The Wolf pelts weren’t cured; they were barely even dry, but Jonathan didn’t let that stop him from wrapping them tightly around his body. Not only were they much warmer than the shredded rags he’d been wearing before, but they were his trophy of all he’d overcome, as well as his proof that it hadn’t been a fluke.

He hadn’t just killed one wolf now, but two. They’d come around again later that night looking to take revenge on him for butchering their friend, no doubt, but he’d put a second bullet right through the heart of the closest target, and it had dropped on the spot.

He’d spent the next day butchering his latest kill and preparing for his trip because it was better to be warm than to die of hypothermia, even if that meant he smelled disgusting. He definitely couldn’t stay here after all. Almost all the easy firewood was gone, and in a few nights, he’d freeze to death. He had no idea how far he’d have to hike through the snow to reach his destination, and truthfully he had no idea where that destination was exactly. All he knew for sure was from which direction he’d heard the train whistle and seen the quick burst of steam. He had no idea if that was only a mile or two away or if it was closer to ten, though.

It didn’t matter, he decided as he started walking. He had no plans to get that far on the first day anyway. He was only hiking as far as the last stand of trees before the pass sloped steeply down. There might be better spots further down the slope, but he thought he could make that work for the night with the furs and a small fire. He’d better be able to at least, he thought bleakly as he spared a look behind him at his rapidly shrinking campsite because if there was nothing to burn there, he doubted very much he’d be able to get back before dark.

Hours later, he arrived, shivering but pleased to find more than enough stray branches to get him through the night. While Jonathan huddled against the trunk of the fir tree and tried to stop shivering enough to light a fire, he looked further down the slope, and his path became immediately clearer. While the trees were sparse, and the slope was steeper than he was comfortable with, the path of the railway at the bottom was clearly visible. Even if only the occasional tie was visible, the even groove in the snow from the passage of the recent train made it impossible to miss. That it was almost a hundred feet lower than him and still a couple miles away through deep snow was a problem, but not an insurmountable one.

Even better, Jonathan realized, as he followed the curve of the rail to his right. There seemed to be a spur or maybe even a small depot of some kind. The sunlight reflecting off the snow and the distance made it kind of hard to tell, but it was enough that he decided that it was definitely the way he was going once he navigated the slope and got to the tracks.

It was only after the shivers had stopped completely that he got out his very best tinder. Around that soft, shredded bark, he built a tiny teepee of pine needles and twigs in the windless hollow formed by the roots of the tree he was sheltering behind. Obviously, he couldn’t leave his fire this close to the tree, or he’d burn it down, but trying to light it anywhere else would have been impossible.

Once all that was done, and he was as ready as he would ever be, he stilled his mind and began to draw heat from his own body. He did it slowly, allowing the change to happen to his whole body rather than risking harm by robbing too much from one spot too quickly. After a few seconds, his body started to shiver again, but he ignored it. He’d prepared the tinder first for exactly this reason. It felt foolish and stupid to be using his own body’s fire for this sort of thing, but there was simply no other option.

When he’d gathered enough fire for a candle flame, he released it into his campfire, sagging from the effort. There was a brief flash that was hidden by the layers of twigs he’d prepared, and then it was gone. For a second, Jonathan’s heart sank as he feared it had snuffed out as soon as it appeared in this frigid, fire-deficient environment, but then he smelled the first wisps of smoke, and he knew that something had caught.

Prying his little structure apart, he blew gently into the core and was rewarded by tiny leaping flames that quickly started to spread exponentially and consume all the tinder. With shaky hands, he added small pieces of kindling, and when the fire was large enough that he could start to steal some warmth back for himself, he started to look around to decide how to best set things up to ride out the night.

Unlike his previous campsite, he had no boulders to hide behind or heat before he laid down for the night. There were just five miserable pine trees between him and the arctic wind, and he was already huddled behind the thickest one. All he really had were sticks and snow, which sounded like it was going to make for a pretty miserable night.

Still - he spent a lot of time thinking about it while he was warming himself one small stick at a time, and by the time he was ready to start working, he had a plan. It was juvenile and bordered on the ridiculous, but it was better than nothing. He was going to build a snow fort or part of one anyway. He’d made them often enough during winters in Dalmarin before his father had stopped letting him play with the village boys.

So, directing extra heat to his hands to try to keep them from getting frostbitten, he began to roll a ball of snow into an ever-larger object in the area around the tree, and once it was twice as large as his head, he put it in place next to the tree’s trunk, but not too close to the fire before he started the process all over again. He repeated this several times before taking a break and roasting strips of wolf meat on a sharpened stick. It wasn’t a lot better than goblin meat, but it was much better than starving, and thanks to his second kill, he had more than enough to last for a week.

