The woods shuddered under the weight of men.
Boots tore through the muck, branches snapped under the press of bodies.
Armor scraped bark, blades rattled loose from sheaths.
Calder crouched low, Dog's Hunger steady in both hands.
Mud clung to his boots and knees, cold sinking into old wounds.
The first of Thornhollow's trackers broke from the treeline.
Foot soldiers, light armor, axes and spears gripped tight.
No banners. No horns.
Just killers — cold, hungry, and closing fast.
They spread out through the underbrush in tight knots, shields half raised, scanning the ruins for signs of the prey they thought they were chasing.
Calder's warband stayed still.
Low. Hidden.
Sleet hissed against the leaves overhead.
The first man hit a buried stake.
A wet crunch.
A howl that ripped across the forest floor.
Two more stumbled over the body, one falling face-first into a shallow pit lined with broken spears.
The screams came sharper, panic flashing along the line.
Calder moved.
He rose from the mud with a silent step and launched forward, Dog's Hunger creating a silver arc in the grey light.
The first blow smashed into a man's shoulder, cracking bone, sending him spinning into the dirt.
Calder pivoted, blade low, carving a second man open hip to hip before he could raise a shout.
The woods exploded into killing.
Branwen and his flank slammed into the disorganized trackers from the south, blades and makeshift spears flashing.
The sharpened stakes forced the trackers into narrow lanes, easy pickings for the bloodied warband.
Vryce led a knot of fighters across the rise to the north, stones and broken logs raining down onto the trapped enemy below.
Mud and blood mixed into a black slurry underfoot.
The air choked with the wet stink of torn bodies.
Calder drove through the chaos like a hammer.
He crushed a tracker's knee with a brutal kick, bringing him down screaming, then ended it with a heavy downward thrust of Dog's Hunger into his throat.
Another lunged from the side — Calder stepped aside, fast and brutal, shoulder-checking the man into a broken tree, ribs splintering audibly.
The man crumpled without another sound.
The trackers tried to pull back, but the undergrowth and traps boxed them in.
The first to flee found only the deadfall Vryce's men had dragged across the forest's edge — sharpened branches and loose stones, rigged to kill.
A man screamed as he stumbled onto a hidden snare, dragged off his feet and driven down into the mud with a snapped neck.
Branwen fought near Calder now.
The boy moved like a blade still being tempered — rough in the swings, brutal in the thrusts.
But he didn't break.
Calder caught a glimpse of him battering a man down with the crossguard of his sword, then finishing it with a ragged stab to the gut.
Good.
Softness didn't survive here.
A group of trackers rallied near the trail, five or six desperate men locking shields and moving in a tight wedge, trying to punch a hole through the warband's line.
Calder barked once, sharp and cutting through the noise.
"Break them!"
Branwen and two others surged forward without hesitation.
Spears punched low into gaps between shields.
A thrown axe spun end over end — striking a man hard across the jaw, splitting his mouth wide open.
Calder crashed into the flank, smashing Dog's Hunger into the shield wall with brutal, battering blows.
Wood splintered.
Shields dropped.
The wedge collapsed in a tangle of screaming bodies.
Mud, blood, and teeth churned underfoot.
Calder fought without mercy.
A cut across the back of the knees.
A thrust under the armpit.
A skull caved in with a savage kick against a fallen man's helm.
No finesse.
No art.
Just raw, ugly survival.
Some trackers tried to scatter into the deeper woods, but Calder's men ran them down.
Mud sucked at boots, but hatred drove the survivors faster than hunger ever could.
The Marches had taught them how to kill.
Now they simply remembered.
The last of the enemy died with a broken spear shaft through his gut, clawing at the mud, mouthing silent prayers to gods that didn't listen.
Silence crawled in behind the last dying breath.
The woods stank of blood, piss, and wet leather.
Calder wiped blood from his mouth with the back of his gauntlet, scanning the ruin.
Dead men lay tangled among the trees.
Some still twitched.
The warband moved through them, finishing the work cleanly and without noise.
No trophies.
No pity.
Only the math of survival — fewer enemies, more breathing bodies on their side.
He turned toward the deeper treeline, searching.
That was when he saw him.
Orlen.
The man crawled through the mud, one arm bent at a sickening angle, the other dragging him forward like a worm.
His face was a pale wreck of blood and fear.
Calder started toward him without a word.
Branwen moved too, slower, sword dragging low against the mud.
Orlen saw them coming.
Froze.
Raised a trembling hand.
"Please," he rasped. "Calder—Branwen—"
His voice cracked.
The mud around him turned dark with blood.
"I had no choice—Vorn—"
He scrabbled at the ground, trying to push himself back, but his strength was gone.
Branwen reached him first.
Orlen flinched.
Branwen's sword punched through his side, a quick, brutal thrust.
Orlen jerked once, a ragged gasp tearing from his throat.
Then he sagged into the mud, the life leaking out of him.
Branwen stood over the body, breathing hard, blood dripping from the edge of his blade.
Calder watched.
The boy didn't speak.
Didn't tremble.
Only wiped the blade on Orlen's cloak and stepped back.
Good.
Some things could only be learned in blood.
The warband worked in grim silence.
Stacking corpses. Breaking apart ruined gear.
No rites.
No prayers.
The Marches didn't leave room for gods or forgiveness.
As the last bodies were stripped, Calder called the survivors together.
Thirty-three, by his count.
Fewer than before.
Faces hollowed out by blood loss and exhaustion.
Still enough.
He looked them over, reading the set of shoulders, the slant of blades in tired hands.
Still fighters.
Still breathing.
For now.
"We move before first light," Calder said.
No arguments.
No wasted words.
The warband broke apart in small groups, tending to wounds, sharpening blades, quietly staring into the dimly lit coals.
Later, as the last of the smoke drifted away, Calder sat with his back against a tree, Dog's Hunger across his knees.
Branwen approached, hesitating a few paces away.
The boy's face was blank, but his eyes burned.
Calder said nothing.
Just waited.
Branwen dropped to a crouch, poking at the blackened dirt with a stick.
"I thought it would feel better," Branwen said finally.
Voice low.
Rough.
Calder grunted.
"It won't," he said. "Not ever."
Branwen nodded, once.
A sharp, pained motion.
He stood and walked back into the dark, sword hanging heavy at his side.
Calder watched him go.
The boy was bleeding out something inside himself.
Maybe he didn't even know it yet.
But Calder did.
He had bled it out too, once.
And there was no putting it back.
Dawn was a thin smear of color on the horizon when they moved out.
The Marches swallowed them again — grey and endless, the trail ahead choked with mud and memory.
No banners.
No songs.
Only the long death dragging at their boots.
And Calder drove them forward without pause.
The only way through was over bones.