Vennik stepped into the circle of lantern light beneath the dark rock overhang, his wool cap pulled down over his ears and a heavy sheepskin coat belted tightly around his narrow waist. His boots were wrapped in strips of oiled rawhide to prevent the sharp salt crust from eating through the heavy stitching. He smelled of dried mule sweat, pine liniment, and the sharp, freezing draft of the mountain wind.
“Uncle Joric said you needed a rider for the western track, Kezra,” the boy said. He stepped up to the cart. He was only seventeen years old. But three years of freight hauling across the high gravel flats had stripped away every trace of softness from his frame. His shoulders were wide, his hands broad and cracked by dry cold. His grey eyes held the quiet, unblinking focus of someone who had spent his youth reading animal tracks across broken scree.
Kezra Venn stood by the tailboard of the handcart. The notched juniper stick was resting on the wood before her beside a small scrap of linen paper inscribed with fine, dense lettering.
“I need more than a rider, Vennik,” Kezra said, her voice low and direct, cutting through the rhythmic hiss of the greasewood fire. “I need someone who can carry an emergency warning across thirty leagues of broken mountain track without being spotted by the Third Regiment’s patrols, without losing his mount to a split hoof on the flint beds, and without speaking a single word of his…
