Chapter 13 Ahnna
Ahnna
James was gaining on her.
Ahnna had pressed hard through the day and into the following night, but in the dawn light, exhaustion was taking hold. For her and her horse.
Dippy moved at a sluggish walk, head low, barely casting a sideways glance at birds when they burst out of the brush. More than once, she’d fallen asleep on his back and woken with total certainty that James had caught her.
Discovering the trail behind her empty brought little relief, because it was only a matter of time.
Her pursuers’ horses would be flagging as well, but the men themselves could take turns leading one another’s mounts as they slept.
They were better supplied, especially with grain for their mounts.
When they did stop, they could rest easy knowing that one of their ranks was on watch against mountain cats or worse, whereas Ahnna was sick with anxiety that something would attack her while she slept or that she’d freeze to death if her fire burned too low.
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 melted and 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 of James 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.
Nor was there any mistaking the figure on the mare’s back.
Ahnna’s heart skipped, then sped. This was the first time she’d seen James since he’d chased her through Verwyrd, and her head filled with the words he’d screamed at her as she swam across the river. You can’t run from this, Ahnna. There is nowhere you can go that I won’t find you!
It felt like prophecy becoming reality, and even from here, she could feel his anger.
Could see it in the way he rode, pushing Maven harder than she’d ever seen him do.
If the civilians she’d encountered had relayed her message, it had done nothing to aid her cause.
James wasn’t chasing her through the Blackreaches to capture her.
He was here for blood.
Though it had been stupid to do so, part of her had hoped he’d have seen through Alexandra’s schemes by now.
The expression on his face burned that hope to ash, so Ahnna reached for her own anger.
“Fuck you, James,” she snarled. “If you think I’m going to let a backstabbing piece of shit such as yourself be the end of me, you have another thing coming! ”
Ignoring the thunder of her heart, Ahnna assessed the roots of the fallen tree.
Beneath a layer of snow were boulders, chunks of ice, and broken branches, all primed to continue their path of destruction down the steep slope.
All she had to do was remove the barrier without getting herself killed in the process.
And she needed to do it quickly.
Sloshing lamp oil on the parts of the tree she needed to break, she cast aside the bottle and then drew her flint from her pocket.
The snow fell in heavy flakes around her, the wind bitter as it howled through the peaks. Her frozen fingers protested as she closed them around her knife hilt, but Ahnna only gritted her teeth and knocked the blade against the stone. A spark flew but fizzled in the air.
“Come on,” she growled, refusing to look to see how much closer James had traveled.
She cracked steel to stone again, fear clawing at her because not a single spark flew. She’d lit a thousand fires in her life, using the dampest wood, but her frozen fingers were clumsy.
Of their own volition, her eyes turned to James. Her stomach plummeted at how close he was.
“Come on!” Her pulse roared, and she cursed herself for not bringing her saddlebags: This was going to fail, and she’d have to run with nothing but the clothes on her back. “You’re an idiot! A failure! A fool!”
With each word, she struck the knife against the stone. On the last, a spark flew and landed on the oil.
Blue flame raced along the wood, but there was no time to admire the growing inferno. It would work. Or it wouldn’t.
And with the way things were going, she had to plan for failure.
With reckless speed, Ahnna hurled herself down the slope. Slipping and sliding and setting off tiny avalanches as she moved at an angle toward Dippy. She risked a backward glance, certain that the fire would have been put out by the heavy snow, but the tree and its roots were a veritable bonfire.
Except that was only one piece of the plan. All of this was for nothing if there was no avalanche.
Ahnna slid onto the path and rolled, nearly falling over the cliff on the opposite side. Clawing the snow, she scrambled upright and then broke into a sprint down the trail. Her side cramped and sweat rolled in rivulets down her back, but she had to get out of the avalanche’s path.
Dippy shifted restlessly as Ahnna untethered him, forcing her to vault onto his back, stirrups be damned.
Sensing her urgency, Dippy broke into a gallop. They careened down the trail at breakneck speed, Ahnna pressed low over his neck, trusting him to keep his footing as she glanced back.
To see James and Maven come galloping into view. Their eyes locked over the distance, and James leaned over his mare’s neck, urging her for speed.
“Run!” she shouted at her horse even as she prayed for the thunder of falling snow to deliver her from a fight she was as afraid to win as she was to lose.
But the only sound was the pounding of galloping hooves.