Chapter 1934: Halfway Point

The heat in Erling’s chest had stopped being heat.

It was pressure now, three hard points behind his breastbone pushing outward, and each stride drove them a little deeper. Erling had stopped being able to take a full breath somewhere back in the middle of the Frozen Forest. He took half of one, and then half of another, and his legs went on doing what he told them because he had no other choice.

Behind him, Khorijin had changed her rhythm.

Before, she’d been careful. She wouldn’t take a shot unless it affected him in some way. Now, she was taking risks. Not that she missed her target. Just as Milo had warned him, the archers of the Southern Steppe didn’t miss.

But given the choice between an Ice Fruit that was guaranteed to envelop him in a flurry of snow and one that might shred him with a storm of icy shards, she chose the shards.

Erling had managed to avoid the deadly blasts twice so far, once by diving behind a tree and a second time by flinging himself on the ground while most of the shards passed overhead. But even though he avoided the worst of it, he still lost valuable time, and Khorijin drew closer with every heartbeat.

He could feel the arrow he’d launched toward the northern edge of the Frozen Forest. The pressure in his chest for that first cerulean flame was stronger than the other two, and every footstep brought him closer to it. He just had to push a little bit further and then...

The tree ahead of him blew apart.

Erling raised his arm up high, wrapped in his cloak as an improvised shield, and tucked his head under it. He couldn’t afford to roll around on the ground anymore; there was just no time, so he ran through the edge of the blast and let the hail hammer him across the back and the ribs.

Only this time, it wasn’t the light, peppering rain of pea-sized hailstones he’d unleashed on his opponent. These were hailstones the size of walnuts. They came down through the branches and bounced off the trunks of the icy trees, and they hit him in a dozen places at once.

Each strike of a hailstone felt like a kick by a mule, and he was certain to sport several impressive bruises by morning, if they didn’t do him in altogether. One of the hailstones caught him behind the ear when it bounced off a tree trunk, and his vision went white at the corners.

Still, he kept running, taking ragged, shallow breaths and clinging to the feeling of the cerulean flame ahead of him while his vision slowly cleared.

Thirteen. That had to bring her down to thirteen arrows to his twelve, and...

-CRACK!-

Erling never saw the arrow or the fruit, but the sound gave him a fraction of a second to hold up his cloak and hope that it was just more hail.

It wasn’t.

The shards of ice tore through the air like a volley of arrows from a squad of archers, and when they reached Erling, they tore through his cloak like it was cheesecloth. Three, four, couldn’t say. Most just tore through the fabric and fur of his cloak, but one of them went through the cloak and the padding beneath it and into the outside of his right thigh, lodging itself in his flesh.

A strangled cry escaped his lips as his leg folded. He caught himself on a trunk with his bow hand, his chest heaving as he struggled against the pain and the pressure in his chest. Part of him wanted to sit down, to pull the ice from his leg and tear a bandage for it, but if he did that, he was as good as doomed.

Instead, he pressed his back against the tree trunk, using the tree and his good leg to support most of his weight while he fitted another arrow to the nock and drew his bow.

-THWANG!-

Eleven.

Khorijin paused briefly in her advance, but it didn’t take her more than a heartbeat to reach the same conclusion Erling had the moment the arrow left his bow. The shot was rushed and wasted, sailing wide of his target.

The arrow struck a trunk and skittered away into the dark.

Erling swore and reached back and drew again. Even without the wind to foul his shot, he didn’t trust himself to hit a small target again. Instead, he waited for Khorijin to come close enough to a fist-sized fruit that he had a chance.

Blood stained the coat that covered her flanks, and more stained her arm. It was clear that his earlier attacks had done some damage, but that didn’t seem to stop her at all as she raised her bow yet again.

Erling loosed his arrow and prayed that this one would at least slow her down.

Ten.

He had ten shots left. If this one didn’t do anything...

-CRACK!-

Erling’s arrow found its mark, and hail came down in a grey curtain across the path. Erling watched his opponent give up her shot to take cover behind a cluster of tree trunks.

Four heartbeats, he thought. That bought four heartbeats.

He spent them pushing forward. The only hope he had was that he could retrieve the sash and make his way out of this nightmare forest before his body gave out on him.

The trees ahead of him thinned. He was close. He could feel it in his chest that he was close.

Erling came out of the Frozen Forest at a dead, limping run, and nothing he’d ever seen looked as glorious as the sight ahead of him.

Ahead of him, less than a dozen paces away, his own arrow stood burning in the frozen ground with a cerulean flame half the height of a man.

And beyond it, on two posts, in air so still it might have been frozen, two long streamers of silk hung perfectly straight down without so much as a tremor.

One blue.

One green.

Just waiting to be collected.

The surge of relief in his chest at the sight of him nearly did him in, but Erling could hear the sound of hooves ringing against frozen ground, approaching rapidly from behind him.

Now was not the time to celebrate.

Driving himself forward through an intense act of will, Erling hobbled across the twenty paces of open ground to the green scarf, tugging it off the pole before leaning against the pole for support.

Trembling fingers pulled the shard of ice from his leg and Erling felt like his teeth would crack from the strain of biting back a cry of pain, but his hands never stopped moving as he wound the scarf around his leg.

Empress Ashlynn said he needed to bring it back. She never said he couldn’t use it to bind his wounds. And even if she had, stopping the bleeding was far more important than minding the rules. If he offended her, he could apologize later.

Erling winced in pain as he pulled the knot tight, but the bandage held, and that was the important part.

The hoofbeats were closer now, and he could see Khorijin’s figure through the gaps between the trees.

The air was still and calm as Erling drew an arrow to his cheek, taking aim at the smallest ice fruit he could see at the edge of the Frozen Forest. He had the shot prepared, but he didn’t take it. Not yet.

"Wait!" Erling shouted when he saw that Khorijin was about to emerge from the Frozen Forest. "Wait, and hear me out!"