The slope was even steeper than she’d realized when she started her ascent and the old wooden slats driven into the slope to provide better traction were slick with mud and wet. Her boots slipped against them, more than once almost toppling backwards and taking out Gray and the two members of the Wild Hunt that were coming up the slope behind him. The member of the Hunt in front of her kept glancing back, looking surprised at the difficulties she seemed to be experiencing.
“They are waiting,” he said quietly.
Aoife almost cursed out loud as her boot slipped again. Calm down, damn you, she thought. You’re on edge and snapping at them isn’t going to do anyone any good. Just take a deep breath and take this one step at a time.
Hopefully it’s not like this the entire way to where he is.
She sucked in a deep breath, put her head down, and trudged on.
After what felt like forever, they finally reached the top of the slope. Aoife’s calves burned and her thighs ached from the climb, and looking back down toward the river, she realized why.
That was a dangerous climb. Nasty angle.
Gray caught her hand in his and squeezed her fingers. She shivered and shot him a weak smile.
“You okay?” he murmured.
“Are you?” she countered. He smiled.
“We’ll see in a little bit.”
“This way,” one of their escorts said curtly, starting down a narrow trail discernable from the rest of the woods that surrounded them only by the bootprints in the muddy snow—probably from when the men escorting them had come down to the river in the first place.
Gray squeezed her hand again. “I’ll go first,” he murmured, then let go, setting off after the lead escort. Aoife hurried to follow him, fingers wrapping tightly around the straps of her backpack. This part of the trail was much easier to traverse, but she could see another slope rising above them as they worked their way deeper into a system of ravines.
“Is it far?” she asked their escorts. One of them chuckled softly.
“Not too far but not too close, either.”
Aoife wasn’t sure what to make of that as they crossed a small creek. She couldn’t see the river anymore.
Where are they taking us?
To your brother. That’s where. Her jaw tightened. At least they’d better be or there’ll be hell to pay.
The Hunt guys seem to be a bit… …crabby?
Well…I’ve climbed that slope (I’ve climbed several of the slopes and walked several of those trails in the ravines at Grand Valley State). I’ll tell you what, going down is almost worse than coming up (my friends and I came back more than once a bit of a mess thanks to those slopes). They’re probably going to end up having to go back down, so you’d be crabby, too, I think, at the prospect of escorting someone who may or may not be a threat up to campus level, only to turn around and schlep back down to where you were before.
They are going to have to do something about the boat. Isn’t there a boathouse down there a bit further on? It seems that the decent and assent would be easier there.
I Google Mapped the campus when I started reading the story.