The square smelled of iron and dust and hot rope. Flies were already coming. Villagers moved among the bodies with buckets and rags and tight faces, stepping around the worst of it. A cart creaked as two men heaved a raider into it with a grunt and a curse.
In the middle of it all stood the man in the thorn cage.
Ashwyn faced him with the patience of stone. Roots wrapped the raider chest to hips, bark layered over bark, thorns touching his throat so close he had to breathe small. Blood beaded at a dozen pricks. He tried not to swallow. He swallowed anyway.
"Speak truth," Ashwyn said quietly. "Lie, and the roots will know."
The man's jaw worked. "Kill me and be done."
"No," Ashwyn said. "You will be useful first."
Brennar stood off to the side, one hand on the axe head, the other wrapped in a clean bandage Lyra had just tied. He looked as if he would rather do the simple work of ending things. He said nothing.
Rowan stood a few steps back, harpoon across his thighs, the frost edge long gone. He watched the man's eyes. They moved too fast. They wanted to count faces, judge angles, weigh chances. There were none.
Nyx leaned against the broken wagon, Pan sitting like a shadow statue at her heel. Lyra checked her ribs again and got a low, annoyed sound for her trouble. Ari's hawk sat on a high post, feathers ruffled, head turning as if measuring the whole square. Oriel's bright eye fixed now and then on the man in the thorns, and every time it did, he flinched.
Ashwyn did not raise his voice. "Who sent you?"
"Work is work," the man said. "We take pay; we bring goods."
Ashwyn moved one finger. A thorn grew a hairbreadth. The man hissed.
"Who," Ashwyn repeated.
"Black tent," the man forced out. "Always moving. Always south of the line. We bring what we catch. We get silver. We get leave."
"What do you bring?" Ari asked, flat.
"Strong backs. Young ones. Anyone who can carry, anyone who can break," he said. His mouth twisted. "And if one shines—" His eyes flicked toward Toren standing by the well, a sword point sunk in dirt so his shaking didn't show. "Then the black tent sends for the mask. And the woman with the smoke voice."
Nyx's eyes narrowed. "Corrupted."
The man shrugged as far as the wood allowed. "Maybe. Maybe not. I don't ask about smoke if it pays."
"What do they do with the shining ones?" Rowan asked before he could stop himself.
"Turn them or break them," the man said, almost bored, as if saying the price of salt. "Break is quicker. Turning pays better."
Rowan's fingers tightened on the shaft. He saw again the ruined town and the boy on the ground clawing at the air as green fog crawled into his mouth. He saw Brennar, slick with blood, standing over him in Verdant Hollow and shouting for him to breathe.
He swallowed hard and looked at Brennar without meaning to. Brennar's jaw moved once, then stilled. He did not look back.
Ashwyn's face did not change. "How many like you are on this road?"
The man's lips went thin. Thorn points pressed deeper. He winced. "Not one hand," he said at last. "Two. Three. Small bands. Wolves. Men. We take different lanes but keep the same heading. Farm to farm. Well to well. The tent follows dust and whispers."
"Whose whispers?" Nyx asked.
"Yours," he said with a little smile. "People talk when lights flicker in their boys. Word runs faster than feet."
A murmur went through the villagers behind them, a sound of anger and fear mixed like smoke. A woman with a pitchfork took a step toward the cage. Her mouth trembled with words she hadn't yet picked.
Ashwyn lifted a hand. She stopped.
"What is at the black tent?" Ari asked. "How many. What waits."
The man licked dry lips. "Always different. We bring. We leave. But the mask is always there. And the woman. And buyers with chain." He glanced at the cart where a raider moaned. "You asked what waits. Chain waits."
No one spoke.
Ashwyn stepped closer until the thorns pricked his own sleeve. "You will live long enough to show us where," he said. "And if you lie on the way, you will not lie long."
The man tried to look brave. It didn't sit well on his face.
Ashwyn turned to the gathered villagers, to the men with ropes and the women with rags and the children with set mouths who had not run. "The rest are yours," he said, voice clear. "They bled your people. Justice belongs to you. Bind them. Decide together." He looked at the older woman who had killed a wolf with a pitchfork. "Not revenge alone. Justice."
She held his gaze for a long breath, then nodded once. "We'll do what's right," she said. What that meant in detail did not need saying.
They moved in a slow, grim way, tying wrists with old line, taking knives from belts, nudging with feet when a man tried to slither away. None of it was loud. Loud had been spent already.
Lyra left Nyx's side and crossed to a boy with a split scalp. "Sit," she told him, gentle as river water. "Head up." The boy obeyed without a word. Her hands glowed faint; the blood slowed. His mother cried once, sharp and small, then swallowed it and stroked his hair.
Rowan went to Toren.
Up close, the light under Toren's shirt looked calmer, like an ember in a stove when the door is shut. His hands were raw where the leather of the grip had rubbed. His breath shook, though he tried to lock it down.
"You held," Rowan said. "You kept people alive."
Toren gave a tight nod. "I didn't want to run." He looked at his sword as if surprised at the blood on it. "I didn't think. My body just—knew."
"Sometimes that's enough," Rowan said. He almost put a hand on the young man's shoulder, then waited until Toren looked up and gave the smallest nod. Only then did he rest his palm there—solid, brief. "Sometimes it saves everyone."
