The light comes slowly. Thin and pale. The wind has died to nothing. The snow is still, the air is sharp, and the silence before a fight has its own particular weight. I've felt it a hundred times. The moment before the charge. The moment before fire meets the fuse. The moment before everything changes.
I take my position above the approach and look down at the path from the south. Empty. Quiet. Not for long.
The Jötunn are in position. Three on the western slope, three on the eastern. I can't see them. That’s the point. They're tucked behind rock formations and snowdrifts, big as they are, because they know this terrain and they know how to use it. The scarred warrior from Haldrek’s table is on the eastern slope. He caught my eye when I walked them through the positions last night and gave me a nod that said he understood the ground.
Thyran stands behind me. His heat reaches me through the cold air. He doesn't ask if I'm ready. He can see that I am.
“Stay above the smoke line,” I tell him. “When the pots go, the clearing fills from the bottom up. If you come down too early, you'll lose visibility and the heat will make you sweat and the sweat will mix with the sulfite and burn your eyes.”
“I know.”
“I know you know. I'm telling you anyway.”
His hand rests briefly on my shoulder. Warm. Heavy. He moves to his position on the north ridge.
The soldiers come.
Fifty men. Stennard at the front. They come up the path in formation, weapons out, shields raised. Organized. Professional. They've done this before.
I read the formation. Two columns, staggered. Shield bearers on the flanks, archers in the center, Stennard behind the front rank where he can direct without being exposed. Standard approach for a fortified position.
They don't know about the smoke. They don't know about the grease. They don't know about the six Jötunn warriors on the slopes who have memorized every step of the safe ground and are waiting for my signal.
I look at the formation. I look at the slope. And then I look at the ridge above Stennard’s approach.
The ridge line. Rock face, layered sediment, a stress fracture running diagonally from the base to the top where the freeze-thaw cycles have been working the crack wider for years. The snowpack on the ridge is three feet deep. Heavy, compacted, holding its weight through friction and angle.
One charge. Placed in the fracture. The blast would open the crack, shift the rock face, and bring the snowpack down the slope in a crush of ice and stone that would bury the clearing and everything in it.
I have the materials. I made the charge three days ago. It’s in my cache, wrapped in leather. I have enough.
I could end this in thirty seconds.
I know exactly where to place the charge and exactly how much material to use and exactly what the result would be. I've been doing this math my whole life. I am very, very good at it.
Fifty men in the clearing below. Breathing, sweating, gripping their weapons. Men with orders they didn't choose and commanders who lie and families in towns to the south who are waiting for them to come home.
If I bring the mountain down, none of them go home.
And I carry fifty more deaths.
I step away from the ridge line.
I kick the first smoke pot down the slope.
It hits the snow and splits and the sulfite catches and white smoke boils up from the clearing. A second pot goes over, then a third. I kick them over the edge one after another and the smoke fills the approach in a wall of white that swallows the formation whole.
Shouting. Coughing. The sound of men losing their footing on greased snow, the crash of shields and armor. I hear the formation break apart in the smoke, the ordered columns dissolving into scattered bodies stumbling blind.
The Jötunn move.
They come off the slopes on both sides, silent, fast, moving through the smoke on memorized paths. They know the safe ground. The soldiers don't. The Jötunn can hold their breath longer than humans, can see better in reduced visibility, and each one of them is twice the size of the biggest man in Stennard’s column.
No blades. I told them no blades. Disarm and subdue. The crunch of weapons being stripped from hands. The thud of bodies hitting snow. Grunting, struggling, the sound of men being pinned by creatures who outweigh them by three hundred pounds.
I move down the slope into the smoke. I know the clear corridors. I know where the air is thin and where it’s thick and where the grease makes the ground treacherous. I step around the slick patches and move through the haze.
A soldier stumbles across my path. Young. His shield is gone, and his sword is in both hands. His eyes are streaming and he can't see me until I'm three feet away. He swings blind. I step inside the arc, grab the flat of the blade, twist. The sword comes free. I throw it into the drift and keep moving. He doesn't follow. He’s on his knees, coughing. Done.
