After the Ledge

They did not stop until the road widened enough for the wagons to sit two abreast and the drop on the right was replaced by a slope of broken scree. Only then did Raymond call a halt.

The wounded were brought to the center. The man with the shoulder cut sat against a wheel while another Hound cleaned and bound it with practiced speed. The arrow wound was worse — the shaft had to be cut and pushed through. The injured man bit down on a leather strap and made no sound beyond a hard grunt. Maha watched once, then looked away, her face pale but composed. Chandrakala stood nearby, arms folded, eyes still scanning the higher rocks.

Raymond moved among the company, speaking quietly to each in turn. When he reached the two women he stopped.

“Either of you hurt?”

Chandrakala shook her head. Maha answered, “No.” Her voice was steadier than it had been at dawn. The fight had burned off the last of the morning’s shyness.

“Good. We keep moving until we clear the next marker. After that there’s a stone shelter used by the regular convoys. We’ll take a proper rest there and reset the watches.”

He glanced at the blood on Chandrakala’s sleeve. “Yours?”

“Theirs,” she said.

A faint ghost of the previous night’s smirk touched Raymond’s mouth and vanished. “Keep it that way.”

The column formed up again. The road still climbed, but the worst of the exposed ledges was behind them for now. Cloud drifted through the passes in slow, heavy bands, sometimes erasing the path ahead entirely, sometimes opening to show distant peaks the color of iron. The wind stayed cold and constant.

Maha walked beside the second wagon, bow still in hand. Every so often her eyes drifted to Raymond’s back at the front of the line, then away again. Whatever she was thinking, she kept it behind the same careful expression she had once used in Oakhaven — only now it sat on the face of a woman who had just killed from a distance and watched men go over a cliff.

Chandrakala matched her pace in silence. After a long stretch she spoke, low enough that only Maha could hear.

“He didn’t freeze. Neither did you.”

Maha’s answer was quiet. “I didn’t want to be the reason someone else fell.”

Chandrakala gave a small nod, as if that explanation was sufficient.

By late afternoon they reached the stone shelter — little more than three walls and a partial roof built against the mountainside by earlier convoys. It was enough. The wagons were drawn close, animals tended, and a small fire finally allowed in the lee of the wall. The wounded were checked again. Watches were set.

Raymond stood at the edge of the shelter looking back the way they had come. The narrow ledge was already lost in cloud. No sign of pursuit. The Vipers had tested them, lost, and withdrawn. For now.

He turned back to the fire. Maha sat with her knees drawn up, the company purse open on her lap as she made a quiet note of the day’s expenses and the two injury shares that would come out of the contract. Chandrakala cleaned her blade with methodical care.

Their first real action as a unit was over. The passes still stretched ahead, and the contract was only partly complete, but the measure had been taken.

The mountain had not broken them.

Not today.