Chapter 30: The First Watch
The sun was slowly disappearing behind the mountains, bleeding out its last orange light over the white peaks.
The sky had begun to darken from a pale grey to a deep, bruised purple, and the last traces of daylight faded between the crooked pine trees that lined the old path, turning their shadows into long black spears.
The grey-haired man looked around at the old path, at the narrow, defensible spot where the stone walls on one side and a steep drop on the other created a small pocket. He stomped the snow to check it.
They couldn’t continue traveling in the dark. The old path was broken in places, missing stones, and one wrong step in the dark would send them tumbling down to where they had just climbed from.
"We’ll stay here for the night. We make camp here. No fire, we have nothing to burn that isn’t wet. We just rest."
The thin prisoner immediately dropped onto the snow where he stood, like his strings had been cut.
"Finally... finally, damn it..." He let out a groan that was half relief, half pain. "I thought we’d walk until we died."
The grey-haired man gathered the little supplies they had left - two half-empty water sacks, one strip of hard jerky that was frozen solid, and the dead man’s coat they were sharing - and looked at the others, his face serious again now that the relief of finding the path was fading.
"Someone needs to keep watch while the others rest. We’ll take turns. Two hours each. This mountain isn’t empty."
Danny looked at him, still sitting in the snow, his knees pulled to his chest.
"So who’s going to keep watch first? Who’s not about to pass out?"
The thin prisoner raised his hand slightly from where he lay, without even opening his eyes.
"Not me."
He grabbed one of the coats they had salvaged from the caravan, the one that smelled like old blood, and lay down fully, curling into a ball.
"I need to sleep. I haven’t even been able to drink enough water, let alone stay awake. My nose is broken, I’m seeing stars."
Danny frowned. Of course.
The thin prisoner closed his eyes tighter, pretending to already be asleep.
"I’m exhausted. Wake me when it’s my turn. Or don’t. I don’t care."
The grey-haired man sighed, a long, tired sound. He looked down at his own injured arm, the bandage now dark and stiff with frozen blood. His face was pale.
"I need to rest too. I need to bind this properly before it rots."
He looked at his injured arm, then at Danny.
"I’m the only capable fighter here. If something attacks us - one of those wolves, or worse - I’ll need my strength to kill it. If I don’t sleep, we all die anyway."
It was a good excuse. A very logical excuse. The kind that made sense, but still felt like abandonment.
Danny looked at both of them. At the thin prisoner who was already snoring faintly, fake or not. At the grey-haired man who was leaning against the tree, eyes already half-closed.
Neither seemed willing to take the first watch. The first watch was the hardest, when you were the most tired but the night was just beginning and fear was freshest.
He glanced toward the dark forest that pressed in on the old path, black between the trees. Then toward the mountain path behind them, the way they came, now just a dark drop into nothing.
He remembered the monsters they had already encountered on this journey. The giant sand worm that swallowed the caravan whole in the lower woods. The eyeless wolf that hunted by sound and almost tore his throat out. The dead bodies in the snow that were not killed by cold, but by claws.
There was no telling what could be hiding in the darkness on this old imperial road. This road was supposed to be safe once. Now it felt like a feeding trail.
"I’ll do it." Danny said it quietly.
The grey-haired man looked at him, surprised, eyes opening fully again.
"You? Kid, you almost died today twice. You held a man over a cliff. You need sleep more than us."
Danny nodded, pushing himself up onto his shaking legs. He felt dizzy, but he forced it down.
"I’ll keep watch first. I can’t sleep yet anyway." He wasn’t lying. His heart was still beating too fast from the fall, from the near-death. "If I lay down now, I’ll just stare at the sky."
The thin prisoner opened one eye, looking at Danny like he was stupid.
"You? You’re going to keep watch? You’ll fall asleep in ten minutes."
Danny ignored him completely. He picked up one of the coats and wrapped it around himself, over the dead man’s coat, making himself look twice as big. The fabric was rough and cold and damp, but it was better than nothing. It blocked the wind.
He sat near the edge of the path, where he could see both the way forward up the mountain and the way back down where they had climbed. His back against a cold stone pillar that was once part of a road marker.
The grey-haired man watched him for a moment, a complicated look on his face - guilt, pride, worry.
"Wake me if you see anything. Anything. A sound, a movement, snow falling wrong. Don’t try to be a hero, just wake me."
Danny nodded, pulling the coats tighter.
The grey-haired man eventually lay down, curling around his injured arm, his breathing slowing fast. The man could fall asleep on command, a soldier’s trick.
The thin prisoner was already asleep, mouth open, snoring wetly through his broken nose, blood dried on his upper lip.
Within minutes, both men had fallen silent, their exhausted bodies surrendering. Two dark lumps in the snow.
Danny remained awake. Alone.
The night slowly settled over the mountain, heavy and absolute. The last blue in the sky went black. Stars appeared, sharp and cold and indifferent, too many to count.
The wind moved through the trees, making the branches creak and groan like old bones, shaking snow down in silent puffs.
Snow continued falling softly, slowly covering their footprints, covering the old path again, as if the mountain wanted to erase that they had ever found it.
Danny pulled the coat tighter around himself, shivering despite the two layers. His throat burned for water, but he didn’t drink. He had to save it.
He stared into the darkness, eyes wide, listening so hard his ears hurt. Every snap of a branch, every rustle of a pine, made his hand tighten on a sharp rock he had picked up as a weapon.
For now...
Everything was quiet. The forest was holding its breath.
Too quiet. The kind of quiet that comes before something shows itself.
But Danny stayed awake, eyes burning, refusing to blink for too long.
He wasn’t going to let his guard down.
Not here.
Not after everything they had survived to find this old, broken path.