B3Ch50-A new adventure(Sarah) (Patreon)

Sarah woke up warm. Robert had an arm across her and half the blankets bunched between them, and the little room they'd been given still held the heat of the coals from the fire.

"If either of us gets up," Robert said into her hair, "it's going to be cold."

"Then don't get up."

"One of us has to." But he still didn't move.

She lay there a while and looked at him. Four months ago they'd been sleeping in shifts with their backs to each other for warmth and nothing else, and she'd have called you a liar if you told her where this would end up. Now his arm was heavy across her, and he smelled like woodsmoke and the oil he used on the axe. She was happier than she had any right to be out here. Lucky. That was the word for it. She was lucky.

She sighed, but she got up first, stretching languidly as she did. The cold penetrated the second the blanket left her, and she gathered her clothes off the floor and her pack off the peg and worked fast to get dressed.

Robert's pack was open against the wall. She pulled her things out from beside his, and her hand came out holding one of the little figures.

There were a dozen of them wrapped in a cloth. He carved them at night, the way other people fidgeted — sat by the fire and shaved wood off a block while everyone else talked. She'd learned to love watching him work the early ones. These were not the early ones. There was a hoarback the length of her thumb with all six claws picked out, and a ridge cat mid-step, and a little Mira with her bow that really caught Mira's laugh. The hair, the fur, the eyes. He'd gotten good at the eyes. His crafter perks had come a long way.

She looked back at him. He was awake and watching her with a very interested look on his face. She turned slowly, gave him an eyeful, then started pulling her shirt on over his groan.

"That's a war crime," Robert said to the ceiling.

"Get up, and it won't be."

"Excited to get back out there?" he asked, not getting up.

She'd almost forgotten. Somewhere new — the Stair, ground they hadn't walked, past the edge of the map she carried. It hit her all at once, and she started moving faster. Not even the thought of dragging the Hospitallers along behind them could touch it this morning.

"Let's go, lazy," she said. "You're going to be cold, and we have an adventure to get to."

She left the little room bundled in the new jacket Dalen had pushed on her, the second pair of liners folded into the mittens, and found Mira and Jace at the end of the hall with their heads bent close together, deep in something quiet. Mira looked up and gave her a big smile.

It was good to see. Mira had been wound tight as a spring for a lot of their time out here, and Jace didn't smile for anyone, and now here they were. The time up here had done all of them good, however hard it had been.

Theo came up the passage with Sokha beside him. He said something, and Sokha said something back, and he grinned at her wide enough that Sarah could see it from down the hall. Maybe things were going well for him too.

The smell of breakfast was coming from one of the halls, and by the time Sarah had the thought, the rest of the team already had it. A nudge over the bond was all it took, and everybody turned the same way at once. They found the pot, filled bowls, and ate standing up, not bothering to find a seat, taking a minute over the last of the warm food they'd get for a while.

Theo went back for a second bowl.

"We'll be out there two weeks," he said, when nobody had asked. "Can't pass up food this good."

Robert went with him, giving her a quick smile on the way.

"They'll eat our whole ration by the second day," Mira said, not really complaining.

"Robert carries extra," Jace said.

"Robert carries extra because Theo eats extra." Mira watched the two of them load a third bowl between them. "It's a whole system."

Sarah checked her pack before they moved. She did it the same way every time, and she didn't like anyone talking to her while she did it.

Potions last, in the padded roll. A few healing potions apiece — they still had most of the ones Harold had sent up with her. The regen perks did most of the work keeping the five of them alive, and they were saving the potions for the wounds too bad and too fast for the regen to catch. Three explosive potions left, wrapped separate and wrapped twice. A couple of poisons in the small tubes, and Mira had a couple of her own for the arrowheads she'd been hoarding. She counted it all, tucked the roll down, and pulled the flap.

She stood up satisfied, and the Undying was already crossing the yard toward her with his people behind him.

Sokha and a knot of his order, wrapped for the road and packed up. The big man had no hood up and seemed oblivious to the cold. He nodded to Sarah.

