The night smelled of iron and smoke.
At first Axel dreamed it. Charcoal wind blowing through barley, his mother calling his name from a doorway that would not open. Then the shrieks cut through the dark, sharp enough to shear the dream in half. He woke with his heart already racing and the world already wrong.
The rafters above him glowed a dull orange. Straw hissed as embers crawled through the thatch like insects. Heat pressed down. The mat beneath his back had grown warm enough to sweat through his shirt.
He rolled to his feet and nearly slipped on the water jar he'd set by the bed. It toppled and burst across the floorboards. The sound, too loud in the small room, snapped him toward the door.
Outside, His home was burning.
Flames licked from roof to roof in quick, greedy tongues. Smoke slid across the ground before climbing for the sky, thick and low, turning the yard into a shifting maze. The fields beyond the house flickered with firelight, and figures moved between the homes like a line of shadows marching uphill.
Steel flashed. Men shouted. Someone begged. Somewhere a horse screamed.
"Lyra!" Axel's voice rasped raw in his throat. He turned toward his sister's room. Empty. The blanket thrown aside. He sprinted down the hall and burst into the main room.
The shrine candles were already guttering in the heat. Hollowfang was missing from the small stone altar, the black cloth still there as if someone had grabbed the weapon and ran off. Kaelen wasn't there. The hearth was empty. The front door leaned wide, its latch broken.
Axel grabbed the cloth and ran outside into the courtyard.
The white hound, Casper, shot past him, fur like a streak of moonlight cutting through the smoke, teeth bared. "Casper no!"
The yard was chaos. A neighbor stumbled through the gate with a spear sprouting from his shoulder. Behind him came a soldier in black-iron armor, visor featureless, eyes hidden. The soldier did not speak. He pulled the spear free and set his boot on the dying man's chest to keep him from crawling.
Three more soldiers followed the first, stepping with a discipline that looked almost lazy. Their armor drank the light; soot clung to the seams. They were not local watchmen or drunk levy. They were trained. Precise. Cohort men.
Axel froze at the threshold. He saw more of them beyond the fence, a column moving along the lane. Banners bobbed at their rear, black cloth on long poles, edges stitched with dull thread. For an instant the smoke thinned enough for him to catch the mark: a bar of iron crossed by a narrow ring. The Blacksteel Cohort. People whispered about them the way they whispered about storms. When they stopped, something died.
"Father!" Axel shouted into the smoke. "Mother!"
Casper hit the first soldier like a thrown stone, jaws snapping, a snarl ripping from his chest. The soldier pivoted cleanly, caught the dog mid-leap with a cut meant for a man, and let the hound fall in silence. Axel flinched as if the blade had gone through him.
"Axel!" A voice to his left, hoarse and close.
Kaelen stepped from the smoke with the black cloth torn away. Hollowfang glimmered in both his hands, not shining but drinking the fire around it. He wore no armor. The breath in his chest came hard. Ash had collected in the lines of his face like a second beard.
"Get back!" Kaelen planted a foot on the shrine stones. "Inside! To the rear door!"
"I can fight." Axel's hands tightened on the wrapped scabbard out of instinct. He took one step forward.
"Back." Kaelen didn't look at him again. His eyes tracked the soldiers. "Find your mother. Find Lyra. Out the rear."
The lead soldier raised two fingers without a word. The others fanned to either side, blades low and ready.
Then the yard exploded.
The neighbor's wife came shrieking from between the houses with a rake held like a spear. She drove it into a soldier's greave and it skittered off the iron. Another soldier backhanded her across the jaw with his hilt and sent her to the ground. She spat a tooth, propped herself up on one elbow, and looked at Axel as if to say run. He couldn't move.
The soldiers advanced.
Kaelen met the first with a cut that began simple and ended sudden. Hollowfang curved through the dark with a sound like breath pulled in hard. It bit the seam under the soldier's pauldron and staggered him back two steps. The second soldier rushed, sword high. Kaelen wheeled, caught the blade on Hollowfang's spine, shoved, and slipped free. For a heartbeat Axel thought—hoped—that this would become one of the old stories, the kind where his father stood in a doorway and a dozen men broke against him like waves on stone.
Then a hammer struck.
It came from somewhere behind the smoke. A two-handed maul swung by someone tall enough and strong enough to carry it as if it were a child's toy. It smashed into Kaelen's shoulder with a wet crack that made Axel's lungs seize, as if the blow had struck him too. Kaelen went to one knee. Hollowfang dipped and almost touched the ground.
"Kaelen!" A new voice split the noise. Elandra.
She burst from the lean-to with a kitchen knife, hair unbound and eyes blazing. She didn't stop to scream or plead. She drove the knife into the back of the soldier nearest her, once, twice, three times, a quick rhythm like cutting bread. He arched, grunted, and turned with a snarl. Another soldier caught Elandra around the waist and wrenched her away. She kicked him in the shin and spat in his visor. He flinched, just enough for her to rake his wrist with the knife and free herself anew.
"Mother!" Axel started forward.
