They came up the pass at midday, three of them, leading a mule that limped.
Rowan spotted them from the wall-walk, Harl’s boy hauling green wood across the yard below him.
The figures were small against the grade, but they walked like men with nowhere behind them worth going back to.
Maddoc saw them too.
“Recruits or trouble?”
“We’ll know when they’re close enough to answer.” Rowan started for the ladder.
“I’ll meet them at the gate.”
The first man through was older, fifty or near it, with a drover’s shoulders and the kind of face that had forgotten how to expect kindness.
He stopped three paces inside the yard and waited, the way a man waits when he’s used to being told whether he’s wanted or sent back into the cold.
“Name’s Adric,” he said.
“Heard there was a lord at the Gap who paid coin for a wall-hand. My mule’s lame and I’ve no coin for a farrier, but I can hold a spear if the wall’s sound enough to stand on.”
Rowan studied him.
The man’s hands were work-hard, and he held himself steady despite the exhaustion plain in the set of his shoulders.
“The wall’s sound enough,” Rowan said.
“Can you take an order and hold a line?”
“I can.”
“And you’re here of your own will? No man’s sent you, and no man’s coin bought your road here?”
Adric blinked, surprised by the question.
“My own will, lord. I’ve a sister in Baerlon I could’ve gone to. Chose the Gap instead.”
The warmth woke in Rowan’s chest before he’d consciously decided recognition and rightness, the sense of a bond asking to kindle.
He met Adric’s gaze and spoke the words that rose unbidden, in a tongue he hadn’t known yesterday and couldn’t have named now.
“Al dival, al kiserai, al mashi.”
The thread caught.
Warmth flooded down through his sternum, and Adric gasped just once, a sharp inhale and straightened as though a weight he’d been carrying had suddenly redistributed itself across stronger ground.
Rowan felt it settle: a fourth line in the web, warm and clean.
Adric’s eyes were wide.
“What what did you”
“You’re sworn,” Rowan said quietly.
“The fort will feed you, and I’ll see your mule sound. You’ll hold the wall when the time comes, and you’ll hold it because you can’t do otherwise. Do you understand?”
Adric swallowed, then nodded.
“I understand, lord.”
The other two came forward together: brothers, by the look of them, off a failed holding east of the pass.
Younger, hungrier, but the same steady shape to their want.
They gave their names Farren and Edric and Rowan felt the same question rise in his blood.
He Swore them both within the hour.
Farren’s thread kindled as clean as Adric’s. This chapter is updated first at g.com.
Edric’s took a beat longer, as though the bond needed to find its footing first, but it settled warm and Rowan felt the boy’s relief like an exhale he’d been holding for miles.
Five threads now.
The web in his chest felt fuller, warmer but also tighter, as though the space it occupied had a boundary he hadn’t noticed before.
Rowan walked them to the barracks and left them with Bili, who stared at the new men with something close to awe, then crossed the yard to the forge.
Harl was bent over the anvil, hammering a spearhead that glowed dull orange.
He didn’t look up when Rowan stopped at the threshold.
“Green wood,” Harl growled.
“I’m making pig-stickers out of green wood and coal that’s half ash. They’ll bend on the first block and snap on the second, and you’ll have paid four sacks of grain for the pleasure of arming your men with kindling.”
Rowan gave him a beat, then glanced at the fuel-pile stacked against the forge’s outer wall.
“You’re burning it too fast.”
“I’m burning what you gave me.”
“You’re burning it the way a man burns fuel when he’s got a steady supply.” Rowan stepped inside, nodding toward the coals.
“Bank it lower between heats. Let the iron come up slow. You’ll stretch the pile twice as long, and the edge’ll hold better for it.”
Harl’s hammer paused mid-swing.
He straightened, squinting at Rowan with an expression halfway between suspicion and surprise.
“You know forge-work?”
“I know how to make a thing last when there isn’t enough of it.” Rowan met his gaze.
“And I know a man who’s good at his trade when I see one. The wood’s green because it’s what we have. You’ll make it work anyway.”
Harl stared at him for a long moment, then grunted and turned back to the anvil.
But when he set the hammer down to check the edge, Rowan saw the tight line of his shoulders ease a fraction.
“Four sacks,” Harl muttered.
“Coin for timber. And now you’re telling me how to bank a forge.”
“I’m telling you you’re worth the grain,” Rowan said.
“And when this is done, you’ll have a forge that’s yours and a roof that doesn’t leak.”
Harl said nothing, but the hammer’s next strike landed with something closer to satisfaction than frustration.
Rowan left him to it and walked back out into the yard.
The sun was slanting low now, and the wall stretched long and still too empty on either side of the gate.
Five threads hummed faintly in his chest five men who would stand because they’d sworn to, because the bond wouldn’t let them run even if their legs wanted to.
It wasn’t enough.
He felt it clearly now: the warmth of the web, and beneath it, a tautness he hadn’t noticed when he’d only held three threads.
Like a rope pulled just slightly too tight, or a joint bearing slightly more weight than it was meant to.
He didn’t know its measure, couldn’t see it the way he could feel a thread kindle.
But he could feel it there, humming faint and insistent at the back of his skull a boundary his blood knew even if his mind didn’t.
Five threads, and the thing in his chest wanted to stop.
But the wall needed twenty.
Rowan stood in the yard as the light bled out of the sky, counting warm threads and cold gaps, and the arithmetic told him something he didn’t want to hear.
He would need more men than his blood could safely carry.
And the raid would not wait for safe.
PHASE I LAND 1 · SWORN 5 · PROVISION 1 · ROADS 0 · STEEL 1 · WORD 0 (/XII)
That night, Rowan lay awake in the commandant’s quarters and counted threads.
Maddoc: steady, wary, testing.
Bili: bright, fragile, too eager.
Aeldra: solid, unshaken.
Adric: clean, grateful, holding.
Farren: young, hungry, true.
Edric: the same, a beat slower to settle but settled now.
Six men sworn.
Nine on the wall if he counted the others.
The Trollocs had sent twenty ranging the ridges, and that was just the scouts.
He pressed his palm flat against his sternum, feeling the web’s warmth and the faint taut hum beneath it.
The boundary he couldn’t name but couldn’t ignore.
How many more could he hold before the threads thinned?
Before the warmth turned cold and the bonds frayed under a weight they weren’t meant to bear?
He didn’t know.
But he knew the answer the wall needed, and it was more than six.
Rowan closed his eyes and felt the threads settle into the rhythm of sleep around him Bili murmuring something anxious in the barracks, Maddoc’s silence like a held breath, the newer threads still learning the shape of the bond and made himself a promise that tasted like ash even as he spoke it silently into the dark.
He would hold the Gap.
Even if it meant binding more than his blood could carry.
⚜ ━━━━ ROYAL PROCLAMATION ━━━━ ⚜
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By order of the Crown.
The royal vault holds chapters the public throne room has yet to receive.
Long live the Kingdom.