Dawn in the inland cut was not sunrise. It was permission to see.
Mist lay in the low places like poured milk. Dew turned leaf and wheel and boot into the same wet sheen. The oxen breathed white and kept pulling, because oxen did not get to decide whether a road was hunted.
Eryk walked at Wagon Two's front corner, where Brann had put him. The wheel line began at his feet. If the ground wanted to speak, it spoke there first.
His ankle burned under the wrap. Not a clean spike anymore. A constant heat that tightened when he stepped wrong, like the joint was being held in a fist. He kept pace anyway and kept his face still, because stillness was how you stayed uninteresting.
The road carried last night's memory in scuffs and dragged grooves. It also carried new work.
A pale dusting on damp soil that didn't match the earth around it. Powder that should have darkened and clumped, but sat bright against wet dirt as if it had been kept dry until the last moment.
A pressed line under leaf litter, too straight to be wind.
Eryk shortened his stride without changing speed, which was a trick he'd learned by watching Brann. He let his eyes drift, slow and unalarmed. No sharp head turns. No body language that screamed I found it.
The choke ahead rose out of gray like a throat waiting to swallow.
Two low ridges pinched the road. Roots pushed through the soil like knuckles. Stone showed in ribs. The sky above it was a thin strip that made the corridor feel deeper than it was.
Eryk saw the powder again near the edge, scattered as if someone had shaken it from fingertips. He saw a smear on a root where wet bark had been dusted and wiped.
He tapped the wagon bed twice.
Fenn was half a step behind the axle line, palm resting on metal as if the housing could pass him warning through skin. He tilted his head without looking.
Eryk leaned closer, mouth near wood.
"Powder," he said, barely louder than breath. "Line under leaf."
Fenn drifted forward like he was only adjusting his path. Two fingers brushed the pressed strip. His touch was light, almost nothing, and his whole body went still in the way of a man who had just put his finger on a nerve.
The captain's hand rose and pressed down, palm toward earth.
The convoy eased to a halt without a shout. Oxen shuffled once. Wheels settled. The wet air held the sound close, then swallowed it.
From behind Wagon One, the Company rider's voice cracked through the corridor.
"What now?"
No one answered him.
Brann came back two paces. He didn't crouch immediately. He watched the ridges first, then the brush, then the ground where Eryk's eyes had been.
He went down on one knee and lifted leaf litter with two fingers. Under it, a cord looped around a small wooden peg angled into dirt.
Fresh. The bark on the peg still looked raw where it had been shaved. The knot sat neat. Too neat to be hunger work.
Brann didn't touch it. He looked at the captain.
"They want us in it," he said.
The rider muttered something under his breath. It sounded like anger trying to pretend it was bravery.
The captain didn't turn. Her gaze stayed on the ridges. "Where does it run."
Eryk followed it with his eyes.
The cord slid under a root and disappeared into brush. Beyond the root, leaves lay wrong in a straight path. Pressed flat, as if something had been dragged across them, and dragged with purpose.
"A sapling," Eryk said. He kept his voice steady because he forced it. "Loaded. Second line deeper. They've powdered the dirt to hide the pressed track."
Brann's jaw tightened. "Deadfall."
Garr slipped off the road to the right without being told, moving in that quiet stride that made him look slow until you realized how much ground he was taking. Sella appeared on the left ridge like she had always been there, bow already up. The Company guards sank lower behind wood, spears angled out, faces pale in the new light.
Brann spoke in a low, clipped rhythm.
"We back the wagons half a length. Keep them straight."
They eased back. It was careful work to reverse in a narrow throat without tangling wheels, but the band did it like practice. The cord stayed taut and silent in front of them, like a thin nerve waiting to be touched.
Garr returned fast enough to matter and quiet enough to stay alive. He stepped out of brush and shook his head once.
"Log tied," he said. "Drops behind. Blocks retreat. Right side has crossbows in cover. Left has two. Inside the throat there's more than boys."
Sella's voice carried down from the ridge, just loud enough to reach Brann. "Second mark inside. They stacked it."
