With heavy hearts and hurting heads, the hunters made ready to depart Heaven’s Hearth. As the rest strapped on swords, Flinzer steeled himself and paid a visit to the kitchen. Lilleen’s eyes burned, displeased to see him. Flinzer bore the brunt and offered no excuse. With a great, exasperated huff, her rancor broke.

“I’m sorry,” Flinzer said.

“Me, too,” Lilleen allowed. Her eyes grew wet.

With one step, he could embrace her and end the venture. Flinzer wavered, a hair away from calling off the chase and begging her to stay. Cocker’s voice cut through the kitchen door.

“Where’s lover boy?”

It was Flinzer’s turn to sigh. The bounty-man’s lot, it was always time to go.

Lilleen’s face was tear-stained and strained. She lowered her voice.

“Some say Threewolf winters in the west, in the white waste beyond Griefgarden Gorge. Take care if you go there. The storms will start soon.”

“I shall return,” Flinzer vowed again.

“We’ll see,” Lilleen replied.

On the innkeep’s advice, Flinzer’s troop struck out along the winding, westerly way across the frozen lowlands. From the first step, it felt like a mistake. The day grew gray and the wind blew fierce. The black feeling was back, unshakable as his shadow.

Flinzer forged on, haunted by what might have been. The other men were subdued, except Cocker. In a rare mood, Cocker fussed and fumed about the cold and gloom until Flinzer threatened to gag him. Unchastened, Cocker hung to the back of the pack and muttered a mean-spirited crack that Flinzer was the pig’s pick. No one laughed.

Flinzer pretended he hadn’t heard. Then, as they rounded a curve, he wheeled back in sudden wrath. Cocker was so startled he stumbled and fell flat on his ass. As the fallen fool scrambled for his sword, Flinzer smiled wide and winked. His rage was only play. Cocker had to take it. When it came to swordplay, Flinzer was the best of them.

The tension snapped, and the other men laughed long and hard. Even Stripes joined in, a true rarity. All could see Cocker was eaten by envy, for they felt it, too. In his own way, each man had made a play, but Lilleen was set on Flinzer for the first. Happy to be chosen, Flinzer still wished there’d been some company for the others. The Albarian nights were too long and too cold to spend alone.

The days were little better. The march wore on and endless gray settled in above. The wind blew relentlessly over a land that was eerily empty. No birds chirped, no hares hopped, even the squirrels kept their distance. The reprieve ought to be welcome after the storm of crows, but they were all uneasy.

Between them, the seven men had seen every corner of the Arc. They conferred and agreed, they’d never been so out of place as in this cold, dreary waste. The lonely leagues crunched under Flinzer’s feet. Lilleen’s face followed him, a shadow he could not shake.

For long stretches, the trail was barely there. No one came this way so late in the year. Still, they found signs of something or someone ahead. A snapped bough, a rock turned over by a toe. Later that day, they found pawprints in a thin dusting of snow. After long scrutiny, Whent shook his head.

“Not a wolf.”

“Four toes and a pad. Looks like a wolf to me,” Cocker contradicted.

“Too big.”

“Giant wolf, then.”

“Not a wolf of any size,” Whent corrected. “Pads are wrong, look at the lobes. The profile should be oval. Wolves leave claw-marks. Look at this stride. Wolves walk in a straight line.”

“Maybe they’re different in Albaria.”

“Maybe you’re dumb as dogshit.”

“Enough!” Flinzer stepped between them. “Don’t you argue with Sir Larue, he’s our expert. Any idea what it is, Whent?”

“Nope. Bear would be way bigger. They got more toes. Track’s too big for any dog, coyote, or bobcat, and they all got claws. Might be something new, or someone faked these to look like a wolf and cocked it up.”

Puzzled, they moved on. They spent the first night snug in a low cave that had obviously been a bear’s den and built a great blaze at the mouth in case the owner returned. They found no shelter the next night and were forced to camp in the open, in the hollow between two hills. They built an even bigger fire. Still, the cold was incredible.

Flinzer woke in the dead of the night, trapped between too-cold-to-sleep and too-tired-to-move. The others suffered the same. All night they turned like spitted rabbits in their poorly patched bedrolls. One side froze while the other singed. Convinced his teeth were about to shatter, Flinzer rose and threw another log on and thought of Lilleen’s cottage. One by one, the others got up, though it was well before dawn. Even Stripes couldn’t sleep.

“I’d let them wolves eat me just to be warm in their guts,” Whent ventured.

“Have to f-find them first.” Cocker’s teeth chattered.

