Rain thinned to a sting. The road lifted from marsh into black heath, and the wind began to smell like a hearth swept out too quickly. Darrik shortened the column, wagons tight, pikes bristling over canvas like a walking palisade.
"Ash weather," a pikeman muttered.
Maren rode to Leorie's side. "Ferry's three miles if the milestones tell truth. We cross before the wind turns, or we camp and pray."
"We do neither," Darrik said. "We make the crossing. No prayers, no songs."
Leorie tasted the air the way smiths taste steel. Heat lived ahead, not burning yet, but breathing. The milestones under their mud-grey paint tremored, as if the road kept its own heartbeat.
"The Line is close," he said.
One more rise and they saw it: a trench gouged across the heath, charred shoulders, a hundred yards in places, narrow as a ditch in others. It ran to the horizon both ways. Sere grass bent toward it, heads nodding.
"The Ash Line," Maren said. "I hate it from here."
A narrow timber bridge stitched one of the thinner places. Its rails were tar-dark and scored to black glass. Beneath, the Line descended into a throat of clinker and fused sand.
"Single file," Darrik ordered. "Shields up. Cinder at the head."
Leorie walked onto the bridge, striker in one hand, the other brushing the rail. Tar had bubbled, set, bubbled again. Heat curled in the wood like a sleeping animal. The wind shifted. The trench exhaled.
"Move," he said, soft but iron.
The first wagon creaked after him. The mule's ears flattened. No one looked down.
From somewhere deep came a sigh like coal waking. Smoke uncoiled. The wind leaned. Ash skated along the rails in whispering sheets. Leorie raised the striker and drew a pane of pressure ahead of the mule, a transparent wedge that split ash and turned sparks.
"Hold tight," he rasped. His throat argued; he ignored it.
Halfway across, a thin note rang—metal touched once and left singing. Not a bell. A fork. The sound came from the heath to their left.
Darrik swore. "Keep moving."
Ash thickened into a sliding wall. Trapped gasses hunted exits. The trench belched. Flame licked up, testing air. Leorie dug his heels and pushed the pane harder. The flames turned, shouldered by pressure, peeled away, burning sideways and finding nothing to keep.
A mule balked and reared. The wagon lurched; one wheel rode the rail, scraped back. Men shouted. The ash-wall swelled, found a gap, poured for the driver's face.
Leorie spoke a short, ugly syllable. Heat gathered to his left hand. He drank, not the fire itself but its breath, pulling it into the shallow lung of the pane and through his chest into the bridge. Metal taste. A flicker. The ash slid past like water. The driver blinked and lived.
"Cinder!" someone yelled behind. "Back of the column!"
The last wagon had stalled. Two prisoners had tangled ropes. A pikeman cut the line and got his wrist caught; he dangled, boots scraping, over the trench's throat. The ash below made soft, greedy sounds.
Leorie gave the pane one more push and left it to hold a heartbeat too long. He spun, ran, and jumped onto the tailboard.
"Give me slack," he said. The pikeman's eyes were white. The rope bit bone.
Leorie pressed the striker to the knotted hemp and whispered. Heat bled into the rope, not flame—warmth enough to swell fibers and ease the knot. The man's boot found rail. Leorie hauled; his shoulder ground; then the pikeman rolled onto planks, groaning, rope smoking but whole.
"Move," Leorie coughed. "All of you."
The ash surged again. Sparks skittered. A lick of flame kissed tar and left a black smudge. Leorie dragged the prisoners by their collars, shoved them onto the bed, and turned to the trench. He drew breath that clawed and set a wide dome over the rear quarter of the bridge, a bell of pressure that made the railing hum.
The fork sounded once more from the heath, higher, almost amused.
"Whoever's toying, I'll break your teeth," Darrik snapped, shoving the last wagon by the spokes.
Leorie held the dome, bled heat, felt his voice scrape to grain. When the final axle found earth, he let the pane go. The dome sagged, then collapsed like a tired tent. The wind took the ash and sailed it down the trench, smearing the horizon with gray.
"Off the bridge," Maren said. "Do not look back."
They did not. The heath smelled like boiled iron. Faces were ghost-pale. The mule shook itself, as if the world had decided to be normal.
"Count," Darrik told Maren.
"Everyone," she said, ticking. She tapped the prisoners' shoulders with chalk and wrote their numbers. "You almost lost your hand," she told the pikeman with the smoked rope. "Pay the healer before the ale."
He attempted a laugh. "Yes, quarter."
Leorie leaned on a wheel and spat soot. His throat felt scrubbed with wire. He drank from the cask until his chest stopped arguing. The world returned: rain in grass, timber cooling, the ordinary itch under his palms. He did not let the aftermath linger. He moved.
Near the bridge's mouth a milestone leaned. Its face was grooved by a tool, cuts forming clipped letters. Leorie touched it and felt a faint echo at the fork's pitch.
"Road's tuned," he said.
"And someone keeps count," Maren said.
"I fight men," Darrik growled. "Show me the man."
In the grass lay a tuning fork, iron-gray, prongs wrapped with cloth to muffle it. Warm. Leorie picked it up.
"A gift?" Maren asked.
"A taunt," Darrik said. "We're seen."
Leorie held the fork to the milestone. The stone thrummed softly, a cat's purr in rock. He took the fork away and the hum faded.
"What does it mean?" Maren asked.
"That the road is an instrument," Leorie said. "And someone out there has very clean hands."
"Vastria," Darrik said. "We ask our questions where walls are thick. Make the ferry before dark. Then we go fast."
Leorie slipped the fork into his belt, under the striker, both metals against his hip like choices. The wind shifted, turning ordinary. The trench sighed, disappointed, as if the show had ended without an encore.
The column moved. Men tried jokes. They were bad, but they were attempts, and attempts counted.
Maren rode beside Leorie and did not look at his throat. "You drank too much heat," she said, gentle as numbers.
"I drank enough," he said.
"You always do," she answered. "Until the bill comes due."
"It's always due," he said, and watched the heath fall behind. The fork at his belt vibrated once, faint as a thought. He pretended not to feel it. Ahead, the river waited, slate and fast; beyond it, Vastria, and the answers that loved to bite and burn.