Thunderlord snippet - Snowstorm

Please remember that this is a work in progress and drafts have a habit of changing drastically from inception to finished book.

From Thunderlord  Chapter4

With a start, Kyria realized that the snow in front of them was not smooth. A set of tracks marked the center of trail, although the edges were blurred with new snow and the whipping of the wind. Even so, she thought they had been made by a one animal or several, traveling single file.

The captain, who had been riding point, called out, “There it is!” 

Kyria looked up from the blurred tracks, her spirits rising, to see a snug stone house at the end of the glen. Even at this distance, it appeared to have been constructed from the same gray stone as the ridge. The roof slanted sharply, extending past the house itself to form the top of a livestock paddock. Two animals moved in the shadows there  – horses she thought, for they looked too large to be chervines. And smoke arose from the chimney on the opposite side.

The smoke terrified Kyria, and her terror confused and embarrassed her. She had gone out to check her traps a hundred times and never felt this vulnerable. But then she had been on her father’s lands. Then she had not been the promised wife of a great lord, one whose enemies might seek to harm him through her.

I’m surrounded by armed men, sworn to protect me.

I’m in the middle of nowhere, and I have no idea who that is in the shelter. He might be a perfectly innocent fellow traveler. Or a powerful sorcerer, who would think nothing of disposing of anyone who got in his way.

“Why have we stopped?” came Alayna’s plaintive voice. She sounded as chilled, hungry, and exhausted as Kyria felt.

“There’s someone already there!” Kyria called back. Then she saw the captain coming toward them.

“Is it safe?” Dom Ruyven shouted.

If it weren’t, Kyria had no idea what they would do. Whoever was in the shelter might not have noticed their approach yet. They could still turn back – and go where? Alayna could not withstand the cold much longer.