Risens slowed to walk as the calls of the assassins repeated. Bakka and Destra matched his slackened pace.

  “If your task was only to end the warlord’s life,” Risens said to them, “then I release you from you duty. Your quest has been completed. Return to wherever it is that you hail with reports of your success.”

  The two exchanged looks, conveying an unspoken message.

  “I, for one, have no desire to pick a fight with the King’s Rightmaker.” Destra grinned.

  “Nor do I,” Bakka added. There was a disarming sincerity to his voice, and the following words came as a welcome surprise. “We will stay. We will fight at your side.”

  As unexpected as it was, it elicited conflicting feelings.

  Risens believed that the pair were entirely honest in their sentiments, yet it was not a chance he was willing to take. Fighting in the open against two of what he expected to be the most competent assassins in the realm would be complicated. Having to be on guard for the duplicity of any additional number would be a distraction that could prove lethal.

  “No. You’ve served the crown admirably,” Risens said. “This is not your fight. Travel safely, and may the shadows hide you.”

  Both men seemed to be torn. He watched them carefully, knowing how they responded would likely prove the truth of fallacy of their claims. Their indecision ended with a nod and a salute—a closed fist over their hearts.

  “Fight well, Raven Rightmaker,” Bakka said.

  Casting a quick glance at the approaching assassins, they turned away, jogging down the sloping track.

  Focusing his attention on Orio and Feylen, Risens shifted to the inner edge of the track, putting his side close to the edge of a large boulder. With his back against the rock, he would force the fight to stay in front of him, while giving him the ability to push them back toward the precipice of loose stones before a fatal drop over the edge.

  “Why did you abandon us, Rightmaker?” Orio screamed as they closed within a few dozen meters. “You abandoned the bond you claimed to uphold that tied us to the mission. You left Korpis for dead and fled up the pass.”

  The assassins split up, fanning out across the track.

  “Do you take me for a fool, Orio?” Risens growled. “Korpis confirmed the true intent of your mission. The warlord’s death was merely the ruse to separate me from the castle, to overpower me on unfamiliar soil. I have the orders, sealed by the King’s own hand.”

  “Where’s he at?” There was an unexpected depth of emotion in Feylen’s vicious growl.

  Risens chuckled as he formed the connections that had, until this point, been obscured. She and Korpis were connected by more than merely profession. Whether they were lovers or kin, it mattered not. The truth of Trufang’s honest reply was confirmed.

  The King knew all too well what Risens was capable of. He had never intended that the trio of assassins be alone in his demise. The outposts in the mountains were there as reinforcements. The signals—the flares—that lit the night’s sky had been meant to alert them of their target’s approach. They had gone unnoticed, as none still lived to receive the call.

  “It was you who left him behind in the village,” Risens spat, knowing full well the response he was about to garner. TheRavens Talons cackled with delighted glee as they fed off his design. “I suppose it would have been difficult, carrying him this whole way, though. At least I separated his head from his body, so you could have split the weight.”

  Feylen twitched with anger, and she let out a scream, an ear-piercing blend of sheer wrath and utter devastation. Disregarding their subtle preparation, she plowed forward, negating their plan to bring the battle from both sides.

  Risens whipped the Talons from their sheaths, gritting his teeth as he bore the brunt of her merciless, emotional attack. Heslid back into the rough stone from the force of her blow. Her strength was incredible—far beyond what her diminutive size indicated possible. She was a force to be reckoned with, yet the current unraveling of her emotions would be her undoing.

  Sparks flashed over Risens’ head as her second attack struck the boulder, not his skull. Stone shrapnel rained down over his hood as he rolled out of the way. Her screams turned from rage to pain as his blade dragged across the back of her leg. With a wild bellow, she threw her sword in a desperate attempt to skewer him where he stood.

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  The timer marking the Talons decreased another digit. Apparently, a mere taste of blood wasn’t enough to reverse their countdown.

  He slapped her twisting, makeshift javelin away with an errant slap. The steel, pitted from the force of striking the stone,skipped harmlessly across the primitive roadway. The Talons screamed in his mind, demanding her blood, yet they were robbed of their kill as steel punched through her chest.

  Orio ripped the dagger from her back, kicking her bleeding body to the stone. Instead of pressing the attack, he backed off a few paces, leaving ample room between himself and Risens.

  “You’re proving more challenging to kill than expected, Rightmaker,” he grumbled. His blade, dripping with Feylen’s blood, was still pointed menacingly at him, yet his other hand fished through the pocket of his cloak. “If you would just die, I could be rid of this cursed mountain. Perhaps the King will grant me your title after I bring him your head.”

