They broke camp with the morning light and given everyone’s sudden health, agreed to walk together, at least for a while. They felt better, but it was still bitterly cold. They trudged though the snow silently. Norman Gilead tried to engage the Snow Witch in conversation, but she seemed tired and the howling wind made conversation difficult. Her guardian protector walked on her other side and kept a hand on her at all times.
The sky unleashed a heavy load of thick snow upon them such that every step meant walking through thick slush. It was tiring, cold and wet, but they formed a queue and made steady progress.
The heavy snow was in fact a blessing for Alandra. Her trackers lost her position and had to set up a network of checkpoints instead.
They took a late lunch at Breaker’s Point and agreed to part company there. Norman Gilead was deeply disappointed, but his men wanted to head into town to resupply and wait out the storm. Alandra could not. The town would be crawling with night stalkers by now.
So they agreed to part ways. Gilead again thanked the Snow Witch for her blessings bestowed and vowed to pay her back tenfold for saving his life. She told him that only if he pursued his vision would their paths cross again.
She and Morgan watched as Gilead and his men set off toward the town of Dunsmith.
“They will betray us before the moon hits its full height tonight,” she told Morgan, disappointed to have to say it.
He frowned deeply. She had waited until they were out of range.
“Then why save him?” he asked.
“Not him,” she corrected. “Them.”
He tossed his hands in the air.
“How shall you keep me safe, master knight?” she asked, raising one eyebrow. “The night stalkers will know of this position within six hours.”
“You tell me,” he snorted back.
“I only know that you will,” she replied.
—————
Gilead and his men continued to forge through the deepening snow until they reached town. They were six and the first inn at which they inquired did not have room for that. The temperatures had dropped so low, even some of the local townsfolk were staying at the inns, making rooms that much more difficult to find.
Eventually they found three rooms at a ramshackle establishment called The Horse’s Mane. The source of the name was not clear at all. Few people had horses this far north, and nothing about the place suggested it had ever been a stables or otherwise associated with horses. There were not even horse-related things inside.
They hungered fiercely so they took a single booth in the common room and crowded it. Soon they had flagons of ale and bowls of stew before them. But just when the cold finally began to leave their bones, in it came again in a rush as two night stalkers entered the bar and left the door open, allowing impossibly cold air to rush in overlong.
They were not actual night stalkers – those they would have left outside the town’s limits – but they wore the patches over their hearts and they were here to do the night stalkers’ business. They were two men with heavy winter clothes, wearing swords and multiple knives each, and the badge of the cowled man on their chests.
First they went to the bar to get drinks. From there they surveyed the room. They counted and memorized who was in the room. Then they went from table to table with a picture of a beautiful woman with raven hair and striking eyes in a hood of white fur. “Have you ever seen this woman?” they asked every person while scrutinizing each face to read their body language. “Do you know who this is?”
They believed the no’s they received until they got to the table of Norman Gilead and his companions. “Have you ever seen this woman?” they asked.
Gilead nodded no and stared at his companions to do the same, but one of them broke and began to speak of the Snow Witch.