Free Hand of the Black City by Bryce O'Connor

Winter, 232n.n. – The a’Tor Ranges
    -three weeks since the flight of the Free Provinces
     
     
     
    Trystan Süll peered down into the mountain path, his breath misting through the burgundy cloth wrapped around the lower half of his pale face. Everything was laid out before him from his perch in the cliffs some fifty feet above. Grey eyes took in the snowy trail, the only part of him that moved as he studied his opportunities. With practiced efficiency he registered every detail, memorizing every shadow, every dip and bump of stone beneath the winter white. Once satisfied, Trystan crouched low, reaching back to free the heavy pine bow slung over his shoulder. The paired sabers sheathed at his right hip rattled when he strung the weapon with rapid ease, drawing a thin black arrow from the leather quiver by his knee. Nocking it, he stilled.
    The wait was on.
    Somber clouds rolled thick over the heavens, suspending the mountains in semi-darkness despite the fact that it was only just past midday. It wasn't snowing now, but a sharp wind whistled through the valley, ruffling Trystan's thin white hair to whisper of swiftly coming storms. Somewhere in the bluffs high above a king-falcon screeched in its dive earthward, the lethal call reverberating through the rocky cliffs.
    Trystan ignored it all. Closing his eyes, he focused on drowning out the rest of the world. When all had died to a dull thrum, like a distant river, he whispered a word.
    Trystan convulsed as his senses leapt from his core, flooding out of his body into the air, over the cliff, and down into the path below. The spell drew part of his mind away, pulling it northward in a rapid blur of distorted images over the snow-covered earth like a silent wraith. The natural stone walls on either side of him whipped by, the rocky ground rising and falling before dipping suddenly to wind back and forth down the mountain. Only practice and discipline kept Trystan's physical body from off-balancing, the images playing before his eyes like a ghost world imposed over the scenery around him. He felt ill as the spell moved faster and faster, the details of his vision little more than streaks of shades and color…
    And then, abruptly, it stopped.
    It took a moment for Trystan to get his bearings, head reeling from the sudden shift. When he did, though, he smiled beneath his cloth wraps.
    At last, at long last, he'd found them.
    Six men, unshaven and haggard beneath their grimy steel plate and worn leather armor, slumped wearily atop a half-dozen warhorses that looked even worse for wear. They moved carefully, climbing the treacherous mountain path at a plodding pace for the sake of the large hide-top wagon in the center of their little group, pulled by a pair of shaggy tan oxen. Two women sat at the front of the cart, one grasping the reins while the other stared off at nothing as the small boy held tight in her arms shivered and coughed weakly from within the swaddles of the dirty blankets he was wrapped in. Trystan couldn't see them, but he knew another three women and two little girls were hidden away inside the wagon.
    Unless their numbers had dwindled since they'd fled the Black City, making a break south for the Free Provinces…
    In any case, it would only make his job easier.
    Trystan released the spell with another word, and the scene faded away before him like smoke carried off by the wind. The group was still a fair distance off, but it mattered little. To a Hand of the Iron Will, the cold was little more than a mild annoyance.
    For nearly an hour he waited, motionless except for the snap of his gaze as he searched the path below. He would hear them coming first, he knew that, but Trystan had lived through too much already in his twenty-six years to let his guard down in an unfamiliar place. It paid well to be wary of the world, and hurt little to be overly cautious. The wind picked up briefly, catching flurries off the cliffs above so that it fell in thin curtains