Chapter 40: The Axe in the Stump
The question hung in the air, sharper than the mountain cold. Kaelen’s hand wasn’t gripping the axe for an attack, not yet. It was a statement. A claim. His eyes, bloodshot and weary, held Dan’s without blinking.
Fine linen. Dan’s mind raced. The clean cloth he’d taken from the medical bundle was indeed fine-woven, soft and even. It was from Dargo’s hoard, part of a larger bolt tucked away with other “useful” treasures the dragon had accumulated over centuries. To a trapper living hand-to-mouth, it was an absurd luxury.
On his shoulder, Dargo was a frozen weight. The dragon’s thought was a single, clear spike of warning. Careful.
Dan didn’t look at the linen. He looked at Alric’s leg, where the filthy bandage was already soaking through with fresh, yellow-tinged seepage. He kept his voice flat, a little annoyed. “Traded for it. Last autumn. A merchant from the coast got lost up here, frost-nipped and grateful for a guide back to the pass.” He shrugged, the motion making his hair shift over Dargo’s concealed head. “Took the cloth and a good skinning knife as payment. Seemed fair at the time. You going to stand there judging my bargaining, or are you going to let me clean your friend’s wound before the rot sets into the bone?”
He turned his back on Kaelen, a move of calculated dismissal, and knelt by the fire. He poured water from their skin into a small, scoured pot and set it at the edge of the flames. The silence behind him was thick. Then came the sound of the axe being pulled from the stump, and the softer thud as Kaelen leaned it against the rock within arm’s reach.
Grynda moved to help, her hands trembling slightly as she worked to cut away Alric’s ruined leggings. The wound was a nasty gash across the calf, swollen, the edges an angry purple. The smell made Dan’s stomach twist. Alric gritted his teeth, sweat beading on his forehead despite the chill.
“How’d it happen?” Dan asked, not looking up as he crumbled dried willow bark into the warming water.
“Pike butt,” Grynda said, her voice tight. “During the… the evacuation. He fell. One of the Baron’s men wasn’t looking where he was shoving.”
“Evacuation,” Dan echoed, letting the word sit. He soaked a strip of the fine linen in the now-steaming willow-bark infusion. “That’s a polite word for it.”
“It was a slaughter,” Kaelen growled from the edge of the firelight. “They called it ‘relocation.’ A lie. They surrounded the guildhalls. Gave us an hour. Anyone with tools, with skills, they marched east towards the foundries. Anyone who objected…” He made a sharp, cutting motion with his hand. “We didn’t object. We ran. Into the woods. Then the mountains.”
Dan began to clean the wound. Alric hissed, his whole body tensing. The pus came away, revealing inflamed, ragged flesh. “This is days old. You’ve been running on this.”
“Had no choice,” Alric grunted, words squeezed out between clenched teeth.
“You do now. This next part’s going to hurt worse.” Dan took the paste of horsetail and woundwort. He applied it thickly, the astringent green smell cutting through the corruption. Alric jerked, a stifled cry escaping him. Grynda held his shoulders, murmuring something low.
They are telling the truth, Dargo’s thought filtered in, cool and analytical. The emotional resonance matches the story. The wound is consistent with a blunt, splintered weapon. Not a clean blade.
Are they a threat? Dan thought back, his hands steadily wrapping the clean bandage.
The man Kaelen is dangerous because he is terrified. The woman is pragmatic. The injured one is currently irrelevant. The immediate threat is their need. It will make them unpredictable.
Dan finished the bandaging and sat back on his heels. “That’ll draw out the poison and help with the fever. It’s not a cure. He needs rest, real rest, and more of this paste for a week.”
“We can’t stay here,” Kaelen said immediately, though his eyes lingered on Alric’s now-treated leg with a flicker of desperate hope.
“You can’t go anywhere,” Dan replied, wiping his hands on a scrap of hide. “The blightwind will be here in a few hours. It’ll freeze the sweat on your skin and drop the temperature to where your breath turns to ice in your lungs. You’ll be dead by morning, out there.”
Grynda looked up at the sky, where the usual slate grey was deepening into a bruised, greenish-black. The wind had already begun to change, losing its random gusts and settling into a steady, keening stream from the highest peaks. She knew the signs. Everyone from the mountains did. Defeat slumped her shoulders. “We have nowhere to go.”