Layered.
Brann stared at the cord and did the math without moving his lips.
"If we cut it," he murmured, "they spring it anyway. If we step it, we spring it for them."
The captain's gaze stayed on the ridges. "If we dance to their rhythm, they own the beat."
Brann stood and looked at Eryk.
"You keep eyes down," he said. "If you see another line, you call it. Loud."
Eryk's stomach tightened. Loud meant attention. Loud also meant living. "Yes."
Brann turned back to the band.
"We go through on momentum. No chasing. No breaking shape." His eyes flicked to Fenn. "Keep wheels alive."
Then to Harl. "Keep fire dead."
Harl's voice came thin from behind the pot cart. "I'd like a morning where nothing tries to light itself."
Brann didn't look at him. "Then stop hauling interesting things."
The captain raised her hand and pushed forward with her fingers, like she was pressing the air.
Go.
The oxen leaned. Wagon One rolled. Wagon Two followed. The throat drew closer.
Brann did not cut the cord.
He hooked it with his knife, lifted it just enough for Wagon One's wheel to pass under, then eased it down behind the rim. A refusal that still kept it quiet, a man stepping around a trip line without giving it the satisfaction of singing.
They entered the choke.
Roots rose like ribs. The ridges pressed in. The road narrowed until there was only wagon, brush, and the thin strip of sky above. Mist hung low and made distance lie. Ten paces looked like twenty. Sound tightened until every creak felt like it belonged to your own bones.
A bolt struck Wagon One's sideboard and lodged there, shivering.
The crack snapped through the throat.
Another bolt followed, thumping into wood.
Crossbows.
The Company rider flinched hard enough to look like he'd been hit.
The captain's hand cut down.
Down.
Men folded behind boards. The wagons kept rolling. Stopping inside a throat was how you died with your face turned the wrong way.
Eryk kept his eyes on the ground and saw it.
A cord stretched low across the road at ankle height, half buried under leaf. A snare meant to trip a man into wheels and make panic do the rest.
"Line!" he shouted.
The word tore out of him rough and loud. It echoed off trunks and came back sharper.
Fenn's grunt came from the wagon's side, approval stripped down to its simplest shape. "Good."
Brann's hand snapped up, then sliced down in a tighter motion that meant hold without stopping.
The oxen checked themselves for the smallest possible heartbeat. Wheels slowed, not enough to give crossbows a clean shot, just enough to let hands work.
Brann stepped in and cut the cord once. It snapped and fell limp into leaf. Then his hand flicked forward again.
Go.
They surged.
Behind them, wood groaned under tension.
The deadfall dropped.
A log slammed across the road with a wet crash. Mist puffed up around it. Mud jumped. The sound felt like a door being barred.
Retreat was gone.
Eryk's eyes flicked to the log for one disobedient heartbeat. It lay across the road like a sentence: you are committed now. In the mist, he could already picture men rolling it forward later, pushing it into place wherever the road pinched again.
The rider made a small sound behind Wagon One, something between curse and plea.
"Don't look back," Fenn muttered near the axle, as if he could feel panic through the wood. "Back is where wheels eat people."
The captain didn't spare the log a glance. "Forward," she said, and her voice was simple enough that even fear could obey.
Bolts came again, lower now. One pinged off iron on Wagon Two's rim and died in wet air. Another buried itself in the dirt and stood quivering like a warning post.
Sella's bowstring whispered.
A distant cry answered, short, then cut.
They cleared the tightest part of the throat and the road widened by a shoulder. Not a clearing, but enough space that men could breathe without brushing bark.
A figure stepped into view ahead, standing in the pale strip of light between trunks like he could afford it.
On the tail end of the curve, the bound bandit went rigid. His chin lifted like he'd been yanked by a string. When he saw the gray cloak, his breath caught, and a sound escaped him before he could swallow it.
Fear, raw and personal.
Eryk didn't turn his head fully, but he heard the bandit whisper through cracked lips, "Don't bargain. He'll take and still smile."
