Page 53 of What Remains (John Worthy #3)

Their arrival wasn’t a surprise. They made sure it wouldn’t be. No point in being gunned down until Amu delivered his terms.

There were two ways up from the camp. One was the wide road used by truck. Even walking, the time to the mine would have been cut by half.

There was another way: a narrow path hacked from stone.

Taking that would gobble up most of the day.

Which, naturally, is the path John proposed they take: the path of most resistance.

Because appearances mattered. They shouldn’t look to be in any particular hurry. Twilight, John said, was their friend.

Sarbaz’s men knew they were coming. The mine’s entrance was not at the summit, but several hundred feet below at a staging area large enough for trucks to rumble in empty and rumble out full. Anyone standing guard at the mine would have a pretty clear view of them for most of their journey.

That was important, too.

The path was sinuous, slow and steep. Given the westerly wind, the trip up was also brutally cold because there were no true breaks, no way to get part of the mountain between you and that wind.

Instead, the path went up and up and up, with switchbacks that went back and forth and back and forth as if stitched into the mountain in broad loops.

There was only one switchback where a person could really pause to rest and get out of the wind.

More than midway to the mine, the path was partially obstructed by a rock fall.

No one at the mine had ever bothered to clear the fall, possibly because the drop from there into the valley was nearly vertical, with no ledges or anything would stop a fall.

Slip there, and it was a long way down. There also was no way to avoid the rockfall either, which probably accounted for why the rockfall remained where it was.

Still, it was a good place to stop. Just not for too long.

They didn’t go unarmed. That would be stupid. Worse, not taking rifles would probably raise Sarbaz’s antennae. But Amu’s rifle was in a pannier strapped to the yak’s flank and Kur carried his in sling on his back.

Amu also made sure that spare uni to which he’d tied a strip of white cloth was visible at all times.

Surrender had the same meaning in any language.

An interesting word, too, Poya thought. A person might surrender and withdraw from a fight.

But a person could also be surrendered, the way a chess player might sacrifice a pawn to guard a king or gain an advantage.

A person could be pawned off, sacrificed in much the same way: this for that.

Pawns were useful only insofar as their deaths served a greater purpose.

Shahida was a pawn. So was the lumpy man-sized bundle, stained with rust-colored splotches, lashed to the yak’s flanks.

And now, so was he.