They moved through the grey like broken phantoms, every step heavier than the last.
No banners.
No horns.
Only the scrape of steel against leather and the rasp of breath freezing in the air.
Vryce walked near the front now.
A tall man, sharp-eyed, with a blade always just loose enough to be drawn in a blink.
His cloak was torn down one side, splashed black with old blood.
Jast followed close behind him, shorter, broader, his spear carried low, knuckles raw and scabbed from the last fight.
Eddric lagged a few steps back, one arm bound tight against his ribs where a tracker's spear had torn deep.
Still on his feet. Still moving.
Good enough.
Maelen was gone.
Calder hadn't seen her fall during the fight —
too much blood, too much screaming, too many bodies crashing through the mud and trees.
One moment she'd been cutting down a man with an axe twice her size, the next she was just gone —
a smear of blood across a snapped tree trunk and a body left cooling in the mud.
No songs.
No goodbyes.
Just another mark against the odds.
Calder moved at the head of the battered column.
Dog's Hunger swung heavy across his back, a comfort he didn't bother questioning.
Branwen walked a few steps to his right, armor patched with bloodstained leather, the wolf's tooth talisman thudding softly against his chest.
The boy's face had changed.
Harder around the eyes.
No more quick glances to Calder for direction.
Good.
The Marches didn't have patience for slow learners.
They pushed through the grey for hours, past the hollowed remains of villages long abandoned to rot.
Ruined walls.
Charred foundations.
The bones of old hopes picked clean.
Nothing stirred in the wastelands.
The only living things here wore steel and scars.
It was near dusk when they saw the smoke.
Thin.
Faint.
Rising behind a low ridge to the east.
Calder slowed, raising a clenched fist.
The warband dropped to cautious halts without a sound.
He knelt at the top of the ridge, staring down into the hollow below.
A village.
Barely more than a collection of crumbling houses and half-dead fields.
Walls sagged inward, broken.
Roofs gaped open like pulled teeth.
A place barely clinging to the idea of survival.
Yet there was smoke.
And where there was smoke, there were people.
Calder scanned the terrain.
One main path wound through the ruins.
No barricades.
No sentries.
The kind of place that had learned the hard way that screaming for help only brought more wolves.
He motioned Vryce forward.
The man crouched beside him, silent.
"Take Jast," Calder said. "Circle wide. Watch the edges. No mistakes."
Vryce nodded once and slipped back into the brush, Jast a shadow at his heels.
Calder rose.
"Move quiet," he said to the rest.
Then he led them down into the hollow.
They entered Hollow Hearth without challenge.
The name wasn't posted anywhere, but Calder knew it.
Knew it like you knew the scar on your own hand.
A village that had once been nothing.
Now it was less than that.
Doors stayed shut as they passed.
Faces watched from broken windows, pale and silent.
No one ran.
No one begged.
The people here knew better.
They'd seen too many marching boots to waste hope on mercy.
Calder felt the weight of their stares but ignored them.
He scanned the alleys, the roofs.
Looking for threats, not pity.
At the center of the village stood a stone well, half-collapsed, its lip blackened by old fire.
A few huddled figures worked nearby — hauling water, tending weak fires, fixing broken fences with more hope than skill.
One among them broke away and approached.
A man in threadbare robes, grey around the beard, a heavy iron crucifix swinging around his neck.
Calder tightened his grip on Dog's Hunger but didn't draw.
The man stopped a few paces short and raised both hands, palms out.
"I am Father Bryn," he said, voice rough but steady.
"You'll find no weapons raised here. Only empty hands and hungrier bellies."
Calder said nothing.
The warband fanned out behind him, rough, blood-streaked, blades still close to hand.
Father Bryn's eyes flicked over them — reading the exhaustion, the cold efficiency — and something tightened in his jaw.
Smart enough to know what stood before him.
Smart enough to be afraid.
Good.
Branwen stepped forward slightly, not enough to break rank, but enough to make his presence known.
Calder let him.
"We're passing through," Branwen said.
"No need for trouble."
Father Bryn bowed his head slightly.
"You'll find no trouble here," he said. "Only those too weak to offer it."
He glanced past Branwen to Calder, reading the chain of command without needing it explained.
Calder offered nothing.
Just watched.
Measured.
A thin woman carrying a bucket stumbled nearby, nearly falling.
Eddric moved to steady her — a small motion — but Calder caught the hesitation in his steps, the pain flashing across his face.
Wounded.
Bleeding slow under the bindings.
Still standing.
For now.
Calder filed the observation away without comment.
Another knife in the belt getting dull.
