Axel woke to frost crusting the edge of his cloak and a dull ache in every joint. Morning blurred through the pines as a milky wash of light, the trunks banded with shadow, the ground rimed and hard. He lay still a long while, listening, for soldiers, for hoofbeats, for the scream of steel. Hearing only wind and a woodpecker ticking somewhere out of sight. Hollowfang lay where he had fallen asleep, wrapped in its black cloth, pressed to his chest as if he had been trying to keep it warm.
He pushed himself upright, slow and stiff. The clearing where he had collapsed in the night looked smaller by day, the stumps like ruined teeth, the old roots clawing out of the frost. He flexed his fingers. They burned and stung, cracked at the knuckles. When he coughed, the sound came up raw. Hunger gnawed from inside and made his hands shake.
He looked down at the sword. The cloth was muddy and torn. He could see a sliver of scabbard where the fabric had split. The sight of it filled him with something that wasn't quite rage and wasn't quite fear.
"Why did they die for you?" His voice rasped, thin in the cold. "Why me?"
The trees had no answer. The blade lay heavy and dumb in his lap.
He waited for bitterness to pass and found that it did not; it only settled deeper, cold as the frost. He tied the cloth tighter, slung the sword, and stood. North. He didn't trust the sun this deep in the wood, not with the canopy slanting light at angles, so he found the faint cut of the creek and chose the bank where ice had formed on the downstream side. He followed that flow, and when it bent, he checked the moss on the trunks and adjusted, keeping the same bearing he had kept since he fled: north through the pines, north through his own emptiness.
By midmorning the frost melted to slick mud. He skidded twice and caught himself with his palms, grinding grit into the broken skin. He licked the blood without thinking and tasted iron. When thirst clawed, he broke a film of ice at the creek and slurped the water cold enough to ache his teeth. It didn't matter. The ache meant he was still here.
He walked until hunger blurred the edges of things. The trees seemed to lean, the ground to tilt. He stooped, yanked up a mat of wintergreen, chewed the bitter leaves, swallowed, and felt his stomach lurch. He breathed slow until it settled and kept moving. Snares would take time he didn't have, and the last of his twine was stiff with cold. He would set them at dusk, if he reached dusk.
By noon he found a place where deer had scuffed the leaf litter into a long, narrow path. He crouched and set two loops anyway, clumsy with numb hands, one on either side of a gap between saplings. He knew they would likely sit empty. Still, the act of tying knots steadied him.
When he rose, the sky had thinned to a hard, bright blue between the branches. He saw smoke then, thin, white, drifting at a slant far off, no color of burning, no black churn of ruin. Hearth smoke. More than one thread of it. For a moment he stood frozen, breath shallow, as memory wrenched up from somewhere low: the shape of flames against a house wall, the line of men, the bar of iron stitched on a black banner. His knees went loose. He swallowed until his throat worked again.
Not a raid, he told himself. Not iron men. Just roofs, and pots, and old women scolding boys for running. He wanted it to be true so fiercely it felt like shame.
He almost turned away. Hiding in the trees had kept him alive this long, and the thought of walking into people; faces, questions, eyes dropping to the sword at his hip. It made his skin crawl. But hunger spoke louder than fear, and the smoke meant food and fire and a road. A road meant north faster than the blind crawl through pines.
He cut along the creek until the smoke strings thickened. The land lifted, the trees thinned, and the creek widened to a cold, shallow braid running over flat stones. Beyond, a palisade shouldered up from the scrub: logs planted close, their tops sharpened. A gate stood where a cart track met the wall, two men in patched cloaks on either side with spears they held more like walking sticks than weapons. One stamped his feet and blew on his fingers.
Axel pulled his hood forward, tucked the wrapped sword under his cloak as best he could, and walked down out of the trees into the open.
"Ho there," one guard said. He sounded tired more than wary. His beard was shot with grey, and his nose had broken long ago and healed wrong. "Where from?"
Axel opened his mouth and found that the word stuck. "South," he managed. "A ways."
"Name?"
