Iron Covenant on the Salt Road

• Chapter 1 The Rust on the Blade
• Chapter 2 A Merchant's Bargain
• Chapter 3 The Gate of Ash
• Chapter 4 Salt and Broken Oaths
• Chapter 5 Shadows Over the Dunes
• Chapter 6 Whispers in the Bazaar
• Chapter 7 The First Crossing
• Chapter 8 Blood in the Tracks
• Chapter 9 The Oasis of Lost Souls
• Chapter 10 Iron and Ledger
• Chapter 11 The Mirage of Peace
• Chapter 12 Viper’s Pass
• Chapter 13 A Covenant Sealed
• Chapter 14 The Dust Storm's Edge
• Chapter 15 Water for Silver
• Chapter 16 Night of the Scavengers
• Chapter 17 The Ruined Guardpost
• Chapter 18 Treachery at the Well
• Chapter 19 The Weight of Casks
• Chapter 20 Ghosts of the Highway
• Chapter 21 The Sun's Anvil
• Chapter 22 Gold, Steel, and Scars
• Chapter 23 Ambush at the White Flats
• Chapter 24 The Broken Wheel
• Chapter 25 The Price of the Covenant
• Chapter 26 Beyond the Salt Horizon

The flies in Oakhaven were fat and slow, but here in the border sinkhole called Qasr al-Milh, they were lean, frantic, and tasted of sulfur. Ser Royce Vance scraped one off his forearm with the dull edge of his paring knife, leaving a smear of black grease against skin that had peeled and darkened under three seasons of southern sun.

The taproom of The Three Goats smelled of scorched suet, sour beer, and the unwashed wool of fifty men who had spent three weeks walking behind flatulence-prone camels. Royce sat in the darkest corner, where the timber pillar met the adobe wall, nursing a pot of thin ale that had turned tepid before the froth had even settled. His back was against the solid post. Old habits had outlived his knighthood by seven years, along with the dull ache in his left shoulder and the habit of counting every man who entered through the swinging low-beamed door.

Sixteen paces away, two drovers were arguing over a game of bone-carved dice. One accused the other of shaving the six; the other reached for a gutting knife with a handle bound in greasy twine. Royce did not shift his seat, nor did he lay a hand on the scabbard tucked between his shins. Three months ago, in a cooler climate, he might have cared enough to calculate their lunges. Today, his shirt was glued to his spine with salted sweat, and he had only three coppers left in the leather pouch tied to his breeches. A corpse in a tavern was none of his business unless someone was willing to pay a quarter-groat to drag it outside.

A gust of hot wind shoved the door open, spraying dry, powdery grit across the sawdust floor. The tavern grew quieter, though not silent. Men who live by the road learn early to measure the wind, because the wind brings dust, and dust ruins axles, blinds mules, and hides raiders.

Through the veil of grit stepped a man who clearly did not walk behind camels. He wore a traveling cloak of deep sea-green wool, lined with silk that showed at the hems like an unearned boast. The wool was far too heavy for the heat, but men of money liked to suffer for their dye-pots; it proved they could afford the weight of their own arrogance. Under the cloak, silver wire bound the seams of a tailored linen tunic. His nose was long, his cheeks bore the smooth, oiled shine of someone who used citrus balm after shaving, and his eyes darted through the dim room with the quick, evaluating twitch of an appraiser at an auction of dead men’s bedding.

Behind him came two guards. They were large, broad-faced men from the hill country, wearing boiled leather jerkins stitched with crude iron rings. They had swords, but their scabbards were clean and their knuckles lacked the flat, calloused look of men who fought without their weapons drawn.

The man in the sea-green cloak scanned the benches, wrinkled his nose at the smell of the tallow lamps, and spoke to the tavern-keeper without lowering his voice.

"I was told there was an iron-monger here who used to wear an eagle on his chest," the merchant said. His voice was light, musical, and carried the nasal drawl of the river ports five hundred leagues to the west. "One who knows which end of a broadsword cuts."

The keeper, an old man whose ears had been cropped for petty theft twenty years back, didn't even look up from the pewter mug he was scouring with a handful of wood-ash. He simply jerked his chin toward the corner pillar where Royce sat.

Royce took another sip of the sour ale. It was terrible, but liquid was liquid when the wells outside were half-choked with brine.