A gauntlet came up under Elandra's ribs and forced the air from her with a sound like a bell struck wrong. Another hand caught her arm. Three helms closed around her. Steel moved in quick, ugly lines.
The sound that followed was small. A surprised breath. A soft "oh." Then nothing.
Axel forgot the sword in his hands. The yard narrowed to the width of his mother's body on the ground and the red smear on the stones that began near her and went nowhere.
He might have stood there until someone put a blade through him. Maybe that would have been better. But Kaelen surged up with his left arm limp and his right hand still on the hilt. He didn't shout. He didn't look at his wife. He looked at Axel. His mouth moved around words he didn't have breath to say.
Run.
Another soldier charged. Kaelen stepped into him with a cut from the hip that opened the man's thigh and sent him down hard. Then Kaelen turned, lifted Hollowfang to guard, and took the hammer on his forearm rather than his skull. The bone broke. The arm bent. Kaelen stayed on his feet for three breaths longer than he should have and then collapsed onto the shrine stones as if he had been told to lie down.
Axel moved without knowing. He ran to his fathers side and grabbed the blade. Then he kept moving. He found himself inside, stumbling through the back room, dragging the wrapped scabbard because his fingers could not unclench. He thought of Lyra, small feet pattering through the hall that morning, Casper's paws skidding. He thought of Taren's voice from the field. He thought of the mead catching golden light in their cups. He thought of his father's hand steadying the black cloth every night as if steadying a sleeping child.
A soldier's shadow cut across the floorboards from the front.
He veered for the rear door.
The latch stuck. He slammed his shoulder once, twice. On the third strike it opened and the night grabbed him by the throat. Smoke rolled through the kitchen and chased him into the yard like a living thing.
He ran.
He vaulted the fence. He cut through the bean rows toward the pond, feet slipping on wet soil, hands slapping the stakes. He didn't crouch or hide. He moved like a hunted animal moves, straight and fast and blind. He heard the heavy breath of men behind him. He heard boots hit the fence rails. He heard a voice call orders. The words didn't stick.
The path to the pond bent around a stand of elder trees. He took it and nearly went to his knees where the ground turned slick. The pond lay ahead, black, smooth, ringed by reeds. On its far side the path continued into the willows and then into the shallow cut of the creek that led to the woods.
A figure stepped from the reeds to block the path.
Axel threw his weight left and slid. A blade sang through the air where his collarbone had been. He fell, rolled, and clutched the cloth-wrapped sword against his chest to keep it from tearing free.
The soldier moved with professional patience. He did not rush the downed boy. He advanced a step, checked his footing on the slick bank, and lifted his sword for a clean thrust.
"Not the boy," another soldier barked from behind. "Orders were clear. The blade, bury the blade"
The first soldier's point wavered. His visor turned toward the voice. It was all the space Axel needed.
He threw himself sideways into the reeds and slid into the pond. Cold took him and stole his breath as surely as the smoke had. The mud sucked at his boots. He went under to his chest and pushed Hollowfang up above the water with both hands because some animal corner of him believed if the sword sank the world would end faster.
"Left bank!" the soldier shouted. "He's in!"
An arrow hissed past Axel's ear and bit the water with a sound like a hand slapped flat. He ducked by reflex and swallowed pond water. He came up gagging and pulled himself along the reeds, not toward the willows but straight across, where the bank on the far side rose into briar and fieldstone.
He heard a splash. Then another. Armor crashed into the shallows behind him. A hand caught his ankle. He kicked and felt his heel strike iron. The grip loosened. He clawed through water and weeds, the wrapped scabbard knocking against his shoulder, and dragged himself up the far bank with his nails full of black mud.
He did not look back. He ran for the field wall, found the gap where he and Lyra used to chase Casper in spring, and flung himself through it. Stones scraped his ribs. Thorns bit his forearms. He didn't feel them. He kept moving, kept the hedge at his shoulder, found the old cart track by touch and memory, and crashed into the willow cut that would lead him toward the trees.
Shouts rose behind him. Boots pounded the path. One voice, calm and cold, cut through the rest.
"Let him run. Spare the boy. Bring me the blade."
Axel didn't know if they were obeying the voice or playing with him. He ran anyway.
The willow cut narrowed to a tunnel where the branches met overhead. The smoke thinned. Stars showed through. He could hear water talking over stones at the creek. He slid down the bank and dropped into the channel. Cold shocked his calves and steadied his head. He turned upstream, crouched low so the willows hid him, and moved against the flow.
Hollowfang grew heavier with every step. He wanted to throw it into the water and watch it vanish. He wanted to take it back to the shrine and lay it down exactly where it had been. He wanted to set it in his mother's hands and tell her he didn't need it, that he didn't want it, that he never had.
He held it tighter.
The creek bent into the trees and the noise from the village softened. A barn roof collapsed with a roar. Sparks lifted, drifted, died. The shouts grew distant, then thin. Only the orders remained, that calm voice carrying farther than the others.
"Search the outbuildings. Check the ponds. Leave nothing."
Axel climbed from the creek when the banks grew too steep. He found the game trail that led into the thicker wood and followed it by the smell of pine.
He ran until his body gave out and the night closed over him.