Well hello there! SURPRISE! *blows dust away*

After my thesis exam went well (Feb 18th) I'm now a graduated person! Gonna celebrate it with a new chapter of my long pushed aside fanfic. Again, so inmensely sorry for the long wait. I hope you are still there to read it, as there's more to come!

Lots of love,

-Ael

Chapter XII - Runaway

From his position, Prince Hans stared up at the distance.

This was just like any other hunt. He made himself think away the quarry. It did not matter if you were after a deer or a bride-to-be; the procedures held. You gathered evidence. Then you acted. You studied, then you performed. If you studied too little, the chances were strong that your actions would also be too late. You had to take time. And so, frozen in thought, he continued to stare.

After following the trails in the Cliff of Insanity, he had sent half of his ships south along the coastline, the other north. They should meet by twilight near the Fire Swamp. His ship will sail to the first landing possibility, and Count Pitch would follow him with soldiers after the kidnapper.

The Prince took notes in his brain after studying all the clues and trails left behind by the Princess' captors: his enemy is strong; his enemy is not impulsive. Hans had examined the footprints atop of the Cliff until he was certain of two things:

(1) a fencing match had taken place,

(2) the combatants were both masters.

The stride length, the quickness of the foot feints, all clearly revealed to his unfailing eye, made him reassess his second conclusion. They were at least masters. Probably better.

"There was a mighty duel," Prince Hans had said, directing his comment toward Count Pitch, who had finally caught up, together with a contingent of a hundred mounted men-at-arms.

"My guess would be . . ."

And for a moment the Prince paused, following footsteps.

"Would be that whoever fell here, ran off there," and he pointed one way, "and that whoever was the victor ran off along the mountain path in almost precisely the opposite direction. It is also my opinion that the victor was following the path taken by the Princess."

"Shall we follow them both?" the Count had asked.

"I think not," Hans replied. "Whoever is gone is of minimal importance, since whoever has the Princess is the whoever we're after. And because we don't know the nature of the trap we might be being led into, we need all the arms we have in one band. Clearly, this had been planned by countrymen of Guilder, and nothing must ever be put past them."

"You think this is a trap, then?" the Count asked.

"I always think everything is a trap until proven otherwise," the Prince answered. "Which is why I'm still alive."

And with that, he was back aboard his horse and galloping.

When he had reached the mountain path where the hand fight happened, the Prince did not even bother dismounting. Everything that could be seen was quite visible from horseback.

"Someone has beaten a giant," he had said, when the Count was close enough. "The giant has run away, do you see?"

The Count, of course, saw nothing but rock and mountain path. "I would not think to doubt you."

"And look there!" cried the Prince, because now he saw, for the first time, in the rubble of the mountain path, the footsteps of a woman. "The Princess is alive!"

And again the horses were thundering across the mountain.

When the Count caught up with him again, the Prince was kneeling over the still body of a hunchback.

Pitch dismounted.

"Smell this," the Prince said, and he handed up a goblet.

"Nothing," the Count said. "No odor at all."

"Iocane," the Prince replied. "I would bet my life on it. I know of nothing else that kills so silently." He stood up then. "The Princess was still alive; her footprints follow the path." He shouted at the hundred mounted men: "There will be great suffering in Guilder if she dies!"

On foot now, he ran along the mountain path, following the footsteps that he alone could see. And when those footsteps left the path for wilder terrain, he followed still. Strung out behind him, the Count and all the soldiers did their best to keep up. Men stumbled, horses fell, even the Count tripped from time to time. Prince Hans never even broke stride. He ran steadily, mechanically, his legs pumping like a metronome.

It was two hours after dawn when he reached the steep ravine.

"Odd," he said to the Count, who was tiring badly.

Pitch continued only to breathe deeply.

"Two bodies fell to the bottom, and they did not come back up."

"That is odd," the Count managed.

"No, that isn't what's odd," the Prince corrected. "Clearly, the kidnapper did not come back up because the climb was too steep, and he must know that they were closely pursued. His decision, which I applaud, was to make better time running along the ravine floor."

The Count waited for the Prince to continue.

"It's just odd that a man who is a master fencer, a defeater of giants, an expert in the use of iocane powder, would not know what this ravine opens into."

"And what is that?" asked the Count.

"The Fire Swamp," said Prince Hans.

"Then we have him," said the Count.

"Precisely so."

It was a well-documented trait of his to smile only just before the kill; his smile was very much in evidence now…

They still could not believe it. Jack did weep; Elsa's eyes did not remain precisely dry. They embraced for some long minutes, saying with a low, trembling voice how glad they were to see each other.

However, within a quarter of an hour, they were arguing.

It began quite innocently, the two of them kneeling, facing each other, Jack holding her perfect face in his quick hands.

"When I left you," he whispered, "you were already more beautiful than anything I dared to dream. In our years apart, my imaginings did their best to improve on your perfection. At night, your face was forever behind my eyes. And now I see that that vision who kept me company in my loneliness was a hag compared to the beauty now before me."

