The Goat Trail’s Teeth
The wind changed an hour before noon, and with it came the smell of iron and pine sap. Elias caught it on the back of his tongue, a metallic tang that made his stomach clench. He had been walking for six days now, chained to the supply wagon like a mule that had gone lame, and he had learned to read the mountain’s moods the way he once read a coastline’s treachery.
The goat trail was not a trail. It was a scar.
Elias had drawn this route on a map once, years ago, from the testimony of a half-mad shepherd who claimed he had crossed the Serrated Spine on foot. The man had died three days later of a fever, and Elias had filed the sketch away, never believing it was real. Now he stood at its mouth, and he understood why the shepherd had gone mad.
The path was barely two feet wide, a ledge of crumbling shale that hugged the cliff face like a desperate lover. Above, the rock leaned outward, forming a natural roof that blocked the sun and turned the air cold and damp. Below, a drop of six hundred feet ended in a river that ran white with rage. The sound of it rose up like a living thing, a constant, hungry roar that made speech impossible and thought difficult.
“You said this was passable,” Rook Vane said.
Elias turned. Vane stood a few paces behind him, wrapped in a wolf-fur cloak that made him look larger than he was. His eyes were pale gray, the color of the sky before a killing frost, and they held no warmth at all. The bastard prince of a broken kingdom, playing at being a soldier.
“It is passable,” Elias said. “If we’re careful.”
“Careful.” Vane tasted the word like it was spoiled meat. “I’ve lost forty men to this mountain already, Thorne. The snow took twelve. The cold took eight. The rest died of your ‘shortcuts.’” He stepped closer, and Elias could smell the wine on his breath, sour and sharp. “I’m beginning to think you’re leading us in circles.”
“I’m leading you through the Spine,” Elias said. “There is no other way.”
“There is always another way.”
“There is the Dead Man’s Corridor,” Elias said, and he let the words hang in the air like a challenge. “But you saw the landslide. That route is gone.”
Vane’s jaw tightened. The scout had returned two days ago with news of the collapse, and Elias had watched the color drain from Vane’s face. The Corridor had been his plan, his great gamble, and now it was a tomb of broken stone. The goat trail was the only alternative, and Vane knew it.
“Fine,” Vane said. “We go. But if this trail kills even one more man, I’ll have your hands nailed to the supply wagon.”
He turned and walked away, his boots crunching on the frost-hardened ground. Elias watched him go, and for a moment he allowed himself to feel something like satisfaction. Vane was walking into a trap, and he didn’t even know it. The goat trail led to the valley. The valley led to his sister. And his sister led to the one thing Elias had sworn to protect.
But the satisfaction curdled quickly, replaced by a familiar, gnawing dread. The trail was dangerous. That was not a lie. And the men who would die on it were not monsters. They were conscripts, farmers, boys like Tam who had been pulled from their fields and given swords they didn’t know how to hold. They were following a man who would kill them all for a crown he didn’t deserve.
Elias had drawn the map that brought them here. The debt was his to pay.
The army began its descent onto the trail an hour later, strung out in a single file that stretched back nearly a quarter mile. The supply wagons had been left behind at the base of the pass, their contents redistributed onto the backs of mules and men. Elias walked near the front, his chains loosened just enough to allow him to shuffle forward, a rope tied to his waist and held by a mercenary named Corvus, a man with a face like a hatchet and a laugh like breaking glass.
The trail narrowed as they advanced, and the wind grew stronger, howling through the gap like a living thing. Elias kept his eyes on his feet, watching each step, feeling the shale shift and crumble beneath his boots. The river below grew louder, a constant, grinding roar that vibrated through the rock and up into his bones.
“How much farther?” Corvus shouted, his voice barely audible over the wind.
Elias shook his head. He didn’t know. The shepherd’s testimony had been vague, and the map he had drawn was more guesswork than fact. He knew the trail ended at the valley’s northern rim, but he didn’t know how long it would take to get there. A day, maybe two. If the mountain didn’t kill them first.
