Greenglade came into view as the road climbed a low rise and the hedgerows fell away. The village sat on a broad terrace above the river flats, fields fanning out on three sides, timber palisade bristling with sharpened logs and two watchtowers watching the approaches. The early afternoon sun did little to lift the chill on the air. Smoke lifted from dozens of chimneys and drifted in soft sheets. As they reached the gates, three guards stopped them and asked them their business. When they heard that they were a Guild party sent from Brindleford, one of the guards volunteered to guide them into the town to meet with the Headwoman. They followed the man inside the gates, eyes roaming as they walked.
The streets inside the wall were busy even in the chill, carts creaking, hawkers calling, a smith’s hammer ringing, children zigzagging underfoot until a mother’s voice cut them short. This was no scatter of huts like Stonebridge. It was a place with weight. Max counted as they passed under the open gate: a team of oxen dragging a cart, a pair of apprentices hauling a crate, three elders arguing in front of a bakehouse, guards changing on the towers without needing to be told. A thousand souls, likely more, a town that fed its own and had something left to be worth stealing.
Headwoman Maera met them in front of the council hall, a broad-beamed building with painted shutters and a carved board over the door. She was in her middle years, black hair tinged with gray braided back, her hands work-rough, the kind of person who did not let her title spare her calluses. Two guards with short spears stood to either side. Her eyes found their guild badges first, then each face in turn, weighing and measuring. “You are from Brindleford,” she stated. “W-we are,” Max answered, pointing to each member in turn as he introduced the party. “Max. Elira. Calder. Borin. Alina.” Maera’s gaze lingered on Alina’s new leather, the fresh quiver, the copper badge at her breast. Something in her mouth softened for a blink and then set again. “You came because of the reports we sent. Two weeks back there was a fight out there on the plains. A border skirmish between Valdarin and Kharvos. It happens every few years. We usually pick up the pieces when the soldiers move on. This time, the pieces have gone missing.” She did not raise her voice, just spoke in a manner of fact way that did not invite argument. “Yes, we heard. We will not leave until we have some kind of answer,” Max said. He felt the hitch at the start of the sentence try to catch and pushed through it. “That is a promise.” Maera watched him for the long heartbeat it takes to decide if a person means what they say. “Good. Then hear me plain. I do not want a show. I will not have you frightening my people to make your work easier. I want competence. Do what you were hired to do.” Elira inclined her head. “We will not fan rumors. We will bring you facts.” “S-speaking of facts, we just came from the village of Stonebridge,” Max added. “T-the dead rose there. We dealt with it and consecrated the chapel hill. That d-does not mean the same will happen here, but it does mean you should probably set a curfew. No one walking alone if they can help it. Doors barred, windows latched. Lanterns inside, not out. In a situation like this, an abundance of caution is best.” Maera did not argue. She just turned to the guard captain at her elbow, a thin man with a careful stance. “Curfew at dusk. Two guards on each tower. No patrols outside the walls after dark unless they are paired with a runner and a lantern. Put bell pulls where someone can reach them even if their hands are shaking.” She turned back to the party. “You should walk the town, talk to townsfolk, hear what they have to say. Captain Rulon will go with you. He knows who will talk and who will not. If you need anything within reason, tell him.” Rulon gave a short nod, eyes steady but tired. “I will take you where you need to go.” “H-how many bodies went missing from the field?” Max asked. Maera exhaled through her nose. “It's hard to get a clean count. Valdarin burned some of the bodies before they pulled back. Kharvos does not leave tidy lists. From what my people saw before weather muddied the ground, twenty to thirty, maybe more.” Max saw Borin grimace out of the corner of his eye when he heard that, but did not comment. They thanked her for her time, and followed Captain Rulon as he led them through the town.
They spent the rest of the afternoon listening and walking, not just the square, but the lanes and the fence lines where people worked with their heads down and their eyes open. Rulon took them along the palisade and through the streets that wrapped the center, past the granaries and the smithy, and the sheds where oxen chewed cud and watched the world with the slow patience of animals that thought they had seen all of it before. People in Greenglade did not gossip like in Brindleford, but they did not hold their tongues either, not when the Headwoman told them to speak.
A weaver pointed east with a shuttle still in her hand and said she had seen three faint glimmers beyond the last fence on a moonless night, not torches but the tight steady glow of shielded lamps.
A herdsman swore he heard a clatter of metal on metal where there was nothing to clatter, then realized later his own dogs had not barked once and that put a cold taste in his mouth.
