Chapter One. Heart of Ice. (Part One)

                                    

                                          
Slippered feet beat out a staccato rhythm on the frozen forest floor as the girl twisted around trees and over brush, sprinting as fast and as far as she could from the roughly hewn path behind her. The dense forest gladly accepted her, offering a place of refuge in its dark recesses as it devoured every trace of her. Almost as if she had never entered its treeline at all. 
                          
It was an old forest, still and silent in the last light before dusk. No animals chattered in its depths. No branches rustled under the feet of prowling predators. There was only the soft swish of her cloak as she brushed against wayward branches, the crunch of her soft-soled boots punching through the brittle surface of half-frozen puddles, and the persistent hammering of her pulse in her ears. The noise was deafening. Fear amplified each sound, easily drowning out the distant shouting of the hunters that called out her name, seeking her. A troop of over a dozen men, all too far away to save her from her killer. 
                          
So the girl did what she could. She ran, and she ran, and she ran. 
                          
Aching muscles and bleeding feet were easy to ignore but her struggling lungs were far more difficult to forgive. Breath that had been ragged at the start of the pursuit was now drawing shorter and shorter as dark stars began to dance in the corners of her eyes. The slow deterioration of her sight frightened her, frustrated her. She desperately willed her tunneling vision to clear, having already mistaking one black spot for his dark cloak and had almost collapsed at the sight of it. Her clenched arm still shook. The pursuit itself was terrifying. But it was worse knowing that he was only a few meters behind her, just out of sight. Her fearful eyes darted hastily from shadow to shadow. 
                          
Attention torn, she paid a painful price for her negligence. Branches and brambles caught at her from every angle. Sharp thorns pulled at her long, unbound hair and scored the soft skin of her cheeks and hands. Tangled masses of roots kept her pitching and stumbling over the uneven ground. Nevertheless, she persisted on steadily until she heard a muffled thump from somewhere close behind her. A sound so controlled, so purposeful, it could only belong to him. 
                          
It spurred her back into rapid action. Pushing harder against the ground with just the balls of her feet, she flew across the forest floor, moving quickly and leaping over the thick brush until a thick root, weaving higher than its fellows, caught at her ankle and she tripped, falling hard to the ground and skinning her palms as she caught herself on the frozen earth.
                          
There was no time to push herself back up. Instead she crawled forward, on her hands and knees, feeling very much like the frightened beast she had been hunting earlier. Leaves enveloped her as she scurried through the brush, until she found herself completely caged by the twisting limbs of an overgrown juniper bush. Tucked into its tight confines and well hidden, she turned herself around to face her opponent.
                          
It was quiet. The hollow around her was placid. However, even as exhausted as she was, the girl remained vigilant. Pressing her hand over her mouth tight to muffle her uneven pants, she listened for the crash of footsteps around her. Eyes fixed straight ahead where she was sure the man would appear.
                          
Only he didn't. She waited and waited for the glint of steel or for a gloved hand to reach out through the low, flexible branches. And then there was movement to her right.
                          
Deadfall to her right cracked and suddenly, out of the corner of her eye, she saw his boots kick through rotting leaves that littered the ground less than a meter away from her. Heart thundering as if she were still running, she desperately wished she could spring up to her feet and flee once more. Not that she could. he limbs around her, once a signal of security, were now claustrophobically tight. Stupidly she attempt to recoil, to get a little further away from him and from the berries around her.