The Queen's Gambit

10: Specters

She had given up before. Bloodied swords and dying screams. Her horse falling from under her. Pinned to the ground, a knife pricking her throat. She had stopped fighting then. Closed her eyes and resigned herself to death.

There were fates worse than death.

I cannot give up, thought Rhea. I will crawl until my limbs fail me, until the breath freezes in my throat.

Reaching under her wool shirts to her frayed linen shift, she tore a ragged strip and haphazardly bound the bleeding leg. There was nothing to do for the ankle.

She searched the dark outlines of the mountains around her. The storm had arrived from the south, and the wind had driven into her face before the avalanche. Turning to where she estimated east --and the path-- to be, she dragged herself through the snow, her useless ankle trailing.

The cold cut through her snow-covered gloves and into her fingers. They turned numb, and she tucked them into her shirt periodically, pulling herself along on her elbows.

Thirst ravaged her throat. She sucked on snow until she started shaking with the chill. Dehydration and wind cracked her lips until they bled.

She sometimes stopped, muscles screaming for rest. But she discovered deep wells of will she never knew existed and crawled on, knowing that resting now would be resting forever.

She found Daron's body sometime after night fell. Dark had come when she hadn't noticed, and she wouldn't have noticed the body either had her crawling not brought her hand to rest on the rough leathery heel of a boot, the only thing left above the surface.

A sudden frenzy had taken her then, as she clawed madly at the snowpack. Her gloves tore and her numb fingers bled, but she continued until she had excavated enough to see the leg, covered in dark blue soldier fatigues. She felt the cold of the body, cold as the snow around her, snow that had suffocated her companion to death in an icy prison.

Rhea tried to scream, but it came out as a dry, brittle croak, and she lurched from the corpse, vomiting. When her body had stopped heaving, she scrubbed the sick from her face, fingertips leaving bloody streaks against her cheeks.

There was no choice but to continue. A renewed fervor fueled her crawl; she now sensed an unseen shadow just behind her, ready to swallow her into eternal darkness.

The pain in her ankle increased until it consumed every thought. She slowed, her motions labored, body cold to the point of numbness. Her teeth chattered together until her jaw hurt. Strands of her golden hair had escaped their neat braid and lay frozen against her face and neck.

Snow swirled before her, and the flakes began to coalesce in the night. A boot, then a leg. A tunic, then a cloak edged in fine ermine. A familiar face, beard neatly trimmed, grey eyes with crinkles at the corners. But where Rhea remembered pale yellow hair, the figure's hair was white, made with millions of shifting and swirling snowflakes.

"Papa?"

"Rhea, my little bird, come inside," said the figure, extending a hand. "I have missed you so much."

Rhea crawled forward. "I am so cold, papa."

"Then sit with me by the fire, and tell me of your day."

A thick warmth flooded her and Rhea sighed in relief.

"I am afraid I have failed you," she said.

"No," replied her father, "I am--and have always been--the proudest father in the kingdom." The gentle smile on his lips made Rhea's chest clench in longing. Oh, how she had yearned to see that smile again!

"Papa, I've missed you terribly!"

"Then come, little bird, closer to the fire. Stay with me now, I have so much to tell you."

Rhea scooted closer to the figure of her father, and she began to burn with heat. Sweat soaked through her clothes.

She undid the clasp on her cloak and it fell behind her into the snow, a dark puddle against the frigid white. The heat on her body still burned, unrelenting.

She pulled off one wool tunic, then another until only her torn shift remained. She cast off the shredded gloves, and tugged off one boot. The boot on her injured ankle--now surprisingly free of pain--was stuck. She ignored this and tugged off her trousers, laughing, the cool snow exhilarating against her bare skin.

A cocoon of warmth surrounded her as she laid flat across the snow. Some part of her mind registered that the makeshift bandages on her leg had become soaked through; blood trailed through the snow behind her and became a crimson stain beneath her leg. But for the first time in months she felt perfectly comfortable, blissful even. She closed her eyes. The world drifted further from her.

"Am I dying?" she asked, to no one in particular.

The only sound was the howl of the wind and a faint crunching noise somewhere in the darkness.

"Then it is not so bad after all," said Rhea, answering her own question in a voice no louder than a whisper. "There are worse things than dying."

And as she drifted through her meager seventeen years' worth of unresolved hopes and fears, triumphant joys and crushing disappointments, the people she loved and the people she lost, she faded slowly into a depthless darkness. She didn't hear the horse that snorted in the night, didn't feel the arms that picked her up, and didn't see the white robes that swirled in the storm.