The first death came at the halfway point.
It was a mule, a gray beast with a swayback and a patient, tired eye. The animal had been carrying a load of dried meat and rope, and it had been stumbling for the better part of an hour, its hooves sliding on the loose shale. Elias saw it happen in pieces, the way a man sees a disaster unfold in slow motion. The mule’s front hoof slipped. It caught itself, then slipped again. The load shifted, and the animal’s legs went out from under it.
The mule fell sideways, into the men walking beside it.
Three soldiers went with it. Elias heard their screams, high and thin, swallowed by the roar of the river below. The mule bellowed, a terrible, human-sounding cry, and then it was gone, tumbling into the white water with a splash that was barely audible over the din.
The soldiers did not scream for long.
The column stopped. Men pressed themselves against the cliff face, their faces pale, their eyes wide. Corvus pulled on the rope, dragging Elias to a halt. “Stay still,” he said. “Don’t move.”
Elias stayed still. He could feel the shale shifting beneath his feet, the whole ledge trembling like a struck bell. The mountain was alive, and it was angry.
Vane appeared a few minutes later, pushing his way through the column with a look of cold fury on his face. He stopped at the spot where the mule had fallen, looked down at the river, and then turned to Elias.
“You said this trail was passable,” he said.
“It is,” Elias said. “If we’re careful.”
“Three men are dead.”
“They weren’t careful.”
Vane’s hand shot out and grabbed Elias by the throat. The grip was iron, and Elias felt his windpipe compress, felt the world swim at the edges of his vision. “I could kill you right now,” Vane said, his voice low and even. “I could throw you off this ledge and find another way.”
“There is no other way,” Elias gasped. “The Corridor is blocked. The Spine is impassable. This is the only route, and I am the only one who knows it.”
Vane held him for a long moment, his eyes searching Elias’s face for something—a lie, a weakness, a reason to let go. Then he released him, and Elias staggered back, gasping, his hands going to his throat.
“Keep moving,” Vane said. “And if another man dies, I’ll take it out of your hide.”
He turned and walked away, and Elias watched him go, his heart hammering in his chest. The rope tightened around his waist as Corvus pulled him forward, and he forced himself to take another step, then another, his eyes fixed on the path ahead.
The trail continued for another hour, winding along the cliff face like a snake. The wind grew colder, and the sky darkened, and Elias began to see the first flakes of snow drifting down from the gray clouds above. The men around him pulled their cloaks tighter, their faces pinched and miserable. The mules brayed and stamped, their breath steaming in the cold air.
Elias thought about his sister.
Her name was Mara, and she had a laugh like a bell, bright and clear and full of joy. She had fled the capital with her husband and her son, three years ago, when the purging had begun. Elias had drawn the map that led them to the valley, a hidden pocket of green in the heart of the mountains, a place where the war could not reach them. He had sworn to keep it secret, to protect them with his silence.
And now he was leading an army to their doorstep.
The thought made him sick. He stopped walking, his hands braced against the cliff face, and vomited into the void. Corvus laughed, a harsh, barking sound. “Seasick, mapmaker?”
Elias wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Something I ate.”
“Something you ate,” Corvus repeated, and laughed again. “Sure. Keep telling yourself that.”
They moved on. The trail began to descend, the cliff face sloping downward toward a narrow saddle between two peaks. Elias could see the valley beyond, a dark smudge of green against the gray of the mountains. His heart lurched. They were close. Too close.
He had to slow them down.
“We need to stop,” he said, raising his voice over the wind. “The snow is getting worse. If we keep moving, we’ll lose more men.”
Corvus looked at him, his hatchet face unreadable. “Vane said keep moving.”
“Vane said no more deaths,” Elias said. “If we push on in this weather, we’ll lose half the column before nightfall. The trail narrows ahead, and the footing is worse. We need to find shelter and wait out the storm.”
Corvus stared at him for a long moment, then shrugged. “Not my call. You want to stop, you ask Vane.”