Two boys who ran messages to the towers showed Elira a spot along the east lane where someone had scuffed over boot prints with a bundle of straw, and Elira crouched and brushed the marks back to reveal a neat, repeating pattern of hobnails that matched itself every stride.
At the north tower, a guard said he had caught the bitter stink of cheap lamp oil on a still morning and found a smear of it on the outside of the east gate’s crossbar where no lantern ever hung.
A cartwright opened his hand to show them a small length of blue-dyed thread he had pulled from a split in his fence rail after hearing movement outside, the color wrong for Greenglade’s wool and closer to what Kharvos troopers wore on their sashes.
A boy at the mill said he watched crows circle the skirmish meadow for a day and then leave it alone like something had told them it was no longer theirs.
Rulon listened with the party and added his own notes. Two nights in the last six his guardsmen had reported seeing faint light east of the barley stubble after midnight. The west watch heard nothing on those nights, and the north watch heard a faint tapping like metal buckles on wood carried in pairs. None of that was proof by itself, but the shape of it together felt like a set of hands moving with care where they should not have been.
In the evening light, Max and Alina found a stretch of open ground near the square where they would not be in anyone’s way. He pulled his longsword free, and she loosened the short sword on her belt. Half the children in earshot drifted closer as they wrapped their blades, until their mothers snapped at them to keep their distance. Elira leaned on a post with one hip, casual and very awake. Borin folded his arms and watched. Calder shut his book, which meant he was paying attention. “We have done this before,” Max said, voice easy. “First a quick r-refresher. Out here, long steel controls space. Your job is to take that space away or refuse to be where it matters. Remember the angles.” He started with reminders, showing the rhythm rather than lecturing it, his point claiming the line, her guard centering, the small half-steps that kept the tip between threat and flesh. Then he layered in more. “Ways in,” he said, and demonstrated a firm beat to the blade to knock his point off line, a quick bind sliding his edge over hers and passing on the outside, a hanging guard that let her slip under his tip with the hilt high and then drive in. He showed a shield-lip bump that stole his posture for a heartbeat, a hand parry at the wrist with her off forearm, and a false retreat, consisting of two short steps back to pull him forward, then a sudden angle off his weapon side as he chased. “F-footwork buys you those,” he added. “Triangle steps. Forward-left, forward-right. D-do not cross your feet. V-step offline when you see the shoulder load for a big cut. Change levels by dipping your head and shoulders without lowering your eyes so a high swing skims air and you are already under it.” He pointed at the ground and had her mark a quick triangle with her boots, then run the pattern until the placement lived in her hips. “A-against longer and c-clumsier weapons, like axes, spears, or even my longsword, you enter as the head is traveling, not when it is waiting. Watch the front shoulder and the lead hip. They tell you when an attack is coming before the hands do. Step inside the arc, not away from it.” He walked her along a fence post and had her use it like terrain, crowding him on one side so his longsword had nowhere to go while her short blade still worked. Then he brought her back to open ground and had her put it together at a patient pace: beat, step, angle, entry. She did not win often, but she learned where the wins could live, and how not to be where the losses were born. Slowly but surely, she was gaining confidence with the unfamiliar blade.
They ate that night at The Willow Crown, a low-roofed inn with a green-painted sign and a hearth that threw serious heat, then slept the kind of sleep people sleep when there is more to do in the morning and no point spending energy on fear.
The next morning, Rulon met them in the inns common room, then led them east towards the skirmish site outside of town with a farmhand to keep them from stepping where the low ground liked to drink feet whole. The battlefield sat where border squabbles had always sat, a long scar across a fold of scrub and field. Torn banners from Valdarin and Kharvos hung chewed by bramble and wind. Boot prints lay frozen where the frost had not cracked them. There were long scuffs where bodies had been dragged. Someone had taken armor with a care that did not look like looting. Straps were cut clean or unbuckled. Knots were untied instead of hacked.
Elira crouched and studied the ground, then began marking a scrap map with a bit of charcoal. “Two sets of traffic. Here and here. The first is messy and spreads, like villagers coming to stare and take what they can carry. The second walks narrow and repeats itself. Heel to toe, narrow gait, same depth each time. Multiple pairs moving together. They stepped wide on soft patches to avoid leaving holes. Not drunk villagers.” She pointed to a snagged hedge twig catching a thread of that same wrong blue.
