Alaric glanced at his right arm, strapped to a splint of rough wood and tied tight with ogre leather straps.
The straps bit into swollen flesh every ti the cart jolted.
He looked from that useless arm to Joji, who was hauling the whole cart like it weighed nothing, boots digging into the dirt, shoulders steady under the strain.
"Since Lilina has been healing ," Alaric began, careful, "Joji, can I...?"
Joji did not even look back. His mouth curled as if he could taste the request before it was spoken.
"Your future, not mine," Joji said. "I already told you. Go ahead. Lose an arm."
The scowl in his voice shut Alaric up. Alaric swallowed the words and let them die.
He could feel Lilina’s healing in his bones, the ache dulled, but healing was not the sa as undoing, and Joji was not letting him gamble a lifeti of strength for a brief bright flare.
Behind them, hoofbeats kept coming. Shapes moved in the dark, riders circling for clean shots.
Alaric needed to contribute without lighting up the night with his na.
His eyes dropped to the pile of bone javelins Joji had gotten from the goblins.
Throwing weapons. Not his craft. Worse, he was not left handed. Still, his left was all he had.
He grabbed one, tested the balance, then tucked a thread of aura deep, not in the air where it would shine, but buried in the bone and his own arm, quiet as a held breath. He drew back and threw.
The javelin flew straight and true enough. It hit a horse high in the chest, missing the rider by a handspan.
The animal scread and stumbled, legs folding wrong. Rider and mount went down together in a tangle of panic and weight.
Alaric exhaled hard. That was enough.
He grabbed another javelin and threw again. And again. His shoulder burned. His grip slipped with sweat.
He adjusted, learned fast, and turned himself into a machine that only knew one motion. Pull. Aim. Release.
Javelins did not arc like arrows. They cut forward and straight. The chasing horsen began to drop, one after another, horses hit in the neck or shoulder, riders thrown into dirt.
One unlucky man took a javelin through the ribs and got pinned against a tree trunk, wheezing as if his lungs had beco a leaking bellows.
The man leading the ambush saw more than a dozen go down and his voice rose in fury.
"Horsen, retreat. Bown, take positions."
Ahead of the cart, the wolves were already there, gray bodies slipping between the trees and the road.
Rizz hit them like a battering ram.
He was innately larger than the wolves, and he did not treat them as threats.
He lowered his donkey head and drove forward, teeth bared, ramming one wolf into another.
Hooves kicked. Bodies rolled. The wolves yelped and scattered, then returned, then scattered again, unsure what to do with prey that fought like a bull.
Joji saw the opening Rizz made. He spared one glance back at the cart, at Walter crouched low, at Alaric with his splinted arm, at the bag they had sworn not to lose.
"We ditch the damn cart," Joji said.
His voice cut through the noise like a command in a barracks yard.
"Alaric, take the bag. Protect it as best as you can."
Then Joji looked at Walter, careful not to say his na aloud where strangers could hear and rember it.
"You with ."
Alaric nodded once. He hooked the strap of the heavy bag with his good hand and hauled it tight to his body, sweeping a glance over the top to make sure nothing had spilled, no papers torn, no evidence scattered into mud.
Then he planted his boots on the cart’s edge and jumped, landing hard and running.
Joji stopped the cart so abruptly the world lurched.
Walter flew forward with a grunt, then clung to Joji’s back like a koala finding a tree in a storm, arms locked, legs squeezing.
Joji barely felt the weight. Not anymore. The demon heart beating inside him had changed the math of burden.
Walter felt like a child on his back.
Joji sprinted.
He surged toward Rizz, cutting through the gap in wolves and smoke, feet finding firm ground.
He reached Rizz and grabbed the donkey by the tail.
Rizz yelped and twisted his head.
"No words for now. Follow ," Joji said. "Main road. Caravan over there." He pointed into the dark.
Joji’s eyes had already found it. With the Cave Ogre Eyes, the dark was not dark.
With the Cave Ogre Eyes, the dark was the sa as daylight.
He could see the mass of wagons ahead, n gathered around a large cart, clearly hauling sothing heavy.
He pulled Rizz toward it without asking permission. This was not the ti to protect strangers.
This was not the ti to be a stickler for clean morals. It was life and death, and the road did not reward saints.
The caravan was hauling sothing huge, a giant lizard over ten ters long, its obsidian black skin mottled and gleaming even under gri.
n laughed as they looked it over like it was a peerless treasure, because it was.
"Look at this skin. Aren’t we too good?" one of the man bragged, clearly pleased.
"Can’t argue with that. We preserved it pretty well."
Depth Salamander. Joji had heard of it. A creature that surfaced once every two years to sunbathe and gorge on insects, then sank back into deep water to nest.
Its hide, processed right, stayed cool against the body and wicked sweat away.
Nobles and royals paid obscene coin for undergarnts made from it.
Joji did not rush to the rear of the caravan like a frightened dog begging at a table.
He angled for a path that would force involvent, not request it. He wanted the ambushers to hesitate.
He wanted arrows to have other targets. He wanted bodies between Walter and the n hunting him.
He filled his lungs and shouted loud enough to make every head snap around.
"Bandits. Bandits. Help. They are trying to steal our loot."
Alaric, running hard with the bag, nearly stumbled at the sound.
Joji could feel the judgnt in him without even looking. A knight’s honor did not like using strangers as shields.
Still, Alaric did not peel away. He did not abandon them. He stayed close, jaw tight, eyes sharp.
Behind them, arrows hissed again, and Joji kept running straight into the caravan’s lantern light, dragging the night’s violence right onto soone else’s doorstep.
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