“Albaria. Never again,” Flinzer vowed. He spat, and the gob froze and cracked when it hit the ground. The men shared a look, astounded.

“Can’t even spit on this wretched place,” said blue-lipped Bluddox.

“We c-could turn back,” Cocker said. He was shamefaced, but the other men nodded, thinking the same. They turned to Flinzer. He reached into his duster, drew his purse, and turned it inside out before them.

“Boys, I know it’s cold, but we’re too broke to get home. If the bounty doesn’t shake out, we have to go back to Sunnyside and beg.”

He’d been dreading this moment, but they’d all suspected. Their eyes grew harder than ice. Pride was all they had.

“Let’s go,” Flinzer said. There was no disagreement.

The seven men strode hard and didn’t stop until the red dawn rose over Griefgarden. Flinzer’s breath caught at the surreal scene. The gorge split two great, painted mesas, each crowned by a thick taiga of stone pine and spruce. The sound was incredible.

Banshees howled down the pass, ghosts of the great glaciers that carved this place. Wind droned in the dells and whistled through strange formations of eroded stone. The path was strewn with shards. Ice wedged into every crevice and cracked great boulders like eggs. At once, Flinzer was glad they’d come. A bit of shivering was nothing against this vista.

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“I shoulda been a painter,” Whent rued.

“What painter ever saw this place?” mused Ames.

Whent nodded his point and tugged his mustache at the conundrum. They forged into the gorge and found a craggy labyrinth of cliffs, rifts, and dead-end canyons.

It was the Ryo Fjord all over again. The men kept their eyes high and alert all the time. It would be all too easy to get ambushed here, easier still to become utterly lost. As they searched, Flinzer scratched at the map in his journal with a bit of granite wrapped in string. He’d kept meticulous track of the landmarks they passed, the turns they took, and the traps they left behind.

As they delved into Griefgarden, Whent’s wish for a brush made him wonder. Flinzer was an educated man. He’d always had a fair hand and an abiding passion for the land. In another life, he might have made it as a cartographer. Maps last and names stuck. Once a bounty was done, the hunter was forgotten.

They took a turn into a slot canyon where the walls rose in rolling waves of banded stone. With zeal, Flinzer pointed out the strata. Each layer of rust-orange sandstone was a long stretch of windswept desert, bands of burgundy lava rock meant eruptions, and the narrow lines of white limestone that divided them spoke of times when all this was underwater.

He’d never seen the like.

Flinzer explained how a unique combination of flooding and erosion created this unconformity. The other men lent an ear to his lecture, more from politeness than passion. Though literate, Cocker clearly didn’t give a shit. The rest were unlettered. The play of ages did not move them the same way.

Were he alone, Flinzer could have spent all day wondering at the strange stones and scratching notes in his journal. As it was, he had to move on. They had a bounty to catch.

Deeper in, the trail grew thin and the path forked again and again. They were paralyzed by options, no longer certain if they chased a man or a string of coincidences. Scattered stones, streaks in the dust, it was never enough. It might take weeks to scour this frozen maze.

An out-of-place scrape against a stone led them west, through a narrow defile into a bowl-shaped depression. As the land sloped, it shelved in regular ridges like a rice paddy. At the bottom was a frozen spring, the edge overgrown by stonecrop.

There was no way out of the bowl, another dead end. When no ambush came, Flinzer called a rest. While the others caught their breath, Flinzer climbed down to the spring for a closer look at the stonecrop. Some species of sedum were edible, but the fleshy leaves of these were gray and stiff. They looked dead, but Flinzer surmised they might self-petrify to survive the vicious winter.

He scratched a note in his journal and decided. If they survived and got the bounty, he would stay here with Lilleen. In the spring, he would fully explore and map out this gorge.

Flinzer turned around and found their eyes were all upon him. Cocker, Ives, Ames, Whent, Stripes, and Bluddox sat along the stone ridges and looked right at him. Flinzer felt like an actor before an amphitheater.

“What daft playwright wrote this drivel?” he projected his voice and pressed the back of his glove against his brow as if anguished. His voice echoed back from the high cliffs as his theatrics flopped. The men were not in the mood for mirth.

“Ho. What do we do when it snows?” Stripes spoke up and tilted his head at the sullen sky.

All day, Flinzer had been carried away by the strange terrain. Lilleen had warned him of the storms but, in his excitement, the danger slipped his mind. The men had noticed. Stripes was their spokesman.

“You’re right,” Flinzer admitted. “We’re deep in it. If a blizzard comes down hard, we’ll die in the drifts. We could press on through the pass, perhaps. We’d have to cross the white waste. Even if we made it, we’d be stranded in Norta ‘til spring.”

