Silence held for half a breath after the arrow struck.
Then the woods reacted to it the way skin reacts to a pin. A tremor. A shiver through leaves. A boot scuff that tried to be nothing and failed.
Sella stayed where she was, bow still raised, her body turned into a line. She didn't chase the sound. She didn't speak. She adjusted by a finger's width and waited for another mistake.
Up the road, the voice didn't change tone.
That was what made it worse.
"Blood," it repeated, almost thoughtful, as if it had been weighing options like coin.
Brann lifted one hand and the band moved like it had been waiting for permission to breathe.
Garr slid left toward the slope, using Wagon One's wheel as cover until the last moment, then becoming a darker shape against darker dirt. The captain stepped back into the wagon curve and spoke in short bursts that didn't travel.
"Down. Behind wood. No lantern."
A Company guard started to rise anyway, knees straightening like fear needed height.
The captain's gaze caught him.
He sank back down as if the look had weight.
Fenn crouched by Wagon Two's axle, palm flat to metal. He didn't look at Eryk. He didn't have to. The axle was his language and Eryk had learned enough of it to understand when it was listening for trouble.
Eryk held his place by Wagon Two's rear quarter, back close to the wheel, hands near the strap. The night pressed in. His ankle pulsed like it had grown its own heartbeat. He forced his breathing slow through his nose and tasted smoke, damp bark, and the sour edge of leaf mold.
The voice came again.
"You have one breath to be reasonable."
The Company rider sucked in air to shout something that would have gotten men killed faster.
Brann said, quiet, "Do not."
The rider snapped his mouth shut. His teeth clicked. The sound still carried.
For a moment nothing happened. It felt deliberate, like the woods were waiting for panic to show itself.
Then a stone whistled out of the dark and cracked against Wagon One's sideboard.
Another followed, hitting lower, close to the wheel.
Not thrown to kill.
Thrown to make men flinch. To make men look up. To make men break the rules they were clinging to.
Harl's whisper floated from behind the pot cart, humor scraped thin. "Polite. Knocking first."
Brann's hand cut down. Harl stopped.
A third stone came and struck a lantern hook on the Company side. Metal rang out, small and bright in the corridor.
Eryk's stomach tightened. Sound was a flare.
From the right slope, something answered it.
A low twang, almost lost under the ring.
Fenn's head snapped a fraction. "Bow," he breathed.
Sella's bowstring whispered again.
An arrow went into the dark without ceremony and the twang stopped.
No scream. No plea. Just the soft, ugly sound of something tumbling through leaf mold and coming to rest.
For a heartbeat, Eryk thought that kind of precision would be enough. That it would shame them back into the trees.
A laugh came instead, closer than before.
Not loud. It didn't need to be.
"You've got a good eye," the voice said. "Shame you can't see all of us."
Brann didn't answer. He shifted his weight and the captain mirrored him, a small coordinated adjustment that made the curve of wagons feel less like two carts and more like a bite waiting to happen.
A hiss cut through the dark.
Then orange flared as something burning arced into view.
A torch spun end over end and landed in dry litter near the road's edge. Flame caught fast, hungry for anything foolish enough to be tinder.
The rider surged up. "Fire—"
The captain slammed him back down by the shoulder.
"No," she hissed. "You don't give them your silhouette."
The flame brightened the corridor, painting trunks in unstable light. Shadows jumped. Every moving head became a target.
From the left slope, a second torch came.
It landed closer, near the outer corner of Wagon Two.
Eryk moved before his mind finished naming it.
He grabbed the wet leaf bundle they'd used to press smoke down earlier and slapped it over the flame. He ground it into the dirt with both hands until the fire choked and died in a sour puff.
Smoke rose anyway. Thin. Pale. A smear against the night.
His hands came away damp and black.
His ankle flared as he shifted weight to crush a stubborn ember. The pain was clean and bright and immediate. He bit down on a sound and tasted copper.
Behind him, Fenn's voice came low. "Good."
The same word as always. Tonight it sounded steadier, like a hand bracing a shoulder without touching.
