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I paused at the edge to don my crampons again and to take out my climbing ax, then I started up the jagged rocks. My only goal was to get to the top so I could see how far it extended.
“Oh, shit,” I murmured once I got to the top.
“What?” Appius called up from only a few yards below me.
Of course he’d taken it upon himself to climb up with me. I was beginning to see that climbing and me were Appius’s two favorite things.
But when he got to the top of the pile with me, he also blurted, “Oh, shit.”
The remnants of the avalanche stretched for at least half a mile, well into the distance. It wasn’t one smooth pile either. The rocks were a sharp, scattered mess, creating their own hills and valleys, all of them with pointed edges.
Even worse than that, the rocky expanse was scattered with discarded weapons, abandoned bits of equipment, and, if I wasn’t mistaken, partially and mostly decomposed bodies with some or all of their bones exposed.
“The new army,” I said in solemn tones.
“I…I can’t believe they just left them here,” Appius whispered.
I swallowed hard. “They didn’t, really,” I said. “Well, they brought as many of them out as they could. My guess is that these men were already dead, and that there weren’t enough leftover soldiers to take them all the way back to Aktau. Especially if the bridge had already been destroyed and they had to carry people while climbing that chasm.”
“They’ve been here for months and months,” Appius said, running a hand through his hair, the horror of the situation clear on his face.
I took a moment to bow my head and silently mourn for the men who hadn’t made it, but a moment only.
“We can’t cross this in the dark,” I said, turning and starting down the edge of the pile. “We’ll have to camp here tonight and tackle this tomorrow.”
Appius agreed, and we climbed down to tell the others what we’d seen.
“As long as we’re stuck here until tomorrow morning,” Mara said, taking out one of the slingshots we’d brought with us, “we might as well see if we can catch and kill something to cook tonight.”
I shrugged. “If you want to give it a try, be my guest.”
Mara and Lucius went off to hunt, and the rest of us set to work making a camp for the night. We’d only been on the run for a few days, but what we were doing now felt more natural to me than most of the time I’d spent in the Royersford. I might have been born and raised a city-dwelling nobleman, but if I ever needed anything to show me I was a wolf at heart, this was it.
Surprisingly, Mara and Lucius came back with a pair of rabbits. I was extraordinarily impressed with their skills, though not as impressed by the way we overcooked the meat in an attempt to be on the safe side, and had to chew our way through tasteless sinew. It was something, though, and it meant we could keep what we’d brought with us for later.
We bedded down for the night in our usual pairs, and it was not lost on me that Appius snuggled happily against me and fell asleep almost right away, in spite of what we’d seen at the top of the rocks. His comfort and affection were contagious, and I ended up stroking his hair for a while as he slept and just basking in how sweet it was to have someone care for me like that before falling asleep myself.
Morning came without incident. We woke up, cleaned up as best we could on the run, ate the remnants of the rabbit from the night before, then packed up our camp. None of us talked very much. There wasn’t a lot to say. My mind was on getting across the field of jagged boulders and discovering what the next obstacle might be. Everyone else’s mind seemed to be in the same place.
“This is morbid,” Leander said once we’d all climbed to the top of the obstruction and looked out across the rocks and decayed bodies.
“We have to climb through all that?” Darius asked.
“Unless you’d prefer to go back,” Lucius snapped.
“Hey, no one asked you, Lulu,” Leander bit back with a scowl.
I could see that yet another argument was about to break out between the two of them, just as if we were back at the dormitory house.
“Stop fighting and start walking,” I ordered them.
I adjusted the pack and rope I was carrying, and with Appius at my side, I started across the sea of boulders.
Oddly enough, it wasn’t as hard to traverse that obstacle as it had been to climb down and up the chasm. It took more time, and the rocks shifted under our feet now and then, but at least we weren’t in danger of falling to our death if we put a foot wrong. I also didn’t feel like we were in danger of causing another avalanche. The ground at that point in the pass was flat, which was why the previous avalanche had filled it like it was a giant bowl.
The worst part of crossing the rocks were the decomposed bodies and the lingering stench of death.
“My brother was here,” Lucius said in a strained voice as he climbed around a skeletal arm sticking out from between two large rocks. “These were Augustus’s friends, his comrades.”