"Was good night!" he said. "Fun night, good times and good people." Then the grin came down a notch. "But you will bring my people back, yes? So good times do not end."

"I'll bring them back," Sarah said.

He looked at her a long moment, frowning, and then he nodded, satisfied.

"Two days more, I finish this place," he said. "Then the rest of my order comes behind you. My quest is the key. We come to help once this site is held." He tipped his head toward the yard, where a section of his people drilled in the low morning light, and past them to where a work party had a half-built tower going up with a heavy ballista sitting on the ground beside it, waiting to be hauled. "The Legion is good. But they will have trouble holding this through the winter."

Sarah looked at the soldiers. Winter clothing on all of them, well armed, drilled tight — no slack in the lines even at this hour, and she could hear the optios and the centurion barking the counts from across the yard.

"Don't underestimate Lord Dalen," she said. "If any of the Lords can hold a struggling position, I'd put my money on him."

The Undying looked at her sideways. "Perhaps you are correct. But you have not met Lord Caswell either. Is tough man. Strong man."

"It's not all about strength." She shrugged. "Dalen learned that the hard way."

He thought about it, then put his hand out. She took it. His grip closed down hard enough to grind the bones in her hand together.

"Don't let me catch up to you," he said.

"Then don't fall behind." She got her hand back before it could complain and shook the feeling into her fingers where he couldn't see.

From the back of the group, Mira snorted.

Jace and Theo had their heads together off to the side, already talking the march through. Theo glanced past Sarah, to where Sokha stood — the reed-thin woman had color high in her cheeks and the loose, settled look of someone who'd slept very well. He looked back at the trail and said nothing, and then Sarah felt it: a warm, smug flicker leak off him and across the bond before he caught it and shut it down.

She kept her face still. Barely.

Sarah turned to Sokha, and Sokha put her game face on.

"We move hard today to make up time," Sarah told her. "Your people follow us. Jace is going to steer us into a couple of simple fights on the way, so your teams and mine can work the kinks out — figure out how to move together before it's a fight that'll kill us."

Sokha nodded, frowning, but she got it. She called two of her team leaders over by name. They looked at Sarah, uncertain — she'd gotten used to that look over the last few days — and then Sokha said something short and hard, and both of them nodded, firm.

Sokha turned back and nodded to Sarah, and they moved out.

Theo fell in beside her, settling his pack. "Six days of walking to babysit ten strangers. You left some things out when you pitched this."

"You said anything beat wall duty."

"I was cold and lying." He glanced back at the Hospitallers filing out of the gate behind them. "They're not bad, though."

"Are you saying that just because Sohka is coming?"

"I'm a simple man."

By the time the gate was behind them, they'd fallen back into the old habit, the way they always did out here — no voices, everything on the bond. A pulse of watch that ridge, a nudge of I've got the dead ground. Jace was gone the second they cleared the wall, up and off the trail and swallowed by the rocks; his stealth had come a long way. And she couldn't have found him now if she couldn't feel the direction of him on the bond. The rest fell in behind her, the Hospitallers behind that, and the valley closed up over their heads.

The ground began to climb, and the mountains opened around them as they went — range behind range, white and vast and running out past anything the map she carried had a name for. She kept catching herself looking up instead of ahead. High off one of the far peaks two rocs turned slow circles against the sky, black specks at that distance, and something smaller and faster knifed between them and was gone before she could make out what it was. She'd have given a week's rations to know.

Off to the east, a long way off, something roared. The sound started low and rolled the whole length of the range before it faded, and every part of her wanted to turn and go find out what had a throat that big. She caught her feet drifting a few steps off the line before she pulled them back.

This was the part she could never explain to anyone who hadn't felt it. The map gave out a day's walk ahead of them, and everything past that was hers to see first. Where the trail crested a shoulder of bare rock she stopped, just for a moment, just to look — the valleys stacked below in blue shadow, the sun coming hard and bright off the snow, the sky so clean it ached — and then made herself walk on.

She felt it leak to the others behind her before she thought to hold it back. Robert's slow warmth. Mira's grin, bright and immediate, taking it up like it was her own. Even Jace, way out ahead in the rocks, came up a little.

