Chapter 1 — Ashes Don't Ask for Names
The first thing Mikkel Aarsen learned about war was that it did not care who you were.
It did not care if you had a family waiting somewhere beyond the hills, or if you had once planned a life that never involved blood and fire. It did not care if your hands had only ever known tools instead of weapons.
War did not ask for names.
It took them.
The caravan moved slowly through the ash-stained road, wheels creaking under the weight of grain sacks and battered crates. Smoke drifted lazily in the distance, carried by a wind that smelled of burned timber and old death. What had once been farmland now lay blackened and hollow, the earth cracked like dried skin.
Mikkel walked beside the third wagon from the rear.
Not riding. Not guarding. Just walking.
He wore no uniform—only a dull brown tunic reinforced at the shoulders with stitched leather, a belt that held a small knife he hoped never to use, and a spear that was more reassurance than weapon. The spearhead was chipped, the shaft warped slightly from age. He had checked it that morning anyway.
He always did.
Mikkel was lean rather than strong, his build shaped by long marches and short meals. Dark blond hair was tied back at the nape of his neck with a strip of cloth that had once been white. Grey-blue eyes moved constantly—not nervously, but deliberately—counting wagons, watching shadows, measuring the distance between the caravan and the low ridgeline to the east.
There was a faint scar above his collarbone where his shirt hung loose. A shallow cut, healed badly. The kind left by a blade that had almost mattered.
Most of the others walking beside the caravan talked too loudly.
They joked about how close they were to safety, about how the worst of the fighting was behind them, about how they'd get paid once they reached the border garrison. Their laughter rang thin in the open air, brittle and forced.
Mikkel said nothing.
Hope, he had learned, was loud.
Experience was quiet.
The caravan belonged to a minor frontier lord whose lands no longer existed in any meaningful sense. His keep had burned two weeks ago. His soldiers had scattered. What remained of his authority now rolled forward on four wagons of grain meant for the northern garrison—food traded for protection, survival purchased one sack at a time.
Mikkel was not a soldier.
He was listed as auxiliary labor on the caravan manifest. A body strong enough to walk, weak enough to be expendable. If bandits attacked, he would not be expected to fight. If soldiers were needed to delay an enemy, he would not be missed.
That was the value of men like him.
The road dipped slightly as it curved between two low slopes. Burned fence posts jutted from the ground like broken teeth. A few blackened stones marked where a farmhouse had once stood.
Mikkel's pace slowed by half a step.
He scanned the ridge again.
Nothing moved.
Still—
He adjusted his grip on the spear, resting his hand lightly against the shaft. Not gripping it. Just confirming it was there.
Ahead, one of the guards—an older man with a rusted helm and a patchy beard—laughed loudly at something a companion said.
"Relax," the man called back over his shoulder. "Graymarch dogs don't bite this far north."
Mikkel didn't answer.
Graymarch raiders didn't bite.
They tore.
The first arrow struck the lead guard in the throat.
There was no warning shout. No dramatic pause. Just the dull, wet sound of impact and the sudden spray of red as the man dropped, clutching uselessly at his neck.
For half a heartbeat, the world froze.
Then chaos erupted.
"AMBUSH!"
Shouts tore through the caravan as arrows rained down from the ridgeline. One wagon driver screamed as a shaft buried itself in his shoulder. A horse reared, panicked, snapping its reins as it tried to flee.
Mikkel moved before the fear could settle.
He dropped the grain sack he'd been carrying and shoved the nearest civilian toward the wagon's far side. "Down," he barked, voice sharp enough to cut through the noise.
Another arrow struck the wagon's frame, close enough that Mikkel felt the vibration through the wood.
He crouched low, heart pounding—not with panic, but with calculation.
Three… no, four shooters, he estimated from the rhythm. High ground. Light bows.
Graymarch, then.
The guards scrambled to form some semblance of a defense, shields raised unevenly as they tried to return fire uphill. They were too slow. Too scattered.
Mikkel risked a glance toward the ridge.
Figures moved there—lean silhouettes against the smoke-stained sky, already repositioning. Raiders wore mismatched armor, leather and scavenged mail, faces hidden beneath cloth and crude helms. Efficient. Experienced.