Gray cloak. Hood down. Face weathered. Eyes calm in a way that didn't belong to a hunted road.
He raised one hand, palm open.
"Company," he called.
Brann's voice went flat. "Gray."
Gray's mouth twitched. "You learn fast."
"I listen," Brann said.
Gray's gaze drifted to Wagon Two, then to Eryk at the front corner, then away as if Eryk was a nail that had appeared in the wrong board.
"You're hauling fire," Gray said. "Powder. Reagents. Call it medicine if you want it to taste kinder."
The Company rider took a step forward.
A bolt thunked into the ground near his boot.
He stopped so hard he nearly rocked back.
Gray didn't even look at him.
"Give me Wagon Two," Gray said. Calm as yesterday. Calm as a man reading a price list. "You walk away with the other cart and your lives."
Brann didn't slow. "No."
Gray's eyes narrowed a fraction. "Then you lose more."
The captain spoke from inside the moving curve. "You already took what you could without dying."
Gray smiled thinly. "That's why I'm talking now."
He walked backward as the wagons advanced, never turning his back, never rushing. Like a man who had already measured the distance and decided it was safe.
"You've got a hawk," he said, eyes flicking toward the left ridge where Sella's presence lived even when she wasn't visible. "Hawks get tired."
A net snapped from the right brush, thrown low at the oxen legs.
Weighted corners. Stone knots. Built to tangle.
The lead ox stumbled. The yoke jerked. Wagon One lurched.
Eryk moved before he thought. Knife out, he dropped to the road edge and sawed at the net's cord where it tightened around a leg.
Wet fiber fought him. It stuck to itself. He cut again.
A bolt slammed into dirt beside his hand. So close he felt the impact through the ground, a little kick under his palm.
He didn't look up. He cut again. The cord gave. The net loosened enough for the ox to heave free and find its footing.
The wagon surged.
Eryk tried to rise with it. His bad ankle buckled. He went down hard, palm slapping wet dirt.
For a heartbeat the wheel was beside him, huge and moving, close enough that he could see the wet grain of the rim and the clinging mud on the spokes.
A hand grabbed his collar and hauled him sideways.
Garr yanked him clear with brute certainty.
"Up," Garr said.
Eryk's lungs dragged in air like they'd forgotten how. The ground he'd hit was cold enough to sting. Mud smeared across his fingers. For a ridiculous moment he was grateful for mud, because it meant the wheel hadn't taken his hand.
Garr didn't ask if he was hurt. Hurt was assumed. Garr only checked whether Eryk could still stand where he belonged.
"Eyes down," Garr added, almost gentle for him. "That's your work."
Eryk got up shaking, pain bright, then dull again. He didn't look at Garr's face. He didn't say thank you. There wasn't time for either.
They were out of the choke now, but the bandits kept pressure. Crossbows thumped from cover. Men moved in controlled bursts through brush, aiming for wheels and straps instead of bodies.
Harl stayed near Wagon Two with a wet bundle and his pot lid held like a shield. A torch arced in and died in wet ground with a hiss.
"Wrong season," Harl muttered.
Brann drove them into a bend where trunks spaced wider and old cut brush had left sightlines ugly for ambush. The ridges weren't pinching now, but the woods still crowded close. The corridor had loosened its fist without letting go.
The captain's hand rose and pressed down.
Stop.
The wagons halted where the ground did not funnel them. The band held shape. No one broke formation to chase shadows. Sella took a higher angle. Garr and two men showed themselves at the edges, blades bared, not advancing, just making it clear that stepping out would cost.
Gray stepped into view again at a distance that made bolts and arrows less certain. He looked over the wagons like a man checking inventory.
"Well done," he called.
Brann's answer was simple. "Leave."
Gray's calm didn't break. "You can't out-walk me. You're on wheels."
The Company rider's voice came sharp. "Who are you?"
Gray's gaze slid to him. It was colder than his tone.
"A man who reads paper," Gray said. "A man who knows what your Company moves when it thinks no one is watching."
He looked back to Brann.
