The storm broke two nights later.
Thick clouds rolled low over the hills, blotting out the moon. Rain lashed the earth, turning Thornholt's yard into sucking mud. The half-finished palisade swayed in the wind. The old tower groaned like a dying thing.
But Garran knew it wasn't the storm that mattered.
It was what followed it.
The night watch doubled. Fires were built high against the mist. Crossbows kept loaded, blades within arm's reach. The men of the Black Harp moved in tense silence, rain plastering hair to faces, water trickling down rusted mail. Even Jorik's grin was a brittle thing.
They all knew what was coming.
And it came at dawn.
A horn blast.Sharp and shrill.Not theirs.
A rider burst from the tree line at full gallop, blood spattered across his chest, a javelin jutting from his side. One of Garran's scouts. He toppled from the saddle just within the gates.
"South road," he rasped. "They come."
Dannic swore, yanking the man clear as the gates slammed shut.
Garran strode to the wall.
Through the mist and thinning rain, they came into view. Shapes moving between the trees. Armored men. A black banner, marked with a crimson raven. Fifty… no, more. Sixty at least. Ser Kestrel's riders.
And at their head, a knight in dark mail, helm crowned with crimson-dyed feathers.
Not Kestrel himself. Garran knew the sort. Some favored killer sent to settle debts.
"Name?" Jorik asked.
"Doesn't matter," Garran muttered. "He'll leave here in pieces."
The Black Harp readied their ranks.
Fifty men against perhaps twice their number. No escape. No mercy.
Just the kind of fight Garran Vale had always favored.
The enemy drew up beyond bowshot.
The knight raised a hand, signaling his men to halt. Rain hissed off steel. The sound of horses snorting, boots shifting in mud. For a moment, the world held its breath.
Then the knight bellowed:
"By order of Ser Kestrel Harrowmont, surrender this holding, or be slaughtered to the last man!"
A rough chuckle ran through the Black Harp's line. Even Mera cracked a grim smile from atop the half-built wall.
Garran stepped forward.
"Come take it, you pig's son."
And the fight was on.
The first charge hit like a hammer.
Mounted men swept in, lances leveled, hooves churning mud. Crossbow bolts lanced from the walls, dropping the lead riders, sending others crashing into the muck. Garran's men met them at the broken gate with pikes and axes, driving the charge back in a tangle of blood and steel.
The Black Harp fought like cornered beasts.No ranks. No shining shields.Just teeth and blades and old, dirty tricks.
Jorik caught a charging rider with a thrown axe, dragging him from the saddle. Dannic shattered a man's skull with a smith's hammer. Mera slit a throat at the palisade's edge.
Garran moved through the fight like a storm.
A sword stroke split a rider's mail at the collar. A dagger buried into the next man's ribs. Blood streaked his face, his cloak sodden, his voice raw from shouting.
"Hold the gate!""No quarter!""Kill them all!"
The knight in crimson-feathered helm cut a path through the defenders, his swordwork precise, brutal. Garran saw him drop three men in as many heartbeats.
Their eyes met.
The knight pointed his sword.
"Steward of Thornholt!"
"Come on, then," Garran spat.
The clash was hard and fast. The knight was good, too good for a petty lord's errand man. Garran took a cut to the shoulder, answered with a knee to the gut, a pommel strike to the jaw. They broke apart, circled.
The world shrank to the ring of steel, the wet stink of blood and earth.
Garran feinted high, stepped in close, and drove his dagger into the knight's thigh. As the man staggered, he hacked down with his sword, splitting helm and skull in a single stroke.
The knight crumpled to the mud.
And with him, the enemy's fight broke.
The surviving riders fled into the mist, leaving their dead to rot in the muck. The Black Harp didn't pursue. Not yet.
A victory bought in blood.A price paid in men and pain.
By dusk, the dead were piled high. Twenty of Garran's men lay among them.
Jorik leaned against the ruined gate, panting, face smeared with blood not his own.
"Ser Kestrel'll not like this."
Garran wiped his blade clean on a corpse's cloak.
"Good."
The rain fell again.But Thornholt still stood.
And for the first time, men began calling it their land.