The team bedded down, waiting until 3am with most of the team resting, and only a single person on watch. As the evening wore on, the wind rose and clouds raced across the sky, gradually building up until there was complete cloud cover. The truck rocked slightly on the suspension as the wind tore down the valley, but the extra blankets and supplies purchased in the market kept everyone tucked up warm and safe.
As they reached their "go hour", Tads sank to the floor cross-legged, and attuned herself to the mountains. She called upon the spirit of the land, summoning forth the essence of the rocks to guard and protect the vehicle, and to keep it safe. Then, she cast her eyes skywards, calling the spirit of the wind, binding mana to the spirit to grant the vehicle concealment. As she bargained with the wind spirit she felt her control over the mountain fade - it would carry out her last instruction, until they either left the mountain or dawn broke - but it was no longer bound to obey her. Finally, with two spirits guarding and concealing the vehicle, she cast an invisibility ward upon the vehicle, wrapping light around the vehicle to further obscure their presence. Concentrating on sustaining the spell, she moved to a bunk and motioned for the others to begin the crossing.
Marius engaged the gearbox, and the vehicle started to crawl up the mountain, following the road, then the goat track, and then finally just the best line he could manage over the scrub, low hardy perennial plant growth and loose soil. With no lights, full cloud cover and thermographic senses just showing the fairly uniform surface of the ground, it was difficult and painstaking progress, and once or twice he had to reverse and take a different tack to overcome a gulley or bad patch of terrain.
By 4am they reached the crest of the ridge, and their truck continued to roll forwards, Marius not even using the gas, just letting the idle of the engine pull them forwards in crawler gear. The ground was more barren here, loose rocks and compacted sand and earth, with fewer plants and grasses to cover their tracks. Looking backwards though, they saw little in the way of marks - the spirit concealing them was smoothing the signs of their passing. They continued to crawl forwards until Marius braked sharply, as the dimly seen fence appeared in front of them. The team got out to examine the fence closely.
A triple roll of razor wire formed a loose pyramid, laid out in a two meter wide snake heading to the horizon in both directions, contained between slender wooden posts about a metre high. For a person on foot it was a significant barrier, and it also threatened to snag on the vehicle as they drove over it, leaving obvious signs of their passage. And if it contained capacitance wire, or signal wire in the centre, that would trip an alert if approached or cut. Marius prepared his toolkit and got ready to snip his way through the barrier, as neatly as he could to allow him to repair the damage after they had crossed. The others watched to the north, west and south, straining to see any guards, patrols or civilians which could jeopardise their mission.
Aswon suddenly called for a halt, and quiet - listening to a high pitched hum that rose and fell in pitch. After he pointed it out, the others strained their ears - or used their cyberware to filter for the noise, and could also make out the mournful and sad noise. They checked for the source, and discovered it was the wind, whistling through the tubes of wire, exposed on the bare mountain side. Fearful that there might be some detection method they checked the poles for microphones, before realising that this couldn't be a reliable security system, with its dependence on the wind to generate the noise. Eventually it clicked - the wind was making the wire "sing" because it was under tension - a lot of tension. Cutting it would make it spring back, violently. Quite aside from being almost impossible to put back together, it was very likely to cut someone in half if they tried it.
The team got back in the truck, and slowly and carefully drove over the wire. Only the massive tyres and excessive ground clearance of their purloined Sovie made it feasible, and only the expert driving of Marius using all his concentration, and the help of the air spirt, stopping the wire from snagging the underside of the truck, or striping the tyres of their treads - only these things made it possible, but after a few minutes, they were across and could breathe again. The wire sprang back up from where it had been crushed, they weren't snagged, and they could move on. They started to roll down the hill...
The wind spirit appeared in front of Tads and warned her about the danger, and she called out for them to stop - Marius slammed on the brakes again, and waited for clarification, which was not immediately forthcoming.
"What sort of danger?" she asked to the spirit. "Dangerous danger". Hmm, not helpful. The spirit didn't know what was dangerous, it just sensed that it was. As a creature of wind and magic, it didn't really have a grasping of the physics that bound the meat sacks together... it just knew that there was risk. What kind of risk? Dangerous risk...
Tads changed tack and decided to talk to the mountain spirit, still guarding their truck. Though she had no hold over it now, having consciously shifted her mind to the air above, she hoped it would at least talk to her. The ground below her feet distorted, showing a gnarly face in the rocks. In her mind, the gravelly voice as two mountain ranges collided and ground against each other asked her what she wanted in a surly voice.
She asked about the danger, about what lay ahead, and the spirit answered by describing the annoying itch. The itch that irritated it, for miles either way. When asked what the itch felt like, it beckoned her closer. Closer. Then a handful of gravel was expelled from the ground, pelting her face and making her flinch away, picking out bits of rock from her mouth, nose and eyes. Slowly it dawned on the team - land mines ahead, buried in the rough terrain.
