The fighting started like a storm breaking over a ridge—Brennar's bellow, steel on shields, men crying out in anger and fear. Then the fog rolled in from the river, thick and cold, eating the torchlight and swallowing the shouts until they were only a dull thunder somewhere beyond the wagons.
Ari moved first.
"Keep low," she whispered. "The fog is ours. Stay close. Move when I move."
Lyra nodded, jaw tight, eyes bright. Tamsin touched the leather strap of her satchel once, as if for luck, and followed. The three of them slid between wagon tongues and piles of rope, past stacked barrels that sweated with damp. The air smelled of wet iron and smoke and the sour stink of too many bodies penned together.
Cages loomed out of the mist—iron bars beaded with water, rough wood frames bolted into the ground. Shapes stirred inside. A hand reached through, skeletal and shivering. Someone coughed until it hurt to listen. Tamsin flinched toward the sound, but Ari raised a finger and the healer stopped.
They crept to the first door. Ari put her ear to the lock and listened. The battle's roar faded and surged again. Footsteps crunched somewhere far off, then turned another way. She pulled a short iron wedge from her belt and slid it into the seam, working slow so the metal wouldn't shriek.
"…Ari?"
The whisper was small, but it cut through everything. Ari spun, bow half raised.
Two thin faces peered from the next cage—eyes huge in the dim. The girl's voice trembled with hope and anger both. Her older brother had his arm across her as if even now, behind bars, he could shield her from all of it.
"You're alive," the girl breathed. "We thought—"
"Quiet," Ari hissed, already moving to their lock. Her heart kicked once, hard, and then went calm. "Get ready. You wanted to fight? Here's your chance."
The brother set his jaw. "She doesn't fight alone. If she's in it, I'm in it."
"Good." Ari's voice dropped even lower. "Listen close. When this opens, you tell everyone inside to split. Fighters to the tree line—bows, blades, anything. The weak, the hurt—run for the forest and don't stop. Pass it down. No shouting. No crying out. Hands on shoulders if you can't see. Understand?"
They both nodded. The girl swallowed and nodded again, fiercer.
"Show me the ones with sense," Ari added. "Commanders. Anyone who looks like they've led men before."
The siblings pointed through the mist to a cage across the row. A broad-shouldered man sat there, older, scar across one brow, eyes sharp as a hooked thorn even in the gloom.
"Lyra," Ari said. "Him. Go."
Lyra slipped off, small and quick, skimming the mud. Tamsin glanced to another cage where someone coughed wetly, then looked back at Ari, asking without words.
"There," Ari said, picking a third. "Anyone you can keep moving."
Tamsin ran soft-footed to it, already pulling linen and a short roll of herbs from her bag.
The girl's fingers were white on the bars. The brother had his head turned, listening hard like a hunter. The lock under Ari's wedge gave a little. She worked slower. The metal sighed—loud in her ears, thin in the fog—and then the bolt slid back with a dull clack.
The girl's eyes went wide. The brother's shoulders sagged once with relief he did not let become sound.
The hinge complained when Ari eased the door, but a wave of shouts from the choke swallowed it. Brennar was laughing out there—low and savage. The sound steadied her.
"Go," she breathed. "Tree line. Now."
They didn't rush out like a flood. They trickled, careful, faces pale, hands shaking as they touched the door as if it were a dream they might wake from. Ari pulled a canvas sack from under the wagon bed and yanked the ties loose—short swords, knives, a few axes, three bows, a coil of arrows. She pressed blades into ready fingers, turned a club the right way in a man's grip, pushed a bow into the girl's hands.
"You remember this?" Ari asked softly.
The girl nodded, lips pressed thin. "I remember."
"Then stand with me when you reach the line," Ari said. "Brother, run the weak into the trees. Bring them back in pairs if they falter."
"I will," he said. He put his hand to his sister's hair for half a heartbeat, then he was gone, guiding a hunched woman and a boy who could not look up.
Across the row, Lyra reached the older man's lock. There was no time for finesse. She braced a boot against the frame and worked a flat iron between the hasp and staple, biting and twisting until rust flaked and the loop tore through. The gate jolted, then swung.
