Kay found Sire Klod where he’d expected him to be—near the ditch, looking at the head. The elf’s face hung crooked on the pike beyond the new-dug earth, braid hacked halfway through, eyes still open with shock. The mist had thickened as the light went, turning the camp into a shallow bowl of gray and firelight. Men moved as silhouettes between half-built redoubts. The river muttered on their left, a sound more felt than heard. Yellow boars marked the shadows gathered near the pike. Sire Klod stood a little apart from his men, gaze fixed on the trophy. A new helm under one arm, gauntleted thumb hooked in his sword belt.

  “Sire Klod,” Kay said as he walked up. “A word.”

  Sire Klod didn’t turn at once. He watched the head a heartbeat longer, then glanced over. “If this is about thanks,” he said, “you’re welcome. Twice over. You can have one for the charge and one for the decoration.”

  Some of the men nearby smirked. Kay stopped a few paces short, close enough to speak low, far enough that he wasn’t crowding.

  “It’s not about thanks,” Kay said. “Walk with me.”

  Sire Klod held his eye a moment. Then he pushed off the pike’s shadow and fell into step beside him. They moved along the inside of the ditch, away from the head and the men and the nearest fire. Enough distance that the camp’s noise thinned to a murmur.

  “What’s wrong, boy?” Sire Klod said at last. “Not enough ink on your maps, now you want to scribble on me too?”

  Kay let that pass. He stopped near one of the unfinished redoubts—four posts and a crossbeam, not yet a tower—and faced him.

  “You broke the line today,” Kay said. “I ordered us to hold. You charged.”

  Sire Klod’s mouth curved. “And came back with more dead elves than men lost.”

  “I’m not pretending it didn’t buy us anything,” Kay said. “Your riders kept the first rush off our backs. Your men bled for it. Elves died. That matters.” He held Klod’s gaze. “But you decided where the line was without me. You chose for all of us when the march turned from building to battle. That I can’t leave alone.”

  Sire Klod snorted. “King’s writ again? You clutch that parchment like a shield. Out here, it’s not ink that keeps men breathing. It’s steel. Movement. Fear on the right side of a blade.” He jerked his chin toward the fog. “I’ve listened to elves crawling through my grandfather’s stories since I could stand. They don’t break to neat orders and tidy walls. You feel them close, you hit them. Or you die wondering what brushed past you.”

  Kay let him talk. He heard Sid’s words behind his own ribs—know which tool you’re holding.

  “I’m not asking you to stop hitting them,” Kay said quietly. “I’m asking you to stop deciding you ride alone.”

  Sire Klod’s eyes narrowed a fraction. “Yellowhill doesn’t sit safe,” he said. “Not behind Amberwood. When elves come north, they slip between keeps and towers like water. Amberwood’s supposed to be the wall, but Sire Hudson’s line has never held anything they weren’t handed. Every time they falter, it’s my fields that burn next.”

  He tapped his own chest, jaw tight. “My father buried brothers because Sire Hudson’s grandsire couldn’t keep his own borders straight. Because some fool up the chain always thought the danger was still a day’s ride away.” He lifted his chin. “So yes. I ride hard when I smell them. I don’t ask the sky’s permission first.”

  Kay felt the tug of that, somewhere deeper than anger. He didn’t soften his voice.

  “Then hear this,” he said. “You’re not riding under just your sky anymore. You answered to the writ, same as the rest of the south. You want to kill elves? Good. I need you to. But you do it with the line, not through it. You charge when it moves—not because your blood says go and you like the sound of your own banner.”

  Sire Klod’s jaw worked. “And if the line never moves?” he asked. “If we sit and sit while the elves slit throats in the fog? You planning to bury this march under ‘caution’ and letters to the crown?”

  “If the line never moves, that’s on me,” Kay said. “Not you. Not your men. The King’s writ puts my name on the rope if this goes wrong. I know that.” He stepped in half a pace, enough that he didn’t have to raise his voice. “But as long as we march under it, we move together. You break that again, you force me to choose between the writ and you.”

  “Threats again,” Sire Klod said softly. “First you wave the King. Now you hint at steel. Careful, boy. You start sounding like Sire Hudson.”

  The name pricked like a thorn under the nail. Kay felt the anger climb and caught it before it could show in his hands.

  “Sire Hudson hides behind the crown to fatten himself and grind his neighbors,” he said, voice steady. “I’m standing in a swamp that wants to swallow us, spending coin and blood to keep the south from burning. There’s a difference.”

  “You think you’re better than him?” Sire Klod asked.

  “No,” Kay said. “I intend to be. And if I let you tear holes in my line because it suits your temper, I’ve already failed at that.”

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  Sire Klod studied him. Light from a nearby campfire caught on the edge of his jaw, a thin streak of dry mud lined his cheek.

  “You’ve got more stone in you than you look,” Sire Klod said finally. “I’ll grant you that.”

  Kay shrugged. “I don’t need you to like me. I need you alive, facing the same way the rest of us are. You clearly know how to hurt elves. Do it where it keeps men breathing, not where it leaves us wondering if Yellowhill will still be here by winter.”

  Sire Klod’s gaze flicked over Kay’s shoulder, toward the pike with the head on it. The line of his mouth tightened, then eased.

  “You want Yellowhill in the line, you’ll have it,” he said. “I’ll charge when you give the word.”

  “And if you see something I don’t?” Kay asked. “If you feel them closer than I do?”

