They ran hard through the birch lane, boots thudding the packed earth. The dust Oriel had found rose like a thin brown thread to the south-east. Rowan's breath burned, but his legs kept going. Ahead, low fences and thatch roofs showed through the wavering heat.
"How far can you jump?" he called to Nyx, not breaking stride.
She didn't look at him. "Far enough."
"The villagers need warning. And the boy by the well—keep him safe if you can."
Nyx's mouth twitched. "Then keep up."
She veered toward a hedgerow where shadow pooled. One step carried her into the shade. The next step she wasn't there.
Rowan blinked at the empty air and ran harder.
---
Nyx fell out of shadow into a small square of packed dirt and sun. Chickens scattered. A woman screamed. Three children dropped their buckets.
"Put those down," Nyx snapped, the words cutting clean. "Inside, now."
An old man with a walking stick lifted it like a spear. "Who—"
"If I wanted you dead," Nyx said without turning, "I wouldn't have spoken."
A bell clanged once from a crooked post, a thin, frightened sound. People poured out of doorways, wide-eyed and empty-handed. Nyx pointed at the sheds, the carts, the cords of wood.
"Bar the gate. Carts across the lane. Pitchforks, knives, axes—anything with reach. You, you, and you—" she jabbed a finger, "—hold here. Do not chase. Hold."
A big farmhand shouldered past the others to the well. He hauled a full bucket up one-handed and dropped the rope. He was broad-shouldered, dark hair stuck to his forehead with sweat, a simple shirt stretched tight across his chest. Light pulsed faintly there, like a glow under his skin.
"You," Nyx said. "Name."
"Toren," he said, breath already quick. He lifted a short sword from a hook by the door, tested the weight, and nodded once, as if it were part of his arm.
"Good," Nyx said. "You stand with me."
The village had no walls, only a low fence and a narrow gate between two leaning posts. A wagon went sideways there under quick hands, wheels locked. Old doors and a ladder stacked against it made a rough front. Men and women with pitchforks and poles climbed behind, faces pale, jaws set. A boy brought out a bundle of old shields and dropped them in a heap. Hands grabbed whatever would hide a belly and a heart.
Far fields glittered with moving metal.
Nyx drew one dagger and let the other hang loose. Shadow crawled to her ankles like a tame thing. She lifted two fingers to her lips and gave a short, sharp whistle.
The air thickened. The panther flowed out of the wagon's shade, silver eyes calm. It paced ahead of the barricade and sat, tail sweeping a slow, steady line in the dust.
Toren's eyes went wide, then narrow. He stood on Nyx's right, sword held low, point forward, the way someone had taught him. He looked eighteen. He looked strong. The faint light under his shirt flared and dimmed with his breath.
"They're close," someone whispered.
"Hold," Nyx said. "Do not run. Do not lean. If you're afraid, breathe with it and do not move your feet."
The first wolf hit the open lane at a lope, head low, lips peeled back. Two more flanked it, then five, then a knot of them, lean and hungry with dust in their fur. Behind them, men in dark leathers came at a steady stride. No banners. No talk. Workmen in armor.
"Hold," Nyx said again.
The wolves broke into a sprint.
"Now."
The first leapt the low ladder. Pan rose like a thrown shadow and met it in the air. They hit the dirt together. A flash of claws. A clean, wet sound. The wolf didn't get up.
Pitchforks stabbed. The second wolf rammed a pole and snapped it in half with its jaws before a woman stabbed it through the eye. The third cleared the wagon and landed inside the line on a small man's chest—Toren's sword took its throat in one hard pull, a simple farm cut that wasted no motion.
Men hit the barricade two breaths later. Steel on wood. Hard metal on old door planks. A pitchfork bent, a shield split, a man in a hood went down with half his teeth on the ground. Black leather and bare arms pushed and scrambled and fell. Nyx moved like water, never where a blade expected. One raider lifted his sword for a high cut; Nyx tapped the air near his armpit and her knife went through the gap like a thought, in and out, clean as a stitch. He folded as if he had decided to sit.
"Left!" she called, not looking.
Toren was already there. He stepped into a swing and turned it with his blade the simple way you turn a plow when the ground catches. His riposte was a short jab to a soft place. Another raider shoved at him and met iron, not fear.
