Heart of Winter (The Drake Chronicles Book 1)

by Lauren Gilley

  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 – her horse, 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, but there, and she steered Sigurd toward it.

  The trees crowded in closer and closer, branches snagging at her cloak and hair.

  But the voice grew louder. “…anyone?”

  “Rune!” she gasped, and heeled Sigurd into a quicker walk, his head bowing and knees lifting high against the deepening drifts.

  She ducked under a pair of low, interlaced branches, and a great spread of indigo velvet opened before her. A cloud scudded away from the moon, and she realized she was looking at the sky – at a long, sheer drop over an edge, and beyond, kissed now with moonlight, the glimmer of a frozen lake, and the dark folds of mountains. A figure stood at the precipice, long hair blowing and snow-flaked, cloak concealing him like a shroud, all save the long, gleaming blade of the sword he held at his side, its edge splashed with black.

  Tessa pulled Sigurd to a halt. “Rune?” she asked.

  He lifted his head – slowly, too slowly – and there was just enough light to see the blank hollowness of his expression. Black splotches flecked his jaw and cheeks, beneath his stubble. “Tessa?” he asked and sounded confused.

  She glanced over both her shoulders, searching for threats, for the gleam of eyes waiting in the tree shadows, and when she found nothing, she slid down off Sigurd’s back and walked to Rune. The wind was behind him, blowing toward her, and just as she reached him, she recognized the hot, copper scent that clung to him: blood.

  It was blood on his face. On his sword.

  “Rune.” She laid a hand on his chest, gently, and tried to keep calm. “Are you alright? Are you hurt?”

  He dragged a breath in through his mouth, and when he swallowed it was with a rough, choked sound. “I’m fine. I’m…but Ris…” He gestured behind him with the sword, a small gesture that looked like it taxed him greatly. His shoulders were slumped beneath the wet fur of his cloak. His muscles, she could feel through their layers of leather glove and tunic, shivered – with cold, with effort, with exhaustion, with emotion, or some combination of all.

  “Ris?” she asked, and then remembered that was his horse’s name. “Is he…?” With a sinking dread opening up in her belly, she moved to stand beside him, and glanced down the slope at his back.

  The drop was steep, studded with rocks large enough to rear up through the snow cover, and long. It went down, and down, and down, the snow marred now with deep gouges where something large had tumbled down it – down to the crumpled, but unmistakable form that lay at the base of the hill. Unmoving, head flung back, the snow black with spilled blood around it: Rune’s mount. Dead.

  “Oh, Rune,” she murmured. She touched his arm, and he flinched away a fraction. “I’m so sorry.”

  “He broke…all of his legs, when we hit. I had to…” His wrist turned a fraction, so the blood on the blade winked in the moonlight.

  She laid her hand on his arm again, and though she felt the tension in his biceps, he didn’t try to move from under her touch again. “You did the right thing. He was suffering.”

  He let out a shuddering breath, and shook his head.

  “Are you okay? Were you hurt?” When he didn’t respond, she slid her hand up to his shoulder, fingers carding through wet fur. “Rune?”

  Slowly, he twisted toward her. The wind blew the hair off his face, and just before the light dimmed, a fresh batch of snow clouds hiding the moon, she saw the nasty gash at his eyebrow, the bruise already forming at his temple. His strange silence and disconnect made new, frightening sense, then.

  “Rune.” She reached up, and ghosted her gloved fingertips against the mark. “Does it hurt? Are you…?” She wasn’t sure what questions to ask someone with a potentially-serious head wound. Oliver would have known. Oliver would have done all the right things.

  Her eyes started to burn again, and she couldn’t hold the tears this time; a few slipped down her cheeks, scalding hot against cold skin. She was so very cold, shaking, and trembling, and scared, and sad for this boy who’d just had to kill his own horse, both of them lost in the forest.

  His glassy stare tracked sluggishly back and forth across her face a moment, a
nd then he blinked – squeezed his eyes shut tight, grimacing from the effort. When he opened them, his eyes were clearer, if filled with pain. A moment later, his pupils expanded, gaze going out of focus again.

  But his expression became concerned, and he gripped her arm, suddenly, with his free hand, tight enough to hurt, a little. “Tessa. Are you alright? You’re crying.”

  “I’m…” What was the sense in lying, now? “I think we’re going to freeze to death if we don’t find our way back.”

