The Blizzard's Edge

The rope bridge over the Gorge of Souls hung a thousand varas above the frozen river, and that afternoon the wind rocked it like a hanged man's hammock. Nerea watched it from the last bend with her hands tucked into her armpits. Four mules, six clan boys, twelve panniers of coarse salt and eight sacks of white flour carried up by hand from the valleys. If they crossed before nightfall, they would sleep in the sulfur caves. If not, the blizzard would find them on the ledge, and the blizzard did not bargain.

"The left rope is frayed at the third knot," said Jarek beside her. The old shepherd had a cheek marked by a white frostbite scar and a habit of announcing disasters in the voice of a weather report. "I changed it in autumn. Someone's half cut it."

"Or the ice ate it."

"Ice doesn't cut on the bevel, girl."

Nerea didn't answer. For ten winters she had guided salt along that route, the one her mother had opened when no one in the clans believed a mule train could cross above the dead glacier. The viceroy's tolls didn't reach that high; the seals of the chancery in Burgos were worth nothing against granite. Down below, on the plains of Oakhaven, the muleteers said Prince Fadrique had broken the winter and that a scribe from the south ruled at his side. Up here the winter was still whole, and whoever held the bridle paths decided what bread cost in every village on the border.

She raised her fist. The boys froze with the halters in their hands.

Iker, the youngest, who was making the climb for the first time, grabbed his mule's tail like his mother's skirt. Nerea had promised his real mother she would bring him back with both ears.

Under the howl of the north wind she had heard something else: an iron link striking a steel knee guard.

A lone man stepped out from the stone pier of the bridge. He was no customs officer, no tavern militiaman. He wore campaign armor with the royal arms filed off, a grey cloak torn by brambles and a short matchlock that smoked in the blizzard. His grizzled beard was frosted and a powder scar ran from his cheekbone down to his neck.

"Drop the loads and take the goat path down," he said. "Now."

Nerea drew the knife from her boot. A broad blade of black flint, knapped by her mother.

"This pass has belonged to the clans since before your viceroy learned to piss in silk swaddling, soldier. The salt is for the gorge. If you want to cut off the bread, you'll have to throw us in the river."

"I haven't come to collect tolls." The man lowered the muzzle of the musket to the frost, slowly, so she could see. "My name is Lope de Aldana. Until two weeks ago I commanded the vanguard company of the Burgos tercio. Behind me two hundred Walloons are climbing with orders to burn the mountain storehouses and cut the throat of anyone they find on this path."

"And you've come ahead to warn us out of kindness."

"I've come ahead because I refused to lead them." Something twisted in his mouth. "And because in camp they showed me the bridge rope. They said it was enough to cut it halfway."

Jarek spat on the ground.

"A tercio captain with a torn cloak and no escort," the old man said, never taking his eyes off him. "Either he's a deserter or he's bait. Either way, let him talk from over there."

"What are they paying for you?" Nerea asked.

"Four hundred ducats dead. Six hundred alive." Lope shrugged under his breastplate. "I'm telling you so you can do the sum before your boys do."

Nerea measured the distance with her foot. Three leaps. A man in armor on an icy ledge didn't move fast; she did. But the captain wasn't looking at her. He was looking over her head, toward the black spire that crowned the pass, and suddenly he sniffed the air like a dog.

She smelled it too. Sulfur. Not the cave smell, that rotten-egg stink rising from the earth. This was dry and sour, burnt saltpeter.

"Fuse," said Lope.

He was on her before she could raise the knife. He shouted something to Jarek that the wind swallowed, grabbed her by the cloak and dragged her toward the bridge pier. Up on the crest, a dry crack. Then another. And then the whole mountain coughed.

The cornice of old snow came away like a sheet torn off a bed. Nerea saw Jarek shove the boys toward the lower ledge, saw the mules rear, saw the rope bridge burst into a thousand splinters. Then she saw nothing. The ground vanished under her boots and the abyss took her in, wrapped around a captain of the king.