"Keep the line tight!" Nyx shouted. "Don't chase. If they fall inside—two on one and finish."
Pan launched over the wagon again, landed on a man's back, and drove him flat. A pitchfork pinned his thigh. A knife found his throat. Blood ran in the ruts between the boards.
Ari wasn't there. Rowan wasn't there. Brennar wasn't there. It was villagers and Nyx and Pan and a boy named Toren and a barricade that wanted to be a wall.
More wolves came. Nyx slid low, cut a tendon, rose with a high slice. Her blade kissed a throat and came away clean. She vanished into a wagon shadow and stepped out on the other side of the lane, behind a man who had thought he was safe. Her second knife found the seam at his neck, quick and sure.
"Hold!" she barked, when three men tried to climb down from the wagon to chase a wolf. "Back in line!"
They obeyed. Fear made good soldiers when someone's voice was sharper than the fear.
A man with a round shield smashed the ladder flat, climbed the heap, and roared. Toren met him. Their blades rang once, twice. Toren's footwork was simple but sound—weight under him, shoulders quiet. He beat the man's shield aside with a hard shove and cut across the collarbone, then down. The man fell. Toren stumbled a step and set himself again, chest heaving, the faint glow under his shirt growing brighter.
"Breathe," Nyx said without looking at him. "Not too fast. Don't let it rush you."
"I'm fine," Toren said through his teeth, and took another cut that would have opened a slower man from ribs to hip.
For a time the line held. Wolves bled out under poles. Men fell and were replaced by men who looked the same. A pitchfork snapped. Someone screamed and then swore and then kept fighting. The panther moved like a black thought from one gap to the next. Nyx saw a man draw breath to shout orders, marked him, and her blade slipped through the bars of his gorget as if the metal were smoke.
Then the weight changed.
Fresh men pressed in, heavier, with better helms, long knives and short shields. They did not come one by one. They came three at a time and hit the same place, again and again, like waves. A woman with a kitchen cleaver went down. Her neighbor dragged her back by the belt with one hand and stabbed with the other. A boy screamed for his mother, then bit his lip hard enough to bleed and held the spear steady.
The barricade creaked.
"Hold it," Nyx said, and felt sweat slip down her spine.
Two raiders pushed a shield up the heap like a makeshift roof, ducked under it, and popped out inside the line. Nyx spun and threw. One fell with steel in his eye. The second barreled into her shoulder with the shield and drove her off her feet.
She hit the dirt hard enough to see white. Air left her. The shield man swung for her head. She rolled. The blade slammed into the ground where her face had been and stuck. She kicked his knee and heard something pop. He howled. A third man tripped over him and tumbled into her legs. She slashed blind, felt steel bite leather and skin, and lost the knife in bodies.
Pan roared. The sound thumped Rowan's name in Nyx's chest though Rowan wasn't there. The cat slammed into the shield man and dragged him sideways in a spray of dust. Blood threw shapes on the boards.
Nyx tried to get up. A boot caught her ribs and dumped her again. Breath became knives. She reached for shadow. It was there, but thin. Too much sun. Too many bodies. A blade lifted above her, curved and dirty, not even sharp. It began to fall.
"Toren!" someone screamed.
The boy answered with steel. He broke past the ladder, feet sliding in blood, and met the curved blade with a hard, ugly cut that jarred his arms. He drove his shoulder into the man's chest and shoved him back. A second raider hit Toren from the side and dragged his sword arm down. A third came up behind the second with a grin on his face that had nothing to do with joy.
Nyx saw all three and could stop none of them. Her hands slid in the dirt, found no purchase. The world narrowed to faces and metal and breath.
"Hold!" she rasped, though no one could hear her.
The line buckled. The wagon jolted. Someone fell across Nyx's legs and did not get up. Pan stood over her now, fur bristled, mouth red, snapping at anything with a blade, taking cuts it didn't have time to dodge. Toren's sword flashed, fell, rose, faltered. His glow flared too bright and then guttered, like a lamp low on oil. His feet slipped. A raider seized his wrist. Another raised his knife for the soft place under Toren's jaw.
For a heartbeat the whole square was the sound of breathing and boots and a bell that would not stop ringing in someone's head.
Nyx looked up at the blade and could not move.
It started down.