Chapter 26 #3
They worked without speaking, steaming the air with effort, scooping out the snow with their bare hands and throwing aside splintered rock.
Jane and Hilde caught up to them, but there wasn’t room for four, and Isobelle had no care for them, or indeed for Sylvie, across from her.
Each piece of stone or broken branch was an arm or a leg or a long black braid until she cleared the snow to reveal it as just another bit of debris.
The rope quivered once beneath her hands, a faint vibration that jolted her heart.
‘She’s there!’ Isobelle gasped, half to Sylvie, half to herself.
They dug harder, breath ragged, until at last she barked her knuckles against a hard surface – not rock, not wood, but the cold glint of chainmail, and the coarse weave of Gwen’s cloak, crusted with snow.
‘Here – help me!’ she cried, and together they pulled, heaving at that cloak until a dark head broke the surface, hair tangled with ice and grit.
Then Gwen’s face tilted up, pale but fierce, her eyes blinking against the sudden light. She had her arm locked tight around Orson’s chest, dragging his limp, dead weight up with her. Blood streaked his side, staining the snow in ribbons, but he breathed.
Isobelle seized Gwen’s free hand and hauled, Sylvie bracing the other side, until both knights were pulled clear of the drift.
Gwen collapsed to her knees, still clutching Orson, her shoulders heaving as though she had wrestled the mountain itself.
She looked up once at Isobelle, just long enough for Isobelle to see the wild light in her eyes.
Isobelle scarcely recalled moving, but she was in Gwen’s arms a moment later, inspecting her for wounds, brushing snow from her cheeks and throat. Sylvie had bent over Orson, declaring in a shaking voice that he was alive.
There was no sign of Grimshaw – there wouldn’t be. He was at the bottom of the ravine, buried under several tons of rock and snow.
It took some time for them to catch their breaths, to properly bandage Orson’s arm, and to find the lump beneath his thick blond hair that explained his unconscious state. By the time they’d run out of tasks, the sun had begun to dip low towards the horizon.
‘There’s no way we can get the carriage back across this debris,’ Gwen said finally, broaching the subject no one wanted to raise. ‘And we can’t leave it and the horses here, they’ll die. And Orson can’t travel by himself.’
‘I can drive a carriage,’ Jane said. Her face had regained its colour and then some, the cold blooming like roses in her cheeks. When the others turned to stare at her, she blushed more deeply. ‘Remember that squire I was seeing, during the tournament a few months back? He taught me.’
‘We can’t let you travel alone,’ Hilde protested, ‘with only a wounded man for protection.’
‘Maybe you should all go.’ Isobelle heard the words leave her lips before she’d fully formed them in her mind. She was used to launching herself into conversations without being certain what she intended to say, but rarely had the words struck her own heart so sharply.
At her side, half concealed by the drifts of snow, she felt Gwen take her hand.
‘We can’t leave you,’ Sylvie muttered, though Isobelle could see in her eyes the fear and worry, echoes of what had taken hold of them in Galanty-Uponne-the-Sea.
‘Gwen and I can keep each other safe,’ Isobelle went on, lifting her chin and squeezing Gwen’s hand. ‘But it’s … it’s harder, you see, if …’
‘If you have to protect all of us as well.’ Sylvie’s eyes met hers, carrying a hint of her characteristic dry humour. ‘Or worry about the curse taking us too.’
‘Go, travel back to Darkhaven and get Orson to rest and heal. And you can tell Whimsitt …’ Gwen’s voice trailed off, and her eyes slid towards the emptiness on the other side of the road, the side that had been washed down into the ravine, along with half the cliff face … and Grimshaw.
No one had said his name. They didn’t say it now.
‘We all saw it,’ Hilde said quietly. ‘He died in an avalanche while escorting us from the town.’
‘His death was an accident,’ Jane agreed firmly.
‘If only I could be sure he’d believe you,’ Gwen muttered. ‘We all know what Whimsitt is like when a group of women try to tell him an unpleasant truth.’
‘I saw it, too.’ Orson’s voice was very quiet, but it brought every single head whipping around. Jane and Hilde both bent to inspect him so suddenly that their heads clashed together, and Jane muttered a particularly unsavoury oath.
Orson let out a groan, and shifted experimentally, testing how bad the pain might be if he sat up.
‘It shouldn’t be so, but he’ll believe me if he doesn’t believe you.
Go. You’ve enough time to get back to town before dark, and we’ve got to move if we’re to make it out of the pass.
’ When Isobelle glanced at Gwen, hesitating, Orson’s voice strengthened. ‘Go, I’ll take care of them.’
He tried to finish sitting up, swore, and fell back over.
Sylvie snorted, put her hand over Orson’s mouth, and looked from Gwen to Isobelle. ‘I’ve got him. Go. He’ll be fine, and so will we.’
And so, as they all stood and brushed the snow from their garments, Isobelle found herself crushed in a tangle of arms. Hilde’s curls in her face, Jane muttering something fierce and fond in her ear, Sylvie squeezing her so tightly it nearly lifted her from the ground.
For an instant she was back in her suite in Darkhaven, crowded together around a pot of tea, whispering secrets, holding space for one another.
She shut her eyes and breathed them in, and tried to fix it all in her memory.
When at last they pulled apart, there were no more words to say. Hilde and Jane held Orson up between them, helping him back towards the carriage on the other side of the debris field as Sylvie limped alongside them.
Gwen swung back into Achilles’s saddle, waiting.
Isobelle lingered, watching until their friends reached the carriage.
Then she turned, gathered Princess Buttercup’s reins, and mounted.
Together she and Gwen rode their horses back towards Galanty-Uponne-the-Sea, leaving the others behind in the snow, the silence of the pass pressing close around them.
She and Gwen were on their own.