Calder pinched ash from a tidy burn pit and let it sift onto his palm. “This is not a cook fire. Too hot for what wood is here. Too clean for wet grass. There is a residue in it that feels like order more than accident.” A flat stone nearby had faint chalk arcs scratched into it, barely there under frost, as if someone had outlined where to stand and left the marks weather could not quite take. Calder studied the marks curiously, then pulled out a small notebook and carefully sketched them.
Alina moved along the edge of trampled grass and crouched by a series of parallel scuffs. “They used poles or a litter,” she said. “Look at the spacing. Two to a side, lift, set, lift, set. They carried weight, instead of dragging it, at least for a stretch.” Rulon squinted into the early morning sun, his breath fogging in the chill. “Why carry armor and bodies separately when a thief wants both?” Calder blew gently across the ash and watched how it shifted. “Because the goal is not plunder alone. These people did not hurry. They were organized. They took what they needed in the order they needed it.”
Max looked at the hedges and the old stones like he could find a plan hiding in them. A narrow gap to the east would let eight or ten pass in pairs without breaking stride. The farmhand said the ground beyond stayed firm under frost, even when the meadow turned to soup. “We mark it,” Max said. “We do not sleep out here. This is not a place to get caught at night.” Elira sketched the gap and the burn site and the most likely approach onto her scrap so that when they talked later they would not be arguing from memory.
Back in the square by afternoon, they worked because training was something you could put your hands on when the rest of it slipped. Max forbade steel and left Alina nothing to grip. “F-feet and footwork today” he said. “You will hate it, then you will love it.” He set her to step and slide, to keep her head up, to stay on the balls of her feet and never cross her stance. He shoved her shoulder with the heel of his hand at odd beats to teach her not to panic when the ground moved under her. He tripped her heel once and caught her, then showed her how to roll and come up facing the threat instead of lounging there as an invitation to die. Then he put her on her back on purpose and showed her how to get out from under him. He slid an arm under her shoulder and pinned her wrist with the other, not enough to hurt, just enough to show how it would feel. “If you get grabbed, you are not without tools,” he said, pointing with his chin as he talked. “Men square their hips in close. That leaves a knee open for yours. Here,” he pressed fingers to his own ribs “t-these ribs float and they are soft. An elbow will do more than you think. And h-here,” he tapped the notch above his collarbone “this breaks easier than most people think. Eyes and throat are always answers if you can find them. If h-hands are on you, you are close enough to make someone regret it.” He shifted, readjusting his grip, and found himself chest to chest with Alina, their faces inches from one another. He looked into her eyes and blinked. Elira let out a wolf whistle from the rail, long and teasing. Max’s eyes flicked toward her without meaning to. Alina used that heartbeat. She twisted the way he had shown her, drove her knee up enough to jolt him, slammed her elbow into the center of his chest hard enough to pop his breath, rolled out, and came up with her forearm across his wrist and the point where a blade would have been. He laughed once, surprised and pleased, rubbing at his sternum. “That,” he said, a little hoarse, “is what you are looking for. If an opponent gives you an opening, you take it. Honor is a story people tell after they live. In a real fight, you use the moment. The difference between living and dying can be mere seconds.” They finished the training session with falls and rolls until Alina could hit dirt and rise with her blade line intact. Ten minutes of hating it turned into an hour of liking that her body had learned something it would not forget.
The third morning dawned colder still. They worked before breakfast because fear is quieter on an empty stomach. Max hammered footwork until Alina’s steps settled where they belonged without her thinking. Then he gave her steel and kept it simple. “Let’s go over some basic sword drills. These will teach your muscles to swing the blade in an effective manner, and find weak spots in enemy armor. First, from the shoulder to the collar,” he said, showing a clean diagonal. “Short chop up into the seam where pauldron meets breastplate.” He demonstrated the angle and how to recover. “Low cut into the thigh and pull back fast before the counter finds you. If a hand is on your weapon, smack the knuckles with the hilt; they will let go of anything. Bring your blade home tight so you do not hand your wrists away. Do not chase a head when a knee is closer and less clever. Injuring an opponent and backing off safely is always better than chasing the kill and being punished for it. Take what they give you.” He had her work those cuts against his shield edge and then against a post. He corrected her grip twice and changed nothing else when the good habit settled in. Children watched from behind a fence, whispering, trying to copy her steps with their boots in the dirt. When she finished a neat sequence and recovery without thinking, she rested the flat of her blade on her shoulder and saluted them; two saluted back without quite knowing why, grinning anyway.
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They were still cooling down when a shout cracked from the east tower. “Figures on the flat!” The watchers had seen movement far out on the plain. Max gathered the party, and they made their way to the east gate.
