The City of Malbork was not dying; it was simply turning its back.

  Casimir sat on his stolen gelding in the shadow of the North Gate, watching the life of the capital bleed away with the setting sun. The great stone thoroughfare of the Merchant’s Row, usually choking with carts and shouting hawkers, was emptying. Shopkeepers were barring their shutters with heavy iron bolts. The City Watch was doubling its patrols, their torches casting long, dancing shadows against the limestone walls that looked like grasping fingers.

  Casimir pulled his wolf-fur cloak tighter around his throat. The wind coming off the northern steppes was biting tonight, carrying the metallic scent of snow and the rot of the sewers.

  He checked the cinch on his saddle for the fifth time. The gelding—a mean-spirited brute with a roached mane and a habit of snapping—shifted its weight and groaned. It was a ugly beast, chosen not for speed but for the width of its chest and the thickness of its coat. It was a survivor.

  Just like him.

  "Easy, you bastard," Casimir muttered, running a gloved hand down the horse’s neck. "We have a long night ahead."

  "My Lord?"

  Casimir looked down. The Gate Captain, a man named Horgar whom Casimir had known vaguely from his days observing the drill yard, was shivering in his chainmail. He looked miserable. His nose was red, and he kept glancing nervously back toward the Citadel, as if expecting the Marquis to appear in a puff of sulfur.

  "The sun is down, Lord Casimir," Horgar said, his voice jumping a little. "The bells have finished the vespers. Standing orders are to bar the gates at dusk. We... we cannot hold them open any longer."

  "You will hold them," Casimir said. He didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to. He simply let the silence hang between them, heavy and cold. "Or you will explain to the High Justiciar why you locked him inside with the rats."

  Horgar swallowed hard. "The Justiciar? Lord Harlon is coming here? To the North Gate?"

  "He likes to be punctual."

  "But, my Lord... if the Watch Commander finds the portcullis raised after the bell..." Horgar trailed off, caught between the fear of his immediate superior and the terrifying abstract power of the High Court.

  "If the Watch Commander complains," Casimir said, turning his gaze back to the empty street, "tell him I threatened to gut you. It will make a better story than the truth."

  Horgar shifted his pike, looking unhappy, but he didn't signal the winch-men.

  Casimir checked the sky again. The purple bruise of twilight was darkening to a charcoal black. The first stars were struggling to pierce the gloom.

  Ten minutes, Casimir thought, the acid in his stomach churning. If Kaelen doesn’t show in ten minutes, the point is moot.

  He ran the calculations in his head. Without the wagon, he had no food. Without the explosives, he had no siege defense. Without the men, he had no watches for the night. If he rode out alone now, he would freeze before he reached the Miller’s Bridge. If he stayed, he would hang.

  A dark thought whispered in the back of his mind: Kaelen took the gold.

  It would be the smart move. The veteran sergeant had looked at the suicide mission, looked at the bag of crowns Casimir had given him for bribes, and decided that a warm tavern and a heavy purse were better than freezing to death.

  Casimir wouldn't even blame him. Loyalty was a currency, and House Kovac was bankrupt.

  Then, a vibration traveled through the cobblestones.

  It started as a tremor in the soles of his boots, then grew into a heavy, rhythmic rumble echoing from the side street. It wasn't the sharp clack-clack of a noble’s carriage. It was the groan of stressed timber, the squeal of ungreased axles, and the heavy, tramping cadence of marching boots.

  Casimir turned his horse, his hand drifting instinctively to the pommel of his sword.

  A wagon emerged from the gloom.

  It was a massive, flatbed dray, likely stolen from the dockyards. It was piled high—dangerously high—with crates covered in rough, stained canvas. Two heavy draft horses, shaggy-haired and breathing steam, pulled it with their heads low.

  Kaelen sat on the bench, a clay pipe clenched between his teeth, his good eye narrowed against the smoke. He looked less like a soldier and more like a gravedigger on a deadline.

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  But he wasn't alone.

  Walking beside the wagon, behind it, and flanking the horses was a column of men.

  Casimir blinked. He counted quickly.

  One, two... five... nine... eleven.

  There were nearly a dozen of them.

  They didn't march with the crisp precision of the Household Guard. They shambled. They limped. They favored bad knees and stiff backs. But they moved with a synchronization that only came from years of drilling.

  They were a motley collection of humanity. Some wore rusted chainmail that had seen better decades; others wore boiled leather patched with wool and scraps of fur. One man leaned heavily on a spear as a crutch. Another had a bandage wrapped around his eyes, guided by a hand on his shoulder.

  They looked like a parade of ghosts summoned from the Marquis’s old wars.

  Kaelen pulled the wagon to a halt, the iron-rimmed wheels grinding against the stones. He hopped down, wincing as his knees took the impact, and spat a stream of smoke.

