No luck. They climbed out of the carriage and pressed on.
After pawing through a few more scattered bags, they spotted another wreck: a luggage carriage, half-tilted on the roadside embankment. Its wheels were splintered, the horses long gone, but the main compartment hung together—mostly.
As they drew closer, something felt off. Unlike the gutted hulks around it, this one's doorway was laced with a hasty web of ropes, a desperate bid to hold the contents in place.
A bit late for that, Willem thought wryly. He drew his greatsword and hacked the lines. Bags spilled out in a lazy cascade, thudding to the dirt.
He reached for another when Elias clamped a hand on his arm, nodding sharply. Tucked under two hefty sacks was a bulky, quilt-wrapped bundle.
Willem squinted—it didn't register at first. Then he caught it: a faint quiver, like a heartbeat under cloth.
They locked eyes. Elias eased the pinning sacks aside while Willem hefted his sword, muscles coiled.
The bundle shuddered harder as the weight lifted.
Now. On a silent cue, Elias yanked the quilt free.
A figure unspooled from the folds with a raw, guttural scream.
Willem's blade hung frozen mid-air. They both gaped, thunderstruck. No beast. Just Midge—face flushed crimson, soaked in sweat, on the verge of suffocating in his makeshift cocoon. He trembled like a leaf, eyes wild, blind to the gore-smeared giants towering over him.
"Midge, easy—it's us," Willem murmured, sheathing his sword. "You're safe."
The voice pierced the panic. Midge uncoiled inch by inch, gaze snagging on the massive blade, then flicking to Elias's drawn steel. Recognition dawned. "My lord!" he gasped, then bobbed his head at Elias. "My lord!"
It was a miracle amid the madness—a reunion that cracked grins across their bloodied faces. The kid was alive. Unscathed, even.
"How the blazes did you end up bundled like a forgotten ham?" Willem asked, half-laughing.
Elias beamed widest of all. If Midge was tucked in here, so was the luggage. His luggage. The Elven Grain. He could picture it: the squire, dead set on "guarding the bags," had burrowed into the nearest quilt when the rocks started falling and the rats swarmed. Dumb luck, pure and simple.
"The luggage?" Elias ventured, feigning nonchalance.
"Inside," Midge chirped, popping to his feet and diving back in.
Willem shot Elias a knowing side-eye. Smooth. The "rescue mission" charade was paper-thin.
As Midge rummaged, Elias scanned the haze—Foresight habit, eyes tracing shadows for threats. They snapped wide.
"Something's closing in," he breathed. "Midge—quilt, now!"
He hauled Willem behind a horse carcass, scooping fresh gore to cake his face anew. Willem got the drill: play possum. He went full method, sprawling atop the gutted beast, eyes slitted shut. No clue how Elias sensed it, but trust was absolute now.
Midge burrowed back under the quilt, holding his breath.
Elias went limp, stare vacant as death.
The mountain fires were gnawing at the fog, heat coiling the air thinner. Then—black-clad warriors erupted from the mist, a blur of fangs and fury. Elias's blood iced. They ghosted right over the "corpses," zeroing on the convoy's heart.
The second they vanished, Elias bolted upright. "Clear—they're—"
The sky ripped.
A colossal shadow plummeted—a giant eagle, wings blotting twenty feet of horizon. It stooped low, talons raking the air, snagged the carriage roof in one savage grab. Wings thundered, whipping a gale, and the whole damn compartment wrenched skyward.
In a heartbeat, bird and booty melted into the murk.
Willem, eyes cracked just enough, caught every feather.
Elias reeled. His Foresight had pinged something, but not this—a feathered thief absconding with a carriage?
His grain. Pilfered by some oversized pigeon.
Two thousand silver coins, airborne.
He lurched up—then froze as another eagle knifed past, low enough to ruffle his hair. He hunkered down. Seconds ticked. When the coast cleared, he exploded into motion, streaking for the treeline. Willem was a shadow at his heels.
Elias blurred through the underbrush, a ghost in greens, scrambling the tallest peak in sight. He swarmed a massive oak, bounding limb to limb like a squirrel on stormwind.
Willem hit the trunk, gaping upward. Elias? Vanished into the crown. The "scholar's" grace was a sham—that sword wasn't for show. "Blackwood" was a predator in scholar's skin.
He wedged his greatsword into his belt and hauled upward, bark shredding his palms, progress a grunt and a scrape.
At the crown, Elias pierced the fog's lid, coiling low before exploding upward on a spring of branches. He hung there, scanning the vaulted gray.
Eagles wheeled in lazy spirals, but one hauled a sagging prize: the carriage, dangling like bait. It banked toward the jagged horizon—the tallest peak, miles off.
He plunged back through the canopy, rebounding for a fix on the vector. Straight-line to that summit.
He rappeled the trunk in a controlled slide and hit dirt sprinting.
Willem, barely thirty feet up, clocked the drop and reverse-slid, palms raw as flayed meat. He pounded after the vanishing blur.
They erupted from the woods, jaywalked the road, and dove into the opposite treeline.
Elias skidded to a halt at last. "Why the hell are you tailing me?" he growled, irked. The big lug crashed like a bull—dead weight.
"Where else?" Willem huffed, baffled. "You gonna ditch me in this slaughter pen?"
"These woods'll eat you alive," Elias shot back. "Head to the escort—they'll shield you." He wheeled to bolt.
Willem surged forward. Back to that grinder? If they cracked, heads rolled—literally. "If it's so damn cozy back there," he hollered at the retreating back, "why aren't you hightailing it home?"