Rurik's Arc

Chapter 6 of 22

The alliance was bought. Now Rurik had to use it. He led his warband down toward Greyspine and stopped where the trees still hid them from the plain. Below, the enemy camp ringed his hold. He could see tents and cook-fires, but not the lines that mattered. Where were the watches? Where were the weak points? March in blind, and he'd feed his people to a wall of spears. Thorin crouched beside him and spat. "Can't fight what you can't see." "Then we see first," Rurik said. "We send a scout close. Count the pickets. Find the gap." Bjorn shook his head. "They'll take a man who walks that ground. He won't walk back." Rurik knew he was right. A man on foot would die on the open plain. He needed eyes that moved faster than a spear could reach. Brenna came up the slope behind them. Rurik had met her three days past, a dwarf shield maiden racing south ahead of the freeze. Her eldest brother's shield hung on her back, and she'd sworn to reach Greyspine before the passes closed. She dropped to a knee beside Rurik and looked at the camp the way a smith looks at a bad weld. "Your enemy's lazy," she said. "They've bunched the tents on the near side. The far slope's near empty." "You can't know that from here," Bjorn said. "I watched their smoke this morning. Cook-fires cluster where the men sleep." She pointed. "Nobody's cooking on the north edge. That's your gap." Rurik studied where she pointed. It could be a gap. It could be a trap. He would not stake the warband on smoke. "I want proof before I move." "Then let me prove it." Rurik whistled low. The wyrm slid from the trees, iron scales dark, its eye burning amber. Rurik pointed it toward the camp. It climbed the air in a long slow circle, high enough that the men below shielded their eyes and never raised a bow. It crossed the whole ring once, then dropped back into the trees and coiled at his feet. Rurik had walked it before. He knew how it turned when it saw men, how it slowed where it saw none. He read its path in his head. "It banked over the near tents. It flew straight over the north slope. No men there." He looked at Brenna. "You were right. The north edge is open." Brenna nodded once. "Told you." Bjorn grunted. "Then that's where we hit them." Rurik stood. He had the enemy's shape now, drawn plain in his mind. He knew where the spears were thick and where the ground lay bare. "We march at dark. We come through the north slope and roll their line before they wake." The blind march was gone. But knowing the gap meant using it, and a night attack on a sleeping camp could wake into a battle he could not stop.