  He nodded, and stepped back; sheathed his dirty sword. “Right. Sigurd can carry us both.” He took a step that wavered. “But maybe you better steer.”

  ~*~

  The torches offered enough light to reveal four sets of deep hoofprints leading out away from the palace grounds, already beginning to fill with the fresh snowfall. When the flames began to sputter, Bjorn and Magnus used them to light fresh torches from their saddlebags. The tracks followed a narrow, twisting stream, up a gentle slope, and, finally, into a patch of dense pine forest, the trees tall enough to blot out the sky. When the clouds gave it a chance, moonlight fell in small puddles on the glistening snow cover.

  The cold was vicious against Oliver’s face, and the temperature seemed to be dropping. He tugged on his hood, trying to wriggle back even deeper inside it. He was glad of the borrowed cloak, but wished that he’d thought to ask for boots, too. The wind bit right through the thin kidskin of his own.

  The snow was deeper here, and the going slower, the horses lifting their feathered legs high as they stepped their way carefully through it. Erik’s horse slowed enough that he rode only a half-stride ahead of Oliver.

  Looking for a distraction from his frozen toes – and his fear for Tessa – he said, “Do they normally stay out past dark?”

  A half-halt, a quiet flexing of one gloved hand on the reins, brought Erik back so they rode abreast. Though their horses were of a height, Erik was still taller; his profile was stern and forbidding in the flicker of torchlight. “No,” he ground out, his jaw clenched tight. “Only once, years ago, and the tongue-lashing they earned for it was enough to have them home before sunset ever since.”

  “Hm,” Oliver hummed, to keep from pointing out that they hadn’t had a lovely young woman along with them those other times.

  As if sensing his thought, Erik glanced toward him, already-harsh face carved with shadows. “Nothing untoward has happened to your cousin. That I can swear to you. My nephews can be impulsive and reckless, but they would never dishonor her like that.”

  “Well, that’s good to know. She’s only been killed and eaten by bears, then.”

  Erik’s expression didn’t change, but Oliver could have sworn he saw a glimmer of amusement in his eyes. Or maybe that was just the torchlight. “There ae worse things than bears in these forests,” he said, dryly, facing forward again. “Bears don’t hunt in packs.”

  “…packs?”

  “Oi!” Bjorn shouted ahead of them. He’d pulled his horse to a halt, and they reined up on either side of him.

  The wavering torchlight illuminated a wide patch of thoroughly trampled snow. The regular tracks of four horses that they’d followed steadily gave way to a chaotic, churned up mess of tracks, and skid marks, the mud beneath the snow showing in wide gashes. At least, he hoped it was mud…

  A gasp caught in his throat when he saw a hulking figure standing just beyond the reach of the light, something huge, and dark, its breath steaming like dragon smoke. Oh, gods, there really are bears…

  Erik dismounted.

  “What – what are you doing?” Oliver stuttered. “You can’t–”

  But Erik strode forward, into the wrecked snow, and the beast moved toward him.

  Oliver glanced wildly toward Bjorn. Some captain of the king’s guard! “You’re just going to let him–”

  The beast stepped into the light, shadows sliding back from its face – it’s white-blazed face. A horse. It was a horse.

  Bjorn let out a low, rough chuckle.

  Erik caught the horse’s dangling reins and stroked its nose, its neck. Led it closer to their party, so that the torchlight illuminated the white crust of dried lather on the animal’s chest, and several deep gouges along its flank where the blood had dried black and shiny. The animal pressed its muzzle into the king’s chest and heaved a deep sigh; Oliver had the sense it was taking comfort in him, a frightened creature reassured by the king’s commanding presence.

  Erik ran his gloved hand up a strong shoulder and touched the pommel of the saddle. “This doesn’t belong to either of the boys. This was Tessa or Hilda’s horse.”

  It was an effort to swallow; an even greater one to keep his voice steady. “What made those marks on its side?”

  Erik stepped farther back along the horse’s side, and fingered the gouges; the horse’s skin shivered beneath his touch, but it didn’t shy away. “Tree branches, I’d say. The spacing isn’t right for claws.”

  “Oh. Right. Okay, well…”

  Erik led the horse forward, and handed its reins off to Lars. Then he remounted his own horse. “The trails split up, here. Something spooked them, and they all bolted in all directions.”

  “Gods.”

  “We’ll find them,” Erik said, firmly.

  They moved on, following the trail that led straight ahead, the one that offered the clearest path between tree trunks.

