The first bell always sounded like someone banging a pot. The second meant trouble. The third meant you ran.
Kael was halfway up the stable ladder with a bundle of straw when the third bell hit the air like a hammer. The horses tossed their heads, eyes rolling white. Old Marlo—the stablemaster—didn't even look up from his ledger.
"Drop it," he said. "Gates."
Kael let the straw skid from his shoulder and took the stairs three at a time. Outside, Greywatch's morning was unspooling fast: market hawkers dragging carts off the street, shutters slamming, the river fog shredding under the sudden throb of alarm. The wall-walkers were already shadows against the sky, crossbows bristling. Somewhere up the lane, a woman grabbed a child and vanished into a cellar. Two dogs barked until a militiaman kicked them silent.
The fourth bell came late and ugly. Breach.
Kael's mouth went dry. He'd heard bells before. He'd seen raiders sweep past the walls like smoke, testing sentries and counting heads. This wasn't that. This was Lord Ashgren's people or worse, pouring across the flats in a black line.
Marlo thrust a leather satchel into Kael's chest hard enough to bruise. "Messages. West Gate. Head down, feet quick, don't play hero. You bring back the captain's answer and I'll keep your job for the winter. Go."
"Yes, Mar—"
"Go."
Kael went.
The streets had turned into a river of the wrong kind. Militia squads jogged toward the western side of the city, boot soles thumping, spears bobbing. Carters shoved their loads toward the inner squares, trying to get out of the way. Kael tucked in behind a wagon, dodging barrels, breath working in tight, cold pulls. He kept his eyes on the stone gutter, the old trick for not freezing up when the world went loud.
The West Gate rose out of the lane like a squat, angry giant. Smoke already crawled along the crenels. The gatehouse yard was a churn of leather and steel and shouting. Kael dodged three men blaming each other for a coil of rope, slipped past a pair of priests mumbling blessings, and found the captain by the gate chain, red-faced and snapping at a messenger.
"Satchel," Kael said, breathless. "From Master Marlo."
The captain—big-bellied, close-cropped beard gone mostly gray—snatched the leather and broke the seal with his teeth. He read fast, grunted, and looked past Kael like he wasn't there. "Tell Marlo yes. Tell him he can have his damn hay wagons in the inner court after we turn the raiders. And tell him if he sends boys next time, I'll draft his horses."
Kael nodded and was already turning when the world changed pitch. Above the gate, a wooden tower coughed black smoke. The near parapet convulsed; a dozen men flinched like they'd been struck. Then came the crack of a crude bomb, the shriek of iron fragments, and a section of the gate's outer screen sagged outward, held by chains that screamed.
"Rams!" someone yelled. "Shields front!"
Kael didn't think. Thinking was for later. He jumped into the lee of the winch housing as a ram thudded into the outer door and the whole world shivered like a scared horse. The captain's voice cut through the mess.
"Lads! Rotate! You two—pull that chain! You—boy!"
Kael looked up. The captain's finger jabbed right at him.
"Get on the parapet and tell me what banner they're flying!"
Kael swallowed and nodded. He scrambled up the interior ladder, hands stinging, trying not to look at the militiaman curled at the base of the rungs with a piece of iron shrapnel in his neck. The air on the wall was all smoke and pitch and the sharp stink of fear-sweat. He crawled the last few feet, kept his head below the crenel lip, and risked a glance.
Beyond the ditch the flats ran gray and brittle under an old frost. Men in patchwork armor heaved their ram as if it were a holy duty. Behind them, riders in pieced mail wheeled and shouted, bows low, horses foam-slick. There were banners, ragged triangles hung from lances. Kael squinted, eyes watering in the smoke.
A crow picked out in white on black. Ashgren's sign.
He slid back down. "Crow banner, Captain!"
"Of course it is," the captain snarled, and to the men: "Crow bastards want our grain! Hold!"
The ram hit again. The outer doors were iron-faced, but old. Something gave. The chain creaked. The gate room filled with a sound Kael had only heard once: wood groaning like a beast.
