Dawn came pale and thin, like it was afraid to touch the world.
The road wound through low, frost-silvered fields, a dark line between stubbled earth and hardy scrub. Breath steamed from the mouths of the men.
From Eryk's, too.
Every exhale tasted of old smoke.
His wrists were bound.
Rope wrapped them in rough loops, the end knotted to a longer line that linked him to two other captives and then to a saddle ring on one of the horses. The rope never went slack. If he slowed, it bit. If he stumbled, it yanked.
The cold found every place it could reach. It pressed under his nails and into the thin tears in his palms. It crawled up his ankles where ash and grit had rubbed his skin raw.
Behind them, the sky was stained faintly darker where smoke still smeared the horizon.
Hollowford was already becoming distance.
He tried not to look back.
A man grumbled somewhere behind. "Road's worse every year. Been sayin' they should lay stone on this stretch."
"And who's paying for that?" another snorted. "You? Blackstone's barely keeping its own walls up."
"The Lord's coffers, then."
"The Lord's coffers are why you've got steel on your back at all. You want him filling in ruts for you now too, coddled like a babe?"
Low laughter. Brief. Spent quickly, like warmth.
The words slid over Eryk, strange and ordinary all at once. Men complaining about roads while a village cooled behind them. As if the world still ran on rails. As if smoke was just weather.
He walked anyway.
His hands ached where the rope had scraped through skin. Every time he flexed his fingers, it stung like nettles.
Under that pain was something deeper.
The stone-deep thrum had come and gone in Hollowford like a cruel mercy. It had lifted iron, bent the world for a breath, and then torn away.
Now he only felt the loss, dull and heavy, and kept moving because there was nothing else to do.
The captive in front of him limped.
Not badly enough to fall. Badly enough to make the rope jerk on every third step.
Eryk's pace was forced into that rhythm.
Lift. Plant. Drag.
The man behind him breathed hard through his nose. He did not speak. Only the rope spoke for him, tightening and loosening, counting their steps.
A watchtower stood on a low rise to the right, squat timber and a roof dark with frost. Someone watched from its top, a shadow against the weak sky. No horn sounded. No call of alarm.
It was easier, Eryk realized, to watch without seeing.
The road curved. A line of bare trees gathered like ribs along a shallow ditch. The wind hissed through them, dry and thin.
His heel slipped on a patch of frozen mud. His shoulder lurched forward.
The rope snapped tight.
"Watch your step," a voice muttered ahead without turning.
"Sorry," Eryk rasped.
The man did not answer. He kept limping, kept walking, as if apologies were currency nobody spent anymore.
They stopped when the sun was a pale coin just past its height, hanging weak in a washed-out sky.
The road dipped through a shallow hollow, sheltered on one side by scrub and twisted birch. The bandits pushed the captives off the packed track toward a tree with branches like clawed fingers.
Snow and dead leaves were kicked aside to clear space for a fire.
"Get the livestock down," a broad-shouldered man called. "Let 'em sit before their scrawny legs give out."
Droth.
His face wore the bruise like an ugly badge, blue and yellow under one eye, the rest mottled where Eryk's plank had caught him. He seemed pleased by it, in a way that made Eryk's stomach crawl.
Two men dragged the rope and hauled the captives farther off the road. A stake was driven into the ground. The line was slipped over it, turned, tightened. Their world became a circle of rope and mud.
"Sit."
Eryk dropped with shaking legs.
The ground was cold and wet, but it did not move, and that was enough.
His wrists burned where the rope had eaten the skin. He shifted, trying to find a position where the fibers did not grind into the same raw places. It did not matter. The rope followed him like a second skin.
Someone eased down beside him with a low groan, one hand pressed briefly into his back.
"Move your toes when you can," the man murmured. "Keeps the blood moving."
Eryk looked sideways.
The man was older than him. Not old like a father. Older like someone who had already learned not to hope too loudly. His cheeks were hollow. His hair had the greasy look of weeks without proper water. One eye was swollen, half-closed.
"You from Hollowford?" Eryk asked.
The man shook his head once. "No. Year back. East of here. Name don't matter."
