Chapter 10 – Guests at the Gate
Dawn found Hawk Keep awake and unsmiling. Smoke bled from the last black heaps on the field. Men worked with quiet hands: patching arrow-slashed shutters, bundling broken shafts, lifting fallen stones back into place. The wind smelled of pitch and wet iron.
Scouts returned in twos and threes. They climbed the stair to the gatehouse and spoke to the guard-captain, who sent them on to the hall. By midmorning, a picture emerged: the Veylans had fallen back to the ridge and dug in. Wagons reached them from the river road—grain, timber, bundles wrapped in oilcloth. A siege line was taking shape.
Lord Arion stood on the east curtain with his captains, counting distances. Below, engineers measured the slope with cords. A squire held a slate while a veteran with a flattened nose scratched figures in chalk.
"They're laying timber yards," the veteran said. "Siege towers by week's end if you let them."
"We will not," Arion said. He turned from the ridge to the road and paused. Banners moved there—two, side by side, rising over a column that kept a careful distance from the Veylan scouts. One was unknown to the wall guard; the other was known to every man who had knelt and sworn.
"The king's hawthorn," a soldier said hoarsely. "And a river stag. Valeor."
"Make the yard clean," Arion said. "Dress the men. Open the gate when they show their seals."
Word ran. Men washed faces in cold water, pulled new tunics over linen that still smelled of smoke, set helms on heads and let them rest there without buckling. The portcullis lifted in a thunder of chain. The bridge groaned down.
They came in at a measured walk. The royal legate rode at the column's center under a hawthorn banner stitched in white on green. He wore black mail and a plain cloak; his escort wore the king's colors and kept spears upright. At his right hand rode Lady Nyra of Valeor beneath a river stag leaping on blue silk. Her riders were fewer but better mounted, their harnesses clean despite the road.
Arion met them in the yard with Lysandra at his side and a ring of captains behind. Servants brought water and feed. Grooms took reins. Nothing hurried. The keep watched with the quiet of a drawn bow.
The legate dismounted. "Sir Malrec, sworn to the crown," he said by way of greeting. His voice was even, his eyes cool. He handed a roll of vellum to the herald, who broke the wax and read the king's writ aloud. It offered recognition of Hawk Keep's defense, promised the crown's concern, and required reports, levy counts, and obedience to royal ordinance in matters of war.
Lady Nyra waited for the last word to fall. Then she stepped forward, pulled off a glove, and bowed. "Nyra Valeor," she said. "My father sends his respect and an offer."
Arion inclined his head to each in turn. "You are welcome, Sir Malrec. Lady Valeor." He led them through the yard and into the hall. Benches filled. Men stood behind them in rows. The banners overhead stirred in the draft.
Servants poured watered wine. Trenchers came out, then went away untouched. Arion remained standing at the long table, hand on the edge of the map as if it were the only steady thing left in the world. Lysandra stood at his right. Aric took no seat. He stayed near a pillar along the wall, where the light slanted across stone.
Sir Malrec set the king's seal on the table and spoke first. "His Majesty bids me see, count, and advise," he said. "Your reports are brave, Lord Arion. Your need is plain. The road is watched by serpents. The ridge is held. Your magazines are finite." He lifted a palm. "The crown can grant grain, arrow-fletch, a company of engineers, and two hundred spears within ten days. In return, we require a royal garrison officer attached to your command, levy counts certified, and hostages from three vassal houses to ensure order."
"Hostages," Darven of Stonebrook said from a bench, the word souring in his mouth. "Pretty name for collars."
Sir Malrec did not rise to the bait. "Guarantees," he said. "The realm cannot send food and iron into chaos."
Lady Nyra folded her hands on the table's edge. "Valeor's offer is simpler," she said. "We send fifty wagons of grain by river and five hundred spears by the lower road. We keep our officers in our own chain. We ask no hostages."
"And your price?" Arion asked.