  "You’re late," Casimir said. He tried to keep his voice commanding, but it cracked with a relief he refused to fully show.

  "Had to make a few stops, my Lord," Kaelen grunted, patting the flank of the lead horse. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the dark city. "Turns out, there’s a few in Malbork who don't have a warm bed to sleep in tonight. Rumor got out that a Kovac was hiring for a one-way trip."

  Casimir rode his horse slowly down the line, inspecting what Kaelen had dragged out of the gutters.

  He recognized the original five from the barracks. Davin, the boy, looked terrified, clutching his helmet like a shield. Merrick, the twitchy archer, was restringing a bow that looked like it had been salvaged from a firewood pile. Boras the earless was chewing on a piece of dried root. Piotr was coughing into a rag, a wet, rattling sound. Silas the mute stared at nothing.

  But the new faces... they were different. They were harder.

  "Who are they?" Casimir asked, stopping his horse in front of a giant of a man whose beard looked like a thicket of steel wire.

  "Refuse," Kaelen said simply, walking alongside. "Men the Marquis cut loose when they got too old, too slow, or too expensive. That big one? That’s Kowalski."

  Kowalski looked up. His face was soot-stained, his nose broken in three places. He didn't bow. He just nodded.

  "Used to be a master smith in the armory," Kaelen explained. "Until a destrier kicked his shoulder in during a shoeing. Bone never set right. He can still swing a hammer, just can't lift it above his head."

  Casimir looked at the man’s right shoulder. It was slumped, the muscle withered slightly, but his forearms were thick as tree trunks.

  "And him?" Casimir pointed to a man standing near the rear wheel, checking the lynchpin. He was missing his left arm below the elbow, a rusted iron hook strapped to the stump with leather belts.

  "Krol," Kaelen said. "Camp cook. Lost the hand to frostbite in the Salt-War trying to dig a supply cart out of a drift. The army discharged him without a pension the day he got back. He makes a stew out of boot leather and tree bark that you’d thank him for."

  Casimir looked at the others. A man with a scar across his throat that likely ruined his voice. Another with a shaking hand. They were the discarded tools of his father’s ambition.

  The men looked up at him. Their eyes were hollow, hard, and devoid of hope. They weren't looking at him with the reverence due a Lord. They were weighing him. They were calculating the odds. Is this boy worth dying for? Or is he just another noble sending us into the grinder to pad his resume?

  Casimir felt the weight of their judgment. It was heavier than the armor he wore.

  "Do they know where we’re going?" Casimir asked softly, leaning down to Kaelen.

  "I told them we’re going North," Kaelen said, relighting his pipe. "I told them there’s land for those who survive the winter. I told them the pay is nonexistent and the food is scarce."

  "And they still came?"

  "I told them one other thing," Kaelen said, looking Casimir in the eye. "I told them you’re the only Kovac who sees usefulness in the useless."

  Casimir straightened in his saddle. A strange sensation bloomed in his chest—not pride, exactly, but a fierce, protective heat. Kaelen hadn't just hired mercenaries; he had built a fellowship of the broken. And in doing so, he had raised their odds of survival from 'impossible' to merely 'improbable.'

  "Right," Casimir said, his voice stronger now. "If they can march, they can eat. What about the supplies?"

  "It’s done," Kaelen grinned, a flash of white teeth in the scarred ruin of his face. "Though the Quartermaster had a few choice words about Lord Stefan’s sudden need for mining explosives. He threatened to report me."

  "And?"

  "And Merrick asked him very politely about the structural integrity of the storehouse roof while toying with a flint and steel," Kaelen chuckled. "We have the oil. We have the powder. We have enough bear traps to snap the legs off a giant."

  "Did you get the forge?"

  "Kowalski carried it out on his back. Hard to fix armor without fire and iron, my Lord."

  "Fair point."

  Casimir looked over his "army," illuminated by the flickering torchlight. Eleven broken men. One wagon of stolen explosives. And a Lord with a split lip and a stolen horse.

  It was pathetic. It was magnificent.

  "He’s not coming," Kaelen muttered, his humor fading as he looked at the empty road. "The Marquis probably told the Justiciar to let you rot. If we don't leave now, Casimir, we’re trapped."

  "He'll come," Casimir said, though his stomach tightened. "Harlon is a creature of statute. He wouldn't miss the chance to officiate a dispossession. He feeds on bureaucracy."

  "My Lord!" Horgar stepped forward, his pike trembling. "The bell... it's finished. The Watch Commander is signaling from the inner wall. We must close the portcullis."

  The heavy chains began to rattle. The massive iron gate groaned, the sound like the dying breath of a leviathan, and began its slow, jerky descent.

  "I said hold!" Casimir shouted, wheeling his horse around, his hand dropping to his sword hilt.

  "Hold!"

  The second command didn't come from Casimir. It cracked like a whip from the darkness of the city streets.