“I don’t know. It’s not supposed to be here.”

“City?” Yaz looked up, suddenly realising that Thurin had mentioned a city. “What city?” Men had had cities before the ice swept them aside. The legends said so.

“A city of the Missing,” Thurin said. He leaned back and shook his head. “You really don’t know what goes on down here at all, do you?”

“No!” Suddenly she was angry. “And neither did you before you were pushed down the pit, so don’t play so high and mighty with us!”

“I wasn’t pushed.” Thurin said it so softly she wondered if she had misheard him above the hunter’s clawing. He’d thrown himself down, like her?

Kao snorted, recovering some of his composure. “Of course you were, you lying sack of—”

“I was born here.”

8

   HOW LONG DO we have to stay here?” Kao had been pacing for what seemed like hours. One pace, two pace, turn. One pace, two pace, turn.

“I don’t know.” Thurin had given the same reply the last several times and it didn’t seem to stick.

“Try sitting,” Yaz suggested from where she sat.

Kao made no reply. He seemed more scared of the narrowness of the space confining him than of the hunter outside. And he had been pretty scared of that. Yaz didn’t blame him there. No amount of muscle is going to make a difference against a creature of iron with knives for claws. But fear of enclosed spaces was not something the Ictha knew. Anyone who couldn’t spend three months inside a tent would not last long among her people.

Outside the grinding continued as it had continued the whole time.

“Will it dig its way to us?” Maya asked, eyes wide in the darkness.

Yaz would have said no, nothing could, but the sounds did seem to have grown louder as if the beast were actually making progress. Certainly when it reached in every so often its claws seemed to scrape the rock much closer to their hiding place each time. Either it was burrowing through ice at a remarkable rate or its limbs were growing longer!

“The others will come,” Yaz said. “Quina will have told them.”

“Unless that thing got her,” Kao said.

Yaz shook her head. “Then Arka would have sent someone to check on us already. Arka said we should hurry.”

“They’ll all know by now,” Thurin agreed. “One way or the other.”

“So they come and find us and . . .” Yaz still marvelled that they were being attacked by a mass of iron that would outweigh all the metal owned by even the largest of clans. Her life could soon be ended by a sharp-edged heap of treasure of incalculable value. “How do you beat these things?”

“We don’t. We hide and eventually they go away.”

“And if they don’t?”

“Then someone draws them off. But they always go away in the end, and if you can make it to the long slope they hardly ever follow you past the gateposts.”

“So . . . why hasn’t someone drawn it off?” Maya asked. Now that they were in real trouble she sounded perfectly calm, no sign of the wide-eyed nervous girl from before.

Thurin didn’t speak for a moment, and then as if deciding on honesty: “I guess they’ve tried to draw it off but it just wants us more than it wants them. Sometimes that happens. It’s one of the reasons you won’t see many grey hairs among the Broken.”

Kao stopped pacing. “I’ve got to get out.” Muttered to himself as if it were a sudden realisation. “Got to get out.” He fell to his hands and knees and began to crawl to the gap.

“Don’t be stupid.” Thurin grabbed the boy’s shoulder and tried to haul him back. He made almost no difference against Kao’s strength but the boy lashed out anyway, sending Thurin flying back into the wall of the chamber.

Yaz stepped between Kao and the gap just before he could enter it. “That thing out there will tear you apart!”

Kao showed no signs of having heard her. Somehow his fear of being trapped in such close confines had overwhelmed his fear of the hunter. He jumped to his feet with a strangled cry and reached to grab Yaz as though intending to toss her aside too. Bracing herself against the wall she caught both his wrists. The boy growled and tried to fasten his hands on her shoulders. He stood well over six foot, his arms heaped with muscle and his strength frightening.

“What?” Kao grunted with effort and pressed down even more forcefully.

Yaz ground her teeth, breathing heavily, and held him where he was, hands just inches from closing on her. In the main chamber a great crash rang out.

“How . . . are . . . you . . . doing . . . this?” He eased the pressure, amazed.

A pained laugh rang out behind them, Thurin back on his feet, clutching his side. “She’s of the Ictha. The northmen are a different breed.”

“Listen!” Yaz let go of Kao’s wrists. A second great crash sounded outside along with an unearthly howl more chilling than any the wind ever made. The light dimmed; nothing but the faint glow of the surrounding ice reached them.

“It’s not normally like this.” Thurin’s voice sounded beside her, closer than she had thought he was. “Even when hunters do leave the city they stick to the fringes. I’ve never heard of one this far in. We’re practically at the settlement.”

Yaz shrugged, trying to offset his worry. “This sort of thing has been pretty normal for me lately.” The hunter scared her less than Hetta had, though it looked even harder to overcome. Somehow it was Hetta’s hunger that terrified her more than iron claws and spikes.

“Ha.” Thurin snorted. They faced each other, just two handwidths between them but still not close enough to make out each other’s expression.

“It’s stopped.” Maya crouched low and peered through the gap. “It’s gone!”

Kao bent to join the girl but Yaz turned from Thurin and shoved him back with a grunt. “It could be a trick. We wait!”

Kao straightened but thought better of testing his strength against hers again. Yaz was glad of that. Her arms hurt. She had always been told the Ictha were stronger than the southern tribes but had thought it meant only that they could endure the cold better. However strong the Ictha might be, though, Yaz knew that a couple years more growing would see Kao able to brush her aside without effort.

“What’s going on out there?” She directed the question at Maya, still on her belly looking out.

“I can only see ice. The way out’s blocked. But I hear digging.”