The north trail climbed out of the gorge in lazy switchbacks, each turn doubling back across the same brown slope. Fresh prints scarred the dust in four patterns, pressed deep by men carrying more weight than they started out with.
Ray crouched over the clearest set, tilting his head the way other men tilt their heads over a newspaper.
He traced the deepest print with one fingertip, "We’ve got a big guy walking point, one guy dragging his left heel, plus two who stroll like they own the road and every toll on it."
"You read all that from dirt?" Yuzu asked, hauling the limping mule up the last bend behind him.
"Dirt is the most honest witness you’ll ever meet, seeing as nobody in history has managed to bribe it."
The air in front of his eyes flickered, painting blue lines over every print that only he could see.
[ TARGETS LOCKED ]
[Count: 4]
[Lead: Rogan]
[Pace: Unhurried]
[Route: North Switchbacks]
The lines crawled up the slope along every lazy turn, bending toward a notch in the ridge high above them. Then a brighter line cut straight up a goat chute, a steep gash of loose rock that skipped every switchback.
[ INTERCEPT PLOTTED ]
[Location: Scree Throat]
[Target Arrival: 40 Minutes]
[Contractor Arrival: 15 Minutes]
’They need forty minutes while I need fifteen, leaving me twenty-five minutes to pick my spot and enjoy the shade.’
"Why are you smiling at a hillside?" she asked, narrowing her eyes at him.
"The hillside just told me exactly where those four are going to be standing in forty minutes, which makes the two of us... close personal friends now."
She glanced at the empty slope, then back at him, adding this to her growing list of things she disliked.
"That makes eleven things on my list, with half the day still left to go."
"Only eleven sounds like I’m doing great," he said, straightening up with a crack of both knees, "considering you have only known me since the goblins."
A little way above them, a goat shelter of piled rocks huddled against the slope under a roof of thorns. Ray led the mule into its shade, looping the rope around a post while Yuzu watched him with deep suspicion.
"You’re parking me in a goat hut like luggage," she said flatly.
"I’m putting you in charge of our only mule, a crucial job with full benefits and the best shade on this mountain."
The mule chose that moment to shove its nose into his ribs, hunting for anything edible inside his coat pockets.
"We have an understanding, big guy, where you guard the doctor while I promise not to sell you to the first—"
The mule clamped its teeth on his sleeve, tugging hard enough to pop a stitch at the cuff.
"She is a girl," Yuzu said, scratching the mule behind one ear, "who bites men that lie to her."
"Then I apologize to the lady, who is clearly the smartest member of this whole operation by a mile."
She folded her arms, "That satchel is three weeks of fever medicine for eleven patients that I refuse to lose twice in one day."
"I don’t play hero, Doc, I collect debts, a job that goes a whole lot smoother without an audience watching me work."
Her jaw tightened, though she stopped arguing, telling him the bruise on her elbow hurt more than she showed.
"Then promise me one thing before you go running up a cliff like a goat with a death wish."
"That depends entirely on what it costs me," he said, tilting his head.
"Bring all four back alive for the watch in Kelford," she said, holding his gaze without blinking once.
He stared at her the way a man might stare at someone asking him to catch a wasp unharmed.
"Those bastards sold you to goblins with a jar of goblin bait, so you want me to hand them back with a bow on top?"
"I am a healer who will not take her purse back with blood on it," she said, chin raised, "not even theirs."
’Alive is slower and riskier, but the client is paying, so the client gets exactly the job she ordered.’
"Fine, nobody dies today... though I’m not promising they’ll walk straight for a while or keep every tooth."
"Crooked bones heal fine, which is more than I can say for corpses," she said, the corner of her mouth twitching.
’Sixty-one rounds with no Shop until this first contract pays out makes a fistfight the cheapest option on the menu anyway.’
She held out her rapier hilt first, "Take my rapier, given that you’re climbing up there to fight four armed men with your bare hands."
"Keep it across your knees, since a sword in my hands is just a very expensive way to cut myself."
He left her in the shelter with the rapier across her knees, starting up the goat chute without looking back. The rock was loose and hot under his palms, each handhold testing him before it agreed to take his weight.
