There was only a faint sliver of sun in the sky by the time they reached the pass. It stared down at them like a squinting eye, suspicious of their presence. Solongo was glad for the impending darkness.

“How many spirits do you have?” Olzii asked her.

“Just the one.”

“That’s what I thought,” he said through gritted teeth.

“Why? How many do you?”

“One.”

That was a surprise. She had expected his belt to be packed full of them. The chagrin on his face was noticeable even in the fading light.

“Before you ask, it’s nothing awe inspiring either,” Olzii said. “Not a wolf or a cave bear or anything like that…though it is uncommon.” He glanced at her. “Is it too much to hope that your spirit is something with sharp teeth or claws?”

“Unfortunately.”

He heaved a sigh. As he did, a shadow manifested in the darkness, spilling from his lips like a mouthful of ink. Slowly it began to take shape. Solongo clasped her hands together in anticipation. She was always curious to see what sort of a spirit a shaman had attracted. Someone with as much personality as Olzii was bound to have drawn something interesting. Solongo could just make out the silhouette of something small and stocky. It had long, plush fur and a flat face with low, wide seat ears. A pair of rounded feline eyes glinted from the shadows; their pupils were tiny and circular. The eyes narrowed as they took in Solongo, but an encouraging nod from Olzii called the spirit forward. It was a stout little wild cat. A manul, as her people called it. Solongo only needed one hand to count the number of times she had seen one. They were solitary, temperamental creatures that blended into the rocky crevices near the caves. She had never met a shaman whose spirit took the form of one before.

“What sort of a spirit is he?” Solongo wanted to know.

“Karakhas is a cave spirit,” Olzii said. For all he had just disparaged the creature, he couldn’t keep the pride from leaking into his voice. The shadowy creature wrapped around his leg and slid up onto his shoulder. It peered down at Solongo with an ornery expression on its flattened face. Fitting that such a spirit had chosen Olzii to be its vessel. She favored it with a polite bow. It regarded her no less grumpily than before, flicking its puffy tail like it was granting her a boon.

A silent communication passed between the shaman and his spirit and Karakhas winked out of sight.

“He can tell us how many people are down there. Even another shaman would have trouble noticing him,” Olzii said. He glanced anxiously over the ledge. “Maybe you should call out your spirit now too. Just in case.”

“That’s probably not a good idea,” Solongo demurred.

“Why not?”

“We don’t want to draw attention to ourselves yet, do we?”

“Just what sort of a spirit do you have?” Olzii asked with a frown.

Karakhas reappeared before she could answer. Olzii crouched down to confer with him.

“There are six slavers. One of them is a shaman.”

Solongo furrowed her brow, swaying her head from side to side in contemplation.

“How many people do they have?” she asked.

“A cartful. And there’s no telling if any of them are your people. You don’t even know if they’re missing to begin with.”

“What difference does that make? We’re here now. You don’t see anyone else doing anything to help them.”

Olzii nodded tersely. “Fine. What are we going to do about it then?”

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Solongo opened her mouth to speak. A hissing shriek filled the air. Karakhas’ fur puffed in a fury. Wide eyed, she turned just in time to see the boot that sent her flying off of the ledge. The impact came sooner than she expected. Her shoulder smashed into a rocky outcropping. Pain exploded in her shoulder and reverberated all the way down to her toes as she bowled down the hill overlooking the camp. She landed with an echoing thud and felt the breath knocked out of her body. She groaned. The rocky hill had given her a beating; she would be lucky if nothing more than her shoulder was broken.

What had happened to Olzii? He had his spirit with him. Solongo hoped that would be enough to protect him. But she wasn’t as worried about him as she normally might have been. Her fall had attracted the attention of the slavers. In a daze, she scrambled to her feet. Her shoulder throbbed so loudly she wondered if they could hear it. She brushed her fingers against it and felt her stomach lurch.

“It’s a little girl,” a burly man said. The fire burning behind him cast his features in a gruesome light. Solongo took an involuntary step backwards just as three more of them appeared. One of which was wearing her prized fur hat. Her eyes lit with recognition at the same moment as his.

“That’s the sleeping shaman,” he said. He was the one to step backwards.

Solongo was suddenly very angry. Ignoring the pain in her shoulder, she clapped her hands together, bowing out her legs like a wrestler. Calling out her spirit wasn’t such an easy thing as it was for Olzii. A little wild cat would be nice, she imagined. Less of a weight to carry around. In any case more practical for the kind of work she did than a hulking muskox. Not that she had any right to complain. With a bellow, she released it and the ground trembled. A rush of adrenaline shot through her spine. It wasn’t every day that she called on all of her powers.

