1.The First Rule
The others watched him like wolves waiting for a lame stag to fall. He knocked back the last of the firewater, the burn a welcome distraction, and let the dice fly.
They betrayed him.
Again.
His groans were lost under the table’s roar of victory.
Still no hauberk. It sat there away from the gaming table, a coiled heap of cold steel rings, reminding him of all he had lost.
Mirek leaned in. “Stay in the game, friend? You’ll need something heavier than curses to wager.”
He reached for the sword at his hip. Chairs scraped back; a half-circle of steel glinted in the lamplight. Then he laid the blade on the table with a soft, final clack.
“I’m still playing.”
Mirek’s gaze slid past the sword with hungry delight to the curved ivory hilt at his belt capped with a silver dragon’s head.
“That knife would do,” Mirek said, almost gently. “Roads eat men who travel without a sword. A knife’s easily replaced.”
“No.”
The single word echoed in the darkness of the room. His eyes dropped, reassuring himself the short falchion still rested against his thigh, long as a forearm, perfectly balanced, the only beautiful thing the world had ever left him. He would lose a hundred swords before he lost this.
Mirek lifted both palms, smiling the way a man smiles when he’s already won. “As you wish.”
Three hours later he swayed into the alley, several flasks deeper, lighter by a sword, still missing the hauberk that might have kept him alive another season.
His straw mattress greeted him with the sour stink of every night he’d ever lost. He sunk his face into what passed for a pillow and willed slumber to take him somewhere he was not drowning in regret. Maybe in a few hours he would wake to find some comfort the night would not provide.
The blast of the horn split his consciousness open.
He jerked upright, skull pounding, dawn’s first blade of light knifing through the thatch.
Another blast. Closer.
Not the lazy call to morning work. This was the sound a town makes when it realises the world is coming for it.
He staggered out of the hut and into the light, morning sun needling his eyes, the air thick with smoke.
Hoofbeats pounded against the dirt, shaking the ground under his boots. Shouts came from every direction. Screams split the air, edged with animal panic.
Fuck.
He lurched forward, ducking between the cool shade of buildings. Fighting spilled through the streets: the bright ringing of steel on steel, and worse, the wet tear of flesh giving way to a sharp edge.
Get Out
He had no stakes in whatever border skirmish this was. No one had hired him. His services required coin.
The first rule of his line of work: don't get involved unless you're being paid.
That was when he saw her.
A girl with long dark hair ran into the road ahead, bare feet slapping dust. A man in mail chased her, sword raised high, sunlight flashing off the blade. What kind of man ran after children like this? It was almost enough to make him act. But one killing led to another and he wasn’t here for that.
The man swung. She dodged, small body twisting like smoke. Three more strokes, three more evasions, gravel exploding around her heels, until she skidded hard onto her knees.
The soldier charged and swung downwards. The blade seemed to slow in the air. She rolled; the tip bit gravel where her head had been, spitting dust. Frantically, she clawed at a fence, trying to haul herself upright.
Old senses kicked in. No convenient weapons, only a broken plough-haft lying in the muck. One step, it was in his hands. Another step and he swung.
The impact jarred his arms. The man crumpled sideways; his helm rang like a struck bell. The girl scrambled clear.
Stay down. Be knocked out. You never saw me.
The soldier jerked, eyes locking on him.
Fuck.
He jabbed the broken haft forward. Mail chimed, letting only splinters through before the man batted it away.
But the haft had bought one second. In that second his short falchion hissed free and carved a full, brutal arc. The girl saw it, wide-eyed. The soldier realised last. Blood sprayed across mail as the man folded, throat opened to the morning air.
Footsteps shuffled behind him. He sighed. One kill led to another.
He turned and threw the falchion. It punched three inches into the new man’s chest, mail parting with a crisp clink. While the man stumbled, he was already running, both hands slamming onto the hilt, driving him down. Weight and momentum buried the blade to the hilt. Blood plumed hot across his knuckles.
More footsteps charged. One kill led to another.
Drenched and bruised, tasting smoke and iron, he left the town behind, breaking across open fields with the girl before him on the saddle, silent but upright. He’d killed a number of men for her. He still wasn’t exactly sure why.
The girl stayed silent as the miles slid past, the stolen horse settling into a ground-eating lope. Heat shimmered off the fields; grasshoppers whirred away from the hooves. Dust clung to the drying blood on his sleeves and made pale streaks when he wiped his brow.
Late afternoon found them at a lonely stone well ringed by thistles. He worked the creaking windlass; the bucket rose dripping, cold enough to sting.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
He filled the leather flask, drank first, then held it out to her.
“You have a name, girl?”
She stared up at him, face filmed with dust and soot, eyes too old for the small body beneath them. No answer.
“You have kin somewhere? Other villages?”
Slow shake of the head.
“Both parents back there?” He tipped his chin toward the faint smear of smoke still hanging on the horizon.
Another shake.
“Mother?”
A single, barely-there nod.
“Father?”
She lifted one thin shoulder and let it fall.
“You don’t know where he is?”
This time she nodded, decisively.
He corked the flask, hung it back on the saddle, and looked at her for a long moment while cicadas sawed the hot silence.
Somewhere behind those dark, smoke-reddened eyes was a story she wasn’t ready to give him.
Fair enough.
He had plenty of his own he never told.
“Right now,” he said, voice scraped raw by dust and yesterday’s firewater, “if you’ve got no kin left, we do something different.”