"Boy!" the captain said again—no, not him. Another boy, a runner, barely sixteen, was shoved toward the inner arch. "Take a message to Council: the West Gate will not hold. Tell them we fall back to the inner square if the second door goes. Run!"
The runner sprinted. He didn't make it five steps past the threshold before he pitched forward like a puppet with cut strings. Kael saw the arrow in his spine and didn't understand it until he saw the shadow in the openwork—someone had climbed the outer door and was shooting through the cracks.
"Down!" the captain roared. Another arrow hissed into the gate room and stuck in a barrel a foot above Kael's head.
Then, mercifully, the bowman died. A crossbow clacked from above. The shadow jerked and fell.
"Haul!" men screamed at the winch. "Haul, haul, HAUL!"
They hauled. The chain wailed. The outer door slipped on its hinges, sucked by the ram and its own ruin. It tore free on one side and slammed crooked. The gate room filled with daylight and men.
The first through wore crow-black leather with rings sewn into it. His head was bare and his beard was braided with a bit of ivory. His eyes found Kael and passed over him. He was already moving, a low, soft step, blade wrist loose.
Kael was not a soldier. He had fought exactly three times: two tavern brawls and once when he was twelve and another boy had tried to drown him in a watering trough. What he had was a body trained by hard labor and a habit of watching.
He watched the bearded man slant toward the captain. He saw the militia line flinch, the way men do when the one coming through the door moves like he's done it before. He saw the captain's sword come up too slow. Somewhere, a piece of his mind put it all together and pulled his feet for him.
Kael grabbed the broken spear the dead runner had dropped. He didn't aim, he didn't think. He lunged.
The spear punched into the bearded man's side an inch behind the ribs with a feeling like stabbing a sack of wet grain. The raider's eyes went mild with surprise. He turned his head as if to ask a question. Kael was already yanking, because some part of him knew if the weapon stayed in, he would die. The spear tore free in a rush of heat. The raider stumbled forward two steps, looked offended, and fell to his knees.
A second man flung himself through the gap, caught a militiaman across the mouth, and went down with two more on top of him. The gate room devolved into a shove-match with knives.
Kael backed up on instinct, the cut spear trembling in his hands. He had most of a heartbeat to see the bearded man's short saber lying in the soot—plain, ugly, battered. Then the saber hummed.
Not a sound, not really. More like a thrum under the breastbone that pushed out into the skin. The little hairs on his arm prickled. For a mad moment he thought it was the bell again, the metal singing in his teeth.
He should have left it where it was. He didn't. He dropped the broken spear and snatched the saber.
It was heavier than he expected, but it sat in his hand like it had been meant to be there since before he was born. The vibration under his skin steadied into a line that ran from his palm up his arm and into the tight place behind his ribs where his fear lived. It didn't make him braver. It didn't make him anything. It just made every shape in the room snap into focus.
The next man in a crow patch came at him with a hatchet. Kael parried because there was no other choice, and the hatchet skipped off the little saber in a shower of sparks that looked too bright for the gloom. Kael stepped in. The blade slid under the raider's arm. Hot wetness hit his knuckles. The raider howled and fell back into another man.
"Hold!" the captain bellowed, voice raw. "Hold, curse you!"
They held, somehow. It was messy holding, men grunting and shoving and stabbing at the close of the door's slanted mouth while above them crossbows thrummed and raiders screamed when they were too slow. A barrel went over and exploded into a river of barley. Someone slipped and disappeared. The ram hit air, hit wood, hit the half-hung door and made it jump.
"Chain!" the captain roared. "Give me that chain!"
Kael didn't know what he was doing until he was doing it. He shoved his shoulder against the winch bar alongside two men he didn't know, heaved until his knees shook, and the chain took. Wood ground. The skewed door crept two inches. The men at the gap roared like animals. The men outside answered. Blood ran across stone under Kael's boots and turned slick.
It could have gone either way. Kael thought so later, and other men said it with more conviction, because men like stories with a hinge. Maybe it would always have gone the way it did once the crossbows on the wall found their marks. Maybe the sabers mattered more, the way a line stiffens when it has a blade at its center that doesn't back up.
