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Chapter 8 - White Nights

The night refused to go black. As the hours crawled toward dawn, it lightened instead—a pale film laid along the horizon, as if the sky had been washed and left damp: light that wouldn't leave, shadow that wouldn't settle. It was a night that bleached edges—fence posts to bones, fields to cloth, faces to masks.

They hauled the carcass from the chute with hooks and rope, boots slipping in chalk and blood. Up close the thing looked less like an animal and more like a decision the forest had made against men: cinder bristles standing in plates, hide seamed like old oak, a dewlap thick as a butcher's apron. The tusks were lacquered in wolf-fat, rimmed with gravel; the eye the bolt had taken was a crater glazed with pitch and nerve. It had not died because men were brave. It had died because weight met a wall at the angle it could not forgive.

He'd already read their markers when the bell first rattled: the boy with the pitch-basket — Level 3; the two spearmen — Level 5; the man giving orders on the parapet — Level 7. Perfect Sight tagged only levels over people, never their names; those you earned the slow way.

He said little and the villagers liked that. They were low-leveled, low-voiced—hands trained to keep animals in and weather out. The reeve counted heads and spears and then looked down at the boar the way farmers look at weather: as a fact. They expected claims—tusks, hide, a quartered share for the stranger who'd brought trouble to the gate.

Nameless shook his head. "Keep it. All of it. You'll eat tomorrow."

That settled the noise before it started. A priest—Aldric, someone had called down—murmured a blessing over the tusk and then started giving orders about the cuts. Hooks bit through jaw, rope creaked, knives flashed. No cheers, no speeches. Relief is a quiet trade.

He stepped closer to the fallen Razorback, not to take but to learn. He put a knuckle against the shoulder seam where the three boar-spears had gone in.

"Here," he said softly, mostly to himself. "Not the spine, not the belly. Here."

In Devir, a hit isn't a number; it's a place and a path. Force is a sentence with grammar: mass, speed, angle, and where the blade chooses to end. A spear into bristle is nothing. A spear along the grain, into the seam where muscle must move—there the world agrees to break. A crossbow to the skull is coin tossed away; the eye is a door that never locks. Even fists mean different things: a stone on foreleg robs footing; a tap on rib does nothing but make the night angry.

The palisade was not decoration; it was a machine. Two fences narrowed the charge, chalk stole traction, troughs fixed the distance, and the wall gave back less than it took. The Razorback would have lived in an open field. Against wood and angle, it died on schedule. He hadn't beaten it. He had chosen where it would beat itself.

A guard with a straw-colored beard hovered near, waiting for him to speak. He didn't. He watched instead: how they bled the heat, how they saved the caul, how they cut the haunch for curing. You learn a place by how it butchers.

When the reeve finally came over, wiping his hands on a rag already past saving, he nodded at Nameless without warmth and without debt.

"You brought it here," the reeve said. Statement, not accusation.

"I ran away," Nameless answered. "Your wall did the rest."

The reeve glanced at the spears, at the cracked fence, at the boy who had thrown the pitch and now pretended he hadn't. He grunted. "You didn't argue the cut. That helps."

"I don't fight over meat," Nameless said. "I fight over information."

That earned him a longer look. "What do you want?"

"Nothing you'd miss," he said. "How often they come down from the scrub. Which side the swineherds fear. Whether your watch rings before dawn or after."

The reeve jerked his chin toward the north fence. "Boar from the scrub, wolves from the ridge, men from the road when they're hungry enough. We ring when we must. Not for shadows."

"Good policy," Nameless said. He pointed, not touching, at the gouge where tusk had kissed timber. "This line—fix it tomorrow. Not higher—denser."

"We know our fence," the reeve said, but without heat. "You sleep inside?"

"No," Nameless said. "I sleep where I can leave running."

He took three steps back and let the pale night soak everything flat again. In that chalky hush he could see, in the mind's eye, how tomorrow might have gone without tonight: some boy at dawn, driving pigs; a charge out of the scrub; a body not returned. He had not earned their thanks. He had stolen their accident.

