The party had made three days’ journey into the mountains before the storm came in for earnest on the fourth. The sodden clouds had been lowering above them for several days. Traveling as they were it seemed that everything took longer than planned; their pace was slower, in the mornings the starts took longer, and none of them got much sleep.

Then the temperature really dropped and the snow began to fall. At first slowly, and then gaining momentum with every passing minute. Fia looked heavenward, then back along the trail and wondered if there was any way they could speed up the straggling line. She shook her head; probably not. The flakes fell thicker and faster, soon filling the air with their drifting whiteness.

Ilido galloped up from the rear. “We’d better try for Gilahdro’s,” he said, and she nodded, her mittened hand over her nose. The storm was coming on very fast. “I’ll take the lead now, since the horses don’t know the way there.”

She nodded again, not moving her mitten. She had given many of her scarves to some of the people who had fewer warm clothing than she, especially the children. Now the cold stung her face.

“See if you can’t do something back there!” Ilido called over the wind as it picked up. Then he moved away, more whirling snowflakes piecing together a curtain between the riders and Fia.

She turned her mount and headed back along the line, their shapes strangely dark and fuzzy through the snowfall. Some were walking, to spell the horses and some to warm themselves; when they tired they would mount again until the cold drove them back to their own feet. The children huddled on their mounts, sometimes three or four together, or in front of mothers and fathers.

“We’re changing course!” she told them as she passed. “Olayin House is too far away, we’re going somewhere closer. It’s not far now, keep moving!”

Across ridges, the slow column of Othiran refugees climbed up slippery slopes and along ravines. Down hillsides and then up again the party wound. Fia was thankful for the sure feet of the mountain cobs; they kept their footing on even the slippery slopes. The lowland horses they had needed to fill in the numbers were not faring as well, continuously slipping and sliding, but so far catching themselves.

Ahead of her one went down, his hooves slipping sideways out from under him, the chestnut head flying up and to the left as he went down onto his right flank and shoulder. The three children on him tumbled clear and were mercifully unhurt, only the youngest crying from the spill and the snow on his face.

Three figures unloaded from their mounts and toiled towards them. But she was nearer, and reached them first, slipping off her cob. The red horse was struggling up again now, shakily clinging to his balance.

“Get on this one,” she told the oldest boy and handed him her reins. He didn’t bother brushing the snow off his clothes, but took the cob’s reins and mounted. Their sister was trying to get the little brother to stop crying, brushing the sleety snow off his face with cold fingers.

“Here,” Fia said, and took a mitten off. “Put your hands in here. Both of them.”

Then with her warm, newly mitten-less hand she got the snow off both their faces and rubbed them dry with the inside of her cloak.

“Now up you go!” she told them and swung the youngest behind his brother and their sister on behind him.

“Put all four hands in the mitten,” she instructed them, and they obeyed. “He won’t slip on you.” She patted the dark brown neck, woolly with winter hair.

The boy urged his new mount forward and he moved off into the snowfall. She caught the red horse’s trailing rein as he tried to shake the snow off himself, nearly slipping again in his vigorous attempt. She caught his head between her hands, one mittened and one bare, melting the flakes that clung to his chestnut jaw.

“Easy,” she said to him in a firm voice. “Easy there.”

Snowflakes drifted down between the horse and girl as she kept a steady hand on his face. His big brown eyes were shaken and helpless, his nostrils flaring in the snuffy breathing of a frightened and bewildered horse whose world has literally slipped out from under him.

“Keep moving!” she called out to the others. “We’re almost there now!”

The night was coming on fast, the quick dusk of a stormy winter evening settling tightly around the refugees, and swiftly bringing even colder winds. They needed to get to shelter soon. It would be especially tough on the wounded and the little ones.

“Come on, fella,” she told the horse quietly. “Let’s go, now.”

He had been brought up well; she could tell by the way he followed on her heels like a lost dog. In the midst of confusion he trusted to people to save him. They went forward through the storm.

She could not have remembered the way to Gilahdro’s on a sunny day, and now with the snow and the darkness she was as helpless as any of them. It seemed as if they had been pressing on for ages through the cold, and the wind, and the soft fluttering snow. It had been so long, she figured that by now they certainly had to be nearer. It had to be close.

The drifts were building up now, making walking difficult, and the cold was deepening. The people were flagging badly, and so were the horses.

Pressing against the wall of drowsiness, she constantly exhorted them to keep moving. Now even the cobs badly wanted to turn tails to the wind and stand stock-still. That would work all right for them, but their riders would freeze. There was no way to explain that to them, so they had to force their mounts onward despite themselves, with strong hands and heels, incessantly urging.

The red horse that followed her was almost as much a menace as any help, he was so shaken with his feet slipping on the insecure footing that he wanted to keep nearly on top of her in the blind belief that she would somehow help him.

Whenever he felt his feet start to go he would begin to panic and lunge towards her, which was not only counterproductive for him but downright dangerous for the girl on the ground. She knew that if he went down on top of her, or only partially on top of her, between the hard ground and a heavy horse she could get seriously hurt. And a fresh casualty was the last thing anybody here needed, or wanted to deal with right now. Especially her.

Determinedly, she kept him away with her hand, her own feet none too steady. At length he slowly calmed, and as long as she steadied him mentally with a firm hand on his neck close behind the ears, he seemed to be able to accept this slipping, recovering, sliding method of traveling. It was a good thing, too; not only was Fia having to walk almost exclusively, but she was about exhausted with his added antics.

At last her part of the line reached a long ridge top, where the forest floor beneath the snow was drier for good footing, and she climbed gratefully onto his back. It was a relief to sit still and feel the comfort of his warm hide beneath her, to only watch for bad places and slowly catch her breath. Her un-mittened hand was stiff with cold, so she shoved it into her cloak, trying to bury it deep enough that the winter air couldn’t reach it.

It seemed like an eternity until they broke out off the ridge, the front of the line trudging out from the trees onto an open slope ahead. A murmur seemed to slip along through the column of benumbed refugees, like some disembodied voice amongst the falling snow. “We’re almost there!”

Stoically laboring mothers who had not let a sigh escape them now wept with relief, and Fia’s own weariness lessened as renewed hope buoyed her up. She switched her mitten to her nearly freezing left hand and gathered the reins in her right, working it further into the red mane before her. It wasn’t much protection, but every little bit helped.

Even the horses seemed to sense now that shelter was near and the pace at last quickened. Finally those at the end broke out from under the trees and made their way painfully up the open slope, hurrying faster in the whorls of thick, falling snow, the tree trunks behind them like dark sentinels against the falling blanket of white.

At last, benumbed and miserable, the column was gathered together at the massive gates of Gilahdro’s house and Elarno and Ilido were making it echo to their hearty knocking. There were a few frozen, agonizing moments that seemed to last forever, and then slowly the gates swung inward and the line all trudged inside in haphazard file, their movements sluggish and awkward with the cold.

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