Elias looked ahead, at the column of men trudging through the snow, their shoulders hunched, their faces blank. He could see Vane at the front, a dark figure against the white, and he knew that asking would be a gamble. Vane was not a patient man, and he was already suspicious.
But Elias had no choice. If they reached the valley tonight, the army would be at his sister’s door by morning. He needed time. He needed a delay.
He took a breath, and he began to walk.
It took him ten minutes to reach Vane, weaving through the column, his chains clanking with every step. The wind had picked up, and the snow was falling harder now, a thick, blinding curtain that reduced visibility to a few feet. Men were stumbling, their boots sliding on the icy rock. A mule brayed in terror, and somewhere behind him, Elias heard a man cry out.
“Vane,” he said, his voice hoarse. “We need to stop.”
Vane turned, his pale eyes narrowing. “I told you to keep moving.”
“The storm is getting worse,” Elias said. “The trail ahead is exposed. If we push on, we’ll lose more men. We need to find shelter and wait it out.”
“There is no shelter,” Vane said. “There is only the trail.”
“There’s a cave,” Elias said. “A half mile ahead, on the left. I marked it on my map. It’s big enough to hold the column.”
Vane studied him for a long moment, his expression unreadable. “You marked a cave on your map?”
“I marked everything,” Elias said. “That’s what cartographers do.”
Something flickered in Vane’s eyes—a spark of suspicion, or perhaps amusement. “Fine,” he said. “We stop at the cave. But if it’s not there, Thorne, I’ll leave you in the snow.”
Elias nodded, and he turned away, hiding the relief that flooded through him. The cave was there. He had marked it years ago, on his first survey of the Spine, and he knew it was deep and dry and warm. It was also a dead end, a pocket in the rock with only one entrance.
If he could get the army inside, he could seal them in.
The thought came to him unbidden, and he pushed it away. He didn’t have the means to seal a cave, and even if he did, he would be sealing himself in with them. No. The cave was just a delay, a way to buy time. He would figure out the rest later.
They reached the cave an hour later, as the storm reached its full fury. The entrance was a dark gash in the cliff face, barely visible through the snow, and Elias felt a surge of relief as he ducked inside, out of the wind. The cave was larger than he remembered, a vast chamber that echoed with the sound of dripping water and the shuffle of boots.
Men poured in behind him, shaking snow from their cloaks, their faces pale and exhausted. Vane was among them, his wolf-fur cloak dusted with white, his eyes scanning the darkness. “This will do,” he said. “We’ll wait out the storm here.”
Elias found a spot near the back of the cave, where the rock was dry and the air was warmer. He sat down, his chains clanking against the stone, and he closed his eyes. The sound of the storm faded, replaced by the murmur of voices and the crackle of a fire being lit.
He had bought himself a night. Maybe two.
But it wasn’t enough. It was never enough.
He thought of Mara, of her laugh, of the way she had hugged him when he had drawn the map that led her to safety. He thought of her son, his nephew, a boy with his sister’s eyes and his father’s stubborn chin. They were out there, somewhere in the valley, waiting for a storm that would never come.
And he was here, in a cave, with the men who would destroy them.
The fire caught, and the light spread, and Elias opened his eyes. He looked at the men around him, their faces lit by the flames, and he saw them not as enemies but as victims. They were farmers and conscripts, boys and old men, dragged into a war they didn’t understand by a man who would use them and discard them.
He hated them. He pitied them. He needed them.
And he would betray them all to save his sister.
The storm raged through the night, and Elias did not sleep. He sat against the cave wall, his chains cold against his skin, and he watched the fire burn down to embers. When the first gray light of dawn crept through the cave’s entrance, he rose, his body stiff and aching, and he walked to the mouth of the cave.
The storm had passed. The sky was clear, a pale, washed-out blue, and the mountains gleamed white in the morning sun. The valley lay below, a dark green scar against the snow, and Elias could see the thin ribbon of smoke rising from the village at its heart.
