The mist held like a rotting shroud over the siege camp. Fires struggled to catch against damp wood, their smoke curling low, clogging men's throats and souring the air with the stink of wet ash and burned marrow bones. Garran Stone stood at the edge of his mustered line, watching his fifteen hand-picked men shuffle into place.
If you could call them that.
Most were half-starved levies and crooked-mouthed sellswords from the Bleak Company, men whose faces he didn't trust and names he didn't want to remember. Haim was there, grinning like a dog about to bite, and Dren clutched a battered relic bone he swore had belonged to some drowned saint's hand.
"This is no good ground," Dren muttered, making the sign with two fingers as he eyed the misted tree line. "Mist like this, you can smell ghosts in it."
"You smell your own coward's breath," a squat man named Rorik spat, hitching up his rust-patched mail.
"Say it again, pig's son," Dren growled, hand on his dagger.
"Enough," Garran barked, stepping between them before blood spoiled the morning. "You fight the mist, not each other."
They grumbled but fell back into line, casting wary glances at one another. Garran scanned the road ahead. A narrow track, mud-churned and lined with ditch willows, leading east toward Hather's Croft. The mist made ghosts of the trees, their bare limbs stretching like bone fingers. A crow called once, sharp and wet, then fell silent.
Orlec rode up, rain-dark cloak clinging to his shoulders, helm hung from the saddle. The old knight's face looked like leather stretched over stone. Hard eyes, flat as a dead man's. He leaned in close.
"Grain carts slipped out by nightfall," Orlec rasped. "Croft's got a store they meant to keep. Lord Rowe wants it ash before dusk."
"No survivors," Garran said, voice low.
Orlec smiled, a crooked, cruel thing. "Good memory."
He tossed Garran a cloth-wrapped bundle. Garran caught it, unwrapped it to find a half-rotted dagger with a wolf's head pommel. The thing stank of rust and old blood.
"What's this?"
"Came off a Calrow scout we pulled from a ditch last night. Mark of the Wolf Duke's line. Lord Rowe says if there's a line still loyal to Calrow, we burn it clean. Croft's likely one of theirs. Keep the blade. Could fetch coin, or a curse."
"Likely both."
Orlec snorted and turned his mount. "You've till sundown, Crow-mark."
As the old knight rode off, Garran felt the stares again. His men watched him like dogs waiting for a crack in the voice, a flicker of weakness. Word traveled fast in siege camps. He was rising, and rising men drew knives and rumors like flies.
Dren stepped up, eyeing the dagger. "I've heard of that sigil," he muttered. "Wolf Duke's line. They cursed a whole levy company at the Battle of Tall Fen. Men's livers rotted in their guts. No proper burial for any of 'em."
"Good," Garran said. "Let's make sure the croft burns quicker."
He tucked the dagger into his belt and raised his voice.
"We march! Rorik, front. Haim, with the torch crew. Dren, keep to the left flank. If I catch any man pocketing relic bones or charms, you'll hang by your own guts."
That earned a few crude chuckles and a dozen muttered curses. The march began, boots squelching in the muck, spears and axes glinting dully in the gray light. The road twisted through fields of drowned barley, the mist swallowing the horizon. Crows watched from the branches, eyes gleaming like old coins.
As they passed a half-fallen shrine to Saint Talric, a pair of levies peeled off to piss against the stones. Garran let them. No good came of chastising men on a cursed road.
Haim fell in beside him, torch over one shoulder, a thin-bladed sword rattling at his hip.
"You feel it?" Haim asked.
"The mist?"
"The weight of it. Like old blood pressing against your bones."
"I feel it."
"Could be worse," Haim grinned. "Could be pissing ourselves in the trenches outside Calrow's walls. Give me a croft to burn over that."
"Keep talking and I'll let the old miller's daughter gut you first."
"I'll wager a copper she's better than the cook's boy."
Garran snorted. Even here, at the edge of fire and death, men found a way to laugh.
They reached the outskirts of Hather's Croft near midday. A ragged cluster of thatch-roofed huts, a small timber mill slumped by the water's edge. No smoke from the chimneys. No livestock in the pens. Too quiet.
Dren made the sign again. "Saint's teeth. They're waiting for us."
"Only cowards hide," Rorik growled.
"Like you behind your pigskin," Dren shot back.
"Enough," Garran snapped. "Haim, take four men, sweep the left. Rorik, with me through the mill."
"What about the relic shrine?" Dren asked, pointing toward a sagging wood-frame altar by the path.
"Burn it."
"But—"
Garran turned a hard eye on him. "You want to test your bones against the outlaw gods? Go kneel now."
Dren spat but fell silent.
They fanned out. Garran and his crew approached the mill, stepping careful over muddy ground littered with old bones and broken cart wheels. The waterwheel turned slow, half-bound in creeping ivy.
A sound — the scrape of wood on stone.
"Inside!" Garran barked, charging through the splintered doorway.
The miller and two others crouched in the shadows, old men, faces grim, blades in their gnarled hands. The miller spoke no words, only raised a rusted hatchet. Garran ran him through in a single thrust, the old man's blood hot and bitter.
The others fell quick. Rorik cleaved one's skull. The third tried to run, but Dren drove a spear through his gut.
It was done in moments. No glory. No battle songs.
Haim appeared in the doorway. "Huts are empty. Relic charms strung in the trees, but no men."
"Check the grain store."
They found it behind the mill — a half-collapsed barn stacked with barrels and sacks. Enough to feed Calrow's Ford for a week if they ran lean.
"Burn it," Garran ordered.
Haim grinned and tossed his torch.
The dry hay caught fast. Flames licked at the rafters. Smoke coiled up into the mist, black and thick. Somewhere, a crow shrieked.
Dren spat on the ground. "Bad ground. Bad blood."
"Good kind," Garran said.
A rider appeared then at the edge of the croft. A scout from the main host, mud-spattered, cloak torn.
"Crow-mark!" he called, breath ragged. "Rowe sends word. Black Banner Company broke contract. Cut down one of our foragers. Tensions boiling at camp."
Garran swore. "Coin's going dry."
"Worse," the scout said, voice low. "Word's out about that dagger."
Garran's blood chilled. "Who?"
"Captain Veck. Says he knows the mark. Wolf Duke's bloodline. Claims Rowe's hiding relic oaths. Mercenaries are murmuring. Blood-debts old as the March."
Garran looked to the burning croft, the flames swallowing what little life had clung to this patch of cursed earth.
"Tell Orlec I'll see him by dusk."
The scout wheeled his horse and vanished into the mist.
"Trouble," Haim said.
"Always," Garran replied.
They watched the fire a moment longer, the March feeding itself one bone at a time.
And the crows sang their dirge.