He hesitated. The last name tasted cursed in his mouth. "Axel."
"Axel what?"
He pressed his lips together. "Just Axel."
The guard's eyes flicked to the shape under the cloak. "You're lopsided," he said without malice. "Whatever you've got on that hip, keep it covered. We've got farmers here who'll sell their souls for a knife, and sharp eyes for stolen things. You look like a kicked dog. That won't help you."
Axel nodded once.
The man jerked his chin toward the gate. "Go on. If you start trouble, we pitch you out by your ears. If you drop from hunger first, fall somewhere that won't spook the horses."
Axel stepped through into noise. It wasn't much by the measure of a true city—maybe thirty houses and twice that in sheds, a square where wagons stood with their oxen steaming, a smithy ringing hollow blows, a line of poles with dried fish hanging from their hooks. It felt like too much. The voices crowded him. He flinched when a child ran past, finger pointing, laughter trailing like birds.
He kept to the edge of the track. The smell of baking hit him like a blow: coarse bread, yeasty and dark. His stomach cramped so hard he had to brace a hand on a post and breathe until the pain eased.
"Look at the sword," someone murmured behind him.
"Not a sword," another said. "A stick. He's wrapped a stick to look fierce."
"Fierce? He's made of bones."
He moved faster. He didn't look up. He found the square by following the press of carts and the thicker fold of voices. Traders had staked out places with blankets and boxes, goods spread in poor strips: iron nails and wool socks, jars of pickled cabbage, coils of rope stiff with cold, a battered kettle with a dent that gave it a permanent lean. At the far side a man with a red face ladled stew from a cauldron into wooden bowls for those with coin. Axel stood smelling it until he had to step back before his knees went out.
"Hold," said a voice to his right. Not harsh. Not like the Cohort's officers. A simple word, spoken as you might say careful to someone carrying a sloshing pail.
Axel turned. The man had the look of a working traveler: broad in the shoulders from years of lifting, beard trimmed close, hair tied back to keep it out of the wind. His clothes were good wool but scuffed at the cuffs and elbows. Over his chest hung a small oaken disk, carved with the simplest of marks; Two lines crossing to make a narrow star.
"You look ready to fall," the man said. "Sit."
Axel didn't move.
The man tipped his head toward an upturned crate beside his cart. Sacks were piled under a canvas, tied off neat. A brown mule cropped hay from a net and blinked as if bored with the world.
"You've got a sword under there," the man said calmly, eyes on Axel's cloak. "Or a bundle of iron rods. Either way, you won't bring it to your mouth and chew it. Sit."
Axel's legs folded before his pride could catch up. He sat on the crate, hands clenched on his knees.
The man reached into his cart, pulled out a hard heel of bread and a wedge of cheese wrapped in cloth. He tore the bread, set half in Axel's hand, and broke off a piece of cheese the size of a thumb.
Axel stared at it stupidly.
"Eat," the man said. "We can talk while you chew or after. I don't mind silence."
Axel bit. The bread was rough enough to scrape his gums. The cheese was dry and sharp. He didn't care. He chewed until his jaw ached and swallowed a lump that felt like a stone sliding down.
The man poured water from a skin into a tin cup and handed it over. Axel drank in small swallows because if he drank as he wanted, he would choke. He set the cup down with hands he tried to keep from shaking.
"Name's Baroth," the man said. "Of No middle where, from all over, going north. Yours?"
"Axel."
"Axel from where?"
He stared down at the bread rind. "South," he said.
"Fair," Baroth said mildly. "I'm a merchant. That means I sell. It also means I listen. I'm going to tell you what I think I hear in your bones. You can stand and walk away after if I'm wrong. You can stand and walk away even if I'm right."
Axel said nothing.
"You've walked too long alone," Baroth said. "Hungry. Scared. You've got a fine thing under that cloak, and you don't want anyone to see it, which means you know it will bring trouble or you believe it will. You're headed north because men like you go north when the world ruins itself around them. Maybe you think the north will fix what the south broke. Maybe you just want to keep moving until your feet stop. Either way you won't make it three days on the frontier road without a pot and a blanket and someone to watch while you sleep."
