The Witch's Eye by Steven Montano, Barry Currey

they went too far they were on their own.
    T hey still had a few hours of light left, and both Ronan and Moone hoped they could find a place to rest for the night with better vantage and shelter.  The winds in the Bone Hills could get extremely harsh, especially after the sun went down and the dread chill rolled in from the northern wastes, and if they stayed exposed after dark they ran the risk of getting chilblains or frostbite.
    They also needed water .  Their supply was almost gone, and while they could do without food they had to have something clean to drink.  Ronan had experienced the horrors of dehydration first hand: it led to deteriorating eyesight and cramping muscles, and if they went too long without fluids they’d start to hallucinate.  Very little of the ice at the edge of the Bone Hills was suitable for melting down to drink since it was full of sediment and lime, and the few pools they’d come across were thick with minerals that floated up from the bedrock. 
    It had been an uneventful two days of travel.  On the first night they’d found an abandoned shack that had probably once been the home of a trapper or wilderness scout.  The place had Gorgoloth markings all over it, and Ronan thought they’d pressed their luck staying there even for a couple of hours to rest, but the brief shelter had been welcome.  The shallow crater was the first comparable thing they’d found since.
    Ronan watched the survivors.  They were two-thirds men and one-third women, none of them older than their middle forties, and no one younger than a teenager.  Their clothing was ragged, dirty and disintegrating, as no one had been given the opportunity to wash for days.  They were like the landscape now, dirty and grim, stripped of their color, cold and thin with hunger.  Everyone was exhausted beyond measure, clearly visible in their demeanor and motion. 
    You knew the risks , he wanted to tell them . 
    Something in the way he watched them must have caught Jade ’s attention. 
    “You don ’t like people much, do you Ronan?” she asked.
    “What ever gave you that idea?”
    “What happened to make you like this?”
    He looked at her.  She was an admittedly beautiful woman, but there was somet hing about her he didn’t trust, even beyond the fact that she still paid loyalty to the Shard.  He couldn’t decide if she was more wolf than lamb, and that made her dangerous.
    “What the hell do you care?” he said.
    Jade watched him for a moment with anger in her eyes. 
    “I don’t,” she finally said, and she stood up and walked off.
    “Ronan,” Moone said as he came down from the edge of the hill.  “Should we get going?”
    “Ye ah,” Ronan shrugged.  “Round your people up.”
    “They ’re not my people,” Moone said.  “I’m just helping them.”
    “ They’re sure as hell not my people,” Ronan said.  “So that makes them yours .”
     
    They walked for another two hours.  The sky bled dark.  For the last few minutes before sunset the sun looked like a candle floating in oil. 
    The temperature fell dramatically, and the need to find shelter became more pressing.  Moone and a couple of volunteers – young men from one of the farming settlements near Kalakkaii who claimed to have hunting experience – scouted ahead to find a place for the group to hide. 
    “They ’d better hurry,” Greer said after they’d gone.  “It’s getting difficult to see where we’re going.”
    No shit , Ronan thought, but he kept his mouth shut.  The way ahead was covered with frost boils, patches of shale and deep crevices.  The clouds bled to pale wisps of red and black that hung unmoving in the sky, as if defiant of the razor-cold wind. 
    “Maur is cold,” the Gol said.
    “We’re all cold,” Taala said.  “And hungry.”
    “We know ,” Ronan said.  “We’re working on it.”
    A tower of icy rock stood in the distance , just at the edge of the Bone Hills.  Cold vapor curled away