Chapter 1, Part 2
The words of the scout—whole clans moving together—hung in the air, colder and sharper than the wind. For a long moment, the only sound in the yard was the panicked breathing of the scout's horse. The men of Stone-End stood like statues of frost-rimed stone, their faces a mixture of disbelief and raw, primal fear. This wasn't a threat they could fight; it was an avalanche, a force of nature.
Marcus Aquilius felt the blood drain from his face, a cold tide pulling inward, but his voice, when he spoke, was like iron. He grabbed the nearest soldier by the shoulder, a man whose eyes were wide and staring north as if he could already see the horde.
"You, with me," Marcus commanded, his grip steadying the man. "Get these scouts to the infirmary. Give them wine and what's left of the broth. Varro!"
The centurion's head snapped toward him, his own shock instantly buried under a lifetime of discipline. "Captain!"
"Get the men moving. Double the watch on all walls. Seal the gate and bar it. I want every man not on the wall sharpening a blade, fletching an arrow, or reinforcing a barricade. Move! Now!"
His voice, raw with authority, broke the spell of terror. Varro began bellowing orders, his parade-ground voice echoing off the crumbling walls. Men, grateful for the release of action, scrambled to obey. The yard, once a frozen tableau of despair, became a frantic hive of activity. The gate groaned shut, the heavy wooden bar slamming into place with a sound of finality.
Marcus watched them for a moment, his gaze sweeping over the yard. He saw the fear still there, lurking in the frantic energy, but it was being channeled. For now, it was enough. He turned to the other officers who had gathered. "Tribune Severin, Lucan. My quarters. Now."
The captain's command room, if such a grand name could be given to it, was a leaning timber structure with more holes than walls. A single brazier burned weakly in the center, its smoke gathering in the blackened rafters and doing little to fight the encroaching cold. A crude map of the Northern Marches, inked years ago and smudged with grease and sweat, was spread across a scarred wooden table.
Marcus stood over it, his hands braced on the wood, as the others filed in. Lucan the quartermaster slumped into a chair, his face pale. Tribune Severin, a young, polished officer from a noble family, sent to the frontier not for experience but to keep him out of the capital's intrigues, stood stiffly, his hand resting on the pommel of his ornate sword as if for reassurance. Varro entered last, his scarred face grim.
"Families," Marcus said, his voice low. "The scout said they're moving with families, wagons, herds."
Lucan let out a breath that sounded like a death rattle. "Then it's over. This isn't a raid for plunder. They're coming to settle. That means they won't turn back. They'll dig in, strip the land bare, and throw themselves at these walls until we're all dead. We can't hold against that. Not with what we have."
Severin straightened, his youthful face bristling with indignation. "We are the Emperor's Thirteenth Legion! We are the shield of the north! We hold. It is our duty."
Varro's laugh was a low, humorless growl from deep in his chest. "We're the Emperor's forgotten broom cupboard, Tribune. Two hundred men fit for duty, a wall that leaks like a drunk's bladder, and no stores to last a month. Don't dress it prettier than it is. Your ideals won't stop a thousand axes."
"My ideals are what separate us from the savages at our gate!" Severin snapped back.
"And what separates Governor Servius from them?" Lucan sneered, his voice dripping with venom. "He sits in his warm villa in Drakmoor, hoarding our supplies, while we stand here waiting to die for him. Is that your glorious Empire, Tribune? A viper who sacrifices his own men to settle a grudge?"
"You speak treason, Quartermaster!"
"I speak the truth! And you know it!"
"Enough!" Marcus's voice cut through the argument like a blade. The room fell silent. He hadn't shouted, but the quiet intensity in his tone was more commanding than any roar. He studied the map, his finger tracing the thin, lonely line that marked the road south to Drakmoor.
"Retreat is not an option," he said, his voice calm and measured. "Lucan is right—Servius wants us dead. If we run, he will brand us deserters. He'll hunt us down with his own legions and hang us as cowards who fled our post. He wins. The clans pour through this pass, and he gets to ride in as the savior. No. We do not give him that satisfaction."
He looked up, his eyes, burning with a cold fire, meeting each of theirs in turn.
"We hold. Not for the Emperor, whose throne is too far away to help us. Certainly not for the Governor, who has already condemned us. We hold for the legion. We hold for the eagle standard gathering dust in the barracks. We hold for every man standing on that wall who still believes in the idea of the Empire, even if its leaders have forgotten it."
He leaned forward, his knuckles white as he pressed down on the table. "We will show them what true loyalty is. Every day we keep this horde occupied here is another day for the villages to the south to evacuate, another day for word of Servius's treason to reach a senator who isn't in his pocket. We will die here, yes. I have no illusions about that. But we will die as soldiers of the Valorian Empire, not as pawns in a traitor's game. We will make this victory so costly, so bloody, that Grak Ironjaw will have nothing left but ruins and corpses to offer his chieftains. We will make Servius's treachery known to the gods themselves."
