The battlefield stank of ash, blood, and fear. When dawn finally broke through the smoke, it revealed a hollow silence that felt heavier than battle itself. The fighting was over, but grief had only just begun.
The freedmen gathered first around the captives who had fallen during the raid. Children searched among the dead for parents, wives for husbands, brothers for brothers. Some found them alive and clung to them with tears; others collapsed at the sight of still faces. A boy no older than ten hugged his father's old cloak, sobbing into the scorched fabric as if warmth still lingered there. Rowan had to look away.
Ashwyn gave the order for a great pyre. Timber was stripped from wagons, planks pried loose, branches cut and stacked high. The freedmen laid their dead carefully upon the wood, whispering names as though to keep them alive one moment longer. Trinkets followed — a doll with one arm missing, a woven bracelet, a broken knife placed on a chest. Each offering was a story sealed in ash. Songs were sang in the old traditions calling for the spirits to welcome one of their own.
When the fire caught, it roared like an angry beast. Smoke spiraled to the gray sky, and the freedmen bowed their heads. Brenner stood stiff, fists clenched at his sides. Nyx, usually unreadable, lingered in the edge of the flame's glow, eyes sharp as though memorizing every flicker. Rowan closed his eyes, but the smell of burning cloth and hair clung too close. It was a victory, yes, but one paid for in lives.
The raiders' bodies received no such honor. A pit was dug on the far side of the field, wide and ugly, where their corpses were dragged and thrown in heaps. Freedmen spat curses, some even striking the dead as they were rolled into the hole. "Rot in the dirt," one woman hissed, and no one stopped her. By the time the pit was covered, the earth bulged like a scar.
But grief was not enough. The freedmen turned on the living captives locked in their cages. Their voices rose in fury, calling for justice, for blood.
"He burned my home!"
"He cut down children!"
"Hang them! Hang them all!"
The noise swelled until Rowan thought it might shatter the morning. The freedmen pressed toward the cages, faces twisted with rage, some holding stones and sticks as if ready to kill where they stood.
Rowan stepped forward, heart pounding. "Enough!" His voice cracked but carried. "There will be no mob justice. We fought to live, not to become what we hate."
Ashwyn raised his staff, his frail figure somehow commanding silence. "Then let there be trial," he said. "One by one, their crimes shall be spoken. One by one, judgment will fall."
The first captive dragged forward was a gaunt man with a scar over his cheek. A widow screamed, pointing at him with shaking hands. "That one! He cut down my husband while he begged for mercy!"
The raider spat blood into the dirt. "He had a spear. He fought me. I fought him back. That's not mercy, that's war."
The freedmen roared for his death, but Ashwyn lifted a trembling hand. "This is not murder," he declared, voice hoarse but steady. "This is battle. If we condemn every man who struck in battle, then we condemn ourselves as well. His crime is no more than ours. He will live."
The widow wailed, collapsing into the arms of those beside her. Some cursed Ashwyn, but Rowan felt a chill of respect. The old warden was right — justice could not mean vengeance alone.
The next case left no doubt. A young girl stepped forward, bruises dark on her arms. "That one," she whispered, pointing at a hulking raider with bloodshot eyes. "He beat my brother until he couldn't walk. He laughed."
The raider sneered, but when questioned, his silence was guilt enough. Ashwyn lowered his gaze. "This is cruelty. Choice, not war. For that, he dies."
A rope was thrown over the bough of a blackened tree. The man kicked and struggled, but when the branch creaked and his body went limp, the freedmen shouted in grim approval.
Another trial followed, then another. Some spared, some condemned. The freedmen argued loudly, sometimes ready to riot when a prisoner was spared. But each decision was made in the open, reason weighed against rage, and slowly the crowd bent to it.
By the end, nine raiders swung from ropes, their shadows long in the rising sun. The rest huddled in their cages, faces pale, eyes wide with fear.
Lyra stepped forward, her expression colder than the steel at her belt. "Do not mistake this for mercy," she said, loud enough for all to hear. "You breathe because we allow it. If any of you try to run, or raise a hand against us, you won't die quick. You'll beg for the rope before we're finished."
Her words sank like stones into the silence. Even the freedmen shivered.
But Rowan was not done. He stepped beside her, lifting his voice again. "And hear this — if any of you," he looked hard at the freedmen now, "take vengeance into your own hands, if you harm these prisoners outside the trial, your fate will be the same. We need laws. Or we are no better than the ones we fought today."
Ashwyn nodded, frail but resolute. "We are not savages. Without order, without justice, all this was for nothing."
The freedmen murmured, some sullen, some relieved. The line had been drawn.
The day closed heavy with ash and silence. Families sat together among the wagons, holding one another. Rowan sat apart, watching the cages and the ropes still swaying from the tree. Victory had come, but at a cost that felt almost too high.
Tomorrow they would march again. Tomorrow they would seek a new home. But tonight, they had forged something more dangerous than any weapon — a law, and the will to follow it.