darkened blade_ A fallen blade novel - Kelly McCullough Page 0,62

by white helms shining like polished steel in the clear light of a cloudless day.

Twice we had to slowly pick our way through the aftermath of major rockfalls, and once an ominous crack from above announced the imminent arrival of a huge slab of granite. It bounced once on the trail, shattering the edge, before spinning off into the void, barely missing both Javan and one of the goats as it passed. Not a good omen that.

Maybe an hour after sunset we arrived at Kelos’s ambush site. The trail ran ribbon thin around a thick curve of rock with a nearly sheer drop on the left. Perhaps four hundred feet below, a valley pointed down and away to the south, while the trail looped off to the west. I could see both why Kelos thought it would make a good spot to take on our foes and why he wished for a better one.

If we could get our undead in the right place and bring a chunk of the mountain down on top of them, it would certainly thin their ranks nicely. There wasn’t so much as a jot of shelter to protect them. If the rocks didn’t crush the risen, the fall was such that even the dead would likely arrive at the bottom more in the form of loose sacks full of smashed bones than anything that might walk away.

At the same time, it was a big stretch of very narrow trail, which would string them out into a long line. So, the chances of bringing down enough of the slope to get them all were awfully slim. Also, simply climbing up the wall to get in position to bring on the avalanche would make for a hell of a task.

“Which means we’d best get to it,” Faran said with a sigh when I pointed that out. “How do you want to do this?”

I leaned back to get a better look at the slope above as we neared the sharpest part of the bend in the trail. “We can’t afford to let them scent us—or whatever it is they do—before they reach the place where the ambush is going to happen. That means the climbers are going to have to go around this corner, head up, and then work their way back past this spot above. I want you at the point farthest back toward the way we came, so you’re first up the wall.”

“Not Siri?” Faran sounded surprised.

“Entirely sensible,” said Siri with a laugh.

“What am I missing?” asked Faran.

Siri held up her stump. “This. The less of this sort of climbing I have to do, the smaller the chance I fall to my doom. I’m going to be holding down the back end of the line, with Javan just in front of me since we’re far and away the weakest climbers here.”

Javan nodded, and I couldn’t help but notice how pale and shaky he looked. I wished I could have spared him the climb completely, but that would have left him down on the trail with the risen—an even riskier proposal. I didn’t like putting Faran out front with her injury, but I trusted her more than anyone else there, Siri included, and that made her my point woman.

Faran actually struck her forehead with the heel of her palm. “Of course. I’m an idiot. So, who’s between Javan and me?”

“In order,” I said, “Kumi, Jax, Kelos, and Altia.”

That got me a very hard look. “Where are you going to be?” she demanded.

“I’m the tethered goat or, the plug in the bottle, if you prefer. Someone has to stay on the path and force the risen to bunch up before you drop the mountain on them.”

“That’s not acceptable,” Faran said in the same breath that Kelos insisted, “It ought to be me.”

Siri and Jax didn’t look happy about it either, but the former nodded and the latter looked away. Kumi, Javan, and Altia kept their heads down and played the part of the three monkeys of legend.

I addressed Kelos first. “You’re ten times the mage I am, and everyone here knows it. In fact, there’s not a one of you can’t cast rings around me—bright blue ones with fairy wings, even—and you all know it. You’d do better as the plug in the bottle than I will, too, but only by a narrow margin.”

I looked at Faran. “The same argument holds for you as far as to what happens above, and you’re not even in the running for