He let Perfect Sight dim and looked with his own eyes: the cut of tusk, the slick on chalk, the line where spear met motion. Lore written in splinters: placement, not drama. Range turns power to law. Blow for blow is theatre; reach and angle are verdicts.

A guard called down, uncertain. "Stranger—your share? You sure?"

"I'm sure," Nameless said. "You need the meat more than I need a fight."

The boy with the pitch-basket stared at him like people do at a story that chose not to happen. "You… saved us?"

Nameless almost smiled. "No. I saved your tomorrow from an idiot with a knife and a good opinion of himself."

The words landed and held. They laughed, but softly, the way people do when the joke is a little too true.

Any village this close to a feeder like that was living on borrowed luck. Sooner or later some hunter would cut sign at dawn, follow blood the wrong way, and bring the thing back on a straight line to the gate. With hands this green and ranks this low, the end would have been quick and ugly. The palisade was the only tool heavy enough to argue; his feint had simply made the Razorback spend its life against it—die by the mouth it charged with.

He let the thought turn once.

If I'd missed the timing, I'd be the fool who dragged a killer to their door. A little butcher with a clever plan and a dead village.

But it worked. Which buys you a different name.

He used that truth like coin. Not swagger—just the posture of a man who knew exactly why the wall was still standing. Run it here, make the weight break itself, stay in the radius, keep your hands off the spoils. A strategist, not a scavenger. A rescuer by design, not accident.

They read it the way he needed. Relief writes history fast.

He watched the guards settle—fear banked, discipline returning, gratitude negotiating with suspicion—and filed the lesson where it belonged.

It is always the same: first they doubt, then they cheer. Part of the process.

The white night thinned further, the horizon a vein of milk. The wind brought up the smell of cut flesh and cooling iron. Behind the wall someone began to hum a work-song older than the palisade itself.

He turned away from the gate and let the fence-lines show him the safe lines by first light. West Montanum did not forgive. It didn't need to. It had men to build straight timbers and beasts to test them.

Tonight, geometry had been enough. Tomorrow, it would ask for more.

Father Aldric spoke low to the captain, a hand to his sleeve, a glance at the carcass. The captain nodded once, then stepped to the parapet and called down.

"You did clean work," he said. "Not brave—better. Intelligent. Looks green when you're running, but that was an old man's line." He studied Nameless a heartbeat. "You've done this elsewhere."

"Once or twice," Nameless said.

"You took no meat," the captain went on, "and you're unarmed." He vanished from the wall, boots on ladder rungs, and came out through the wicket with a small loaf wrapped in cloth. Under his arm—a short sword, scarred guard, the edge nicked from honest work.

He pressed the bread into Nameless's palm. "Eat."

The boy did have a sword—issued with the watch, worn like a badge, never drawn. He'd spent the night hugging the pitch-basket, the scabbard knocking uselessly at his hip. The captain unhooked it with a flat tug and handed it over. As the grip settled in Nameless's palm, the overlay blinked:

[Common Shortsword — Steel — L1]

Then the sword. "Take this. The boy isn't ready to carry it—not tonight, not next. Let him keep to pitch until he learns where to stand." He didn't look back at the lad when he said it.

Nameless balanced the weight, testing the grain, the bite of the guard. "Thanks."

The boy shifted, pitch still drying on his knuckles, belt empty where a sword should hang; the captain kept his eyes on the work, not the faces. The blade itself was honest—nicks on the guard, sweat-dark leather, no story but use.

Inside, he smiled without warmth. Seeing past skins and uniforms—that was the one edge he hadn't surrendered. Most men read rank and age; he read the number they pretended wasn't there. The careful captain didn't know the boy and I stood on the same rung tonight. The overlay still ghosted at the edge of sight: Emperor — Level 3. The boy, too — Level 3. The captain's prudence read age and posture; Perfect Sight read what mattered. Appearances promote; numbers don't. A guard learns sooner or later what a wall already knows: appearances don't stop tusks.

He hesitated, weighing something that wasn't the sword. "There's room in the watch-house. One bunk open since Midwinter." He didn't say why. He didn't need to. "If you're passing through, take it. Night's a bad teacher."

Father Aldric added, with a tired smile that never reached his eyes, "You're welcome to bread and water, nothing finer. And to a door with a bar."