Eight figures, evenly spaced, stood in a line, stark against the low grass. They did not rush. They did not wander. They walked together until they reached the edge of what the towers could see cleanly. Then they stopped and stood in a line outside bow range, as if measuring the village with their eyes. The wind died to listen. Max squinted as he looked them over. They were dead, that was undeniable, but this was different. “That is not Stonebridge,” Max said quietly. The dead there had rushed at the nearest breath like moths to a flame. These tracked and waited. Elira was already strapping on her quiver. Calder’s staff settled easy in his hands. Borin’s jaw set and loosened once. He watched the line a long beat and then spoke as they watched the now motionless figures waiting on the plain. “The ones at Stonebridge were raised and left to hunger,” he said. “Mindless dead chase heat and breath. These stand in a line and hold a distance. That means a will is riding them. There is a difference between raised and controlled. Raised undead means a spark jammed into a corpse and then abandoned to want. On the other hand, controlled undead is like a leash. Whoever did this taught them to remember a few old soldier habits and to wait. That is worse.” The gate ground open. They did not let the line come to the palisade, because you do not invite a fight into your own house if you can help it. Most guards stayed on the wall where they belonged. As the party moved outside the gate, doing final checks on their gear, three young men stepped forward anyway, faces pale and stubborn. They trotted out to meet the party and formed on Borin’s left with spears and small shields. Borin gave them a quick nod of acknowledgement and thanks. “Hold together,” Max told them. “You are here to stand, not to chase.” They nodded too quickly.
They walked to meet the line in plain view under a gray sky with the river glinting to the south and the towers watching over their shoulders. When the party came within a range that made sense for both sides, the eight began advancing, their shields touching. They wore mismatched armor, a Valdarin breastplate over Kharvos greaves, a Kharvos shield dyed the wrong color, a Valdarin helm polished like it had always belonged to this skull. They stood together and did not sway. Borin’s voice stayed calm and close. “Hold here. Let them cross to us.” He lifted his hammer and swept his hand. “
They began the fight at range. Alina’s first arrow arced and struck a shield, hissing off the rim. Her second drove into a shoulder plate and stuck. Elira’s first bolt skipped off a helm, the second punched into the gap at a bicep and made that arm slow. Two more shots were batted away on shields that moved together like they remembered hours of drilling from their seargent. The undead did not quicken. They did not taunt. They simply kept moving, and closed the distance. The first meeting hit like dropped timbers. Shields slammed. Max drove forward an inch and set. He felt Borin on his left without looking, the cleric’s shield a moving wall, his hammer a metronome. Max’s sword hunted wrists and collar seams, short cuts that made metal ring and bone jar. Elira slid right, popped
The three young guards did not disgrace themselves. They planted shields, took blows on wood and iron, and stabbed when space opened. Alina worked the seam Elira had made, shifting two paces to avoid a shield and then snapping a shot into the slit of a visor at twenty paces. The head snapped back and the body slumped. The line did not break. They shifted a half step and pushed at the opening between the guards and Elira’s right. It was not elegant, but it worked. The shove angled Alina away from her support, and two of the armored dead turned quickly toward her as if a quiet order had just been given. She had time to run. Her body did not take it. She drew steel. The first soldier tried to keep her at the edge of his range with his sword, as she had been shown. She made one quick step into the space that turned his swing clumsy, jammed his weapon with the flat of her blade to knock it off target, and hacked up into the seam under his shoulder. The blade bit into flesh, and he rocked. The second undead soldier came on her right without giving her room to be proud. She tried to slip out, but misread his timing by a heartbeat. The point of his blade skated along her ribs below the leather and opened skin with a rip of sound. Pain hit like hot wire. She screamed in pain, but she did not drop. Her feet took over, the drills carrying her weight where it needed to be. Max was trying to make his way towards her, but he was being harried by two of the soldiers. He watched as she angled again, denied both blades at once, and bought herself three breaths that she would later be very grateful for. The three young guards had seen her cut off and veered toward her as one, driving in shoulder to shoulder, shields up, bodies tight to deny space to the blades. One took a sword on the forearm; the shield cracked but held. The other rammed his spear into the belly seam of the first soldier and pushed until his boots carved furrows. It bought enough seconds for Borin to get there at a hard angle. He broke one helm with a hammer stroke that made the iron flower. His other hand pressed Alina’s side and thigh and heat and steadiness poured through torn flesh. Her ribs knit enough to hold. The world focused down to a point she could breathe through. She staggered behind Max’s shield while Max slid to take that space, and the cleric moved like a man possessed. "Are you alright?" Max asked quickly, as he deflected one swing with his shield and caught another with his blade. Alina was behind him now, grimacing and clutching her ribs. "I'll live. Let's finish these fuckers," was all she said. Max grinned as he cast
