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Just when Link was starting to wonder if it would be worth it after all to turn and confront the mounted bokoblins hunting them- and never mind the bruises that their arrows would punch even through the protection of his armor- he and Wolfie found what they’d been looking for.
They slid down a gravel slope through banks of fog, tiny rocks spilling under their feet into a dry avalanche. At the bottom they fetched up against the stubborn trunks of a stand of trees that squatted along the edge of a cliff with their leaves hanging in long strands around their shoulders. Fog foamed up over the edge of the cliff, obscuring the world underneath wet, smothering silver and making even short distances seem vast as it removed reference points from view. From here Link could smell salt and hear the distant roar of the sea somewhere lower down and to the left, tucked beneath the fog’s blanket and entirely indifferent to its self-congratulatory smugness. The ocean did not care who or what tried to cover the world; its tides would rise and fall as they always had. A faint breeze stirred the trees' scraggly hanging leaves so they drifted ghost-like through the air, appearing and disappearing behind the fog, temporarily pressing the world closer as they broke the fog’s curtain.
Link slid among the trees and leaned over the edge, peering down with one arm wrapped around one of the slippery trunks for support as he panted for breath. The bark was damp with humidity, water beading up on the tree's mottled skin. It sank through his outer layer of clothing, brushing cool fingers along his arm and side. He ignored it as he examined the area while the bokoblin's snorts and snarls increased in volume behind them.
The cliff dropped too sharply for Wolfie to follow him if he went down by paraglider and was too fog-slick to climb. He squinted forwards, peering into the fog as though he could part it and see beyond it. Past cracked and ragged stone and curling tree’s roots poking from the cliff the cloud mass swirled, mean and smug. Hah! it seemed to say. Am I not splendid? I am too solid to see through and there’s nothing you can do about it. How will you escape without my assistance?
“I think it’s a canyon,” Link told Wolfie as the wolf paced back and forth behind him, keeping a watchful eye out for their pursuers. This wasn't a sea cliff, since the rumble of ocean waves was too far away, and if the bridge they’d just crossed was the one he thought it was, then this cliff should be… He thought it might be above the Luro river, which had wavered across the paper map he’d been allowed to look over at the stable two nights ago, jockeying between two cliffs like the filling in a sandwich. That meant that there might be land close behind the fog's curtain, maybe close enough for Link and Wolfie to reach but beyond the ability of any boko-ridden horse to jump to. It was impossible to tell by eye if the maybe-canyon might be wide enough when the distance of a dozen steps looked the same as a thousand.
Wolfie flicked an ear at him in acknowledgment, his attention still facing into the fog behind them and the confused echoing sounds of their pursuers. Link thought for a heartbeat as he caught his breath, then pulled his slate off of his belt. Its rippled, stone-like shell was already slick with the fog’s breath, and he held it carefully by the handle on one side as he flicked his fingers across its screen to activate a rune and held it up in front of his eyes.
This was taking too long. Behind them the boko’s cries were dangerously close, circling to the left and right as they fanned out beneath the fog’s cover. On the screen, the glinting silver mask of the fog was broken up near eye level with vibrant yellow silhouettes of trees, low stubby bushes, and the loose tumbled scree of another collapsed slope atop the opposite, hidden cliff. The silhouettes were close, large; not close enough for Link or even Wolfie to leap to, but not impossibly out of reach. Link hooked the slate back onto his belt and tilted his head back, critically examining the height of the tree he hung off of.
Wolfie began to growl quietly as an excited whoop came from nearby on their right, along the edge of the cliff, and was answered by a screeching snarl from their left. From behind them came a hiccuping laugh like a horse’s scream and the burble of malice. Out of the corner of his eye Link could see his friend’s muzzle wrinkle, probably against the monster's scent- like hatred condensed into flesh- that was still too faint for his hylian nose to smell. The tree was probably tall enough, but their enemies were too close, too close!
Wolfie’s growl deepened as sudden movement behind them caught Link’s eye. A horse slid down the gravel slope towards them, its eyes rolling with terror as it was spurred forwards by the bokoblin on its back. As if its appearance had been a signal the rest of the bokoblin’s hunting party charged out of the fog into view, one on either side.