You're leaking, Robert said over the bond, and she could feel him smiling when he did.

She was. She didn't care. She grinned into the wind and kept climbing. Thoreau was a genius.

Jace found them their first fight before midday.

The warning came over the bond early, Jace turning back toward them and a shape of trouble behind him. Goblins. Pack. Coming with me.

"Goblins," Sarah told Sokha. "He's bringing them onto us. Get set."

Sokha had her people into a loose line in under a minute; a couple held back as reserve, weapons out — spears, a pair of axes, one big man with a maul. A mix, loosely spaced so they could all swing. They looked confident. 

Jace came back down the draw with the pack strung out behind him, and the moment they saw the line the goblins split apart into a screaming run.

Sarah saw the difference in the first exchange. They'd killed a lot of Blackjaw goblins in their time here, and those had been vicious in a way the basin ones never were — a basin goblin flinched off a shield; these threw themselves onto it to reach the man behind. One took a spear clean through the shoulder and kept coming up the shaft to bite. It was still a simple fight. It was also more dangerous than any goblin fight they'd had, and she felt Mira understand it the same instant she did.

The Hospitallers held. It was only about twenty goblins, and they went down hard, but they went down — the maul caving in two at a swing, the spears working the front, the reserve stepping in wherever a man got dragged. A few of Sokha's people took bites and cuts. Sarah watched the wounds close over the next minute as the regen caught up. Nobody fell, and they handled the simple fight well.

But she was frowning by the time it ended. That was harder than it should have been, and the packs in the mountains often ran with about fifty goblins. This was supposed to be an easy pack.

Mira came up at her shoulder, an arrow still on the string. "That wasn't hard," she said. "But they were stronger than the Blackjaw goblins we fought before. A lot stronger." She looked at the bodies. "It's the mana. Has to be. Everything up here got a drink of it at the solstice, same as we did. If it all got stronger, this whole place just got more dangerous." She said it over the bond and out loud both, so the Hospitallers got it too. "We gotta be careful from here on out."

Jace came in off the rocks, wiping his knife. "They're smarter, too. I had to work twice as hard to move around them — watching shadows, twitching at sounds they'd never have noticed before." He crouched to clean the blade in the snow. "They didn't just get stronger. I saw a couple of them setting traps back in the draw."

She frowned harder at that. If it was true, the whole trip just got worse.

"On the bright side," Theo said, flexing the shoulder where something had bitten down to skin before the regen closed it, "if they're smart now, maybe they'll be smart enough to run."

"Don't you dare wish that on me." Mira actually looked hurt by the idea. "It's been ages since anything up here gave me a real fight. I want the smart ones. Those are the fun ones."

"And that," Theo said, "is why we don't let you pick the route."

"We keep pushing," Sarah said. "But we find somewhere we can fortify tonight. I don't want to be caught in the open if the whole range became like that." She looked down the line to where Sokha was walking her people, checking the closed wounds. "You good to keep going?"

Sokha lifted a hand without looking up.

Sarah took the lead into the afternoon until Jace came back to her.

"Found a spot for the night," he said. "Good one. Cave on some high ground, one way in. Only problem is it's already got a tenant." He rolled a shoulder. "Some kind of troll. A variant, I think — couldn't get close enough to be sure what."

"Nothing else?"

"Nothing else I could find."

She stood and searched her feelings for it.

Her perk had always pulled at her toward strong things, and these mountains were full of them; up here she could feel herself tugged in six directions at once, and holding against it was like standing in a river with the current dragging at her legs. She'd learned to resist it. It had taken a long time, and it still wasn't easy. One pull ran low and steady toward Jace, and something big past him, sitting still — the troll. Nothing else close enough to matter. She felt Mira's worry near at hand, a small tight knot of it, and under everything Robert's faith in her, certain and never wavering.

Ok, she told Jace over the bond. Let's do it.

She stopped the column and turned to Sokha.