Dan poked the fire. The flames leapt, casting long, dancing shadows. The weight on his shoulder was a constant, judging presence. He thought of the geothermal cave. The warm, damp air. The hidden mural. A sanctuary. A hiding place.
He made a decision.
“There’s a place. Not here. Warmer. Sheltered from the wind.” He stood up. “I can take you there. But there are conditions.”
Kaelen’s hand drifted toward the axe again. “What conditions?”
“One,” Dan said, holding up a finger. “You ask no questions about the place. How I found it, what’s in it, nothing. Two.” A second finger. “You touch nothing but the floor. No exploring. Three.” A third. “The second the blightwind passes and Alric can walk, you leave. No arguments. You go south, not north. Agree, or you take your chances with the sky.”
The three refugees exchanged a long, silent conversation with their eyes. It was a negotiation of the desperate. What choice did they have? Trust a mysterious trapper with inexplicable linen, or die.
“We agree,” Grynda said, her voice firm, cutting off whatever objection Kaelen was forming. “We ask nothing. We touch nothing. We leave when we can. You have our word.”
“Words are light,” Dan said. “Actions matter. Can he walk with help?”
With Grynda and Kaelen supporting him, Alric could hobble. Dan moved swiftly. He kicked snow over their fire, leaving only a smoking pit. He shouldered his pack with their remaining supplies, making sure the hatchet was loose in his belt. “Follow me. And keep up. If you get lost in this, you’re done.”
He led them away from the overhang, along the base of the cliff face opposite the direction of the geothermal tunnel. He walked for ten minutes, until the bluff was a dark shape behind them in the gathering gloom. Then he stopped, pretending to scan the rock.
What are you doing? Dargo’s thought was a wary buzz. The fissure is south.
Making sure they can’t find their way back to our camp, Dan thought back. And giving you a moment.
He bent, feigning to adjust his boot. “Stay here. I need to check the path ahead isn’t iced over.” Without waiting for a reply, he slipped around a jagged outcrop and into a narrow seam in the rock, out of their sight.
The moment he was concealed, Dargo shifted. Not to a larger form, but to his human shape. He materialized in the tight space, his golden eyes blazing in the shadows. “This is a profound overextension of risk,” he whispered, the words taut. “The cave is a strategic secret.”
“It’s a hole in the ground,” Dan whispered back, just as fiercely. “And they’ll die out here. You analyzed them. They’re not agents. They’re victims.”
“Victims can still be vectors. They see the drawings. They will have questions. Questions lead to speculation. Speculation leads to talk, if they survive. That talk can find the wrong ears.”
“Then we make sure they see nothing.” Dan’s mind was working, a plan forming as he spoke. “The main cavern with the pool and the drawings is to the left of the tunnel entrance. There’s a smaller chamber off to the right, just before it opens up. Remember? All rock, no drawings. We put them in there. We keep them on the right-hand path. They’ll never see the mural.”
Dargo stared at him. The blightwind’s leading edge whimpered through the seam above them, carrying needles of ice. “You have become disturbingly competent at deception.”
“I’ve had a good teacher.” Dan met his gaze. “We need to move. Now. In your smaller form. You need to go ahead, make sure… make sure the way is clear.” He meant Kael. He meant making sure the young dragon stayed hidden in the upper pocket of the overhang.
Dargo held his stare for a second longer, then gave a curt, frustrated nod. The shift was instantaneous. The cat-sized dragon leapt back to Dan’s shoulder, claws gripping tight. Hurry. The wind is turning.
Dan returned to the three refugees. “Path is clear. This way.” He led them back south, now taking a more direct route. The light was failing fast, the green-black sky leaching the color from the world. The first real gust of blightwind hit them, stealing the breath from Dan’s lungs with its sheer, shocking cold. It wasn’t just temperature; it was a sucking, lifeless chill that promised numbness and then eternity.
“Gods,” Grynda swore, huddling over Alric.
“Not much further!” Dan shouted over the rising wail.
He found the fissure, a darker slit in the gathering dark. “In here! Single file! Mind your heads!”
He pushed Kaelen and Grynda with Alric in first, then followed, blocking the entrance with his own body for a moment as if checking the weather. He felt Dargo leave his shoulder, a whisper of movement into the deeper dark of the tunnel ahead.