More torches followed, thrown in a spread meant to force choices.
One hit Wagon One's wheel and spit sparks.
Another struck the road and rolled, trailing flame like a dragging finger.
A third clipped the pot cart and bounced into the dirt with a dull thud.
Harl made a sound that wasn't quite a growl and wasn't quite a laugh.
He didn't speak. He grabbed the pot lid and used it like a shovel, scooping wet soil and slamming it over the nearest flame. Again. Again. Aggressive. Efficient. Like the jokes had been a thin skin stretched over something uglier.
Sella fired again.
A grunt came from somewhere in the dark. A body hit the slope, slid, and stopped.
The voice up the road clicked its tongue.
"Fine," it said.
And something in it shifted.
The calm moved the way a man's shoulders move when he stops negotiating.
"You want to work," the voice said. "Work, then."
A whistle cut through the trees. Short. Sharp.
The brush moved.
Not one man.
Many.
They came low at first, shapes breaking from the slopes in uneven bursts, using trunks as cover. They appeared in torchlight for a breath, then vanished again.
Eryk saw the first clearly enough to remember later: a young man in a patched coat, scarf pulled high to hide his jaw, eyes too bright with fear. Fear that made people fast and stupid.
He sprinted toward Wagon Two's outer side with a knife in his hand.
Garr met him like a wall rising from the dark.
There was no dramatic clash.
Garr stepped in, caught the wrist, stopped the motion, and drove his forearm into the man's throat.
The knife dropped.
The young man hit the ground and tried to suck air through a closed passage.
Garr didn't finish him. He stepped over him and turned because the next threat was already there.
Brann held the front of the curve, blade out now but not swinging wide. Waiting. Letting men come into the space where the wagons and his feet did the work.
The captain stayed central, where she could see both slopes and the road ahead. Her orders were mostly gestures. Two fingers. A curl of hand. A small tilt of the wrist.
Men shifted to positions they already knew.
The Company guards, for once, obeyed. They crouched behind wagon beds with spears angled out, eyes wide, faces pale in the torchlight. The rider stayed upright longer than he should have, staring into darkness like anger could pull a missing chest back into his hands.
An arrow struck the road near his boot and quivered there.
He flinched and finally dropped.
Eryk stayed by the rear quarter, hands near the strap, and tried to turn fear into function.
He looked down.
The ground.
The edges where hands could slip in.
A shadow moved low near the wheel.
Not charging.
Crawling.
Eryk saw the glint of a blade aimed toward the underside of the wagon bed, toward the lash point where rope met wood.
A quiet cut. A shifted load. A spill. Chaos.
His body reacted before his mind caught up.
He drove his boot down hard.
It hit a wrist. Bone under skin.
The blade clattered against the wheel.
The man hissed and tried to pull away.
Eryk dropped his weight, clamping the wrist with the heel and ignoring the spike of pain that shot up his ankle. He leaned down and grabbed the man's collar, fist closing on damp cloth and hair.
The man twisted, eyes wild.
For a heartbeat Eryk saw a face that wasn't monstrous. Thin. Hungry. Desperate enough to believe a knife under a wagon was clever.
He almost hesitated.
That fraction of mercy could have killed him.
A second shadow rushed in from the side, faster.
Eryk let go of the collar and snatched the fallen blade by the handle.
He didn't think about killing.
He thought about stopping hands.
He slammed the knife down, not into flesh, but into the dirt between them, pinning cloth and forcing distance. The rushing shadow checked, surprised by resistance.
That was all Garr needed.
Garr was there suddenly, huge in the torchlight, and his fist came down like a hammer.
The rushing man folded.
Garr kicked the crawling man's knife farther away and planted his boot on the man's shoulder.
"Stay," Garr said.
It wasn't a threat. It was a fact delivered in one word.
Eryk's breath came fast. He forced it slower. His fingers shook around the knife handle. His stomach wanted to empty itself. He swallowed the urge down and stared at the ground like it could hold him steady.