The line had its own lesson. Alina watched as a broad-shouldered body behind a battered tower shield fought like someone who had taught others to stand. Max hit him once, then twice, and the only thing that moved was Max’s arm. Elira put a bolt through a gap at the knee and he did not make a sound. Calder slicked the ground and the sergeant kept his feet like a man who had drilled on bad dirt his whole life. “Ward,” Borin said, fingers pressing Max’s shoulder. Stone Ward settled cool through Max’s bones. The next hit on his rim should have rung his teeth. It spent itself instead. Max stepped in, chopped at the joint of neck and shoulder. The blade bit and stuck. The shield smashed up into his face and the world flashed white for a heartbeat. He tasted blood. “Down,” Elira snapped. He ducked short. Her bolt cut the air where his ear had just been and slammed into the tower shield near the boss. The sergeant shoved, found his foot on Calder’s slick patch, and for half a breath his balance was wrong. Borin came over the rim with a hammer strike that crashed the shield down, then twisted and tore leather and tendon away from where the straps held. Max ripped his blade free and drove it in again where the pauldron had shifted. The sergeant finally dropped like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Two more pressed in to fill that space. Borin drew a long breath, set his boots, and lifted his hammer overhead. “Judgment,” he said, voice steady. The air seemed to tighten, then a clean pillar of white and gold wrapped the warhammer. For an instant the head looked like the point of a falling star. He brought it down on the crown of the one still pushing, and bone did not crack so much as decide to be dust. The light vanished as quickly as it had come. The nearest guard made a sound in his throat and then remembered to breathe again.
It stayed messy and close. Calder’s frost bought two heartbeats here and three there. Elira threaded a quarrel through a visor slit with such precision that Max heard the metal ring and knew he would not be able to describe it later without sounding like a liar. Borin was where the worst blow would land a breath before it did. Alina, pale and sweating, shot into gaps from behind Max’s shield and did not pretend she had not been bleeding a minute before. When it ended, cold air burned in their lungs and the road under their boots looked like it had been dug with shovels. Everyone was marked. Max’s shoulder would scar. Elira had a slice along her hip where an edge had cut through her coat. Calder’s knuckles were scraped raw from catching himself on the ground when his own frost betrayed a foot. Borin had a bruise blooming under his mail where a shield rim had tried to ruin a rib. One guard’s forearm was cracked; Borin wrapped it tight and murmured a prayer that helped eased the pain. Another had blood in his hair from a scalp split that looked worse than it was. Borin moved among them with the steady hands of someone who had done this too many times to count. He closed skin where it would not close, checked Alina’s ribs and thigh twice, and kept enough of himself in reserve in case the day was not done with them.
They did not drag the bodies inside after the battle. They would not risk letting whatever had ridden these corpses brush against the walls and doors of the town. Maera and Rulon came out from behind the gate with more guards. The eight bodies were stripped where they fell. Under a cuff, Elira used the tip of her knife to lift a leather cord with a small bone charm carved in lines that matched nothing she liked. The cord stank of the same bitter oil they had smelled before. Calder crouched over a bracer and squinted at fine chalk like fingerprints along the inside edge, marks that might have looked like nonsense scratches if he had not seen the same pattern on a flat stone by the battlefield fire pit. He pulled out his notebook to compare, and then carefully sketched the marks on the bracer on a clean page. Max rolled a shoulder plate and found a scrap of cloth caught under a strap, stiff with old blackened wax and smudged with a spiral drawn by a careful hand. He held it out to Borin. The dwarf glanced at it and then looked to the eight helmets set aside in a neat line in the dirt. “This was not an accident,” he said quietly. “In Stonebridge, the dead moved like animals. These held rank. They waited. They pressed a seam. Someone is pulling their strings.” Maera stood with her arms folded and mouth set in a hard line. “Burn them,” Borin told Rulon, voice firm. “Outside the walls. Do not let the fire go hungry. Salt the ash when it is done. Watch it until there is nothing but cold gray. If a priest can bless that ground when it cools, all the better. If not, I can do it.” Rulon nodded and began giving orders. Maera bent over the evidence, did not pretend she had not seen what she saw. “Bring this to your guild,” she said. “Bring it to whoever needs to look until they stop telling me thieves did this.” Borin nodded. "Aye, we will. This isn't right. The Guild Master will hear of this as soon as we return, you have my word."
