The thought comes unbidden, and I curse my own presumption. Could be a man with small feet. Could be a child, though the stride length argues against it. Could be anyone.
But the scent doesn't lie. Rosewater and silk. Fear and female musk.
Definitely a woman. Young, from the lightness of her step. Hurt, from the blood and favored gait. Terrified.
Wind gusts through the ravine, setting loose snow to dancing in spirals around my boots. The storm-scent grows stronger, sharp with ozone and the promise of violence. I have maybe thirty minutes before the blizzard hits in earnest.
Enough time to reach shelter. If I turn back now.
Instead, I follow the prints.
The trail leads into the maze of ice-carved channels that scar this part of the mountain. Some are shallow enough to step across; others plunge into black depths where even my keen eyes can't penetrate. The woman—I'm certain now it's a woman, chose her path poorly, following what appeared to be the easiest route without considering where it led.
Straight into wolf territory.
The realization makes my jaw clench. The dire packs that hunt these mountains show no mercy to the weak or foolish. They'll tear apart a lone traveler without hesitation, noble blood or common making no difference to their hunger.
Still not your problem.
But my pace quickens anyway.
The wind picks up, howling between the rock walls. Snow begins to fall in earnest now, fat flakes that melt on my nude skinbefore the cold turns them to ice. The storm will erase the trail within minutes once it hits full force.
Last chance to turn back.
I press on.
The ravine narrows, forcing me to walk single-file between towering walls of blue-white ice. The woman's prints grow more erratic here, weaving from side to side like a drunk's path. The blood spots increase in frequency.
Exhaustion setting in. Hypothermia maybe.
A new scent joins the others, wet wool and horse sweat. She had a mount, then. Lost it somewhere back in the maze of stone and ice. Probably fell, from the smell of fear-sweat clinging to the trail.
Fell hard, from the look of things.
The prints show where she went down, a chaotic sprawl of impressions in the snow. Fabric scraps cling to sharp rocks, silk, dyed deep blue like summer sky. Expensive. The kind of cloth that costs more than most folk see in a year.
Definitely nobility. Probably high nobility.
Which raises uncomfortable questions. What's a highborn lady doing alone in the northern wastes? Where are her guards, her retinue, her escort? No noble travels without protection, especially not into the deep wilderness.
Unless she's running.
The thought sends an unwelcome chill down my spine that has nothing to do with the growing storm. I know the stories, whispered around clan fires on long winter nights. Forced marriages. Political alliances sealed with unwilling brides. Young women who'd rather face the mountain's mercy than their father's choices.
None of your concern, hunter.
But my feet keep moving, following the increasingly desperate trail winding into the ravine.
The storm hits hard, visibility narrows to nothing.
One moment I can see twenty paces ahead; the next, the world disappears behind a wall of driving snow and ice. Wind screams through the canyon with the fury battering me from all sides. The temperature plummets until each breath burns my lungs like swallowed fire.
Should have turned back.
But it's too late now. The storm will rage for hours, maybe days. My only choice is to push forward and hope I can find shelter before the cold claims me.
The trail becomes harder to follow as fresh snow fills the prints. I have to work by scent now, following the fading traces of fear and nobility through the white chaos. More than once I lose the path entirely, circling back on myself until I pick up the trail again.
