The yard was too small for a proper run.
Alex did it anyway, perimeter laps, tight corners, the dead weirwood passing on his left every circuit like a pale marker.
Not ideal.
Better than nothing.
The dawn was grey and wet and the yard stones were slick underfoot and he slipped once on the third lap and caught himself and kept going.
Mikal was in the doorway with his cup when Alex finished.
Watching with the expression he used when he had nothing to say about something.
“Hoster wants us midafternoon,” Mikal said.
“I know.” Alex caught his breath.
“Briefing?” “First job details.” Alex nodded and went to check on Cloud.
— The yearling was awake.
Alert, ears moving, still processing the unfamiliar stable two mornings in.
Alex worked through the checklist, water, feet, a hand along the neck checking for tension.
Cloud’s ears stopped moving.
Not gradually, they simply stopped tracking the general sounds of the stable and oriented toward Alex specifically.
The way they had last night.
The same quality of attention that didn’t quite match a young horse in an unfamiliar environment.
Alex kept his hand on Cloud’s neck for a moment.
‘Still probably tired,’ he thought.
He finished the check and latched the stall.
— He spent the morning learning Raventree Hall the way he learned all spaces — moving through it without obvious purpose, letting the place show him what it was.
The hall was older than its exterior suggested.
The stone in the corridors worn smooth from generations of feet, the kind of wear that took centuries not decades.
The Blackwood sigil was everywhere, ravens and a weirwood tree, the old gods mark of a house that had never converted to the Seven when the Andals came.
One of the few.
Alex found the godswood mid-morning.
Small and walled, separate from the main yard.
The dead weirwood at the centre — the same tree visible from his window, closer now.
He stood at the entrance for a moment then went in.
The space was quiet in a specific way.
Not silent, birds somewhere above the wall, the distant sounds of the hall going about its morning, but quiet underneath all of that.
The kind of quiet that suggested the space had been used for something for a very long time.
He stood in front of the tree.
The carved face was level with his chest from this close.
Worn smooth as Steward Hoster’s expression, the eyes just shallow depressions in the pale wood, the mouth a horizontal line that could have been anything.
He touched the key around his neck.
He didn’t pray.
He didn’t know how, not to this, not yet.
He just stood there in the space that belonged to whatever his mother’s blood connected to and let it be what it was.
‘This is what she knew,’ he thought.
Not the carved face specifically.
The quality of the space.
The age of it.
He stayed for a few minutes.
Left without doing anything significant.
In the corridor outside he passed an older woman, senior servant by her manner, the kind of person who actually ran the parts of a household that lords didn’t notice.
She looked at him with the specific quality of someone who noticed things and filed them accurately.
Alex nodded.
She nodded.
He kept walking.
He noted being noticed.
— Mikal had found the two men-at-arms who would accompany them by mid-morning.
They were sitting in the guard room, older, local, the comfortable worn competence of men who had been doing specific work in specific territory for long enough that it had stopped requiring conscious thought.
One had a scar along his jawline in roughly the same place as Mikal’s.
The other was broader, quieter, the kind of man who watched more than he talked.
Alex sat on a bench near the door with his story book open.
Mikal asked about the route.
They described it, the Blue Fork trail east, the point where it left the river and went overland through Blackwood holdings, the specific section of the border where the woodland started.
“The tree lines on the eastern edge,” the broader man said.
“That’s where they like to sit.
Not every time, sometimes weeks go by without anything.
But when they decide to make a point, that’s where they do it from.” “How do you know when they’re there?” Mikal asked.
“Bird calls,” the other man said.
“There’s a call they use, sounds almost like a wood thrush.
Not quite right if you know what a wood thrush actually sounds like.” “And if you don’t?” “Then you don’t know until you’re already past the tree line.” Mikal absorbed this.
“The camp position.” “Rotated.
Hoster picks a new one each time now.
After Edric.” He said the name flatly.