All Kael knew was he pushed until his vision wavered. He pushed until the chain screamed high and thin and the door thunked into its frame and there were fingers in the crack and he could feel the bones of them with the chain through wood.
Then it held.
It held long enough for someone on the wall to remember the boiling pitch. Long enough for the militia to wheel the second winch. Long enough for the captain to step forward and, with unhappy dignity, cut the fingers sticking through the gap. The screaming outside went thin and far.
When it was over, Kael was shaking and didn't know it until he tried to sheath the saber and realized he didn't have a sheath. He looked down at it. There were flecks of barley stuck to the blood. His hands were scored where the chain had jumped. He found he couldn't stop breathing like he'd run a mile.
The captain loomed.
Up close, the man smelled like iron and old leather and onions. He had a gouge in his scalp that had bled into his beard and then stopped.
"You," he said.
Kael straightened without meaning to. "Sir."
"You stabbed my gate like an idiot," the captain said. "Then you used your back like a man. What's your name?"
"Kael. Kael Rydan." He braced for the flicker you got when you gave that name—Rydan, as in the late border officer hanged for selling maps to raiders. Some people hid their look and some didn't bother.
The captain didn't flicker. He grunted. "You can hold a line?"
Kael looked at the saber. "I can try."
"Good," the captain said. He jerked his chin toward the courtyard. "Congratulations. You're militia."
Kael blinked. "I have a job. At the—"
"You had a job," the captain said. "You've got a saber and a pair of legs. That makes you mine until the bells sleep."
Kael swallowed. "Yes, sir."
The captain pointed at the blade. "Where'd you get that?"
"From—" Kael gestured at the blood and barley. "He dropped it."
"Keep it," the captain said, surprising him. "Looks like it likes you."
That was nonsense. Swords didn't like anyone. Kael nodded anyway because it felt wicked to argue. The saber hummed one last time, a faint thing under his skin, and then went quiet.
They worked. They hauled the mangled door up enough to drive wedges under it. They dragged bodies into a line and covered them with canvas. They fixed the second door's crossbar and reset the oil pots and stacked more stones where the parapet had cracked. The priests made their circuits, tapping foreheads, murmuring blessings to the Unbroken Sun. One placed a warm hand on Kael's shoulder. "He sees you," the priest said.
Kael didn't know what that meant and wasn't foolish enough to ask. It was noon before the captain let the watch cycle fall back to the courtyard. Men sat down where they stood and chewed dry bread like it was a favor.
Isolde found him there, or he found her. It was hard to say. She had a slash across her forearm bound tight with a strip of someone's shirt and a look that said she had assessed every man in the yard and found most of them annoying.
"Rydan," she said.
He got halfway to his feet. "Sergeant."
She eyed the saber. "You plan to cut your own foot off with that thing?"
"I don't—"
"You don't know anything," she said, not cruel, just tired. "You held a bar and didn't run. So now you get to learn, or you get to die and make me mad, and I would rather not be mad today."
"Yes, Sergeant."
She jerked her head toward the practice yard. "When the captain sleeps, you'll meet me at dusk. We'll see if you've got a wrist. Bring the ugly blade."
He nodded. She turned, then paused. "You did well," she said in the same flat tone. "Don't let anyone tell you it was luck. Luck doesn't haul chains."
When she was gone, Kael sat with the saber across his knees and his bread untouched and listened to the city breathe. Somewhere, behind the smoke and the fear and the creak of leather, a slow cheer rolled along the wall—relief performing itself so the body would believe.
Marlo found him there because of course he did. The stablemaster had a way of being where he wasn't supposed to be, a talent that came from decades of keeping animals and men from trampling each other.
"You came back," Marlo said, like it surprised him.
"I did." Kael tried a smile and failed. "The captain says I belong to him until the bells sleep."
Marlo grunted. "They don't sleep much anymore." He looked at the saber and then at Kael's face. "You keep your head and you keep your hands. I'll keep your job warm with my good graces. Not that they're worth much."