"Enough about my beauty," Elsa softly said. "Everybody always talks about how beautiful I am. I've got a mind, Jack. Talk about that."

"Throughout eternity I shall do that very thing," he told her. "But now we haven't time." He made it to his feet. The ravine fall had shaken and battered him, but all his bones survived the trip uncracked. He helped her to her feet.

Jack looked up the ravine, and sighed.

"If only you didn't jump after me…"

"How could I not? It was you!" she sounded a little offended. "You didn't want to see me?"

Jack sighed again. "Of course I wanted to see you. I just didn't want to see you down here."

"Why ever not?"

"Because now, my precious, we're more or less kind of trapped. I can't climb out of here and bring you with me without it taking all day. I can get out myself, most likely, without it taking all day, but with the addition of your lovely bulk, it's not about to happen."

"But... you climbed the Cliffs of Insanity, and this isn't nearly that steep."

"And it took a little out of me too, let me tell you. And after that little effort, I tangled with a fella who knew a little something about fencing. And after that, I spent a few happy moments grappling with a giant. And after that, I had to outfake a Weseltonian to death when any mistake meant it was a knife in the throat for you. And after that I've run my lungs out a couple of hours. And after that I was pushed two hundred feet down a rock ravine. I'm tired, Elsa."

The girl just stood there in silence, annoyed by Jack's sarcasm. "I'm not stupid, you know."

Elsa walked away from him. "The Princess of Arendelle is displeased with you and she wishes not to see you!"

"What?" Jack asked, half disheartened and half in disbelief.

With no more words, she whirled into his arms then, saying, "I didn't mean that, you idiot."

He held her very close, shut his loving eyes, and only whispered, "I know."

"Yeah right, you sounded like a sad puppy" she laughed.

"Alright, quit bragging, Princess"

"Then stop being rude, peasant!"

They started running as fast as they could along the flat-rock floor of the ravine.

Jack was a bit ahead of Elsa with the realization that they were heading into the Fire Swamp. Whether it was a touch of sulphur riding a breeze or a flick of yellow flame far ahead in the daylight, he could not say for sure. But once he realized what was about to happen, he began as casually as possible to find a way to avoid it. A quick glance up the sheer ravine sides ruled out any possibility of his getting Elsa past the climb. He dropped to the ground, as he had been doing every few minutes, to test the speed of their trackers. Now, he guessed them to be less than half an hour behind and gaining.

He rose and ran with her, faster, neither of them spending breath in conversation. It was only a matter of time before she understood what they were about to be into, so he decided to beat back her panic in any way possible. "I think we can slow down a bit now," he told her, slowing down a bit. "They're still well behind."

Elsa took a deep breath of relief.

Jack made a show of checking their surroundings. Then he gave her his best smile. "With any luck at all," he said, "we should soon be safely in the Fire Swamp."

Elsa heard his speech, of course. But she did not take it well.

Fire swamps contain a large percentage of sulphur and other gas bubbles that burst continually into flame. They are covered with lush giant trees that shadow the ground, making the flame bursts seem particularly dramatic. Because they are dark, they are almost always quite moist, thereby attracting the standard insect and alligator community that prefers a moist climate.

The Florin/Guilder Fire Swamp did and does have some particular odd characteristics: (a) the existence of Snow Sand and (b) the presence of the R.O.U.S., about which, a bit more later. Snow Sand is usually, again incorrectly, identified with lightning sand. Nothing could be less accurate. Lightning sand is moist and basically destroys by drowning. Snow Sand is as powdery as anything short of talcum, and destroys by suffocation.

Most particularly though, the Florin/Guilder Fire Swamp was used to frighten children. There was not a child in either country that at one time or another was not, when misbehaving very badly, threatened with abandonment in the Fire Swamp. And so, as children grew, so did the danger of the Fire Swamp in their enlarging imaginations.

It is impenetrable and over twenty-five miles square. The one between Florin and Guilder was barely a third that size. No one had been able to discover if it was impenetrable or not.

Elsa stared at the Fire Swamp. As a child, she had once spent an entire nightmared year convinced that she was going to die there. Now she could not move another step. The giant trees blackened the ground ahead of her. From every part came the sudden flames.

"You cannot ask it of me," she said.

"I must."

"I once dreamed I would die here."

"So did I, so did we all. Were you eight that year? I was."

"Eight. Six. I can't remember."

Jack took her hand.

She could not move. "Must we?"

He nodded.

"Why?"

"Now is not the time." He pulled her gently.

She still could not move.

Jack took her in his arms. "Child; sweet child. I have a knife. I have my staff. I did not come across the world to lose you now."

Elsa was searching somewhere for a sufficiency of courage. Evidently, she found it in his eyes.

At any rate, hand in hand, they moved into the shadows of the Fire Swamp.