"Jace found us a place for the night. There's a troll living in it." Sokha went a shade paler. "That's the good news. If a troll's holding it, nothing else comes near it after dark. We kill the troll, we sleep safe. It gets more dangerous the deeper in we go, so we take the safe nights where we find them."

Sokha turned to her people and started to say something about building a fire.

"Don't," Sarah said. "You don't need to set anything. We’ll handle the troll; save your fire."

Sokha narrowed her eyes, thinking about that. Then she nodded once.

"Are you sure? We can back you up," she said.

They moved fast to Jace, her team taking the lead, and he met them at the mouth of the hole after a long climb up a scree slope — a black slot in the rock with a stink rolling out of it.

"Gods, Jace. This is the place you find for the night?"

Jace checked his knives while he answered. Sarah looked him over. He looked tired. "I'm sorry, your highness. I couldn't find you a four-poster bed and a balcony to look wistfully over your domain from."

Mira sniffed. "Well. I suppose it'll do. It'll be warm."

"Once we evict the tenant," Theo said, and rolled his shield arm loose.

At the unspoken signal from all of them, they went in.

Sarah went first, her team coming in behind without a word, weapons out smooth as breathing. Robert and Theo ducked the low ceiling. Mira dropped back a step, took the shape of the cavern in a glance, and Sarah felt her Battle Caller come up — commands sliding out on the bond ahead of the fight, everyone already where they needed to be.

Sokha came in after them, as fast as she could manage the drop, and stopped.

The troll was in the middle of the cavern, and it was enormous. Half again as tall as the stone trolls they'd killed all winter, gray and knotted, a warhammer in one fist that could have flattened a century of legionaries. Set into the center of its forehead was a red stone, and as they came in, the stone began to glow.

With a grunt from the troll, a furious red beam came off it and shattered the floor where it struck. Stone was turned to gravel in a fist-sized crater. The team was already clear of it, sliding wide like they already knew what was going to happen, and Jace was already gone.

The troll roared and swung the hammer.

Theo stepped back and let it pass through the air in front of his face, close enough to move his hair, and Robert stepped in on the same beat, into the dead space of the swing. His axe caught the low light with a soft glow along the edge as it came down, and with a short grunt of real effort he opened the troll's leg to the bone in one clean cut.

The leg gave under it, the troll shouting fury and pain, and as it started to come down Jace dropped off the ceiling. He'd been up there the whole time. He landed on its head and drove his short sword down into it, again and again, riding it as it fell. The stone started to light up again, but Mira loosed once from the floor, and the arrow took the red stone dead center and shattered it in an explosion that cratered its forehead.

Sarah waited. She walked in as it came down, eased past one last swing of the hammer, slipped in close under its jaw, and put her sword through its eye to the hilt.

The cavern went quiet. Then Theo started laughing.

"What," Jace said, sliding down off the troll's shoulder.

"You rode it down like a sled. You looked completely ridiculous."

"I rode down the thing I killed." Jace sheathed his short sword. "You stepped back and let it swing at you. That was your whole fight. One dodge." He tipped his head toward the mouth of the cave, where Sokha still hadn't moved. "In front of your girl, too. Shame, Theo. Shame."

Theo opened his mouth, glanced at Sokha, and closed it again.

Somewhere water dripped. The team was already stepping back off the body, checking the edges of the cavern, Robert wiping his axe on the troll's hide and sheathing it.

Sokha hadn't moved from the mouth of the cave. She stood there with her spear still on her shoulder and stared at the dead troll, and then at the five of them, and the shock plain on her face.

“What the hell? How!” Sohka exclaimed as she glared at Theo.

Sarah pulled her sword free and cleaned it.

"You can bring your people in," she said. "It's safe now."

Sokha's mouth closed with a click, and she shot Sarah one more look before she turned and waved the Hospitallers up out of the dark.

They came up wary, in a line, giving the dead troll a wide berth as they filed past it. Theo had already dropped his pack on the flattest stretch of floor in the place.

Sohka approached Theo, who was searching through some of the things the Troll had gathered. She poked him viciously in the chest. “We are going to talk, and you’re going to explain.”