  Sire Klod looked unimpressed. “Then I’ll shout before I ride. If you’re too slow answering, that’s on you.”

  Kay figured that was about as much as he was ever going to bend. “I can live with that. Just make sure you do too.”

  Klod’s grin flashed again. “Plan to. Long enough to hang a few more of their pretty faces on pikes.” He turned as if the matter were settled, then glanced back once more. “For what it’s worth,” he added, almost grudging, “your father would’ve hauled me over the coals had he the chance.” His eyes crinkled at the corners. “You’ve his eyes when you’re angry.”

  Kay didn’t trust himself to answer that, so he dipped his head once.

  “Form your men for rotation,” he said instead. “Sid wants the watch rings tight. We both know they’ll try again.”

  “They’d be fools not to,” Sire Klod said. He gave a short, almost formal nod, then strode back toward the yellow boars gathering near the ditch.

  Kay watched him go. He saw the way Sire Klod spoke to his riders—quick, curt orders, a clap to one shoulder, a tilted helm on another man just so. Some laughed. Some didn’t. All of them moved when he sent them. A war hammer, Dylan had called him. You didn’t turn a hammer into a chisel. You put it where it needed to fall.

  Kay let his gaze drift to the elf head on the pike. In the fading light it was little more than a darker knot against the mist, hair lifting in the damp air like a warning. He turned back toward the heart of the camp—to the half-built walls, the digging, the swearing over stubborn roots, the smell of thin stew and wet wood. Every man here would feel the weight of tomorrow in his bones, whether he admitted it or not.

  I’m not my father either, he told himself. I don’t have to be. I just need to put the elves in the ground.

  The river whispered behind the camp. The marsh waited ahead. And somewhere deep and beyond, Toby and the others moved through their own set of shadows. Kay pulled his cloak closer against the chill and went to walk the line.

  The morning arrived without fight. The fog had pulled back in the night, retreating to whatever hole it had crawled from. For the first time since they’d marched south, the marsh lay bare. With the fog gone, the ground showed its truth: dead horses, dead men laid out in the open. However, only half the men’s bodies had been found; the other half were missing. They had prepared a bonfire to send them off at noon.

  Kay stood on the half-finished rampart and looked out over it all. The river kept to their left, a dull green shouldering past reeds and mud. Beyond that, the land flattened into a patchwork of brown and gray and faded green. Pockets of standing water glimmered between hummocks. Dead trees jutted out of the ground at odd angles like broken spears. The air still smelled of rot and tannin, but at least he could see more than an arm’s length now.

  He’d grown up with stories of the marsh—a single, endless mire where men vanished and never came back. Seeing it like this, spread and ordinary, made it feel wrong. Like a beast laid out for cutting, ribs visible, teeth hidden.

  “Clear enough to get into trouble,” Sid said beside him. His beard was still damp from a quick wash, white hairs catching the light.

  “Clear enough to see something before it kills us,” Kay said. “I’ll take it.”

  He’d already set the plan the night before. Now it was time to pull it taut. By midmorning the camp was a different kind of busy. The redoubts had climbed another man’s height overnight—rough timber towers at the corners of the palisade, with ladders lashed up the backs. Men moved between them with armfuls of sharpened stakes and baskets of stone for ballast. The ditch was deeper, the berm higher. Smoke from cookfires drifted flat under the low ceiling of cloud.

  Ten banners flickered at the assembly point—falcon, stag, tree, boar, and the plain, practical cloth Vincent’s mercenaries favored. Lines of men stood under each, sorted and counted. Pages moved through them with lists in hand, calling names, checking straps, pressing spare horn-cords into fingers. Kay walked the line with Sid, his own cloak thrown back so they could see his face.

  “Ten parties,” he said, loud enough for the nearest captains to hear. “Two from each fief. Two from Vincent’s men. You all know your paths.” He nodded toward the marsh, where a dozen markers pointed toward pre-chosen routes. “You move no further than the second horn mark. You don’t wander. You don’t chase shadows. You see something, you mark it, you fall back.”

  Each party had the same bones. Half a dozen of Graves’ archers, hoods up, bows strung and ready. A score of men-at-arms, shields slung, spears resting against shoulders. Two knights to lead. Every group carried a horn. One call for warning—three short blasts to say trouble was coming and from where. One long, drawn-out call to mean retreat, now, all together.

  Sid had insisted on a second horn carried by another person. “We don’t want the only horn bearer slain in an ambush,” he’d said.

  Sire Gordon stood with one gauntleted hand on his horse’s neck as his own party formed up. He’d chosen to ride the western path, skimming the line where the marsh strayed on Amberwood’s borders. His men listened when he spoke, shoulders squaring without fuss.

  Sire George had taken the southern route—following the river, where the land rose in low ridges before sagging back into muck. He’d picked his scouts himself, men who knew how to read broken branches as well as tracks. Sire Klod was already mounted, his yellow boar bright even in the gray. His party waited like their horses—restless, champing at bits, eager for anything that wasn’t standing still.

  Vincent swung into the saddle with his usual lack of ceremony, chain coif loose around his throat. His chosen company looked rough around the edges but ordered—men who knew where their bread came from and what could cut it short. Graves stayed by the gate with the remaining bowmen, eyes on the marsh instead of the bustle. He’d argued to be out with one of the parties; Kay had refused him. Someone had to keep the teeth at the camp. If they all drifted into the fog, the outpost would just be an empty shell.

  Kay stopped where the nearest three groups could see him and raised his voice.