He turned in the saddle and scanned the horizon until he found it: a thin grey cloud rising in the south-west, too dark for cook-fires, too steady for grass burning.
“I don’t know why they hit your village. I don’t know if they came to take you or just to kill whatever moved. I’ve seen enough fucked-up things on these roads not to ask twice.”
The girl watched his mouth, eyes steady, drinking in every word.
“So the safest thing is to get you gone. Far from whichever lords are pissing on each other’s borders this season.”
He lifted an arm and pointed past the heat-haze to a faint blue scar where sky and earth met.
“Those are the Dragon Horns.”
Her face stayed blank, unreadable.
“You’re wondering why I’d drag a child to the most dangerous ground on the continent. Turns out it’s only dangerous if you don’t know the paths. I do.”
She looked toward the mountains, pale and sharp as broken flint. A small nod.
“Three days to the border if we don’t break the horse. And we won’t. The mountain road is no joke.”
She stared at the distant peaks as if weighing them herself.
He leaned forward, elbows on the pommel, voice low.
“I’m telling you plain. I’m taking you out of your homeland. You might never come back. Does that sit well with you?”
The nod came quick and sure, chin high.
He studied her a moment longer, then straightened.
“Very well.”
He pressed his heels to the gelding’s flanks. The horse snorted, shook its mane, and set off toward the Dragon Horns at a steady, ground-eating trot.
Behind them the sun bled across the sky, and the last trace of smoke on the horizon thinned to nothing, as though the world had already erased the village from memory.
They had to stop along the way.
In the first village they passed he sold one of the two swords he had snatched up during the fight. The steel was plain, serviceable, gone for a handful of silver. He hoped the second blade would stay on his belt, but no coin waited ahead. Helping the girl had done nothing for his purse.
The days slipped past.
The thick, honeyed warmth of Camora thinned into sharp mountain chill. The sky bled from bright blue to cold slate. Wind knifed down the slopes carrying the bite of stone and pine resin.
He kept to the trade road at first, then turned onto a narrower track, then onto a deer path most men would swear was no path at all. Somewhere between the rising wind and the steady climb the land softened. Pines closed overhead, needles muffling every hoof-fall. Sunlight spilled in pale gold shafts. Waterfalls hissed down rock faces and shattered into cool mist. Wildflowers pushed through moss thick as velvet, white, violet, blood-red. The air tasted clean enough to sting the lungs, and birdsong followed them like an honour guard.
They climbed higher.
At last the way narrowed to a cleft between two towering slabs of granite. The instant the horse stepped through, a bell rang somewhere out of sight, clear and cold as struck crystal.
The ground levelled. A narrow bridge arched over a ravine so deep the bottom lay hidden in shadow. Men waited on the far side.
They wore armour strange to lowland eyes: sweeping folds of bright steel over shoulders, forearms, and shins, yet the torso beneath was covered only by dark silk. A fool might see an opening there.
One warrior walked forward, unhurried, hand resting lightly on the hilt of a sword.
“Who said you could pass this way, outsider?”
The word outsider cut deeper than it should have.
“I bring someone in need of refuge.”
“She is a girl. This is not the place for her.”
“I believe it is.”
The warrior studied the child, then him, then flicked two fingers.
“Advance.”
They crossed the bridge single-file, wind moaning through the gorge below. More bells sounded ahead, bright notes skipping along hidden wires.
At the gate of high timber banded with iron a man waited in robes the colour of midnight. Silver thread glimmered along hem and sleeve in the weak sun.
The lead warrior leaned in, spoke low, then stepped aside.
The robed man’s eyes were pale and sharp.
“You know you are not permitted inside our walls.”
“I do. But she should be.”
“A feminine variation, you think?”
“Yes.”
The man in midnight blue robes smiled, small and amused. “A portent of change perhaps.” He looked her over again. “Have you checked she is a girl?”
“I am,” the child said.
The voice, clear and steady, the first words in days, nearly pitched him from the saddle.
The robed man gestured. He dismounted, boots crunching on gravel, and lifted her down. Her feet touched the ground light as a bird alighting.
“Five nights I will give,” the robed man said. “Ten if she proves helpful. But if you are wrong, it can be no more.”
“I understand.”
The man bent until his eyes were level with hers.
“And do you, little sister?”
“I do,” she answered.
A soft click of fingers. One of the warriors produced a small leather pouch, heavy with coin.
“This was a good deed.”
A crooked smile teased the corners of his mouth. “I didn’t do it for coin.”
The robed man’s smile warmed. “Then it is the better deed. And you know full well we believe a good deed may still be rewarded.”
He took the pouch. Its weight settled in his palm like an answered prayer. He closed his fist before relief showed on his face.
The robed man rested a hand on the girl’s shoulder. “You will come with us now.”
She started forward, then paused and looked back. He met her eyes and nodded once.
Just as she turned he spoke.
“Girl. May I know your name now?”
She faced him fully. A half-smile, the first he had ever seen from her, broke across her grimy face like sunrise on water.
“Lyrianna.”
“You can survive here, Lyrianna. You have the heart of a wolf. Fare well.”
She gave one last slow nod and walked through the gate, a small figure swallowed by tall shadows and the scent of pine and steel.
He stood a moment longer, chest suddenly heavy, fingers tight around the coin pouch.
His part was done.
The Hunter, we head to the far north, where a deadly threat lurks deep in the forest.
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