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Twelve guards, not six. Ryan counted twice from behind the wagon wheel just to be sure his own eyes weren't lying to him tonight.
"Manifest says six," he whispered.
"Manifest's wrong." Ivy already had a knife in each hand, blades flat against her forearms so torchlight wouldn't catch them. "Victor doubled the escort. Somebody warned him."
"Nobody warned him. I track everything that moves through this valley. I would've known."
"Then track this." She nodded at the column — twelve soldiers walking two-by-two beside six wagons stamped FROSTHOLLOW HARVEST. Grain that belonged to his people. Grain Victor's men had "requisitioned" under a tax code Ryan had already proven was forged.
"We take the third wagon," Ryan said. "That's the one with the real ledger, not the fake copy they're showing the toll clerks."
"You take the wagon. I take everyone who tries to stop you."
"That's twelve men."
"I've fought worse odds before breakfast."
He didn't ask what breakfast looked like in her old life. The column was already turning off the north road, and there wasn't going to be a better window than right now, in the dark, before the garrison gate.
"Go," Ivy said, and shoved him toward the tree line.
He went low, boots quiet on frost-hard dirt, counting wagons the way he counted everything — first, second, third — and swung up onto the third wagon's footboard just as a guard turned his head.
"Oi—"
The guard didn't finish it. Ivy was already there, blade across his throat before the sound left him, gone again into the dark like she'd never stopped moving.
Ryan tore into the strongbox lashed under the sacks, fingers shaking, and ripped out the manifest scroll. Fake seal. Fake weight totals. Fake tax stamp. Victor's men were skimming grain off the top and calling it tribute.
"Got it!" he shouted, louder than he meant to.
Every torch in the column swung his way.
"There! On the wagon!"
Steel rang out of a dozen sheaths and Ryan's whole plan collapsed into one simple fact: he was standing on a moving wagon holding a piece of paper, with no sword.
Ivy hit the wagon bed behind him hard enough to shake the boards, already turning to put her back against his.
"Told you twelve," she said.
"I heard you the first time."
"Stay behind me and don't get creative."
"I'm always creative, that's my whole—"
"Ryan."
"Right. Behind you."
The first guard swung and Ivy took his arm off at the wrist before the blade got halfway through its arc. The second lunged low and she stepped into it instead of away, knife up under his ribs, using his own weight to throw him into a third man's legs.
Ryan flattened against the grain sacks, manifest still crushed in his fist like it was worth more than his own arm — technically, it was.
"Ivy, there's too many—"
"Then make yourself useful. Cut the harness."
"What?"
"Harness. Cut it. Bolts snap, horses run, we've got a wall of moving grain between us and them."
He didn't ask why she trusted him with a knife after telling him twice not to get creative. He sawed through the leather strap lashing the lead horse, and the wagon lurched sideways like the world had tilted.
"That's not—" He grabbed the rail. "That's not slowing down, Ivy, that's speeding up—"
"I said cut it, not steer it!"
The wagon bucked hard right, wheel catching a rut, and for one long second Ryan was airborne with nothing under his boots but night air.
Ivy's hand closed around his collar and yanked him sideways into her instead of off the wagon, and two guards closing in from the flank went down under the swinging wagon tongue a heartbeat later — she'd dropped them both while pulling him in, one boot to a knee, one blade to a throat, without letting go of him once.
For a second neither of them moved. His face was an inch from hers, her arm locked hard across his chest, both of them breathing like they'd run the whole north road.
"You're heavier than you look," she said.
"You're stronger than you look."
"Everyone's stronger than a man who does math for a living."
"That math just cost Victor his whole tax scheme."
Her mouth almost did something that wasn't a scowl. Almost.
Then the horses hit flat road and the wagon steadied, sacks spilling loose behind them, and the guards fell back into torchlight, shouting orders nobody was fast enough to follow.
"We're clear," Ryan said, half a question.
"We're not clear." Ivy was already scanning the treeline, blade still up. "We're lucky. Different word."
That was when the horn sounded. Far off, past the ridge, low and deliberate. Not a patrol. Something that had been waiting for exactly this.
"That's not Victor's escort," Ryan said. "Escort doesn't carry horns like that."
"That's reinforcements." Ivy turned to say something else and her whole body flinched sideways instead, one hand snapping up to her shoulder.
"Ivy?"
"I'm fine—"
She wasn't fine. The arrow had gone in under her collarbone, feathered end still shivering, and her knees went before the word finished leaving her mouth. Ryan caught her on instinct, one arm hooking under her back before her head hit the boards, her weight dropping into him all at once.
"Ivy — hey — look at me—"
"Don't." Her hand found his collar again, weaker this time. Blood soaked warm through his shirt where her shoulder pressed against him, spreading faster than he wanted to think about. "Don't let me die."
"You're not dying, you're bleeding, those are different—"
"While you still owe me." Her eyes found his, glassy, furious, refusing to close. "Ashe. You still owe me. Don't you dare let me collect it like this."
The horn sounded again, closer now, and past the ridge torches were already climbing the far hill in a line too straight and too fast to be anything but Victor's second column — riding hard toward the exact spot where Ryan knelt in the dirt with grain spilling around him and Ivy Crowe's blood running warm between his fingers.