Evelyn had the refitted spear in hand before sunrise. Snow sat beside her, watching Averik fasten his coat.
Averik looked from the spear to the wolf. Snow’s ears were forward, her tail still across the floor, but the rest of her had the expectant tension of an animal already convinced she was going somewhere.
Evelyn caught his look. "Could Snow come with us today? If you’re going to work with your Tamer Talent anyway, I thought she’d be better beside you than waiting here."
"She’s coming."
Her smile warmed. "Then can I stay on the spear and let her handle anything with teeth?"
Averik glanced at the broad leaf-shaped blade resting against her shoulder. "If it deserves both of you, I’ll tell you."
Snow stood before he called her.
"Stay close to me outside. Don’t run after anything unless I tell you."
Snow huffed low in her throat and shifted aside, clearing the door.
They left District 2 as pale morning light began to spread over the roofs. By the time they reached Unit 1, the fortress was properly awake.
A compact tracked crawler waited in the yard with marker stakes, probes, rope, and a hand winch strapped across its rear rack. It looked as if someone had cut a larger snow vehicle in half and joined the pieces back together at the waist. Both sections rode on broad tracks, with a thick articulated joint between them beneath a plated housing crusted white around the edges.
The operator was crouched beside that joint with one glove pressed to the casing.
"Joint’s warm," he said to Caedren. "Power pack’s got enough for the strip."
"Okay. Stop touching it before you find something to fix." Caedren turned as Averik, Evelyn, and Snow crossed the yard. His gaze passed over the spear, then settled on the wolf. "She’s coming out with us?"
"She is."
"Fine by me."
Snow stared at him.
Caedren stared back. "Yeah. I’m talking about you."
One of the workers laughed under his breath while gathering an armful of marker stakes. Averik recognized the broad-shouldered man from Awakening night; he’d sat two rows ahead and awakened shortly before Averik’s turn. Another of the three workers had been in that hall too. The broad-shouldered man only shifted the stakes out of Snow’s path. His friend was busy tightening a glove before Caedren found another job for his free hand.
The crawler operator climbed into the forward section. The electric motors answered with a low rising hum.
Caedren nodded toward the gate. "We’re only opening the short strip. Wind pushed the outer bank in and buried half the markers. We cut it back, check the edge, move anything that’s lying to us."
Evelyn looked toward the gate. "Does the edge shift that much?"
"After wind like this? Enough to check."
White light filled the opening as the primary gate opened.
The crawler went first. Its front blade skimmed the drift instead of digging deep, shaving fresh snow from the old lane while the tracks packed a darker line behind it. Near the curve by the wall, the two tracked bodies bent at the middle instead of dragging one side around in a wide skid. The turn was slow, tight, and ugly in a practical way.
Averik liked it immediately. It did a job, carried its own tools, and didn’t require someone to waste Essence moving every shovel-load of snow by hand.
Caedren and the workers followed along the inner side with poles and stakes. Evelyn took the outer right edge where the spear had room to move. Averik stayed behind the crawler’s rear quarter, slightly closer to the packed center, while Snow ranged on his right between him and the untouched drift without entering the track line.
Cold air scraped across his face. He felt it, but it had no bite.
Perhaps thirty paces later, the crawler’s blade clipped the base of a wind-packed shelf.
The bank answered with a dry crack. A slab of crusted snow peeled away above the blade and slid sideways across the work line. One of the workers was bent over a half-buried marker, with a rack of probes behind him.
The slab was already cutting across Evelyn’s side of the line when she moved.
Her boot bit once into uneven crust. The new weight in the spear changed the first angle by a fraction, enough for Averik to notice because he was watching for it. She corrected without breaking stride, drove the leaf-shaped blade into the slab’s leading edge, then turned the shaft through her hips.
CRACK!
The slab split around the reinforced point. One half collapsed short of the worker. The other sheared outward into the untouched drift, spraying powder across Snow’s legs.
Snow sneezed.
The worker straightened and looked at the broken slab. "Appreciate it."
