The first thing Vhar heard below Corvain’s ridge was a wagon axle screaming against stone.
SKREE!
Nyra stopped on the narrow road above the cut before he did. Smoke pushed out from beneath a freight wagon thirty paces below them. Its rear wheels had jumped the ruts. A chain ran from the wagon’s bed up to a timber frame on the slope, holding a square iron counterweight above three route workers and a cluster of travelers pressed against the guardrail.
One worker had both hands on the brake lever. The lever would not move.
"The chain is taking the wagon’s weight," Nyra said.
Vhar saw the pin through the timber frame. Fresh metal shone at its head. Somebody had filed half of it away.
The pin snapped.
CRACK!
The counterweight dropped.
The freight wagon lunged downhill. One of its burning pitch jars broke against the road. Orange fire spread under the bed while the workers scattered too late to clear the rail.
Vhar went down the slope.
Loose stones rolled under his boots. He drove his heel into the wet dirt and stopped hard enough to leave a deep print, then reached the road as the wagon bore down on the trapped people.
"Get behind the rock!" Nyra shouted from above.
Thronebreak struck the timber frame just below its top crossbar.
THOOM!
The spearhead punched through the wood. Nyra swung from the shaft, kicked off the slope, and landed beside the nearest traveler. She caught a girl under both arms and threw herself behind the roadside boulder with her before the wagon reached them.
Vhar caught the wagon’s iron brake bar.
The bar smoked against Vhar’s palm. The wheels kept turning. The chain dragged the counterweight toward the workers trapped at the rail.
Vhar closed his hand around the ratchet housing welded beneath the bar.
| TITANFOLD |
BOOM!
The ratchet housing burst inside Vhar’s closed fist. Its iron teeth became a crushed knot of metal and shards. The brake bar dropped free because nothing remained inside the housing to hold it. Vhar drove it down between the rear spokes.
The wagon bucked. Its left wheel shattered against the bar.
KRAK!
The freight bed tipped toward the ditch. Vhar caught the burning sideboard with his shoulder before the whole load rolled over the rail. The wagon’s weight drove the road into two long trenches beneath his boots.
The route worker at the rail stared at him through soot. "The weight is still moving!"
The counterweight was still sliding. Vhar let the wagon fall into the ditch away from the people, stepped through the spray of loose pitch, and met the iron block with both hands.
THUD!
It struck his palms. The road cracked beneath him. He held it there while Nyra ripped Thronebreak out of the timber frame and cut the remaining chain with the spearhead.
CLANG!
The severed links slapped across the road. The counterweight stopped against Vhar’s chest. He turned and lowered it onto the empty freight bed with enough care that the wood only groaned.
The fire had reached the wagon’s first crate. One jar burst.
WHUMP!
Flame rolled across the ditch. Vhar grabbed the burning crate by its iron rim and threw it into the creek below the road. Steam blew up through the smoke.
HISS!
For several breaths, nobody moved.
The girl Nyra had pulled behind the boulder started coughing. Her mother scraped mud from the child’s hair with a shaking hand, then looked at the wagon ditch instead of at Vhar.
"My husband is under the canvas," she said. "The one who drove the second cart. He was pinned when the first jar went."
Vhar crossed the road. The woman pointed after him. A broken cart tongue had trapped a man’s leg beneath the overturned canvas frame. The man was awake, teeth clenched around a strip of his own sleeve. Fire licked at the freight sack beside his head.
"Can you move your foot?" Vhar asked.
"No, but i can still feel it" The man looked at the burning sack. "Juat help me move the cart and leave the grain."
Vhar put both hands beneath the cart frame and lifted. The split axle came away with it. The trapped man dragged his leg clear while the route worker pulled him by the shoulders. Vhar threw the frame into the creek after the burning crate.
SPLASH!
The mother reached her husband before the water stopped boiling around the wreckage. He gripped her wrist once, hard, then held the child’s face against his chest with his free hand.
"You can walk?" Vhar asked him.
"With help."
"Take it. Do not wait for the wagon."
The route worker put the man’s arm over his own shoulder. The family started west without looking back at the freight.
Nyra came out from behind the boulder with the girl still gripping her coat. "Anyone under the wagon?"
"The driver was the last one."
The worker at the rail sank onto the road. His palms were bleeding where the brake lever had torn loose. "It was set to take the whole wagon. We saw the smoke and thought a jar had cracked." He looked at the shaved pin. "That was never an accident."