"Give me the crates marked with three blue wax seals," Gray said. "You know the ones. The ones your men handle with gloves."
His eyes flicked to the rider's guard, to the thick gloves even in wet morning. Then to the rider's clean bare hands, and back.
"You don't even carry your own," Gray said. "You let other hands burn for you."
The rider went very still.
Eryk felt the cold deepen. Too specific to be guessing.
The captain's eyes stayed on Gray. "You have an inside hand."
Gray shrugged. "Everyone does."
Brann's voice stayed level. "We don't hand you anything."
Gray's smile thinned. "Then we keep taking."
Brann turned his head toward Fenn. "Pick one."
The rider made a strangled sound. "No."
The captain's gaze cut him down. He stopped moving like his joints had been locked.
Fenn climbed the sideboard. He didn't grab at random.
He chose a crate near the edge where the wood had been weeping a faint sharp smell since yesterday, the kind that made your throat tighten if you breathed too deep. Eryk realized then that Brann had been waiting for a moment to spend it.
Fenn dragged the crate down and let it drop.
It hit the road with a heavy thud. The corner split. Something inside clinked like glass, quick and bright.
A clear wetness seeped from the split seam and ran onto the road. It wasn't blood. It wasn't water. It was slick, almost oily, and it carried a bite that cut through damp leaf like vinegar sharpened into a blade.
Where it touched the dirt, the soil darkened, then went pale in irregular blooms, like frost spreading the wrong way. Wet leaf curled inward. A faint hiss rose, small but wrong, and the iron nail heads in the broken plank fuzzed with sudden rust as if a day had passed in a breath.
One of Gray's men in the brush moved without thinking. He reached toward the crate.
His fingers brushed the spill.
He jerked back with a strangled noise.
Not a scream. A sound of surprise turning into pain. He shook his hand hard, and Eryk saw the skin at his fingertips blanch to gray-white for a heartbeat before it flushed angry red. The man sucked air through his teeth and pressed his hand to his mouth like he could undo it.
Gray's calm faltered for the first time. Not fear. Calculation that had just found a new variable.
"That's bait," Gray said.
"Yes," Brann replied. "And it's also time."
Gray's eyes flicked to his men. A small hand motion. Two shapes moved, not toward the crate, but toward the road behind, angling to roll a log or throw another block.
The captain saw the motion and spoke a single word. "Go."
Brann's hand snapped up. Two fingers forward.
The oxen lunged. Wheels jolted. The wagons started.
The broken crate lay behind them in the road like an offered coin no one could afford to pick up.
Gray's voice cracked into a bark. "Move!"
Bolts thumped. An arrow hissed. Men shifted in brush.
Eryk ran the front corner again, ankle screaming. The ground tried to speak and he kept his ears open through his feet.
A thin cord flashed ahead, low and wet against leaf.
"Line!" he shouted.
Brann angled the lead team a half step. Fenn's knife reached down and cut as the wheel passed. The trap died before it could sing.
Behind them, someone reached the abandoned crate again. A man bent, touched it, then recoiled like the liquid had teeth. Another tried to wrench the lid open and glass cracked inside. A sharp, frightened shout rose.
Gray's voice snapped, sharp and ugly. "Leave it. Leave it!"
His men backed away from the crate like it was alive.
The pursuit faltered. Bolts stopped coming in tight rhythm. Movement in the brush slowed and became cautious, as if the road itself had turned into a thing that punished hands.
Eryk heard the rider behind them make a sound of horror, not for men, for cargo.
"What did you drop?" the rider hissed.
Brann didn't answer. The captain did, without looking back.
"Something you didn't want in their hands," she said. "If you want it back, you can ask Gray politely."
The rider choked on his anger and said nothing more.
Gray's voice carried once from behind, stripped of amusement.
"This isn't done."
Brann answered without turning his head.
"It never is."
The woods closed in again. The road narrowed. Somewhere ahead, the next peg hole waited, and the next line lay ready to be found by men who knew how to hide their work.
Daylight didn't change the toll.
It only made the collectors easier to see.