"You're no raider," the man rasped, voice rough but steady.
"Not tonight," Lyra said, thrusting a sword at his hand. "Fight if you can. Run if you can't. Get the fighters in the trees."
He tested the blade's balance like it was an old friend and nodded once. "Aye."
Tamsin's cage opened last. People stumbled out—one limping, one holding his side, two more with haunted eyes and nothing else. Tamsin's hands glowed faintly as she touched them in passing: a palm to a shoulder to slow the coughing; two fingers on a calf to steady a step; a thumb at the throat to ease the desperate, shallow breaths. It wasn't much. It was enough.
"Follow," she whispered to a woman who could hardly stand. "Hold the man in front. Don't look back."
They emptied three cages like that—quietly, quickly, with hands guiding instead of voices. As each group slipped into the fog, the line at the tree edge grew, shadow on shadow. The archers—three of them now, counting the girl—took posts as Ari pointed: one high in the fork of a young oak, one crouched behind a wheel, one with Ari at the corner where the wagons made a crooked lane.
"Lyra, Tamsin—take five," Ari said, pulling more blades from the sack. "Work the next row. Quiet. Fast. Don't stop until every lock breaks."
Lyra already had four people at her side, nimble fingers on hinges and bolts. Tamsin held up an iron peg and showed two men where to jam it to split a rusted loop.
"Breathe slow," she told them when their hands shook. "You're not alone."
Ari stayed at the watch with the girl and eight more who could stand. She kept her bow low, string under her fingers, eyes on the fog. It moved like a living thing, curling around torchlight until the flames were only blurs, then eating them entirely.
"Your job is simple," Ari murmured. "If anything comes that isn't one of ours, you drop it. No warning. No mercy."
The girl nocked an arrow. The older brother reappeared long enough to press two more blades into Ari's hands—found somewhere in the dark—and was gone again, shepherding a pair of old men through the mist by their elbows.
Time stretched like a tight string. Creak of iron. Scrape of chains. A child's breathy sob that never rose above a whisper and then died away under a mother's hand. The wagons groaned as the night damp sank in. Somewhere far behind, steel rang, and the roar at the funnel swelled and broke like surf.
A torch bobbed in the fog.
"Down," Ari breathed.
They folded into shadow. The torch drifted closer, orange light smearing across wet wood, then veered left. A man's silhouette passed, head turned back toward the sounds of the choke, muttering about fools and narrow roads. The torch thinned, wavered—then went out as a damp curl of fog ate it whole. His curse faded. His steps did too.
Another cage door rasped open. Lyra's group flowed to the next. Tamsin's glow touched another set of hands, another forehead, left a shaken man steadier than before. Ari pushed two knives into two sets of calloused palms and pointed toward the line. People passed by her like ghosts, faces tight with fear, eyes huge and wet in the mist.
A shape formed where the fog was darkest. Not a torch this time. A man. He stumbled, stopped, squinted. He turned toward the movement at the cages and his mouth opened.
"Oi—"
Two arrows hissed at once. The first took him high in the chest; the second hit his throat. He folded soundlessly, torch clattering from his hand to die in a hiss at the edge of a puddle.
"Back," Ari breathed. "Back, back."
The girl's bow arm shook once, then steadied again. Her eyes didn't leave the fog. From the trees, a low growl answered—quiet, warning.
More shapes slid between the wagons. Ari lifted a hand. The line eased closer together, bows half drawn, blades angled low. A head lifted, sniffing. The man took two careful steps.
Yellow eyes blinked once in the fog.
Pan hit him out of the dark like the night had learned to pounce, weight and sinew and silence. The raider was there and then he wasn't, dragged away with only a wet breath and the scrape of boots. Another reached for a horn. A deeper shadow slid across his wrist. The horn fell in two pieces into the mud.
"Keep moving," Nyx said from the mist, voice cold as the river. "Don't stop for anything. We'll keep their eyes here."
Ari didn't turn her head; she only let out the breath she hadn't known she was holding. "Lyra. Tamsin. Faster."
