Chapter 107: Cargo

They finished their meal in silence, each lost in their own thoughts. The morning crowd began filtering in as they stood to leave, merchants and laborers and a few bleary-eyed travelers who'd arrived during the night. Normal people living normal lives, completely unaware of the storm gathering in the mountains above them.

Outside, the air was cold enough to bite, carrying the promise of snow from peaks hidden behind low grey clouds. Nacho pulled his cloak tighter around his shoulders, more out of habit than necessity. His Titan Body barely registered the temperature anymore.

"We meet at the narrowing of the pass," Sera said, her voice low enough that it wouldn't carry. "The place where the cliffs come together, three hours north of here. If any of us isn't there by midday, the others continue without them."

"And if we all make it?"

"Then we hit the convoy hard and fast." Her pale eyes met his, fierce and unyielding. "No mercy. No hesitation. These are people who traffic in human suffering. They don't deserve either."

Vael was already moving, slipping into the crowd with a grace that surprised him given her weakened state. One moment she was there, the next she'd vanished into the flow of bodies and voices and morning commerce, invisible as a fish in water.

"She's good at that," Nacho observed.

"She was the best infiltrator in the Siren military before they promoted her to command." Something like pride flickered across Sera's face, quickly suppressed. "The Consortium never should have been able to capture her. The fact that they did means someone sold her out."

"You think it was one of the Elders?"

"I think it was someone with access to classified deployment schedules and a reason to want her gone." Her jaw tightened. "When this is over, I'm going to find out who. And they're going to wish the Consortium had gotten to them first."

She turned without another word and walked north, her stride eating ground with the efficiency of someone who'd spent their whole life marching toward things that wanted to kill her. Within minutes, she'd disappeared around a corner, leaving Nacho alone in the middle of Thornbury's muddy main street.

He stood there for a moment, letting his senses sweep the village one last time. The surface thoughts of the people around him washed over his Mind Fortress like waves against stone, fragments of worry and hope and the small concerns that made up everyday existence.

No hostility. No recognition. Just strangers going about their business, not knowing that three people were about to start a war in the mountains above their heads.

Good enough.

He turned east, taking a route that would loop around the village and approach the pass from a different angle than either Sera or Vael. His Combat Precognition painted the terrain ahead in shades of threat and opportunity, highlighting cover positions and ambush points and the places where a wrong step could send you tumbling down a mountainside.

The climb was brutal.

Not physically, at least not for him. His enhanced body handled the steep trails and loose scree without complaint, his lungs processing the thin mountain air as easily as the ocean depths where he'd been born. But the isolation pressed against him like a weight, the silence broken only by wind and the occasional cry of a bird circling overhead.

He'd gotten used to having people around. Lizbeth with her cooking and her quiet pride. Vanessa with her demands and her threats to track him down. Captain Rhea with her scarred forearms and her moans that she couldn't quite suppress. Even Sera, all sharp edges and impossible standards.

Now there was just him and the mountain and the knowledge that somewhere ahead, twenty armed guards were escorting weapons toward a fortress where very bad things were being planned.

The chokepoint came into view around midmorning, exactly where Greta's map had promised it would be. The pass narrowed here, the cliffs on either side rising sheer and impassable, forcing any travelers onto a path barely wide enough for two wagons side by side. Perfect terrain for an ambush. ℯℯ𝘭.

Sera was already there, crouched behind a boulder that overlooked the trail. She didn't look up when Nacho approached, her attention fixed on the empty road below.

"Vael?"

"Not yet."

They waited in silence, the minutes stretching into an hour. Nacho's senses probed the surrounding mountains, searching for any sign of their missing companion. Nothing. Just rock and wind and the distant rumble of something that might have been thunder.

"She'll make it," he said, though he wasn't sure if he was trying to convince Sera or himself.

"She always does."

Another thirty minutes passed. The clouds had dropped lower now, obscuring the peaks and turning the world into shades of grey. Nacho could feel the first flakes of snow beginning to fall, cold pinpricks against his skin that his Titan Body immediately neutralized.

Then his Apex Senses caught it. Footsteps. Light and quick, approaching from the southwest.

Vael emerged from behind an outcropping of rock, her face flushed with exertion but her eyes bright with something that looked almost like triumph. She dropped beside them without a word, her breathing gradually slowing as she recovered from what must have been a brutal climb.

"Had to take the long way around," she said finally. "There were scouts on my original route."

"Did they see you?"

"No." A thin smile crossed her face. "But I saw them. Four men, positioned at intervals along the western approach. They're expecting trouble from that direction."

"Which means they're not expecting it from here." Sera's voice had gone quiet, taking on the tone of someone running calculations in her head. "How far out is the convoy?"

"An hour, maybe less. Three wagons, just like Reeve said. I counted eighteen guards, plus two drivers per wagon."

"That's twenty-four total."

"Twenty-two." Vael's smile sharpened into something predatory. "I left two of them napping on the mountainside. They won't wake up for hours."

Nacho felt his estimation of her tick upward. Six months of captivity hadn't broken her. If anything, it had honed whatever edge she'd already possessed into something razor-sharp.

"What about the cargo?"