Silence followed his words. It was a heavy, profound silence, filled with the weight of their shared doom. Varro nodded once, a look of grim, unwavering satisfaction on his face. This was a language he understood. Duty unto death. Severin's youthful pride, so easily offended moments before, seemed to stiffen into something harder, a true and tragic purpose. Even Lucan, the eternal cynic, simply sighed, a man accepting his fate.
"Then I'll count the arrows again," Lucan said, his voice quiet. "And the bandages. If we're to die, best we know exactly how few we have of everything." He rose and left the room without another word.
"I'll see to the men," Varro grunted, turning to follow.
Severin remained, his expression conflicted. "Captain… your orders are… honorable."
"Honor is all we have left, Tribune," Marcus replied, his gaze returning to the map. "See that you remember that when the fighting starts."
The next few days dragged by like wounded beasts. A tense, desperate energy settled over the fort as it braced for the inevitable. Patrols were doubled, though they didn't dare venture far, their purpose now to provide a few minutes of warning, not to engage. The men worked tirelessly, their hunger a constant, gnawing ache in their bellies. Repairs were made with whatever could be scavenged: the walls were stuffed with a mixture of straw and mud that would barely stop a well-thrown rock, and shields were patched with scraps of stitched hide. The air was filled with the rhythmic rasp of whetstones on worn steel as men sharpened blades that had been dull for years.
At night, they huddled around smoky, inadequate fires, telling jokes so bitter they circled back to being funny.
"Maybe the clans will see our rations and turn back in pity," Titus quipped one evening, gnawing on a bone that had been boiled three times and still had no meat on it.
"They'll kill us first, then pity our ghosts," another replied, the joke earning a few weak, hacking laughs.
The gambling stakes grew darker. A man wagered his last waterskin, another his dagger. One night, a grizzled veteran named Horatius wagered a small, dented silver locket containing a lock of his wife's hair. The fort fell silent as the dice were thrown. He lost. The man who won it, a young recruit, stared at the pathetic token in his palm for a long moment. Then, without a word, he tossed it into the heart of the fire. A collective breath was held as the silver blackened and the contents vanished with a soft hiss. No one gambled after that.
Marcus kept to his rounds, his presence a constant, silent force on the walls. He listened more than he spoke. He saw the grim resolve setting in the men's eyes. He saw young recruits, like Publius, writing letters home with charcoal on scraps of cloth, knowing full well that no courier would ever carry them south. He did not stop them. A commander who quashed such final rituals lost the little faith his men still clung to.
On the third night after the scouts' return, the watch cried out from the north tower. Marcus climbed the ladder, his heart a cold stone in his chest.
In the distance, faint but undeniable, tiny pinpricks of light dotted the foothills. Campfires. Dozens at first, then hundreds, flickering into existence like a new constellation of malevolent stars that had fallen to earth. The soldiers on the wall stood in utter silence, their faces pale and spectral in the torchlight.
"Gods help us," one whispered into the wind.
Varro, standing beside Marcus, spat over the parapet. "The gods are south, feasting with the governor. It's a long march to get here."
The morning after, Marcus convened his officers again. The hall smelled of damp wool, fear, and stale smoke.
"We send riders south," Severin urged, his voice tight. "To Drakmoor. We must officially report the threat. Servius cannot ignore a direct report of a full-scale invasion! The law would compel him to act."
"He'll use the report as proof of our incompetence and his justification for not wasting resources on a lost cause!" Lucan sneered. "By the time it arrives, we'll be bones bleaching in the sun."
Varro slammed a heavy fist on the table, making the oil lamps jump. "They can and they will ignore us. The Empire has grown fat and blind. We're the bone they'll throw to the wolves while they argue in their marble halls."
"Enough," Marcus cut in. "Varro is right. We can expect no help. But Severin is also right. We will send riders. Two men. They will not ride to beg for aid." He turned to where two of his best scouts stood waiting by the door. "You will ride south. You will avoid Drakmoor entirely and ride for the capital. It is two weeks, maybe more. You will carry this." He handed them a sealed scroll. "It is my official report to the Imperial Senate, detailing the size of the horde and Governor Servius's refusal to send aid. It is treason, and this is the proof."
He looked them in the eye. "The chances you will make it are slim. But if you do, the world will know what happened here. It will not be for nothing. Now take the best horses we have left. Ride, and do not stop for anything."
The scouts saluted, their eyes betraying the knowledge that they were being sent on a suicide mission, but their backs were straight. They were being given a purpose beyond dying on the walls. Hope. And hope, Marcus knew, kept men fighting.
As they left, a new sound reached them from the north. The deep, guttural blast of a war horn. Then another, and another, until the air itself seemed to vibrate with the sound. The final act was beginning.