When Toby woke, the sound hadn’t changed. For a disoriented moment, he thought he’d slipped back into some other night—a time when Brindle Hollow faced a storm that had flattened half a season’s work. Then the smell of smoked meat and damp canvas and horse hit him, and the memory of the day slotted back into place.

  “Your turn,” a tired voice murmured.

  Reece sat by the flap, cloak drawn tight around his shoulders, hair plastered dark against his forehead. His eyes looked bruised at the edges. He gave Toby a quick, apologetic half-smile.

  “Still raining,” Reece said around a yawn. He scrubbed a hand over his face. “You’ve got it now. Wake the other two if you see anything that isn’t water.”

  Before Toby could answer, Reece had already wormed his way into his bedroll and dragged it up to his chin. By the time Toby shifted to sit where he’d been, Reece’s breathing had gone long and even.

  Toby settled himself near the flap, the way Maxwell had taught them—close enough to see out, far enough not to silhouette himself against any light in the tent. He slid a hand under the canvas and lifted it just enough to look.

  Rain.

  Still coming down in thick, heavy ropes, each drop big enough to feel from across the tent. The fang reared up in the dark, its white surface turned a slick, dull gray under the bruised sky. The carcass—what was left of it—sat further out, more suggestion than shape now. The bones gleamed when lightning grumbled somewhere far off, a pale tangle against the churned ground.

  The sound felt different. It was still a solid, endless roar, like standing beside a wide river that had forgotten how to be slow. But Toby’s ears had given up trying—the storm had become a kind of moving silence, constant enough to make anything else seem distant.

  He let the flap fall and leaned his back against the nearest pack, listening. Somewhere out beyond the edge of his sight, the elves were also listening. The thought came uninvited and sat in his chest.

  Where are they?

  He pictured them as he’d last seen them—dark armor that drank light, red eyes in the fog, movements that turned the world slow and sharp all at once. They belonged in shadow, but in reeds? In places where feet sank and sound died? Out here, in the open plains beneath a stone fang and a sky that couldn’t make up its mind, they felt wrong in his head.

  And yet they’d burned farms, killing everyone and everything that breathed—generally leaving no corpses behind or tracks to follow. They’d found a way to slip past men who knew the land. They hid in marsh and waited for weakness.

  Toby stared through the dark in the direction the marshes lay, past where he knew the horizon curled, even if he couldn’t see it now. Water and elves and memory tangled together.

  Every time he braced himself for them—from the first night in Highmarsh’s yard to the clearing where he’d carved them down—something had stood in the way. A lack of training. A lesson he hadn’t learned yet. A wall he hadn’t seen until he walked into it. Now the wall was a stone fang. Another gate he needed to open.

  He could feel his anger trying to wake—that old, familiar heat that had once made his hands shake with the need to move, to act, to hit something until it stayed down. He’d let it run him, once. It had burned hot enough to cut elves out of the world. It would burn him too, if he let it roam again without a leash.

  He breathed. In through the nose, held, then out through the mouth. Maxwell’s rhythm. Sire Kay’s discipline. Sire Ray’s voice in the back of his mind, telling him that rage without direction was just another way to be useless. Turn it useful. Do something great with it.

  He thought of Sire Kay then—of the hall in Highmarsh, of maps under his hands and banners under his eyes. Of a bed softer than anything Toby had slept on, and a weight that made soft things feel like stone. Out here, Toby had mud and rain and hornets and a tower of stubborn rock. He had four horses and three men he trusted and a sword that fit his hand.

  Sire Kay had the south. Toby pictured him at the high table, not as a lordling coasting on his father’s name, but as a man sitting in a room full of voices all asking for something. Food. Troops. Protection. Vengeance. A thousand wants, each one dressed up as need.

  It had been easy, when they’d ridden out to gather mercenaries. The gray pikes were good men. But to imagine building a whole army, over one thousand men, one thousand horses. Feeding them would be hard enough, let alone lodging them, training those that needed it, smithies to mend and create, paper trails of who was owed what.

  He knew better now. For every man who’d taken the king’s coin there had been three who’d hesitated. Fields, families, old oaths—those things didn’t simply let go because a writ said so. Every spear had to be fed. Every man had to be given reason to stay. Every captain had his own pride, his own story, his own price for loyalty.

  Sire Kay had stepped into that mess, carrying a name that was both shield and target. Trying to turn frightened people and scattered veterans and hungry mercenaries into something that could stand against elves who moved like night itself. Toby let his head rest back against the tent pole, eyes half-closed.

  It would be easy to envy the bed. The roof that didn’t leak, the fire that burned in a hearth instead of under open sky. Even now, with the plains shaking under the weight of the storm, Sire Kay was probably in a room where the rain sounded distant. But comfort wasn’t the same as ease.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  The weight on Sire Kay’s shoulders was heavier than wet mail. Toby knew that. Every letter sent. Every rider dispatched. Every grain measure counted to feed men who hadn’t yet swung their blades. The world had put the south in Sire Kay’s hands. The wild had put this storm and this stone in Toby’s.

