Sirath
Three days later, they come at dawn.
The scree field first, three sets of boots on loose shale, the sound carrying up the mountain in the cold air, and I’m at the cave mouth before the second footfall.
Then my heat pits register movement on the eastern approach, two more, flanking, and one on the switchbacks with a measured stride. The leader.
Six. The number Magnelle warned us about.
Ruelle is already up, boots on, hair tied back, three vials in her belt and the frostbark knife in her hand. She’s been ready for this since Magnelle left.
“Western, three,” I say. “Eastern, two. Switchbacks, one.”
She nods and doesn’t speak; her face has the focus I’ve seen at the workbench, the same attention applied differently. She touches my arm as she passes me at the cave mouth, brief, warm, and then she’s gone, moving along the ridge above the western approach to check her placements.
I make myself visible at the entrance, a clear silhouette. Let them see me.
Below, on the western approach, the first scream.
Frostbark irritant. The screaming man’s partners shout, boots scramble on rock, and the compound reacts to body heat and doesn’t stop reacting.
They retreat, but the path behind them is treated too, and three soldiers stumble back down the slope, blistered and panicking.
On the eastern approach, silence, then two heavy thuds in quick succession. The contact paralytic on the rock face. Anyone who touches the wall for balance goes down, not dead, immobilized.
Five neutralized. One still coming.
The switchback runner rounds the upper bend and finds me in the choke point: human, medium build, leather armor, short sword, the calm expression of a professional.
I know him. The lean build that never matched his stride, the cord at his throat where the lens used to hang. The runner from the first week, the one who studied the cave from the switchback and walked away unhurried. He came back, the way men like him come back.
“Give us the poisoner,” he says. “Gereth sent us.”
“I know who sent you.”
“He wants her. The offer is generous.”
“She’s not available.”
He looks at me, calculating, and then he does something I don’t expect. He smiles. “We were the first wave,” he says. “The second is already on the mountain.”
He steps back and sheathes the sword. His job was never the fight; it was keeping me here while the second wave moved in.
Behind me, higher up the slope, the scree field sounds again. Not from the western approach. From above. From the ridge where Ruelle went to check her placements.
They came up the back side of the mountain, a route I knew existed but dismissed, too exposed, too narrow for my shoulders, the rock face too steep for claws. I didn’t account for humans who climb with ropes and weigh a third of what I do.
Three more heat signatures on the ridge. Moving fast. Moving toward her.