Bartolo’s gaze returned ahead, and he spotted a nearby rise where some boulders clustered to form a hill. He leapt from rock to rock until he was at the summit, before shading his eyes and gazing once more up at the mountain. Hearing movement behind him, he turned and saw Dorian climbing up the rocks to meet him. The young yellow-haired bladesinger moved with grace, and wore his armorsilk like it fitted him, Bartolo noted with approval.
“What do you think?” Dorian said.
“Nothing,” said Bartolo. “No light.”
“Why would Tingarans stop the light at Wondhip Pass? I can understand their motivation in blocking our call to the east, cruel as it is, but to prevent our signal going south? Do they really hate us so much?”
“I don’t understand it either,” Bartolo said. “After what happened at the bridge, I had to check. And here we are, and there’s no light at the pass.”
Inwardly, Bartolo seethed. Altura was under attack. His homeland needed him.
Miro needed the signal to get through.
“So you think there’ll be four of them, like last time?” Dorian asked.
“Tapel said that last bunch was waiting for four more men to join them—the ones Jehral met. So, at a guess, I’d say between four and eight.”
“You think the recruits are up to it?”
“Eight bandits against us two and five lads who’ve trained at the Pens most of their lives? I can’t see them putting up much of a fight. The last station was guarded by rogues, not warriors,” Bartolo said. “This one shouldn’t be any different.”
Bartolo stretched, hearing his back crack as the recruits caught up. He felt confident, but a thought kept nagging him.
Why would these men in the pass, Tingarans, care whether or not Hazarans and Petryans helped Altura?
Loki had only the barest idea where he was.
After the shipwreck, he’d taken his surviving draugar and finally found a way up from the beach to the high cliffs above. That was only the beginning of his ordeal, for Loki was confronted by a terrible expanse of desert.
He knew this must be the Hazara Desert he’d been told about. The storm had turned the ship around before casting it against the shore, but this land could be no other place. He also knew his draugar wouldn’t last long: the Lord of the Night had cooled the air aboard the ships with lore, but the sun here was fierce, and rot would soon take them.
Loki headed north and struck success when he found a Petryan town called Hatlatu. He used his wretched draugar from across the sea to destroy the town and kill the townsfolk, first questioning some screaming women, checking his location, and finding out about the route to his fellow necromancers in Altura via the mountain pass.
Loki used his essence to make new draugar from the dead of Hatlatu to replace those he’d lost, but making a draug took time, and he only made a dozen.
Now these dozen were all he had left.
Loki’s goal was to find cooler lands and meet up with his fellow necromancers, and so he kept heading north. Finally Loki found the mountain pass.
The pass was guarded by a strange tower.
Loki tried to decipher the lore, but it was foreign to him. He didn’t let any of his draugar pass beneath the three-legged tower, and particularly he stayed clear of the triangular prism.
But there was only the one way through.
Finally Loki decided to take a risk, and sent a draug to pull at one of the tower’s three legs. The whole thing finally came crashing down, and Loki made his draugar send the tower tumbling down the mountainside, back the way he’d come. The strange glossy pyramid was buried in a rockslide, and Loki was pleased when the way through the pass was made clear.
He made camp in the gully. It was a good, defensible position, with a sweeping view of the land on all sides. Looking through the pass to the north, he now saw lush forests and knew this must be the land of Altura.
Loki frowned when he saw movement on the mountain. He quickly set an ambush and waited to see who was coming.
“This is one of the worst approaches I’ve ever seen,” Bartolo muttered. He finally made a decision. “I’m going to scout ahead. Bladesinger Dorian, you’re in charge. Bring them forward, but shadow the rocks, and don’t enter the pass.”
Bartolo scampered ahead, keeping his body close to the ground. He left the path and climbed up the steep mountainside, gripping loose boulders and pulling himself forward and up. He felt sweat dripping down his brow and shook droplets from the dark locks of his hair.
Up ahead, he could see a cleft in the mountain: Wondhip Pass. He veered off, climbing vertically now, taking his weight on his legs and pushing hard, only using his arms to steady himself. He kicked a rock loose and sent it tumbling down the mountain. Soon he was twenty paces high, and he felt his arms and legs burn as he kept going, refusing to look down. He now skirted the rock face, heading toward the pass but maintaining height so he could look down.
Bartolo cursed inwardly when he saw the cleft was too steep for him to look into, the walls too high.