“They fear you are too freshly knighted,” Kerr said softly. “They are cold, hungry. They fear they will not make it home.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” Niel muttered.
“Whatisthe plan, my lord?” Kerr asked. The captain cleared his throat. “Pardon my insolence, but do you even know where we are?”
They’d reached a shallow cliff, where the ground before them abruptly fell away. Tricked by the glaring white-on-white of the snow, Niel realized it only when he was a foot away from the edge. He quickly stepped back, throwing a hand out to Kerr to warn him. The drop was a dozen feet or more. Niel glanced up the slope again, trying to judge by the size of the trees how far they’d have to go to get around the ravine.
That was when he saw a flash of rich plum purple flicking between the dark shapes of the giant mountain firs, down in the ravine. With a quick hand signal to Kerr, Niel pressed himselfdown to the ground so he’d be out of sight. Kerr followed. With snow brushing his chin, Niel peered below into the ravine.
The rider was a noblewoman, her elaborate purple gown hitched up over her bare thighs—didn’t she know what stockings were?—despite the freezing weather, cold enough to literally kill a man. Her skin was pale; her hair long, thick, and black, flying out behind her as her dapple-gray horse skidded down the slopes. She was riding too fast for him to get an impression of her face. She’d injure her horse with how treacherous the terrain was.
They weren’t in the wilderness anymore. Not if a woman dressed as foolishly asthatwas riding about. Niel quickly scanned the terrain for signs of any other movement. Surely, in mountains as dangerous as this, she’d be with an escort. It wasn’t as though she were armed and armored herself. Finding no other signs of life, apart froman eagle flying overhead, Niel slowly pushed himself up. Snow clung to him as he worked his way carefully along the ravine’s ridge in the direction the rider had gone.
Kerr followed him to an overview, where the mountain and the forests sloped sharply away beneath them to reveal a valley beyond. There, in a wide, distant clearing, a small town nestled against a stone castle with a tall, fortified wall. Pillars of smoke rose from the houses’ chimneys to blend into the gray sky above. From the highest point of the castle’s keep, a blue flag with a black charge fluttered in the wind.
“Blackfell,” Niel informed Kerr, recognizing the heraldic colors even though he couldn’t make out the shape of the black Kettalist fir he knew was displayed on the blue field. Inwardly, he cursed. He’d thought they were at least a day’s march further east. Were they really moving that slowly?
“Should we head further up slope, then?” Kerr suggested.
If they were this close to the lowland of Enar, the odds of the Queen’s soldiers catching them were higher. The storms were pushing them further and further down the slopes as they made their way east to the safety of Mount Eyron.
Niel stared at the castle. He knew his hold on his men was slipping. The worse the storms grew, the fewer of them would survive to make it back home before the true cold of winter set in. It was still early fall; the brutal Kettalist mountains had far worse to throw at them. Castle Blackfell had secure walls, ones that would be hard to crack.
It was a small, old castle, built in the days before Enar was a unified country, before Niel’s ancestors had come down from the Kettalist on dragonback to conquer the Hulder courts and the petty human kingdoms strung throughout the cradle. And the castle would likely be well-stocked against the coming cold.
In fact, a few days of feasts, medicine, and roaring fires might be enough to get his men back to marching shape.
“I’ve changed my mind. The men need better rest than a half hour in the snow,” Niel said. “Blackfell ought to provide it.”
“Acastle?” Kerr said, disbelief in his voice. Niel turned and began to trudge back through the deep snow to where they’d left the men, his mind churning through plans of how to conquer Blackfell. “My lord, the men aren’t in fighting shape…”
“They don’t need to be,” Niel said. “I work better alone anyhow.”
Three Wounded Men
Ayla sat in the solar at the top of the keep, staring out the window at the snow-covered slopes and the pale, thin flakes drifting slowly down. She’d been home from her ride only a few hours, the day edging to late afternoon. The mountain’s cold still sat deep in her bones.
If she took grain from the castle stores, would Ditmar notice? A week ago, she wouldn’t have worried about the servants telling him. Now, still uncertain how he’d found her contraceptive tea, she wasn’t sure.
But she didn’t like the thought of a unicorn starving in the mountain winter. She couldn’t get the image of its stark ribs out of her head.
With a sigh she pressed a hand to her own bruised side, then looked down at the embroidery hoop in her blanketed lap. Ayla frowned and slowly pierced the needle through the beak of the griffon she was stitching, adding another speck of burnt orange. She pulled at the thread, watching its length vanish through thefabric. Halfway through it got caught. She tugged harder, then turned the hoop over and looked at the mess of knots on the backside. Ayla sighed.
After three years with few other amusements permitted, she ought to have been better at thread craft by now. The trouble was, she didn’t enjoy it. It was hard to get good at something solely because Ditmar wanted her to be a proper lady. The enjoyments of her old life, reading and glassblowing, were strictly off-limits.
She stared dully back out the window. Boredom was better than terror, but hardly enjoyable.
There, at the base of the slopes, where the trees thinned. Far past the reach of the walled town that hugged the castle’s left.
Movement. Three men staggered out of the woods. She couldn’t make out details. Likely they were villagers, gone out hunting. Blackfell was too remote for the men to be from anywhere else. She watched them make their way across the distant snowy fields, like ants on white tile, then bent down to the embroidery hoop.
With slow coaxing, Ayla negotiated the thread through the tangle of knots and pulled the stitch tight. She was only halfway done with her griffon. The back of the embroidery was only going to get messier. Ought she just give up now and start over? She could pitch it into the fire.
She pierced the fabric with another stitch, and another, fighting to get each tight and neat. Then curiosity lifted her head back to the window.
The men were closer now. Distance still made them small, but she could see some detail now, and it was odd. They walked with difficulty, as if injury pained them. And they dressed as warriors, in armor. Not villagers. Ayla leaned towards the window, her embroidery momentarily forgotten as she studied the newcomers making their way across the field. The closerthey grew, the more certain she was that they were wounded. But what were theydoingin Blackfell? They weren’t Ditmar’s men, she would swear on that; the armor and clothes did not match. And the war wasn’t at Blackfell, it was far west and far east, at the corners of the country. Besides, during the stormfall a week past Ditmar had predicted there would be no more fighting before the spring. He knew more about such things than she did.
She glanced down at her embroidery hoop, then back out the window, and decided the unknown men were more interesting than a craft she wasn’t good at. Perhaps they were hunters, not of game, but of monsters, whose body parts fetched high prices for the magic they bore. Nixie hair, for instance, was worth a pretty sum; her father had once made quite a trade in it.
