Dalfur lifted Raphael’s arm over the back of his neck when he fell to his knees into the frosty mud. Samma trotted to a stop in front of him, calling out to the others with teeth clattering like a forge hammer.

  “Come on,” Dalfur lifted him back onto his feet.

  Raphael whimpered. His tears were lines of ice down his cheeks. His skin was white as the snow that tipped the crusty mounds around their frosted boots. Their shivers were vibrations combatting each other.

  “I can’t feel my toes,” Raphael’s lips barely moved.

  “Me neither,” Dalfur tried to smile, bits of frost falling like dust from the scruff of his cheeks. “We’re almost there.” He pointed as the cold wind burned his bare arms toward the silhouette of the jutting towers in the horizon. “See. Just a little further.”

  Dark tipped fingers bent only at the middle around his shirt as Raphael struggled to shakily stand and shuffle forward. Dalfur nodded to Samma in front of him. Andre and Damon were a shivering clod in front of Samma, waiting for Samma to signal for them to turn and continue running. Hugo and Bruce were just beyond them, both wavering shadows in the misty cloud of snow flurries tossed by the wind.

  Samma cried out once Dalfur got Raphael to stagger forward and they were off again, albeit slower than before, deeper into the biting cold. Samma quickened his step to reach his brother and Andre. They were leaving trails through the field that became deeper as their feet dragged into it. Their knees were bending less and less.

  A little further, Dalfur thought. His fingers weren’t there. He knew they were still on his hand but he couldn’t feel them. It was the same with his toes. His feet were weights on his legs that he lifted and plopped down awkwardly with each step that became harder to balance on as he went. Raphael’s head was rocking. At least his legs were moving. His arm was moving on his back every few paces. There were white puffs with every crunching, sloshing, awkward, burning step.

  Andre and Damon fell forward, disappearing into the thickening cloud in front of him. Samma’s shout was a watery and shrill howl as he sprinted into the cloud ahead for them.

  Dalfur winced, adjusting his hold on Raphael’s belt to keep his hold on him. He didn’t want to think about what was happening ahead of him. Raphael was dragging his feet more and more. He was an icy vibrating weight on his side, but the vibrations were fading. He pulled him tighter. The puffs were getting shallow. His head was hanging.

  Dalfur jerked him with his next step, “Hey! Something happened to Andre and Damon.”

  “Wha-what?” Raphael raised his head weakly.

  Dalfur stopped to get a better grip and lift him more upright. His teeth were grinding and clattering at the same time. His skin felt like it was being raked by the wind. His arms were numb and burning like he was standing inside his forge. All he wanted to do was lay down. He was fighting to keep his own eyes open. He was fighting to keep from collapsing. His lips were sore rods.

  “Damon!” He heard Samma crying. “Damon, wake up! Damon!”

  “I’m…so…cold,” Raphael wasn’t really shivering anymore. “I…can’t…feel…”

  “You’re not,” Dalfur grimaced as he dragged him toward the shadows through the fog and flurries. The wind was turning into pelting ice. “You’re not giving up now.”

  “Andre,” Samma was hunched over them, rocking them, jerking them, when Dalfur reached him. He looked up with a face full of frosted tips. “They’re…”

  Snow was already capping the pale arms that embraced the two friends lying side by side in the frozen mounds, half sunken in a puddle layered by ice. Their eyes weren’t closed but they weren’t really open either.

  Hugo and Bruce trotted to stumbling halts in front of them, gaping. Dalfur felt Raphael sink in his arms and jerked him straight, even as he shook his head. He waited, hoping to see just one cloudy puff of breath from Andre or Damon’s blue lips, from their sallow noses, anything. Nothing.

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  “They’re…” Samma touched his little brother’s face.

  Hugo grabbed his shoulder.

  He jerked it away. “No!”

  “We’re going to die out here if we don’t find somewhere warm sooner rather than later,” Bruce was wavering, his teeth clicking and his lips sticking.

  Samma shook them again, making the icy puddle splash around them, “Damon, wake up! Wake up! Please wake up! I beg you, wake up! Don’t go away! Please, please, please, please wake up! Andre! Andre? Damon?” His voice was more crackles than words.

