The System Chose the Weakest Man

Chapter 025: The Ashen Road

Iron Heron left Greywatch at the second bell, in a column of nine, under a sky the color of dishwater.

Ethan walked at the rear with a pack that weighed as much as a small child. Forty kilos, give or take, lashed to a wooden frame. The leather straps bit into his shoulders. He let them. He bent forward a little more than he needed to and breathed harder than he had to, because a null who didn't strain would be remembered, and being remembered was the one thing he couldn't afford.

Ahead of him, the party. Behind him, the gate, closing.

"Terms," said Hargo Dane, without turning around.

The red-bearded leader strode at the head of the column with a long-handled axe over one shoulder. He talked the way other men breathed, constantly and for no reason. "Porters carry. Porters don't fight. Porters don't touch loot unless it's handed to them. Your pay is a tenth of the hunters' share, split among you. Is there anyone who doesn't understand?"

"No, sir," said Hal Dunning, the grey-haired porter walking beside Ethan.

"No, sir," said Wrenna, a short, square woman, with her jaw clenched.

"No," Ethan said.

"No what?"

"No, sir."

"Good." Hargo waved a hand. "I like a quiet porter. My last one talked about his mother. Three hours, I swear. I nearly gave him to the hounds."

Nobody laughed. Ethan glanced sideways at the others, and the window opened across the road.

[Hargo Dane. Human. Level 24. True attitude: Boastful. Anxious.]

[Selka Roe. Human. Level 19. Archer. True attitude: Bored. Loyal to Hargo, mostly.]

[Doran Fitch. Human. Level 18. Fire mage. True attitude: Smug. Insecure.]

[Bram Holt. Human. Level 31. Tank. True attitude: Weary. Guarded. Worried for someone far away.]

The fourth was the oldest of the hunters, a broad grey-bearded man with a face like a cracked boot. He carried a tower shield strapped to his back and a short heavy sword at his hip. A scar ran from his left temple down into his collar. He hadn't said a word since the gate. He walked a little apart from the others, with his eyes half-lidded, and every few steps his hand dropped to his chest, to something under his shirt, and then away.

A locket, Ethan thought. Not a weapon. Not a charm. Something small and warm that he checked the way you check a pulse.

At the front of the column, beside the cook's cart, Mira walked with a bundle of firewood on her back. She'd put on a shapeless apron two sizes too big and tied her braid up under a cap. Nobody gave her a second look. Even Hargo, who had inspected the porters like cattle, had only nodded at the cook, a stooped old man called Pol, and then at the girl beside him and said, "Kitchen help? Fine. Don't eat the good cheese."

She caught Ethan's eye across the length of the column and winked.

The Ashen Road ran north along the edge of the Rift.

On the left, a long ridge of black rock, glazed and cracked, rose to a ragged skyline. On the right the land fell away into a plain of dead trees and ash dunes, endless, grey, whispering. A haze hung over everything. Now and then the wind lifted a fold of ash and carried it across the road, and the hunters pulled their scarves over their mouths and never slowed. Far away, a red glow rimmed the horizon. Ethan could feel it on his skin like a faint warmth through a cold glass.

He walked for four hours. The pack rubbed him raw. Beside him Hal Dunning breathed in grunts, a man who had carried loads for twenty years and had nothing left to carry them with. Wrenna kept pace out of sheer spite.

"You're doing well," Hal wheezed at noon, glancing at Ethan. "For a skinny one. I've seen bigger lads fold by now."

"I'm tougher than I look."

"You'd have to be." Hal squinted. "You're not sweating."

Ethan's heart skipped.

"Cold day," he said.

"Hm." Hal didn't push.

At midday Hargo called a halt in the shelter of a rock outcrop. The porters dropped their loads gratefully. Hargo stood in the middle of the road, one hand on his hip, holding court. He told a story about a Bloodhide in the southern gates that he'd killed with one swing. It had four heads in the first telling and six in the second. Selka looked at her nails. Doran laughed too loudly. Bram sat on a rock with his eyes closed.

Ethan unpacked the bread and watched.

Appraise gave him very little at a glance, but he'd had days of practice reading it. He could watch a person's attitude shift in the text like a candle flame. He saw Hargo's boastfulness bloom as the story swelled and fall back each time a sound came from the plain. A loose pebble. A distant crack of wind. Each time, the text flickered. Anxious. Anxious.

Anxious about what?

A dead branch cracked in the wind, sharp as a whip crack. Hargo jumped. It was a small thing, a flinch, and he covered it at once with a laugh and a slap on his thigh. But Ethan saw the line change, only for a second.

[Hargo Dane. True attitude: Terrified. Weakness: Breaks and flees if he is wounded.]

His stomach turned.

A leader who runs.

He kept his eyes on his bread. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Bram's eyelids lift a fraction, and Bram's gaze drift, slowly, across the camp, over Hargo, over Doran, over each of the porters. It stopped on Ethan.

It stayed there for a moment.

Then Bram closed his eyes again.

By dusk they had made camp in a shallow hollow between two ridges, with a wind-bitten wall of rock behind them and the Rift's glow away to the east. Pol had a fire going. Mira helped him stir a pot of beans. Hargo posted the watches himself, first Selka, then Doran, then Bram, and left the porters to sleep wherever they could, in a row on the cold ground at the edge of the firelight.

Ethan lay on his back with his pack for a pillow and looked up at the sky.

There were no stars. Only ash, drifting past the dark like soft grey rain.

He lay still and listened to the camp. The crackle of the fire. The scrape of Pol's ladle. Doran's laughter, a little too loud. He opened Stalker's Instinct, not all the way, only enough to hold the shape of the night in his head. Fifteen meters, a ring of tiny sounds. Beetles. A mouse in the rocks.

Hal Dunning snored.

Mira sat on a rock at the edge of the fire, scraping out the pot, her face glowing orange. She glanced across the camp and caught his eye again.

Okay? she mouthed.

He nodded. Okay.

Then something moved at the very edge of his range.

A pulse. Small, hot, fast. Then another, a little to the left. Then three more, in a line. They weren't beetles. They weren't mice. They were low to the ground, quick on their feet, hungry, and they were not alone.

He counted slowly, keeping his face still.

Eleven.

They stood at the edge of the hollow, forty meters off, in a perfect half circle around the firelit camp. Nobody had seen them. Not Selka on watch, who had her back to the rock wall. Not Doran, who was laughing. Not Hargo, who'd gone to relieve himself behind a boulder.

They weren't moving. They were waiting.

Ethan sat up very slowly.