Axel lifted his eyes. Baroth's were steady and tired and not unkind.
"I'm not a priest," Baroth said, tapping the little wooden disk. "I sell iron, salt, and rope. This," he touched the token, "is a reminder to myself to feed a hungry man if I can. That's all. No sermons. No questions I don't need answers to. You hungry still?"
Axel nodded. Baroth passed him the other half of the bread and a thicker slice of cheese. He watched Axel eat, not like a hawk, not like a man counting coin, but the way a farmer watches a sick animal and takes quiet note of whether it chews or spits.
When the food was gone, warmth crept into Axel's limbs so quickly it hurt. The square tilted and steadied. He realized his vision had been rimmed with black for hours. He set the cup down carefully and pulled the cloak tighter, keeping the sword hid.
"Where are you going?" Axel asked, voice low.
"North border," Baroth said. "Then to the straits, gods willing and the roads not drifted shut. If the crossings are open, over to the continent they call magic. I buy salt here and sell it there. I buy dyed wool there and sell it back here. There's talk the Cradle glows bright this year. When the Cradle glows bright, men get stupid. Stupid men buy rope and salt and iron and forget to argue the price."
"The Cradle is real." The words left Axel before he could choose them.
Baroth's mouth ticked. "Real enough for men to die walking toward it. Real enough to take what a man brings and give back something else, or nothing, or an empty stare."
Axel looked away. "I need to go there."
Baroth didn't blink. "Likely half the fools passing through this town say the same in softer words. You planning to join a caravan?"
"I have no coin."
"Ah." Baroth rubbed his hands together. The knuckles were scarred white. "Then you'll freeze, or starve, or go to sleep on a road and wake up with your boots gone. Unless you walk with someone who has coin, or blankets, or two more spoons than mouths."
Axel's fingers found the edge of the cloth binding Hollowfang and pinched it until the nail beds whitened. "I can work."
"Can you drive a mule, mend a strap, lift a sack, stay awake when it's your watch, and not steal from my cart?" Baroth asked it the way men ask if you take your stew with salt: a simple measure, not a trap.
"Yes."
"Can you keep that blade under your cloak and your pride under your tongue if a man jests about how thin you are or how poor?" Baroth's brows rose a hair.
Axel's jaw worked. "Yes."
Baroth nodded once. "Then you can walk with me. I'll not pay you coin, but I'll not charge you for bread or a space by the fire. If trouble comes, you take your share like a man—carry, not run. If a thief cuts my mule traces, you chase him until your lungs burn. If we meet soldiers who ask too many questions, you say as little as I do. And you don't show that sword unless your life is worth less than keeping it hidden."
Axel's chest tightened. He hadn't realized until that moment that he had been bracing for a no, for the world to turn him away again and again until he fell down somewhere quiet to rot. He set his hand on the crate so the relief wouldn't show in a sway.
"Why?" he asked.
"Because the gods say feed the hungry," Baroth said evenly. "Because a boy alone on the northern road turns to a body in a ditch fast and I've seen enough of those. Because I have a son who didn't come back from a summer on the border, and sometimes I think if someone had put bread in his hand and said 'walk with me,' he might have. Because I'm not fond of wolves and you'd draw them." The last he said with the faintest smile, as if to turn his own throat-sore words aside.
Axel swallowed. The token on Baroth's chest was plain. He felt the urge to say something cruel about gods and their silence. He pressed his teeth together until the words ground themselves dull and did not come.
"When do you leave?" he asked.
"Dawn," Baroth said. "I've two other carts tied in; Gerta with wool bolts and Jorin with copper pans. They're good enough folk, and they shout when they're afraid instead of going quiet, which I like on the road. We travel light and quick. If you're late, we go without you."
"I'll be there," Axel said.
Baroth looked him over once more, gauging whether the words would hold. He seemed to find enough in them to nod. "There's a hostel on the east side," he said. "It's three walls and a rude fire, but the roof doesn't leak if the wind comes from right. The keeper will let you sleep by the hearth if you sweep in the morning. If he turns you out for the stink, come sleep under my cart. I'll pretend I didn't see you."
