She's weakening.
The signs are clear to anyone who knows how to read them. Shorter steps. More frequent stumbles. The metallic scent of blood growing stronger as whatever injury she carries worsens in the cold.
Won't last much longer in this.
Part of me wonders why I care. I've never been one for rescue missions or heroic gestures. The Ice-Blood Clan values pragmatism over sentiment, survival over nobility. We take care of our own and leave the rest to sort themselves out.
So why am I here?
The question haunts me as I struggle through the deepening snow. Maybe it's the desperation I scent on the wind, the raw terror of someone pushed beyond their limits. Maybe it's professional curiosity. I've never tracked noble spoor before, and the challenge intrigues me.
Or maybe you're just getting soft in your old age.
The thought makes me snarl into the wind. Twenty-eight winters haven't made me soft. They've made me careful, calculating, aware of which risks are worth taking.
This isn't one of them.
But I keep walking anyway.
The ravine takes another turn, opening into a wider channel carved from living rock. Ice sheathes the walls here, thick as a man's arm and clear as winter sky. Through it, I can see the frozen remains of last summer's growth, stunted trees and hardy shrubs locked in crystalline death.
Beautiful, in its way.
And deadly as a blade between the ribs.
The wind funnels through the canyon with renewed fury, driving snow and ice chips like tiny arrows. My skin stings where they hit, and I pull my hood lower to protect my face. The temperature continues to drop, well past the point where exposed flesh freezes in minutes.
She can't survive this.
Unless she finds shelter soon, the storm will claim her. Another casualty of the mountain's indifferent cruelty, another set of bones to be discovered when the snows melt in spring.
If they're ever discovered at all.
The wilderness swallows people without trace. Hunters and herders, traders and travelers, the wise and the foolish alike. The mountain doesn't discriminate. It kills rich and poor with equal enthusiasm.
But something about this trail, this desperate flight into the frozen wastes, pulls at me like a fish hook in my gut. I've spent my adult life reading sign and spoor, learning the stories tracks tell about those who make them.
This one's different.
The prints speak of someone pushed past breaking, someone who chose the certain death of winter over whatever waitedbehind. That kind of desperation doesn't come from mere discomfort or displeasure.
It comes from terror.
What could frighten a noble lady so badly that she'd risk the killing cold rather than face it? What fate could be worse than freezing to death alone in the wilderness?
The kind that involves marriage contracts and political alliances.
I've heard the stories. Seen the results, sometimes, when merchant caravans bring news from the southern kingdoms. Young women wed to old men, daughters sold to secure treaties, brides who disappear rather than honor arrangements made without their consent.
Still not your concern.
But my conscience, dormant for so many years it's almost atrophied, stirs uneasily in my chest.
The trail leads around another bend, and suddenly I catch a new scent on the wind. Blood, yes, but also something else.
Wolves.
The pack scent is unmistakable, musk and hunger, wet fur and the metallic tang of recent kills. They're close, maybe just ahead in the maze of stone and ice.
