He climbed until the trees thinned and the light took on that high-country clarity that sharpens every edge. The dungeon mouth was a shadow behind him, swallowed by ferns and rock. The air tasted like pine and stone dust. When the wind came, it smelled clean. He breathed deep and felt the weight of underground lift off his chest one ounce at a time.

  The bracelet tugged north. Not a yank. Not a command. A quiet pull like a current beneath his feet. He followed the slope where it offered itself and skirted where it became a wall. His legs remembered the long rhythm of travel. His thigh ached at first and then settled into the same conversation it always had with him. You hurt. Keep going.

  Birds argued in the branches. A jay scolded him for existing. A hawk drew circles in a blue so bright it felt like a lie after stone. Somewhere lower a stream threw its voice up the ravine. Each sound reminded him of a thing that was not the Dominion and not fear and not a ring of spinning runes demanding the correct answer at the wrong time.

  "Eyes up," Merlwyn said. "If they lost you at the dungeon, they will try to gain you at the passes."

  "Understood."

  The land wrinkled into a broad saddle between two shoulders of gray. He stepped onto it because it looked like a gift and because he had already been given enough tricks by stone this week to be suspicious of gifts. The saddle drew him out into light. He could see the valley below like a spilled map. He could see three places where rock outcrops broke the slope just enough to hide a man or three.

  He stopped moving.

  The wind shifted and brought him leather oil and cold iron and the old animal scent of men who had slept in their own sweat.

  "Three," he said softly.

  "Yes," Merlwyn said. "One heavy. Two quick."

  The first moved when Trace pretended not to notice the second. He came from behind the right-hand outcrop with an axe that looked like it had been born to break doors and men in a single swing. Big through the shoulders. Easy in his weight. He treated the hill like a floor he owned. The second slipped left, lean and loose, paired short swords held low and back so their points would come like teeth when he stepped. The third did not show more than a quarter of his shield. Spear and shield. He would watch and wait and let the other two spend Trace's blood.

  They were quiet enough that a village guard would not have heard them and loud enough that a Ranger would. Trace had been a Ranger.

  He had five good steps to choose between running and dying. He did neither.

  He took three back, quick and light, and let the heavy think he had given way.

  The axe came down with a sound like a splitting maul finding the sweet line. Trace slid inside it and felt the wind of it on his ear. He tried for the throat, read the barbute helm in time, and settled for a thrust into the armpit where leather gaped. The spearhead bit. The man grunted and tried to turn his whole body into the wound the way strong men sometimes do, as if they can scare steel backward. It did not work. Blood came black in the shade.

  The short swordsman arrived like a shadow that had found knives. Trace tore the spear free and gave ground with purpose, letting the swordsman have the space he wanted because that space led to worse footing.

  "Do not be noble," Merlwyn said. "Be alive."

  "I am working on it."

  He kited them along the contour. Never straight uphill. Never straight down. He kept the axe on one side and the twin blades on the other so his spear could play the middle. The heavy tried to trap the spearshaft under the axe handle. Trace let him be close enough to believe it twice and each time slipped the haft free with a quarter turn and a twist of the wrists that left the axe biting air. The duelist probed for the fingers on the haft, for the tendons inside the elbow, for the soft place at the base of the thumb. Trace let him find knuckles and not flesh. Let him bite wood. Fed him false openings and the iron taste of patience.

  The shieldman advanced only when Trace looked like he might break, which meant he advanced in a shallow crouch, spear forward, shield turned to catch a throw. He wanted to end it when the moment cost least.

  Trace gave ground because giving ground bought time and time bought control. He kept stone ribs under his boots and refused the grass patches that would slip. He let the heavy climb first whenever he could because gravity is a quiet kind of ally that only asks for attention. He threw Criterion once at the duelist's knee and pulled it back with Sure Hands the instant before the man's blade cut the shaft. The spear snapped into his palm at thirty feet like a dog clearing a fence to return to heel.

  The duelist swore. "Witch weapon."

  "Keep talking," Trace said. "It helps."

