77
It was their third day of travel, and Rune wasn’t well.
Michaela began noticing it the day before. The constant droop to his head, just as he had stood when she first found him in the soldiers’ camp and rescued him.
There were few places to rest. Most of the time they trekked across long stretches of open land, all of it deeply buried in snow.
When they found streams, the horses drank and grazed on any grasses exposed along the bank. Michaela tested any new plants to know if they were safe to eat. But more often than not, she walked away hungry.
The horses were hungry, too. It had been too many days since they ate their fill.
But once Michaela made the decision to return to the plains, she would let nothing keep her away. She would return both her horses and herself back home, no