“Buguldeika,” Solongo murmured, greeting her spirit. She didn’t need to say anything else for intent to be clear. Buguldeika swung his enormous horns from side to side, pawing the ground before letting forth an earth shattering roar. He charged forwards, mowing through the slavers as if they were made from nothing more than grass.

Olzii skittered down the hill.

“That is your spirit?” He was sporting a black eye that looked mere seconds away from swelling shut. The collar of his deel was ripped and his bottom lip was bleeding, but otherwise he looked lively and flushed. His deep set eyes were glowing with more excitement than she had thought possible from him. “You use that for curing colds and blessing babies?”

“The spirit chooses the shaman that carries it,” Solongo said with a shrug. “Buguldeika is a practical sort of creature at heart.”

“Seven spirits,” Olzii muttered. “I expected you to have a hedgehog.”

“That will teach you to make assumptions about other shamans then.”

“What do you think that one has?” Olzii asked, nodding to the woman making her way towards them with a snarl.

They didn’t have to wait long to find out. The air around them crackled with energy and a high keening echoed through the canyon like a mourner’s wail. The hair on Solongo’s arms stood up as if she had been doused with a bucketful of ice. Her breath hitched in her throat as three shadowy shapes stalked forward, their bellies brushing the ground. Steppe wolves, each one larger than the next. Their teeth shone like daggers in the inky darkness. In that moment it didn’t matter how imposing her own spirit was. Solongo was caught in their gaze, struck frozen like prey.

“Solongo,” Olzii hissed.

He pinched her arm hard enough to make her yelp. The pain called her back to her senses. It was one thing to use her magic to defend herself like she had against the slavers and another entirely to fight. Especially against a shaman with three spirits at her disposal. Even with Olzii’s help they only had two. And his…well, she had been booted down the hill before she had a chance to see what it was capable of. The grim look on his face conveyed more than she would have liked; she doubted that he was any more of a fighter than she was.

The wolves started to circle them, drifting like shadows as their mistress hummed a slow, deliberate chant. The air around them took on a cool quality that had nothing to do with the absence of the sun in the sky. Olzii murmured under his breath. It took Solongo a moment to realize that he was singing. His voice was pleasant and clear as it began to rise, but there was a purpose behind it that made her blood run cold. The darkness became deeper for it, shrouding them like a veil. It muffled the sound of the other shaman’s voice. The panic surging under Solongo’s skin began to ebb. She looked to Olzii and his eyes flashed. He didn’t have to speak for her to understand his meaning. She cast her own voice into the air. Its huskiness was smoothed into a fine edge that cut through the night air like an arrow in flight. It hovered over their heads in a high, unwavering note. It was a clarity she never could have achieved in speech—a clarity and a ferocity. Her spirit charged through the blackness and the ground quaked. The chill of the air shattered in its wake. It rushed forward, oblivious to the snapping jaws and jagged teeth it trampled beneath its hooves. Olzii threw his voice behind hers and the darkness went with it, swallowing the enemy shaman’s spirits like a yawning cavern. Buguldeika crashed into the shaman and Olzii’s shade swept her away. Only after did it return to its original shape; Karakhas the wildcat formed himself from the shadow and flicked his bristling tail.

“That will teach me to go making assumptions myself…” Solongo muttered. She should have known better than to assume that a spirit’s form had any bearing on its power. It was as foolish as thinking that a shaman’s size did either.

Olzii’s spirit wrapped itself around his shoulders and let out a sated purr. The shaman’s eyes were overbright from exertion, glowing with a feral light that put Solongo ill at ease. He looked at her and cracked a lopsided smile.

“We don’t make a bad team,” he said with a dry chuckle.

“N—no.” Her whole body trembled, stricken with fatigue. If the battle had excited Olzii, it had shaken her. She wanted nothing more than to crawl into her warm pallet and sleep for a week. She called her spirit back into herself while she still had the energy to manage. It settled inside of her, filling a space she hadn’t known was empty. It gave her the strength to stay standing. There was still work to be done.

Olzii nodded to the cart by the fire. Anxious faces stared out at them from behind the wooden bars.

“What do we do with them?” He seemed more daunted by the prospect than any malicious shaman that could have been thrown at them.