The valley continued to narrow as they progressed, and the land grew even drier. Tiny wisps of cloud passed by high overhead, but for the most part, the mountains kept this stretch of land as dead as the hells themselves.

  The demons probably felt right at home here.

  The road was old and rough here, though it had clearly been maintained. Someone had repaired the potholes, but they hadn’t bothered to bring proper paving stones. Instead, unworked stones from the surrounding landscape had been set into the road. It worked, but it was rough on the carriage and the wagons.

  Leirin and Olias had gotten out a league or so back, opting for a bit of exercise over the bruising ride. The priests were either too proud or too out of shape to walk.

  About an hour before noon, Ina appeared, waving to them, and jogged toward them from behind some boulders up ahead. Bernt was walking near the front with Estrid, just a few steps behind Emata and Leirin. The druid was quizzing him about spellforms – she hadn’t given up on the idea of casting spells. He was trying to explain how the shape and orientation of the outer shell with respect to the central rune or glyph could modulate the size and mana density of the spell, but he stopped to listen as the goblin approached.

  “People up ahead!” she called. “Looks like a broken down trader. Ksuwa is keeping an eye on them.”

  Emata frowned. “They’re lucky they haven’t been noticed, yet. No sign of demons anywhere?”

  The scout shrugged. “Nothing I could see. It’s too rocky here to be sure, though – nowhere to leave tracks. We should probably give them a hand, but we ought to hurry. I don’t think the demons are going to be understanding and ignore them. They won’t survive very long this close to us, certainly not through the night.”

  The soldier nodded in agreement. “We’ll see if we can’t get them moving again and offer to let them join us behind our defenses. I’ll talk to the priests, but I’m sure they’ll agree.”

  Bernt watched her go, noting with a bit of second-hand irritation that nobody ever asked Torvald for his opinion. It was his expedition just as much as theirs. The high priests, or at least the Temple of Eyeli, had arranged for him to be pulled into all this, but none of them actually seemed to value his input. He’d known from an early age that the rich and well-connected liked to treat everyone they saw as beneath them like dirt – but Torvald wasn’t beneath them. Not really. He didn’t have a title, and his family wasn’t terribly wealthy, but he was very well connected. The king’s own brother was here, for the gods’ sakes.

  It was, he supposed, the price of refusing to play political games. Torvald himself didn’t seem interested in addressing the disrespect he was being shown, so there was little point in Bernt getting involved.

  The traveling merchant came into view just a few minutes later, as they rounded a bend. It was a small cart, drawn by a donkey. Its single axle was broken, one wheel hanging at a crazy angle from the splintered wood.

  Bernt could see as they approached that the merchant had clearly also seen better days. Her cloak had holes in it, and the two guards looked more like bandits than reputable mercenaries. Their spears had rust on the tips and their armor was ill-fitting and damaged in places. Ksuwa stood a few paces away, perched on a boulder to keep an eye on their surroundings. They watched her and the approaching expedition warily.

  “Hello!” Captain Emata called out and waved, obviously trying to look friendly. “Looks like you could use a little help, there.”

  “Hmm,” the woman hummed with a sour frown, “depends on what that’s going to cost me. I’m not hauling gold, here, you know.”

  “I don’t know.” the soldier replied with an easy smile. “I think we can manage a spare axle. There are demons running around out here. They’re after us, so we’d be remiss to leave you out here exposed. You can camp behind our defenses tonight, if you like.”

  The merchant scowled. Obviously, she'd misinterpreted Emata’s words. “Right. Demons. Not Bandits, today? And I’m sure we have a choice in the matter – your goons there are just for show? I’m sure.” she spat on the ground. “Well I haven’t got anything for you to ‘appropriate’ in exchange for your generous protection. Just move along!”

  The two guards gripped the hafts of their spears tightly and exchanged a nervous glance. Emata rolled her eyes and turned away, marching back a few steps toward the carriage. She exchanged a few words with the priests inside. Olias, Bernt saw, had backed up to one of the wagons. He was refilling his flask from a larger bottle with a look of concentration. Several of the adventurers had started to pull out food and drink, taking advantage of the short stop to rest and eat something. Ina and Estrid had cornered Uriah and were trying to get him to refill their canteens – the sun was high in the sky, and it was starting to get surprisingly warm.

  Finally, the carriage started moving as the driver pulled it up next to the broken-down cart. The doors opened and Surin stepped out, followed by Hannis and Angjou.

  Unlike the adventurers, the priests couldn’t be mistaken for anything but what they were. Angjou murmured something to the scared merchant, who gave a tight nod, and then signaled to her guards. One moved off, following Emata back to one of the wagons where they stored their tools.

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  The other moved to the back of the cart and began fiddling with the merchandise. They’d probably need to unload everything to make it easier to get the broken axle out, and the new one on.

  Having reassured the merchant, the priests turned to climb back into their carriage. In that moment, Bernt saw her expression change. Her jaw flexed and her lips peeled back in a rictus. Her hand shot up, light glinting off of metal – a knife.

  “Watch out!” someone shouted, and an arrow suddenly sprouted from the merchant’s chest. But she hadn’t been moving to attack priests. Eyes bulging, she slashed the blade across her own throat. Blood sprayed. Almost by reflex, Bernt activated his thornskin amulet, getting ready to fight.

