The cold metal limbs of thirty heavy crossbows remained locked on the ox-wagon.
Since cresting the northern ridge the previous afternoon, the thirty Iron-Blood riders had shadowed the suppressed caravan for twenty-three hours. Once their scouts confirmed no ducal army marched behind the wagons, they herded the party into a narrow salt hollow.
Now the afternoon wind whipped fine white salt against the leather harnesses in a dry, rustling hiss. Forty-seven hours and twenty minutes had ticked by since the Slate’s four tracks began, and Kaelen Vance had spent every single one of them lying on his side.
The lead cavalryman urged his six-legged sand-strider forward three paces to close the trap.
The rider was broad-shouldered, encased in scarred crimson plate that bore deep claw marks across the breastplate. He wore the brass torque of an imperial frontier centurion around his neck. The spiritual pressure radiating from his frame was dense and razor-sharp: a Golden Core Peak warrior whose circulation was completely unhindered by the surrounding dragon-vein array.
The centurion pulled up his beast-faced visor, revealing a face mapped with jagged burn scars.
“Halt the beasts,” the centurion commanded. His voice sounded like two millstones grinding gravel. “You have crossed into the western march of the Iron-Blood Frontier. By decree of General Dravus, all unbranded wanderers owe tribute to the garrison.”
