This Story Has a Surprising Amount of Survival In It. I Should Update the Genres...

The next morning, they broke their sad little camp at dawn. Without tools to start a fire, and while still being so close to where they’d encountered the bandits, it would be foolish to make a base camp where they’d taken shelter.

Leo briefly considered moving further south along the coast, but his gut told him that doing so would only increase their likelihood of encountering unsavory types. Besides that, once word got out about the slave ship’s demise, there would be bounty hunters prowling the shoreline in search of escaped slaves. As the sole survivor, Leo would be an ideal target for pinning Sharkins’ crimes.

He’d inventoried their food supplies. If he rationed carefully, they would last another three days, maybe four. The wine he’d harvested from Uric’s cabin had been a mix of weak new wine and some stronger stuff. The stronger wine, he left untouched for now, but he could use the new wine to keep them hydrated, at least until he could start a fire.

His best bet, however, was to travel uphill and hope to find a town to take shelter in. Any real farming villages would be a couple day’s journey inland, to protect them from coastal raiders. The townsfolk would largely be wintered in, but the addition of a scrawny slave and a petite woman would not be a huge drain on their stores.

So, with that in mind, Leo began the trek up the steep incline between the cliffs, with Fia falling in beside him. Along the way, he took the opportunity to gather sticks. He mostly took fresh pine boughs, occasionally pulling a tender one from trees while he waited for Fia to catch up, but he also grabbed any that he thought might dry well once out of the snow.

It was slow going, with the uphill slope being particularly taxing on the goddess. Still, by nightfall they’d put a large amount of distance between themselves and their starting point.

When they made camp, they did so in the shadow of a large boulder to protect themselves from the wind. Leo used the pine boughs to create a rough bed for them to sleep on, then placed a few boughs on some icy rocks to make an improvised fireplace.

Leo placed one the thicker dried sticks that he’d gathered on the boughs, then using a strip of cloth cut from Rorik’s clothing, he fashioned a bow drill of another stick. Leo worked the bow drill into a notch in the thicker stick, pulling back and forth until the heat caught flame on some surrounding kindling that he’d cut with Rorik’s sword.

When the first flickers of fire came to life, Leo almost shouted with joy.

“By the stars, that is amazing,” Fia clapped her hands. “Where did you learn to do this?”

Leo continued his work, gently adding more kindling until the fire was well and truly underway. As he did so, he said, “Before I was a slave, I was a Spellblade. My master taught me the way of the sword, as well as some magic. But more than that, he taught me to live off the land, to survive even the worst circumstances.”

“That’s amazing,” said Fia. “Your master must be very proud of you.”

Leo’s enthusiasm faded as he stoked the fire. “The last time we spoke, he disowned me as his student. My failure to follow the King’s direct order went against everything my master had ever taught me. We lived to serve.”

The slave mark on Leo’s neck had changed everything for him. Worse than designating him the property of some rich asshole he’d never met, it branded him a traitor to the crown and to everything he’d ever loved. And on top of that, it cut him off from his magic.

Even after receiving Fia’s mark, that effect of his slave brand didn’t disappear.

Fia didn’t immediately respond, so Leo got about preparing for the morrow. He finished the last of the new wine, then began stuffing snow into the empty bottle. He melted it on the fire, then began stuffing it with snow again. Snow was mostly air, so it was a slow process, but at least they would stay hydrated.

He chewed on some jerky for dinner, and when all was done Leo laid down on the pine bough mattress. Fia joined him once more, encradling herself in his arms.

As sleep began to take them both, Fia whispered, “For what it’s worth, I know you made the right decision.”

“How so?” Leo grunted, eyes lingering on the embers of their campfire.

“That is how I found you,” she answered.

He blinked. “That was two years ago, Fia.”

“I know,” she said, sounding apologetic, “but I had to be sure. If I chose the wrong person as my champion, things could go very badly for me.”

“How are you certain you actually made the right choice?”

She buried her face in his chest and sighed. “I just do, Leo. I just do.”

***

The next morning, they continued their trek. But before they started for the day, Leo used some of the pine boughs and more strips of Rorik’s cloth to fashion makeshift snowshoes for the pair of them. The shoes wouldn’t be as effective as properly crafted ones, but they would help keep their feet dry and their legs above the snow.

It did not take long for them to require their use. The further inland the pair ventured, the deeper the snow became. Leo made one of the longer sticks he found into a walking staff, and he used it to measure the snow before he walked, lest they come unawares upon a snow drift and sink in to their deaths.

That night, they made camp like before, and the next day, they continued their trek. While there were some sections flatter and some sections steeper, they generally maintained an uphill trajectory, toward where Leo figured the mountains would be. As they hiked, he kept an eye on the horizon, both for signs of threats, and for smoketrails.

The woods were remarkably quiet, but for the crunching of snow beneath their feet. Clouds hung low overhead, threatening snowfall at any moment. He and Fia moved through the pines without talking much, and instead focused on controlling their breathing while putting one foot in front of the other.

The next day, Leo awoke to discover they’d camped practically at the base of the Crestamere mountains, in the valley of a frozen river that snaked out of the high passes. If he and Fia were to continue any further inland, they would undoubtedly encounter bitter cold far too intense for either of them to survive with their meagre supplies.

How have we not encountered a village yet?

He’d never visited the Crestamere hills before, but he knew the land to be at least sparsely inhabited. The presence of bandits alone proved as such.

Leo spied a nearby cliff rising up over the frozen river. “Wait here, I want to check something out.”

Without Fia to slow him down, he crossed the frozen river, scaled the nearby slope, and rounded the cliff in under an hour.

From here, he could see quite some distance. The Land of Crestamere was indeed a frozen wilderness. Beautiful in its own right, but utterly harsh. He spied a stag loping through the woods not far off rom where they’d made camp and filed the knowledge away for later. If they couldn’t find a town tonight, they would have to build a long-term shelter of their own and winter in place.

A few miles to their east, sitting upon the same river they’d camped at, he spied the ringed wooden walls of a nearby town.

Leo frowned. There was no smoke coming from the town’s chimneys, and he couldn’t see any movement within its walls.

That isn’t good.