Chapter 247 Frozen Ridge: Zoey's POV

Chapter 247 Frozen Ridge: Zoey's POV
The wind on the high eastern ridge felt like frozen needles against my face.

Below us, the pine trees looked like small green spears sticking out of the heavy white drifts. I knelt in the deep snow behind a granite outcrop, pulling my thick wool cloak tight around my neck.

Beside me, three of my best hunters—Lyra, Jax, and Dax—lay flat on their bellies, their short bows wrapped in oiled leather to keep the string dry.

"There," Lyra whispered, pointing a gloved finger down toward the narrow creek bed.

Through the bare birch trees, I saw them.

Vane’s vanguard. Fifty heavy cavalrymen rode in a tight, double column along the frozen stream. They were big men wrapped in thick black furs over dark iron chainmail.

Their horses were broad-chested steppe chargers, their hooves clattering loudly against the ice. Long iron sabers hung from their saddles, and heavy round shields painted with a red hawk emblem rested against their stirrups.

They moved like men who believed no one was watching them.

"They’re moving slow," Jax muttered under his breath, his breath forming a white cloud in the freezing air. "The snow is too deep for those heavy chargers."

"That makes them easy targets for a long bow," Dax whispered, reaching for an arrow in his hip quiver.

"Touch your bow and I’ll break your fingers," I growled softly without taking my eyes off the trail.
"We aren't here to start a fight with fifty armored riders. We’re here to find where their main camp sits."

Dax pulled his hand back, swallowing hard.

I looked down at my left hand. Beneath my heavy leather mitten, the silver signet ring pressed firm against my skin. Through the blood bond, I could feel Klaus back at the mountain camp. His pulse was a steady thrum in my chest, focused as he rallied the heavy spearmen for the midnight march.

He trusted me to find the enemy’s throat before he swung his axe.

"Follow the tree line," I ordered, rising into a low crouch. "Keep your boots in the shadow of the crags. If a horse snorts, you freeze."

We moved like ghosts through the high timber.

The snow was waist-deep in the dips between the rocks, but we stayed on the high ridge where the mountain wind blew the stone bare. We tracked the cavalry for two miles as the sky turned from dull grey to bruised purple.

At the bend where the Red River cut through the steep gorge, the trees cleared.

I dropped to my knees behind a fallen pine, pulling Jax and Lyra down with me. Below us sat Vane’s main supply camp.

It was packed into a wide, flat clearing between two towering rock walls. Over two hundred dark leather tents lined the riverbank. Smoke rose from a dozen large campfires where horsemen sat roasting dark meat on iron spits. Near the center of the camp, four large timber wagons stood surrounded by armed guards.

"Look at those wagons," Lyra whispered, her dark eyes wide. "That’s not just grain."

I pulled a pair of copper brass field glasses from my belt pouch—a gift Klaus had taken from a southern trader—and put them to my eye.

The lenses focused on the heavy timber wagons.

They were reinforced with iron bars and locked with heavy chains. Stacked high beside them were dozens of wooden kegs marked with a white cross.

"Black powder," I said, my voice dropping into a cold line. "Vane didn't just bring cavalry. He brought siege powder to blow our wooden gates off the hinges."

"If he gets those wagons up the narrow pass to our lower valley, the timber walls won't hold five minutes," Jax said, his knuckles turning white as he gripped his hunting knife.

"He won't get them up the pass," I said flatly.

I swept the glass across the rest of the camp.

Vane had set his guards at the main entrance near the river, but the back of his camp rested directly under the steep granite cliff where we were standing. To a steppe rider who lived on flat grasslands, a hundred-foot cliff looked like an impassable wall. To a mountain hunter born in the crags, it was just a steep set of stairs.

"Lyra," I commanded softly. "Count the guards around those powder wagons."

"Eight men," she answered immediately. "Two on the timber watch-platform, six walking the perimeter with iron spears. They swap shifts every hour."

"And the horses?"

"Tethered in the pine grove on the far west side," Jax added. "Over three hundred mounts. If those horses break loose in the dark, Vane’s men will be chasing them through the snow until morning."

I lowered the glass and tucked it back into my pouch.

Through the bond, I felt Klaus’s mind shift. He was on the move. The heavy column had left the mountain gate and was winding down the dark trail toward the eastern pass. He was two hours away.

"We have our target," I told the three hunters.

"We heading back to meet the Alpha?" Dax asked.

"No," I said, unslinging my short bow and checking the notch on my broadhead arrows. "If we leave now, Vane might move those powder wagons before Klaus gets into position. We stay on this ridge."

"Just the four of us?" Jax asked, looking down at the two hundred armed men in the clearing below.

"We don't need two hundred blades to ruin a camp," I said, a cold, vicious smile touching the corner of my lips. "We just need four fire arrows and a steep hill."

I looked down at the iron-bound powder kegs resting in the snow below.

Vane thought he was the hunter. He thought he could demand my life and my pack's freedom with a arrogant note pinned to a dead man's chest. But he didn't know these mountains, and he didn't know the female who wore the North Pack's ring.

"Set the fire rags," I ordered, pulling four oil-soaked linen strips from my pack. "When Klaus’s horn blows from the pass, we light the dark."

The three hunters nodded, their eyes hard and sharp as iron.

We settled back into the cold snow behind the granite ledge, watching the fires burn in the enemy camp below, waiting for the dark to bring my mate.