"Thank you."
"Don't thank me. Come back alive and we'll call it even." Marlo's eye ticked to the wall. "They'll come again before night. Crows don't like being told no. If the inner square goes, you run for the keep. You know the way?"
Kael nodded. He'd mucked the keep's stables and run messages up its towers since he was seven. He knew every shortcut, every bad stair.
Marlo squeezed his shoulder once, hard, and went away in that quiet way of his.
The second attack came at dusk, as Isolde had promised. It was smaller and meaner, a probing rush mixed with fire arrows. The militia smothered flames and swore. Archers dropped three men in a row and whooped; then one archer took a shaft through the cheek and the whoops died. Kael stood the stretch on the wall with his back against stone and his saber low and steady and tried not to think about how his hands wouldn't stop trembling.
When it quieted, Isolde dragged him to the practice yard behind the barracks where the ground was packed hard and scored with years of boots. Torches spat in iron brackets. She tossed him a wooden waster and thwacked his knuckles when he tried to hold it like a club.
"Hips," she said. "Your shoulders lie. Your hips tell the truth. Again."
He stepped. She knocked him down.
"Again."
He stepped. She knocked him back and then stopped his fall with a hand on his chest, the gesture oddly gentle.
"You've got good eyes," she said. "You see the movement a breath before it happens. Don't watch my sword. Watch me. Again."
Somewhere in the drills—under the sting and the blunt knocks and the grunted curses—the saber in his belt warmed the air against his hip. It might have been his imagination and probably was. He turned, cut, stumbled, corrected. He heard his own breathing change. For a heartbeat, her shoulder twitched and he knew where the next stroke would be. He put his wooden blade there and the thock sounded exactly like a promise.
Isolde's mouth twitched. It might have almost been a smile. "Again."
They worked until the torches guttered. When he went to sleep on the barracks floor among snoring men and creaking leather and the sweetish stink of pitch, the saber lay heavy on his chest like a guard dog. He dreamed of crows with men's faces and a river that ran backward, and woke to the cold hour when the world is thin and horses go quiet.
He rose with the others, cold water in his face and a crust of bread in his hand. He had no armor worth speaking of; he wouldn't get any until the quartermaster had a reason. He had the saber. He had drills in his muscles and a new way to watch the world, and more fear than he could hide.
Dawn brought fog. And riders on the far flats. And banners that were not crows.
Kael was on the wall when he saw the silhouette on the ridge—one rider, motionless, cloak kicked back by the wind. The fog made a halo around him. Even at that distance, the stillness was wrong. Not the stillness of a scout. The stillness of a man who expected the world to bend.
"Who is that?" someone muttered.
No one answered. The rider didn't move. The fog peeled back. A second banner showed itself along the far line, and the men on the wall shifted. Not crows. A pale cloth with a sigil like a thorned sun.
"Not Ashgren," Isolde said quietly beside him.
"No," the captain said from the stairs, voice gone low and hard. "Worse."
Kael didn't know the banner, not by sight. But when the rider on the ridge finally turned his horse and began to descend toward the flats with the unhurried grace of a man who always arrives at the right time, Kael felt something move under his ribs. Not the saber. Not fear exactly. Recognition without memory.
The rider came down to the line of raiders. He spoke. Men moved. Orders rippled. The dark line reshaped with a competence that made the hairs stand on Kael's neck. Someone laughed softly and didn't know why.
"Who—?" Kael began.
"Darius Vayne," the captain said. "Champion for hire. Or for his own joy. Don't stare, boy. He likes it when you stare."
Kael looked anyway.
The rider turned his head as if he felt it and—impossible at that distance—Kael thought their eyes met. The man smiled like he'd heard a story he meant to correct in person.
"Bells," the captain said. "Once more."
They rang. The city's breath held. Every man on the wall felt the line tighten. Kael set his shoulders, lifted the little ugly saber that wasn't his and was, and thought, not for the first time that day: I am not ready.
The bells didn't care.
They sang out over the river and the flats and the thorned sun banners, and Greywatch braced to find out who survived breakfast.