Nyra met his eyes and did not blink. "Three things. First, river toll exemptions for our barges between here and the ford while this war lasts. Second, a joint right to garrison and repair the ford tower—Hawk men and Valeor men together, under oath to one another. Third, a marriage pact binding our houses within the year."
The hall tightened, air drawn inward. Heads turned toward Aric without meaning to.
Nyra did not follow their eyes. She kept her gaze on Arion. "A daughter to Hawk, a son to Valeor. Names to be settled in council."
The royal legate laid two fingers on the king's seal, as if to remind the table it existed. "The crown does not forbid private compacts," he said. "But the ford is royal stone. Its garrison is a royal prerogative."
"The crown forgot it," Darven said under his breath.
Arion lifted his palm and the grumbling died. "You both came under banners of truce," he said. "You both crossed ground where serpents look for gaps. I will hear both in full."
Sir Malrec nodded. "Then hear this: the crown's aid is certain. Ten days for the first convoy. Twenty-four for the second. We will send a royal engineer to oversee your repairs and a castellan to audit your stores. It is the proper shape of things."
Nyra's mouth curved the smallest degree. "Proper shapes break in storms," she said. "I offer food in days, spears in less than a week, and no castellan counting your grain. In return, we tie our rivers and roofs to yours. No more. No less."
Lysandra reached for the goblet at Arion's elbow and set it aside. "The ford is a knife," she said. "If Valeor holds a hand on its hilt, we bleed less when the river rises."
"And the marriage?" Sir Malrec asked mildly.
Lysandra's jaw moved. "Houses tie knots. It is how walls stand in wind."
No one asked Aric's opinion. No one had to. The arc of glances had already found him; the air around his stillness became an opinion of its own. He remained near the pillar and said nothing.
Arion took the silence and made a decision with it. "We will not give hostages," he said to Sir Malrec. "We will not seat a royal castellan in my hall. We will accept a royal engineer and grain and arrows, and we will count our levies in good faith. That is my answer to the crown."
Sir Malrec inclined his head a fraction. "I will carry it," he said. If the word displeased him, he did not show it.
Arion faced Nyra. "We will discuss river tolls and the ford tower at dusk with my vassals present," he said. "As to marriage pacts, such knots are tied in daylight and with more wine than this. I will not bind children by a word thrown into a hungry morning."
Nyra's fingers tapped once against wood and stilled. "Dusk, then," she said. "Bring your vassals and your objections. I will bring my ledgers and a list of names."
The council broke to meat and bread that no one tasted. Servants carried bowls. Men talked in knots—some around Sir Malrec, some around Lady Nyra, some around the pillar where Aric had stood and from which he had moved only to let a tray pass.
Lysandra joined him in the shade. "They want pieces of us," she said.
"Pieces cost less than the whole," Arion answered from behind her. He had crossed without a sound. "Find Captain Wren. I want a list of men who know the river trails better than their own beds. Valeor barges are one thing; a Veylan skiff is another. We will not let grain become a blade pressed to our throat."
Lysandra saluted and left. Arion looked at his son for the first time since the envoys had entered. No one else was close enough to hear.
"You will stand at dusk," he said. "You will not speak unless asked. They came to see you; do not show them all there is to see."
Aric nodded once.
"Wash," Arion added. "Wear the hawk. Let them look."
He walked away toward a knot of captains waiting with slate and chalk.
Outside, the day lifted into a thin, bright cold. The yard hummed with drills, then quieted as men went to their duties. Aric crossed to the practice ground where a line of youths stood with staves, legs quivering, shoulders hunched. A grizzled trainer looked ready to beat steadiness into them.
Aric took a stave and stepped opposite the nearest boy. "Hold here," he said. He adjusted the boy's hands—one low, one high—and nudged his feet until his weight settled. "Breathe. The blow will either land or not land. Your breath decides if you're here to see the next one."