The boots of the two hill-guards thudded on the packed earth floor as they cleared a path that was already empty. The merchant followed, moving with that peculiar, buoyant walk of a man who believed every room he entered had been prepared especially for him. He stopped three feet from Royce’s low bench, looked down at the grease-stained knees of Royce’s canvas trousers, and then at the sword propped between them.

The scabbard was wood covered in split cowhide, bound with rusted iron bands. The hilt was bare steel, wrapped in black thread that had frayed into gray fuzz near the pommel. The pommel itself was a plain lead sphere, beaten flat on one side where Royce had once used it to drive an iron picket into frozen ground.

"You are Ser Royce Vance," the merchant stated. It was not quite a question, though he tilted his head as if waiting for an objection.

"Royce will do," Royce said. His voice was gravelly, the sound of an iron grate sliding over river rocks. "Ser is an expensive title, and I cannot afford the laundry for it."

The merchant smiled. His teeth were very white and suspiciously even, the sort of teeth that had never met an iron knuckle or a stale ship-biscuit. "A sense of economy. Excellent. My name is Master Elian Finch, of the Grand Levant Guild. Perhaps you have heard of my cousins in Oakhaven?"

"No," Royce said.

"A pity. They control three-quarters of the copper imports through the sound." Finch glanced at the wooden stool opposite Royce. It was covered in a film of gray salt-dust. Finch motioned with two fingers, and one of his hill-guards stepped forward, wiped the stool with his sleeve, and stepped back. Finch sat down, pulling his cloak carefully around his knees to keep the hem off the earth. "I am told you are an expert on the Salt Road."

"I am an expert on surviving it," Royce corrected him. "There is a difference. Men who become experts on the road itself usually end up planted four feet deep beneath the milestones."

"A semantic distinction," Finch said with an airy flick of his fingers. "The point remains. I have twelve wagons loaded with rock salt from the lower basins. Not the gray scrapings the locals feed their swine, mind you, but crystalline white—the kind the high courts in the North pay for in silver weight. Two thousand bags. Pure, preserved, and destined for the city of Al-Kharid."

Royce looked at him for five seconds. A fly landed on the lip of his ale pot; he did not bother to brush it away. "The road to Al-Kharid is seven hundred miles of dry flint, scrub brush, and three tribes of nomadic bastards who consider every bag of salt passing their territory to be a personal insult from God. It is also the dry season. The cisterns at the Red Well collapsed in the spring."

"I am aware," Finch said smoothly. "Which is why my wagons carry six hundred gallons of water in sealed, wax-lined casks. More than enough for forty head of oxen and twenty-five men."

"Oxen," Royce muttered. He set the cup down. The iron tang of the beer lingered on his tongue like a bad penny. "You brought northern oxen to the salt flats?"

"They have greater hauling capacity than pack-camels. It is a matter of simple arithmetic, Vance. A good ox pulls four times what a camel carries, and eats dry straw without complaining."

"And when their hooves split on the salt crust?"

"We shoe them with rawhide," Finch said, though his left eyebrow twitched. He did not like being questioned on matters of tonnage. "I have not crossed the sea to be lectured on animal husbandry by a hedge-knight. I came to hire an arm. Not a farmhand."

Royce leaned his head back against the timber pillar. The wood was dry as tinder; he could hear the wood-boring beetles clicking inside the grain. He knew Finch’s type. The world was full of second sons of merchant houses who had read three books on logistics, borrowed their father’s credit, and thought the wilderness was simply a marketplace that hadn't yet been properly surveyed. They looked at a map and saw straight lines between rivermouths and cities. They did not see the heat mirages that made three leagues look like ten, nor the salt rot that ate the stitching out of boots within forty-eight hours of leaving the well-heads.

"I am not a hedge-knight," Royce said quietly. "A hedge-knight has a horse and a squire."

"You have a sword."

"I have a piece of steel that keeps the locals from taking my boots while I am asleep."

Finch leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. A heavy gold ring, set with a cloudy green beryl, clicked against the wood of his walking stick. "Let us be direct, Vance. I know who you were. The Eagle of the White Ford. Lord Julian’s personal champion at the siege of Morne. You held the water-gate against twenty mounted men while the non-combatants crossed the shallows."

"Nineteen," Royce said. "One of them fell off his horse before he reached the gate. He was very drunk."