Not without feeling, just with the specific flatness of someone who had processed a grief and filed it somewhere functional.
Alex listened to all of it without looking up from his book.
‘This is the actual map,’ he thought.
‘The one that matters.’ The broader man glanced at him.
Then at Mikal.
“He always like this?” he asked.
“Since he could walk,” Mikal said.
The man looked at Alex for a moment with the assessing look of someone recalibrating.
Then returned to the conversation.
— Hoster’s office in the afternoon.
The map on the table, new marks on it, route, camp position, woodland boundary.
Six woodcutters.
One cart.
First light tomorrow.
Full day’s ride to the disputed woodland.
Camp at the edge overnight.
Two working days.
Back on the fourth day.
Hoster’s finger on the map.
“This is where Edric died.” Flat.
Factual.
A known hazard marked and labelled.
“The Brackens claimed a poacher’s misfired shot,” Mikal said.
“They did.” A pause.
“The woodcutters know the risk,” Hoster continued.
“The timber is worth more than the Brackens want them to think.
Your job is to make the risk manageable.” He looked at Mikal evenly.
“Defence and withdrawal if you make contact on our side of the border.
Unless withdrawal isn’t possible.” “Understood,” Mikal said.
“The camp position — new?” “New.
They won’t have it.” “And if we need to send word back quickly.” “One of my men knows the trail well enough to ride it in the dark.
You won’t need to send Alex.” He glanced at Alex briefly — the filing look, squire, noted — and back to Mikal.
“First light,” he said.
“Don’t be late.” — They ate at the common table with the household that evening.
The food was plain and hot and there was enough of it.
The Blackwood men talked among themselves in the easy way of people with established relationships.
Mikal ate and said little.
Alex ate and listened to everything.
The atmosphere was specific, not tense exactly, but the kind of focused quiet that settled over a working household the night before people went somewhere uncomfortable.
Everyone knew what tomorrow was.
Nobody made anything of it.
After the meal they went back to their room to prepare.
Mikal laid his equipment out on the bed.
Travelling light, the tourney kit stayed.
What came was functional: weapons accessible, bedroll ready for cold ground, the specific prioritisation of a man preparing for work rather than performance.
Alex did his own checklist in parallel.
The practice blade.
His small knife.
The things that needed to be where they needed to be in the dark if something happened.
They worked in silence for a while.
“We’re thin,” Alex said.
Mikal didn’t look up from his sword belt.
“Two knights and two Blackwood men for six woodcutters and a cart.” “Yes.” “I know.” Alex folded his bedroll.
“We have money now.
First time properly.” He kept his voice level, not a pitch, just a statement of fact.
“Two or three men.
Not knights.
Just reliable men who can hold weapons and follow orders without needing to be told twice.” Mikal was quiet.
“We could start here,” Alex said.
“The Riverlands has discharged soldiers, hedge knights between contracts.
Men looking for steady work.” A pause.
“The Blackwood contract gives us a base.
Something to offer.” Mikal set down the sword belt.
He looked at Alex with the expression that still didn’t have a clean name, the one that lived somewhere between recognition and something older than recognition.
“Two or three to start,” he said.
“Yes.” “Reliable over capable.” “Yes.” Mikal picked up the sword belt again.
“I’ll think about it.” Alex went back to his checklist.
He knew what *I’ll think about it* meant.
It meant yes, on Mikal’s timeline, in Mikal’s way.
That was enough.
— He went to Cloud’s stall before sleep.
The stable was quiet.
The other horses settled.
Cloud awake and present, ears orienting before Alex had made a sound, before the latch, before the footstep, as though he had known someone was coming specifically.
Alex stood at the stall door for a moment.
He thought about wood thrush calls that weren’t quite right.
About tree lines and camp positions and a man named Edric who had died six months ago doing the same job they were doing tomorrow.
“Tomorrow,” he said quietly.
To Cloud or to himself or to neither.
Cloud’s ear moved toward his voice.
Alex latched the stall and went to bed.