"They burned it?" Eryk heard himself say. As if he needed to hear the answer from someone else to make his own real.
"They took what they wanted. Left the rest."
"Didn't the Lord's…"
The older man's exhausted eye met his.
"Boy," he said quietly. "These are the Lord's men."
The words landed like a stone dropped into a well.
Across the fire, Droth laughed at something one of the others said. He moved with the loose ease of someone who had never worried about permission.
He carried a skin of something that smelled like sour ale and ditch water.
He squatted near the captives and announced to the camp, "Still got both hands."
A few chuckles came back.
"Even after tryin' to brain me."
A crust of bread landed in the dirt between Eryk's boots.
Droth leaned in, close enough that Eryk could smell sweat and fermented drink, close enough to see the burst blood vessels in the bruise.
"Drink," Droth said. "Can't have you dyin' on us for lack of ditch water."
Eryk took the skin with stiff fingers and swallowed because refusing would only make it worse. The liquid burned going down, sharp and sour, and sat in his stomach like a stone.
"Easy, rat," Droth said when Eryk coughed. "You ain't at your mam's table."
Eryk's hands tightened around the skin.
The rope bit deeper.
Droth watched him like he wanted Eryk to do something stupid, like he was hungry for an excuse.
Across the fire, Garren sat apart from the laughter.
He ate with the calm patience of a man who never worried about the next meal, not because he was kind, but because he knew how the world worked.
His thumb turned the plain iron ring.
Once. Again.
Eryk's eyes caught on it the way a tongue caught on a sore tooth.
"Three sound," someone said, counting without warmth. "Two older. One with the leg. Call him half."
"Grain?" Garren asked.
"Short."
"Always is."
The younger bandit by the fire spat into the leaves. "We could've just taken the coin."
"Coin don't scream," someone replied.
"Coin warns the next village," Garren said without looking up. "Then the Sheriff looks up from his cup."
Silence answered that, the kind that meant agreement and resignation both.
Eryk chewed gritty bread and stared at the dirt.
Heads.
Not names.
Not places.
To them, Hollowford was already a mark rubbed out.
"How long to Blackstone?" Eryk asked, the question escaping before he could choke it back. Blackstone was the word they had been using like a destination and a threat.
"Two days on a mule," the older captive said. "On your feet? Depends how much Garren thinks he's owed along the way."
A faint smile tugged at the man's mouth, bitter and tired. "World's bigger than that hill of yours."
Eryk thought of the alder tree. Of his father's voice. Of the way the square looked from up in the branches.
He had not imagined it this big.
The second day blurred into sore feet and the taste of old smoke.
They passed farmsteads with shutters closed. They passed carts that turned aside early, drivers staring straight ahead like staring at captives would make them complicit. They passed a little shrine by the road with a weathered wooden figure and half-frozen offerings at its base.
"Lucky they made their tithe," someone said when they went by.
"Means we'll be back when the Lord wants more," someone else replied.
Eryk listened. He watched. He tried to stitch the world together from scraps of talk.
A Lord with coffers and collectors.
A Sheriff with a cup.
Blackstone with walls that were barely holding.
The ropes on his wrists were proof of where he fit in that stitching.
They made camp again when dusk fell, the sky bruising purple over the fields.
This time they drove the stake deeper.
This time they tightened the rope until his hands tingled and his shoulders ached.
They ate. They drank. They laughed at nothing.
Eryk lay on his side in the cold dirt, staring at the fire and the men around it. Sleep came in broken pieces.
When it did, it brought Hollowford back in flashes.
His mother's voice through the cellar crack.
The beam.
The strip of pale apron.
The hand.
He woke with a sound trapped in his throat and the taste of ash on his tongue.
The fire had sunk low. The men were quieter now. Some lay wrapped in cloaks, breath steaming. One guard watched the dark with a spear across his knees.
Bound to the stake, Eryk tested the rope.
The stake had not been driven deep enough.
Or perhaps the ground had softened.
Either way, it shifted under his pull.
Pain flared. Blood ran warm beneath the rope.
Desperation sharpened.