  The heavy came again. This time he did not swing for the head. He came low, trying to take legs. Trace gave him a foot and kept the knee. The axe skimmed his boot heel and sparked on stone. Trace thrust for the collarbone because that was what a man expects when he has been given a shoulder. At the last breath he shoved the point an inch lower into the seam where armor bent under the arm. It sank as if the man had been made for exactly this mistake.

  The heavy bellowed. Blood poured. He did not fall. He shoved in, axe forcing the spear sideways with raw strength. The duelist cut from the blind angle and scored a hot line across Trace's back. Skin opened like wet paper. Trace refused the flinch because flinching here would mean two blades inside him.

  He vaulted onto a boulder the size of a table and made them climb to him. The heavy tried first and lost a half step of footing with every push. The duelist chose a faster line, light feet on small holds. The shieldman shifted to guard the lower approach and waited, spear just outside of Sure Hands' reach, patient as stone.

  Trace threw Criterion past the duelist as if at the heavy again, then cut the pull at the last breath and jerked it short across the duelist's face. Wood cracked cheekbone with a sound like a green branch breaking. The man's eyes blew wide. Trace reversed the point and stabbed down into the soft pad where jaw becomes neck. Not deep enough to kill. Deep enough to ruin. The duelist gagged on his own blood and fell back hard, blades skittering.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Trace marked where he landed. A man that hurt could still find a way to die fighting.

  The heavy gained the boulder and came in with the kind of sincerity only an axe can bring. Trace let the first chop go wide and stabbed the man in the inside of the knee with a half step and a twist that Bran had called the last argument. Something tore. The heavy dropped to one knee with a sound that had a little boy in it and tried to bring the axe around one more time. Trace jammed the butt of the spear into the hollow above the clavicle and shoved hard until he felt the crack and the give that means the shoulder will not work anymore. The axe slipped. The heavy clung to it like a man clings to a rope that is no longer tied to anything.

  "Down," Merlwyn said.

  Trace took him at the hip, all his weight behind it. They tumbled off the boulder. The world turned. Stone hit his ribs and stole his breath. He tasted copper and dirt. He found the spear by instinct because it had become an extra bone in his hand. He drove it under the heavy's jaw and into the brainpan with a short, ugly shove that had nothing noble in it.

  The man went still.

  [Dominion Scout Defeated +45 XP]

  [Level 12: 100 / 3,450 XP]

  The shieldman came quiet and fast, almost on top of the notification, spear flicking for the gap at Trace's ribs while he lay half on his side. Movement at the edge of his vision — the duelist, still alive, dragging himself forward with one blade in his fist and blood on his teeth. The man had more left in him than the wound deserved.

  Trace rolled left so the shieldman's spear took him in the meat of the triceps instead of the lung. Pain lit him clean and bright. He kicked his heel into the duelist's ruined face on the same breath. Bone crunched. The man screamed thin and high and stopped moving.

  [Dominion Scout Defeated +45 XP]

  [Level 12: 145 / 3,450 XP]

  The shieldman kept his mouth shut and his point steady. He had eyes like a dog that has been hit and intends to bite you for doing it.

  Trace slid on his back over scree and let gravity pull him out of the spear's line. He came to his knees behind a knee-high rib of stone and let the shieldman decide whether to climb or circle. The shieldman chose to bully the line and came over. Trace met him with a thrust not for the chest but for the shield rim. The point slid and caught, bit the inside lip, jerked the shield up and open. The spear followed through in the same motion and cut a groove along the man's jaw instead of taking the throat because the shieldman was good. He was good and still alive and Trace wanted to respect that by not giving him another chance to be.

  The shieldman took his chance anyway. Spear for the gut. Trace dropped his hips and let it take cloth and skin and not organs. The shield rim crashed his shoulder and tried to fold him. He went with it and slid along the inside arc of the shield until he could feel the man's breath. He pushed his spear up and under and into the soft triangle below the ear. The shieldman tried to twist away. Trace kept pressure and held him while his boots tore lines in the dirt and then stopped.

  [Dominion Scout Defeated +45 XP]

  [Level 12: 190 / 3,450 XP]

  Silence fell in pieces, like broken glass finding the floor. The jay swore at him again from a pine and did not care about three dead men because jays are honest.