"And then you refused to hang the prisoners after the keep surrendered," Finch continued, ignoring the correction. "You told Lord Julian that an oath given under parley was binding, even to peasants with pitchforks. Julian did not agree. He took your spur, your lands, and your good name, and left you to wander the margins with whatever iron you could carry on your saddle-pommel."

Royce’s gaze did not waver. The scar through his right eyebrow felt hot, as it always did when Morne was named. It had been seven years, but a broken vow has a way of staying fresh in the mouth, like copper filings under the tongue.

"You’ve been talking to the recruiters in the lower square," Royce said.

"I talk to everyone. It is the first rule of trade: know the provenance of the goods before you weigh the silver." Finch smiled his bright, thin smile. "The mercenaries here are rabble. Deserters from the border wars, thieves who got tired of the galleys, hill-men who would sell my throat to the first bandit who offers them three sheep and a jug of date-brandy. I have forty hired lances, but they need a master. Someone who knows how to form a square when the dust-riders come out of the sun. Someone whose word is so stupidly, inflexibly iron that he would die over a sack of salt rather than break an agreement."

"That was another man," Royce said. "That man died outside Morne. The crows finished him. I am what was left after they took the fat."

Finch did not look discouraged. Instead, he reached into his tunic and drew out a small, flat wooden box. He set it on the greasy table between them and slid the lid back with his thumb.

Inside was a single coin. It was not the thin silver groat common to the border territories, nor the stamped pewter tokens the wagon-captains used to pay their drovers. It was an imperial sovereign of the old dynasty, twice the size of a man’s thumb, thick-rimmed, and struck in red-gold so pure it showed the fine, velvet grain of the die. It caught the yellow grease-light from the overhead lamp and seemed to drink it, glowing like a small, hot coal on the gray planking.

"That is one," Finch said. "There are forty-nine more in my chest at the inn across the square. Ten now. Twenty when we reach the halfway wells at Bir-Zara. Twenty more when the wagons enter the North Gate of Al-Kharid."

Royce looked at the gold. He had not seen a sovereign since the war. A man could buy four good horses with that one coin, or twenty cows, or fifty acres of stony hill-ground in the North where the rain fell every four days and the water didn't taste of alkali. A man could buy a small cottage with a slate roof, hire an apprentice to work a garden, and never have to look at another camel for the rest of his life.

"Bir-Zara is dry," Royce said. He didn't look up from the gold. "The nomadic tribes took it two moons ago. They salted the cisterns."

"They took the upper pool," Finch countered, his voice dropping an octave into business-like precision. "My informants say the deep borehole is still sound. It is merely blocked with stone. We have crowbars and pulleys. We will clear it."

"Informants who sit in taverns thirty miles from the sand," Royce said. "The Sand-Snakes don't leave water behind them, Finch. They know that an army without water is just meat waiting to be carved."

"Then we will carry more water," Finch snapped, his patience fraying slightly at the edges. "I did not come to debate the theology of thirst with you, Vance. The wagons move the day after tomorrow, at dawn. The high tide at the lagoon will let the barges clear the harbor bar, and the trail opens. If you are with me, take the coin. If you wish to sit here until your liver rots on goat-beer, say so, and I will hire the German captain at the barracks."

"The German captain has the pox," Royce said. "And he will run the first time a skirmisher whistles an arrow through his tent-flap."

"Then he and I will have a very short relationship," Finch replied. He rose, smoothing the silk lining of his sea-green cloak. "The coin stays on the table. It is my offer. Take it, and be at the North Yard by the third hour of morning to inspect the draft-harnesses. Leave it, and the tavern-keeper will have it five minutes after I am out the door."

Finch turned on his heel, his two guards falling into step behind him like twin shadows of boiled hide. They moved out into the blinding white light of the square, the door banging shut behind them and letting in another thin spray of salt-grit that settled over the table like fine ash.

Royce sat alone.

The tavern had resumed its low, grumbling rhythm. The two drovers had decided not to kill each other over the dice; instead, they were sharing a bowl of fried lentils and muttering about the price of hay. The keeper was still rubbing his greasy mug, his small, piggish eyes darting occasionally toward the corner where the gold coin sat on the rough wood.

Royce reached out with two fingers. His hands were broad, the skin cross-hatched with pale, thin lines—the white tracks of long-healed cuts from shield-bosses and broken spear-points. His nails were cracked and black with grease.