"The pin was shaved down on purpose," Vhar said.
A man in a dust-stiff House Talvern coat stepped out from behind the overturned supply cart farther down the road. He held a leather document case against his ribs with one arm. His other sleeve was blackened at the cuff.
Tarev Talvern looked older than he had in the founder chamber. More tired, certainly. He watched the ruined wagon, the cut chain, and the counterweight sitting where it could no longer crush anyone.
"I told them the freight was too close to the workers," he said.
Nyra leveled Thronebreak at his chest. "That sentence would have been more useful before the pin broke."
Tarev did not look at the spearhead. "I know."
Vhar walked to him. The document case had a House seal pressed into its clasp, but the leather beneath the seal was wet with sweat.
"Why are you here?"
"Because Corvain’s people needed someone who could identify surviving witnesses." Tarev held out the case. "They gave me this at the lower camp and told me to carry it to the ridge after the road had been cleared."
"You came anyway."
"There were armed men behind me and a wagon full of fire in front of me." He swallowed once. "I picked the direction that left a chance to put the paper in the right hands."
Nyra took the case without lowering the spear. The seal split under her thumb. Inside lay one folded order, one route map, and a list of names written in a narrow clerk’s hand.
The girl by the boulder made a small sound when she saw the list.
Her mother pulled her closer.
Nyra read the order once, then handed it to Vhar.
The first line gave Corvain Talvern command of the Kessendrel severance operation. The second ordered Vhar Blackvein killed on sight. The third ordered every traveler who had seen House men, traps, freight, or work crews removed before they reached a provincial post.
The final instruction sat below it in colder ink.
`Record all deaths as slide casualties. Burn the lists after the pass closes.`
Vhar folded the paper along its old crease. "How many people have they already buried under that sentence?"
Tarev’s eyes moved to the blanket-covered body on the far side of the bend. "I do not know."
"You carried the list. You know enough to start."
"The ridge has two timber towers, a stone storehouse, and a lower yard above a drainage cut. Corvain brought thirty-two fighters from three House branches. Eight more stayed on the western slope with the fire loads." His fingers twitched once at his side. "The workers who built the towers were told the road would be closed for repairs."
Nyra looked down at the route map. "This mark?"
"The lower yard." Tarev tapped a black square beside the ridge. "The drainage cut begins under it and runs toward the settlement east of the pass. Corvain has carts, water, grain, and enough rope to hold the road shut for weeks."
The route worker on the ground pushed himself up, blood still on both palms. "Kessendrel has families east of that ridge. Freight has not reached them since the slide."
"It will," Vhar said.
Smoke curled from the wagon ditch behind him. The counterweight had left a gouge through the road wide enough to catch a boot. A woman knelt beside one of the shaken workers and wrapped his cut hand with a strip torn from her own sleeve.
Tarev watched them instead of Vhar.
"The order says to kill the workers too," he said. "It calls them loose witnesses."
"Corvain calls them that so he can burn them." Vhar handed the order back to Nyra. "The paper shows what he built."
Tarev rubbed the soot on his cuff between thumb and forefinger. "The names on the list include the mill keeper at Kessendrel, two women who sell grain from the east road, and a child whose father drives a water cart. Corvain marked the child because the father talks when he is afraid." He stopped there, jaw tight. "I read the names when they gave me the case. I could not pretend I had not."
Nyra’s expression changed by a fraction. "Where is the second list?"
"At the ridge, if Corvain did not burn it after the freight failed. The clerk keeps duplicates in the stone storehouse." Tarev looked at Vhar. "That is why I came down with this one. The names should not be left with him."
Nyra folded the map into quarters and tucked it inside her coat. "The towers, drainage cut, and settlement are all on the page. We have enough."
Tarev nodded toward the road east. "You cannot take the main rise. He has crossbows above it and a cable barrier across the first turn."
"We will use another way up."
Vhar looked at the route workers. "Move everyone west. Take the creek track until you reach the pass. Do not stop under a slope, and do not light a fire where the ridge can see it."
The worker with the torn palms stared at the wrecked wagon. "What about the freight?"
"Leave the burned crates. Take the food and the water."
"And you?"
Vhar looked at the two thin columns of smoke above the ridge.
"We are going to the man who wrote the order."