Chapter 41: Swing
What?
Why was he looking at me like that? Like he had already weighed me and found me light? Like I was less than a waterskin, less than a strip of jerky?
Danny’s heart began pounding so hard it was the only sound in the world, louder than the wind that cut down the old imperial road, louder than the crunching in the trees that had stopped.
Had the grey-haired man believed him? That stupid, petty lie about water? Where the big lie about the curse and the DoD clan failed, did the small one work? Did selfish sound more true than cursed?
Had he really decided to sacrifice him? After sharing his last piece of jerky without being asked? After calling him kid instead of DoD? After teaching him how to keep his toes from blackening? After all the mountain?
The grey-haired man tightened his grip on his sword, leather creaking, knuckles going white around the worn handle, old shoulders tensing under his thin coat.
Then he spoke, and his voice was calm, too calm, the kind of calm that comes after a man has made a hard decision and doesn’t want to argue about it anymore.
"Your logic is reasonable."
Three words. Reasonable. Like they were talking about how to split bread, not a life.
Danny’s eyes widened, his stomach dropping through the snow, through the mountain, down into nothing.
No... No no no. Old man... no. Not you. Don’t you too.
The grey-haired man suddenly stepped forward, fast, not the shuffle of an old tired prisoner who had been climbing for days, but the quick, short, economical step of a soldier who has done this a thousand times before, who doesn’t waste movement.
Then—
Whoosh!
He dashed forward. The blade cutting the cold morning air with a sharp whistle, coming straight, fast, aimed right at Danny’s face.
Danny’s body froze, legs locked in snow, brain screaming RUN RUN RUN but his body not listening, like in those nightmares where you try to run and the ground holds you.
The sword was coming straight toward him, gleaming despite rust, that dull edge that could still open his throat in one second, that could end everything he survived.
He’s going to kill me! He’s really going to do it! He’s going to kill me to save them! To save himself!
Danny tried to move, tried to throw his useless rock, tried to scream his name, but his boots were stuck deep in soft snow and his fear was deeper, holding him tighter than any snow.
He squeezed his eyes shut, just for half a second, waiting for steel.
But before he could— before the blade could touch him, before he could even feel wind from it—
CRASH!
A sound like a tree breaking, like snow exploding upward from below. Something massive burst from behind him, from the side of the path where Danny had just been stepping back, from the drop where his heel had kicked that loose stone and sent it falling.
It had been waiting under the snow ledge, tucked against the cliff, listening to them argue, smelling fear.
A massive blur of pale, eyeless muscle and matted white fur lunged forward, jaws wide enough to swallow Danny’s whole head in one bite, claws out, black and curved, aiming for Danny’s neck from behind, where he had no eyes, where he was weakest.
The grey-haired man’s sword changed direction instantly, in mid-dash, mid-air, with impossible skill. Wrist snapping, elbow turning, whole body twisting. The whistle changed pitch.
It wasn’t aimed at Danny at all. It had never been. Danny was just the bait he needed to make it jump.
SLASH! A wet, tearing, sickening sound, like cloth ripped under water.
Blood splattered across Danny’s face, hot, stinking, black-red in the white snow, steaming, getting into his mouth, his eyes. It wasn’t his blood. It was warm and foul and alive.
Danny fell backward onto the snow, landing hard on his back, wind knocked out of him in a grunt, his rock flying from his hand and disappearing.
His heart hammered against his chest so hard he thought it would break his ribs, his breath coming in sharp, panicked gasps that burned.
"What...? What...?"
He looked up, wiping blood from his eyes with a shaking hand that wouldn’t stop shaking.
An eyeless wolf stood exactly where he had been standing moments ago, where he would have been if he hadn’t stepped back that last inch. Its massive body blocked the whole path. Its jaws were open, gasping, a long, deep cut across its eyeless face, from the corner of where an eye should be to its lower jaw, from the old man’s sword.
Its claws dug into the ground, twitching, snow melting under its hot blood. It had jumped to kill Danny from behind, to take the weakest first, and the grey-haired man had intercepted it mid-air with a cut meant to kill.
The grey-haired man stood between it and Danny now, sword raised, breathing hard, his back to Danny, protecting him, just as he had before on the cliff, just as he had before with the other wolves.
He had never turned on him.