His sister was there. She was alive.
And he was going to lead an army to her door.
He turned away, his heart heavy, and he walked back into the cave to wake the men.
The goat trail was not a trail. It was a scar.
Elias had drawn this route on a map once, years ago, from the testimony of a half-mad shepherd who claimed he had crossed the Serrated Spine on foot. The man had died three days later of a fever, and Elias had filed the sketch away, never believing it was real. Now he stood at its mouth, and he understood why the shepherd had gone mad.
The path was barely two feet wide, a ledge of crumbling shale that hugged the cliff face like a desperate lover. Above, the rock leaned outward, forming a natural roof that blocked the sun and turned the air cold and damp. Below, a drop of six hundred feet ended in a river that ran white with rage. The sound of it rose up like a living thing, a constant, hungry roar that made speech impossible and thought difficult.
“You said this was passable,” Rook Vane said.
Elias turned. Vane stood a few paces behind him, wrapped in a wolf-fur cloak that made him look larger than he was. His eyes were pale gray, the color of the sky before a killing frost, and they held no warmth at all. The bastard prince of a broken kingdom, playing at being a soldier.
“It is passable,” Elias said. “If we’re careful.”
“Careful.” Vane tasted the word like it was spoiled meat. “I’ve lost forty men to this mountain already, Thorne. The snow took twelve. The cold took eight. The rest died of your ‘shortcuts.’” He stepped closer, and Elias could smell the wine on his breath, sour and sharp. “I’m beginning to think you’re leading us in circles.”
“I’m leading you through the Spine,” Elias said. “There is no other way.”
“There is always another way.”
“There is the Dead Man’s Corridor,” Elias said, and he let the words hang in the air like a challenge. “But you saw the landslide. That route is gone.”
Vane’s jaw tightened. The scout had returned two days ago with news of the collapse, and Elias had watched the color drain from Vane’s face. The Corridor had been his plan, his great gamble, and now it was a tomb of broken stone. The goat trail was the only alternative, and Vane knew it.
“Fine,” Vane said. “We go. But if this trail kills even one more man, I’ll have your hands nailed to the supply wagon.”
He turned and walked away, his boots crunching on the frost-hardened ground. Elias watched him go, and for a moment he allowed himself to feel something like satisfaction. Vane was walking into a trap, and he didn’t even know it. The goat trail led to the valley. The valley led to his sister. And his sister led to the one thing Elias had sworn to protect.
But the satisfaction curdled quickly, replaced by a familiar, gnawing dread. The trail was dangerous. That was not a lie. And the men who would die on it were not monsters. They were conscripts, farmers, boys like Tam who had been pulled from their fields and given swords they didn’t know how to hold. They were following a man who would kill them all for a crown he didn’t deserve.
Elias had drawn the map that brought them here. The debt was his to pay.
The army began its descent onto the trail an hour later, strung out in a single file that stretched back nearly a quarter mile. The supply wagons had been left behind at the base of the pass, their contents redistributed onto the backs of mules and men. Elias walked near the front, his chains loosened just enough to allow him to shuffle forward, a rope tied to his waist and held by a mercenary named Corvus, a man with a face like a hatchet and a laugh like breaking glass.
The trail narrowed as they advanced, and the wind grew stronger, howling through the gap like a living thing. Elias kept his eyes on his feet, watching each step, feeling the shale shift and crumble beneath his boots. The river below grew louder, a constant, grinding roar that vibrated through the rock and up into his bones.
“How much farther?” Corvus shouted, his voice barely audible over the wind.
Elias shook his head. He didn’t know. The shepherd’s testimony had been vague, and the map he had drawn was more guesswork than fact. He knew the trail ended at the valley’s northern rim, but he didn’t know how long it would take to get there. A day, maybe two. If the mountain didn’t kill them first.
The first death came at the halfway point.
