“There’s nothing we can do!” The Hawk darted to the support pole at the tent’s center. Anji heard a heaving rasp as the woman bent down and grasped the bottom of the only thing holding the tent upright.

“What are you—”

The Hawk yanked at the bottom of the pole. The tent roof collapsed, flapping as it settled dark and musty over Anji.

“Keep still,” came the Hawk’s voice, right beside her now. Anji groaned as the woman pushed her prone against the ground.

“Are you fucking crazy? This is our only shelter!”

The Hawk grunted, her scratchy breath blowing warm against Anji’s neck. Currents of air pounded like a god’s hammer at the flattened tent.

Nine, let me outlast this.

Nine knew she’d outlasted everything else.

Then the ice started falling.

“Cover your head,” the Hawk said. She raised her manacled hands to her scalp, the chain scraping against skin. Every muscle and tendon strained and shook against her bones. Cold snot seeped from her crusted nostrils and she sniffed it back, whimpering and miniscule and drenched in frozen fear.

The deluge outside was like a rockslide: thousands of icy boulders tumbling from the heavens. Hailstones crashed against the rocks outside, pounded into their matted, makeshift shelter. Anji curled tight against the Hawk, wishing she could dig under the hard permafrost below.

They laid huddled together, the sky tearing open above, Anji’s vision marred by the darkness of the canvas and the intermittent spikes of light on all sides.

She listened to Molli’s dying squeals. Her stomach churned at the scurrying, teakettle screams of the spiders as they set to the mare like a hungry fire. Anji wondered which breath would be her last, picturing that churning flume of wind and rock lifting the tent into the sky, sucking air from her lungs as she dangled above the earth. Her heart slammed against her ribs, pulse pounding in her ears as chunks of ice punched into her arm, her torso, her legs. She could only whimper under the onslaught, could only lie in dark confusion and fear curled up against the Hawk and the storm.

Finally, the mare’s nauseating cries gurgled to a stop, and Anji heard the scuffing crawl of thousands of legs before the innumerable tiny pinpricks scuttled over her body with only a thin layer of cloth to protect her. The Hawk cursed and shifted, her limbs flailing. She swatted Anji on the head, kicked out and rolled away before a crunch followed by a tiny scream issued from somewhere in the tent.