin she'd worn suspended around her shoulders had spent the night sandwiched between them, and the water was still liquid. Not warm, but it still flowed down her throat. She put some in his bowl and he lapped it up eagerly, then licked her face clean when she pulled the wrap off to rearrange it. "I love you too." She breathed, rubbing his ruff.
"Do we go, or do we stay?"
He knew two words in that, go and stay, and she could sense his eyes on her, waiting for her to decide. "Come, Gwallen." She ordered, and he surged to his feet, following her out into the miserable glare. She walked to the edge of the outcropping, her mind already made up. His heart was in it, but he limped behind her, his ears drooping and all the fire gone from his eyes. He was not going to travel like this, her only choices were to stay here with him and hope he healed, or to leave him. And left with those, there was only one right one.
She moved back to the shelter, and he followed her, lying back where he had slept the night out. His eyes followed her. "Let me tell you of home, Gwall." She began, huddling back in her bedroll. "Home is green." Not white. "Home is warm." Not this bitter, burning cold which surrounded her. "Home has great trees, blue lakes, and mountains which hold you safe. It's such a beautiful place." He rested his head in her lap, his breathing relaxing. This was not the first time she'd done this, many times before had she been alone, and homesick, dropping the mantle of champion in the solitude. This one was different, though. This was more than that. "I never took you home with me. Ever." Tears which had nothing to do with the cold biting her eyes gathered. Always too busy, to wrapped up in duty, to take her greatest friend there. "I'm sorry, Gwall. I should have taken you there, if only once." He had never left her side in fourteen years, which meant she had not been home in his lifetime. It was such a long time... "Too late now."
He worsened through the day, and only her voice and touch seemed to soothe him. He had bled so much from the wounds received trying to protect her yesterday, and then had slept on the cold hard ground with only a tent and the edge of a bedroll to keep him warm. She tried everything, chewing little pieces of dried meat and placing it between his lips. When he didn't take that, she tried mixing them in water, and that he tried to lap up, but failed. She packed his wounds with herbs and fat, winding the bandages tight again, but he had long since stopped bleeding.
And she told him more stories, ones that he had heard before, but that had never bothered him. She told him stories of his puppies. She reminded him of the joy of running through Nagrand's great grasslands and chasing rabbits. Never once did she mention the wars, those which were supposed to be their greatest moments, and which here, now, paled beside memories of green fields and fast prey. "I want to go home, Gwallen." She cried, and he opened an eye to regard her, too weak to raise his head even though he managed to beat his tail against the ground. "I want..." Things that she couldn't have ever again, another chance. Her village was gone, destroyed, and those who had brought blood and fire to her childhood had not paid for it. "I don't want to die here like this."
"I don't want to die at all." That thought was nearly heresy. Death came to all, the only thing was to die well, and join the ancestors with pride. She knew, she'd heard it, and still, acceptance did not come. She didn't want to die. She wasn't ready to die, here or any other place. Too much was left undone. She sat, alone with Gwallen, waiting for him to die, while rage and panic built in her soul.
He died late in the afternoon, one shuddering sigh and he was still. And she screamed louder and longer than she had screamed when the death blood of her parents had splashed down her face. She stood, she paced, and she howled her misery to the pristine day. And when the night began to fall, she simply walked away from it all. She walked away from his body. She walked away from her pack, her tent, and everything she had. She walked to face death on her own terms.
The wind was still dead, motionless. The night was crystal clear, the stars close enough to touch, the moons swimming in the black sea of the horizon. The sky had never looked like this at home. Never this breathtaking, never this immense. It was fully dark when the faintest hint of a breeze stirred, and it spoke to her, just like its brethren spoke to her at home. It was a different spirit, darker, less comforting than those of home, less alien than those she had encountered on Draenor. It denied that she had to die here, it promised she would carry on into the morning. While it did not keep her warm, she stopped feeling the cold. While it did not heal her, or allow her to heal herself, she stopped feeling the pain. While it did not promise that she could go home, it promised another home, here. It promised her solace from the distance that her position had given her. She could belong again, and she had not done that in years.
"I'm tired." She stated and the breeze considered.
"You will rest your fill. You need to. You are not well right now."
That was certainly so. While she had not been injured in the battle, the time since then had worn away at her strength. The bitter cold stole her fortitude, like it had never existed, but it also cleared her mind. Why return to that emptiness? Even if she survived this, what was the point of it? Her service had not brought retribution to those who had destroyed her home. Had not given her a family to cherish, except for Gwallen. It heaped respect on her, but had never made her happy. Twenty years of service, and nothing to show for it but trinkets and a title.
She stopped walking, and sat on the edge of a ravine. She had been wrong. This place was actually quite lovely, with a stark, austere beauty. The silence was calming after the din of so many spirits all vying for her attention. She could finally hear herself again. Touch her own soul again.
Dawn came finally, and it was the purest, most perfect sight she had ever seen, a blazing glory of color. She watched it for a long time, holding her hands out to it like a child requesting to be picked up and held.
She felt a presence behind her, not as intrusive as most when they came to her. "Have you found home?" A voice asked, soft, just audible over the squeak of snow under his steps.
"Yes. I think I have, finally." She stated, and he pulled even with her, staring at the same sunrise, over the same ravine.
"Good. We left you alone so you could find it yourself. But you left something behind you'll want to keep."
She glanced sideways at him. His leggings were white fur, much like Gwallen's, but his armor was dark. There was little she wanted to keep right now, and she shrugged, turning back to gaze at the sun. "Nothing I want to keep." She muttered, and felt his gaze upon her.
"Not even your only friend in all the world?" He grasped her shoulders in his hands, turning her to face behind him. Gwallen stood behind him, massive, well, his ears upright and his lips grinning. "He wouldn't leave you. You won't leave him."
"Gwallen?" She demanded, staggering to her feet and stumbling in his direction. He yelped with the same welcoming puppy bark he'd always used, and bounded towards her. He rolled her into the snow and the pair of them played like children in the drifts, watched by their new master.
In memory- C.E.B. 7 March 1941- 18 March 1998
Started 2/24/09. Ended 2/26/09. Unedited first draft. 3712 words.