Chapter 5
When they reached the house, they almost ran Bunny over: she was in the process of reaching for the door latch just as Scan flipped it up. Seeing her face, Yana knew that something had happened-something bad.
“Message from Adak, Scan. A hunting party found one of the lost teams.”
“They did?” Scan took the hands that Bunny had held out in an unconscious appeal for comfort. “And?”
“There are five still alive …” Her voice trailed off.
“Which five?”
Yana read into that question that he was amazed that anyone had survived.
“Two of theirs this time, three of ours.”
He dropped Bunny’s hands and started to gather items about the room, cramming them into a pack at the same time he put on outerwear. He was ready in one circuit of the room.
“Where are they?” he asked.
“Clodagh’s.” As if that should have been a given.
“Drive us there, will you, Bunny?”
“Sure!” And the girl began to shrug into her wraps.
Yana wondered at how lightly Sean Shongili had dressed for a long drive in freezing temperatures. He hadn’t even rolled down his sleeves or done up his shirt collar, and the smooth pelted fur jacket he donned wasn’t nearly as thick as Bunny’s or hers. He grinned as he caught her expression.
“I’ll be warm enough.”
Then he hurried them out to the sled, where the dogs were already standing in their harness, yapping as if infected by the urgency that possessed the humans.
With deft movements, Scan settled Yana into the sled, bundled the furs about her, ignoring the cat’s attempts to get into her lap, and gave her custody of his pack, telling her not to let it fall off.
Then he snugged his hood over his head, tying it under his chin, and shoved his hands in the thick fur mitts that were fastened by thongs to his sleeves.
“Come on, Bunny!” he yelled, and whistled at the team; the dogs strained against their harness even as Bunny wrenched the brake free of the ice and paddled with her foot to set the sled in motion.
The sled bumped forward, Yana clutching the pack for fear it would tumble off her fur-encased lap. If she had thought the outbound trip was fast and jarring, though she knew that Bunny had gone easily for her sake, the inbound journey was another matter. Scan ran beside Maud, the red leader dog, urging her to her best pace, chivying Bunny down steep inclines when she would have taken safer routes.
Yana hung on, determined not to close her eyes when the sled tilted at alarming angles and the landscape seemed to fly past her. She was particularly aware of the increased speed when the sled thudded from one hummock to another, crashing her bones together. Or when the cat, who had somehow crawled back under the rugs, sunk its claws through her pants leg to keep from being thrown about. Stands of hardwoods that had seemed miles apart during the outward journey streaked past her with barely an interval between them.
The abrupt arctic daylight had waned by the time they neared the settlement and saw its lit windows blinking welcomingly through the trees at them. The dogs slowed as they reached Clodagh’s, making their way through a welter of other teams parked there. Scan grabbed the pack with a flash of a grateful grin at Yana and charged up the steps, Bunny right behind him as soon as she had hauled on the brake.
Grunting but telling herself that of course she understood their haste, Yana peeled back the furs and extricated herself from the sled. The cat jumped out and disappeared under the pilings. Oddly enough, as Yana straightened up she found that she wasn’t nearly as stiff this time. She felt for the bottle of Clodagh’s elixir and wondered what it contained. Then, hesitant about intruding, she climbed the steps to the porch. She could hear the subdued buzz of many voices even before she opened the door and slipped inside. The warmth was like a blanket surrounding her, but the press of people almost made her withdraw.
Peering over and around the bodies packed inside the room, she could see no part of the injured survivors, though there was a long clear space in one corner of the room where they might be lying obscured by the crowd. Clodagh’s head and hips appeared from time to time, and once she saw what looked like the top of Scan Shongili’s head. Bunny was standing by the stove, where she was precariously dribbling coffee into two cups, trying to keep from spilling any as she was repeatedly jostled.