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All content of this story is copyright {2014} by Returning_Writer_Guy and is my intellectual property. This is purely a work of fiction and fantasy and not based on any truthful events. No individuals were harmed as none of the individuals in these stories exist. This story is not to be redistributed under any circumstances without my express written permission.
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The wilds of DarkFyre Dale were a raw, wretched place, and never more so than in the grip of winter.
For the first few days they traveled mostly through the open, sweeping meadows and plains of the western highlands. During the all too brief summer months the highlands were an entirely different place characterized by tall, lush green grasses swaying in the cool wind, speckled with notes of color from wildflowers. They teamed with small, secret life. Bees buzzing, drone-like and purposeful, and field mice scurried about in the abundant shelter of the dark grasses. Roaming herds of wild horses grazed over the grass with long, strong legs silhouetted, rising up to powerful haunches as they bent graceful necks down to sample the tasty greens.
In winter, it was different. The flatlands were abandoned and covered over with the unchanging, beautifully dreary snow. The airy powder suffocated the lush green grasses, froze out the flowers, sending the field mice into their burrows to hibernate away the cold. It hung heavy on the sparse, scattered trees and dusted the great boulders that rose like lonely, forgotten sentinels. They were scattered about in groups, cast aside and forgotten by ancient giants that forsook the Northlands long ago in favor of someplace blessedly fucking warm.
Growing up in the Dale, Silmaria thought she understood what cold was. Oh, she'd had a good idea, true. But nothing of her experience of DarkFyre winters had prepared her for the travails of traveling through the wilds. Always before, when she was exposed to the bitter, biting cold, she'd had walls and a roof and shelter to retire to at the end of the day. Even the scant nights traveling to Trelling's Rest after House IronWing burned didn't fully prepare her for what they faced.
Now, there was no escaping the cruel grip of the torturous freeze. When they bedded down for the night, they were lucky if they managed to find a stone large enough to offer some cover from the wind that came whipping dagger-like to knife cold down to the bone. Though Rael was reluctant to set up fires, worried that if they were, indeed, being followed the flames would act as a beacon, the cold left them with no choice; it was construct a fire, or freeze to death.
Even sleeping as closely as they dared to the fire, the nights were brutally cold. Rael and Silmaria had quickly set all propriety aside and slept rolled up together with all their combined blankets and cloaks bundled around them as they huddled together for warmth. Silmaria was eternally grateful for the Nobleman during those nights. He cast off an enormous amount of body heat, more than any man she'd ever known, as if he was deeply warmed from within. If not for his body's warmth, the Gnari girl would have frozen for sure, even with all their blankets and cloaks and clothes. The cold was a constant oppression, and the only reason Silmaria was able to sleep through the misery of their conditions was due to how utterly exhausted she was at the end of the day's march.
The days weren't much of an improvement. They walked, endlessly walked, on and on in an unforgiving trudge through snow that sometimes piled up around the bottoms of her thighs. Rael was relentless. He hardly ever tired, and he refused to let her rest or fall behind. Silmaria had complained once or twice, but he hardly slowed his pace at all, reminding her gently but firmly that she'd wanted to come, and he'd warned her. Then he would tilt his head in that way of his, half curious, half cocky, and ask her if she would be okay. Silmaria heard the unspoken challenge in his voice: Can you keep up?
It made her seethe every time, and every time she went trudging along faster, cursing all Nobles and Warriors and stupidly stubborn Knights, sometimes under her breath, sometimes not.
When they weren't marching on and on until her poor cold feet blistered in her boots, Rael was at work in other areas. When they stopped for a rest, Rael scouted around, usually looking for some kind of vantage to get a measure of their surroundings. A tall, sturdy rock, or a hill overlooking the otherwise flat land. A few times he even made his way up a tree when he found one that grew tall and strong. He surveyed the land around them, took his bearings, and adjusted their course as needed.
Their food was rationed carefully. They both grew leaner during those days of forced marches and less nourishment. Rael did everything he could to bolster their food supplies, stringing up snares for snow rabbits and other small game when they made camp, and ranging for small deer and mountain elk with his bow.
And so their days went. It was near a week before the wide flatlands of the Western Plains began to change, turning into the gently rolling hills of IceMarch Rise. They trudged gradually upward, and trees and woodlands became more common. Tall pines and thick, old evergreens gathered in small, secretive groves on the rocky hills climbing in ever-swelling humps toward the Frostfall Mountains. The days seemed to stretch longer with each dawn, harder and more grueling than the last.
The journey changed Rael, it seemed. Already serious and intense, he became even more focused during their travels, as if all his being were tuned to taking them deeper into the wild and escaping from the Dale at all costs. He made it quite obvious early on that he was to be obeyed implicitly and unwaveringly. He was not cruel, not even unkind, really. He continued to treat her with the same quiet kindness and respect he always did. But there was a hardness to him now, a sternness and demanding quality that would brook no argument and give no rest or reprieve to the pace he demanded until the day was over and he was satisfied they'd covered enough ground. His temper was even and patient as she balked and struggled to adapt to his pace. But he was unyielding, and he smiled less.
Silmaria tried. Truly she did. She put her all into meeting his demands. She rose to the relentless challenge he set forth, putting her heart and soul into keeping up with his pace. She stubbornly pressed ahead. Her will was born of the desire to prove to him she could do it, both as an act of defiance, and also to gain his approval. She couldn't say which was her true motivation from one moment to the next, but she was determined to do it all the same.
Still, all the determination in the world didn't make the journey a single step shorter or one bit less demanding. As much as she was loathe to admit it, Silmaria was wearing thin.
"This is a lot harder than I thought it was going to be," Silmaria admitted quietly one night. They camped high on a hillock, just under the edge of a copse of trees. The canopy of branches would have been great shelter for the fat, falling snowflakes that had been following them the last two days. Only tonight, the sky was empty and clear, the unforgivingly thick blanket of clouds finally giving way to a captivating view of the cool winter sky with its distinctively gleaming stars spread by the thousands like diamond dust cast into the void. The Gnari girl sat, her knees drawn up to her chest, staring up into the sparkling darkness while Rael sat across the serenely crackling fire, running a whetstone along the blade of his greatsword.
"I warned you," he reminded her, not unkindly.
