Thirty-Seven Days: Baiting the Trap

The second horn call blew closer, flat and brassy, vibrating through the shale beneath Yuraq-illa’s moccasins.

Kallpa-qa’s forward hounds were already working the upper rim of the gorge. If the trackers found where the ice bridge had collapsed, they would have the blood trail in ten minutes. Rumi-qa’s right foot was wrapped tight in greased hide and willow salve, but he was still limping, his bootheel dragging a furrow through every patch of drift. On open scree, an imperial pursuit squad would run them down before sundown.

"We don't outrun them," Yuraq-illa said, crouching in the shadow of a split granite slab. She squinted up through the swirling spindrift. Three hundred paces up the terrace sat the squat masonry of Redoubt Seven-West, its square iron brazier puffing thin, golden-white smoke into the gray sky. "The lower turnpike is locked down. Outpost sentries above, search lines behind."

"We don't need to outrun them," Rumi-qa said. He knelt in the shale, resting his weight on his sound left knee and laying his ash poleaxe across his thighs. He pulled the calcified gorge-leech fang from his pouch. The six-inch barb was translucent, ridged like frozen grease, its root hollow still caked with sulfurous river bile. "We give them something else to butcher."

Yuraq-illa stared at the needle-fang. "The brazier."

"The imperial fuel is seventy parts marrow tallow, thirty parts rendered lard, salted to hold the burn," Rumi-qa said, his voice flat with vanguard drill. "The wolves hate the marrow scent. It burns clean, sharp, like dry cedar ash. But if you drown the crucible with cold fat and beast bile, the heat cracks the oil. It won't repel them. It turns the whole ridge into a slaughter pit."

"And Kallpa-qa’s men are thirty chains downwind along the ridge," she muttered, feeling the cold air bite her cheeks. "If the pack catches the stench, the imperial line is the first meat in their path."

"Take the drain chute on the western wall," Rumi-qa said. He handed her the heavy leech fang. "Two watchmen on the platform. The hoist is iced over, so they won't expect anything from the drop. I'll hold the base of the scree chute. If you get pinned, drop over the parapet; the drift below is four paces deep."

"If I get pinned, I'm shooting you first for giving me the idea," she said.

She slung her hunting arbalest across her shoulder, checked the tension wedge she had carved to steady the cracked stirrup latch, and slipped into the cleft.

The basalt chimney was a vertical scar running from the river terrace straight to the redoubt foundation. Meltwater had frozen along the basalt joints in ribbed sheets of ice. Yuraq-illa jammed her toes into the stone seams, climbing by touch, keeping her breathing shallow so her vapor would not rise ahead of her. Her fingers burned with numbness where the gloves rubbed against bare granite, but she ignored the ache. A runner who stopped to warm her hands on a climb was a runner who fell.

Ten paces from the rim, the stench of the imperial brazier hit her nose—a dry, alkaline smoke that tasted of bone dust and bitter lime. It coated the roof of her mouth like chalk.

She reached the iron grating of the refuse drain, braced her back against the opposing rock face, and drew her skinning knife. The iron pins holding the grate had rusted under decades of winter damp. She worked the blade into the mortise, levered the lower pin until the cold metal sheared with a muffled snap, and slid beneath the overhang.

The redoubt floor was paved in rough gray fieldstone, swept clear of snow by the heat radiating from the central hearth. In the center of the terrace, an eight-foot iron bowl sat on three cast-bronze claw feet. Inside the bowl, a bed of crushed charcoal supported four glowing ingots of marrow tallow, their pale flames licking at the low clouds.

Two sentries stood by the southern parapet, clad in the Seventh Vanguard’s heavy slate-gray wool coats and boiled-leather cuirasses. One leaned against his spear, blowing into his mittens; the other held a short horn at his hip, his gaze fixed on the valley trail below.

"Wind’s swinging north," the speared one grunted, his words carrying over the hum of the fire. "That makes four days without a supply sledge. If the corporal doesn't send more tallow cakes from the depot, we'll be burning horse dung by convergence."

"Quiet," the horn-bearer muttered. "The commander's horn sounded from the rim. They're sweeping the scrub for that deserter."

Yuraq-illa did not wait for them to look back.

She rose from the drain rim, stepping across the frost-crusted flagstones with the silent, roll-heeled stride of an ice-runner. She unhitched her arbalest, set the ash stock against her hip, and settled the tension wedge into the damaged stirrup latch to keep the sear from slipping.

The horn-bearer began to turn, his iron-plated collar catching the brazier light.

She squeezed the trigger.

The arbalest cracked with the dull thud of dry timber. The heavy square-headed bolt struck the horn-bearer square in the throat, punching through the wool collar and pinning his neck to the wooden crane behind him. He dropped without a cry, his horn clattering against the stones.

The second sentry spun around, leveling his spear, his mouth opening to shout.

Yuraq-illa dropped the arbalest, closed the four paces between them in two strides, and drove her shoulder into the man’s unarmored hip before his spear point could drop. The impact shoved him backward against the low parapet. His knees caught the stone lip; he flailed, his spear clattering into the darkness, and pitched headlong over the edge into the four-pace snowdrift below with a soft, distant crunch.

The platform went dead silent, save for the crackle of the marrow fire.

Yuraq-illa did not stop to look over the wall. She darted to the central crucible, pulled the block of salted llama tallow from her pouch, and jammed it directly into the heart of the glowing coals. The heavy animal grease hissed violently, spitting white droplets that sizzled against the red iron.

Then she drove Rumi-qa’s calcified gorge-leech needle-fang into the lower tallow sump.

She hammered the thick root of the barb with the hilt of her skinning knife, cracking the calcified casing. Thick, black, putrid bile—clotted from the bottom of the frozen river gorge—spilled across the white marrow blocks.

The reaction was instantaneous.

The clean, golden flame sputtered and died in a burst of greasy blue sparks. In its place, a thick, tar-colored vapor billowed from the iron bowl, swirling violently in the draft. It did not smell of holy ash or salted bone. It smelled of rancid gut-fat, stagnant swamp rot, and spilled intestines left to fester in the dark.

The foul stench caught in Yuraq-illa’s throat, making her eyes water and her stomach heave. She choked back a cough, snatched her arbalest from the flags, and scrambled for the drainage breach.

A sound tore through the gorge before she could drop her boots onto the first basalt shelf.

It was not a dog's baying, and it was not the hunting horn of the Seventh Vanguard. It was a deep, chest-rattling roar that scraped against the limestone cliffs like grinding boulders.

From the dark pine scrub downwind along the southern ridge, the brush splintered.

A pale shape crested the rise—a beast the size of a bull elk, its shaggy white pelt matted with frozen mud, its shoulders thick with corded muscle. Three more Yana-wolves poured out of the trees behind it, their silver-rimmed eyes locked onto the black smoke curling along the crest.

The lead wolf caught the putrid updraft, threw its massive head back, and let out a curdled howl that set the very shale vibrating beneath Yuraq-illa’s feet. Driven wild by the carrion stench, the pack surged straight into the line of imperial torches that stood between them and the ruined brazier.

Yuraq-illa seized the chimney edge and swung her body into the void, sliding down the frozen basalt chute toward the scree where Rumi-qa waited. Above her, the first screams of Kallpa-qa's forward trackers cut through the winter gale.