The mountain pass known as the Widow's Throat was not merely a geographical obstacle; it was a psychological weight that had crushed the ambitions of Oakhaven's merchants for generations. It was a jagged, vertical wound in the earth, carved by ancient glacial shifts and tempered by a wind that never seemed to stop screaming. To the uninitiated, it was a scenic, if daunting, route through the spine of the southern mountains—a place of majestic peaks and crystalline silences. To a logistics officer like Deacon, however, it was a tactical nightmare of bottlenecked supply lines, unstable shale, and high-ground vulnerability that defied every standard operating procedure in the manual.
In the height of a normal summer, the Throat was a treacherous path of loose stone and sudden, violent thunderstorms that could turn a dry creek bed into a terminal torrent in minutes. But in the depths of this unnatural winter—this "Ice Age" brought about by the Goblins' interference or the planet's own dying gasps—the pass had transformed into something far more malevolent. It was now a frozen deathtrap, a corridor of blue, translucent ice and shearing, sub-zero winds that could strip the heat from a man's marrow before he could even register the chill.
Deacon stood at the mouth of the pass, his boots crunching into a crust of permafrost that had likely not thawed in months. His breath emerged as a thick, pulsing plume of white in the pre-dawn gloom, momentarily obscuring his vision before the wind whipped it away toward the jagged peaks. The air was so cold it felt brittle, possessing a crystalline quality that made every sound—the snort of a horse, the jingle of a harness—carry for miles with unsettling clarity.
Behind him, the first official export of the "New Oakhaven" was ready to move. It was a sight that would have been a fantasy only a month prior: a procession of six heavy sledges, each a masterpiece of Miller's improvisational engineering. These weren't the flimsy, decorative sleds used by the local nobility for winter festivals. These were heavy-duty industrial platforms, their runners reinforced with Miller's specialized "S-7 Steel"—a high-carbon iron alloy they had refined in the tower's basement. Each runner had been polished to a mirror finish and lubricated with a thick, nauseating mix of rendered mutton tallow and graphite flakes to ensure they wouldn't seize against the ice.
On each sledge sat a "Mark I Seed Drill," the machines that were supposed to save the Southern Marches from starvation. Each one was a hulking assembly of seasoned oak and hand-milled brass, wrapped in layers of heavy, wax-treated canvas to protect the delicate internal mechanisms from the biting moisture. Beneath the canvas, the drills sat like sleeping giants, their internal gears and hopper-plates representing the most advanced technology on the planet. To the local laborers who had helped load them, these were "Holy Engines," artifacts gifted by the ancestors. To Deacon, they were the "Initial Public Offering" of the Shadow Command—the currency with which they would buy their seat at the regional table.
"The weight distribution is holding, Sir, but only just," Corporal Miller reported, his voice muffled by the thick wool scarf wrapped around his face. He moved with a lumbering, deliberate pace, checking the tension on the harness of the lead team of draft horses. Miller was a man of iron and earth, and the cold seemed to bother him less than the potential for mechanical failure. "We've had to mount the seed hoppers high to accommodate the gravity-fed gear ratios Blake insisted on. It makes the whole rig top-heavy. If we hit a pocket of soft snow or take a corner on the ice with too much momentum, the center of gravity is going to shift. If that happens, we lose the machine, we lose the horses, and the driver goes over the edge with them."
Deacon nodded, his eyes scanning the steep, icy walls of the pass. He wasn't just worried about the physics; he was worried about the optics. This caravan was a rolling target. Every mile they traveled away from Oakhaven was a mile where they were vulnerable to the myriad of predators—both human and otherwise—that inhabited the wilds.
"I've rigged 'dead-man' brakes on the rear of every runner," Miller continued, pointing to a heavy iron lever situated near the driver's seat. "If the sledge starts to slide backward or lose control on a descent, the driver pulls that. It drops a series of three-inch iron spikes directly into the ice. It'll stop the sledge, but it might shatter the frame if the speed is too high. It's a one-time use, 'hail mary' solution."
