Daggers of Ice

Chapter 14

1010.

The Tenth Year of the Golden Age.

Peter.

The wind sharpened as they rode north.
It carved through cloak and leather, whispering through the pines with a sound like teeth against glass. The tracks were faint – half-buried by snow, blurred by the scouring gusts – but Asura followed them with the patient certainty of water finding its path.

Peter rode at her side, the crest of the Lion glinting dully beneath the grey sky. Behind them, half a dozen of the Royal Guard kept their distance: soldiers hardened by the northern marches, wrapped in furs, their breaths ghosting into the air.

None spoke.

The silence of the landscape demanded it.

The trail wound along a frozen river, then turned upward into the cliffs where the world narrowed to ice and shadow. Every sound, hoof against stone, the jingle of harness, seemed too loud, an intrusion on a place that had long ago ceased to belong to the living.

By midday, the mountains opened into a vast plateau. Snow lay deep here, unbroken except for the faint remains of a road, stone slabs cracked by frost. The remains of walls rose ahead, glacial white and jagged, their outlines half-swallowed by drifting snow.

The ruins of the Witch's castle.

Even after all the years passed, the sight of it sent a ripple through him. The black spire lay shattered, its bones jutting from the ice like the ribs of some enormous beast. Time had softened its angles, but the air still carried the weight of old power, old death.

Arod snorted and refused to go farther until Peter leaned low and murmured a reassurance. The horse obeyed, but the whites of its eyes showed.

"Someone's been here," Asura said quietly. She had dismounted, crouching near a patch of disturbed snow at the base of the wall. Beneath it, char and ash: fresh, only days old. "They built a fire."

Peter joined her, kneeling beside the faint ring of stones. He brushed snow aside with his glove. The ashes still held the smell of smoke and meat, faint but distinct.

"Travelers?" one of the guards asked, voice low.

"No," Peter said. "No one travels here."

He rose, scanning the courtyard. The Witch's throne hall was little more than a ruin now—a skeleton of ice open to the grey sky. The drifts were deep, undisturbed except for one narrow trail of footprints leading toward the broken dais.

Peter followed them slowly. His own steps echoed off the hollow walls, each one swallowed by the cold. At the center of the dais, something glimmered beneath a crust of ice: a scrap of cloth, dark against the frost.

He knelt. It was a torn fragment of a cloak –fur-lined.

A drop of dried blood stained one corner.

Asura came up beside him, her hand tightening around the hilt at her belt. "They made camp here," she murmured. "But where are they now?"

The air answered with a sound so soft he might have imagined it – a rustle, distant, behind the shattered archway. Every head turned.

"Form up!" Peter barked–
But Asura was already moving.

Before his words had even found breath, she spun, glaive flashing into her hands with a motion so fluid it seemed born of instinct rather than thought. The steel caught the light, curved blade gleaming with frost as she swept it up before her, stance low and ready.