It was a mule, a gray beast with a swayback and a patient, tired eye. The animal had been carrying a load of dried meat and rope, and it had been stumbling for the better part of an hour, its hooves sliding on the loose shale. Elias saw it happen in pieces, the way a man sees a disaster unfold in slow motion. The mule’s front hoof slipped. It caught itself, then slipped again. The load shifted, and the animal’s legs went out from under it.
The mule fell sideways, into the men walking beside it.
Three soldiers went with it. Elias heard their screams, high and thin, swallowed by the roar of the river below. The mule bellowed, a terrible, human-sounding cry, and then it was gone, tumbling into the white water with a splash that was barely audible over the din.
The soldiers did not scream for long.
The column stopped. Men pressed themselves against the cliff face, their faces pale, their eyes wide. Corvus pulled on the rope, dragging Elias to a halt. “Stay still,” he said. “Don’t move.”
Elias stayed still. He could feel the shale shifting beneath his feet, the whole ledge trembling like a struck bell. The mountain was alive, and it was angry.
Vane appeared a few minutes later, pushing his way through the column with a look of cold fury on his face. He stopped at the spot where the mule had fallen, looked down at the river, and then turned to Elias.
“You said this trail was passable,” he said.
“It is,” Elias said. “If we’re careful.”
“Three men are dead.”
“They weren’t careful.”
Vane’s hand shot out and grabbed Elias by the throat. The grip was iron, and Elias felt his windpipe compress, felt the world swim at the edges of his vision. “I could kill you right now,” Vane said, his voice low and even. “I could throw you off this ledge and find another way.”
“There is no other way,” Elias gasped. “The Corridor is blocked. The Spine is impassable. This is the only route, and I am the only one who knows it.”
Vane held him for a long moment, his eyes searching Elias’s face for something—a lie, a weakness, a reason to let go. Then he released him, and Elias staggered back, gasping, his hands going to his throat.
“Keep moving,” Vane said. “And if another man dies, I’ll take it out of your hide.”
He turned and walked away, and Elias watched him go, his heart hammering in his chest. The rope tightened around his waist as Corvus pulled him forward, and he forced himself to take another step, then another, his eyes fixed on the path ahead.
The trail continued for another hour, winding along the cliff face like a snake. The wind grew colder, and the sky darkened, and Elias began to see the first flakes of snow drifting down from the gray clouds above. The men around him pulled their cloaks tighter, their faces pinched and miserable. The mules brayed and stamped, their breath steaming in the cold air.
Elias thought about his sister.
Her name was Mara, and she had a laugh like a bell, bright and clear and full of joy. She had fled the capital with her husband and her son, three years ago, when the purging had begun. Elias had drawn the map that led them to the valley, a hidden pocket of green in the heart of the mountains, a place where the war could not reach them. He had sworn to keep it secret, to protect them with his silence.
And now he was leading an army to their doorstep.
The thought made him sick. He stopped walking, his hands braced against the cliff face, and vomited into the void. Corvus laughed, a harsh, barking sound. “Seasick, mapmaker?”
Elias wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Something I ate.”
“Something you ate,” Corvus repeated, and laughed again. “Sure. Keep telling yourself that.”
They moved on. The trail began to descend, the cliff face sloping downward toward a narrow saddle between two peaks. Elias could see the valley beyond, a dark smudge of green against the gray of the mountains. His heart lurched. They were close. Too close.
He had to slow them down.
“We need to stop,” he said, raising his voice over the wind. “The snow is getting worse. If we keep moving, we’ll lose more men.”
Corvus looked at him, his hatchet face unreadable. “Vane said keep moving.”
“Vane said no more deaths,” Elias said. “If we push on in this weather, we’ll lose half the column before nightfall. The trail narrows ahead, and the footing is worse. We need to find shelter and wait out the storm.”
Corvus stared at him for a long moment, then shrugged. “Not my call. You want to stop, you ask Vane.”
Elias looked ahead, at the column of men trudging through the snow, their shoulders hunched, their faces blank. He could see Vane at the front, a dark figure against the white, and he knew that asking would be a gamble. Vane was not a patient man, and he was already suspicious.
