climbing returning with laughter and claps on the back. Dogs barked, tails wagging, and goats bleated.
“I told you it was possible,” Korbin said, and Tom turned, gave him a grin. Korbin smiled in return, pushed his glasses up onto his nose.
Behind him, Tom saw the ground beneath the back wheel of the wagon slip.
“Watch out!” he barked and surged forward, rock and dirt cascading away from the wheel in a small avalanche. The wagon began to tilt as he brushed past Korbin Then his shoulder slammed into the corner of the wagon, his feet sliding in the dirt. For a moment, he thought the ground beneath him would give way, that his weight would set the entire slope tumbling down to the plains below, but his boots found solid stone and held.
The weight of the wagon began digging into his shoulder. He gasped, sweat already sliding down into his eyes, down his back. He heard shouts as men began converging on the wagon from all sides. Korbin dodged in behind him, sending another cascade of dirt down the hill, loosening Tom’s footing briefly, and then the wheelwright added his strength to Tom’s.
“Henri!” Tom bellowed. “Get the damn wagon moving! We can’t hold it forever!”
He heard Henri curse the horses, heard the whip snap, the wagon shuddering, gouging deeper into his shoulder, but it didn’t move. Someone scrambled next to Korbin from the far side, near the front wheel, another avalanche of stone rattling down the slide. Tom blinked the sweat from his eyes, stared down the steep slope toward the wagons below, saw men surging up the fall toward them, stumbling on the rocks And with no warning at all, the stone beneath Tom’s feet gave way. He spat a curse as he kicked, feet digging into earth and stone, and then he was falling.
He heard Ana scream, “Tom!” her voice cracking with fear, and then his shoulder slammed into the rockfall, pain shooting up into his shoulder from his elbow as he spun and rolled, stone sliding with him. He didn’t cry out, didn’t have time. He ground to a halt a short way below and to the side of where Korbin and another man-young, no more than seventeen-were frantically trying to hold the wagon upright.
But the wagon began to tilt, to slide downward toward him as the ground for ten hands to either side suddenly gave way. The rear wheel crunched into the ground and splintered, the entire wagon shuddering as it struck. The weight inside the wagon shifted, slammed into the downhill side, cracking the side of the wagon, pushing it outward. Tom heard Henri roar, heard the horses shriek as the twisting wagon wrenched to the side and began to overturn.
The ground beneath Korbin and the younger man slid away, dragging them both downward, pulling them away from the wagon’s edge. Korbin hit hard, spun in the loose dirt, his glasses jarred from his face, sunlight glinting on the rounded glass, on the frames And then the full weight of the toppled wagon crushed his chest.
He never made a sound.
The younger man beside him screamed-an animalistic, terrifying scream that shuddered down into Tom’s bones. The wagon rolled, already beginning to break up, and slammed into the younger man’s legs. Supports snapped, wood cracking with sharp reports, and then the wagon rolled over Korbin and the other man completely, dragging Henri and the two shrieking horses with it. It tipped, ground into the slope, starting a huge avalanche of stone and debris, disintegrating as it rolled, horses kicking, a cloud of dust rising in its wake. Men and women scrambled to get out of its way farther downslope.
The wagon below it didn’t have a chance.
The disintegrating wagon crashed into it halfway down, tipping it over as if it were made of paper. The animal hide covering imploded as it skidded, wheels snapping beneath it, and then it and its team of horses joined the mass of tumbling wood, stone, supplies, and bodies on their way to the plains below.
Tom lay on his side against the stone of the rockfall, stunned, hand clutched to his arm where pain still shot from elbow to shoulder. He watched, gasping, as the dust rose, as the wagons reached the base of the slope and crashed into the grass. He listened to the clatter of stone as the slide settled, listened to the distant splintering of wood as the wagons struck and came to rest, but all of these sounds were muted, barely piercing the thunderous beating of his heart.
And then he heard more rocks clattering behind him, felt pebbles pelting his back. He jerked to the side, expecting to see the ground above him giving way again, but then Ana skidded to a halt beside him. “Tom! Tom, are you all right!”
Tom hissed and bit back a blistering curse as she touched his arm. “Don’t touch it,” he yelled, laying his head back against the stone. For a moment, his vision wavered, filmed over with a vibrant pulsing yellow. He grew lightheaded, but he gasped, closed his eyes, and fought it back.
“Thank Diermani,” Ana whispered, her hands covering his body, feeling for more wounds, searching for blood, although she kept clear of his arm. Her voice shook with relief, the terror he’d first heard there buried beneath. He heard her muttering a prayer, her movements frantic, and then she seemed to relax. “Nothing but the arm,” she said, and now he could hear the tears.
He opened his eyes, saw her bowed head, one hand raised to her face to shield it. She was shuddering, barely holding herself together.
People shouted, bounded down the slope to either side. He caught a glimpse of Lyda, her face blank, yet intent, and he suddenly lurched up into a sitting position.
“Lyda!” he shouted in warning. He could hear the sickening crunch as the wagon crushed Korbin’s chest, could see the smear of blood it had left behind And then Lyda screamed. A high, piercing scream that reverberated in Tom’s skull, that sank claws into his gut, that tightened his chest with juddering grief. She screamed until she ran out of breath, choking on it, then she sucked in air and screamed again, the sound thicker now with phlegm, harsher.
At his side, Ana jerked, her hand falling away from her face. Her reddened eyes searched the slope below, where Tom could see Sam trying to hold Lyda back from Korbin’s body. It had come to rest in the sliding debris nearly thirty hands downslope. His chest was unnaturally flat, caved in and bloody. His head angled downhill, face upturned to the sky. The priest, Domonic, was leaning down next to him, but he was obviously dead.
“Holy Diermani,” Ana said, voice raw. Her expression smoothed from terrified relief into a grim, hardened calm.
Without a word, she stood, folds of her dress held in one hand, and began picking her way down toward Lyda and the body. Tom watched her a moment, then struggled to his feet. Lyda broke free from Sam, her screams faltering, and stumbled to the ground beside Korbin’s head, stones shifting away at the movement. Her hands shook as she reached down, as she cupped his face, then traced his features, his forehead, his jaw, his mouth. Her entire body shuddered, back arched as she bent over him, her forehead dropping to meet his, arms cradling his head. No one near her made a move. Sam stood back. Domonic sat back on his heels, caught Tom’s gaze with his own and shook his head, his face stricken. No one moved except Ana. They stood, some heads bowed, others tilted toward the darkening sky, all of them silent.
When Ana finally reached Lyda’s side, her arms falling across the woman’s shoulders, Tom glanced to the ground.
There, not three paces away, Korbin’s glasses lay against a rock, sunset flaring in one shattered lens.
7
The group buried Korbin, Henri, and the driver of the second wagon at the top of the Bluff the next day, a good distance away from where the land had collapsed and formed the rockslide. Two children had also been riding inside the second wagon, and they were buried next to the men. One of the mothers wept openly. The other mother, older than the first, simply stood next to the grave, one of her other children, a boy, resting on her hip, a second clinging to her leg. She stared, stoic and unmoved, out over the plains, her movements desultory, her face blank.
Its lifelessness sent a shudder through Tom, and he shifted his glance toward the fathers, both of them standing at their wives’ sides, heads bowed, faces grim. The younger looked haunted, eyes a little too wide.
“-as we give this mortal flesh back to the earth,” Domonic murmured, “as we give the light of their souls back into Diermani’s Hand, into his keeping forever.”