He touched the gold. It was cold, far colder than the tavern air. It felt heavy, heavier than it had any right to be for its size.

He picked it up, turned it over, and felt the raised profile of the old Emperor—a man who had been dead forty years, whose marble monuments had all been turned into lime for mortar by the warlords who followed him. The gold was soft enough that his thumbnail left a faint mark near the laurel leaves.

"Fool," Royce muttered to himself.

He slipped the sovereign into the empty pouch at his belt. It hung there like a lead sinker, pulling the leather down against his hip.

He picked up his sword. The blade rattled slightly in its wood-and-hide sheath as he stood. It was three inches longer than the short, curved blades the men of the South favored, designed for hacking down from the back of a great horse that had died seven years ago in the red mud of Morne.

Royce walked out of the tavern, stepping through the low door into the blast-furnace heat of the midday square.

The sun above Qasr al-Milh was not yellow; it was a white, blazing iron plate that bleached the sky until the blue turned to the color of wet tin. The buildings around the square were low, flat-topped blocks of sun-dried brick, coated with a crust of gray-white brine that rose from the damp earth every morning and dried into a fine powder by noon. To the north, the salt-pans stretched away toward the horizon, flat and white as an inland sea frozen in mid-surge, shimmering with heat-ripples that made the distant limestone crags look like floating towers of bone.

Across the square, outside the great stone storehouses of the Salt Company, a line of huge northern wagons stood like stranded galleons. They were mountain-wagons, built of heavy oak timbers with iron-tired wheels taller than a man’s shoulder. Royce walked toward them, his boots crunching on the salt-crust that coated the clay.

A boy was leading an ox toward the stone troughs. The beast was huge, dun-colored, with a wide, wet muzzle and horns that spanned five feet from tip to tip. It was panting, its great tongue lolling out the side of its mouth, white foam dripping from its lips into the gray dust. Its ribs showed beneath its skin like the timbers of a wrecked hull.

Royce stopped by the lead wagon. He reached out and touched an iron tire. The metal was hot enough to raise a blister if he held his hand there for three heartbeats.

He drew his paring knife again, bent down, and jammed the tip into the wooden felloe of the wheel, right beside the iron ring. The seasoned oak resisted for a fraction of an inch, then gave way with a soft, dry crunch. The wood had dried out in the desert air; the grain was shrinking, pulling away from the iron tire that held it together.

"Two hundred leagues," Royce whispered to the tire. "You won't make sixty."

He stood up, wiping his knife on his canvas trousers. From the courtyard of the caravanserai, he could hear Finch’s high, sharp voice barking orders at the teamsters, demanding that the casks of salt be double-checked against the bill of lading. A whip cracked twice, followed by the deep, guttural bellow of an ox being turned into a stall.

Royce looked down at the hilt of his own sword. There was a speck of red rust near the crossguard, where the salt air had found the steel between the oilings. He rubbed it with his thumb, but the red did not come away; it had bitten deep into the iron, eating into the metal just as the road ate into men.

He looked once more toward the North, where the white flats met the trembling horizon, then turned toward the smithy to find an iron hammer and a bushel of tallow.

The high, hot sun had barely begun to sag toward the Western Crags when Royce found Master Elian Finch in the central courtyard of the Great Khan. The place was an open-air marketplace of sweat, beast, and bale, packed tight with forty heavy mountain-wagons and twice as many bellowing draft oxen. The stench of wet straw, old dung, and rancid tallow hung over the yard like a wet wool blanket.

Finch stood atop an upturned salt-crate, a brass-bound ledger balanced on his left forearm, shouting at a crew of local loaders who were struggling to lash down a wooden water-cask with hemp rope. His sea-green cloak was draped over a hitching post nearby, revealing a tunic drenched in dark circles under the arms. His citrus balm had surrendered hours ago to the reality of Qasr al-Milh, replaced by a fine, white film of salt-dust that clung to his smooth jawline and dark eyebrows.

"Not there, you absolute swine!" Finch barked, using a slender bone-handled stylus to point at the wagon’s rear axle. "The weight must sit over the timber frame, not the tail-gate! If that axle snaps on the salt-flats, I will personally deduct the cost of the wood from your lineage!"