Brennar stepped up, looming like a doorframe. He looked Toren up and down the way a smith looks at a bar he means to shape. "You swing heavy," he said. "But you don't waste motion. Good."
Toren blinked. Praise from a man like Brennar landed like a gift he didn't know how to open. "My father taught me—fence posts, old steel. He—" The word stuck. "He's gone."
Brennar's voice softened in the place only men who've buried someone can reach. "Then he taught you well."
Ari came to stand with them, Oriel hopping from the post to her wrist. "The dust to the south is real," she said. "Faint, but steady. Wagons. Weight." The hawk clicked its beak like it agreed.
Nyx pushed off the wagon with a wince and came closer, Pan flowing at her side. She looked at Toren's chest, then at his eyes. "You shone," she said. "You'll draw more attention."
"I don't want to," Toren said, rough. "I want to fix fences and pull rope and sleep at night."
Nyx's mouth tilted, not unkind. "Want and world don't meet often."
Ashwyn joined them. The wolf and stag were gone, but something of them still seemed to stand with him, a steadiness in the air that made people breathe slower. He looked from face to face, then to the villagers who were binding the last of the living raiders.
"You've heard him," Ashwyn said, nodding toward the cage. "There are more bands like this on the road. They'll keep coming. Not for grain. Not for sheep. For light." His eyes went to Toren. "For you."
Toren swallowed. His hand tightened on the hilt. "Then I should go," he said, low, "so they stop coming here."
Silence held a beat. You could hear a rope creak, a bucket set down soft.
Rowan spoke before his doubt could. "Come with us," he said. "At least until we find a place that can hold. You can learn what you are. Learn to aim it. If you stay, you put them in danger. If you go, you might come back strong enough to end it."
Toren looked at him, long and searching, as if trying to see if there was a lie hidden in the words. He didn't find one.
Brennar set a heavy hand on Toren's shoulder. "Strength without guidance breaks," he said. "Don't waste what you have."
Ari added, "We move fast. We don't promise comfort."
Nyx's eyes flicked to the south. "But we promise trouble before it finds you."
Lyra tied off a bandage on a farmer's arm and came over, wiping her hands. "And if you're hurt, I'll put you back together," she said, simple. "As many times as it takes."
Toren looked around his village—at the woman who had killed a wolf with a pitchfork; at the boy with the stitched scalp; at the cart with a sheet thrown over it, too flat to be a load of wood. He looked at the well rope he had lifted like it weighed nothing.
He nodded, once. "I'll go."
A breath left the people around him, some in relief, some in fear. The woman with the pitchfork touched his arm. "You do what you have to," she said. "We'll keep roofs on and bread baking. You come back when you can." She didn't add if you can. She didn't have to.
Ashwyn turned back to the thorn cage. The leader watched all of it with a small, sick smile that never reached his eyes.
"We'll take him," Ashwyn said to the villagers, meaning the caged man. "We need his tongue and his fear. The rest—do what your elders judge is right."
The old man with the walking stick nodded. "We know our dead," he said. "We know our law."
Ashwyn inclined his head. He set a hand to the living cage. The thorns loosened just enough that the man could walk without bleeding more. Two farmers took hold of the wood on either side and pushed. The cage shifted like a wheelbarrow. The man stumbled along inside it, teeth bared.
Ari glanced south again. "Dust is fading," she said. "But the line is straight. They're not wandering."
"Nor are we," Ashwyn said. He looked to the road, to the thin brown thread still hanging where Oriel had first seen it. "The black tent moves. Where it passes, villages burn. Where the light walks, the dark follows." His voice carried, but it was not loud. "We follow its shadow, or it will find us all the same."
Rowan felt the words settle at the base of his skull like a weight he had been trying not to admit he was already carrying. He looked at Brennar and saw again the day at Verdant Hollow—the wolves, the river, Brennar's hands dragging him up, the world narrowing to breath. A life could turn on a breath. His had.
He gripped the harpoon. The wood was warm from the sun. The waterskin pressed cool against his side, steady as a promise.
"Pack light," Brennar said, rolling his shoulder like it had decided to be useful again. "We move before dark."
Nyx nodded, already checking straps and knives. Pan flicked its tail. Ari stroked Oriel's neck; the hawk clicked its beak and launched to a higher post, watching the road. Lyra tucked a roll of clean cloth into her bag and tied it shut with a sure knot.
Toren wiped his blade on a strip of cloth, hesitated, then tucked the strip into his belt as if he might need it later. He looked at Rowan. "What do I do with the glow?"
Rowan thought of water held still over a stone while the river moved past. "Breathe slower than you want," he said. "Don't chase it. Let it come back to you."
Toren tried. The light under his shirt dimmed to that steady ember again. He let out a breath, surprised. "That… helps."
"It will help more with time," Ashwyn said. "And with work."
The sun had begun its slow drop. Shadows stretched long from posts and cart wheels. The square still smelled of iron and dust. But the air felt different, like a string had been plucked and now hummed, low and steady, in the bones of everyone who stood there.
They would follow the dust. They would find the black tent. They would pull answers from it even if those answers came out like thorns.
"Before dark," Brennar said again, with a half-grin that had not quite remembered how to be real. "On your feet."
Rowan lifted the harpoon, set the strap over his shoulder, and fell into step as the road chose them once more—and as they chose it back.