“Really rather not go back,” worried Whent. He tapped a gloved finger against his black eye. Worse was waiting for him in Norta.

“I do miss the food, though,” he added.

“Speaking of eatin’, our rations won’t last forever, neither,” Bluddox added. The big man’s thoughts never flew too far from his next meal.

“I never expected Albaria to be so barren. Not even birds, it’s absurd,” Flinzer said.

“It’s the work of that witch. First, he sets those crows on us. Then, he warns all the game away to scare us and starve us out,” Cocker said. For once, Flinzer took him seriously.

“You might be right. I’ve got an eerie feeling. Threewolf might well be stringing us along.”

“Right where he wants us.” Cocker swept a hand around the bowl. A wall of spruce grew atop the cliffs. Anything might hide up there.

Flinzer drew his sword and raised it high.

“Threewolf! Here I am! Come and take me!” Flinzer called out, loud as he could. His words echoed back. There was no reply but the wind. He shrugged and sheathed his sword.

“Flinz,” Stripes pressed. “We think—“

“That the Griefgarden tip was pigshit,” Flinzer guessed. The men nodded. “Moraney warned us not to trust the townies. But why would she lie?”

“She might be some sorta succubus, workin’ with the witch,” Cocker suggested.

Flinzer fought the urge to scoff.

“She’s no demon,” Flinzer assured him. “She tried hard to warn me off. Felt like she really liked me.”

“Women,” Ives and Ames said in unison.

“Let me think on it.”

Flinzer stepped off the stage and sat on the ledge. He tugged his beard and stewed on every word she’d said. He could not remember them all. If only he’d used his brain instead of his balls. If only moonshine wasn’t involved.

Some say Threewolf winters in the west…

Using what others said was a hedge. Who were these some, how did they know? Why would anyone winter in the white waste? They’d seen no game whatsoever. A man could not live on cold alone, nor could wolves, and where were those? All questions he might have asked, if he were on task.

Was that why she’d plucked his heartstrings so hard? Were Lilleen and Threewolf in cahoots? Had she sent a hundred men to their doom? But then, why offer to winter with him? Flinzer wasn’t usually the sort to be so taken in by ill-intentioned women. Perhaps it was only pride, but he felt sure her affection was genuine. Then why lead him astray?

The midday sun broke through the clouds and, for a moment, everything was illuminated. Flinzer shut his eyes against the glare, threw his head back and laughed.

To protect him. It all made sense. Lilleen truly believed they would all die, so why not waylay him into the waste with a white lie?

The men peered at him.

“Boys,” Flinzer shook his head. “She fucked us.”

The men out-groaned the wind and grew angry. Stark shadows spread beneath their narrowed eyes.

“I say we go back to town and burn that inn down,” Bluddox growled.

“Then bed down in the ashes after?” Flinzer said, a step ahead of the bloodshed.

“That lying slit tricked us into this shit! Flinzer means to spare her, just because she screwed him! He’s under her spell!” Cocker clutched his hands into fists. The other men tensed. There might be mutiny at any moment.

“Under her spell? Listen to yourself. Who said anything about sparing? Why burn a perfectly good tavern? We can take it over, squeeze it dry all winter, then loot everything and leave her penniless,” Flinzer proposed with unexpected venom. The bum tip still stung, no matter how well-intended. But the men were not mollified. He only deepened the divide.

“I’m not one for looting.” Stripes shook his head.

“Well, I am,” Whent cut in, and Cocker nodded in agreement.

“Same,” said Bluddox, moving to stand with them.

Ives and Ames shared a glance, then nodded to Stripes. They stood beside him.

“Then, it’s four against three,” Cocker counted.

“Don’t speak for me,” Flinzer jabbed back. “What about the bounty?”

“What about it? We lost.”

“We lost two days, not the whole race. I didn’t march here to the hoary hind end of Hell to surrender. Screw muscling in on some rinky-dink inn. I want those ducats! I want revenge for my blisters, my bedroll, my frostbitten balls. I’ll hunt Threewolf alone if I have to.”

Flinzer stepped over to the side of Stripes, Ames, and Ives. The other three looked at each other, unhappy at how the split had shaken out.

“When the bounty’s ours, we can burn down the inn, if you still want to,” Flinzer threw Bluddox a line once the danger of actually doing the deed was gone. The big man nodded, appeased. Bluddox was only bad when he was angry. It never lasted long.

“Let’s go back and check our traps,” Flinzer proposed.

Rejoined and resolved, they turned to leave, but Flinzer stopped cold. High in the shadows between spruce, he saw the glint of gold.