Nameless inclined his head. "I'll take the bar."

The captain jerked his chin to the gate. "Then come. We'll haul this sow out of the trench and you can sleep where the roof doesn't argue with the sky."

They worked the ropes through the Razorback's jaw while the wicket creaked. Nameless kept a pace inside the threshold—no swagger, no claim—just enough radius to let the ledger shut in his favor and enough distance to keep tusks, even dead ones, from making a last point.

As the carcass slid toward the ditch, the captain glanced over. "For the record," he said, almost formal, "thank you. Not for killing it— for choosing where it died."

"Places matter," Nameless answered.

"More than people admit," the captain said. 

The reeve called orders, the bell softened to a habit, and the village settled into the work of surviving itself. Nameless followed the captain through the narrow door off the gatehouse to a short hall that smelled of oil, damp wool, and old iron.

"Third pallet on the left," the captain said. "Blanket's clean enough. If anyone asks your name, tell them tomorrow."

"Tomorrow," Nameless agreed.

"Sleep," Father Aldric added from the threshold. "Night still owes us a little quiet."

Nameless set the sword within arm's reach, tore the bread, and ate without ceremony. Outside, hooks rasped on bone; inside, the walls held. He let his eyes half-close, counting the silences between voices until the silences won.

He let the door's bar fall into its notch and the room settle around him—oil, wool, old iron, a roof that didn't argue with the sky. He sat on the third pallet, set the sword within reach, and let the quiet open inward.

"Points, then," he said to no one. "Spend the right coins."

The sheet rose inside the skull, pale as breath on glass.

[INT +1][WIS +1][STR +1][PER +1]

Numbers turned where they needed to.

INT 7 · WIS 6 · STR 3 · PER 4(DEX 1 · CON 1 · STA 1 · WIL 3 · CHA 1 · PRV 2)

HP: 60 IP: 53 Breath: 26

[Skill Points: 2] — held.

"Long game," he murmured. "Sight first, blade later. Found the house before I buy the furniture."

He rolled his knuckles; the overlay answered.

[Fist Weapons Proficiency 21/10,000]

"Twenty-one into ten thousand," he murmured. "That isn't a path; it's a rumor."

He let his hand fall to the short sword, lifted it, and watched the tag flare again:

[Common Shortsword — Steel — L1]

"I need a bridge to wisdom," he said under his breath. "For now, the sword must do."

Sight chooses doors; steel keeps them open. The Skill Points could wait.

He lay back, eyes open to the rafters, and let the clock he trusted do the math. He'd come in at 19:00 outside; launch was 22:00. Three hours real. Sixty hours in here. 

"Good trade," he said, almost amused. "Time for truth before the crowd arrives."

"My 'private tutorial' stretched to the size of a small life—and a few of those hours were already scraped away by wolves, chalk, and a wall that didn't break."

He closed the sheet, felt the weight of the sword's haft against his palm, and listened to the village breathe: hooks rasping bone, low voices, a bell rung by survivors. He pictured the line he'd walked to the gate and the line he'd need tomorrow.

"I hope the ones who come after me make less trouble than I did," he added, dry as chalk.

A soft knock, then the captain eased the door with two fingers. The white night bled around his shoulders like chalk.

He took Nameless in from the threshold—height, pallor, the cut of the cheekbones—and tilted his head.

"Half-Ratiol, aren't you? Rare this far west." A beat. "Where'd you come from?"

Nameless's hand rested on the sword. He weighed the truth he couldn't say and the one that would do.

"From outside," he said.

The captain studied him a heartbeat longer, then nodded once. "Understood. You're spent. We'll talk when the sun decides what color it wants." His mouth twitched. "White nights bring strangers out of time."

He stepped back into the pale, closing the door with the gentleness of a man who owed the dark nothing.

Nameless listened to the latch settle. Half-blood was an in-game option among the humanoid races, granting a portion of both lineages' advantages; spawns skewed toward human lands rather than other kindreds, most of all across Montanum. He lay back, the sword within reach, the bread heavy in his hand, and let the bright darkness press against the shutters until thought thinned into sleep.

Then he let the white night carry the rest.

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