The pause before the next charge felt wrong.
Too quiet.
Not truly quiet—men still shouted, horses screamed, a roof crackled somewhere as bucket lines fought the fire—but the drum had stopped, just for a breath. The tremor in the ground eased.
It felt like the world was sucking in air.
"Move while we've got it!" Marsh barked. "You heard me—brace that right flank! Cart there, not here, unless you fancy building 'em a ramp!"
Villagers and soldiers swarmed the field gate like ants around a wound.
They dragged another wagon up against the doors, wheels grinding. A pair of lads rolled a half-broken millstone under the axle. Someone hauled a wardrobe—doors still on—and slammed it sideways into a gap in the brace. Grain sacks thumped down, stacked as if they could soak up hooves.
"Get that beam higher!" Osric snapped, voice flat and sharp. "Tom, on the end, not the middle—when it hits, you'll be chewing it if you don't duck."
"Aye, ser!"
William stepped back to see it as a whole.
The gate was no longer just wood and iron. It was carts, doors, a plow wedged sideways, a millstone, half the village's life rammed into place. In front of it, shields and spears sat in a tight crescent, the last skin between Ashford and the riders.
"Lord William!" Halden shouted down from the parapet, voice like gravel. "Gate's as ugly as it'll get. You've done your part down here. Get your noble bones on the wall and call the rain."
Jory, beside him, lifted a hand with his bow. He looked far too pale under smoke smears, but his fingers were steady.
"Aye, my lord," one of the older men below puffed, wiping sweat with a filthy sleeve. "You're better off up there. We break our backs, you keep the big picture."
"Right," a woman added, shoulder jammed into the wagon's wheel. "You've given us a chance. Let us keep it. Someone's got to stand where the Barons listen."
A couple of the villagers gave him lopsided grins—bragging already.
"She'll hold, my lord," Rowan said, patting the beam like a horse's flank. "You see this? Not even a Tsar ram's knocking this down."
"Unless it does," the braided woman said dryly. "Then you can eat it after."
A few laughs sparked, thin but real.
It helped.
Marsh saw the war in William's face and snorted. "You heard 'em. Go be tall and important. You're worth more calling volleys than getting turned into jam on the front board."
Osric settled into the center of the shield line, long sword slung across his back, spear planted. "Commanders belong where they can see," he said. "Let old dogs hold the teeth of the gate."
William's fingers tightened around his spear.
He pictured the wall—higher view, cleaner lines. The place he was supposed to be.
Then he pictured Osric, Marsh, Ern with his gnarled hands, the braided woman, all of them standing in the mud in front of a gate held together by stubbornness and junk.
"Once the first clash hits," he said, voice steady, "you fall back in order. No turning and running. Shield to shield, step by step. When you're through the posts, we slam this damn thing in their faces."
"That we can do," Marsh said. "You heard him! No stampede. If you trample me, I'll come back and haunt you.—"
The drum rolled again.
Doom. Doom. Doom.
Heavier now. No teasing build-up. Just a straight line of intent.
Roderic was done probing.
Halden's shout cut down from above. "Riders sighted! Swinging left—straight for the gate! Bows ready! Wait for my word!"
"Of course they are," Osric muttered. "Give a fool one door and he'll bash his head on it till something gives."
Outside, hooves hit full gallop. William felt the vibration through his boots.
"Back behind the wall, Lord William," Ern said quietly at his elbow. "We swore to this. You're here because you're kind, not because you ought to be."
The braided woman nodded. "You keep your head where it can see. We'll keep ours low where they belong."
They meant it. That somehow made it worse.
William took two steps back, toward the inner yard. One eye stayed on the line.
Go up, that drilled-in voice said. Be the calm. Be the symbol.
Another voice, the one that had dragged him out of bed into frost every morning since he was ten, said something different:
If this line breaks, it doesn't matter what you see.
"Marsh!" he called. "On my signal, begin the step back. Not before."
Marsh gave him a look that said reckless brat and my lord at once. "Aye."
Osric shifted half a pace, leaving a gap on his left.
William stepped into it.
"Thought you just told them you'd fall back," Osric said.
"I lie sometimes," William answered. "Terrible noble habit."
Osric huffed a breath that might have been a laugh. "Very well. Let's make it a good one."
"Hold!" Marsh yelled. "Let them come to us!"
The riders burst through the smoke.