Royce leaned his shoulder against the stone archway of the yard, watching the circus with his arms crossed over his chest. In his right hand, he carried a heavy wooden bucket filled with rendered pig fat and a crude iron scraper he had leased from the local blacksmith for two copper pieces.

"They don't speak your river-dialect, Finch," Royce said, his voice easily cutting through the chaos of shouting men and stamping hooves. "To them, you sound like a wounded goose."

Finch spun around, nearly dropping his stylus into the dirt. He blinked through the heat-glare, taking in Royce’s silhouette against the blinding white archway. A look of sharp relief crossed the merchant's face, though he quickly smothered it behind a mask of irritated authority.

"Ah, the knight errant returns," Finch said, stepping down from the crate with a stiff, careful grace that suggested his boots were pinching his toes. "And with a bucket of grease. How fitting. Have you decided to earn your gold, Vance, or are you merely here to criticize my logistics?"

"Your logistics are going to burn half these beasts alive before we reach the second milestone," Royce said. He walked past Finch, ignoring the merchant’s puff of indignation, and stopped beside the nearest wagon. He squatted down, looking at the massive wheel hub. The iron band had already begun to bite into the dry oak felloe, expanding under the desert heat while the wood shrank beneath it.

Royce dipped his iron scraper into the gray grease-bucket and slapped a heavy, thick glob onto the joint where the spoke met the hub. "Your teamsters are tightening the ropes, but they aren't soaking the wheels. In three days, the dry air will pull every drop of moisture out of these spokes. The wood will shrink, the iron tires will slide off the rims, and your rock salt will be sitting in the dirt while the dust-riders use your draft oxen for target practice."

Finch walked over, sniffing dubiously at the bucket of pig fat. "The yard-master assured me these vehicles were built for heavy freight."

"They were built for the stone turnpikes of the Rhine," Royce replied, slapping another wedge of grease into the hub assembly. "Where it rains three days out of five and the mud keeps the wood swollen. Here, the air eats water faster than a dry sponge. Every wagon needs its hubs packed with fat every morning before the sun clears the ridge. If you don't grease them, the friction alone will set the axles on fire by noon."

Finch stared at the wheel, then at the sprawling line of thirty-nine other wagons filling the dusty yard. His smooth forehead creased into a deep, calculating furrow. "That will take hours. We lose the morning light."

"You lose three hours now," Royce said, standing up and wiping his greasy hands on a scrap of rag, "or you lose half your salt in the White Flats. Choose."

Finch sucked in a sharp breath through his nose, his dark eyes flickering toward the northern horizon where the heat shimmered off the salt-pans. For a moment, the arrogant merchant vanished, replaced by the cool, cold calculator who lived behind the linen tunics and silver trim. He turned back to the court, raised his voice, and shouted for the head teamster—a thick-set, scarred man named Hobb who looked like he had been carved out of salt-pork and iron.

"Hobb!" Finch snapped. "Get six men with grease-pails. Every axle, every spoke, every hub. We do not roll until the knight says the wood is wet."

Hobb spat a brown stream of tobacco juice onto the cobbles, looked at Royce, then at Finch, and grunted. "Costs extra for the fat, Master Finch. The local smith knows what we're up against. He's charging four silver groats a tub."

"Pay it!" Finch spat, his face turning a shade darker under his tan. "And charge it to the contingency account under 'unforeseen maintenance.' Now move!"

As the teamsters grumblingly began to retrieve grease-pots from the storehouse, Finch turned back to Royce, folding his arms tight across his chest. "You drive a hard bargain for a man who was drinking sour beer out of a cracked pot an hour ago."

"I am saving your life," Royce said plainly. "And my gold. A contract is no good to me if I have to bury my pay under a salt-pile three hundred miles from a tavern."

Finch let out a short, dry chuckle that lacked any real humor. "Fair enough, Vance. Let us discuss the rest of your duties. I have forty lances hired from the barracks down the road. They are currently occupying the cellars of the Red Lion, drinking my advance pay and threatening to cut each other's belts off."

"Who commands them?"

"A mercenary from the eastern marches named Captain Jax," Finch said, waving his hand vaguely toward the south side of the square. "He claims to have served in the Duke's horse-archers."

"Jax is a deserter," Royce said, leaning his hip against the heavy wagon timber. "He ran from the trenches at Oakhaven when the siege towers caught fire. He's good at intimidating unarmed peasants and beating camp followers, but if a Sand-Snake so much as whistles from a dune, he'll be the first man on the fastest mule heading back to the coast."

