vendors, he bought travel food: meat pies, bread, smoked sausage. A few potatoes in case they got ambitious enough to cook on the trail. By the time he wrapped up, Ast returned with packs full of gear. They struck north at ten that morning.
A dirt trail switchbacked up the side of the cliff where Soll retired each night. At the top, the sun shined on a broad, windswept meadow. White sheep dotted the grass.
"Don't the kappers eat the sheep?" Lew said.
"Sometimes," Ast said. "They seem to prefer humans."
"Curious," Dante said. "And convenient."
Ast gave him a sidelong look, but said no more. Beyond the meadow, screes of dark shale footed sudden peaks. Ast led them over a spar of jumbled stones, which shifted threateningly underfoot, clacking dryly. In the sunlight, Dante worked up a hard sweat. The scree led up to another pine forest. Birds hopped from branch to branch, chided by squirrels. Slippery needles lay thick underfoot. Dante hunched his shoulder to wipe the sweat from the side of his face.
The woods continued for several forevers. It was a steady uphill slog, and very soon Dante was having serious thoughts about foregoing the whole endeavor to take up a life of farming. Better yet, to become a fisherman. Anywhere far from the mountains.
The sunlight grew brittle, the air chilly. Ast nodded ahead. "Be on the lookout for cliffs. Anything twenty feet or higher should do."
Lew took his assignment very seriously, head on a swivel for any sign of rocky rises. Assuming they'd be rather easy to spot, Dante gave it no special attention. Twenty minutes later, Ast pointed at a gap in the canopy. A black wall loomed above the forest.
It was an everyday cliff. Nearly vertical. Fist-sized rocks littered its base. Dante glanced at the sun, but it was hidden behind the trees. Maybe an hour until it set. Part of him wanted to continue on until dusk—there was no shortage of cliffs in the area—but another part of him, specifically his legs, argued for an immediate halt to all activity more rigorous than breathing.
He got out his favorite knife, a short-bladed, antler-handled norren weapon that never went dull, and cut a quick line on the top of his left arm. As soon as he called to the nether, it flocked to the welling blood. He tilted back his head and felt for the nether woven into the rock of the cliff.
"You may want to stand back," he said.
The two men shuffled behind him, feet scraping over rocks. 25 feet up, Dante plunged his focus into the stone. He thought about dropping the excavation in a single dramatic boulder, but not wanting to make too much noise, or inadvertently smash Lew into monk-jam, he opted to liquefy the rock into the consistency of thick mud. It flowed down the face of the cliff and settled over the sharded rock on the ground. Within moments, a hole large enough to climb through had appeared in the side of the wall.
"Not bad," Ast said.
"It isn't." Dante took a step back to examine the cliff. "But here's the best part."
Starting just below the cave, he gouged a small hole in the rock, leaving a lip of stone on its bottom edge. A foot below that, he duplicated it, continuing in this fashion all the way down the cliff. He'd soon carved a makeshift ladder up the wall.
He staggered back, legs trembling; he could move much more earth than that, but delicate work was always more draining. "Should be a little easier than a rope."
This time, Ast's look was unreadable. "I'd heard about your people. I saw some of you during the war. But I never knew you were capable of a thing like this."
"The others aren't," Dante said, allowing a certain pride to enter his voice. "Just me."
Ast nodded vaguely. "Hungry?"
"As a kapper."
Lew laughed uncertainly. They sat down on a fallen log. At the other end, wear and insects had reduced the wood to a spongy crumble. Inch-long black ants trundled through the orange bits. Dante kept one eye on them as he ate his meat pie.
"Tell me more about these signs," he
Katherine Garbera - Baby Business 03 - For Her Son's Sake