Chapter 5: Bloodied Blades and Broken Bodies
The camp on the leeward side of the pass was a pocket of uneasy calm. Alaric stood at the perimeter, his back to the low-burning fire, and stared into the teeth of the wind. His joints ached with a deep, cold fatigue, the kind earned from days in the saddle on mountain trails. Behind him, the muffled sounds of his men—Garrick’s rumbling laugh, the clink of a bottle—felt both comforting and alien. He was their king, but here, on this desperate errand, he was just another blade. A tired one.
He’d put Rose’s horse next to his own gear. He told himself it was to keep an eye on her, this quiet woman who seemed more suited to a library than a mountain covert. Her comment about the dagger hilt from earlier today played in his mind. A strange detail for a scholar to notice. He dismissed it. Exhaustion bred paranoia.
The first arrow didn’t whistle. It thudded into the log beside Garrick’s head with a sound like a axe hitting wet wood.
Chaos, then. Instant and screaming.
Figures materialized from the scree above, not with warcries but with a guttural, focused silence. Northern barbarians, clad in mismatched pelts and rusting mail, their faces painted with ash and ochre. Alaric’s sword was in his hand before the thought fully formed. He met the first attacker’s charge with a brutal shove, using the man’s momentum to spill him onto his own axe. The second came low, and Alaric pivoted, his blade finding the gap between collar-bone and neck with a wet crunch.
He fought in a bubble of hyper-clarity. The fire spat embers into the dark. Men grunted and died. Metal rang on metal. He heard Garrick bellowing, “To the left! To the left, you shits!” Heard Liora’s bowstring snap again and again. He was a node in the defensive line, holding, pushing, his world reduced to the next slash, the next parry.
Then he heard her scream.
It was a short, sharp sound, more shock than fear, cut off abruptly. Rose. It came from beyond a tumble of boulders where the horses were tethered. His head snapped toward the sound. A barbarian lunged at him, forcing his attention back. He dispatched the man with a furious, inefficient blow that nearly wrenched his shoulder. He couldn’t go to her. The line would buckle. His duty was here, to the many. The scream echoed in his skull, a needle of cold failure amidst the hot work of killing.
It felt like an hour. It was three minutes.
When the last barbarian turned to flee and was felled by Liora’s arrow, Alaric was already moving, his breath tearing at his throat. He shoved past the panting, bleeding shapes of his men, around the jagged rock.
The scene was lit by a single fallen lantern, casting long, grotesque shadows.
Rose was backed against the stone, one strap of her dress torn, the pale fabric dark with more than just shadow. Her eyes were wide, unblinking, fixed on a point on the ground. In her hand, held in a white-knuckled, shaking fist, was a dagger. It was small, elegant almost, with a filigreed hilt he’d never seen. It was slick with blood.
At her feet, a barbarian twisted in the dirt, his hands clutched between his legs. A high, keening whine came from his throat. Between his fingers, dark and terrible, was the source of the blood. The man wasn’t just wounded. He’d been mutilated.
Alaric didn’t hesitate. He stepped forward, his sword already moving. The blade took the barbarian in the throat, silencing the awful sound. The body jerked once and was still.
Silence rushed in, louder than the battle had been.
Rose hadn’t moved. Her chest hitched in shallow, rapid pants. She stared at the dead man, then at the dagger in her hand, as if it were a serpent that had appeared there. Her breath came in little gasps. This wasn’t the poised woman from the mountain path, nor the blushing listener to tavern tales. This was someone hollowed out by a single, violent act.
“Rose.” His voice was rough. He sheathed his sword.
No response. She was locked somewhere inside.
He reached out, closing his hand over hers on the dagger’s hilt. Her skin was ice-cold. He pried her fingers loose gently, the bloody weapon clattering to the stone. He turned her hand over, holding it between both of his, trying to push warmth back into it.
“Rose. Look at me.”
Her gaze snapped to his, the green of her eyes almost black in the low light. A shudder ran through her, deep and violent. She blinked. A tear broke free, cutting a track through the grime on her cheek. Then another. She wasn’t sobbing. She was just… leaking the shock out.
“It’s done,” he said, his thumb stroking the back of her hand. “You’re safe.”
She let out a long, trembling breath. Her shoulders slumped. She was back in her body, and the weight of what it had just done was settling in. She looked from their joined hands to the dead barbarian, her face pale.
“He…” she started, her voice a ragged whisper. “He grabbed me. I just… I remembered the knife.”
“You used it,” Alaric finished, his tone leaving no room for debate. He studied her face—the intelligence in it now clouded with trauma, the refined exterior shattered to reveal something far harder and more desperate underneath. The quiet scholar was a fiction. This, the woman who could act with such brutal efficiency even in terror, was real.
Behind them, he heard the crunch of boots. Garrick and Liora approached, their battle-ready tension slackening into confusion as they took in the scene: the dead barbarian, the bloody dagger on the ground, their king holding the shaking woman’s hand.
Alaric didn’t let go. He kept his eyes on Rose, a silent question hanging in the air between them, more important than any crown or stolen throne. Who are you?
But for now, he simply said, “Can you walk?”