Chapter 56
Road Trash
I stood up from the brush and stepped onto the road. I did it slowly. Deliberately. My arms stretched out, palms open, my fingers spread. I walked forward and stopped in the center of the road, directly in the path of the lead wagon, maybe sixty yards ahead of the column.
The reaction was immediate. The front riders pulled hard on their reins, the scaled mount rearing its head as the Dragoon jerked it short. Four guards broke off and rushed forward, their spears aimed at my chest. Behind them, two crossbowmen brought their weapons up and locked onto me.
"Don't move." The lead guard was an average-looking woman with a hooked nose and green eyes. She moved her spear lower, towards my gut. "Hands where I can see them."
"They're out." I kept my voice level. No edge. "I'm just passing through."
"Nobody just passes through. Where's your partner?" " The guard said as they circled me.
They'd already seen Zo. Of course, they had. The brush wasn't that thick, and Zo wasn't small. I tilted my head back toward where she was hiding.
Zo stepped out of the brush. She did it the way I'd asked, with her hands away from her axe. But there was nothing she could do about the rest of it. The scars. The tattoos. The blue-green veins tracing up her forearms.
The guards saw all of it. I watched their eyes scan from Zo's axe to her arms to her face, and I watched the ideas forming behind their expressions. Two armed strangers emerging from the brush on a trade road.
They didn’t lower their spears. If anything, they got stiffer and more ready.
"Dragoons," the scarred woman said.
"We are wandering ones. Looking for work.
" I kept my chin down, my eyes on the woman's spear tip rather than her face.
My best play at a submissive gesture. Or at least close enough to one.
Every instinct I had wanted to meet her stare and push, to let the pressure of my Origin seep out just enough to make her understand the gap between us.
But that would end in blood… hers, probably, and then the crossbowmen's, and then the rest, and then Zo and I would be standing in a field of corpses with no caravan, no cover story, and a Dragoon whose strength I still hadn't gauged deciding whether to kill us or not.
So I swallowed the aggression down. Pushed the worms back, clamped my power shut, and stood there with my palms out like a beggar.
"Why would we hire road trash?" A guard said, spitting into the dirt.
Zo's lip curled. I could feel how badly she wanted to hit him. The desire came off her in waves, a change in the air's density around her, and I was almost certain the blue veins on her arms had lit up for a second.
"...Zo." I whispered.
She exhaled slowly. Her shoulders relaxed.
The scarred woman watched the exchange between us.
"Road follows the valley to Valdris," she said. "We don't own the road. Walk it if you want."
"Thank you… I appreciate it."
I turned and walked toward Zo, and neither of us looked back at the guards until the caravan had started moving again.
We fell in behind the last wagon.
The beasts kicked up a constant cloud of brown grit that hung in the air. My tongue was coated within minutes, a dry chalky film that tasted of the road itself. I pulled my shirt up over my nose and breathed through the fabric. It helped a little.
Zo didn't bother. She walked with her mouth closed and her eyes half-shut against the grit, and if it bothered her, I couldn't tell.
The caravan moved at the pace of its slowest wagon, which meant slow. The draft beasts plodded with the mechanical patience of animals that had been doing this their entire lives, each stride covering ground at a rate that a brisk walk could match. We had no trouble keeping up.
From back here, I could see the full length of the group. And with time to watch, the structure of it started to come together in my head.
The wagons weren’t sorted randomly. They were ordered by value.
The first three wagons were the heaviest. And most likely carried high-value cargo.
Trade goods, maybe. Raw materials. The Dragoon on his scaled mount rode ahead of those three, and the densest concentration of guards clustered around them.
Eight guards per wagon for the front three.
That was nearly half the total force dedicated to maybe a quarter of the cargo.
The middle wagons were lighter. Supplies, probably—food, water, camp equipment. The guards here were three or four per wagon.
The rear four wagons were the interesting ones.
They were the smallest, their canvas flaps not as tight as the others; through the gaps I could see bedrolls and personal effects.
Passenger wagons. People who were paying for the caravan's protection rather than providing it.
Through the back flap of the nearest one, I caught a pair of legs propped on a sack of grain that belonged to someone who was sleeping.
And then there was the second wagon from the back.
That one was different. It was the same size as the others in the rear group, but its canvas was brand new and thicker.
It had a darker shade of grey, with a pattern stitched along the bottom edge in gold thread.
Gold thread. On a wagon cover. The beast pulling it wore polished brass fixtures on its harness.
The two guards walking beside it weren't mercenaries.
They wore matching dark blue coats, with short swords of identical make.
Private security. Someone in that wagon had money and a lot of it.
I didn't stare; I kept looking ahead, matching the caravan's speed, letting the dust settle on my shoulders.