Fragment VII — Before the Pass Closes
The wind always arrives before the snow.
It comes down the throat of Vaelor Pass in long, hollow breaths, carrying the taste of iron and old stone. By the time a man feels it in his joints, the closure is already decided. The high ridges do not argue. They seal.
I have three hours of light, perhaps less if the clouds thicken. The horses know it. They pull without coaxing, their breath white against the gray slope. Every merchant who has misjudged this stretch now lives only as a caution repeated in taverns from the marches to Valen Cor.
The road from the pass bends southward in a narrow descent toward the settlements scattered along the outer ridge. That is where I must be by nightfall — not too close to the mouth of the pass, and not too far into the lowlands. There is a thin band of habitations where the clans mix just enough to temper suspicion. Farther up, near the stone towers, the faces grow harder. Patrolmen in wool and bone watch for banners and dialect before they watch for blades.
Imperial speech carries in the cold.
It is not wise for a convoy like mine to travel without men whose grandmothers can name a Highland ancestor. That much I have learned. Mixed bloods soften the edge of insult. They know which jokes to laugh at and which to ignore. They know how to greet without bowing too low or too high. An imperial merchant alone on this road would pay for every mile twice — once in coin and once in dignity.
The Highlands have long memories.
They do not forget whose coin builds the stone markers on this road, nor whose surveyors first measured the basin beyond the pass. To them, a trader is never only a trader. He is a ledger walking upright. He is a rumor wrapped in wool. I have been spat near the watch posts before. I have also been escorted through snowdrifts by the same men who spat, when it suited them.
Trade confuses hatred.
That is why the route exists at all.
The basin beyond the pass draws men like frost draws breath from the lungs. It is the reason caravans attempt this crossing so late in the season. It is the reason imperial coin flows north despite the risk, and Highland goods move south despite resentment. Without that basin, Vaelor would be nothing more than a treacherous cut in the mountains. With it, the pass becomes a vein.
And veins must remain open.
The marches depend on it. Valen Cor depends on it. The markets there feel the closure of the pass before the snow even falls. Prices shift. Warehouses tighten. Families calculate. A sealed Vaelor is not merely inconvenience; it is contraction. It is a tightening fist around distant throats.
The first flecks of snow strike my glove.
Too early.
If the wind turns and the drifts rise, the patrols will retreat to their higher keeps, and the road will belong to no one but the weather. In such moments the empire feels small, and clan pride feels irrelevant. The mountains answer to neither.
Still, I am grateful the road exists.
Grateful that stone was laid, that markers were driven into shale, that men risked insult and blade to carve a line between the basin and the lowlands. Grateful that despite hostility, despite suspicion, despite winter’s indifference, there remains a path.
The tiny settlement ahead will show itself by smoke first, then by the outline of its timber palisade against the slope. If I reach it by dusk, I will stable the horses, pay for a corner of floor, and sleep in my boots. At dawn, if the pass has not yet sealed, we press on.
If it has — we wait.
Every merchant who works this road learns the same lesson: trade is not merely exchange. It is endurance. It is negotiation conducted in wind and silence. It is the quiet understanding that even those who resent your presence will sometimes depend on your return.
The wind sharpens.
I lower my head and urge the horses faster.
Vaelor does not forgive hesitation.
