Cold reached Arlan before memory did, slipping through warped oak shutters with the smells of damp stone, mildew, and old smoke, and a tallow lamp guttered above the bed, throwing unsteady light across cracked plaster and a beam blackened by years of soot. "My lord? Can you hear me?" An old man bent over him and pressed a rough palm to his forehead. His bloodshot eyes widened when he felt the skin beneath his hand. "The fever has broken. Thank the Seven."
Arlan tried to answer, but his throat felt scraped raw and his tongue would not cooperate; before he could ask for water, memories belonging to two different men began forcing themselves into the same skull.
Michael Watson had died in another world after an employer betrayed him during what should have been his final job, and he remembered shattered glass, a violent impact, and river water closing over the wreckage before everything went dark.
The years before that remained clearer than his death, and Michael had made his living with blades and other close-quarters weapons, surviving by judging distance, timing, balance, and the small mistakes that killed men before they understood they had made them.
Another life pressed against those memories, and Arlan Ashenblade was sixteen, the only surviving son of Ser Edwyn Ashenblade, and heir to FireStorm, a miserable holding in the southern Stormlands near the Red Mountains.
Arlan closed his eyes for several breaths and let both lives settle instead of fighting either one, and the old man beside the bed was Morton, steward of House Ashenblade and one of the few people who had remained at FireStorm through its recent disasters. "Drink, my lord." Morton lifted a chipped wooden cup with both hands. "Slowly. You have taken almost nothing for three days."
The water was cloudy and barely warm, yet it eased Arlan's throat enough for him to breathe without pain, and he drank while studying the room and allowing inherited memories to put names to what his eyes already suggested.
FireStorm Castle was a castle largely because generations of Ashenblades had insisted on the word, and the chamber contained a hard bed, a scarred table, two mismatched chairs, a cracked iron pot, and half a sack of rye pushed against the wall.
A battered shield hung above the table, painted with a silver sword wrapped in flame before a red sun on storm-grey; damp had blistered the paint near the rim, but the device of House Ashenblade remained recognizable.
Three days earlier, Ser Edwyn had taken twelve able-bodied men to confront raiders descending from the Red Mountains. Only three returned alive, each badly injured. Ser Edwyn and the other nine had died beyond the fields.
The previous Arlan had tried to ride for help after hearing of his father's death, and his horse stumbled into a ditch before reaching Nightsong, and the fall left him injured enough that fever nearly finished what the accident began. Michael Watson had awakened when Arlan Ashenblade no longer could. "There is porridge," Morton said, watching him with exhausted concern. "Oats, mostly. If your stomach keeps it down, I can find something else."
"When are they coming?" Arlan asked. Morton's hands stopped around the cup, and he looked toward the shutter, then lowered his eyes as if the rain beyond the wall might answer for him.
"The raiders," Arlan said. "When?"
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
"Before sunset. They sent word yesterday that they would return and take whatever remains." Morton swallowed before adding the part that mattered. "Less than two hours, my lord."
FireStorm Village held seventeen households and roughly forty-seven people; most were women, children, old men, or boys too young for serious fighting, while the three surviving defenders could scarcely stand on their injured limbs. Ser Edwyn's failed defense had not merely killed men but stripped the holding of almost everyone who normally carried weight in a crisis, leaving families that had lost husbands, sons, or brothers within the same three days.
There was no hidden armory waiting beneath the hall, and FireStorm had a handful of farm tools, poor hunting weapons, and the rusted short sword leaning beneath the family shield.
Arlan pushed the blanket aside and sat upright despite the ache beneath his ribs, and his limbs felt emptied by fever, but his hands obeyed when he flexed them, and his balance held once the room stopped moving around him. "You must leave." Morton dropped to one knee beside the bed and spoke before Arlan could stand. "I can saddle the mare. Ride north and reach Storm's End if the gods are kind."
Arlan looked at the old steward without answering, and the inherited memories of the eastern track were enough to reject the plan: broken ground, deep mud, long distances, and a body that had nearly died attempting a much shorter ride. "Lord Renly would not turn away the last Ashenblade," Morton continued. "If the house survives, FireStorm may someday be reclaimed."
"And the village?" Morton's jaw tightened. "We will hold them as long as we can."
"With what?" The steward did not need to answer, and Arlan crossed the room, lifted the rusted short sword, and turned it beneath the lamp while his thumb rested safely against the flat.
Corrosion had eaten into the blade, the edge was chipped, and the balance dragged toward a badly repaired point. A healthy fighter would dislike it; a fever-weakened one could die because of it. "House Ashenblade must survive," Morton said quietly. Arlan set the sword back against the wall; if he fled while FireStorm was slaughtered, he would preserve a name while losing the people, land, and protection that gave the name any practical value.
He was not choosing a glorious death over safety, and he was deciding that escape, in his present condition, offered less survival than holding ground he understood against men who expected no resistance. "Stand up, Morton."
"My lord—"
"Stand." Morton obeyed, although the reluctance in his face remained, and Arlan rose with one hand braced on the table and waited until the weakness in his legs steadied enough for him to cross the room without stumbling.
"How many?" Arlan asked.
"Eight, if their message was honest. Perhaps more." Eight armed men would expect frightened peasants and a half-dead boy, not a defender who understood how narrow ground could neutralize numbers. Men who made their living raiding isolated holdings usually relied on terror and momentum before anything resembling organized resistance could form, so FireStorm's cramped yard, low wall, and single main gate gave Arlan at least one useful advantage.
"Bring everyone who can move into the stone hall," he said. "Women, children, wounded men. Bar the doors and shutters once they are inside." Morton stared at him. "And you, my lord?"
"Do what I told you." The old steward glanced toward the ruined sword beneath the shield. "You cannot meet eight men with that."
"No." Arlan followed his gaze and felt the problem reduce itself to something brutally simple. A poor blade might still kill one man, but an edge that rolled, a loosened hilt, or cracked steel could turn technique into luck exactly when eight attackers made luck unacceptable. "I need a weapon that will not fail."
A soundless calculation passed through his mind; even an ordinary hand-and-a-half sword would be enough if the steel was sound, the balance predictable, and the edge capable of surviving several clean strikes, and a cold mechanical voice answered the thought.
[Core demand detected from host: Compatible close-quarters weapon.]
Arlan went still while Morton watched him in confusion.
[Myriad Realms Forging Group activated.]
[Current Host Title: No Title.]
[Permissions Unlocked: Common Quality Item Trading.]
[Current Account Balance: 2 silver stags.]
A pale blue interface unfolded across Arlan's vision, invisible to everything else in the room; at the top, two words appeared beneath a simple header.
[Forging Shack]