"Hand over what you have without resistance, and I'll let you keep your lives."
His voice was hoarse without reason — the kind a man deliberately roughens to seem more threatening than he is. A near-square face, curly brown hair, and narrow eyes that strained for an authority that did not convince Kilan for a single moment.
Kilan glanced sideways at Manuel. The concern on the older man's face was unmistakable — his hands gripping the reins far harder than necessary, his jaw locked shut.
Kilan exhaled lightly and stepped down from his seat until he stood on his feet before the carriage.
*Just insects playing at strength. I sense no spiritual energy from any of them.*
He took his time looking over all four of them.
*Nothing remarkable about them... except for this wolf.*
It was not one of the cave-breed — those that carried spiritual energy and no human could tame. This was a wild beast of the grinding-wolf variety, large enough to be dangerous, but in the end no different from any animal except in size and the savagery of its shape.
"Clear the road. We're passing through without trouble."
He said it not as a request but as a statement of fact.
One of the men let out a cold laugh:
"You're in no position to give orders, you one-eyed fool."
The wolf let out a snarl that tore a frightened whinny from both horses, sending them lunging against the reins.
The square-faced man gestured toward the wolf without looking at it:
"Easy, Yajugr. You'll scare off your dinner."
He flicked his hand once. The two men on the flanks moved — each carrying a heavy cleaver with a blade broken in a deliberate way, designed to tear flesh rather than cut it.
Kilan placed his hand on his sword's hilt.
The one on the right came from above, the one on the left from below, both at once.
*A fighting style built to disorient.* Kilan noted it with perfect calm. *They have the ability and choose to waste it.*
A brief scowl crossed his face. If he had been born with their ability, he would never have arrived at what he had been forced to become. But he extinguished the thought before it could finish forming.
He drew his sword in a single swift motion and swept it through the air — deflecting the right man's overhead cleaver without shifting his feet — and in the same movement kicked the left man's blade away until it spun out of reach. Before the right man's foot had touched the ground, Kilan had his wrist and threw him into the left man.
Their skulls met with a sound like breaking glass. Both collapsed without moving.
Kilan stood looking down at them for a moment, then raised his eye toward the others.
*I didn't even need to draw my sword for that. Try attacking together next time — perhaps that will make a difference.*
The square-faced man spat on the ground without glancing at his fallen men. Unease was bleeding into his face against his will, but his last remaining asset still stood beside him — the enormous creature whose shoulder height came close to six feet.
The man released the leash.
Yajugr launched like an arrow.
Kilan did not move.
He waited until the wolf's fangs were a single arm's length from his face, its jaw open to the fullest extent — then drove his sword directly between the jaws. The blade passed through the skull and the wolf crashed to the ground, drowning in its own blood.
Kilan looked down at the massive body before him.
*It had never been conditioned for real combat.* Even wild animals, when trained by an experienced fighter, could become dangerous enough to shift the balance of a battle. *But these men were never experienced fighters to begin with.*
*Ordinary road bandits. No spiritual energy worth noting, no spiritual bond — despite possessing a beast like this.* He gave his sword a sharp swing to clear the blood. *Not that I can fault them for it. Even a low-flow user like myself cannot form a spiritual bond with beasts.*
He walked toward the square-faced man with slow, measured steps.
But the man beside him stepped forward and raised his weapon.
Kilan stopped.
The fighter was younger than the others — brown hair, narrow black eyes, a scar on his left cheek. His hand held a thin, gleaming silver blade, and etched along its edge was an inscription Kilan could read from this distance without difficulty:
*Wind Cutter.*
Kilan's one pupil widened.
"Where did you get that blade, you wretch?"
"What business is it of yours, one-eye? Get a good look at it — it's the last thing you'll see today."
The young man swept the blade back and forth. Two horizontal waves of cutting wind erupted from it. Kilan blocked them with his sword, but they sliced through the edges of his cloak with ease.
*That is without question Diana's Wind Cutter sword.*
Kilan rushed him. The young man swung a high arc that sent a vertical wave slicing downward — Kilan cut through it with a horizontal sweep, but the collision between the two waves left cuts across his face and shoulder.
The young man raised the blade for a third strike.
He never made it. His knees buckled without warning, the blade dropped from his hand, and he collapsed gasping, Kilan's sword now at his throat.
"A Falcri sword is not a weapon that the likes of you can wield." Kilan's tone was cold, carrying beneath it an ember that nothing could extinguish. "Without spiritual energy, the sword feeds on your own life force, you fool."
He raised his eye to the square-faced man, who stood frozen, barely able to form words.
"Where did you get it? Answer me and I'll let you live."
The man's lips moved slowly:
"We... we found it in a cargo carriage belonging to a black market trader. He gave us the blade and the wolf in exchange for information about a third-rank cave."
"And who gave you that information?"
The man swallowed. "Nobody gave it to us. We found the cave ourselves."
Kilan studied him. The answer had the shape of the truth. Even if Falcri weapons were rare and costly, a third-rank cave was worth far more than any of them. Caves were ranked on seven tiers — the seventh being the weakest, the first the most powerful — and what lay within them in creatures and resources made them a genuine fortune in every sense of the word.
Kilan lowered his sword from the young man's throat and looked at the blade lying on the ground.
"The price of keeping your lives is that blade."
A brief pause, then he added in a tone that ended the argument before it began:
"Now get out of my sight."
The square-faced man helped his young companion to his feet and the two of them moved toward the pair lying in the middle of the bridge without looking back.
Kilan picked up the blade and slid it into his belt. He stood watching them until they were gone.
Manuel was still holding the reins — though his hands were doing it without conscious awareness. His eyes moved between the wolf's massive body, the two men lying motionless, and the scattered patches of blood on the old bridge's stone, his face carrying the expression of a man still trying to absorb what his eyes had witnessed in the span of a few minutes.
Kilan climbed back to his seat with steps that carried none of the weight they perhaps should have.
He sat.
And without looking at Manuel, he said:
"Keep moving."