Chapter 378: First Blood on the High Road

The high road climbed in long pale stretches that seemed empty enough for the silence after Varn Thal to be almost unreal. There was only the wind, and broken stones, and the sound of their own boots for a while. The city’s horns had gone behind the ridges. Sera walked with her cloak pulled tight and eyes on the road ahead, the tension that had driven the escape in her shoulders still present. Istra kept to the left flank and Rhel and her two Quiet Line companions held the rear and the other point looking up the rises like men who did not trust open land.

Lucian saw the change before any of them spoke.

It was not the messy hunger of house hunters or the stiff pressure of Authority process. This attention had a cleaner and heavier feel to it as if the road had been marked in advance.

"hold," he said.

Rhel stopped immediately. "You feel them too."

"Yes."

Sera’s hand drifted towards the short blade she had taken from the city fight. "Please do not say it is another group with terms."

"No terms," Rhel said, her eyes fixed on the ridge line. "Not this sort."

They came over the rise without banners and no warning calls. Twelve figures in dark travel armor, fanned out spread to cut the road front and sides at the same time. Their marks were not house colors and not Authority gray. It was an older and sharper design that was a seat-mark cut down into hunting form.

One of Rhel’s companions swore under his breath. "Lord-aligned."

There was no demand to surrender. No speech about custody or review. The front three raised bound spears and charged.

Lucian met them head-on.

The first spearman came in fast and to target, trying to pin rather than kill. Lucian broke the line of his thrust, stepped inside of it and put the man down with a short brutal hit that cracked his armor and ended the fight. The second tried to angle towards Sera. Istra intercepted him with her rod and forced him back long enough for Lucian to throw the third into the roadside stone.

Then the rest closed in.

The fight spread across the open road in seconds. These were hunters who did not waste motion nor care for witnesses. Two went for Rhel’s rear pair. Three tried to isolate Sera from Lucian. The rest pressed right at Lucian using binding hooks and weighted chains that meant to lock a strong target in place long enough for the whole unit to finish the capture.

Sera cut one chain off her arm with a raw slash and kicked hard enough to make space. "I am getting very tired of people practicing on me!"

"Stay inside my reach," Lucian said.

He stopped saving power for street fights. Infinity rose sharp and controlled enough to shatter the nearest binding hooks and hurl two hunters off the road bed. One of them hit the lower slope and did not rise. Another came up immediately, visor cracked, showing the same cold purpose.

Rhel fought with clean efficiency, no flourish, every strike meant to disable. Her first companion held the left side well enough until a hunter with a hooked blade got behind his guard and drove the weapon up under his ribs. The man made a short sound and went down hard.

"Bren!" Rhel’s second companion shouted, trying to reach him.

He never made it. Two more hunters cut him off and the wounded man on the ground was finished before anyone could make them stop.

Rhel’s face went flat with rage but she did not break formation. "Leave him! They will take the living if we stop!"

Lucian heard and forced more power in the direction of the center of the road. The stone cracked under the nearest cluster of hunters. Three were thrown sideways. One binding team lost their grip altogether. Istra used the opening to drag Sera back towards Lucian while striking down a hunter who had gotten too close.

The remaining attackers tried one more coordinated rush, chains and spears together. Lucian met it directly, tore the formation apart and put in enough force to the counter so that the survivors finally broke their distance instead of pressing in again.

For a moment the high road held only the sound of wind and rough breathing.

Five of the hunting party were down and unmoving. The rest pulled back the remaining distance to the ridge in a controlled retreat, not panicked but already reforming as if it had been a first contact and not a full commitment. One of them looked back once at Lucian, marked him in silence then disappeared over the rise with the others.

Sera stood with blood on her knuckles and her blade still in hand. "Are they gone?"

"For now," Istra said. "Those were not house dogs. They came to test the capture pattern."

Rhel was already on one knee beside her fallen companion. Bren’s eyes were open and empty. She closed them with a steady hand then rose, not letting the grief stay in her voice.

"He had been with the Quiet Line since before Cael’s absence," she said. "He deserved a better road than this."

Lucian looked at the bodies on the stone then to the ridge where the hunters had withdrawn. "They will come again."

"Yes," Rhel said. "And next time they will not come in a group this small."

Sera wiped her blade on a fallen hunter’s cloak, using it as a sharp movement of leftover fear. "So this is the upper road. No talks. Just blood and seat-marks."

"This is the beginning of it," Istra said.

Lucian checked Sera for deeper injury then Istra then the remaining Quiet Line companion. All of them were marked by the fight. None of them were down. Bren’s body remained on the road as the first cost of leaving the mid-plane behind.

Rhel looked at Lucian. "If you want to turn back, this is the last point where the mid-plane still means anything."

Lucian shook his head. "We keep going."

Sera exhaled hard. "Of course we do."

They moved Bren’s body off the open road and under the partial cover of a broken wall, not so much of a grave but better than leaving him to the next hunting pass. Rhel said no prayer out loud. She only rested her hand on the stone for a second then stood.

"The first rise is still ahead," she said. "After that the land opens into the routes the seats actually watch."

Lucian took one last look on the blood on the high road.

Varn Thal had been politics and panic. This was different, it was ranked hunting with no interest on his answers, only on whether he could be taken.

He turned towards the rise.

"Stay tight," he said. "The next ones will not need a test run."

They climbed together, leaving the first dead of the upper road behind and the wind held no promise that the path ahead would be kinder.