Heat bloomed beneath his ribs.
It was not comfort. It was not peace.
It was a pressure, a vibration that built in bone and teeth.
The stone-deep thrum.
The iron hook that held the rope to the stake shuddered.
For a heartbeat, the rope loosened.
A finger's width.
Two.
Eryk's breath caught. He pulled again, harder, and the hook trembled as if it wanted to obey him.
Then a boot crushed down on his wrist.
The thrum faltered like a candle in wind.
Droth leaned over him, his face a pale smear in the dark lit by fire.
He tightened the rope until Eryk's wrists screamed.
"Try that again," Droth said softly, "and I take your fingers."
Eryk lay shaking, teeth clenched so hard his jaw ached.
Across the fire, Garren saw.
He did not rise.
He did not speak.
He only turned his ring.
Once. Again.
As if to remind himself that iron stayed where it was put.
By dawn, they were moving again.
Toward Blackstone.
They reached it the next day.
The town clung to the side of a low, dark hill, perched above a river that cut the valley like a scar. Stone walls ringed the lower slope, not high enough to impress, but thick enough to say no to easy hunger.
Houses crowded close inside, upper floors jutting until the roofs nearly touched. Narrow lanes ran upward in hard angles, disappearing between timber and stone.
Smoke rose from chimneys, cleaner than Hollowford's had been. It smelled of coal and damp wood.
The gate was a heavy wooden affair banded in iron, standing half open.
A guard leaned on a spear and watched them approach with the bored expression of a man who had seen worse and expected more.
"Roads treat you kindly, Garren?" he called.
"Kind as ever, Jarek," Garren replied without warmth. "Which is to say not at all."
The guard huffed a laugh. "You're late this season."
"Fields were dry," Garren said. "Had to ride farther to find folk with grain worth taking."
The other guard's mouth twitched. His gaze slid over the captives like weighing meat.
"Steward'll want your numbers. He's in a worse mood than usual."
"When is he not?" Garren said. "Open the rest of the way."
The gate groaned wider.
Iron shoes struck sparks from stone as the horses stepped through.
The air felt thicker inside, packed with too many lives moving too close together. Sounds layered, dogs barking, a hammer's ring, a distant bell, a curse thrown from an upper window.
People watched.
A woman carrying a basket of laundry paused, cloth limp over her arm. Children clustered behind her skirts, wide-eyed. One lifted a hand as if to wave, then caught his mother's sharp look and dropped it.
A man in a brown robe with a simple cord at his waist stood near a corner where a faded banner hung, a black shape on a muted field. He spoke to a knot of townsfolk as if nothing had passed through the gate at all.
No one shouted.
No one spat.
No one asked what village had paid for the numbers in Garren's line.
They climbed toward a yard halfway up the slope, enclosed on three sides by stone and on the fourth by a fence of thick posts. A covered pen hunched near the far wall.
A man waited there.
He was not armored. He wore a thick wool coat, a heavy belt, and a face that looked carved from habit. His hands were ink-stained. A leather ledger hung at his side like a weapon.
"Garren," he said. "You're late."
"And yet still in time to keep your Lord's stores from running dry," Garren replied. "You can mark that as thanks, if your hand remembers how."
The steward snorted and flipped open his ledger. "My hand remembers the shortfall last autumn. What have you brought me?"
"Grain. Some salted meat. Three heads sound enough for work. Two older. One with a bad leg. Call that half if you must."
The steward's gaze traveled over them.
It paused at the limping captive.
At Eryk.
At the third, whose eyes were blank with exhaustion.
"Teeth," the steward said.
"Open," Garren repeated, the command flat.
The captives obeyed because refusing would only earn pain. The steward looked like a man buying horses, checking what would last.
"Good," he said at last. "How old?"
"Twelve," Garren answered.
The steward's brows lifted slightly. "He speaks?"
"Enough to shout insults," Garren said. "And swing a plank."
"I don't like any of them," the steward replied. "I like numbers that add up."
The quill scratched.
"Three and a half, then," he said. "Grain is light again."
"Fields were thin across the valley," Garren said.
