Chapter 11 · Black Nettle

The horn came again and I put my mouth under the water.

Two notes, then one long one cut off clean. The sound rolled down the gorge, hit the shallows where I stood chin-deep, and got into my teeth.

Then it answered. From the north. Closer than the last one.

Two hunts now. One behind me on the deer trail, one somewhere upriver I hadn't found yet.

Inventory, fast, the way my father taught me on the trapping line: one boot. No knife. Cut on the forearm that had stopped bleeding on its own. Ribs that made breathing a negotiation. And a mark on my neck humming against the cold like a radio left on in an empty room.

Didn't matter. Move.

The pass was gone — I'd watched the whole north wall come down and take the road with it. So the only way out of this gorge was down it, through Dead Man's Gorge into the flats, and the flats had trappers, rangers, and at least one ranger who owed Torin a favor.

Four miles downstream there was a burn scar from the summer before last. Black nettle grew in that ash.