Finch’s left eye twitched again. "He came highly recommended by the local magistrate."

"The magistrate gets ten percent of Jax's hiring fee," Royce said flatly. "It's a standard border game. Jax takes your coin, walks three days into the scrub, finds an excuse to drop his weapons, and runs back to Qasr al-Milh to split the profit with the magistrate while you get carved up by the local tribes."

Finch stood very still. The air between them seemed to grow tighter, heavy with the scent of hot iron and sulfur. "You seem remarkably well-versed in the local rascality, Ser Royce."

"I have been sitting in that tavern for seven months, Finch," Royce said. "You listen to men long enough when they think you're just another piece of washed-up iron, and you learn how every rat in the sinkhole gets its cheese."

"Then what do you propose?" Finch asked, his voice dropping into a low, sharp murmur. "I have two hundred thousand silver groats tied up in this haul. If I do not reach Al-Kharid before the winter trade-fleet arrives from the western islands, my family's house in Oakhaven goes to the creditors. I cannot afford to lose these wagons, Vance. I cannot afford to turn back."

Royce looked at the merchant. Underneath the fine clothes and the arrogant drawl, there was a desperate, razor-thin edge to Finch. He was not just a greedy trader looking to double his coin; he was a man standing on the edge of a precipice, carrying his family's honor on a line of wooden wagons that were drying out in the heat. Royce knew that look. He had seen it in the mirror seven years ago when the gates of Morne were closed against him.

"We keep Jax," Royce said softly.

Finch blinked. "Keep him? After what you just told me?"

"If you fire him now, he and his forty men will be waiting for us five miles out in the scrub to take the salt for themselves," Royce said. "We keep them, but we split them up. Five men to a wagon-group. We put two of your trusted house-servants with each team to hold the reins, and we make Jax ride at the front, right beside me. Where I can see his hands at all times."

"And if he refuses?"

"He won't refuse," Royce said, touching the worn leather hilt at his hip. " Jax knows me. He knows I remember what happened at Oakhaven. He will sit on his horse, keep his mouth shut, and pray that we meet bandits so he can hope I take an arrow in the neck."

Finch studied Royce for a long moment, his eyes scanning the knight’s graying hair, the old scar through his brow, and the worn, plain iron of his kit. A slow, thin smile spread across the merchant's face—not the fake, bright smile he had used in the tavern, but a cold, sharp blade of an expression.

"You really are an insufferable, suspicious bastard, aren't you, Vance?"

"I am still alive," Royce said. "That makes me an expert."

"Very well," Finch said, turning back toward his ledger. "We follow your disposition for the guard. But the schedule remains mine. We move at dawn tomorrow. The water-casks are filled, the salt is lashed, and the draft-beasts have been fed their final ration of dry barley. If we miss the morning breeze off the bay, the heat will kill three oxen before we clear the low salt-flats."

"Dawn it is," Royce said. He reached down, picked up his bucket of pig fat and his scraper, and looked out over the yard. "Get your men to work on these wheels, Finch. I'm going to the barracks to tell Captain Jax that he has a new line of march."

Royce turned and walked back toward the archway, his heavy boots crunching against the dry salt-crust on the cobbles.

The heat of Qasr al-Milh was reaching its afternoon peak, turning the low adobe buildings into red-hot bricks that radiated light like dying coals. In the square outside, a few thin goats were gnawing on the dry wicker of an abandoned basket, while the town's iron-monger beat out a rhythm on an anvil—clack, clack, ring—a hollow, metallic sound that echoed off the white walls and died in the vast, empty space of the northern desert.

Royce didn't look at the sky, nor did he look toward the tavern where his three coppers had been left on the greasy planking. He walked straight toward the narrow alley that led to the town barracks, his hand resting light and easy on the hilt of his sword, feeling the heavy lump of the gold sovereign pressing against his hip like an iron weight.

The Salt Road was waiting for them out there beyond the mud-brick walls—seven hundred miles of dry flint, white dust, and old blood. It was a bad road, built on bad oaths and bad money, but as Royce stepped into the shadows of the alley, he realized it was the only road he had left.

He reached the heavy timber door of the barracks, kicked it open with the heel of his boot, and stepped inside to find Captain Jax.