"I won't—" Axel began, and stopped, because he had almost said I won't be trouble and men who say such things always are. "Thank you."
"Eat again before you sleep," Baroth said, already turning to check the lashings on his sacks. "Body that's been starving breaks when it's warm. Little at a time, then more. If you vomit, sip water and wait."
Axel stood. His knees didn't fold. That felt like a small miracle. He went to the stew pot and traded the last good thing he had, the leather thong from his brother's wrist, plaited and worn, for a bowl and a heel of bread. He held the thong in his fingers a time too long before setting it on the board. The stew was thin and salted hard, but it had meat in it that wasn't a scrap burned on a stick, and carrots soft enough to fall apart.
He ate with the bowl close to his mouth, careful to pace himself as Baroth had said. When he was done he stood by the square's edge and watched people not die. A woman argued over the price of onions. A boy carried a basket of nails, face creased with concentration. A dog limped with a rag tied around its foot and sniffed all the places the dog before had sniffed. The commonness of it made his chest ache worse than hunger had.
He found the hostel by the smell of stew and smoke and damp wool. The keeper was a sharp-eyed woman with a scarf tied over her hair. She looked Axel up and down as he stepped inside and said, "You sweep at first light and you don't snore. If you bleed on my floor I make you scrub it yourself."
"I can sweep," Axel said.
"Good," she said, and shoved a broom into his hands. "Start now and we'll both feel more honest."
He swept. The work set a pattern to the noise in his head. He watched the room, learned where men set their boots and where they didn't, where hands went when laughter turned rough. The hearth burned low and steady. He slept that night with his back to the wall, cloak around him, Hollowfang under the blanket pressed long along his spine. Twice he woke from a dream of fire to the sound of a mule braying somewhere outside and each time he touched the sword and his breath settled, not because it gave comfort but because it gave him the truth of weight.
Dawn came thin and grey. He swept again, hands stiff, and the keeper nodded once as if he had passed some silent measure. He ate a bowl of porridge ladled with a stingy spoon of honey, thanked the keeper, and stepped into a morning that smelled of hoarfrost and horse.
Baroth already had his cart at the gate. The mule flicked its ears. Gerta was a square-shouldered woman with hair cut to her jaw and a wool cap pulled low, her cart stacked with bolts and covered in oiled cloth. Jorin was narrow and sharp, nose like a hooked beak, his cart hung with copper pans that chimed when the wind found them.
"You showed," Jorin said, as if surprised.
"Boys who don't show on time get left," Gerta said. "Best lesson for a boy."
Baroth glanced at Axel's bundle. "Keep it under," he said softly. "Road's clean enough near the town. It goes bad three miles out."
Axel nodded. He fell in at the back, where a man could swing if he had to, and followed as Baroth clicked to the mule and set them moving. The guards at the gate lifted a hand. One yawned so wide his jaw popped. The palisade fell behind. The road unspooled, two ruts with frost hard in them, bordered by scrub and the ghosts of summer weeds.
They walked. Baroth hummed sometimes under his breath, a tune with no beginning and no end. Gerta counted her steps in tens and spat every hundred. Jorin muttered prices to himself like prayers. Axel kept his eyes on the places where the scrub thickened into cover, on the stands of trees, on the rises where a man could lie and watch a road with an arrow nocked.
By midmorning the sky brightened to a pale, clean blue. They passed a shepherd and three sheep chewing at the stubble, a man carrying a bundle of sticks, a woman with two children and a basket of turnips. No iron helms. No banners. No silent men. The farther they walked without sighting soldiers, the less Axel's shoulders crept toward his ears.
"Tell me when you need to piss," Baroth said at one point, entirely practical. "I don't want you wandering off and getting turned around because you stared at a pinecone too long. Men die that way more than wolves take them."
"I'll say," Axel muttered. He didn't know whether to be grateful or insulted and found he didn't have energy for either, only for placing one foot in front of the other.