The voice up the road laughed again, quieter now, sharper.
"Look at you," it said. "Stray's got teeth."
Eryk went cold.
They knew him.
Or they'd guessed and gotten lucky.
The captain's head turned a fraction toward the voice, but her eyes stayed on the slopes. She didn't give it a reaction. She didn't offer them the pleasure of seeing her anger.
Sella fired again.
Another body hit dirt somewhere unseen. This time there was a scream, short and high, cut off too fast by shock or a hand.
The attackers didn't stop. They adjusted.
From the left slope, a man rolled a log.
Not huge. It didn't need to be.
It thumped down the incline, gathering speed, aimed at a wheel.
Fenn shouted a single word. "Brace."
Eryk moved to the rear quarter without thinking, shoulder to wood, hands on the wagon bed. Garr hit the opposite side at the same moment. Together they took the impact.
The log smashed into the wheel with a heavy crack.
The wagon shuddered.
Eryk felt the jolt in his teeth. The strap snapped tight. For a breath it made a sound, not loud, but wrong. A tight, high complaint like a rope beginning to decide whether it was still loyal.
Eryk grabbed it and held tension, keeping the load from shifting with the shock.
The wheel held. The wagon stayed upright.
Fenn slapped the axle housing once, almost grateful.
"Again," the voice called, amused. "Make them work for it."
A second log came.
Then stones.
Then a flurry of arrows, not aimed for killing, aimed for herding. Arrows thudded into wood. One struck the rim of a crate and stuck there, vibrating.
The Company guards ducked lower. Someone whispered a prayer. It sounded like bargaining.
Harl did something that was half spite and half genius.
He lifted the pot lid, not as a shovel this time, but as a shield. He stepped to the brightest edge of torchlight where silhouettes were born.
Then he seized the pot itself, heavy with whatever thin stew they'd managed, and hurled it into the darkness in a wide sloshing arc.
Hot liquid hit leaves.
A hiss rose.
A man screamed, full and animal, and stumbled into the light clutching his face.
Garr dropped him with one clean step.
Harl let out a single exhausted breath that might have been laughter if he'd had more air. "Dinner," he muttered, and went quiet again.
Eryk tightened his grip on the strap. His hands were slick with sweat and soot. His ankle screamed every time he shifted weight.
He ignored it.
He kept his eyes low.
That was where the next danger arrived.
Movement near the left wheel.
Not crawling.
A rope.
It slid out of the brush and hooked around a wheel spoke with practiced speed.
Someone on the slope pulled.
The rope went taut. The wheel jerked a fraction. The wagon bed trembled. The oxen shuffled, confused by the sudden change.
They weren't trying to drag the wagon away.
They were trying to make it roll.
To break the curve. To make wood and bodies collide.
Eryk didn't have time to call out.
He lunged toward the wheel, knife still in his hand, and hooked the blade under the rope.
He cut once.
The fibers resisted.
He cut again, sawing hard.
His ankle slipped on uneven ground. Pain shot up his leg like fire. His knee hit dirt. He kept cutting anyway, teeth clenched until his jaw ached.
The rope snapped.
The sudden release pitched him forward. His shoulder slammed into the wheel. Sparks of pain burst behind his eyes.
He heard a muffled grunt from the brush, then the scramble of someone retreating before hands could grab them.
His ankle wrap had shifted. The knot had dragged. Hot pressure swelled under it like the joint was trying to break out of its own skin.
Fenn was there instantly, crouched beside him.
"You all right?" Fenn asked, voice flat.
Eryk almost laughed. He almost vomited.
"My foot," he got out through his teeth.
Fenn's gaze flicked to the wrap and away. "Later," he said. "Now watch."
There was no later if now went wrong.
The captain's voice cut across the curve, low and sharp.
"Left slope. Three."
Sella shifted aim without speaking. An arrow went out.
A body thudded down the incline and rolled into torchlight, stopping crooked at the base. The man twitched.
Eryk saw thin wrists. Empty hands. The strip of red cloth tied around an arm, like yesterday's toll men.