Tads commanded her air spirit to help them, exposing the mine field by scouring away the top layer of earth in a giant cyclone. The team retreated, and the spirit whipped up the winds, ever faster, a 4 meter whirling dervish that ploughed across the landscape. Earth lifted and flew to the side, the maelstrom glinting in the darkness - and then an almighty crack as one of the grenades less well buried than the rest flew up and the plunger impacted other debris. The team looked around them, watching for signs of activity. Then a much louder retort, echoing down the mountains... something bigger. They watched again - nothing it seemed. Moments later the whirlwind died down, as the spirit reached the other side of the 15m wide strip of mines that paralleled the border fence. It was laid in an irregular pattern, and looking at the layout, there was no way to get the truck though without hitting at least a few. Most of them looked relatively small - probably anti-personnel mines, that would be unlikely to cause catastrophic damage to the truck - though still capable of shredding tires and damaging parts. However, there were a few bigger beasts that had the look of anti-vehicle mines, capable to taking out APCs or light tanks. And... one that looked completely unfamiliar to Aswon.
After discussion, Kai asked Aswon if he was willing to use his knowledge and experience with demolitions to clear them a path through the mine field. By the looks of things they needed to clear about four mines on the left, and three on the right, to make a set of 30 centimetre wide strips they could drive through - carefully. Aswon sighed, got down on the floor, drew his knife and started to crawl forwards. Slowly he scraped away the earth around the mine, excavating it carefully until he could carefully pull out the charge, and move it to the side, out of the way. He crawled forwards, repeated the process. Despite the breeze and the chill night air, perspiration beaded his forehead... he know more about demo than anyone else it seemed, but he still didn't regard himself as an expert. He advanced on the third mine, scraping away and clearing the earth, then setting that aside too. Onto the fourth and last. Scrape, scrape, wiggle, scrape, scrape. As he pulled on the mine gently, some of the casing broke, the cheap components degraded after so much time in the cold landscape. His hand flew up before he could control the pressure, pulling on the side of the plastic material, and with a fateful click the arming mechanism caught and fired. His reactions already spiking from the cracking of the plastic, he flung himself to the side, rolling frantically away from the device. It detonated a fraction of a second later, throwing up a gout of flame and shrapnel in a vicious cone. Being so low to the ground, and rolling so quickly, only the edge of the blast caught him - and he managed to arrest his roll before he hit one of the other mines. The blast echoed down the hillside again, the team back on alert, scanning for lights and movement.
Aswon inched his way back to the truck, wincing in pain. He'd dodged some of the blast, his armoured clothes had soaked a little more - but his back was covered with shrapnel, the back of his head was burnt and also punctured. Shimazu and Kai approached him with a medkit, and spent the next 5 minutes picking out fragments with tweezers, before liberally spraying him with antiseptic gel and skin sealant. Tads came over and examined Aswon, then spread her hands across the back of his head. Warm golden light seemed to form under her hands, and the flesh knitted back together, the swelling receding and the blisters fading under her hands as she moved them in circles around his body. Everyone else in the team watched the power flowing from her hands into him, his wounds healing in front of their eyes, watching in silence, and evaluating the strange little Russian woman in a new light.
With a sigh, Aswon gripped his dagger again, crawled towards the minefield and started to clear the right hand path. The first two were cleared without incident, though he proceeded slowly and with even more care after his recent experience. Just as he was settling down to start on the third, he suddenly gave a start, moving abruptly and unexpectedly as the black scorpion emerged from its tunnel and probed against his ankle. Time seemed to slow as his body lurched, and the others watched, and started to flinch as his arm skated across the surface, towards the plunger. He threw his weight to the side, desperately flexing and bending, trying to avoid contact. He almost made it.
The mine exploded, and another cone of explosive force lit up the night sky, the blast wave rolling down the hill, a sharp "crack" punctuating the night air. With less warning, and less time to react, even his magically enhanced reflexes couldn't save him this time, and the blast wave picked him up and dumped him on the floor hard, fortunately in the cleared space behind him. Blood flowed freely down his face, part of his hair was singed, his nose was broken, and a good portion of his skin was missing, exposing raw flesh underneath. Moving with extreme care, he inched backwards a little, before being plucked from the ground by the others, and carried gingerly to the truck and laid on one of the sterile plastic sheets they had purchased for situations just like this. Shimazu and Kai got to work again with the medkits, and picked out the fragments and rocks, sealing the gaping wounds and packing holes with dermal filler. They sprayed more gel, dousing him in the stuff really, making sure that he wouldn't get infected and being glad they had laid in so many supplies for their cover story. Tads sighed again and moved over to Aswon when the others were finished, and once more gathered her strength. The golden light was stronger this time, brighter, filling the back of the van with its light like a trapped sunrise. She poured magical energy into him, throwing her full power into the spell - and again when she moved her hands, his flesh was whole and showed no sign of his trauma.
Sparing a quick glance at the weird device in the centre of the minefield, they discovered it to be a starlight shell with a remote pressure pad. If they'd driven over that - or a nearby mine had been close enough to it when triggered, it would have fired a shell several hundred feet into the air - then exploded and illuminated thousands of square meters with a pale light for several minutes - and almost certainly raising the alarm. They cut the line to the pressure pad, just in case, got back in the truck, held their breath and hoped Marius could drive in a perfectly straight line with no deviation - over rough terrain, in the pitch black. Once again though, the rigger didn't let them down, and made it through the mine field to the clear area beyond, and they started to head down the mountain and towards their rendezvous in Razi.