Wolfie leapt towards a mounted boko, teeth bared, paws outstretched. Another boko drew and loosed an arrow with a snap and a whistle of wood through air. The third had a rusted sword plucked up from the death and ruin of the destroyed fort, and it spurred its horse to greater speeds and leaned low to swing it at Link.
Link focused, the way he’d known to when he woke in his grave, the way he’d done accidentally every time he opened a chest or a door, every time he’d looked away from an enemy or allowed himself to become distracted by a conversation. His power burned in his chest, so cold it seared, golden and familiar.
The flow of time sputtered, grit its teeth, and stopped, trembling under his command. The arrow paused mid-flight. Wolfie hung in mid-air, a bokoblin caught in his teeth and half dragged from the saddle, their momentum arrested. The rusty sword stopped in the middle of its arch, wisps of fog parting around it like an afterimage of its path.
Alone and surrounded by stopped reality, Link hefted his sword back and swung at the tree once, twice, then one last time, his breath hitching around that kind and searing cold power in his chest. Fresh sweat trickled down his temples as the strain of holding time in place was joined by the strain of swinging the blade.
With a motion made exaggerated and enormous in the frozen world, the tree fell. It tipped towards the empty space beyond the cliff’s edge and dropped through the fog gathered there like a blade coming down. The fog swallowed it, tore around it, shimmering with agony, but the far edge of the tree caught on the invisible cliff on the other side of the gap with a CRASH.
Time resumed. Link jerked sideways out of the path of the arrow and was forced to roll forwards out from under the stomping hooves of the sword-wielding boko’s mount. Wolfie and his prey hit the ground with a snarl and the boko’s outraged scream.
Link came smoothly back to his feet and shoved two fingers into his mouth, whistling sharply as he leapt back towards their improvised bridge. Let’s go! the whistle cried. Come on! He didn’t bother to pull free his sword or shield as all three of their enemies began to screech in protest, crying out against a quarry that was about to get away.
As an arrow whistled past his head and one of the horses screamed and, by the sound of it, reared and began to kick, Link threw himself onto the uncertain footing of the bridge. Behind him came the immense sense of weight and heavy paw steps that was Wolfie, following him onto the narrow wood with as much ease as he’d run across the flat ground. They made it out into the center of the bridge before a boko drove its horse screaming into the other end. The bridge shuddered and slid forwards, tilting sharply as the branches bracing it on the opposite cliff broke and bent. The horse was too terrified to pull up at the edge of the cliff, its good sense robbed from it with the stench of monsters in its nostrils. It allowed its rider to spur it across and over the log it had already jarred into with an impact, stumbling over tree roots and gravel and hitting its proper stride again just in time to run into empty air. It and its rider fell together into the mist with matching squeals like indignant pigs.
The fog was too thick for Link to see whether the boko dissolved into the vibrant, heavy smoke of dispelled malice when it and its mount broke together against the riverbed far below. But then, he was mostly too busy to look; windmilling his arms and rapidly stepping sideways as well as back as the disturbed tree-bridge slid and twisted, slowly but inexorably sliding him off itself. The weight of his weapons on his back pulled him backwards, working against his efforts to regain his balance and conspiring with the moving footing to force him down into the empty fog after the monster. Just before his foot slipped, as he was reaching resignedly for his paraglider, Wolfie lunged forwards and caught him with a snap of teeth around his cloak hood.
A frustrated scream came from the other side of the bridge as Wolfie carefully hauled him back up onto his feet. Two more arrows hissed out of the fog with a slice of wind, thunking against stray branches of their tree-bridge and splintering the damp wood. Link ruffled the fur of Wolfie’s ruff, grinning, and started to run again. With a soft boof, his friend ran after him.
They were too far for bow-shot now, and despite the tree-bridge slowly twisting free of its footing on either clifftop, Link and Wolfie vanished into the fog out of reach. By the time the bridge fell into the canyon, they were long gone.