The Whitefire Crossing - By Courtney Schafer Page 0,48

bloodstreaked hands. With a shout, he funneled a column of power forward. Magical energy slammed into the avalanche. The collision of forces sparked white-hot agony throughout Kiran’s body as power splashed back along the conduit. He forced every shred of power back out, keeping the barrier solid, until at last the strain overcame him and he fell into blackness.

CHAPTER EIGHT

(Dev)

I fought to stay on the plunging, snorting mare as she struggled for footing. My own fault, for trying to turn her too fast—what the fuck had gotten into Kiran? The mare stumbled again, badly, and for a frantic moment I was too busy to worry about anything else.

By the time I got her sorted out, the avalanche’s rumbling had died away to silence. I dreaded what I’d see when the white fog of spindrift cleared. That avalanche had been massive enough to bury the entire convoy. Countless men dead...and Kiran lost along with them, if he’d run back into the slide path. My best chance of saving Melly, consigned to Shaikar’s hells.

Cold, sick foreboding filled me as I strained to see through the haze. I’d have to direct a search along with Cara and Jerik, assuming they’d survived. Dig out the crushed bodies of men I knew, their blue-tinged faces drawn in airless screams.

Slowly, the spindrift settled. The sight it revealed brought a rush of stunned relief so great it near knocked me from the saddle.

The majority of the convoy sat unharmed on the trail. Halfway down the couloir, the avalanche had split in the middle, sweeping down the edges instead of the center. The righthand river of snow had missed the convoy completely, spilling harmlessly across the trail a hundred yards in front of the lead wagon.

The lefthand slide had caught the convoy a few wagons short of the end. Scattered pieces of metal and wood poked up through the snow, all that remained of the wagons in the avalanche’s path. I drove the mare back down the pinnacle’s side, urging her to the fastest pace I dared on the unstable rocks. Any men buried in the thick snow of the avalanche had only minutes to live.

Deep gouges in the scree marked Kiran’s running footsteps. They led straight back to the trail. I scanned the intact wagons, quickly. No sign of him, and damn it, no time to look further.

A sharp whistle pierced the air. Jerik’s dark figure stood on a crag beside the slide path. He pointed first to himself, then to the broken remnants of wagons. As the closest outrider to the scene, he’d direct the first hasty search for survivors.

I whistled in reply, and stabbed a hand at the convoy to indicate I’d collect more men for the search. A third, fainter whistle echoed from the head of the convoy. I sighed in relief. Thank Khalmet, Cara hadn’t been caught by the opposite end of the slide. As the mare clattered back to the trail, I glanced up at the couloir. Nothing unusual showed at the point where the avalanche had split. No rocks, no ice lumps, nothing to explain the avalanche’s bizarre behavior.

Shouting, pale-faced drovers milled around wagons knocked askew by panicked mules trapped in their traces. Mid-line, many of the mules had fallen, and appeared to be so badly tangled that they couldn’t rise. I burst onto the trail, and yelled loud enough to silence those within earshot, “Get down the line! Avalanche hit the tail end, we need probe teams!”

Men ducked their heads and hurried off. One man with the copper skin and dark curls of a Varkevian grabbed my stirrup, his other hand clamped around the spiked bronze loops of a devil-ward charm. “Khalmet spared us, but our mule teams are dead!” He pointed.

I rode to the front of the wagon. The mules lay collapsed in their traces, eyes staring and tongues protruding. What in Shaikar’s hells?

The drover had followed me. “Neriyul said men are down too, dead without a mark on them. The banehawk, the storm, and now this—surely we’re demon-cursed—”

“You can’t help dead men, but those buried in the slide still have a chance. So quit whining about demons and get the fuck down the line!” Not much hope Jerik’s teams would find anyone to save, not with an avalanche as monstrously powerful as this one, but we had to try.

He swallowed and bobbed his head. Another drover, younger even than Kiran, came racing up the trail. He skidded to halt in front of me. “Jerik says he’s got enough