The Villain Who Seeks Joy-Chapter 89: The Uphill Drag

The mountain didn’t care about politics. It cared about gravity.

The slope steepened, turning from deep powder to a slick, wind-scoured sheet of ice. The sapling runners we’d lashed to the Centurion’s belly groaned under the weight of the wounded.

Seraphine’s team was failing. They were nobles, mostly—students who trained for duels on heated floors. They weren’t built for hauling dead weight up a ten-degree grade in a gale.

One boy slipped, knees hitting the ice. The sled lurched backward, sliding toward the drop-off on the left.

"Hold!" I shouted.

I slammed my heel down. Anchor Step. The pulse locked me to the ice. I grabbed the rear push-bar and took the strain.

The sled stopped. My shoulder popped, but the slide halted.

"Switch," I ordered. "Seraphine, your team is done. Cael, swap in."

Seraphine looked at me. Her face was wind-burned, her white hair escaping her hood in ragged strands. She wanted to argue. She wanted to prove she didn’t need help.

She looked at the drop. She nodded.

"Switch out," she rasped.

Cael’s team moved in. They were fresher, heavier. Marcus took the lead rope. Cael took the rear corner opposite me.

"Heave," Cael said.

The sled moved.

We climbed for another hour. The air grew thin. My lungs burned with every breath. Four in. Two hold. Three out.

The pack was still there. I could feel them through the leash—a prickling at the base of my neck. They were shadowing us on the high ridges, moving parallel to our path. Waiting for a mistake.

"They’re getting closer," Lyra said. She walked beside me, her eyes scanning the rocks above. She had her wand out, but she kept it low.

"They know the terrain," I said. "There’s a choke point ahead. The Devil’s Elbow. The trail narrows to a wagon-width."

"Perfect ambush spot," Cael noted.

"If I were a wolf," I said, "that’s where I’d hit."

We reached the Elbow at mid-afternoon. It was a nasty cut in the rock, a ledge carved into the cliff face. On the right, a sheer wall of granite rising fifty feet. On the left, a drop into white nothingness.

The wind here was a physical blow. It tried to shove us off the ledge.

"Hollow," I whispered.

The bird lifted from my shoulder. Ten seconds.

He rose above the ridge line. Through the thread, I saw them.

Twelve Leapers crouched on the overhang directly above the path. They weren’t waiting to jump down. They were digging.

They were loosening the snowpack.

"Avalanche!" I yelled. "Halt!"

The team froze.

"Back against the wall!" I roared. "Shields up!"

A rumble started deep in the rock. Then the white wave came over the lip.

It wasn’t a massive slide, but on a narrow ledge, it didn’t need to be. It was a curtain of heavy, wet snow meant to sweep us into the void.

"Warden!" I shouted.

I pulled the heavy thread. The Centurion woke from its dormant state. The lock-pins snapped.

It didn’t stand up—the lashings held the wounded to its back. Instead, it drove its limbs outward. The bear-femur legs punched into the cliff wall. The glass plating on its sides flared out like wings.

"Anchor!" I commanded.

The construct locked rigid. It became a roof over the wounded.

The snow hit.

It slammed into us with the weight of wet sand. Darkness fell. The weight pressed down, crushing breath.

I was pinned against the sled chassis. Cael was somewhere to my left.

"Hold!" I gritted out.

The slide lasted ten seconds. It felt like ten years.

Then, silence.

I pushed up. The snow gave way. I broke the surface, gasping.

We were buried to our waists, but we were still on the ledge. The Centurion had acted as a breakwater, diverting the flow over our heads.

"Sound off!" I called.

"Here," Cael’s voice came from a drift.

"Here," Gareth sputtered.

"Clear," Seraphine called. She was digging out one of her students.

From the ridge above, a howl cut the air. Frustrated. Hungry.

The Leapers appeared on the lip, silhouetted against the gray sky. They realized their trap had failed. Now they were going to try the direct approach.

They launched.

"Spears!" Marcus yelled.

Three beasts hit the snow in front of the sled. Marcus met them with a shadow-blind, confusing their eyes. They snapped at air.