  “Three of you together have failed,” Risens retorted, shifting away from Feylen’s corpse toward the middle of the road. “The outpost has been decimated. What makes you think that you alone can stand against me?”

  Orio grinned as he backpedaled along the road, his hand continuing to fumble inside the pocket of his cloak. That he rummaged for some prepared trickery was clear, though Risens wasn’t entirely sure what he had prepared.

  A sudden keening note carried on the wind stopped both of them in their tracks. It was as unexpected as it was unnatural, sounding like a mixture of the screech of birds and the howl of a feral beast. The cacophony ended abruptly with a subtle popping noise that Risens felt reverberate through his feet.

  Recovering from the distraction, Orio removed his hand from his cloak, flashing an object ominously in the air. Risens groaned as he noted the mageVial held between his index finger and thumb. He’d faced the challenges of far too many of these in the last several days; he had no desire to deal with any more. His patience, as with his faith in the King, was crumbling rapidly.

  Despite the situation before him, he couldn’t shirk the discontent that had formed in his spirit at the sound of the distant grumbling. Only too recently, he’d heard the same noise as the face of one of the adjacent peaks had separated in the aftershocks of the earthquake. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the icy pinnacle of the mountain that loomed over Breakker’s Pass shift as it did just that, detaching from the cliff.

  Noting the change, much of the bluster that fueled Orio’s movements and attitude faded. With a snarl, he reared his arm back, preparing to throw the vial toward where Risens stood.

  As fast as the assassin could act, Risens was faster. Snapping his arm out in front of him, he released his hold on the Talon in his right hand. The blade spun end over end as it screamed through the air. In his mind, he pleaded with the blade to follow its course as death was not what he currently sought. Making a final rotation, the tangent of the knife held true as it sliced through Orio’s thick wrist.

  His limp hand, still clutching the mageVial, flopped to the ground. The blade sparked as it hit the mountainside while the glass vial shattered on impact.

  Pain competed with the sudden look of terror for control over Orio’s face. From where the mageVial had broken, a thin cloud of grey smoke covered the ground. He tried to jump out of the way as the mist darkened with a loud snap before disappearing from view.

  With blood pouring from the stump where his hand once was, the assassin struggled to move his feet, yet his motions were met with only frustration. The binding vial, meant to assure his victory, would be his demise.

  To the north, off the side of the pass, the views of the mountain peak that Breakker’s Pass wrapped around and the surrounding range were lost behind a veil of snow and ice that choked the air. The thunder of its approach became deafening. There was no time for Risens to run. Darting back across the track, he pressed his body against the boulder, curling up to make himself as small as possible. The vanguard of the avalanche stuck at the back of his tenuous hiding place as soon as he tucked behind its cover.

  Stones—some as large as his fist, with others several times larger than his body—bounded by. They skipped off the surface of the road before careening over the edge of the defile. Orio pleaded for his life as he was pummeled by a smaller chunk of rock and debris. His body, rooted to the ground, had no means of defending or shifting from the punishing blows. A vicious hit to his shoulder spun his torso to the side.

  Risens lost sight of the assassin as a massive boulder spun him farther away. His screams were drowned out by the booming growl of the avalanche, and a wall of snow and ice slammed against Risens’ shelter. In a moment of clarity before it struck, Risens spotted only stumps of legs rooted to the ground where the assassin had once stood.

  Risens relished in the joy of his success for but a breath. He had foiled the plot to end his life, again, but his celebration was short-lived as the rock he crouched behind shifted under the force of the wall of ice and snow.

  The reality of his situation took hold.

  He had outlived the King’s killers, yet it would be the snow that did him in. None of the skills or equipment he’d gained from the Roost would aid or protect him from what was to come. With a violent shudder, the stone gave way. The snap of it shearing into pieces was only a whisper under the roar that enveloped him.

  Risens was tossed mercilessly into the flow of snow and ice. The world around him was enveloped in a dirty wash of white pain and cold. His vision swam as the side of his head connected with stone. Whether it was the ground or something caught in the avalanche, he neither knew nor cared. It mattered not anymore.

  Another dizzying blow, and things spun far quicker than his uncontrollably twisting body did, caught up in the avalanche. His world, which had been shrouded in shadows for much of his life, fell into utter darkness.

  In the final seconds before consciousness faded and his life ended, he felt clear and distinct pain. Along his shoulders and his arms, he felt like dozens of claws stabbed into his skin before he felt no more.