After Jonathan had built a wall slightly longer than he was tall, he used dozens of slender green branches to make himself an icy little cave and filled the floor with dead pine needles. There was no way he’d be able to have a fire in there with him, but it would keep the wind off, and with the furs, it should be enough until morning. As confident as he was, though, he still stayed up well past sunset to tend the fire because he knew how much worse things would get once that slender tendril of warmth ceased.

In its waning light, he worked up the courage to look at his leg again and was confident that it was on the mend now. It had hurt only a little on his walk here, and there was much less redness than before. That was all the good news he needed to finally crawl into his bed and snuff out his fire for a long miserable night.

The morning came with a hard decision. For the last several days, bright blue cloudless skies had alternated with gloomy, partially cloudy days, but today the skies were dark and leaden. They held the promise of snow even to his inexperienced eyes, and while his shelter here was tenuous, it was shelter. He wasn’t sure how he’d fare if a blizzard caught him in the open.

In the end, he decided to risk it, though, and after finding two large branches to use as walking sticks, he began to head down the slope to the tracks. Staying would have been the safer option. He had plenty of food for now, after all, but if the snow got much deeper, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to get down this slope. Already it came up to his thighs, and in places, it came up to his stomach, making for remarkably slow-going as he trudged through it.

“At least it’s all downhill,” he told himself as he tried to keep his spirits up. It was the first time he’d spoken since the wolves two nights before, and he was surprised at how rough his voice had grown from disuse.

Jonathan promised himself that he would work on that, but only once he’d found a place to stop, rest, and light a fire because he was exhausted and only just over halfway to his goal: a copse of scraggly pine just off the tracks.

Once he got there, though, he decided that there was still more than enough light to keep going, and walking on the freshly cleared tracks was much faster than trudging through the deep snow had been. So, that was how he went for the next hour. He kept promising himself that he would take a break at the next rise or that he would stop and make camp at that cluster of trees, but even when the snow started to fall. He couldn’t stop, though. Not once he smelled wood smoke.

He was getting close, and the idea that there might be real shelter ahead drove him forward relentlessly and by the time the light was failing, he could see not just that there was some sort of structure just head off the rail spur but that there was light coming from its windows! With numb limbs, he strode forward as fast as he could. He was certain it was a dwarvish outpost of some sort, but even dwarves had codes of hospitality. He doubted that they would have any idea who he was, so it would all be fine. All he needed was a warm place to sleep and some idea of where he was headed, and he would be gone in the morning.

So, full of confidence that nothing could go wrong, Jonathan walked up to the door and pounded on it. “Please - is anyone in there? I-I’ve lost my way, and I need help!”

For a long moment, there was no answer, but when he pounded again, there was a response.

“Hold yer horses,” someone barked in the stone tongue as they made sounds of unlocking the door. Finally, a grumpy dark-haired dwarf with a braided beard and a brand in his left hand opened up the door and said, “Ye shouldn’t be here, lad,” before remembering that a human probably couldn’t understand him and repeated in passable Wennlish “Ye shouldn’t - what are you doing all the way out here?”

“I was traveling with a dwarf and… and there was a storm, and I—” Jonathan babbled. As soon as he saw the other dwarf’s weapon, he realized he’d be immediately suspicious of Jonathan having a brand, so he altered his lie to try to explain it.

“Who is it?” another dwarf shouted in dwarvish from the other room.

“It’s some human, but he’s got a—” the dwarf at the door answered.

“A human? They’re not allowed to be here!” the second dwarf shouted, suddenly coming to the door to see. As soon as Jonathan saw him, he could see that he was even more suspicious of him than the first one was. “Why does a human have a brand?”

“I was gonna ask him that, but ye interrupted—” the first dwarf tried to say as the second one interrupted again.

“Are you going to invite him in?”

“Might as well,” the first dwarf answered. “It’ll be a lot easier to find out what he knows in here rather than chase him down like a dog in the snow.”

Jon paled as he heard all this but tried hard to keep his confused expression. “Please - what’s this about? I don’t speak dwarvish. I’m just lost and…”

“Come in, lad,” the first dwarf said finally, adopting a cruel parody of a smile. “You can sit down over some nice hot soup and tell us all about it.”

Terrified but not sure of what else to do, he walked into the warm building, and when the second dwarf tried to take his weapon, he let him because he was unsure what else he could do.