The river ran slow and brown, shallow at the edges and treacherous in the cut. Alders bent over the far bank. Midstream, sand ripples flashed like scales when the light touched them.
The patrol made the same mistake every squad made at this crossing. They stepped in without respect. Armor clanked. The Exalted officer rode a white horse that hated the water.
"Now," Estaron said.
Sera moved first from the left, spear low, feet quiet in the reeds. Bor came from the right with a hook bladed axe he treated like a conversation he meant to end. Estaron stood into the current with Reyik at his shoulder.
The first cries went to the river and came back thin. Sera took a spear from a hand, then the hand from the wrist. Bor hooked a shield and pulled the man behind it into the deep. Estaron grabbed the officer's stirrup and turned the horse sideways so the next rank slammed into their own leader.
Reyik breathed. One percent, no more. His field pushed against the current like two streams arguing. He flattened it and set it on Estaron's left side like a second shield.
A soldier swung for his head. Reyik caught the haft and drew a thin Shear Line with his free hand. The oak parted without splinters. The iron head fell into the water and vanished in the reeds. Reyik lifted the broken length and used it like a staff, quiet and exact. The water in his mind did not move.
The officer saw him. Their eyes met over the splash and foam. The man's aura tasted like bad wine. He kicked free of his horse and came forward with a short spear meant for close work.
"Another rat with tricks," he said.
Reyik kept moving in small controlled steps. He parried twice and let the third thrust pass his ribs by the thickness of a finger. The field tried to climb as pain woke the cut beneath his plate. It looked like heat when anger touched it. He pressed his thumb to the ring at his chest and named the pull. The warmth bled out. Only pressure remained.
On the bank a woman ran with a child on her hip. A soldier grabbed her by the hair and hauled her back. Sera went for them in a flat sprint. Reyik saw the angle and pushed a shallow wave that never touched her. It nudged the soldier's strike a hand wide and gave her the beat she needed. She cut his knee and the river finished him.
The officer's spear scraped Reyik's chest and the old pain flashed. The field surged and the river steamed at his boots. He pulled it tight at once. The warmth faded as he steadied. The water in his head went flat again.
"You are not worth it," Reyik said, almost to himself.
He cut the spear into quiet pieces, caught the man by the gorget, and pushed. Not a blast. One step of pressure that turned the officer as if a giant hand had taken his shoulder. Estaron was already there. His knife went under the rim of the plate and ended the talk.
Downstream Bor fought three at once in the cut. Two more splashed in to help their friends. He turned his hook and used the pull the way a wrestler uses weight. One went under. One crawled to the far bank and ran. The last lost his nerve and his footing together.
"Back line," Estaron called.
Three riders had formed beyond the ford to break the villagers who were trying to scatter into the brush. Reyik set his field ahead of them as a thin curtain. They hit it at a gallop and felt the world slow for a heartbeat. Sera's spear took the lead rider from the saddle. Bor rose out of the water and tore another down by the ankle. The third turned and fled without pride.
The fight ended the way river fights end. With breath coming hard. With bodies drifting. With chickweed and foam clinging to the shallows like a foul garland.
There were names to count and could not count. A farmer with a broken neck where a horse had fallen. A child taken by the brown water. A young man who bled from the thigh because no one had a hand free in time. People who lived. People who did not.
Reyik stood very still until the last tremor left his hands. Sera came out of the water with a cut above her ear and smiled the smile soldiers use when they will not cry until they find a wall.
He stepped close to check the gash. He said the true thing that arrived first.
"You make fear look small."
Sera snorted once. "You make trouble look polite."
They found ground above the flood line and raised a cairn for those they could reach. The river did not return everyone it had taken. Reyik set a small stone for the child and rested his palm on it. The field wanted to rise. He refused it. This power was his alone. It never crossed another person's skin.
Bor limped up the bank with blood in the river lines around his knees. He grinned like a man who knew he would be sore and liked proof he had earned it.
"You are still too neat," he told Reyik.
"I am trying to keep the bowls still," Reyik said.
"Break a bowl and breathe after," Bor said. "We need you alive, not tidy."
Estaron watched the trees while they spoke. A hawk circled over the far bank. It was not a hawk. It was a conjured spirit of one. Someone was watching the ford and taking notes.
"We go," he said. "The Den by night. No trail."
They returned with that kind of silence that still has breath in it. At the gate the crew counted those who came back and those who did not. Sera wrote names on the board because wood takes ink when mouths cannot.
Bor slept upright on a stool and called it good. Reyik washed waterweed from his boots and set the black blade across his knees. Estaron climbed the wall and watched the city lights hold fast, nails in the distance.
It was a win. It tasted like loss all the same.