Hard hooves pounded the earth as horse and rider stormed the pass north of Cliving. The winter-kissed wind from Wildermore howled down the narrow gullet, lured by the wide, hungry Norcrofts. Dytha’s hide-clad thighs squeezed her horse’s ribs as it raced. She leaned to aid his haste, pressed close to his neck, his mad huffing matching the drumbeat of his hooves.
Her heart hammered, her eyes stung, and she gulped down the mountain wind as they raced for the northern border. The patrol pass was steep and narrow. After the fourth switch-back she grunted, heaving with the effort of keeping saddle on the hard, choppy road.
The pass widened, and they picked up speed. Cliving sank from sight beneath the crest of the cliff and fell further behind with every hoofbeat. The morning crept up the eastern ridge of Wildermore, stained yellow from the brown, barren plain.
Forget, forget. The words panted in her head. Forget, forget, forget, with every hoofbeat crashed. Forget was the sound the blood made thrumming in her ears.
Tears rose as the wind batted her eyes. Through them she saw sparse, stunted trees—brittle, twisted, and bare. But the dead tufted brush reminded her of the lush, quivering sea of grass she’d stood on the day before. Forget, forget. She rode harder as the image chased her. She did not want to relive what was still so raw.
Then it struck. His image appeared in view of the plain, followed swiftly by the long-low grassland below Cliving. She cried out, but there was no shaking it. She was swept back into yesterday’s memory as she once again watched his dominant gaze demand from her the truth. "Why are you sorry, my lady?" She couldn’t answer. Even now she felt the coward. “Why are you sorry?”
“No!” she shouted and spurred her steed on.
Her thoughts raced to order themselves. Months ago, she’d met Lord Sheldian and his brothers. The Yule spirit and new company had lowered her guard, made her feel the loneliness of being absent the one whose eyes she dreamed of most. She’d not seen her dear Woodman for months, and as always, when he disappeared, never knew when she would again. So she let herself joke with the Cliving noble a little too liberally, hint a little too much, smile a little too wide. She opened up to naming him a friend. When she learned their father’s health was in decline, she vowed to travel to Cliving when the roads had thawed to pay her respects before his passing.
“Was all this influenced by the trade agreement, hmm? Give someone the impression there might be something, have them agree to an idea of them coming to help for the return of grain? Was that it?" His words on the plain had gutted her.
She had wanted an alliance—Fréasburg and Cliving, the strength of their two houses. Her people had strong sword-arms but empty bellies, and his people were plagued by wargs as they tilled their endless fields of grain. She had wanted it for her people and for her family. Perhaps the ill-blood between her mother and the Norcrofts’ Reeve could be put to rest at last. It would not remove the weregild from her father’s head, but it would lessen the price. She made the mistake, however, of letting herself imagine a different alliance, also—what life as his wife would look like.
It had been harmless. He was married. She’d had success avoiding bonding herself to any man for years, now, and was not prepared to do so soon. So she smiled at him, she cared for him, even dreamt of what riding into battle at his side would feel like, and the victory afterwards…
She made good on her word and made it to Cliving, at last. She was too late to meet the Graevewillow patriarch, but she’d been glad to be there for Sheldian as he mourned his father’s passing. She let herself feel more for him. As he opened his home to her and her people, she opened up a little more to him.
“Thank you for making me see so fully how much of a fool I was.” His words were like a war-hammer to her ribs. It had been a mistake—all of it. She chased herself away from Cliving with a cry to the murky dawn.
Spring came latest to Wildermore of all the holds. The daffodil shoots that thurst up through the mulch in other, fairer climes still dormant under the downs’ soil. The trees were sparse and stunted, not yet flecked with buds. The hamlets were a house or two at most. She had no map, not even in her head, but she needed to reach where winter still lingered in the shadow of the Misty Mountains and be lost in it.
She had never been to Wildermore, and had only an image of Forlaw in her mind from how she’d heard it resembled Wychurst, her grandfather’s seat of power. She knew the walled city lay north and west of Cliving, so those were the forks she took.
When she felt the touch of snow, at last, she pulled her horse to a halt and stared out at her mother’s homeland. The horizon was wreathed in forests and hills. Outposts like matchsticks dotted the drumlins, between which the roads curved, connecting frail, colorless villages. She remembered tales of her mother’s childhood, how some mornings in winter they would open the door to find the snow had risen right up to the roof, and they would have to climb their way out.
It would let her feel something, anything, other than this. She threw off her mantle and shivered as she felt the cool air kiss away her sweat. Without the ride, the truth of her state sank in, and she bent over her horse’s neck and wept.
"How would you feel if someone you cared about told you, they would rather be with another..." She had never seen him so angry. She realized the depth to which she’d hurt him, to enrage him so, and it felt like bile in her heart.
She wept until the heaving hurt her ribs. The cold made steel of her joints. Her horse chose to walk the rest of the road, and she let him, guiding the direction by a slow pull of the reins, lost in a haze of regret. How could she face them after she’d been such a fool? Her father, Orduin, the Oathsworn, Barst… How could she continue to smile in the Reeve’s company, to pass the mead cup and swear a treaty. She’d failed them, and Sheldian most of all.
“Good luck with the other man,” he’d said with his back to her. The blow landed worst of all. It flooded her skin with blood. All the victory of the warg-hunt the day before meant nothing. Everything meant nothing. She buried her face in her horse’s mane as she heard him, again and again in her head, speak the crushing doom.
“I hope he opens his eyes one day."
