Chapter 29: The Old Path Found
Just when I was about to fall into despair...
When my legs had finally decided they would not take another step, when my hands were too cold to feel the rock anymore, when even the thought of revenge wasn’t enough to lift my foot...
"We found it!"
The grey-haired man’s voice suddenly broke through the silence, sharp and loud. It didn’t sound like his usual calm, controlled voice. It sounded raw. Relieved.
Danny raised his head slowly, thinking he had misheard. His neck ached.
His tired, blurry eyes widened, trying to focus through the snow falling in his lashes.
There, ahead of them, only ten meters above the narrow ledge where they had nearly died, hidden beneath a thick sheet of snow and surrounded by old, crooked pine trees that had grown right through stone, was an old narrow path leading farther up the mountain.
Not a goat trail. Not a crack in the rock.
A path. Made by hands. Flat. The snow on it was shallower, and he could see under it the faint, straight edge of cut stone.
The path they had been searching for for half a day.
"We finally found the old path!" The grey-haired man sounded genuinely happy, almost laughing, a sound Danny had never heard from him before. He turned back and waved them forward, his wounded arm forgotten. "Move it quickly! We’re almost there! This is it, this is the merchant road!"
Danny stared at the path, frozen in place.
For a moment, he couldn’t believe it. His brain refused to process it. After all the slipping, after the near-fall, after hours of convincing himself each step was the last.
They had actually found it.
After all the climbing.
After everything that had happened - the caravan, the worm, the wolves, the betrayal on the ledge.
They finally had a way forward. A way that wasn’t straight up a cliff.
Danny let out a tired breath he didn’t realize he had been holding for hours. It came out as a white cloud that shook.
Thank God...
He didn’t think he could hold on much longer. Another thirty minutes on that ice wall and his hands would have just let go on their own. He knew it.
His legs were shaking so violently he could barely stand.
His arms were exhausted, dead weights hanging from his shoulders from holding the thin prisoner.
His throat felt like it was burning from inside, like he had swallowed ash.
If they had needed to climb for much longer on that exposed face, he wasn’t sure he would have been able to continue. He would have sat down. He would have become part of the mountain.
The grey-haired man moved quickly toward the path and helped the thin prisoner up, grabbing his arm and pulling him over the final lip of stone. The thin prisoner was crying again, but silently now.
"Come on. Almost done. You did good, hanging on."
The thin prisoner grabbed his arm tightly, not wanting to let go.
"Thanks... thanks..."
Danny watched them for a moment, two figures silhouetted against the white.
Then he climbed by himself. He didn’t want anyone’s hand.
He grabbed the edge of the old path, his fingers finding actual, flat stone under the snow, and pulled himself upward with a grunt that tore his throat.
"Huff..."
His breathing was heavy, loud, ugly.
"Huff... huff..."
He forced himself forward, onto all fours like an animal, then one knee. The stone here was solid. It didn’t shift. It was the first solid thing he had felt since they left the lower forest.
One step.
Then another onto the old path.
Finally, he reached the middle of the old path. The wind was less here, blocked by the trees that had grown around it like guards.
He dropped to his knees hard, snow puffing up around him.
For a few seconds, he simply stayed there, on his knees, head bowed, hands on the cold stone.
The thin prisoner collapsed nearby, face-down, not caring about snow in his mouth anymore.
The grey-haired man leaned against a tree, breathing heavily, his hand on his chest, his old heart hammering.
"Huff... huff... huff..."
Nobody spoke.
They were too exhausted to speak, too exhausted to even feel relief properly.
They had spent hours, maybe six hours, climbing through the freezing mountain with no food, no real water, and death behind them.
But they were alive.
For now, that was enough. More than enough.
Danny slowly looked around, his vision clearing a little as his breath slowed.
The old path stretched ahead, winding and disappearing between the snow-covered trees and rocks. It was overgrown, with roots breaking the stones and branches hanging low, but it was there. It was a road. It had railings once, now mostly broken. It was made for people.
It wasn’t safe. The stones were icy and some were missing.
It wasn’t comfortable. It was still cold, still high up.
But it was better than hanging from the side of a mountain with a man dragging you to your death. It was flat.
Danny lowered himself completely onto the snow, onto his back, not caring how wet and cold it was. The sky above was grey-white, spinning.
He closed his eyes. Just for a second. Just to rest them.
For the first time in hours, since before the thin prisoner fell, he allowed himself to rest, to stop clenching every muscle.
"We made it..." He whispered, voice hoarse, barely audible over the wind.
The words barely left his mouth, lost almost instantly.
The grey-haired man heard him anyway. He slid down the tree to sit in the snow too, finally letting his own legs give out.
"Yeah." He looked toward the path ahead, toward the ridge where the main imperial road should be, a faint smile on his exhausted face. "We made it. We found it."
For a brief moment, everything was quiet. A rare, true quiet.
No monsters howling below.
No fighting over water.
No shouting or begging.
Just the sound of the wind moving through the trees, shaking loose snow from branches, and three people breathing hard, alive.
But the peace didn’t last forever. Peace never lasts long in these mountains.
The sky slowly darkened, much faster than it should have. The clouds over the peak thickened, turning from white to grey to dark blue.
The light faded from between the mountains, the shadows of the trees stretching long and sharp across the old path.
The cold, which had been bearable while they were moving, became sharper, meaner, biting through the dead man’s coat and finding Danny’s skin.
And before long, while they were still too tired to make a fire or build a shelter...
Night came once again, falling over the mountain like a heavy blanket.
Danny opened his eyes and looked toward the dark forest that pressed in on both sides of the old path. The trees now looked like black walls. The wind sounded different. Hungrier.
Another night.
Another struggle to survive, without food, without fire, on an old road that led nowhere yet.
Damn it