Evelyn pulled the spear free, settled the shaft back into guard, and checked the forward fitting with her thumb.
Caedren had already looked away. "Marker’s crooked. Reset it."
The work resumed. Averik moved closer to Evelyn while the crawler crawled forward another few feet. "How’s it feel?"
She shifted her forward hand on the grip. "A little heavier through that first step, but it settled as soon as I corrected. The reinforcement took the hit cleanly. Nothing’s binding." She rolled the grip once under her palm. "I’d like to keep using it through the lane a little longer, if you’ll let me. I want to stop noticing the refit before I call it settled."
"Use it. Don’t make up another test just because you want another answer."
"I won’t push it." Her eyes softened. "I just want it to feel like my spear again."
They kept moving. Evelyn used the weapon when the work gave her a reason, breaking hard crust away from one buried marker and knocking another ridge off the lane edge. By the time the crawler stopped near the deepest drift, she was no longer looking at the new collars every time the shaft struck snow.
Its motors dropped to a low idle.
The rear track had just rolled past the drift when Snow stopped. One ear turned toward the bank. Her nose lifted, then lowered toward a narrow patch of crust beside the crawler’s compressed trail.
Averik followed her attention. For a moment there was nothing. Then the snow moved. A small patch of crust rose, collapsed, and burst apart.
Something pale shot out of the opening.
It was long-bodied and low to the ground, smaller than Snow by an absurd margin, with broad forefeet that slapped the crust before finding purchase. Frost-white fur darkened toward gray along its belly. Stiff whiskers swept forward from a blunt muzzle as it sprinted for another little hole farther along the bank.
"Rimeburrow," Caedren said.
The younger worker from Averik’s Awakening intake shifted his probe out of the animal’s path and looked at Averik instead. "You taking that one?"
Averik moved before the worker finished the question. "Obviously."
A beast in reach was enough. Another bond meant more practice for the Path, another living creature under his command, another piece of a network that currently consisted of one very large wolf.
"Snow. Cut it off. Don’t bite." His command went through the bond cleanly. Snow vanished from beside him.
She didn’t chase the Rimeburrow from behind. She crossed the short distance in a white blur and planted herself beside the second opening just as the little beast reached it.
The Rimeburrow skidded, twisted, and launched sideways.
Averik met it there. He crossed the remaining ground faster than the animal could change direction, dropped, and caught it in both gloved hands around the ribs and shoulders.
The creature exploded against his grip. Claws scraped leather. Its hindquarters twisted violently. Teeth snapped at empty air near his thumb. Averik barely had to adjust. He locked its shoulders and ribcage in place without crushing them. Breaking a beast he intended to tame would be stupid.
Snow had lowered herself under his hand and accepted him. The Rimeburrow was still trying to skin his glove.
When he deliberately called on Beast Tamer, the difference was immediate. The Rimeburrow fought his hands; the bond itself barely resisted at all. His claim closed before the beast could twist again.
::···:::···:::···::
[Target Successfully Tamed]
::···:::···:::···::
The Rimeburrow went still in his hands. Its heart still hammered against his palm, and one broad forepaw flexed against his glove, but it had stopped trying to tear free.
’Better.’
Caedren planted the butt of his probe in the snow and studied it. "Done?"
"It’s done."
"Don’t let it crawl into the wall foundations. Rimeburrows are a pain to get back out."
Averik looked down at the beast. "What are they good at besides disappearing?"
"Living under all this." Caedren scuffed the crust with his boot. "They follow the loose pockets under a drift. Pack it tight, they turn. Seal the pocket, they pop up somewhere else. Sometimes that saves us a probe. Sometimes some idiot digs after a hole for ten minutes."
The worker beside him snorted. "He’s talking about me."
Caedren pointed the probe at him. "You keep earning it."
Averik studied the lane’s outside edge. The crawler had compressed one strip. The workers were checking the rest one pole at a time. The Rimeburrow already knew how to move through spaces none of them could fit into. That gave him a first job for it.
He lowered the beast to the snow but kept one hand above it until its feet settled. Through the bond, he pointed it along the hollow beneath the lane edge. When the space ran out, it was to come back into the open.