He tapped the stave against the boy's to set a rhythm. The others watched out of the corners of their eyes, trying not to stare. The trainer folded his arms and said nothing, which was the highest praise he had to give.
A shadow fell over the chalk line. Lady Nyra had crossed the yard without her escort. She watched a few passes, then spoke. "A commander's work," she said. "Not pretty, but it holds walls."
Aric let the youth reset and lowered his stave. "Pretty kills less men," he said.
She studied him openly. "My father hears many things," she said. "One is that you stood most of a night without falling. Another is that you cut a knight to pieces as if you'd spent your childhood in a slaughterhouse. Which should I believe?"
"Believe the wall," Aric said. "It still stands."
Nyra smiled with one corner of her mouth. "You say little and leave it hanging," she said. "Men will fill the silence with the words they want to hear. It is a useful habit."
"Useful habits keep men breathing," Aric said. "Will your wagons breathe fast enough to matter?"
"They're already on the water," she said. "If the ford is held at dusk, you will see barges by dawn tomorrow."
"And your spears?"
"Three days," she said. "If your father signs the tower compact."
Aric returned the stave to the boy and lifted his chin toward the ridge. "The serpents dig," he said. "They will not wait for seals."
"Neither will I," she said, and left him to the line and the trainer's patient scowl.
Dusk thinned the light and thickened the hall. Vassals came at Arion's summons—Darven of Stonebrook, spare as a cudgel; Myrel of Highmere, rings heavy on each finger; three lesser knights who owned more men than acres; a reeve from the mill town with ink stains on his cuffs and a face like winter bark. Sir Malrec took the left bench under the king's seal. Lady Nyra took the right with two of her house stewards and a chest of ledgers.
Arion stood again at the head of the table. "We weigh a ford and a tower," he said. "We weigh wagons and spears. We weigh royal favor and royal hands in our grain."
Sir Malrec slid a paper forward. "The king offers coin to pay your men," he said. "He requests you take a royal garrison officer and grant oversight of the ford to the crown's engineer until the war is settled. He requests three sons of vassal houses to be fostered at court in honor and safety until the siege ends."
"Fostered," Darven said. "We all know the word when it's wrapped in velvet."
Myrel's rings clicked on the table. "Coin spends once," he said. "Grain feeds men now. A tower held by our neighbors is better than a tower measured by a royal tallyman while serpents build ladders."
Nyra opened her chest and turned ledgers so the light found them. "Fifty barges," she said. "Each holds grain for one hundred mouths for five days. We send them in groups of ten with armed boats at bow and stern. We ask toll exemption for the duration of the war. We ask to garrison the ford tower with fifty Valeor men under oath with fifty Hawk men—no more and no less. We put that oath in writing. If either breaks it, the other may hold the tower alone for a year and a day. As to marriage, a compact strengthens the oath. It need not name names tonight."
Sir Malrec watched the room instead of the numbers. He saw where the eyes moved—toward Aric when the word marriage hung, toward Lysandra when spears were counted, back to Arion when the word king cooled the air.
Arion looked to his vassals. "Speak."
Darven scratched his beard. "I'll take bread I can bite over coin I can count," he said. "Let Valeor tie the ford with us. Heavier knots hold when a rope gets wet."
The reeve cleared his throat. "The river runs faster than the road," he said. "If we're to last, we need the mill wheels turning and the bakery ovens hot. Barges feed bakers."
Myrel inclined his head. "And a marriage pact costs no blood if the names on it are chosen with care."
Sir Malrec's mouth barely shifted. "The crown will not oppose a marriage that keeps the ford open and the road under guard," he said. "But we will have an officer here to see that the support we send does not feed Veylan bellies. On that we will not bend."
Arion weighed them all in the drag of a breath. "Very well," he said. "We take the crown's grain and arrows and their engineer. We do not grant a royal castellan. We sign a ford compact with Valeor—fifty and fifty under oath, exemptions on tolls until the war ends. Marriage talks will be set for the next full council when my outlying vassals can ride in."
