Richard Von Cobalt - Chapter Tease

Princess Alexandra

I like mountains, always have done. Big obstinate bits of rock sticking up where they're not wanted and getting in folk's way. Great. Climbing them is a different matter altogether though. I hate that.

The following morning they climbed through a coldly damp snatch of cloud that began blotting out the tumbled slopes below them. Patches of hard, granulated snow began to appear nestled in some of the deeper pockets of stone. It glittered like quartz and its texture was as dry as sand. That afternoon they found a single footprint in one of these snow patches. Alexandra stared at it for a moment with awful fascination, then looked up with desperation, as if expecting to see their prey materialize into his own footprint. Their eagerness brought on by exhaustion.

Richard placed his hand on her shoulder and held a firm grasp. His weak attempt to keep whatever madness was driving her onwards at bay, long enough for her fatigue to catch up. “Alexandra stop this, you need rest.”

His touch brought nothing but her wrath down upon him as she violently shrugged away from him. “I am fine. Get off me you damn puppy, always following me when you’re not wanted.”

The air was frigid; they could see the puffs of their breath, Richard’s measured and calm while the air around Alexandra ragged and feisty, as their lungs were spitting smoke.

Richard taking one on his chin took Alexandra’s venomous remark, knowing perfectly well, in the past, he was oblivious to how she felt about him but these weren’t her true feelings, nothing but the tired bitterness of one who had gone days without rest.

“Please Alexandra. You’re not stupid, use your head. You still haven’t recovered from your wounds from Amon Manadh …” His words ceased after the sound of steel being ripped from its housing cutting through the mountain’s winds and a sword tip was aimed directly at him.

“When I am finished speaking you will turn and run. That way.” Tossing the direction behind him with her deadly blue eyes. “Do not stop until you are out of my sight. Do not delay or I will kill you. I am finished speaking.”

Richard much to his character was unflinching, even with Alexandra’s ire upon him, the young man couldn’t help but respect the women that were angled above him right then. This was the woman he followed into war, the same woman who spoke with such conviction that anything she set her mind to was achievable, all the impossibles nothing but an inconvenience in her way.

The threatening figure looming over him, the star spattered heavens of the night was Alexandra’s backdrop. Richard was in awe of her but still, he noticed the bags under her eyes and the slight sway in her posture.

He remained.

“No. I won’t leave you up here to die. You can barely stand if the mountain doesn’t kill you. This thing you’re hunting surely will. Despite your stubbornness.”

Alexandra now only a dim shadow, turned on her side and curled up with the blanket tossed loosely over her. Richard sat sentinel over her for perhaps an hour after, thinking his long, sober thoughts. Such meditation was a new thing for him, novel, sweet in a melancholy sort of way, but still utterly without practical value: there was no solution to the problem of Alexandra’s need for vengeance on those who wronged her other than following her along with the hunt. There might have been a tragedy in the situation, but Richard did not see that; he saw only the predestination that had always been there, still failing to protect, carrying her lifeless body from the battlefield that day, he long last took duty for his own choosing to serve and protect Alexandra. And finally, his more natural character reasserted itself and he slept deeply, with no dreams.