  Finding the horse had sent a fresh, hot wave of panic through Oliver, warming him from the inside out, though the tremors had only gotten worse. “What – what could have spooked the horses that badly?”

  “Do you truly want me to answer that?” Erik asked.

  “No. I guess not.”

  The forest was eerily quiet around them, the snow muffling the normal sorts of woodland sighs, and calls, and chirps that Oliver was familiar with back home. The snow crunched under the horse’s hooves, and the torches crackled. A low, far off thump had him twisting his head around, blinking against the dark.

  “Snow falling,” Erik explained.

  A strong gust funneled down the column, blowing Oliver’s hood back. As he tugged it up again, he saw that the snow was intensifying, the flakes fatter, more frequent, heavier on his lashes, as he tipped his head back and searched fruitlessly for the moon. “What if we don’t find them?” he said, mostly to himself.

  “I won’t return until I’ve found them,” Erik said, and his tone brooked no arguments. The stern voice of a king – undercut by the worry of an uncle.

  It was oddly reassuring, even if Oliver was convinced they’d all freeze to death before the night was through.

  But then–

  A distant shout.

  Erik threw up a hand, and all of them halted.

  Oliver held his breath.

  “…hullo?”

  Erik jerked up straighter in his saddle, startling his horse, who snorted. He cupped both hands around his mouth, and shouted, “Leif!”

  A long pause. And then, closer, clearer: “Uncle!”

  Erik spurred his horse into a trot, taking off past Bjorn, out of the torchlight.

  “Ah, bollocks,” Bjorn muttered, and put heels into his own mount.

  Oliver’s horse hurried to follow, and the huge, swooping stride of the gigantic horse was nothing like his own fleet-footed mare. He gritted his teeth, gripped the reins tight, and stood in his stirrups to keep from being bounced right out of the saddle.

  They trotted up a low rise, and when the ground leveled, Bjorn reined up. Oliver’s horse halted beside it, and in the torchlight, he saw that Erik had dismounted, and had his elder nephew by both shoulders, inspecting him critically.

  Leif had scratches on his cheeks, and his cloak looked heavy and wet, dragging at him; his face was etched with fatigue, but he was saying, “I’m fine, I’m fine. I managed to stay seated.” He stood now at his horse’s shoulder, and Hilda the maid, rumpled, her hair coming unbraided, sat in the saddle. There was a thick bundle behind her, and when Oliver saw the fur, hi
s heart leaped, thinking of Tessa’s cloak – but then he saw the dead gleam of an eye, and a lolling pink tongue, and he realized what was tied behind the saddle: wolves. At least four of them. Dead.

  “We didn’t know we were being tracked,” Leif said. “We were riding along, and there was a stag. Rune was in the lead, and he took out his bow. The wind changed, and then…” He gulped audibly as he swallowed, and wiped his nose with the back of his glove. For all that he was big, and strong, he was still painfully young, Oliver was reminded. His voice quavered with the regret and uncertainty of youth. “I’m sorry, I should have been more watchful, I should have seen–”

  Erik’s hands flexed as he squeezed the boy’s shoulders. “Hush. You couldn’t have known. Wolves are silent when they want to be. They know how to stay downwind.”

  Leif didn’t look convinced.

  “Where’s your brother? And Tessa?”

  “We’ve been searching for them. But I don’t–” His voice caught, and he didn’t continue.

  “We’ll find them.” Erik laid a hand along his cheek, briefly, in encouragement. Then lifted his gaze. “Hilda, we found your horse. Are you all right?”

  In a watery voice, she said, “I’m fine, your majesty, only twisted my ankle like a complete ninny.” She drew in a shuddering breath. “It’s Lady Tessa I’m worried about. Oh, the poor dear, she must be so frightened – and the wolves–”

  “Hilda,” Erik said, patiently. “It will be fine.” To Leif: “Mount up, and we’ll keep looking.”

  Leif swung onto Hilda’s horse, and they were off again.

  Oliver stole another glance at the dead wolves. “How did you kill them?”

  “My sword,” Leif said, distractedly, without a hint of pride. His gaze scanned back and forth across the dark forest, searching.

  “They’re getting bolder,” Magnus said, from behind, and Oliver twisted around in his saddle to look at him. “The wolves,” he explained. “Sure, they’re hungrier once winter’s good and set in, but it’s rare they’ll attack a man on a horse – much less a party of four horses. Things are changing, though.”