This was not a robbery.
It was a harvest.
"Cut the traces!" someone shouted.
A blade flashed as one of the guards slashed at the lead wagon's harness, trying to free the horses. Another arrow struck him in the thigh. He went down hard, screaming.
Mikkel's breath slowed.
If they take the grain, the garrison starves, he thought. If the garrison starves, the frontier burns.
The logic was simple. Brutal.
He had no authority here. No rank. No right to give orders.
But he had eyes.
"Shield wall!" he shouted anyway, stepping forward. "Two lines! Wagons at your backs!"
A few heads turned.
Most didn't listen.
But one did.
A woman in battered armor pivoted sharply, eyes snapping to him. She stood near the second wagon, blood already smeared across her cheek. Ash-blond hair was cropped short, uneven where it had been cut with a knife rather than care. A scar split one eyebrow, giving her sharp green eyes a permanently fierce look.
She took him in quickly—his stance, his grip, the fact that he wasn't shouting in panic.
Then she grinned.
"About time," she said, raising her blade. "You heard him! Move!"
Her voice carried weight. Soldiers obeyed instinctively.
Mikkel didn't waste time wondering why.
He braced his spear as the first raiders charged downhill, blades raised, howling as they closed the distance. The world narrowed to motion and breath and the space between heartbeats.
The first raider reached the wagon line and swung wildly.
Mikkel stepped inside the arc and drove the spear forward.
The impact jolted his arms. The man collapsed with a strangled sound, momentum carrying him forward into the dirt.
Mikkel wrenched the spear free and staggered back, pulse roaring in his ears.
Still alive.
That was enough.
The fight blurred into fragments—steel on steel, screams cut short, the woman with the green eyes moving like a force of nature beside him, barking orders, laughing when a blow glanced off her armor.
They held.
Barely.
When the raiders finally broke and fled back toward the ridge, dragging their wounded, the road was littered with bodies and broken arrows. Smoke hung heavy in the air.
Mikkel leaned on his spear, chest heaving.
His hands shook—not with fear, but with the aftermath.
Around him, the survivors stared in disbelief.
They were alive.
Someone started laughing. Another sobbed.
The woman wiped her blade clean and looked at Mikkel again, this time more carefully.
"Signe Rasmussen," she said, jerking her chin in his direction. "Infantry. And you?"
"Mikkel," he replied. "Just Mikkel."
She snorted. "Just Mikkel doesn't shout like that unless he knows what he's doing."
He didn't answer.
Names, he knew, mattered less than actions.
As the wounded were gathered and the dead counted, Mikkel stepped away from the road and toward the makeshift infirmary forming near the wagons.
That was where he saw her.
Freja Møller knelt beside a wounded driver as if the chaos around her did not exist.
Chestnut hair was pulled into a loose braid that had begun to unravel, strands sticking to her temples with sweat. She wore no jewelry, no color—only a plain linen dress with sleeves rolled past her elbows, already darkened by blood she did not seem to notice. Her brown eyes were calm in a way that made men lower their voices without knowing why.
She worked with quiet efficiency, hands steady as she bound a bleeding arm. When the man cried out, she leaned closer, murmuring something too soft to hear.
Only when she finished did she straighten.
For just a moment, her fingers brushed her own wrist, grounding herself before she moved to the next wounded soul.
That was when her gaze met Mikkel's.
She studied him—not with fear, not with awe, but with the sharp awareness of someone who measured damage and decided what could be saved.
"You're bleeding," she said simply.
He glanced down. A shallow cut along his forearm. He hadn't felt it.
"It's nothing."
"Everything bleeds," Freja replied. "Sit."
He did.
As she cleaned the wound, Mikkel looked around at the survivors, the grain wagons still standing, the road ahead still open.
They had lived.
But only just.
Freja tied off the bandage and looked up at him. "You should be with the guards."
He shook his head once. "Someone else can carry a spear. Not everyone can stop bleeding."
Something unreadable passed through her eyes.
Far above them, the smoke continued to drift.
War did not ask for names.
But for the first time, Mikkel Aarsen wondered if it remembered faces.