Hunger didn't make you harmless. It made you cheaper to buy and easier to spend.
The voice up the road changed.
The amusement drained.
"All right," it said, and now it sounded annoyed. "Enough games."
A single torch arced high, higher than the rest, and for a moment it lit the trees beyond the choke. A flare of the road ahead.
In that flare, Eryk saw movement.
Not men rushing.
Men standing.
Watching.
Holding position like soldiers.
A hand lifted. A signal given.
Then darkness returned.
The torch landed behind Wagon One, near the pocket where the oxen were held.
Fire caught on a dry patch and flared.
The oxen snorted, heads jerking.
Panic rolled through them like a wave.
If they bolted, the wagons would move.
If the wagons moved, the curve would open.
If the curve opened, men would die.
The captain moved at once, faster than torchlight suggested she should be. She grabbed a wet blanket and threw it over the flames, smothering.
Brann snapped, "Hold the teams."
Two mercenaries rushed to the oxen, hands on yokes, murmuring low. Steadying with voice and touch, not whips.
The rider surged up again. "My teams—"
Garr turned his head and the look he gave the rider froze the words in his throat.
Harl slammed another wet bundle down on a spark that jumped the blanket's edge.
The fire died in pieces. Pressed down. Choked.
Smoke hung low. Smoke made silhouettes. Smoke made confusion.
From the right slope, a shout came.
Not the voice.
A different man. Closer. Raw.
"Now!"
They rushed.
This time they came in tight, a wedge aimed at Wagon Two.
They didn't need to take the whole wagon. They only needed hands on the lash, a cut, a spill, the dominoes of panic.
Eryk shoved himself upright, ankle screaming. He braced his shoulder against the bed and gripped the strap.
The first bandit hit the curve and met Brann's blade.
Brann didn't swing wide. He stepped inside the rush and cut a forearm.
The knife fell. The bandit stumbled back, staring at his own blood like it belonged to someone else.
Another tried to skirt Brann and met the captain's knife.
She moved like someone who had learned to fight without wasting motion. Her blade flashed once, then again, and the man's leg buckled.
He went down hard, breath leaving him in a wet grunt.
Sella's arrow took someone in the shoulder before he reached the wagons. He spun and collapsed into dirt, screaming.
Garr met the next two like weather turning bad.
He didn't stab. He didn't slash.
He grabbed and threw.
One hit a tree and slid down it, groaning.
The other hit the ground and didn't get up fast enough to matter.
Eryk saw the gap. Saw the line of men angling toward him.
For a breath he thought they were coming for him.
Then he understood.
They were coming for the wheel.
For the rope.
For the weak point they'd found.
One lunged low with a knife aimed at the lash.
Eryk swung the knife he still held.
He aimed for fingers.
The blade caught flesh.
A startled scream burst out. The bandit recoiled, clutching his hand, blood slicking his palm.
Eryk's stomach lurched.
He had done that.
There wasn't time to feel it.
Another bandit reached for the wheel spoke, trying to hook another rope.
Eryk drove his shoulder into the man's chest.
It wasn't strength.
It was weight in the right place.
The man stumbled back.
Garr's fist finished it, knocking him down with a sound like meat hitting wood.
A third bandit grabbed for Eryk's knife wrist.
Eryk twisted. Pain ripped through his ankle so sharp his vision whitened at the edges.
His grip loosened.
The knife slipped.
It fell into the dirt.
The bandit's eyes lit up and he lunged for it.
Fenn's hand appeared from nowhere with a fist-sized stone and slammed it into the man's temple.
The bandit dropped like a puppet with cut strings.
Fenn snatched the knife and shoved it back into Eryk's hand. "Hold," he said.
Eryk held.
His breath came ragged. He tasted blood and realized he'd bitten his tongue.
The rush faltered.
Men began to retreat, dragged backward by slope and the sudden understanding that wagons and disciplined fighters were not easy prey.
The voice up the road spoke again.
Cold now.
"Enough."