"Understood, Miller. Just make sure the drivers know that a broken frame is better than a dead team," Deacon said. He turned his attention to the rest of the unit. He had assigned Staff Sergeant Rodriguez and a Trio of her best-trained militia to act as the vanguard, scouting ahead for obstructions or ambushes. Meanwhile, Tate and the Pepper Twins were hovering in the treeline above, invisible ghosts acting as a long-range screen.
The "Trade Corridor" was the most critical and most fragile link in Deacon's grand strategy. If these drills reached the Oryn Marches and were demonstrated to the trade factors, the economic hook would be set. Oakhaven would no longer be a failing barony; it would be the Silicon Valley of the medieval world. But if they were intercepted, if a single Imperial Auditor got a good look at the internal gear-boxes or if a Goblin raiding party burned the sledges for warmth, the Shadow Command would be exposed. Their "miracles" would be revealed as mere machines, and the Empire would descend upon them not with curiosity, but with the cold, genocidal intent of a sovereign who has been lied to.
"Brandt, you're on point with the lead sledge," Deacon commanded, turning to the man who was currently adjusting his emerald-green merchant's mantle. "You're the face of the 'Cassian Trade Mission.' If we run into an Imperial checkpoint or a local lord's tax-collectors, you do the talking. Use the 'Ecclesiastical Transit Permit' Father Marius signed. It's got enough purple wax and holy seals on it to confuse any illiterate sergeant of the guard. If they ask about the 'holy engines,' tell them they are consecrated relics of the Great Harvest and that touching them brings a three-generation curse of infertility."
Brandt gave a sharp, confident grin. "I've sold stranger things to scarier people, Sarge. I'll have them bowing to the wood-grain before we reach the summit."
As the caravan finally creaked into motion, the sound was deafening. The groan of the iron runners against the frozen ground sounded like a massive beast awakening from a long slumber. The draft horses, their hooves fitted with Miller's custom "ice-calks"—jagged iron studs designed to bite into the slick surface—strained against their leather harnesses. Their breath emerged in frantic, rhythmic bursts of steam, their eyes wide with the primeval fear of the heights.
Every lurch of the sledges sent a shudder through the entire line. The wood of the frames, seasoned as it was, protested the extreme cold, emitting sharp, gun-shot cracks as the moisture within the grain expanded and froze. It was a sensory gauntlet—the smell of horse sweat and cold iron, the blinding glare of the rising sun off the snow, and the constant, nagging anxiety of a commander who knew that his entire mission was balanced on the structural integrity of a few dozen wooden bolts.
Deacon watched the last sledge disappear into the mouth of the Throat, the shadows of the cliffs swallowing the small procession. He felt the familiar weight of the command inversion pressing down on him. In the 21st century, a logistics officer moved supplies with the click of a button and the roar of a C-130. Here, he was moving the future of humanity with the muscle of a horse and the hope that a blacksmith's weld would hold.
He spurred his own mount forward, a sturdy mountain pony bred for the terrain. As he entered the pass, the walls of the Widow's Throat rose up on either side of him like the ribs of a giant, ancient skeleton. The light of the sun was lost, replaced by a deep, bruising blue twilight that seemed to emanate from the ice itself. He looked up, his eyes searching the ridgeline for any sign of Tate or the Twins, but he saw only the jagged teeth of the mountain and the swirling eddies of the wind.
They were officially in the Corridor. There was no turning back now. Oakhaven was behind them, a beacon of smoke and industry in the frozen waste, and before them lay a world that didn't yet know it was about to be revolutionized. But as Deacon felt the temperature drop another ten degrees, he couldn't shake the feeling that they weren't the only ones who understood the value of the cargo they were carrying. The Empire was watching, the Goblins were waiting, and the mountain... the mountain just wanted to keep its silence.