We moved ahead cautiously, scanning for more attackers. There were none. After searching the area for footprints in the snow, we gathered around him.
He was perhaps thirty, dead, and wore chest-armor with his blood freezing onto it. Tater’s lucky shot from the side had managed to strike near the front lip of the chest-armor, below the shoulder, one of the few places where it didn’t protect him. The unobstructed arrow only encountered flesh and bone.
Tater knelt, prepared to slit the throat of the man if he still breathed. Then he reverently fingered the armor and looked up at me. “Wyvern skin. No arrow could penetrate that.”
“Good shot,” I said.
“Not good. Lucky. It was aiming at his head. You going to take the armor and sell it for a small fortune?”
I looked at him blankly, not understanding his meaning.
“It’s valuable,” he said, after spitting into the undisturbed white snow. “Dragon skin. Moves and gives easily, but no arrow will penetrate it. That thing is worth a year’s earnings.”
“You take it as a reward for helping us,” I said. “You didn’t sign up for a battle.”
“A guide is expected to fight for his people.”
Kendra, who hadn’t said anything as she had approached, kept a watch for other enemies. Her eyes moved all-around nervously she said, “Quit arguing, Tater. The armor is yours, and so is everything else he has. Strip him. If there’s anything we want, we’ll say so. Do it and let’s get out of here.”
Tater nodded. He reached for the man’s bow and quiver and handed it to me. “Carry that from now on.” He didn’t sound very pleased with me, and he was right to talk to me that way. I should have carried a bow from the first. He located a small purse with a few coins we refused, a knife, and a map.
Elizabeth took the map and examined it. She said, “Riverton to here.”
That was enough. Someone had sent this man to the mountain pass by following the map, probably with orders to keep any from crossing. Kendra said, “He must have a camp near here.”
Tater stood and made a slow turn. He pointed to where we’d come from, up along a ridge. “There.”
“You’re sure?” I asked, before realizing how stupid the question made me seem as he answered.
“From up there he can see the crest of the pass and all the way down to here. He probably has another path off the main trail, so he could get down here and conceal himself after he spotted us. I saw a few bushes move a while ago, but assumed it was the wind.”
“Want to go look?”
Tater said, “You go. Meet us back here on the trail. Take your bow in case there were two of them.”
While it might sound like I was brave to obey Tater and search alone, there wouldn’t be another man up there. If there had been two of them, both would have attacked, and if they had it done properly, they would have won the battle before it began with a few well-placed arrows. No, despite the expensive armor made of dragon skin, the man who attacked us was not a professional soldier, and he was alone.
When I backtracked along the path he’d made in the snow, I arrived at his camp right where Tater had indicated it would be. It confirmed my suspicions. His survival skills were minimal, his camp sloppy and poorly constructed, and worse, he was nearly out of food. I searched through it all, trying to find any clue to identify him or his employer. Instead, there were chicken bones so clean they were white and picked as clean of meat as the sticks set aside for a fire. The few other items were empty food pouches and thin blankets.
He had no horse, no other weapons, and what little discovered in his camp was either cheaply-made or worn out. That was odd, considering the chest armor. I made my way back to the others where Tater held the horses and waited for me. “Nothing worth taking.”
Tater held up the breastplate. “’Cept this. Ever see one of these before?”
I hadn’t.
“This isn’t regular dragon skin armor if there is such a thing. This is special. There are tribes down in the brown world that know how to tan dragon-hide like this. First, you got to find and kill a wyvern, so there are not many. Your best arrow would bounce off it, but it doesn’t weigh nothing. The price for this damned thing,” he hefted it into the air for me to see, “is more than all the money I’ve ever owned—and then some. So, my question to you is simple. What was that worthless piece of crap of a man on the ground doing with it? Everything else he has isn’t worth a copper snit.”
“Any idea of who he is or who sent him?” Kendra asked.
Elizabeth, in her way of adding detail to a conversation, said, “He’s been camping here a while. I think he stole it and was hiding. Maybe from his victim.”
Kendra said, “He might have been trying to assassinate you, Elizabeth.”
“Nope,” Tater declared. “He’d been here a number of days, maybe ten. None of us knew we were coming this way, so, how could he? Besides, few even know of this pass, and only idiots try to use it in winter or spring.”
That settled the conversation. I said, “We need to move or sleep in the snow tonight.”
Tater cast me a grin. “When we first met, you were all full of joking and laughing, hijinks they call it at the palace. Where’d that go?”
He was right. The few days of riding had taken away my boyish antics and converted me into a paranoid man afraid of the next bend in the trail. If that change made me better or not was up for discussion. I evaded Kendra’s questions and her stern glances and decided to blame Springer. “Why didn’t the damn dog warn us?”
“I had him on my lap covered up to stay warm. Blame me if you want to.”
“It was not his fault, either,” I admitted, allowing my eyes to slowly scan the area in case we’d missed something. In contrast, Elizabeth’s eyes darted from one place to another, like those of a blue jay looking for a treat to steal—or a cat sneaking up on it. There was the tilt of her head as she listened. When mounted on Alexis again, I slipped an arrow from the quiver and nocked it. The small crossbow was loaded and cocked, ready to shoot. It rested on a leather loop fastened to the horn of my saddle for quick access. If someone leaped from the side of the road, too close to use my bow, the little machine would give him second thoughts.
I mouthed to Elizabeth, “Anything?”
She shook her head, but as she rode past me to take her place behind Tater, her back was straight. I could see the stiffness and tension in her every move. Kendra fell in behind me, leading the string of packhorses again. Both were upset and worried.
Tater set a pace that was hard to maintain. He ordered us to hang back a hundred paces while he rode alone and checked for ambushes or signs of enemies—which would be any men not riding with us. He went bravely into danger first, and I intended to reward him for it. Another guide would travel with us or abandon us because of the danger.
All we had to do was remain alert and follow the trail his horse broke in the snow and of brown spittle he left, the color of the dried leaves he chewed. There seemed no explanation of why, but I liked the man, his bravery, and his insights. Of course, that didn’t include his constant spitting and my dodging the flying wads.
The sun was sinking fast, heading for the peaks in the west when the air cleared, the snow quit falling, and it turned from knee-deep to scattered patches of white, usually under the shade of evergreen trees. The ground became soggy with many puddles, and we continued riding. Nothing is worse than sleeping on, or better said, in the mud. Even sleeping on hard, bare rock is preferable.