The attackers stopped moving forward.
They didn't run. They backed away in controlled steps, pulling wounded when they could, leaving bodies when they couldn't.
That was what twisted Eryk's stomach most.
They had rules.
They vanished into brush. The slope took them back.
Silence fell like a curtain.
Not peace. Not relief.
A pause between decisions.
Brann didn't chase. He held the curve.
The captain kept her knife out and her eyes scanning.
Sella stayed on the right side in shadow, bow drawn, arrow waiting.
Garr planted a boot on the chest of the crawling man Eryk had pinned earlier.
The man groaned and tried to roll.
Garr pressed down harder.
"Stay," he said again, and made the word a weight.
The rider stood, shaking, face slick with sweat. His eyes darted across the curve, counting.
He looked offended by the blood on the ground, as if blood was a breach of contract.
"Are they gone?" he demanded.
Brann's gaze stayed on the trees. "No," he said. "They're choosing their next move."
The rider swallowed.
"They want Wagon Two," he said, voice finally learning volume.
The captain looked at him. "They wanted Wagon Three," she replied. "They took it without asking."
The rider's jaw worked. "You don't understand what we're carrying."
Harl made a soft sound that might have been a laugh if it hadn't been exhausted. "Then explain it, so we can die informed."
The rider snapped his eyes to him.
The captain lifted a hand. Harl shut up.
Brann stepped closer to the rider, posture loose, eyes sharp.
"You lost your chest," Brann said. "They came back for our crates. That means the crates matter. Or the wagon matters. Or something about the way you move matters."
The rider stared, caught between pride and fear.
Then he looked past Brann into the dark where the voice had been.
Something in his shoulders sagged.
"It's medicines," he said, and the word came out like it hurt him. "Reagents. Powder. Things the inner camps pay for."
The captain's eyes narrowed. "Things that burn," she said.
The rider flinched.
Brann didn't smile. "Things that make men rich enough to hire thieves."
The rider went pale. "That's an accusation."
"It's a pattern," Brann said.
He turned away and addressed the band, voice low.
"Count."
Men moved along the curve, checking with quick hands.
Garr spoke first. "One of ours nicked. Not deep."
Harl answered, hollow, "My stew is dead."
Sella's voice came from the shadowed slope. "Two down. One maybe carried."
The captain's gaze found Eryk.
Not his face. His ankle. His hands.
"You cut rope," she said.
Eryk swallowed. "Yes."
"And you didn't run."
He didn't know what to do with that. He nodded once, because anything else felt like begging.
Fenn crouched by the axle again, fingers moving fast, checking for damage. He touched the wheel spoke where the rope had hooked and frowned.
"They were trying to roll us," Fenn murmured.
Brann dipped his head. "I know."
The rider made a small, helpless sound. "So what now?"
Brann looked at the dark slopes and the road choke ahead.
Then he looked at the rider.
"We leave before first light," he said. "We don't give them time to set a new line."
The rider opened his mouth.
The captain cut him off. "If you argue, you argue while walking."
The rider swallowed his protest like something bitter.
Garr dragged the crawling man fully into the wagon pocket, away from the slope's line of sight.
The bandit blinked up at them, dazed. His hands shook.
Not bravado.
Fever. Hunger. The tremor of someone who'd been living on scraps.
Brann crouched beside him.
"Who's guiding you?" Brann asked.
The bandit tried to laugh. It came out as a cough.
"Doesn't matter," he rasped.
Brann leaned in a fraction, not angry, certain.
"It matters," he said. "Because we're still alive, and you're still alive. That means we're still bargaining."
The bandit's eyes flicked toward the road ahead. Toward where the voice had been.
Fear moved across his expression like a shadow passing.
Brann saw it and didn't waste it.
"Name," Brann said.
The bandit swallowed.
"Gray," he whispered. "They call him Gray."
The captain's head tilted a fraction. "Like the token cloth," she murmured.
The rider stiffened so fast it looked like a flinch.
Brann's eyes flicked to him, quick and sharp.