  For a fatal second, everyone watched, bewildered as the red liquid seemed to condense, forming shapes in mid-air before settling on the ground in a pattern. Those were glyphs, Bernt realized. Demonic glyphs.

  In that frozen instant, Bernt knew that they had screwed up. They’d let themselves be distracted by a ruse, and they hadn’t reacted in time. Hannis was looking over his shoulder at the commotion, but Surin and Angjou were already in the carriage. Leirin was staring stupidly up from where he’d been examining the damaged cart. Nobody was going to be fast enough.

  Someone was shouting back by the carts – a lot of someones. The demons were here. It was all a trick. Bernt held out his right hand and began to cast banefire. He'd need to kill them quickly. A flash of red-orange light burned his eyes and he stumbled, losing his footing as he was struck by a wall of burning air. Something whacked him in the back of the head and his vision went white.

  He lost track of everything for a moment.

  That... that was going to hurt, he thought dazedly. Shouldn’t that hurt?

  No, no. He had his amulet. It had protected him. Somewhat. Thoughts gelled together in his mind, forming far too slowly.

  He should be dead right now.

  Bernt's face hurt. Had he hit his face? What was going on?

  There was noise all around him. Growls, screams and howls. People were fighting. They were fighting the demons. Right.

  Bernt started casting banefire again, even before he blinked his eyes open. There were rocks in front of him. Just rocks – and it was hot. Head hammering, he heaved himself up to a sitting position. It was utter carnage. Bodies lay around him – most too badly burned to recognize. Still, Bernt knew that the charred mess under the blackened cart would be Leirin.

  There were bodies in the carriage, too.

  Bernt finished shaping his spellform, but still, he didn’t have a target. Turning his head painfully, he caught sight of the battle. Torvald had his sword out and struck at two demons that were trying to take him on together. Before the smaller of the two could get behind him, though, Nirlig skewered it on his spear. The one in front of Torvald was a tall, hunched over woman with long, stringy hair.

  It was the hag. She swung at him with clawed, too-long arms and shrieked, but the aural attack was canceled by Elyn’s strange tuning fork. Torvald tried to take off the thing’s arm, but she was too fast and he missed, striking a rock instead with a sharp pinging noise. He raised his sword for another strike, only to find that nearly half of it was missing. The tip of the blade had shattered against the stone.

  Bernt released his spell. The bolt of gray fire crossed the intervening distance in less than a second, boring a hole clear through the hag’s torso and setting her on fire. She shrieked in pain and flailed, going down a moment later. That second scream, Bernt noted absently, hadn’t had any magic to it. Curious.

  Torvald looked up in surprise, meeting Bernt’s eyes. Then his gaze locked on something behind him and he opened his mouth to shout. Bernt didn’t wait to see what he said. He threw himself to the ground and activated his belt as something big wooshed over his head.

  He looked up and swung blindly with his fist just in time to see a heavy rock come at his face much too quickly.

  Bernt struck only air, but his attacker didn’t.

  ***

  “I just saw him,” Torvald cried. “If they took him, he’s still nearby. We have to find him!”

  The demons’ attack had weakened significantly after Bernt had killed that hag, and they were running now, just a minute or so later. Still, it was too late for most of them. Everyone near the cart – the priests, Leirin, and Ksuwa – had been killed instantly as far as he could tell. Bernt must have used a spell or something to keep from being instantly cooked like the rest of them. The guard who’d followed Emata to the wagons had stabbed her in the back before anyone could intervene. Tarik, who’d survived being gutted just a few weeks ago, had his throat torn out by a gangly white-furred apelike demon.

  They were lucky so many of them had been back by the wagons. Still, the demons had picked off several more in the ambush that followed. If the hellspawn had been more disciplined fighters, this might have been it for the entire expedition. Not that they were in good shape as it was. Only nine of them were still on their feet, including Regin and, by some miracle, his great uncle Olias. Elyn and Xul’Evareg were more suited to support than direct combat, meaning they had just five capable fighters left.

  “We can’t go around hunting through these rocks all day.” Xul’evareg reasoned, gesturing at massive boulder field all around them. “And we definitely can’t split up to cover more ground. They’ll pick us off easily. We need to get moving away from here as quickly as possible, before they regroup!”

  “I can’t just leave him behind – he could still be alive!” Torvald retorted angrily. “Besides, we need him to make camp at night. Estrid’s the only one left, otherwise. Do you think her plants are going to keep us safe at half-strength? Against more attacks like that?”

  The old goblin sighed. “It doesn’t matter – it will have to do. We won't be tricked a second time. Now, we need to move quickly and hope that they can’t keep up. We’ll leave the wagons and the carriage and load some supplies on the surviving horses to make better time. If we go through the night, we might be able to escape. They can't attack us if they can't keep up.”

  “I saw one of the cultists brain him with a rock – right over there,” Nirlig added quietly from behind Torvald. The paladin turned to find the goblin pointing over to where he’d seen Bernt before. “If they took him, it was probably to prove his identity to their leader. They were after him, remember? The shaman is right, we have to move.”

  The paladin opened his mouth to protest again, but Xul’evareg reached up to grip his shoulder. “We’ve all lost friends today, but if we want to live long enough to grieve, we need to be gone from here.”

  Torvald turned around one more time, scanning the rocks. But there wasn’t anything to see.