He led them toward the well, eyes never leaving the crumbling rooftops.
If Hollow Hearth had knives waiting, they'd show themselves soon enough.
The warband settled near the well, forming a rough half-circle without needing orders.
Vryce and Jast returned from their sweep, moving silent as ghosts.
Vryce gave a sharp shake of the head — no threats, for now.
Calder acknowledged with a slight nod.
Good.
But caution stayed tight around his gut.
In the Marches, quiet usually meant the knife was just closer to your ribs.
Branwen spoke quietly to Father Bryn, exchanging a few curt words.
Something about shelter.
Something about food.
Calder let it happen.
The boy needed the practice.
Every scrap of authority Branwen scraped together now was another nail in the coffin that would eventually box him in.
Calder watched it without pity.
Eddric sat heavily near the well, wincing as he peeled back the bloodstuck cloth from his ribs.
Branwen moved toward him instinctively, but Calder snapped a look his way and he stopped.
Let him patch himself up.
Let him feel the cost.
Mercy softened men.
Wounds hardened them.
Calder paced the edge of the square, reading the village with old soldier's eyes.
The people here were broken.
Bent under years of fear and hunger.
No men of fighting age in sight.
Only children, old men, and hollow-eyed women clinging to the last scraps of survival.
Thornhollow's doing, no doubt.
Starve the people.
Bleed the land dry.
Build your little throne on the bones.
Same as it ever was.
A few children peered from behind doorways.
One, braver or stupider than the rest, crept out with a battered wooden sword clutched in one filthy hand.
He mimed a clumsy strike toward Calder's back.
Jast caught the motion first — stiffened, half-lifting his blade — but Calder raised a hand, stopping him.
The boy froze.
Eyes wide.
Trembling.
Calder turned slowly, crouching low until he was eye-level with the child.
He said nothing.
Just stared.
The boy's courage broke first.
He dropped the wooden sword into the mud and bolted back into the ruins.
Good.
Even fools learned.
Eventually.
As dusk bled into full night, Father Bryn approached again, more cautious this time.
"There's a roof and dry walls at the edge of the square. Yours for the night, if you want them.No charge. We know the weight of the Marches better than to haggle with steel at our throats."
Calder agreed with a grunt.
They moved into the shack under cover of darkness.
Vryce and Jast took first watch, posting themselves just inside the broken frame of the door.
Eddric slumped into a corner, breathing shallow, already slipping toward unconsciousness.
Branwen sat with his back against the far wall, sharpening his sword in slow, even strokes.
The rasp of stone on steel was the only sound for a long while.
Calder sat apart, Dog's Hunger laid across his knees.
He watched the door.
Watched the shadows twitch and shift as the wind pulled at the broken walls.
Sleep could come later.
If it came at all.
Near midnight, a light knock sounded against the doorframe.
Vryce stepped forward fast, blade half-drawn —
but Calder was already moving, already recognizing the lean, cloaked figure waiting beyond the threshold.
Father Bryn.
He held no weapon.
Only a bundle of coarse cloth and a bottle tucked under one arm.
"An offering," Bryn said quietly.
"For what?" Calder asked.
The priest's mouth twitched into something like a smile.
"For your mercy today."
Calder said nothing.
He opened the door wider.
Father Bryn stepped inside, laying the bundle on the dirt floor —
some stale bread, two dried hares, and a bottle of something sharp enough to burn the air between them.
He bowed stiffly and left without another word.
Branwen stared after him, silent.
Calder sat back down without comment.
The bread would be moldy.
The hares half-rotten.
The bottle probably poison or damn close to it.
Didn't matter.
Everything in the Marches was poisoned one way or another.
The warband ate in grim silence.
Eddric roused enough to choke down a few bites.
Branwen sipped the bottle, coughed once, and passed it on.
Calder took a long pull without grimacing.
The burn felt good.
Clean.
Better than most things left in this world.
When the bottle came back around again, it passed from hand to hand without ceremony.
A small thing.
But real.
A ritual not of prayer or hope —
but survival.
Later, when the shack fell quiet except for the slow rasp of breathing, Calder sat awake with Dog's Hunger across his knees, staring into the dark.
He thought of Maelen.
Dead in the mud.
Face down and forgotten.
Another name added to the tally.
He thought of the boy with the wooden sword.
Of Branwen sharpening steel with hands that didn't shake anymore.
Of the path ahead, grey and bloodied and narrowing with every step.
Victory was just another way of saying you hadn't died yet.
It didn't mean anything more than that.
Calder leaned his head back against the wall, eyes half-lidded.
The gods weren't watching.
And if they were, they were laughing.