Chapter 1933: Duel in the Frozen Forest (Part Three)

There was only one way through.

Erling crouched behind the trunk with his shoulder against the ice and looked at the wreckage of the path he’d meant to take. Any hope he had of following his original plan died with that look, and his heart sank as he realized how badly he’d been outmaneuvered.

The fallen branch lay across the gap between two clustered trunks, a tangle of frozen limbs bristling with points as long as his forearm. If it were an ordinary tree, he might have considered going over it, or crawling under the fallen branches.

But these weren’t simple twigs that he could force his way past. The instant he moved wrong, he’d slice himself open on those wickedly sharp points, and if he fell, the injuries would be even worse.

He’d have to go around.

To his left, the trees grew so close their trunks had nearly fused, and the gaps between them narrowed to nothing within twenty paces.

To his right, the ground opened up.

A clean run. More than fifty paces of it, curving north and east through the middle of the Frozen Forest, and wide enough that he wouldn’t have to turn his shoulders once.

And there, in the middle of that path, he spotted a handful of crescent-shaped hoofprints, deep and rough where Khorijin had started her sprint. How long she followed that path and which of the branching trails she might have taken to set her ambush, he couldn’t say, but he was certain that she was out there, either racing away from him or waiting for him.

She didn’t just block his way. She chose his only path forward from here, and he didn’t have time to search for another one.

"Fine," Erling spat as he took off running. Part of him wanted to keep an arrow nocked, but with only fourteen shots left in his quiver, he didn’t dare risk dropping one as he ran. Instead, he kept his eyes wide open and his head constantly turning, searching for the slightest sign of his opponent as he raced into the heart of the Frozen Forest where the air had gone completely still.

Up ahead of him, Khorijin had given up on the race for the scarves.

She’d been wrong to think of this as a race through an obstacle course. Perhaps a human empress would have created such a thing and called it a fair contest, but it had been a mistake to ever think of the Mother of Trees as human, no matter her origins.

The Evergreen Empress understood the Eldritch because she was one of them. She knew to prepare a hunting ground for two followers of the First Hunter, and while she gave them a task to complete in order to end the hunt, she hadn’t said that they couldn’t eliminate their opponent before racing for the scarf.

Now, she circled back on her own path, moving slowly through the frozen forest while Erling raced to catch up. She already had an arrow at the nock; she only needed her quarry to reveal himself to make the next move.

The only question in her mind was what sort of fruit Erling would emerge near and whether it would give her the opportunity she needed or not.

She didn’t need to wait long. Erling emerged from around a bend in the trail, moving at a run. Unfortunately, whether it was by chance or by his design, the only fruit around him were the larger ones filled with snow.

Still, she thought as she pulled the bowstring to her cheek, loosing the arrow with a deep -THUNG-; anything that could slow him down while she sought a better place to ambush him from was a good thing.

Khorijin’s arrow had yet to reach its target when Erling spun in the direction of the sound. His fingers found the fletching of an arrow without taking his eyes off his opponent, and he let out his breath in one long, steady stream as he loosed his own arrow.

-CRACK!-

Khorijin’s target exploded in a flurry of snow, momentarily blinding Erling as he dropped flat on the ground and rolled to the opposite side of the trail.

She had only a heartbeat to react as Erling’s arrow whistled through the perfectly still air. Unlike her, he’d found a tiny target of his own, a fruit the size of a large fig. It was an uncanny shot, one she’d never expected a human to be able to make without the guidance of the stars, but the Ice Fruit seemed to taunt her, refusing to so much as tremble in a breeze as it welcomed the incoming arrow.

-CRACK!-

Khorijin threw up her arms, shielding her face against the blast as she raced to put as much distance between herself and the deadly fruit as she could. A heartbeat later, half a dozen shards of ice buried themselves in her flanks like hot awls, sinking deep into the muscle.

Blood streamed from the wounds, and for a moment, she staggered, slamming her torso into the trunk of a tree she’d intended to use for cover.

"Aaaarrggh!" Khorijin cried out in pain before clamping her jaws shut lest she give away her position.

It was too late.

Erling emerged from the flurry of snow with an arrow knocked, and he let it fly as soon as he had a clean line of sight.

"Starlight, reveal his..." she started to say, hoping her sorcery would help her evade in the right direction. If she dodged towards his target and it was another of the small fruit, she was as good as dead.

She didn’t have time to complete her invocation before the arrow found its target, this time a medium-sized fruit the size of a large apple.

The fruit exploded in a storm of pea-sized hailstones, peppering her torso, ribs, her wounded flanks, and forcing her once again to shield her face from the onslaught.

And then, he was past her, racing through the trees, weaving through them to deny her anything resembling a clear shot.

Pain flared in her flanks as Khorijin chased after him, angling toward the wider, more open trail to regain ground. Meanwhile, her mind was performing the same arithmetic that Erlings was.

Thirteen.

He was down to thirteen arrows, and they’d yet to cross half the Forest on their way to the sashes, which meant she could afford to be more aggressive as she closed the gap between them.

Only, her math was wrong, because she didn’t know about the arrow he’d fired into the ground at the beginning of the hunt... But if she’d known, the predatory grin on her lips would only have grown wider as she chased after her prey.ℴ