One landed on the sled itself, right on top of Aldric.

Aldric screamed. He didn’t have a wand. He did the only thing he could—he shoved his good arm into the beast’s mouth, grabbing the tongue to keep the jaws from closing.

"Marrow!" I shouted.

The hound exploded from the snow at my feet. He hit the Leaper on the sled, knocking it sideways. They tumbled off the pile of wounded and onto the narrow path.

I scrambled over the snow. The footing was treacherous.

Another Leaper landed in front of me, blocking the path to Marrow. It crouched, ready to spring.

I didn’t have room for a duel. One wrong step and I’d go over the edge.

"Physics," I whispered.

The Leaper sprang.

I didn’t dodge. I dropped flat.

The beast sailed over me. As it passed, I kicked upward with both feet—Anchor pulse in the soles.

I hit its belly. My added momentum, combined with its own speed, launched it higher.

It cleared me. It cleared the path. It sailed out into the void.

Its howl faded as it fell.

I scrambled up. Marrow had pinned the other Leaper against the cliff wall. I stepped in and drove my sabre through the ribcage.

"Clear!" I shouted. "Keep moving! They can’t group up on the ledge!"

"Pull!" Cael roared.

We grabbed the ropes. We dragged the sled over the avalanche debris. It was brutal work. Muscles tore. Lungs burned.

But the narrow path worked in our favor. The Leapers couldn’t swarm. They had to come one by one, and one by one, we broke them.

Cael threw one off the cliff with a shield bash. Gareth skewered another. Seraphine, to her credit, used a shovel like a battleaxe, cracking a skull with a grim efficiency.

We broke through the Elbow. The path widened. The ridge opened up.

Ahead, a quarter mile up a gentle slope, stood a stone marker. A flag snapped in the wind.

The High Pass.

Pierce stood there. Liora stood there. A squad of wardens waited with blankets and hot tea.

The Leapers saw the wardens. They saw the end of their hunt.

The pack leader—a massive brute with a scarred ear—stopped on a rock. He looked at us. He looked at the Centurion sled, battered but whole.

He chuffed once, a sound of disgust, and turned back down the mountain.

We didn’t run the last stretch. We walked.

We dragged the sled across the line.

Pierce checked his watch. He looked at the battered, snow-covered group. He looked at Aldric, who was pale and shaking but alive. He looked at the Centurion, buried under snow and wounded students.

"Time," he said.

He marked his slate.

"Status?" Liora asked, stepping forward.

"Alive," I said. My voice was a rasp. "All of us."

"Casualties?"

"Bites. Bruises. Exhaustion." I looked at Aldric. "He held a jaw open."

Liora looked at Aldric. "Did you?"

Aldric nodded weakly. "Didn’t want to get eaten."

"Valid motivation," she said.

Wardens swarmed the sled, lifting the wounded, wrapping them in heated blankets.

I unhitched Marrow. The hound sat down heavily, his bone flank chipped. I rested my hand on his head.

"Good dog," I whispered.

I sat down in the snow. I didn’t care that it was cold. I just needed to stop moving.

Cael sat next to me. He handed me a water skin.

"We made it," he said.

"We made it."

Seraphine walked past. She didn’t stop, but she paused. She looked at the sled, then at the path we had come up.

"That wasn’t boring," she said.

"It was terrible," I agreed.

"You lead well from the back," she said. "Better than the front."

"The view is worse," I said. "But you see who’s falling."

She nodded once, a sharp jerk of her chin, and walked to the heater.

Lyra crouched in front of me. She wiped a smudge of blood from my forehead. 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

"You’re bleeding," she said.

"Not mine."

"Armand," she said softly. "You used the sled as a roof."

"It seemed appropriate."

She smiled. It was a tired, beautiful thing. "Tea is ready. Come on."

I stood up. My legs shook, then steadied.

I looked back down the mountain. The track was a mess of churned snow and struggle.

We had climbed it. We had held it.

I touched the Brass Token.

"Done," I said.

The wind howled, but it didn’t sound like a threat anymore. It just sounded like wind.

I turned and walked toward the tea.