The battlefield stank of burnt pitch, blood, and damp feathers.
Edric stood in the yard just past sunrise, boots in blackened straw, watching Will retch behind the forge. A broken helmet lay in the ash at his feet, its rim bent inward where a panic-blind swing had struck a man's skull. Not Geldar. One of theirs. A boy from the tannery. Seventeen.
Edric didn't remember his name.
He'd fought beside him. Passed him a bow. But now, as he tried to trace the thread, his mind fogged over. Not from blood loss or lack of sleep. He knew the cause. The Crown Rune he'd used the night before. Time-Slow. Three heartbeats of clarity—bought with another fracture in his memory.
Ashcoil coiled at his heel, listless, tongue barely flicking. Its scales were dim again, as though drained. He bent to stroke the serpent's spine, and it shivered under his touch. Not cold—starved. The last rune had wrung them both dry.
"You feel it too," Edric whispered. "Another debt paid."
From the far end of the courtyard, a group of farmers lifted what was left of the first casualty—Falk, one of the pitch-bearers. Half his arm gone, face wrapped in linen. The dead man's wife followed in silence, clutching their son. Will watched her pass, then spat, face pale as soot.
"She asked if we won," he muttered.
Edric didn't answer. Because truth had weight, and sometimes silence was the kinder load.
Garrick limped toward him, tunic scorched, one eye bloodshot. His axe dragged slightly behind him—not for lack of strength, but from the heaviness only survivors carried.
"They'll be back," the old knight said, voice gruff. "And smarter."
"Then we'll be ready."
"You won't. Not like this. Not again."
He gestured to the yard. Every man and woman was moving slower. There were shields to repair, wounded to tend, and arrows to fletch—but the fight had leeched something deeper. Hope didn't grow back overnight.
"Then I buy time," Edric said. "Whatever it costs."
"Aye," Garrick murmured, too quietly for anyone else to hear. "That's what I'm afraid of."
Edric climbed the tower alone that evening. The wind had changed again, blowing south now, away from the smoldering farmsteads. The plume of black was thinner. Perhaps the raiders had moved on. Perhaps they'd simply run out of kindling.
From the tower's top, he could see the bend of the river, the treeline, the silhouette of Old Mill Bridge. In daylight, it all looked smaller. But he knew how far it truly stretched. How far his reach still fell short.
Elena joined him just before sundown, her braid re-tied, a fresh cloak over her shoulders. She carried no scrolls this time, no urgent letter or spy's whisper. Just a folded slip of parchment and two mugs of something hot.
"Mint root and barley," she said, offering one. "Rafe calls it 'brain tea.' Claims it makes him remember numbers better."
Edric took it. "Does it work?"
"He still thinks we have gold in the vault. So no."
They drank in silence for a moment. Below, the village glowed with torchlight and the red shimmer of forge fires. The rhythm of hammer and bellows hadn't stopped since the battle ended.
"How many did we lose?" Elena asked.
"Two. One more might not wake."
"That's fewer than we feared."
"It's two more than I wanted."
She leaned her arms on the stone rail, gaze distant. "This was the first test. You know that."
"I do."
"They'll come again."
"I hope so."
That made her look at him. Not in surprise, but wariness. As if she was watching a blade turn in someone's hand, waiting to see where it pointed.
"You scare me a little when you say things like that."
"Good. It means I haven't gone soft."
She didn't laugh. Just stared at him, long enough that he felt the air shift between them.
Then she handed him the folded parchment.
"It's from the east," she said. "A baron who's not supposed to know your name."
Edric unfolded the note. The ink was sharp, the script angular. An offer.
"Baron Hollowmere," he read aloud. "Offering grain, a healer, and five scouts."
Elena watched him closely. "In return for a formal banner pact. You'd wear his sigil beside your own."
"Which means I'm no longer just House Vale. I'm part of his leash."
"He's testing your hunger. Same way Geldar tested your walls."
Edric let the paper flutter in the wind.
"Send him my thanks. And my regrets."
"You sure? That grain could feed us all winter."
"Then we'll hunt. Or we'll starve on our own terms."
She smiled faintly, not with approval but with understanding.
"Stubborn," she said. "It's a royal trait."
"No," Edric murmured. "That's my mother's trait. She was a farmer's daughter before she married into ruin. She taught me stubborn before I could walk."
Elena looked away at that. Quiet stretched.
Then she said, "Do you want to remember him?"
Edric blinked. "Who?"
"Whoever you forgot."
He froze.
He hadn't told her.
Not about the memory loss. Not about the cost of Crown Runes. But she'd seen it. Or guessed. Because Elena Rowe didn't miss things. She collected them, filed them like blades behind her eyes.
"I don't know," he said finally.
"That's the worst part, isn't it?"
She touched his sleeve lightly, then left without another word.
Alone, Edric stared at the river until dusk swallowed the trees.
That night, dreams came jagged and broken. A door opening into fire. A hand reaching for his, but no face above the wrist. A boy shouting a name he couldn't understand. When he woke, his pillow was damp, and Ashcoil was coiled around his chest like a bandage.
Three days passed in quiet repair.
The villagers rebuilt shields, counted arrows, and sharpened blades with the ritual rhythm of people who knew they had no choice. Fiona tested a new edge rune carved from hawk claw. Ronan trained the shield wall in uneven terrain drills. Garrick took over the kitchen twice, refusing to call it morale-building, though the stew was better when he stirred.
Cress and Wren ran messages to outposts, always returning with windburned cheeks and smuggled berries.
But something shifted under it all. Not fear. Not grief. Weight.
On the fourth day, scouts returned with a fresh arrow—hooked, black-fletched, stuck in a pig carcass thrown into the stream. A message.
We see you.
Edric held it in his hand for a long time, then snapped it over his knee.
"No more waiting," he said. "We bleed them back."
Garrick raised an eyebrow. "You want to march?"
"No. We want them to think we did."
That night, under a moonless sky, decoys marched across the river—wooden silhouettes dragged by rope, torches staggered to mimic footfall, illusions built with barely any real soldiers. Just noise and shape.
The next morning, a Geldar scout post stood empty, its fire cold.
One small win. A whisper of momentum.
Enough.
Edric knew the war was far from over. But he had seen something shift in his people—in Will's jaw, in Merra's stride, in Ronan's quiet smile as he walked among the troops without correcting them.
Hope hadn't grown back.
But something harder had.
Resolve.
And Edric, though he still couldn't remember the boy's name, etched a new rune in the stone beneath the tower.
A simple line.
A hook.
A circle.
He didn't name it.
He didn't need to.
It was memory enough.