They were already faster. Hinges screamed now and then, but the fog swallowed the sound, and when it didn't, the thunder at the funnel masked it. Prisoners poured from cages—some stumbling, some fierce, one or two breaking into a run and then being caught and slowed by steady hands so they didn't fall. Weapons went into hands that shook. The line at the trees thickened—shadow on shadow, breathing hard, clutching blades too tight. Ari pointed, and clumps of five and six faded up the bank to the high ground where roots made low walls and rocks made cover.
A guard came on a straight line, sure and quick, eyes narrowed, breath steady. He must have known the cages like his own hand. He stepped through the place where the wagons made a narrow lane, opened his mouth to shout—
The girl's arrow took him just under the collarbone. He staggered. The brother's shot hit him in the belly. He folded slowly, hands scrabbling in the mud for a weapon he would not lift again.
"Good," Ari said, quiet and flat. She hadn't loosed a shaft. Not yet. "Hold your breath between shots. It steadies you."
The girl inhaled slow and deep, then let it out. "Yes, captain."
"I'm not your captain," Ari said, but her mouth twitched. "Not yet."
Lyra waved from the next row, fingers flicking three and then two—three cages empty, two left. Tamsin slid her hand along a trembling arm as another woman stepped out, and the woman's breathing steadied. "Follow him," Tamsin said, pushing her toward a man with a torn sleeve and clear eyes. "Hold and walk."
Feet thumped in the fog. Not cautious. Many. Coming fast.
"Down," Ari said again, but the footsteps didn't veer. They came straight. A voice followed them, sharp and irritated.
"Who left this cursed cart unhitched? Move—no, not that way—by the cages, you idiots—"
Ari looked to the siblings. The brother already had an arrow half drawn. The girl's knuckles were white on her string. Ari touched the girl's elbow—once, light.
"Only if they see us," she breathed.
The men blundered past the first cage. One glanced sideways and frowned, as if the bars were… wrong. He took another step—
Pan flowed out of the fog at knee height and took him by the ankle. He went down hard and vanished into the dark with a strangled sound. The second spun and got a blade up just in time to meet Nyx's shadow where a throat should be. The third turned to run and ran into the brother's arrow.
The fourth finally drew breath to shout.
Ari's head snapped up. "Now!"
The half-circle of fighters loosed together. Arrows hissed like a single breath. The man went down with two shafts in him, one in the chest, one in the face. Another stumbled into the open and a woman with a hatchet took him high in the neck. He fell with a spray that turned to black in the mist.
"Move the weak!" Ari called, louder now because the quiet game was over. "Everyone who can't fight—into the trees! Fighters hold!"
The stream of people became a flood. It wasn't neat anymore. It couldn't be. A boy of twelve clutched a knife like a lifeline. A man with a broken nose held his wife up under her arm and did not look to either side. A woman with blood matted in her hair stopped to grab an arrow bundle and shoved it into the girl's hands without a word.
Lyra broke another lock and looked up, breathless. "Last row!"
"Do it!" Ari shouted. "Tamsin—anything you can give them, give."
Tamsin's glow flared and faded, flared and faded—little lights on skin, on throats, on calves—until her hands shook with the strain. "Go," she told each as she let them go. "Go, go, go."
The fog seemed to shiver.
The sound hit a heartbeat later.
It was not a man's voice. It was a thing made of brass and rage—a horn from the deep middle of the camp that bellowed so hard Ari felt it in her teeth. The ground under her boots hummed. The freed froze mid-step. Every face turned, even the ones who had been too numb to look at anything until now.
The horn blew again, longer. Farther back, chains clanked. Snarls tore the mist. Not one wolf. Many. Dozens.
The girl swallowed, eyes huge. The brother licked dry lips and drew an arrow to his ear.
Ari went cold and then steady. "Hold the line," she told the fighters. "Every second counts."
Pan's eyes burned low in the fog. Nyx's voice came from nowhere and everywhere at once. "I'm going to make them bleed for every step."
Lyra ripped the final gate wide and thrust blades into ready hands. Tamsin caught a falling boy under the arms and shoved him into the stream of bodies moving for the forest.
The horn did not stop. It rolled over them, long and merciless.
The real fight was coming through the mist.