Page 37 of Heart of Winter
Of the two of them, Amelia had always been the braver. Not reckless and wild, not like Rune, the last glimpse of whom had been his gray mount plunging wildly through the snow, screaming, Rune’s bow flying out of his hand as the wolves gave chase. (She gritted her teeth against that vision; was he alive? Dead? Had the wolves…She shook her head.) No, Amelia had always known when to pull back, when to try a different tack. She could keep her head in a crisis, barking orders to those who’d frozen in shock or fear. Amelia would certainly have found something smarter to do than climb up a tree and wait there, shaking, freezing, straining for sounds of life.
When the wolves first emerged from the trees, they’d surrounded their riding party.
“Bless me,” Hilda had breathed, voice high and quavering with terror.
Rune had shifted his aim from the stag as it fled, toward a wolf that slunk out from between two tree trunks. The wolves hadn’t pursued the deer – for whatever reason, they’d decided the humans on their heavy horses made for a better supper. He’d loosed his arrow – just as the wolf darted forward, and his horse reared.
Leif had lunged sideways and grabbed at Tessa’s reins, clamping down hard on his own. But her horse had danced sideways, as the growling swelled, and the wolves closed in. She’d seen Rune’s horse bolt, and then her own had done the same.
Hilda had shouted.
“Tessa!” Leif had called.
But then it had been a blur of white and green, of branches slapping at her face, the horse totally unresponsive to all her pleading tugs on the reins. She’d ducked low beneath a branch, only to realize a fallen log, half-buried in snow, lay in their path.
The horse had taken the jump early.
Tessa had come unseated, and then, when the horse veered sharply to one side, she’d fallen.
She’d heard the wolves growling, yipping, their blood up with the thrill of the hunt, and all she’d known to do was find the nearest low-hanging branch and climb.
Here she sat, still, fatigue creeping on in a way that she knew wasn’t just about the drain of adrenaline, but about the onset of hypothermia. She was going to freeze to death in a tree, hundreds of miles from home.
Fresh tears filled her eyes, and she blinked them stubbornly away.
A sound reached her.
She held her breath, listening.
It was the muffled thump and crunch of something walking through snow.Wolf, she thought, with a fresh wave of terror – but, no, it was much too heavy for a wolf; they floated along like wraiths. These steps thump-crunched closer, and closer, and closer, and then she heard a snort.
She shifted pine needles aside with a shaking hand and saw a horse standing just below her tree –herhorse, she realized; she recognized his saddle blanket.
“Oh,” she breathed, and his head whipped toward her, ears swiveling. The wide, white blaze on his face glowed in the moonlight. “Come here, Sigurd. Here, it’s me.” She made a kissing sound and reached out with her other hand, waggling her fingers in invitation.
He blew out a very loud snort, big nostrils flaring.
“Come on, Siggy. It’s alright.”
He debated a moment longer, then stepped forward and pressed his nose into her palm. He let out a low, deep breath that she read as relief.
“Good boy.Good boy, we’ll just forget about you dumping me earlier.”
Slowly, trying not to spook him, she slid down the tree trunk and took his reins; they’d flipped over his head at one point and he’d stepped on them, snapping them down the middle, but the leather was well-oiled and supple, and she was able to knot them back together. She checked him over for injury, but other than a light scratch on his flank, he seemed fine. Sweat had dried on his chest and neck, a white crust that she rubbed at ineffectually. “We’ll clean you up when we get back.”
With a little bit of hopping and straining, and maybe a pulled muscle in her shoulder, she managed to scramble up onto his high back.
“Gods,” she murmured, when she was seated, and trembling afresh. “I can’t believe you found me.”
Now she had to see if she could find the others.
The moonlight dimmed, and the snow picked up, but Sigurd seemed eager enough to walk along the natural path between the tree trunks. His ears flopped down to the sides to keep out the snow, and he wasn’t shying or staring like he had before. The wolves had moved on, hopefully.
She rode for a few minutes in silence before her fear of remaining lost won out over her fear of attracting predators. “Hilda?” she called. “Leif? Rune?” Her voice echoed strangely, bouncing back to her when it hit a tree trunk, fading when it struck snow. “Hilda! Leif! Rune!”
The snowflakes grew fatter, and more plentiful. Wind swirled around her, cutting straight through her wet clothes. Her fingers were clumsy on the reins, and she wondered how much longer she had before the cold took her surer and more fatally than any wolf could.
Finally, she heard a voice. Muffled, and indistinct, butthere, and she steered Sigurd toward it.