But Elias had no choice. If they reached the valley tonight, the army would be at his sister’s door by morning. He needed time. He needed a delay.
He took a breath, and he began to walk.
It took him ten minutes to reach Vane, weaving through the column, his chains clanking with every step. The wind had picked up, and the snow was falling harder now, a thick, blinding curtain that reduced visibility to a few feet. Men were stumbling, their boots sliding on the icy rock. A mule brayed in terror, and somewhere behind him, Elias heard a man cry out.
“Vane,” he said, his voice hoarse. “We need to stop.”
Vane turned, his pale eyes narrowing. “I told you to keep moving.”
“The storm is getting worse,” Elias said. “The trail ahead is exposed. If we push on, we’ll lose more men. We need to find shelter and wait it out.”
“There is no shelter,” Vane said. “There is only the trail.”
“There’s a cave,” Elias said. “A half mile ahead, on the left. I marked it on my map. It’s big enough to hold the column.”
Vane studied him for a long moment, his expression unreadable. “You marked a cave on your map?”
“I marked everything,” Elias said. “That’s what cartographers do.”
Something flickered in Vane’s eyes—a spark of suspicion, or perhaps amusement. “Fine,” he said. “We stop at the cave. But if it’s not there, Thorne, I’ll leave you in the snow.”
Elias nodded, and he turned away, hiding the relief that flooded through him. The cave was there. He had marked it years ago, on his first survey of the Spine, and he knew it was deep and dry and warm. It was also a dead end, a pocket in the rock with only one entrance.
If he could get the army inside, he could seal them in.
The thought came to him unbidden, and he pushed it away. He didn’t have the means to seal a cave, and even if he did, he would be sealing himself in with them. No. The cave was just a delay, a way to buy time. He would figure out the rest later.
They reached the cave an hour later, as the storm reached its full fury. The entrance was a dark gash in the cliff face, barely visible through the snow, and Elias felt a surge of relief as he ducked inside, out of the wind. The cave was larger than he remembered, a vast chamber that echoed with the sound of dripping water and the shuffle of boots.
Men poured in behind him, shaking snow from their cloaks, their faces pale and exhausted. Vane was among them, his wolf-fur cloak dusted with white, his eyes scanning the darkness. “This will do,” he said. “We’ll wait out the storm here.”
Elias found a spot near the back of the cave, where the rock was dry and the air was warmer. He sat down, his chains clanking against the stone, and he closed his eyes. The sound of the storm faded, replaced by the murmur of voices and the crackle of a fire being lit.
He had bought himself a night. Maybe two.
But it wasn’t enough. It was never enough.
He thought of Mara, of her laugh, of the way she had hugged him when he had drawn the map that led her to safety. He thought of her son, his nephew, a boy with his sister’s eyes and his father’s stubborn chin. They were out there, somewhere in the valley, waiting for a storm that would never come.
And he was here, in a cave, with the men who would destroy them.
The fire caught, and the light spread, and Elias opened his eyes. He looked at the men around him, their faces lit by the flames, and he saw them not as enemies but as victims. They were farmers and conscripts, boys and old men, dragged into a war they didn’t understand by a man who would use them and discard them.
He hated them. He pitied them. He needed them.
And he would betray them all to save his sister.
The storm raged through the night, and Elias did not sleep. He sat against the cave wall, his chains cold against his skin, and he watched the fire burn down to embers. When the first gray light of dawn crept through the cave’s entrance, he rose, his body stiff and aching, and he walked to the mouth of the cave.
The storm had passed. The sky was clear, a pale, washed-out blue, and the mountains gleamed white in the morning sun. The valley lay below, a dark green scar against the snow, and Elias could see the thin ribbon of smoke rising from the village at its heart.
His sister was there. She was alive.
And he was going to lead an army to her door.
He turned away, his heart heavy, and he walked back into the cave to wake the men.