Halfway up, a hold crumbled under his fingers, dropping him a full foot before his other hand caught.
"Gah, damn it, who builds a mountain out of stale crackers?" he hissed, hugging the rock while pebbles rattled down the chute.
From the shelter far below, a small voice floated up the slope, dry enough to crack.
"Did the mountain win?"
"The mountain is... losing on points, Doc, so go back to guarding the lady!"
He hung there breathing through his teeth, letting the HUD redraw itself while sweat ran down his neck.
[ TARGET UPDATE ]
[Count: 4]
[Distance: 1,100 Feet]
[Elevation Gap: 240 Feet]
[Status: Unaware]
The chute narrowed near the top until he was wedging his back between two slabs just to keep climbing. He walked his feet up the opposite wall, inching higher while grit poured down the back of his shirt.
He hauled himself over the lip onto the ridge path, rolling into the shade of a boulder before he stood.
A scraggly goat watched him from a ledge, chewing a thorn branch with the contempt of a landlord collecting rent.
"Don’t look at me like that, since I paid for this view with half the skin on my palms."
The goat kept chewing, entirely unimpressed, before it hopped away along the ridge without a backward glance.
The Scree Throat was exactly what the HUD promised, a gap barely three men wide between two shoulders of rock.
On the left, the slope fell away in a long fan of loose stone that hissed in the wind. On the right, a crowd of boulders pressed against the path, leaving one blind corner where the trail bent.
"Holy hell, look at you," he murmured, patting the nearest boulder like a prize horse, "a perfect choke point with a blind corner plus a free backstop, so honestly I could kiss you."
He nudged a loose stone with his toe, sending it skittering down the fan with a long, dry hiss.
"Anybody who bolts left takes the express ride to the bottom, saving me the walk while sparing them the dignity."
He walked the throat twice, counting his steps, noting the stones that rolled underfoot against those that held his weight. Then he settled behind the blind corner with his back to the rock, breathing slowly until his pulse went quiet.
’The axeman goes down first and hardest, the archer before he finds room to draw, the knife man without a fair fight, while Rogan comes last like every boss who sends his boys ahead.’
He took off his coat, folding it over a rock, then rolled his sleeves to the elbow with unhurried care.
"Sorry, you two, the client wants this one done by hand, which means you’re riding the bench today," he told the holstered pistols, giving each grip a fond pat.
The wind shifted, carrying voices up from the switchbacks below, loose and laughing the way men laugh after a payday.
"Did anybody else hear that thunder back in the gorge, three cracks with no cloud in the whole sky?" a nervous voice asked.
"Rocks fall in gorges, you jumpy little rat, which is the whole reason they call it a gorge," another voice sneered, sounding bored.
"Rocks don’t fall in threes, boss, not with the goblins going quiet right after—"
"The goblins went quiet while they ate our pretty little healer, the way goblins do with stupid girls who pay half up front," the bored voice cut in.
A thin voice cackled somewhere in the middle of the group, sharp and nasal like a knife on a whetstone.
"Did you see her face when the boss smashed that jar of goblin bait across her skirt, staring at us like we stole her favorite doll?"
"I will be laughing about that face all the way to the tavern," the bored voice said, "provided you idiots walk faster."
A coin purse jingled as somebody weighed it fondly, the four of them starting up the last switchback together.
"Hahaha, a hundred and forty silver in here, boys, plus the tinctures, good for another twenty in Kelford from the right buyer."
"That’s good money for walking a girl into a ditch," the axeman laughed, his voice rough with satisfaction.
’A hundred and forty silver means my hundred-silver fee is sitting in that purse with forty to spare, which is the nicest thing I’ve heard all day.’
"Thanks for keeping my money warm, Rogan," he whispered to nobody, "though I’m going to need you to hand it over in person."
Ray drew one slow breath, letting the last of the jokes drain out of his face until only quiet remained.
A lizard sunning on the rock beside his hand went flat, then poured itself into a crack and stayed there.
Footsteps crunched closer, four sets of them, the big one leading just as the dust promised forty minutes ago.
The shadow of the first man slid across the path at the blind corner, an axe resting on his shoulder.
He waited without moving a muscle, while the shadow grew longer and the debt walked straight into collections.