  Raphael’s shivers nearly stilled. Dalfur shook him. He roared, his own voice cracking, “Come on! We’re going to die if we don’t move! Let’s go!”

  Raphael lifted his head drunkenly. The puffs of his breaths were shallower than they had been before. Dalfur’s teeth might shatter with how hard they were rattling. He kicked Samma’s bent leg.

  “Go without me,” Samma shook his head. “I’m not leaving them.”

  “You’ll die here,” Hugo was crying. His fingers were near black and twisted like an old man’s when he put them on Samma’s shoulder. “There’s nothing we can do for them now. Our families are counting on us. Talkro, Samma. They need us to go on.”

  Samma growled through his teeth and clenched eyes as he pushed himself to his feet with hands that were misshapen claws. Bruce staggered sideways and then back the other way to lean on Samma with a sympathetic hug as they started again.

  Dalfur hissed at the water climbing his leg when his foot trudged through the puddle Andre and Damon were half submerged in, taking one last look at them with a teary-eyed growl. He knew that Raphael went through the puddle, too, and cursed himself for not going around. The wind seared through his trousers to his knees as he dragged his legs and Raphael onward.

  “You with me, old friend?” Dalfur jerked Raphael again when he saw his head hanging and rocking with his footsteps.

  “Still…here,” Raphael’s hoarse voice was strained, slow.

  Hugo and Bruce crowded Samma and waved for them to catch up to join their huddle as they continued on. Dalfur tried to quicken his staggering, dragging pace. When he reached them, they hunched together against the numbing wind. Snow had built on their shoulders, clinging to their heads and their arms whose bones were glowing through their pale skin. Their whiskers and hair had tipped with frost. Their lips were shivering blues. Eyes were bloodshot around orbs staring through lids that grew heavier, straining to see ahead. The snowfall was getting thicker. The wind was blowing harder. The world itself was against them.

  They stumbled over a ridge of stone and their feet nearly pulled from under them as they stepped onto ice with scales of cobblestones. Dalfur arched to catch his balance and quickly reached to stop Raphael from planting face first into the stones at their feet. His head was swaying limply.

  “Raphael!” Dalfur dropped to his knees. He didn’t feel the impact. He didn’t care. He didn’t care that he didn’t feel the hair he lifted with his strawman’s hand to press Raphael’s forehead upward. “Raphael!”

  “Still…here,” Raphael’s eyes barely opened, his cracked blue lips didn’t move.

  “Road,” Hugo sounded half asleep, struggling to get back on his feet.

  “Where…?” Bruce was heaving for breath, almost completely prone behind them.

  Samma let himself lay on one shoulder while keeping on a knee in front of them, “We’re…they’re…”

  Gauntlets lifted Hugo from Raphael’s side. Armor glinted around them. Samma jolted and swung. His cracking shout was more of a breath. Bruce leapt and shoved one back, barely, before falling onto the ground with an arm stretched to the fur wrapped boots of another.

  Dalfur tried to stop the armored arms from carrying Raphael away. He tried to grab him, tried to reach and swing, but he was numb. Everything was numb and burning. Nothing moved the way he wanted them to. He wanted to close his eyes. He wanted to lie down. He wanted to sleep. He couldn’t move. As snow fell over him, he sat on his knees and watched his friends disappear from around him, unable to even turn his head to see them carted off by the enemies they had struggled to get away from.

  An armored man knelt in front of him. Dalfur tried to raise his eyes to look at him. He wanted to see the man who would kill him.

  Dalfur was a mound of flesh that was too numb and cold to shiver, too tired to move, too tired to bother. In the end, he had only proven what he had always known about himself. He was never good enough. Not for his father. Not for Talkro. Not for…

  “I’m sorry, Maud,” he was able to say though his cracked lips stuck together. “I wanted to save you this time.”

  The armored man knelt in front of him and lifted his head by the chin as a thick pelt was dropped over his shoulders. The last thing he saw before his eyes finally closed was the shocked expression on a clean-shaven man’s face through a cross-shaped opening of a helmet as he was lifted by two pairs of hands.