up and listen, hoping to hear a body smash against the rocks below. They were too late. The Holers grumbled the customary curses about lost meat, and looked over to Lilly. Logan’s tears were as hot as his fever.
“Now who the fuck’s Logan?” Gorkhy shouted. “King, was she talkin’ to you?”
Logan closed his eyes. What did it matter anymore?
41
It’s time, Fatty,” Ferl Khalius said. “He’s not crazy enough to follow us across this.”
They were fourteen hundred feet up MountHezeron, the tallest mountain on the Ceuran border. So far, the hike had been arduous, but the worst exposures had been of a dozen feet. From here, there were two ways over the mountain: through the notch to one side, or straight across the face. Ferl had nearly started a brawl at the last village by asking which way a brave man in a hurry would go.
Some of the villagers maintained that the face was never a good option, but that it would be especially bad this time of year. Even a light dusting of snow or freezing rain would make the path suicide. Others had maintained that going over the face was the only way to make it through the mountains before the snows hit. Getting stuck in the steeps and the deeps that made the devil’s pass through the notch would be certain death if it snowed.
And snow was coming.
Baron Kirof wasn’t doing well. He was so scared of heights he’d been crying. “If—if he’d be crazy to follow us, what does that make us?”
“Eager to live. I grew up in mountains tougher than this.” Ferl shrugged. “Follow or fall.”
“Can’t you leave me?” Baron Kirof was pathetic. Ferl had brought him along because he didn’t know what would happen when he fled, and he’d wanted a bargaining chip. But maybe it had been a mistake. The fat man had slowed him down.
“They want you alive. If you stay here, that Vürdmeister will blast me off the rock. If you’re with me, he might not.”
“Might not?”
“Move, Fatty!”
Ferl Khalius looked at the dark clouds grimly. His tribe, the Iktana, was a mountain tribe. He was one of the best climbers he knew, but he’d never liked climbing. Battle he liked. Battle made you feel alive. But climbing was arbitrary, the mountain gods capricious. He’d seen the most devout clansman plunge to his death when he’d put his weight on a stone that had held Ferl—who was heavier—only a moment before. In battle, a stray arrow might kill you, of course, but you could move, you could fight. Death might still come, but it wouldn’t find you scared, clinging to a bit of rock with slick fingers, praying against the next blast of wind.
This traverse wasn’t the worst he’d seen. It climbed perhaps a hundred feet and its entire length was narrow, maybe three feet wide. Three feet was pretty damn wide. It was the sheer drop that made that three feet seem ever so much smaller. Knowing that if you slipped you had absolutely no chance of catching yourself, that stumbling meant certain death, that did things to a man.
It was doing things to Fatty Kirof.
The baron, unfortunately, had no idea why he was important. Ferl hadn’t been able to find out anything either. But Fatty was important enough that the Godking had sent a Vürdmeister after them.
“You’re going first, Fatty. I’ll take all the gear, but that’s all the mercy you get.”
It wasn’t mercy. It was practicality. Fatty would go slower with a pack, and if he fell, Ferl didn’t want to lose his supplies.
“I can’t do it,” Baron Kirof said. “Please.” Sweat was coursing down his round face. His little red whiskers quivered like a rabbit’s.
Ferl drew his sword, the sword he’d given so much to protect, the sword that would make him a clan warlord. It was everything a warlord could want, a perfect sword, down to the highland runes on the steel that Ferl recognized but couldn’t read.
He gestured with the sword, a little shrug that said, “Take your chances with the path, or take your chances with the sword.”
The baron started onto the path. He was muttering too low for Ferl to hear him, but it sounded like he was praying.
Surprisingly, Fatty made good time. Ferl had to slap him once with the flat of his blade when he froze up and started scooting. They didn’t have time to scoot. If they weren’t far enough away from the Vürdmeister when he made it out of the trees,