The Rimeburrow’s whiskers trembled. It nosed the broken opening it had come from, scraped twice with its broad forefeet, and vanished beneath the drift.
Averik looked at Snow. "Outer side. Leave it alone."
Snow moved several paces out and sat facing the open white beyond the lane. Her ears continued working even while the rest of her looked bored.
The crawler stayed still. Averik watched the surface. A faint line shifted under the crust, then another. It moved along the marked edge, disappeared beneath a harder patch, and stopped.
A few seconds later the Rimeburrow punched through the surface almost fifteen feet farther down, shook snow from its face, and turned back toward him.
Caedren’s expression sharpened. "Probe there. Not where it came out. Half a step inside."
Two workers moved in. The first pole hit firm snow. The second worker tried another angle, and his probe sank much farther than it should have.
"Hollow," he said.
He shifted his stance and tested again. Snow gave way under the pole with a muffled drop.
Caedren swore quietly. "Crawler would’ve put the right track across that on the next pass."
The operator leaned out from the forward section. "How bad?"
"Bad enough. Back it off and bring the line in."
One worker pulled the nearest stake and reset it closer to the packed center. The operator reversed a few feet, turned the articulated middle, and lined the crawler up on the new mark.
The Rimeburrow came back to Averik’s boots, unimpressive to look at and already useful. Keeping it at his heel would waste what it had just shown him.
"Can you use it around the gate?" Averik asked.
Caedren looked from the little beast to the hole it had exposed. "If it keeps doing that, sure. We’re not throwing away the probes, but an extra warning beats dropping a track into bad crust."
"Well, it stays out here."
The younger worker raised his brows. "You’re not taking it home?"
"Why would I?"
Averik crouched and rested two fingers on the Rimeburrow’s head. The animal leaned away on instinct, then stopped there. He gave it no command to come closer.
Through the bond, he gave it the near-gate drifts and outer lane. The crawler and anyone working there were to be avoided; his call meant come back. Otherwise, the Rimeburrow could dig, feed, and sleep wherever it pleased.
The Rimeburrow immediately nosed toward the drift again.
Caedren watched the beast disappear, gave a short nod, and waved the crawler forward.
They finished the lane without another interruption.
Evelyn’s spear stayed active through the remaining work. When the crawler finally turned back toward the gate, she stopped near the inner marker line and pressed her thumb to the fitted input beneath her forward grip. A controlled pulse of Essence disappeared into the weapon.
Averik watched until she let go. "Enough?"
She settled the spear against her shoulder and felt the balance once more. "Yes. The buffer drew down cleanly, and the refill went in without fighting me." Her gaze met his. "If you’re satisfied too, I’d like to leave it there for today and save the rest for real work."
"I am."
Evelyn smiled, small and warm. "I’m happy with it."
They were almost back through the gate when metal clanged behind them.
A loaded rack on the crawler had shifted against its stop as the rear section crossed a buried rut. The jolt sent a dull vibration through the packed lane. Farther out, beyond the strip they had worked, an untouched bank slumped.
Snow turned first.
The Rimeburrow, already halfway into its drift, stopped with only its hindquarters visible.
A section of crust slid away from the bank and exposed a fresh opening beneath it. Tracks crossed the newly revealed surface.
They were not the little hand-sized prints the Rimeburrow had left around its vent. These were broader, deeper, and set farther apart.
Caedren walked back two steps and crouched without crossing into the unworked snow.
"Different beast," he said.
"What kind?" Averik asked.
Caedren studied the stride, then shook his head. "Can’t tell from this. Not enough of it."
Averik searched the opening and the untouched bank beyond it. Nothing moved.
Snow’s nose remained pointed toward the trail. The Rimeburrow had gone still at the drift edge.
Averik smiled. If the beast surfaced inside his reach, he would take it too.
The crawler rolled through the gate. Averik followed with Evelyn and Snow beside him. Behind them, the Rimeburrow disappeared into the near-gate drift while the larger tracks remained exposed beside the lane.