Dawn broke with a sullen, grey light, the kind that seemed to sap the color from the earth. A thick mist clung low to the fields, wrapping the world in pale veils. The cold bit deep, settling into bones and blood alike.
Garran adjusted the cloak over his shoulders and watched his men break camp. What was left of the Black Harp numbered fewer than two hundred now, and most of them limped, coughed, or bore fresh wounds. The older hands sharpened their blades in silence, while the younger ones spoke in low voices, eyes flicking toward the north.
Toward Thornholt.
Jorik stomped through the mud toward him, gnawing the last of a bread crust. His beard was flecked with crumbs, and his mail shirt hung open at the throat.
"Hell of a morning for it," the Northman muttered, spitting into the grass. "If the place's not a ruin, I'll eat my boot."
"You'll eat it either way," Garran said, mounting his horse. "And like it."
A crooked grin, then Jorik swung into his saddle. Behind them, the company fell into rough columns — spearmen at the front, crossbowmen trailing, a single cart hauling what meager supplies they'd been allowed. The black banner hung limp in the mist.
They rode without music, without prayer.
No one sang on the road to a grave.
The hills north of Goldmere rose sharp and broken, scattered with bare trees and jagged stones. Villages here were rare — the bones of old farmsteads marked by crumbling stone walls and sagging roofs. Smoke from unseen fires rose here and there, and more than once Garran spotted movement in the trees. Bandits. Deserters. Wolves of another kind.
None dared test them.
By midday, they reached the first signs of Thornholt's old boundary — a weathered stone marker, half-sunk in the earth, the sigil upon it so eroded it was little more than a scar in the rock.
"Not much of a welcome," Jorik remarked, riding closer. He ran a thick finger over the worn carving. "Could be a boar. Or a bird. Or a badly drawn cock."
"Move," Garran ordered.
They pressed on.
By afternoon, the keep itself came into view. If it could still be called that.
Thornholt squatted in a narrow valley, its once-proud palisade nothing more than scattered posts. The stone foundations of the old hall stood amid a tangle of blackthorn and scrub, roof long since collapsed. A lone tower, leaning drunkenly, clung to the hillside like a dying man.
Smoke curled from a single chimney near the base of the hill. A small hovel, patched with timber and thatch.
Jorik whistled low. "A fine estate you've claimed, steward."
A flicker of movement at the edge of the ruin caught Garran's eye — a figure darting between the stones. Thin, quick, and gone in an instant.
"Eyes sharp," he called to the men. "Could be wolves."
And not the four-legged kind.
He dismounted, sword drawn, and moved ahead with Jorik and a handful of his best men. The ground was soft underfoot, littered with dead leaves. Old bones, half-buried, jutted from the earth here and there. Livestock, by the look of them. Maybe not all.
At the ruined gate, he paused.
"Who claims Thornholt?" Garran called out, voice carrying through the mist.
For a long moment, nothing answered but the wind.
Then, a shape emerged from the doorway of the hovel. A woman — hard-faced, sun-worn, no more than thirty but with the look of someone twice that. A dagger hung from her belt, though she made no move for it.
"I keep it," she said flatly. "For my kin."
Garran eyed her. "How many?"
"Six of us. Counting babes."
Jorik grunted. "Where's your lord?"
"Dead, five winters gone. Wolves took the last steward. Bandits finished the rest. Only crows rule here now."
The woman's gaze met his, unflinching. "You mean to take it?"
"I do."
A pause. Then she shrugged, as though the outcome never mattered.
"Then you'd best do it proper."
Garran sheathed his sword. "Gather what's left. You'll stay or go. Your choice."
The woman gave a brittle laugh. "Aye. That's more mercy than the last one gave."
She vanished into the hovel.
The Black Harp began to move in.
Men climbed the leaning tower, pulling down what was left of the old banners. Others scouted the treeline, finding nothing but empty woods and animal tracks. The smith — a sour-faced man named Dannic — began laying plans for a crude forge near the stream.
Jorik leaned against a stone, watching it all. "We've seen worse."
"We've made worse," Garran said.
He turned, surveying the ruin. It would take time. Men. Coin. But it was land. A place to claim. A place to defend.
And once the fires were lit, and the wolves driven off, it would be his.
At least for a while.
The wind shifted, carrying the scent of woodsmoke and coming rain. Garran felt it settle in his chest like a promise.
He had a foothold now.
And no man would take it from him easily