Chapter 60
Greedy Little Worm
The Dragoon held the caravan together through sheer competence. He was everywhere—front, back, sides—killing whatever came close and keeping us moving. But even he was wearing down. I could see it in his slowed reactions, his heavy breathing. He was burning through his reserves.
And through all of it, I worked. Every night, I sent my worms out. Creating flat ones that nobody would see, even if they were looking. They slipped into wagons, under cargo nets, and behind crates, taking valuables we could sell or trade when we reached Valdris.
During the attacks, I made sure to lose some of my own valuables.
I’d allowed the howlers to "blow" my sack of dried meat away, which was actually a sack of gravel I'd repacked to look like the food.
The real meat was already buried in a cache a couple of switchbacks behind us that I'd retrieve with a worm later.
I made a show of scrambling after it, cursing, then coming back empty-handed and with a convincing expression of loss.
By the fourth night in the mountains, I had a small fortune stashed along the trail in worm-guarded pockets of earth and stone.
Coins, medicine, silver wire, a pair of Regalia rings I'd pulled from a sleeping mercenary's pack, three vials of fire-starter, and a map of trade routes throughout the Frostpines that had been rolled up inside the merchant's cargo manifest.
The map was the real prize. Detailed, recent, with terrain markings and notes about known beast territories. Whoever had drawn it knew the mountains well.
I kept it all. Every bit of it. And every morning, I sat with Zo, ate our dwindling rations, and complained about how the mountain was bleeding us dry, like everyone else.
I could feel that something big was coming.
The worms I'd sent ahead had let me know in advance, something that shook the ground with each step.
The rock throwers, howlers, and fire monkeys were most likely its subjects.
This area probably belonged to it. We'd been walking through its kingdom for five days, and it had been watching us the whole time, sending its troops to test us.
But now it was time for it to welcome us.
A huge white fifteen-foot-tall baboon with three heads.
The head on the left was grey, its face flat and textured like dry stone, its eyes the dull color of granite.
The head in the middle was red—the same burning crimson as the fire macaques—heat distorted the air around it.
The head on the right was green, its fur shifting and rippling with the wind; as it opened its mouth, the breeze around the caravan stopped.
It was deathly calm; it had taken the wind and the sound, leaving us with nothing. Then all three heads howled at once.
The ground under the lead wagon split. A stone spike punched upward, flipping the wagon onto its side.
The Dragoon dove clear, rolling, his blade out and ready.
A gust of focused wind hit the center of the caravan, scattering the mercenaries off the trail.
A stream of fire, thicker and hotter than anything the smaller monkeys had produced, slashed across the caravan's side, turning those wagons into a bonfire.
The Dragoon charged. He made it thirty feet up the rock face before the stone head howled, cracking the cliff beneath his feet. It dropped him back to the trail in an avalanche of rock. He landed hard on his back and got back to his feet, bleeding from a cut above his eye.
The alpha used stone to block, wind to displace, and its fire to punish the Dragoon every time he backed off. The mercenaries killed a dozen rock throwers and four fire monkeys that tried to surround the caravan during the fight, while the alpha continued raining down destruction.
In the end, the caravan master screamed for a full retreat. We backed up half a mile to a wider section of trail, and the alpha beat its chest as it let us go, settling on the ridge with its three heads scanning the valley below.
We lost two more wagons. Six more people. The caravan was down to four wagons and fourteen mercenaries, plus the Dragoon, the caravan master, the Golden Rose wagon and its two guards, the merchant family, Zo, and me.
That night, nobody talked. The caravan master sat on a rock and stared at his boots.
The mercenaries cleaned their weapons in silence.
The Golden Rose wagon sat in the center of the circle, untouched, undamaged, its fire-treated canvas intact and its guards as motionless as they'd been since the start.
I sat apart from the group. We couldn't go back—the trail behind us was littered with wreckage, and the monkeys would harass us the whole way—supplies were gone, morale was gone, and the alpha would come for us eventually. The only way was forward, past the alpha's roost.
The Dragoon couldn't do it alone. That was clear. He was strong, but the alpha's three-element combo attack was too much for a single fighter to handle. He needed support. Which meant someone else had to step up.
Which meant—
"Fish."
I turned. Zo stood behind me, her axe in one hand, her other hand clenched into a fist at her side.
Her jaw was set. Her magenta eyes were burning, and the veins in her neck and arms pulsed hard. She dropped something at my feet. A cloth bundle. It hit the dirt and clinked—metal on metal.
"Found that under a rock while I was pissing. Funny thing. It's got a ton of coins. And a pair of Regalia rings that went 'missing' off one of the sleeping mercs."
My stomach dropped.
"You want to explain to me," Zo said, "why you've been crying poor every damn morning while you've got a treasure chest buried in the fucking mountainside?"