CHAPTER 9: LEASH SNAPS
They made camp the first night in a hollow below the snow line, fire small, voices smaller.
Torven sharpened his axe the way a worried man prays. Lysa counted arrows twice, then a third time. Dren sat with his back to a tree and watched the dark like it might speak.
Kael sat apart, oiling the new short sword he'd bought with goblin-ear money. The blade was plain, honest steel, but every stroke of the cloth felt like a promise.
He could still taste Veyra's poison on the back of his tongue, rot and bells. Could still feel the ghost of silver cuts closing like obedient dogs. Could still hear her voice telling him what he would do, when he would report, how he would die if she decided it.
At first it was a little amusing in a way. But now, the memory sat in his chest like a hot coal.
He wasn't angry yet. Anger was a luxury he hadn't earned.
But something colder was waking up.
Torven finally broke the silence. "So. Inquisitor's pet monster now, eh?"
Kael didn't look up. "She thinks so."
Lysa snorted. "She cut you open a dozen times and you just stood there. I'd have taken her hand off at the wrist."
"She was waiting for me to try," Kael said. "Would've given her the excuse."
Dren spoke for the first time all day, voice soft. "And if she tries again?"
Kael tested the edge with his thumb. A bead of blood welled, then vanished before it could fall.
"Then she learns the difference between a man who doesn't flinch and a man who obeys."
The fire cracked. No one answered. They didn't need to.
They all felt it: the moment the leash went on, and the moment it started to fray.
Second day up the pass, the weather turned mean. Wind like knives, snow thick enough to choke on. Visibility dropped to twenty paces.
They were roped together, single file, when the ambush came.
Not the name-eater. Men.
Six of them in white cloaks, faces wrapped in gray cloth, moving like they'd been born on the ridge. Guild badges, D-rank, black border. Inquisitor sigils on the left breast.
They came out of the blizzard with crossbows already cranked.
The first bolt took Torven high in the shoulder, punched clean through the mail rings. He roared and went to one knee.
Lysa got her bow up but never loosed, second bolt clipped her ear, took a chunk of scalp with it.
Dren was already moving, knives low, but the rope jerked him back.
Kael stood still.
The leader stepped forward, hood low, voice muffled by wool.
"Kael Varin. By order of Inquisitor Veyra Sol, you are relieved of duty and placed under detention pending psychic containment. Drop your weapons and submit to binding."
Kael looked at the rope tying him to his friends. Looked at Torven bleeding into the snow. Looked at the six men who thought six was enough.
Something inside him went very quiet.
He smiled. Small, tired, almost polite.
"No."
The leader raised a hand. The crossbows rose with it.
Kael moved.
Ten strides through driving snow, faster than the eye wanted to follow. The rope snapped taut, yanked Torven and Lysa off balance, but Kael was already inside the first man's guard. He caught the crossbow by the stock, twisted, felt the wrist bones go like dry twigs. The bolt fired into the sky.
Second man swung a short axe. Kael leaned into it, let the edge bite his left forearm (deep this time, down to bone). Pain flared bright and useful. He used the man's momentum to drive the axe deeper into its owner's thigh instead of his own.
Third man tried to circle. Kael threw the broken crossbow like a spear (caught him under the chin, flipped him backward into the snow.
The leader shouted something about silver chains.
Kael reached him last.
He took the sword thrust on purpose, right through the meat below the ribs. Felt the cold steel scrape a rib, keep going. Counted heartbeats (one, two, three) while the man's eyes went wide behind the mask.
Then Kael twisted the blade, snapped it off at the hilt, and head-butted the leader so hard the mask cracked.
Six men down in under 20 seconds. Four dead. Two screaming.
The snow around them was redder than the sunset had any right to be.
Kael stood in the middle of it, blood pouring from his side, and felt the wound already closing around the broken blade inside him. The axe cut on his forearm sealed with a soft hiss. Pain ebbed to memory.
Torven stared like he was seeing a god he didn't want to pray to.
Kael pulled the broken sword out of his own gut, dropped it in the snow.
'I can't lie, that was kinda tuff,' He thought amusedly, but maintained his stoic external.
"Cut the rope," he said.
Lysa sawed through it with shaking hands.
Kael walked to the leader, still alive, barely and crouched.
"Tell Veyra the leash didn't fit," he said quietly. "Tell her if she wants me collared, she'll have to come do it herself."
He took the man's waterskin, rinsed the blood from his hands, and stood.
The blizzard was easing. The ridge above them looked suddenly very empty.
Torven found his voice. "So… we're rogue now?"
"No, we only offended the Inquisitor, I have a better way of saying what you meant to say though," Kael said.
"From now on, we're free. Well... partially at least..."
He looked at the bodies, then at the contract tag still in his pocket, the one with Veyra's personal seal.
He tore it in half, let the wind take the pieces.
"We're still going to Cragmere," he said. "We're still killing whatever's left of that thing. Just not for her. Not for the guild. For us. For the eleven dead in that circle. For Selene's nightmares. For every poor bastard who ever had a name stolen."
He looked at each of them in turn.
"Anyone who wants to walk away, walk now. No shame."
Lysa spat blood and laughed. "And miss the look on that bitch's face when we come back richer and breathing? Not likely."
Dren just nodded once, already stripping the dead for gear.
Torven pressed a rag to his shoulder and grinned through the pain.
"Guess I'm writing that letter to my mother after all," he said. "Tell her I finally found something worth dying for. Turns out it's the idiot who won't."
Kael felt something loosen in his chest, not relief, not yet, but the first clean breath he'd taken since Veyra poured poison down his throat.
He looked up the pass, toward whatever waited.
Good, he thought. Let it come.
I'm done being measured.
The leash was gone.
The mountain was waiting.
And for the first time since the truck hit him on a Brisbane crosswalk, Kael Varin felt something close to alive.