Nyra nodded once. Sir Malrec inclined his head to the same degree. Quills scratched. Wax warmed. Seals pressed.
Wine went around at last. Men drank because there was no better thing to do.
A door at the rear of the hall opened the breadth of a hand. A servant slid through with a tray balanced on one palm—cheeses, a small tower of sugared plums, a dish of salted nuts. He moved toward the table at a careful angle, eyes down.
The hound that slept beneath the steward's bench woke with a growl. It rose so fast the bench knocked back. The servant flinched. The tray tilted. A single sugared plum dropped and kissed the table, left a wet mark, rolled, and fell to the rushes.
A guard bent for it on reflex. "Leave it," Arion said, too quickly. The word cracked like a whip. The guard froze.
Sir Malrec's eyes had already shifted to the servant's wrists—too clean for kitchen work, too soft. Nyra's steward caught the scent in the air—a bitter almond that did not belong to nuts.
"Seize him," Nyra said.
The servant bolted. Two guards hit him before he reached the door. The tray skittered and spilled, sending plums and nuts scattering across rushes. One plum burst and darkened where it struck.
Men were on their feet. The hound barked until the steward dragged it back by the collar. Sir Malrec's escort pinned the servant to the floor and wrenched his arms behind him.
Arion came around the table. He did not shout. He did not need to. "Who sent you?" he asked.
The man clenched his jaw. Foam gathered in the corner of his mouth. His eyes rolled. He went limp in the guards' hands.
"Tongue-biter," Darven said. "He was never here to talk."
Nyra flicked the edge of a plum with her knife and held the blade to the candle. The sugar blackened; the smoke that lifted was wrong. "He came to measure our guard," she said, "and, if fortune smiled, to make a hole in the line we just tied."
Sir Malrec gestured to his men. "Search the kitchens, the yard, the cellars. Quietly."
Arion stood very still, then nodded once. "Do it," he said. He looked to the hall. "No one eats a thing that did not come in by the gate with the sun on it. No water unless it's drawn in front of the watch."
The council did not resume. There was nothing left to say that would not sound thinner than it had an hour before. Papers were gathered, seals cooled, promises taken up like swords. The envoys withdrew under guard to the guest tower. Vassals left in clumps, speaking low.
In the yard, night climbed over the keep. Torches kindled along the wall, each a small moon looking for ladders. Down on the plain, the Veylans' ridge line pulsed with watchfires, row after row, a second sky hung too low.
Arion and Lysandra stood on the gatehouse and watched the dark begin to move. Drums rolled somewhere out there, dull as a hand on a door.
"The rope holds," Lysandra said. "Even so."
"Even so," Arion answered.
Boots sounded on the stair. Captain Wren emerged with a dozen men behind him—river-runners and huntsmen with bows slung and knives sheathed, a coil of tarred rope over one shoulder.
"Your list," Wren said. "And a thought: if we break their timber yards at the river tonight, their towers will be dreams in daylight."
Arion looked at the line of fires and the black between them. He did not ask who could slip where a serpent watched. He already knew the name he would hear if he did.
"Take twenty," he said. "No banners. Burn what you can and cut what you can't carry. If you're seen, run for the willow cut, not the ford. Don't touch their fires—touch their food."
Wren nodded. "Aye."
He did not look at Aric when he said, "I'll need a man who can break a wedge if we're found."
Arion did. "You will have one," he said, and his voice carried over the yard without being raised. "Aric."
A dozen heads turned and then looked away as if the name were too bright.
"North gate, half of the hour," Arion said. "Leather, not mail. No crest. If you come back, come back quiet."
Aric buckled a plain harness with steady hands. He took a short blade, a hatchet, a coil of line. He did not go to the armory for anything finer. In the yard, Wren's men checked knots and smothered lanterns with oiled cloth.
