Chapter 27: Blizzard
Finalark had been in tough situations before, but none like this. The Black Guard continued to pursue his group, a whole month after the failed raid on the fortress. They'd been spotted that night 41 strong. 19 of them escaped the initial onslaught. Only seven were left now. They couldn't go back to UB. If the Black Guard followed them back there, it would be the only excuse the Queen needed to destroy their home once and for all. Instead, they'd continued north, going deeper into the tundra known as the Northern Front. Hunger, exhuastion, brutal storms and constant attacks from the Black Guard had pushed them to the breaking point.
They were holed up in a small cave they found along the edge of a frozen river. Finalark rubbed his hands together furiously, trying to restore some of the feeling he'd lost hours ago. Cherry64 stood guard near the edge of the cave, although he couldn't see more than two meters in front of him due to the storm outside. The rest of the men were huddled together in the back of the cave.
"Do you think that Firsus made it back to UB okay?" one of the men asked.
"Stop asking that," Finalark answered.
"UB has probably been razed by now," another said.
"Stop saying that."
"We're probably better off just dying here in this cave. Just go to sleep, let the ice and snow claim us. Never wake up."
"Stop thinking that."
"If we can't-"
"Hey!" Cherry yelled. "Enough! We're alive, and we're going to stay that way. This was the plan; if anything went wrong, we were supposed to go north, and Godsmith would be waiting for us. Relax."
"I think that TheBuzzSaw is the one chasing us," the last man muttered. No one spoke to quiet him, they all knew he was right. TheBuzzSaw, one of the captains of the Black Guard and the most accomplished and feared tracker in all of SWF. No one had ever escaped once he was tasked to find them. Finalark had tried to put the thought out of his head, but now he had to face it with his men.
"You're probably right," Finalark replied. "TheBuzzSaw is on our trail this moment, and it's only a matter of time until he finds us. The question is, do we want him to find us now, cold, hungry, and weak, or after we get to Godsmith, and have a few hundred more people to help us against him?"
"That would barely make the odds even," Cherry said. "Maybe we can get a few thousand to put us over the edge."
The decision was made. They had to keep moving, as fast as they possibly could. They gathered the meager supplies they had remaining and stood together in the mouth of the cave. The storm had subsided only slightly. There was good and bad in this; it would make traveling far more difficult, but the fresh snow would cover their tracks. Not that it mattered against TheBuzzSaw. There were tales that he'd tracked fugitives across the continent while blind-folded to make it more challenging. And finalark believed them to be true.
His thoughts were interrupted by the unmistakable fwip/I] of an arrow being shot. Before he could warn the others, the arrow struck, exploding and reducing their group to six, and a pair of legs which was all that was left of the seventh man. "Run!" Finalark yelled. They took off, arrows raining down around them. There was no doubt that TheBuzzSaw was tracking them now, only he could find seven men in a cave during a blizzard.
Finalark didn't know where they were headed anymore, only that they had to keep moving. He could only hear the wind whipping across his frozen ears and the muffled explosions of the arrows as they burrowed into the meter-deep snow. His mind was racing, trying to come up with an escape route. It couldn't end here like this, their bodies left to freeze after the Black Guard finished with them. "There must be some way out of here," he said to himself.
Suddenly, his feet gave out from underneath him. He'd slipped, and landed flat on his back. The river! As he scrambled to his feet, a plan formed instantly. He turned to Cherry, who had the same thought.
Break the ice, they can't cross the river, Cherry said with his eyes.
How? Finalark asked, communicating wordlessly in a way that can only be developed by years of friendship. And that's how he saw it. Cherry had figured out how to destroy the ice and block the Black Guard. He was going to do it himself. Finalark knew him too well. Once his mind was set, there was no way to change it.
"Now go!" Cherry said. Finalark nodded, and led the other four men to the other side of the river.
Cherry stood his ground, watching as the arrows fell from the sky around him. He was standing in the center of the river. One exploding arrow would do the trick, taking out the layers of ice that made the river passable, and him along with it. A regular arrow pierced through his thigh. He cried out, collapsing to the ice. He gasped again; the ice was so cold it took his breath away. Now the arrows fell with more accuracy, landing dangerously close to him. Then he saw it: one sparking streak, arcing high throgh the air. It whistled, red-hot through the whited-out sky, plumetting on a collision course with his torso. He lay back into the snow, now stained copper red by his blood. Teran and Finalark will lead us to victory, to freedom. They will...
Finalark heard the explosion, then a deafening roar, like the earth was being ripped apart by giant hands. The river ice was cracking, splitting into glacial pieces that would be carried away by the surge of rushing water. It would take at least a day for it to re-freeze. A day they could use to get away. Finalark couldn't fight back the tears that froze against his face in the searing wind.