"Get inside," Kazimir whispered against her neck, his breath stirring loose strands of hair. "Before their hounds catch our scent over the loam."
Danica crawled first. The hornbeam tool's amber gleam cut through the subterranean dark, turning roots that hung like tangled hair into gilded ribbons. The tunnel slanted downward, squeezing her shoulders until stone scraped through her wool kirtle. Behind her, Kazimir’s boots dragged with heavy, disciplined rustles. He muttered a silent curse every time his broad frame wedged against the damp narrows, yet his knuckles hovered near the heel of her shoe—a steady, anchoring presence in the black.
After fifty strides through the earth, cold air washed over Danica's face. The sour dampness of rot vanished, replaced by the sharpness of cedar and frozen river mist.
The crawlway opened onto a ledge of jagged shale. Below lay the Ravine of the Grinding Stone. A sea of grey mist swirled in the belly of the gorge, so thick that the river bed remained invisible, betraying itself only by a distant, hollow roar like grinding teeth. Across the void, fifty paces away, sat the opposite cliff. Connecting the two rims was a bridge made of frayed mountain hemp and split pine rungs, sagging under heavy condensation.
Danica stared at the yawning drop. The spool in her palm pulsed warm, radiating heat into her calloused thumb.
Ten summers ago, the kitchen in her childhood cottage had smelled of simmered birch bark and clover tea. Babushka Nadya had set this very shuttle into her small palms, closing wrinkled, work-hardened fingers over hers. *"This hornbeam carries the grain of the elder wood, Danica,"* the old woman had said, her voice dry as crackling leaves. *"The Brethren preach that true light is pale and cold as frost. Do not believe them. Guard this tool. When night swallows the hearth, when all other lights go out, it will guide your feet toward home."*
Danica had laughed then, thinking it a fairy tale for sleepy children. Now the wood buzzed like a living cicada against her skin.
"The Ravine," Kazimir said, emerging from the dirt tunnel to stand beside her. He shook shale dust from his sheepskin coat, eyeing the ropes with critical squint. "We are three leagues north of their usual patrol route. If we cross here, the bog trails will hide our tracks until Perun's Veil."
"That thing will snap," Danica whispered. The wind whipped her skirt around her shins.
"It has held heavier loads than you, little bird. Mountain hunters set those lines last autumn. Step on the knots, not the center of the pine slats. Keep your hands on the guide-cables."
"I weave thread, Kazimir. I do not walk along spiderwebs hung over open sky."
Kazimir stepped past her onto the first timber plank. It groaned under his weight, dipping an inch. He did not flinch. He turned back, offering an open hand. His palm was mapped with white saber scars, the skin rough, smelling of birch tar and iron. "Look at me, not the water below. One pace at a time. I have you."
Danica swallowed against the dryness in her throat. She tucked the shuttle securely inside her linen bodice, directly over her heart where its thrum matched her pulse. Slipping her hand into his, she stepped off solid rock.
The plank swayed sideways. Danica gripped his wrist with her other hand, fingers digging into leather bracing. The void yawned beneath her boot soles. Through the slats, forty fathoms down, white foam churned between pointed slate pillars. The world spun. Her knees lost their stiffness, melting into water.
She froze mid-bridge, twelve paces out. Her feet glued themselves to a wet spruce rung. Mist rose around them in icy tendrils, beading on Kazimir's dark lashes.
"Danica," he said softly.
She couldn't answer. Her jaw locked. Her gaze fixed on a black drop of water trickling down the underside of a fraying rope twist.
"Danica, look up." His tone was neither harsh nor impatient. It carried the low, resonant calm of an oak beam supporting a barn roof. When she didn't move, Kazimir shifted his stance on the swaying boards, closing the distance until his chest was inches from her forehead. He took her free hand and pressed it flat against the coarse wool of his tunic, right above his ribcage.
Beneath the rough cloth, his heart beat in a slow, unbroken rhythm. Thump. Thump. Thump.
"Feel that?" he murmured, his breath warming her chilled cheek. "Solid earth is waiting on the other side. You survived Torian’s pyre, Danica. A few rotten boards cannot claim the woman who burned the inquisitor’s robes to ash."
"I didn't mean to burn them," she choked out, tears stinging her eyelids from the biting wind. "I was terrified."
"Then borrow my legs until yours remember how to carry you. Shift your right foot. There. Now the left."
She took half a step. The hemp creaked, but Kazimir’s grip never wavered. He stepped backward with each of her forward shuffles, his hazel eyes holding hers like iron links. The sharp edges of her panic smoothed away against his unflinching quiet. He did not mock her hesitation. He did not pull her forward by force. He simply stood between her and the abyss, giving ground only when she found the nerve to claim it.
Ten paces. Twenty. The opposite cliff loomed out of the fog, gray and crowned with wet pine roots.
"Almost there," Kazimir said, his boots finding the dirt ramp of the northern ledge. He hauled her the final step, his arms catching her around the waist as she stumbled off the wood. Danica collapsed to her knees against the sweet, muddy gravel, burying her face against her hands to block out the dizzying sky.
"You did well," he said, his hand resting briefly on her shoulder before dropping away.
A sharp hiss cut through the wind.
An iron-tipped bolt struck the spruce trunk two inches above Kazimir's ear, spraying fragrant bark into his beard.
Danica scrambled back on her elbows. Across the gorge, figures in pearl-grey surcoats emerged from the cedar line. Four Brethren archers, their steel face-plates catching the dull glare of the overcast sky, were reloading heavy arbalests. Behind them, a rider on a white horse peered down into the chasm, the scarlet trim of his mantle unmistakable even through the swirling fog.
"Torian," Danica gasped, the breath seizing in her chest.
"He moves faster than a wolf on a blood trail," Kazimir snarled. He drew the heavy woodman’s billhook from his belt, its curved blade glinting with a honed silver edge. "Stay down behind the ridge!"
"Kazimir, the bridge!" she yelled.
"I see it!"
Another bolt whistled through the mist, burying itself in Kazimir’s leather shoulder pauldron with a hollow thud. He grunted in pain, the impact knocking him sideways. Blood seeped through the punctured hide, staining the fleece collar.
"Kazimir!"
"Stay back!" he roared, dropping to one knee beside the thick anchor ropes lashed around a granite bollard. The archers on the far cliff were winding their cranks, iron ratchets clicking with deadly precision. "Cover your head!"
He raised the billhook and brought it down with all his might against the taught, wet mountain hemp.
The blade bit deep, severing half the fibers. A shower of hemp dust flew up. Across the chasm, the archers raised their crossbows, leveling the black quarrels directly at Kazimir's exposed neck.
He swung a second time. The iron sheared the remaining strands. With a shriek like a snapped harp string, the massive suspension line whipped violently into the foggy void, flinging the pine slats into a wild, spiraling descent toward the churning waters below.