They came in a wedge this time—Roderic at the point, visor down, cloak snapping. Behind him a ragged V of mounted men, hooves churning the same bloody ground they'd already fed.
"Shields!" Osric roared.
Boards locked. Steel met wood.
The impact was like the sky falling.
The front horses crashed into the locked shields, the dead and dying bodies underfoot turning the whole front into a spinning, shrieking mass. Spearpoints stabbed over and around, finding flesh where they could.
A horse smashed against William's shield, the strap biting into his arm. He felt his teeth rattle.
He braced, shoved, then drove his spear forward through the gap between boards, low and hard. It punched into a horse's chest. Hot blood surged over his knuckles.
The animal screamed and toppled, dragging its rider sideways. Two more behind collided with it, formation bending.
"Step!" Marsh's voice cut through the chaos. "One back! One—two—hold!"
The line shuffled as one, half a pace back. The brace creaked but took the strain.
Again.
"Step! One—two—hold!"
Shield. Shove. Stab. Step.
It became a rhythm, rough and brutal. The cavalry could not get their full weight onto the gate with so many of their own dead clogging the ground.
Somewhere to his left, a man cried out as a spear found him. Another voice snarled and filled the gap.
William's spear found a rider's thigh. The man howled, dropped his lance, clutched the wound. A second spear—someone else's—finished him.
"Third step!" Marsh shouted. "After that we're through the posts! Eyes open, don't trip!"
William's legs burned. His shoulders screamed. His fingers were numb on the shaft.
One more, he thought. One more and then inside.
They started the third step.
The gate posts loomed behind them now, just at their backs.
Something in the mess of bodies outside shifted. A horse, eyes white, found one last crazed burst of strength.
It crashed into the section of line directly in front of William and Osric, hooves scrabbling over corpses.
The shield jolted sideways. The strap tore free from William's forearm with a sharp, painful snap.
His left arm suddenly had nothing in it.
A rider forced his mount over the tangle, spear already lunging for the sudden gap.
Osric snarled and thrust his own spear. It rammed through the rider's chest, burying deep. When the horse lurched away, the shaft tore from his grip, dragging blood and splinters.
The Germanian slumped back in the saddle, dead or near enough.
More riders pressed.
William didn't think.
He stepped into the gap, drove his own spear low, straight into another horse's neck.
The beast screamed, legs folding. It tumbled sideways, smashing into two mounts beside it.
William yanked at his spear.
Pinned.
The weight, the muscle clamping around the head—he could've been trying to pull it out of solid rock.
Leave it, the trained part of him said.
He did.
"Inside!" Marsh shouted. "We're at the posts! Move, move!"
The line started the last, delicate part—filtering backward under the gate arch without turning their backs. Shields up, spears still threatening, boots sliding.
"Go with them," Osric said, drawing his sword now. "I'll stand the last breath."
William's hand went to his own hilt.
He could follow. Crawl under the gate with the rest. Climb the ladder. Try to be what everyone kept saying he should be.
A glance over his shoulder showed him the brace, the narrow gap waiting, villagers' hands gripping the gate posts, ready to slam it.
A glance forward showed a brief thinning in the riders—the charge losing its shape for just a heartbeat. Horses bunching, looking for space. Men shouting over one another.
If we just hit them once more...
"Marsh!" William shouted. "Get them inside!"
"What about—"
"Close it when you must," William lied.
Osric's jaw tightened. "Stubborn whelp."
"Learned from you."
William ran.
He vaulted past the last shield as it edged under the gate, boots slipping on blood-slick mud. With no shield to anchor him, he used his free arm to balance, blade half-drawn.
A rider loomed, horse struggling for footing in the corpse-choked mess. The man's eyes were on the retreating line, not on the idiot sprinting straight at him.
William planted a foot on a fallen helm, pushed off, and leapt.
Time stretched thin.
He rose up alongside the rider, sword clearing the scabbard in a single smooth motion.
Martial Muti surged—not as light, not as aura, but as a perfect snap of body and intent. Every muscle in his legs, back, shoulders aligned around that one cut.
Steel flashed.
The man never finished his shout. William's blade took his head clean, momentum carrying it away in a red arc.
He landed in the saddle as the body slumped, boots jamming into the stirrups like he'd trained for it.
The horse, wild with fear, bolted.
William yanked the reins, forcing it into a circle. Another rider charged in, spear couching.
"Martial Muti," William breathed, voice low. "Headhunter."
He dug his heels in.