The relief from the wind was immediate and profound. The air inside was still and, compared to the hellish breath outside, blessedly mild. The distant, mineral scent of the geothermal waters was like a promise.
“Keep moving,” Dan instructed, his voice echoing. “Stay to the right. The left passage collapses further in.”
He herded them, a hand on Kaelen’s back to steer him at a fork he knew wasn’t a fork. They stayed in the narrower, featureless right-hand branch. The glow of the phosphorescent veins began, providing a faint, ghostly light. He heard their gasps of relief as the temperature continued to climb, becoming truly warm, damp and earthy.
The tunnel opened into the smaller chamber. It was maybe twenty feet across, the floor a soft, dry silt, the walls solid rock. It was empty, silent, and safe. A faint, warm draft seeped from a crack in the far wall, connected to the main cavern’s geothermal system.
“Here,” Dan said, dropping his pack. “You’ll be warm. You’ll be out of the wind. There’s a crack for fresh air.” He pulled out their remaining trail bread and a wedge of hard cheese, handing them to Grynda. “Rations.
“Rations.” He tossed a waterskin after them. It wasn’t much, but it was more than they had.
Grynda caught the food with a nod that held the weight of a vow. Kaelen helped Alric sink to the sandy floor, his eyes still scanning the shadows of the barren chamber. “You’re not staying?” Kaelen asked, his voice echoing slightly.
“My shelter’s elsewhere,” Dan said, taking a step back toward the tunnel. “Safer for both of us. The blightwind will blow itself out by midday tomorrow. I’ll come back then. Remember the terms.”
He didn’t wait for another question. He turned and moved back into the throat of the tunnel, leaving them in the faint, watery light. He walked until the murmur of their voices faded, then faster, until the frigid slap of outside air hit him. He squeezed back through the fissure entrance and into the full, screaming fury of the blightwind.
It was a wall of white noise and needles. He pulled his hood up, bowed his head, and fought his way back along the cliff face, the journey a brutal, blind slog. He wasn’t heading for the overhang. He angled upslope, toward a gnarled, ancient pine whose roots clawed into the mountain high above the refugee’s hiding place.
A shadow detached from a thick limb, landing silently in the snow beside him. Dargo, in human form, his braid a whip in the gale. He didn’t speak. He simply clamped a hand on Dan’s arm and led him into a shallow, wind-scoured recess under the tree’s roots. The sound dropped to a muffled roar.
“Report,” Dargo said, his voice a low rumble that bypassed the wind.
“They’re in the side chamber. They didn’t see anything. They have food, water, warmth.” Dan leaned against the rock, breathing hard. “They agreed to the terms.”
Dargo’s golden eyes were on the dark line of the fissure below. “The one called Kaelen does not like terms. He likes control. He has none.” He glanced at Dan. “You gave him an enemy to resent. You. The mysterious hermit with rules. That was… adequate. It directs his suspicion usefully.”
“Is Kael safe?” Dan asked, thinking of the young dragon alone in the high crevice.
“The hatchling is asleep. The overhang is insulated. He is fine.” Dargo’s attention remained fixed below. “This is now a watch. We will take shifts. You will take the first rest.”
“I’m not tired.”
“You are exhausted. Your magic is low from the healing effort, and your judgment degrades with fatigue. Sit. Sleep. I will wake you in three hours.” His tone brooked no argument. It wasn’t a request. It was a tactical order.
Dan slid down the rock to sit on a dry patch of ground. The adrenaline was leaching away, leaving his muscles leaden. He watched Dargo, who had turned back to face the night, a stark silhouette against the swirling snow. The dragon shifter was utterly still, a statue carved from the mountain itself, his gaze unblinking on the crevice where the humans hid.
“You’re waiting for them to break the terms,” Dan said quietly.
“I am waiting for what they are,” Dargo corrected, not turning around. “Desperation is a solvent. It dissolves oaths, given enough time and pressure. We have given them both.”
Dan’s eyes grew heavy. The howl of the wind became a distant thing. The last thing he saw was Dargo’s patient, unwavering vigil on the limb, a sentinel in the storm, guarding secrets older than the bones of the mountain.