The north gate opened to a slice of dark and the smell of damp reeds. The party moved through it and became fewer with each step, lost to shadow and frost smoke.
On the ridge, a Veylan horn called a change of watch. The note drifted over water and stone and reached the keep like a memory.
The river ran black and fast, whispering past willows. Downstream, where the bank flattened into a working ground, the Veylans had piled timber and pitched canvas. Men moved there with slow hands and dead voices. Lanterns hung from poles and made islands of yellow in the dark.
Wren's hand rose, fingers spread. The line sank into the reeds. The men lay with faces to the earth and watched the pattern of patrols. A gap opened and closed. Another grew wider and held.
Wren touched Aric's sleeve and pointed: a wagon tipped on its side beneath a tree, its axle cracked—planks stacked beside it in neat bundles, tar pots under canvas, a row of saw-horses. The nearest lamp swung on a hook and creaked.
They slid forward on their bellies, then on their knees, then on their feet. Rope snaked from hand to hand. Tar pots tipped and spilled into dry grass; cloths found sparks. Flame was a flower that everyone in the world recognizes. The first petals opened quietly. Then the wind blew, and the flower became a field.
Shouts went up. Boots hammered. A horn blared, and another answered it. A patrol broke from the line and ran toward the blaze.
Wren's men did not run. They cut. A bundle of planks fell apart under hatchets; ropes parted. Aric caught the first Veylan in the dark where the light had not yet reached and put him into the reeds without a cry. The second saw him and did not have time to finish the shout he started.
Lanterns flared. Figures loomed. A spear thrust, and Aric stepped past it and took the man by the collar and the belt and turned him in a circle and sent him into the fire. The others stopped short of that heat and threw and missed.
"Back!" Wren called, calm as rain. "To the cut!"
They went into the reeds in a file that lost itself as soon as it formed. Behind them, flames climbed and took the lower branches of the trees with them. Tar pots burst like ugly stars. Voices tangled. A whistle touched the night—their whistle—and turned into three short notes in three places that were not where the men had been a breath before.
Crossbow bolts hissed and clicked into trunk and mud. One took a man's sleeve and stitched it to the earth. Aric cut him free with one chop and hauled him by the collar until the reeds were around them again.
They found the willow cut and slid into the channel one by one. Water took their legs and stole their breath in the same instant. They waded bent and silent, heads down, faces to the bank. Dogs barked far behind. A light went along the line at the river yard and danced, looking for something to find and finding smoke.
Wren counted breaths. When he reached the number he wanted, he raised his palm. They came up in a stand of thin trees that clacked like bones when the wind moved. The keep's wall was a black strip on a darker sky.
"Quiet to the stones," Wren said. "No heroics."
They kicked the last mud from their boots against the base of the wall and slid through the north gate when it opened to the width of a man.
On the gatehouse, Arion watched the line of fire at the river yard throw its reflection into the stream like an orange road. Sir Malrec stood beside him, hands behind his back. Lady Nyra was there, too, wrapped in a cloak that carried her house colors even in the dark.
"Wagons burn," Nyra said.
"They do," Arion answered.
"And the men who lit them?" Sir Malrec asked.
Arion did not move. The first of Wren's river-runners came up the stair with water dripping from the hem of his tunic. Then another. Then three more. Wren himself arrived with a cuff torn and his face streaked black. Aric walked in behind him, hatchet at his belt, leather dark with river water and something that was not river water.
No one cheered. The night was not a place for it. The guards stepped aside. Arion looked at his son and then away, back toward the ridge where the serpents' line writhed like a thing the fire had wounded but not killed.
"Sleep in armor," Arion said. "At first light, we count how much of their tomorrow we took tonight."
Below them, on the far bank, the Veylans tried to save what scraps they could. Men ran in lines that broke and formed again. A horn called orders that the wind carried away. By the time the sound reached the keep, it had softened into something like a question.