The horse lunged forward. At the last heartbeat, William rose in the stirrups and kicked off.
He hit the oncoming rider chest to chest, boots bouncing off armor, sword hacking sideways. Metal and bone gave. The man's helm flew. So did what was inside it.
William's boots found the next saddle.
From the wall, it looked insane.
He was a streak of motion, bouncing from horse to horse, using stirrups, shoulders, even spear shafts as stepping stones. Every time he landed, something died—a rider's neck, a jaw, a wrist; a horse's eye, a knee.
"Saints save us," Jory whispered. "He's—"
"Shut it and shoot," Halden snapped. "You see a spear point lean at him, you knock it down. You see a man aim a bow his way, you take his damn fingers."
Archers answered.
They couldn't loose full volleys—it was too tight—but they picked their shots. An arrow split the shaft of a lance angling for William's ribs. Another buried itself in a rider's shoulder as he tried to swing at William midair.
William hardly registered it.
He's inside the forms now. Not the court duels, but Harrow's ugly drills—mud, sweat, and bruises. All sharpened by survival.
One horse stumbled under him, the ground too slick. William pushed off as it fell, boots hitting another saddle at a sideways angle. He twisted with it, using the motion to spin his cut.
His sword sheared past a throat.
Blood painted the air.
He landed again, this time low on the new horse's neck, nearly hugging it. A rider on his right leaned in, sword screaming down.
William ducked, felt the wind of the blade over his head, and answered with an upward stab that punched into the man's gut and out his back. He tore the blade free and kicked the corpse away, letting it tumble under hooves.
Horses shrieked. Men shouted in two languages. The cavalry wedge around the gate was no longer a wedge—it was a churning knot.
For the first time, the riders' forward momentum broke.
"Now!" Halden roared. "He's cracked the front! Put 'em down!"
Archers along the wall let fly, arrows falling into the disrupted mass. Horses went down. Riders toppled. The whole front of the cavalry shuddered.
On the rise beyond, Felix Blackwell's jaw clenched.
"Captain," his adjutant said quietly at his side, "their noble... that must be the Lockhart boy. He—"
"I can see him," Felix said.
He raised his hand and made a small, sharp gesture.
Down below, Roderic saw it.
His lips thinned.
He kicked his horse free of the mess, drawing his sword. "With me!" he shouted to the few riders nearest him. "Give him space!"
They obeyed, pulling back just enough to clear a ragged circle of muck and bodies.
William rode into that circle, breathing like he'd run all the way from Albion. Blood from a cut along his ribs soaked his tunic. Something warm trickled down his cheek into his eye.
He blinked it away and brought his horse around.
Roderic trotted in from the other side, sword low, helm spattered red.
For a heartbeat, the battle blurred at the edges. It was just them, the churned mud under hooves, the gray sky above, and the wall full of eyes.
"Lockhart," Roderic called in rough Britannian. "Yes?"
William's grip tightened on the leather reins. "William of House Lockhart."
"You fight like a butcher," Roderic said. "Let's see if you can duel."
He didn't wait for an answer.
He spurred his horse forward, steel cutting in a clean diagonal.
William met him.
Their swords clashed with a hard, bright ring. The force of it jarred his entire arm. Roderic was strong—older, heavier, trained to kill from the saddle.
William didn't try to match that weight. He let the blow slide, turning his wrist, letting his horse's side-step bleed the impact.
They passed, hooves spraying mud.
"Turn!" Roderic shouted.
They wheeled, almost at the same time, and came together again.
Roderic's blade hacked at his shoulder, then snapped down toward his thigh. William's Martial Muti kicked in, the old drills sliding into place—hips loose, elbows tight, never chasing the blade, always watching the shoulders.
He got his sword in place, steel ringing on steel. The third strike scraped his pauldron and kissed the flesh beneath. Fire lanced down his shoulder.
He hissed, gritted his teeth, and answered with a cut at Roderic's reins, forcing the captain to jerk his arm back.
"Dirty," Roderic grunted.
"Effective," William shot back.
They circled again, shorter this time, breath pluming in the cold air. Around them, the cavalry ring held, tense. No one wanted to be the fool who broke the captain's duel.
On the wall, Jory's fingers clenched on his bow. "We could—"
"We shoot one, we shoot both," Halden said. "We wait. Take the ones who try to dogpile him after."
Roderic came in again, this time feinting high and snapping his wrist at the last heartbeat, the blade darting for William's ribs.
William saw the shoulder, not the sword.
