Elias scrambled down the bank, sliding on the ice. He found her water skins overturned, her knife lying in the snow with a smear of blood on the handle. He stood there panting, the rage boiling as blood. Iron Dog appeared on the ridge, attracted by the gunshot. He looked down at the scene, then at Elias.
"They took her," Elias said, his voice trembling. Iron Dog looked at the tracks. "Then it is finished. She is gone. I'm going after her," Elias said, climbing the bank.
You will die, Iron Dog said. The storm is coming, then I die, Elias snarled. He ran back to the horse lines. He didn't bother with a saddle. He threw a bridle on the strongest pony, a bay mare with a white blaze.
As he mounted, a young warrior rode up beside him. It was Two Moons, a friend of Swift Fox. He had a repeater across his lap and a grim determination in his eyes. I ride with you. Two Moons said for Swift Fox.
They rode out as the first flakes of the blizzard began to fall. The tracking was a nightmare. The wind erased the hoof prints almost as soon as they were made. Elias rode by instinct and hatred. He pushed the mare hard, knowing that if they lost the trail now.
Winona was gone forever. They caught them in a narrow box canyon five miles from the river. The whiskey runners had stopped to cinch a saddle. Thinking the storm covered their tracks. There were four of them.
Elias didn't wait for a plan. He signaled Two Moons to take the right flank and he rode straight down the center. The firefight was brief, violent, and ugly. Elias shot the man guarding Winona. The man spun and fell into the snow.
The other three returned fire. A bullet grazed Elias's thigh, tearing through the fabric, but missing the bone. He leaped from his horse, hitting the ground rolling. He came up firing. He saw Two Moons take a hit to the shoulder, but keep shooting.
One of the runners charged Elias, a Bowie knife in his hand. Elias's rifle clicked empty. He swung the barrel, clubbing the man in the jaw with a sickening crunch. The man went down, but grabbed Elias's leg. They grappled in the snow, a desperate tangle of limbs and grunts.
Elias felt the man's knife slice his forearm. The pain was distant. He found a rock in the snow, a jagged piece of shale, and brought it down on the man's temple. Once, twice. The man stopped moving.
Elias scrambled up, gasping for air. Two Moons had the other two pinned down behind a boulder, but they were fleeing, scrambling up the shale slope to escape the madman who had just bludgeoned their partner. Elias didn't chase them. He ran to the horse where Winona was tied. She was conscious, blood running from a cut on her forehead.
She looked at him, her eyes unfocused. "Elias," she whispered. "I've got you," he choked out. "I've got you." He cut the ropes.
She fell into his arms and he held her so tight he thought he might crack her ribs. The blizzard descended with full fury. The world turned white they could not make it back to the valley. The wind was a wall that pushed them back. There is a place.
Two Moons groaned, clutching his shoulder. A rock shelf up the ridge. They led the horses up the treacherous slope, fighting for every step. They found the overhang, a shallow cave protected by a lip of stone. It was barely enough room for the three of them and the horses, but it was out of the wind.
They huddled in the darkness. Two Moons passed out from the pain in his shoulder. Elias checked the wound. It was clean. Through the meat, he bound it tight.
Then he turned to Winona. They sat against the back wall of the cave, wrapped in the buffalo robes they had stripped from the dead whiskey runner's saddle. The cold was a physical weight pressing against them. "You came," she said. Her voice was small, lost in the howling of the wind outside.
"Of course I came," Elias said. He was shaking, not from the cold, but from the adrenaline crash. His hands, stained with blood that wasn't his, trembled violently. He looked at his hands. I had to hurt him to stop him.
Winona reached out and took his shaking hands in hers. Her skin was freezing, but her grip was strong. "You did what survival demanded," she said fiercely. "Do not apologize for keeping breath in your lungs. Do not apologize for keeping it in mine," she pulled him closer.
The space between them vanished in the darkness of the cave, with death waiting just outside the circle of their warmth. The barriers of duty and arrangement dissolved completely. She didn't look at him like a political necessity. She looked at him like a man. I do not want a shield.
Elias, she whispered, her lips inches from his. I have warriors for shields. I want you. The man who is afraid. The man who stays anyway.
Elias looked at her, the bruise blooming on her cheek, the fire in her eyes. He realized he had stopped running. Winona. He breathed. He kissed her.
This time, there was no audience. There was no pretense. It was a collision of fear and relief. Her mouth was warm, tasting of iron and snow. She pulled him down, her hands tangling in his hair, anchoring him to the earth.
Their intimacy was a trembling thing, fierce and desperate, whispered names against skin. the friction of bodies seeking heat. The aching, terrifying realization that they belong to each other, not by law, but by blood and choice. When the storm broke the next morning, the world was silent and buried in white. They prepared to leave.