  He thought of the Gray Pikes then—the mercenary band that had ridden under their own weathered banner, faces half-amused, half-tired. Men and women who’d fought for coin because coin kept families fed. They’d ridden with Highmarsh into a petty lord’s squabble, their long pikes bristling like iron wheat in the wind. Where were they now?

  He imagined them marching still, boots pounding some other road far to the west or north, chasing contracts while the summer baked the land. Or camped round some other fire, playing their own games of dice under a different kind of rain. Would they come when Sire Kay called again?

  Not for a quarrel coveted by history. For elves. For the kind of enemy that didn’t leave much behind for grave-digging. He hoped so. The world would need every spear it could borrow. The rain shifted tone for a moment—a gust driving it sideways so it hammered one wall of the tent more than the others. Toby checked the ropes by sound alone, listening for strain. Everything held.

  In the dimness, Zak snored softly, one arm thrown over his face. Reece’s breathing stayed steady, the rise and fall of his bedroll a small, reassuring shape in Toby’s peripheral vision. Maxwell was a dark silhouette near the far corner, cloak wrapped around him, head bowed in what might have been sleep and might have been the kind of rest that let a man wake instantly.

  They were a long way from walls and watchtowers. From bells and banners and the familiar patterns of a castle’s day. But they weren’t lost.

  Toby drew another slow breath, letting the anger settle into something denser and quieter—a resolve that sat in his chest like a stone of its own. Duty, Sire Ray had called it once. The choice to stand where you were needed, even when no one was watching.

  The elves were out there, somewhere in the dark and the rain and the miles of country between here and the marshes where his village used to stand. When the time came, he’d meet them again. Until then, he had a rock to climb, horses to keep alive, brothers to watch, and a storm to outlast. He shifted, adjusted his grip on the tent flap, and kept his eyes on the slice of night beyond.

  The rain ignored him and kept falling.

  By the time a gray smear of morning crept through the canvas, Toby’s eyes burned from staring at the same slice of night. The rain hadn’t slackened once. It just changed angle and volume, as if the sky were trying out different ways to drown the world. Maxwell stirred first. He pushed himself upright with a quiet grunt, joints popping in the dim.

  “Anything?” he asked.

  “Water,” Toby said. “And more water.”

  Zak rolled over with a groan. “Tell it to share with the south. Sire Kay could use a bit less dust and a bit more flood.”

  Reece blinked himself awake, squinting at the sagging roof. “Still?”

  Toby lifted the flap an inch to show him. A sheet of rain hammered down outside, turning the ground around the tent into a shallow sea. The fang loomed through it, blurred and slick.

  Reece let out a long breath. “If it keeps this up, the hornets will need boats.”

  Maxwell shifted nearer the entrance, gaze going distant in that way it did when he was counting things no one else could see. “We’ll be fine,” he said. “For a while.”

  Zak heard the space inside the words. “A while,” he repeated. “That a unit of measure now?”

  Maxwell jerked his chin toward the packs. “We’ve smoked enough to eat dry for a few days. Oats will stretch further if you don’t complain while you chew. After that, we’ll see what the sky’s decided about letting us use fire again.”

  Toby thought of the meat racks, the way the hornets had swarmed them before the rain. They now looked like soggy old rags.

  Maxwell gave a short, humorless smile. “The good news is, you’re officially allowed a break from climbing.”

  Zak pushed himself up on his elbows. “A break,” he said. “Ser, I’m not sure I know what that word means.”

  “It means if I see you hanging off that rock while it’s slick as soap, I’ll tie you to a horse until you remember you like breathing,” Maxwell said.

  “That’s the kindest thing you’ve ever said to me,” Zak muttered. “No climbing. Shame.”

  Reece rubbed his eyes, then his stomach. “So. No fire. Limited food. Rain that’s trying to drown us.” He tilted his head, listening to the hammering outside. “We’re sure we’re not cursed?”

  “If we were cursed, you’d have better dice,” Maxwell said.

  Zak brightened despite himself. “Speaking of.” He fished in his belt pouch and pulled out the little cloth roll again, holding it up so they could all see. “Since the saints have decided we’re stuck inside their washing basin, might as well give them a show.”

  Toby snorted. “You want to lose to Maxwell a fourth time?”

  “I want to prove his luck was a fluke,” Zak said. “And distract myself from slowly starving, if that’s all right with everyone.”

  Reece shifted closer, blanket still around his shoulders. “If we’re counting every scrap, might as well count pips too,” he said. “Twins again?”

  Toby glanced at Maxwell. The old knight was already tearing a strip from the last of last night’s meat, expression calm.

  “Same rules?” Maxwell said.

  Zak raised an eyebrow. “You have more?”

  “Only one. Roll any triple—instant win.”

  “Ah, so there’s always a chance to win,” Zak said.

  Maxwell nodded. “Then, no arguments about saints when you lose.”

  Zak grinned, unrolling the cloth so the wooden cubes spilled into his palm. The tent shook with another gust, canvas humming.

  “Complaining to the saints is the most important part of the game,” he said, clearing a small patch between them with the side of his hand. “Storm outside, starvation waiting its turn, four fools in a tent.”

  He let the dice tumble to the ground.

  “Let’s see if luck’s as stubborn as we are.”