  Trace crouched and listened hard for the sound of more. He heard only wind and his own breath and the slow drip of blood on stone.

  "Move," Merlwyn said. "There will be more."

  Trace stripped a canteen, a serviceable knife, and a small roll of bandage from the bodies because leaving such things is a kind of stupid that gets you dead later. One of the scouts wore a ring on his right hand, black metal with a crimson stone. Dominion issue. Trace touched the locked ring on his own finger. Still silent. Still sealed. He left the dead man's ring where it sat.

  He tore cloth and bound the cut on his upper arm. It would scar. He did not mind scars that did not stop hands from working.

  He climbed without using the saddle again. He took the ribs of rock and the thin lines where the slope had broken and refused him, then allowed him in the same breath. He zigzagged because zigzagging asks more questions of whoever follows.

  Three ridges later Merlwyn said, "They will try to read your feet. Give them a book in the wrong language."

  "How much time do we have?"

  "Enough for clever. Not enough for careful."

  Trace gave them clever. He bled drops from the bandage where they would lead a man wrong. He walked a downed pine trunk for a hundred paces so the trail vanished into bark. He stepped into streams and left them on blind bends. He crossed shale and used the scree's natural slide to write false stories — a man going down when he had gone up, going right when he had lain flat. The SERE instructors had hauled him into mountains like these and taught him how to be small. He remembered lying under a fallen log while men with dogs walked past. He used every trick they had beaten into him and a few the mountains taught him on the climb.

  He set a false camp sign with a circle of stones where any tired man would stop, and left it wrong in three small ways that only a Ranger would notice.

  From a shelf of rock high above, he watched four Dominion scouts find his story and believe it. They read the ground, split wrong, and followed the trail he had written for them — away from him, away into the lie.

  Trace let his breath out through his nose and let his shoulders drop half an inch.

  "Not clever," Merlwyn said. "Useful."

  "Useful will do."

  They climbed again after the hunters had gone. The sky deepened. The air thinned until each breath felt like it needed to be counted. Trace's legs became the kind that belong to men who climb mountains or carry them. His thoughts grew simple. Water. Warmth. Find the place.

  It came close to dark when the slope eased and the trees gave way to stone and grass cropped short by wind. The bracelet's pull changed from a direction to a nearness that raised the hair on his arm. A light showed ahead. Not the frantic pulse of a campfire but the calm square glow of a window with shutters partway closed.

  He stepped onto a small shoulder of land cupped like a hand.

  The house was stone set with care, each block chosen for how it would sit against its neighbor. The roof had been shingled with split slate. Moss had taken some edges and been kept from others. Smoke rose from a vent cut clever to keep wind from pushing it back down. The door stood closed and did not need a bar to look secure.

  Beside the house a yard had been carved out of the slope and made level. Posts stood at measured intervals. A rack for weapons sat empty. A line of square stones had been set for balance drills. A trench filled with sand had been turned so often it looked like a field. Someone had walked these shapes until they wore grooves a finger deep into the earth. The grooves had the look that only years can carve.

  Trace stepped into the training yard the way a man steps into a room where he is not certain he belongs. He set Criterion's butt lightly to the ground and felt how the place pushed against the spear and how the spear pushed back. The push felt like a handshake.

  He listened. The mountain wind said what wind always says. A small animal rustled in the brush and then changed its mind. The house said nothing. The yard said nothing. The bracelet warmed against his wrist like a hand that had decided to hold his for a moment.

  "Do I knock?" he said.

  "You already did," Merlwyn said.

  Trace frowned. "I did not touch the door."

  "Not that way."

  The air changed pressure, the way it does when a storm decides whether to speak. The yard felt suddenly like a held breath. Trace straightened without meaning to. He lifted Criterion half an inch because he is the kind of man who lifts a weapon when he does not know what else to lift.

  A voice came from the shadow between house and yard. It was not loud and it did not need to be.

  "If you mean to learn, leave your excuses at the gate."

  Trace did not turn to look for the speaker. He held still. He let the words sit where they had landed.

  He tasted iron and pine on the back of his tongue. He let his breath quiet. He looked once at the door and once at the stones and then he stepped forward into the yard because forward was the only honest direction left to him.