The bandit kept talking now, words spilling as if keeping them inside hurt worse.
"He knew the turn. He knew the chest. He knew when your gate opens and closes," the bandit said. "He said the Company writes routes on paper. Paper gets read."
The rider's face went rigid.
"That's a lie," he said too fast.
The captain didn't look at him. "Paper can be stolen," she said quietly. "Or copied. Or sold."
Brann straightened.
"Bind him," he told Garr.
Garr tied the bandit's wrists with efficient knots. The man didn't fight. Fighting was for men who still believed it changed anything.
The night didn't loosen after that.
It stayed tight, pulled like rope around a finger.
They kept the curve. They kept rotations. No one slept deeply enough to dream.
Eryk sat by Wagon Two's wheel until his legs cramped and his ankle throbbed so hard he could feel it in his teeth. The wrap had shifted during the rope-cutting. Heat built beneath it, trapped. Every pulse felt like the joint trying to push out of its own skin.
Fenn returned once and crouched by him, two fingers testing the wrap.
"Too tight," Fenn said.
Eryk's throat tightened. "If I loosen it, it hurts more."
Fenn's mouth twitched. "It already hurts."
He loosened the wrap by a fraction and retied it with a knot that didn't slip.
The relief was small, but it existed.
Eryk exhaled and realized his eyes stung from smoke and strain.
"Why keep me here?" he asked before he could stop himself.
Fenn didn't answer right away. He listened to the woods for a beat as if the woods might speak first.
"Because you're useful," Fenn said.
Eryk swallowed. "That's it."
"That's enough," Fenn replied.
The words weren't warm. They weren't cruel.
They were true.
Somewhere up the road, a branch snapped.
Garr's head turned.
Sella's bow shifted in the dark.
Nothing came.
The woods tested them with almost-sounds and half-movements, like hands probing a fence for weak wire.
They didn't find any.
When the sky finally began to thin, the captain moved along the curve and touched shoulders, waking anyone drifting too far into sleep.
Brann came to Eryk's wheel.
His face looked carved from fatigue.
"You walk at the front of Wagon Two now," Brann said.
Eryk's stomach tightened. "Why?"
Brann's gaze went to Eryk's ankle, then back to his eyes.
"Because they know you watch the wheel," Brann said. "They'll try to use that."
Cold settled inside Eryk.
Brann continued, "Front corner. Eyes down. You see wire, peg, rope, scrape, you speak."
Eryk swallowed. "Yes."
Brann's mouth twitched, almost the same expression as before when he'd said walking was holding.
"Good," he said, and moved away.
They broke camp in silence, faster than before. Hands that knew what to do even when minds were still half in night.
No fire.
No loose talk.
The wagons were pulled into line. The oxen were coaxed forward with low voices and steady touch, not whips.
The rider mounted stiffly and wrapped his cloak tight, as if cloth could hide fear.
They moved out under gray light, woods still thick, corridor still narrow.
Eryk took his new place at Wagon Two's front corner, where wheel path began and the ground told its secrets first.
His ankle protested with every step.
He kept pace anyway.
He kept his eyes down.
The dirt held last night's marks, scuffed and churned. Dark patches where blood had soaked in. A groove where something heavy had dragged. A place where someone had knelt. A place where someone had fallen.
The road remembered even if the woods pretended it didn't.
Ahead, the choke waited.
Slopes rose on either side, ribs of stone and root. The bend beyond it held darkness like a mouth holding breath.
Eryk's skin prickled.
He didn't lift his gaze to search the trees.
He looked down.
Near the edge of the road, half buried in damp leaf, he saw a fresh scrape and a small pinprick of disturbed dirt beside it.
A peg hole.
Empty now.
They'd pulled it after the fight. Cleaned their work like men who planned to do it again.
Eryk swallowed hard.
They weren't done.
They were simply moving their wire to the next place the road tightened.
He kept walking.
And he understood, with a clarity that hurt worse than his ankle, that last night's toll had been paid only in warning.
The next payment would be taken in daylight.