As the fire blazed behind them in the dying light of the late afternoon, the party headed back into the town. Tomorrow they would set out for Brindleford to bring word back to the Guild.
At The Willow Crown, Alina asked Rulon to send the three young guards to the common room when they came off the wall. When they arrived, shy and stiff, she waved them to the table and ordered a pitcher of ale on her own coin. Bowls of stew went cool while they ran out of easy words. The three guards looked a little stunned to be there. Alina lifted her cup with hands that had finally stopped shaking. “Thank you,” she said to them, clear and full. “You kept those two on me from finishing what they started. I would not be here without you.” One flushed and stared into his cup. “Just seemed the right thing to do,” he managed. “We were standing there.” Another cleared his throat. “Never seen anything like that before. I will be telling my brother about this for a year.” The third flexed his bandaged forearm and winced. “Worth it,” he said, and tried out a smile that did not quite fit yet. When the guards finished their drinks, and drifted back to their lives, the room stayed quiet. Alina kept her cup on the table and her eyes on her hands. “I almost died,” she said quietly. Her hands began to shake slightly once more. Her jaw was clenched tight as she tried to settle herself. “I know that is always sitting on the table with what we do, but it feels different after the blade goes in and the blood flows. In the moment, it was like my hands belonged to somebody else. Then they belonged to me again, and I was very loud inside my head.” Borin leaned forward, forearms on his knees. “Knowing the cliff is there and stepping on air are not the same thing,” he said. “Fear that comes late is just your body doing the math you did not have time for in the moment. There is no shame in it.” He tapped his chest. “Steadiness is not never feeling. It is doing the right thing while you feel it.” Elira slid the bottle and a clean cup across the table. “Enough to loosen your jaw,” she said. “Not enough to steal the lesson.” Calder rubbed at his scraped knuckles, found a tired smile. “Tomorrow I will make lists,” he said. “Gear to mend. Patterns to map. Turning fear into errands always makes my breakfast sit better.” Max reached out and tapped his cup to Alina’s. “You did what we drilled,” he said. “That is why you are sitting here t-talking about it instead of cold and dead on the ground outside these walls. For what it's worth, you should be proud of how quickly you've picked up the blade. And, if you w-want to work the entries again in the morning before we go, say so. I am always happy to give more lessons and spar.” “I do,” she said, voice steadier now. “I want to do them until I do not have to think about it.” Max nodded at that, and the five of them spent the remainder of the evening drinking in quiet companionship, sharing their own tales of hardship with Alina. She listened, and was surprised at how open and vulnerable they each were around the table. She had thought they had it all figured out, that none of this fazed them anymore, but she was wrong. She was glad of it, too. It helped her realize that her feelings were natural, and that it was okay to be scared sometimes.
They did not sleep until late in the evening. Somewhere outside the walls, wood burned, and a guard poked coals until nothing remained that could rise again. In the morning, they made ready. Max took Alina to the hard ground at the edge of the square and ran her through a few quick exchanges with steel and six long minutes where only their feet spoke. A knot of children watched with rapt attention and tried to copy her steps along the fence, their boots scuffing lines in the dirt. When she finished, she rested the flat of her blade on her shoulder and saluted them; two saluted back, grinning mischievously.
At the gate, Maera met them with a small parcel of food and a list of names. “If you need to send word quickly, my runner Roth will go as far as Brindleford if you ask it.” “We have enough to make someone l-listen,” Max said, lifting the wrapped bundle that held the bone charm, the cloth with wax, and the bracer dusted with chalk lines. “W-we will bring back what we can prove. Keep your runner here, in case the other bodies that went missing march against your walls.” Borin looked east once, toward the battlefield behind the hedges, then up at the faint smoke stain where the pyre had been, then back to Maera. “Keep your people inside the walls after dark,” he said. “Do not get casual about it. Keep two on each tower who do not blink at the same time.” “We will,” Maera said. They said their goodbyes, and headed out of town, ready for the heavy march ahead of them.
They crossed under the gate and found the road west. Bruises ached, straps creaked, and the winter sun kept low. Stonebridge had been a warning. Greenglade was a message. Someone was stirring the dead and teaching them to remember how to march. With proof wrapped and stowed and a report already writing itself in their heads, they turned for Brindleford and set their boots to the road.