At midday they stopped by a tangle of alder where the road bent. Baroth shared bread and a thin smear of lard. Gerta produced an apple from somewhere and split it four ways with a knife as nicked as a shark's tooth. Jorin filled a kettle from a ditch that ran clearer than it looked and boiled water for tea bitter enough to pull the tongue tight.
"Why north for you?" Gerta asked Axel without looking up from her bread.
"Work," Axel said.
She grunted. "There is always work in the north. Snow makes men stupid. They pay well for strong backs because everything weighs more when it's wet." She chewed, swallowed, pointed her knife toward the wrapped length at Axel's side. "Keep that hid. Thieves see a parcel shaped like a sword, they think sword. If they see a sword, they think blood and stories and take it whether it's worth a damn or not."
Baroth sipped his tea. "He knows."
They walked until the light thinned and the road went soft underfoot. A chill came down that smelled of distant marsh. Baroth looked up, gauged the sky the way a farmer gauges rain, and said, "We camp near the old milestone. Good sightlines, ditch on one side, road on the other. Axel, first watch with me. Jorin second. Gerta third. If I don't wake you, you don't wake me."
"Fine," Gerta said. Jorin rolled his eyes as if he had not slept well in his life and never intended to start.
They found the milestone where Baroth said: a squat block of stone leaning like a drunk in the ditch, its chiseled numbers worn to shallow ghosts. They dragged the carts off the ruts and into the hard grass, set the mule picket, and gathered brush. Baroth showed Axel how to bank a small fire so it threw heat without throwing sparks. They ate porridge and salt pork shaved thin and drank water warmed to keep the cold out of their teeth.
Night fell as if the sky had been pulled down by a rope. The road went to a dark line, the ditch to a darker one. Sound traveled farther. A fox barked far off. An owl questioned the hedgerow and gave up on answers. The fire sighed.
Baroth set his blanket and propped himself on his elbow. Axel sat with the wrapped sword across his knees and watched the road, counting breaths. The count steadied him. Every hundred, he looked left and right and back, the way Taren had taught him when they had played at sentry in the yard. He swallowed and felt the memory like a stone settling.
"You keep a quiet watch," Baroth said softly after a time.
"I don't know how to keep a loud one," Axel said.
"Some think talking keeps fear off. It only gives it more places to sit." Baroth shifted, the blanket whispering. "You're not a thief and not a liar and not a fool. Good enough for the road."
Axel didn't know what to do with the words. He held them like coals near his hands and took what heat he could.
"Sleep when Jorin wakes," Baroth said, and rolled onto his back, face turned toward the dark.
The hours stretched. When Jorin tapped his shoulder, Axel lay down with his cloak over his head and the sword along his spine and dreamed of nothing for the first time in weeks. No fire. No steel. Only a long road, and feet that did not tire, and a sky that stayed the same color from horizon to horizon.
Dawn found them already walking. Frost smoked from the grass. The mule's breath steamed. The ruts sang when the cart wheels found the right rhythm. Axel's shoulders eased into the work of the day because the body learns fast what the mind resists.
By the time the sun stood thin and high, the land began to open. Fewer trees, wider sky, the suggestion of a distant ridge like a bruise along the horizon. Baroth lifted his chin at it.
"Border," he said. "Two days if the road holds. Three if it goes to paste. If the straits aren't blown shut, we'll see masts by week's end. If they are, we'll sit and curse and drink weak beer until we stop caring. Either way, it's north."
Axel looked at the ridge until his eyes watered. Somewhere beyond it stood a sea that led to a continent strangers called magic with the reverence of fools and the dread of men who had seen exactly how it broke them. Somewhere beyond it the Cradle lay like a wound in the world. He did not know what he would become when he found it. He only knew that walking was the same as breathing now. If he stopped, he would fall asleep and never wake.
He adjusted the weight of the sword under his cloak so it pressed against his ribs instead of his hip. The pressure hurt. It also told him he was here, with a road in front of him and company at his side and a horizon that did not turn red. He kept walking.