Silvain Ironleaf's Arc

Chapter 4 of 7

They followed the cut at first light. The wolf cub padded at the front, close to Silvain's boots. Then it stopped. Its ears flattened. It stared at a cold stretch of the path ahead and snarled low. Silvain crouched beside it. "What do you smell?" Silvain whispered. The cub would not move forward. Thaelis drew his blade halfway. "It knows something," Thaelis said. "So do I. This is where his agents cross." He checked the worn ledger. His finger tapped a line marked with a single hard stroke. "A watcher post. Just past that bend." Silvain sent the lynx ahead to scout. The cat slipped into the rocks and vanished. Silvain waited, hand on the staff. The cub kept snarling. Its whole body shook. Silvain had learned to trust the animals over guesses. "We don't walk into it blind," Silvain said. "We find cover first." Off the path stood a roadside shrine of gray stone. Carved figures crowned it, elf and dwarf shoulder to shoulder, worn smooth by rain. Silvain pulled the cub behind the base. Thaelis knelt beside them. The lynx returned within minutes, tail low, moving fast. Behind it came the sound Silvain feared. Boots on loose rock. Two of them. Careful. Trained. "The ones who taught me," Thaelis breathed. "He sent them." Silvain watched from behind the shrine. Two figures came up the cut, blades drawn, eyes on the path where the group should have been. They did not look at the shrine. The cub's warning had pulled Silvain off the open trail in time. Now the hunters walked past, searching empty stone. Silvain made the choice fast. Fighting two guild killers on open ground meant death. But the cub had smelled them coming, and that gave Silvain one thing the enemy lacked. Position. "Lynx, the far rocks," Silvain whispered. The cat streaked across the path. Both hunters spun toward the noise. Silvain moved the other way, staff low, and swept the legs of the nearest. The man fell hard. Thaelis was on the second before he turned. A short struggle. Then quiet. The fallen hunter groaned and reached for his blade. Silvain pinned the wrist with the staff. "Who sent you down?" Silvain asked. The man spat blood. "He's coming himself," he said. "You should have stayed north." Then he went limp, out cold. Thaelis dragged both men behind the shrine. He searched their cloaks and found a folded scrap. He held it up. Fresh marks. A meeting point. A date. "He's not sending agents anymore," Thaelis said. "He set a place to meet us. Two days out." Silvain looked at the cub. It had stopped snarling. It licked Silvain's hand once, then settled. The cold stretch had held real teeth, and the cub had named them first. Silvain took the scrap and marked it in the ledger. "Then we go to him," Silvain said. "The road only opens if he's gone."