"I'll take it up with the collectors."
"They'll tell you to squeeze harder."
"They always do," the steward said. "Seems everyone has their role."
He closed the ledger.
"I'll take them. Boys to the lower yard. The older one to the quarry, if his leg holds. If it doesn't, you'll pay me back out of your next stipend."
Garren's lips twitched. "You'll be old and buried before my Lord pays back what he thinks he's owed."
The steward ignored him. "Bran. Lysa."
Two figures stepped from the shade of a side building.
A girl a few years older than Eryk, sleeves rolled to her elbows, moved with quick certainty. Her hair was tied back tight. Her eyes went to the rope first, then to the captives, as if she had learned what mattered.
Beside her was a broad-shouldered youth with a nose broken more than once. He stood like a door that had learned to watch.
"Take this one and the other boy down," the steward said, nodding toward Eryk. "Put them where the kitchen mistress can see them."
Lysa cut the rope from Eryk's wrists with a small knife, leaving short, raw loops still knotted around his skin.
"This way," she said.
Eryk flexed his hands and winced. Feeling rushed back in needles.
He started to move.
Garren stepped into his path once more.
Eryk stopped.
Garren's eyes took him in again, calm and measured, as if committing him to the same ledger the steward carried.
"Do what you're told, boy," Garren said calmly. His thumb turned the iron ring in its familiar circle. "The world's kinder to tools than to loose stones."
He stepped aside.
The words stayed.
Lysa pulled Eryk down a short flight of worn steps. Stone walls closed around them, damp and cold. The air changed. It smelled of old straw and boiled water and too many bodies.
Above, the town's noises dulled.
Below, a different sound took their place, the scrape of a broom, the clink of a bucket, a bell struck once and answered by hurried feet.
They passed a door cracked open. A pair of eyes watched from the dark and vanished.
They reached a low room with a hearth that was more smoke than flame. A woman stood over a pot, thick arms bare to the elbow. She held a ladle like a weapon.
"This one?" she asked, looking Lysa up and down as if Lysa had brought her a spoiled sack of grain.
"Kitchen or yard," Lysa said.
The woman's gaze raked Eryk. "Thin. We can fix that. If he works."
She jabbed the ladle toward a stack of baskets. "Name?"
Eryk swallowed.
"Eryk."
"You'll carry. Chop. Clean. Drop anything and I drop you in the midden."
Lysa's hand touched his shoulder once, not gentle, not cruel, just a placement, like setting a tool where it belonged.
"This one's free," she said to him, voice low enough that only he could hear. "You wake when the bell goes. You don't steal. You don't run. You don't talk back."
Eryk stared at her.
"Where from?" she asked.
"Hollowford."
Her expression flickered, something quick and buried. "That was you, then. Smoke smelled wrong yesterday." She shrugged, as if shrugging could make a burning village small. "Places burn."
"Why doesn't anyone stop them?" Eryk asked before he could stop himself. His voice sounded too loud in the low room. "Your guards. The priest."
Lysa paused in the doorway.
"Gate men who're paid by the same Lord? Priests who bless bread bought with his tithe?"
She shook her head.
"You're still thinking like a hill boy staring at one field. Down here the plow's already moving. Step in front of it and you don't stop it. You just get churned into dirt."
She closed the door halfway.
Eryk sank onto the straw in the corner.
His wrists throbbed. His shoulders ached. His feet burned from blisters rubbed raw and then rubbed again.
Sounds drifted in through the wood, dogs barking, curses, bells.
The weight in his chest settled deep and heavy.
Far beneath it, the faint echo of that inner vibration remained, quiet, dormant, buried beneath Blackstone and his ribs alike.
Somewhere above him, today was already turning into ink, a village reduced to a smudge in a ledger's margin, a thin new stroke where his life had been added to a count.
Killing one man would not stop that hand.
He lay staring at the rafters.
But he knew what waited at the bottom of him.
He knew the name carved there.
Garren.
He turned the name slowly in his mind.
Let them think him a tool.
Stones waited. Stones endured.
And when the ground shifted,
Stones were what broke the blade.