Though in truth, she was so cold that part of her wondered if even a bonfire would warm her frozen flesh. Ithicana didn’t get cold, and this was the first time she’d experienced snow. It was so much worse than she’d thought it would be—like trudging through sand. It meltedand soaked her clothes when she walked next to Dippy but then froze whenever she was mounted, and her body ached where it wasn’t entirely numb. Her toes had lost sensation, and she had to trade off which hand held the reins, the other tucked into her armpit under her coat. Her body was racked with shivers, and though the Blackreaches were covered with a carpet of green conifer forests, it felt lifeless and desolate.
She couldn’t sustain this pace.
The growl of her stomach was audible over the crunch of the snow beneath Dippy’s hooves, but hunger wasn’t the reason twin tears rolled down her cheeks.
“James will feed you,” she whispered to her horse, who’d finished the last of his grain when dawn had lit the sky. “It’s me he’s angry with, not you.”
Dippy’s ears rotated back, listening to her.
“Just wait on the trail until they catch up,” she instructed. “Forage for grass under the snow and keep an ear out for mountain cats, understood?”
The only way to evade James would be to travel on foot. She had to leave the path and climb into the upper reaches of the mountains where horses couldn’t go. There she could find somewhere to hide and rest, and perhaps escape.
“Do what you have to do,” she mumbled to herself, taking a weary sip from her waterskin. “You need to get to Amarid. You need to find a ship. You need to get to Ithicana. You need to warn Aren that Amarid is in league with Alexandra. You need to tell him that they’re trying to take the bridge.”
A clear path.
A clear goal.
Yet instead of dismounting and heading into the trees, Ahnna continued down the narrow trail, unwilling to abandon the one source of comfort she had left.
From time to time, she glanced back. Though she saw no sign ofJames or his men, she knew they were getting closer. She’d smelled the smoke of their cook fire when the wind had shifted the prior night.
“Do it now, Ahnna,” she muttered. “So that they find Dippy during daylight.”
Ahnna knew it was foolish to strategize around the survival of a horse, but she couldn’t help herself.
Drawing Dippy to a halt, Ahnna slid off his back. She rested her head against his steaming shoulder, snowflakes falling all around them, and then flung her arms around his neck.
“I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “I’m sorry I got you into this mess, but it will be all right. James will feed you, and when you get back to Harendell, you’ll be well cared for. Green pastures and a dry stall at night.”
Her gelding leaned against her, and though it was likely because he was exhausted, Ahnna allowed herself to believe he felt the same grief that she did. She granted herself a moment to stand there with him, wishing that all her memories of her horse were not so entwined with memories of James.
He lied to you,she silently whispered.He stabbed you in the back.
Yet as she removed Dippy’s saddle to reveal his sweat-marked fur, she was hit with the vivid memory of discovering that James had been training her horse in his spare moments. Hours of work in the rain, and all so that she might sit atop a horse she hadn’t been ready for.
It was not lost on Ahnna that if James had not put in those hours of effort to train Dippy—and her—she would never have escaped Verwyrd. It made her wonder if James was cursing himself for the same reason.
Ahnna set the saddle in the snow, and then looked up the sharp slope the trail was cut into.
An idea struck.
High up the slope was a toppled tree, the roots torn from the earth and twisted horizontal. A common enough sight, but what made it interesting was that the spread of tree roots held back a pile of snow and debris from a previous avalanche.
If she could unleash the snow and debris held back by those tree roots to create a larger avalanche, it would cover the trail. James and his men would be able to climb over it, but the horses wouldn’t. They’d have to either abandon their mounts or backtrack to find another route, which would put them days behind her.
It could work.
But she didn’t have much time.
Ahnna swiftly resaddled Dippy and then led him at a trot down the trail until she was confident he was out of range. She tethered him to a tree, and then dug the canister of her remaining lamp oil out of her bag. With it clutched in her frozen fingers, she broke into a sprint back down the trail. The route up to the fallen tree was challenging in the deep snow, but using trees and bushes, she climbed up to the tangle of roots.
As she turned, her foot slipped and a wave of vertigo struck her as she caught her balance. The slope beneath her was terrifyingly steep, but it gave her an impressive view. Dippy was a tiny figure in the distance, her horse pawing at the snow to reach the dead grass beneath.
Ahnna looked the other direction.
“Fuck!” she hissed as riders appeared around a bend in the cliffside path. They were still a fair distance away, but there was no mistaking Maven, the black mare’s head held high and proud.
