The evergreens above his head creak with a coating of ice. Their branches rattle against each other. The gray of morning has come.

He wakes, stiff as frost. He stirs and snow falls off him. The fire is only embers from the night. A wisp of smoke trails into the air.

With clumsy-cold fingers he stokes the fire back to life. He warms himself, then takes a drink of water, careful not to bruise the remaining flowers. He tucks the water skin into his cloak, near his heart to keep the water from freezing and the flower petals soft.

Morning lights the sky into a dull gray. He lingers by the fire, the only warmth for many miles around.

Jarl fled the ruins of his city

He took the wealth he pillaged from the dead

He loads the donkey with his plunder and only then begins to leave. He pushes himself through the thicket and travels the forested valley floor.

He sweats as he pushes his way through snow drifts. He pauses and rests, careful not to work too much. The trees block any breeze that would otherwise reach him.

His warmth reminds him of his top cloak. Without it he would have frozen, yet he is warm now. The woman who lent it to him, is she warm? Or is the cold gripping her heart in its stony fist?

He left his family’s rubble-buried bones

Their bodies found no peace upon burning pyres

Half the day passes before he climbs out of the valley into the Slow Highlands. The still form of a giant’s skeleton faces away from him, midstride. It faces the way he is going.

Gentle mountains ring a frozen lake. The pine trees give the only green the land grows. The lake mirrors the sky. White and slate grays. Its smooth surface is like the work of giants, not of nature.

He looks behind him, before him and to the sides. There is only the slate grey of sky blowing from a sliver of blue on the horizon. The air is calm even in the open. The shortest way back is across the lake; a thin separation between life and death. If winds don’t freeze him, the waters will.

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He escaped that day of disaster

But another pursued him, slowly overtook him

His hand presses gently over his heart where the flowers are. The frigid air bites at his chapped hands. He feels the roughness of her cloak under his hand. A small breeze comes and goes, making him shiver.

He sets off across the frozen lake.

The giant is stopped mid-stride, as if time itself became its enemy.

The landscape passes slowly by. The day passes by. The lake does not. The man and donkey walk over its expanse yet never reach its end. The giant’s still form stays upon their left.

A daze falls upon the man. His body feels like lead. The lake is an endless horizon.

The sun sets a cold pink-red, rimmed by purple-tinged gray clouds.

Still he walks, his mind as blank as the slate boards below and above him.

The curse followed him

It corrupted the paths and the wealth he carried

A breeze picks up. The clouds set with the sun. The sky’s chill gray is replaced with a pale blue moon and cold stars.

The glaze over his eyes clears and he blinks. He looks about him as if just waking.

The patterns of ice, snow and rock glow the same as the surface of the moon. The shadows of the trees are as deep as the sky’s black voids.

He frowns at the world around him. He is still crossing the lake. The sky is dark when it should be light.

A wolf howls far behind him. The donkey jerks on his rope, nervous.

He turns, slowly, as his danger dawns upon him. There, far across the lake, black shapes moving.

His flight was slowed

He heard his enemy’s horns and knew his end

He runs. The donkey senses the fear and runs ahead of him, pulling him along. He slips and falls, catches himself with the donkey’s rope and pulls himself back up.

Another howl, closer. The donkey veers towards the trees on the shore.

The thumps of hooves and feet echoes in the lake like drums. The ice groans.

Howls. Scratching claws close behind.