Jaleigh Johnson - Unbroken Chain - The Darker Road

Cree let Skagi get ahead of them, and when they arrived, he pulled Ashok aside. “I shouldn’t have brought up the past,” he said. “Skagi will tell you the tale someday-you might have to drag it from his lips-but he has reasons for his anger.”

“Whatever his reasons,” Ashok said, “Daruk knows them too. He knew just where to strike at Skagi to bring out his anger.”

It made Ashok uneasy. Why had the bard made such a point of learning the brothers’ histories? And what might he know about Ashok? Ashok had no more secrets to keep from Ikemmu, but he knew nothing about Daruk or his motives. He thought about asking Tatigan, but the merchant had been absorbed with watching after his cargo for most of the journey, and when he wasn’t doing that, he was deep in conversation with the other merchants.

“Do you think he could be the traitor, the one who signaled the brigands to attack?” Cree asked. “You heard how furious Tatigan was that he didn’t fight with the caravan against them.”

“If he is working with them, you’d think he’d try harder to hide it,” Ashok said. “But it’s possible. For now, we’ll just have to watch him. He hasn’t proven himself a threat … yet.”

Cree nodded, but something in the snow distracted him. He veered off the path abruptly and went into the trees. Curious, Ashok followed him. When they’d gotten several yards into the trees, Ashok saw the tracks in the snow, paw prints bigger than both his fists.

Cree squatted next to one of the pines. He brushed snow off the trunk to expose gashes in the bark. “Claw marks,” he said, “and I saw droppings just off the trail. A winter wolf-probably more than one.”

“Are they following the caravan?” Ashok asked. Tuva and Vlahna had warned them about the huge wolves that dwelled in this country, but Ashok hadn’t expected to encounter signs of them until they’d gotten closer to the Sunrise Mountains.

“Doesn’t look like it,” Cree said. “But we’ve invaded their hunting grounds. We’ll have to be cautious.”

“Let Tuva and Vlahna know what you found,” Ashok said. His gaze lingered on the huge tracks.

“Thinking about fighting one of them?” Cree said. He grinned. “We could use the sport.”

Ashok agreed, but he hoped Cree wasn’t tempting the gods by voicing the thought aloud.

By the time the caravan got underway, it had started snowing again, and the wind had changed direction, blowing directly into their faces. The horses and drovers bent their heads into the gale and pushed ahead, but by midday, their pace slowed to a crawl. The Golden Way, while not an actual road, was marked at intervals by the huge vertical stones, one always within sight of the next. But with the fierce wind and snow, the caravan crew was soon blind to even these markers. Rather than stop, Vlahna rode ahead with a torch and served as a marker between the stones to keep the caravan from straying off the route.

The snow and the wind harried them steadily for the next three days.

During those long hours of slow plodding on horseback, Ashok felt as if he’d fallen into a white void. The wind filled his ears with a hollow, painful whistling only barely broken by his cloak hood. He welcomed the icy needles of pain on his face, but all too quickly, the pain turned to numbness. To keep the frostbite at bay, the crew would have to wrap their heads with extra blankets, leaving nothing but the eyes exposed. Buried in darkness and numbing cold, Ashok felt real fear for the first time since he’d begun the caravan journey. The shadows of his soul stirred restlessly, even as his heartbeat slowed and his thoughts became sluggish.

A part of him railed against this, viciously berating his own weakness. He should be stronger than this. He’d spent a tenday in a dark cell in the caves of Ikemmu. This should not test him. But somehow it made the experience worse. He kept expecting to look into the snowbound wilderness and see his father and brothers beckoning to him with their corpse grins.

Another part of him-and this most frightening of all-welcomed the peace and solitude. At these times, his own body betrayed him. His mind drifted, floating in a dreamlike fog, and he had to resist the urge to slump forward against the nightmare’s neck and sleep. Even the jostling motion of the beast beneath him and the rutted, uneven ground couldn’t keep that sense of peaceful longing at bay. Absorbed by it, Ashok felt his fears start to ebb.

This was truly the most dangerous time. When he no longer felt afraid for his soul, he was the most in danger of it fleeing his body. Slowly, mechanically, he peeled his glove off his hand. The cold bit into his flesh immediately, and with it a bit of clarity returned. Ashok lifted his hand to his mouth, but he couldn’t make himself bite his flesh. He didn’t have the strength. What would it accomplish? Why break the peaceful stillness with blood? All he had to do was close his eyes and give in to the arms of the wind.…

In the distance, Ashok heard a loud pop and an explosive hiss like a fire suddenly doused. A breath later, a blast of pure energy hit him in the chest.

The force blew Ashok off his horse. The nightmare reared and screamed, but Ashok couldn’t move out of the way. He gasped at the sudden pain and awareness that flooded his mind. He looked down at his chest and saw a sunburst of black scorch marks on his bone scale breastplate.

Beside him, a similar blast knocked Skagi and Cree off their horses. The caravan halted as horses and passengers screamed. The drovers fought to control the beasts, but there was mass confusion as everyone tried to sort out where the attack came from.

Tuva broke through the mass of rearing horses to get to Ashok and the brothers. “What did you see?” he cried. His eyes, when he got close to them, looked glassy. He shook himself as if waking up from a long sleep. “Where are they?”

Ashok shook his head. He pulled himself to his feet using Tuva’s stirrup. It wasn’t the energy blast, but his own weakness, that slowed him. “I couldn’t see; it came from nowhere.”

Cree and Skagi pulled themselves together. Their wounds were identical to Ashok’s.

“Did you see anything?” Tuva asked them. “What direction-”

“I’ve got her!” cried one of the guards. Tuva wheeled his horse away from Ashok. In the open space, Ashok caught a glimpse of Ilvani standing up in the back of the wagon ahead of them. One of Kaibeth’s sellswords had a dagger pressed to her throat.

Ashok pulled his chain off his belt.

“Let her go,” he said in a dead voice.

“She attacked you!” the sellsword cried. “I saw her hurl the magic at all three of them,” he told Tuva.

Kaibeth and Vlahna rode up from the front of the caravan, their faces swaddled in cloaks and masks. Kaibeth pulled hers down and barked at the sellsword. “Vertan, explain this.”

“She’s the traitor,” Vertan exclaimed. “Tuva said someone in the caravan was working with the brigands. It’s her-she sabotaged us from within.”

Some of the guards came to the back to see what was going on. When they heard Vertan’s words, they tightened their grips on their weapons. Ashok saw all this, but he ignored it. He took a step forward, then another. He couldn’t attack with his chain without the possibility of hitting Ilvani. But he could kill the shadar-kai with his own dagger if it came to that. He just needed to get close enough.

Tuva saw him and wrenched his horse around to get between Ashok and the wagon. “Everyone, stay back,” he barked at the other onlookers.

For her part, Ilvani appeared detached from the proceedings. She remained perfectly still. Her eyes skimmed over Ashok’s and the brothers’ wounds, but otherwise she seemed at ease.