He twisted, taking the cut along his mail instead of under it. Pain flared in a hot line. His vision spotted white for a moment.
He swung low in answer, his blade skidding along Roderic's cuisse. Not a killing blow, but enough to make the captain grunt.
"You're young," Roderic said through his teeth. "You could've made a fine officer. Shame about your king's timing."
"I'm not here for timing," William said. "I'm here because men like you keep riding over villages."
Roderic bared his teeth. "Then die for one."
He spurred his horse into a sudden sideways leap and came down with his full weight behind a downward strike aimed at William's neck.
William did the only thing that made sense.
He leaned forward until he was nearly hugging his horse's neck, the blade whispering over his scalp. As it passed, he snapped his sword up and back with all the strength his aching arm could muster.
The edge bit into Roderic's side, finding the gap between breastplate and mail.
The captain jerked, eyes going wide.
His horse, thrown off by the sudden extra weight and pain, stumbled.
William seized the moment. He rose in the stirrups and hacked again, this time at the horse's foreleg.
Steel hit bone.
The animal screamed and went down, pitching forward. Roderic tumbled with it, hitting the mud shoulder-first and rolling.
His sword stayed in his hand.
Of course it did.
William's own mount shied away, nearly unseating him. He kicked out of the stirrups and let himself fall, landing hard on his already-bruised shoulder.
Stars burst behind his eyes. For a heartbeat he tasted nothing but metal and dirt.
He rolled.
Roderic's sword stabbed into the ground where his head had just been.
They came up facing each other, both on one knee, then both on their feet, swords between them.
"On foot, then," Roderic said, breathing hard. "No horses. No excuses."
William's lungs burned. His shoulder throbbed. Blood had glued part of his tunic to his side.
"Fine by me," he said.
The first exchange on foot was faster.
Roderic pressed, trained footwork carrying him over the churned ground with surprising surety. His blade sought William's wrist, his elbow, his throat. William parried, stepped, let cuts slide off his edge instead of trying to block them flat.
Steel rang. Mud splashed. Men watched, barely breathing.
A thrust slipped through, grazing William's side. Another nicked his ear. Every touch added heat to the pulse throbbing in his head.
Too clean, the ugly inner voice whispered. Too slow.
He shoved it down.
He waited.
Roderic's pattern, for all its precision, had a rhythm. High, low, feint, thrust. Shoulders, hips, knees. The weight shift had to come from somewhere.
On the fourth pass, William saw it—the slight tightening in the captain's left shoulder a half-second before his sword darted.
He stepped in instead of back.
Roderic's blade jabbed past his ribs, close enough that he felt the wind of it. William caught Roderic's forearm with his left hand, shoving the sword further past, and drove his own blade up under the captain's guard.
It slid between ribs.
Roderic froze.
For a heartbeat, neither of them moved.
William could feel the man's breath on his face, smell iron and leather and something sharp beneath it—anger, regret, he couldn't tell.
Roderic looked down at the steel in his chest. Then up at William.
"You'll cost us time," he said quietly. "That's all."
His knees buckled.
William pulled the sword free on instinct and stepped back as the captain slumped into the mud.
For a moment, the ring of riders around them was utterly still.
Then someone shouted, "Captain down!"
Another barked something in Germanian. Hands went up. Reins jerked. The ring wavered.
On the rise, Felix Blackwell gave a tiny nod.
A horn blew—two long notes, one short.
The cavalry began to peel back.
Not a rout. A retreat. Controlled, but sharp. They wanted away from the gate, away from the boy who'd just killed their captain and danced over their front.
On the wall, Halden let out a breath that was almost a laugh and almost a sob.
"He did it," Jory whispered. "He—"
"Don't relax yet," Halden snapped, but his voice had a different weight now. "Pick off the angry ones. There's always a bastard who wants a last shot."
Down below, William stood alone in the churned ring, chest heaving. His sword felt twice as heavy. Blood ran from half a dozen places. He wasn't sure how he was still upright.
He turned toward the gate.
"Open!" Marsh's voice bellowed from inside, muffled by wood. "Open and drag him in before he falls on his face!"
The brace shifted. Carts screeched. Beams groaned. The doors cracked just enough for a man to slip through.
William staggered toward it.
A lone rider, either too furious or too stupid to obey the retreat, screamed and spurred his horse straight at William's back, spear lowered.
Halden swore. "Jory! The one on the left!"
Jory drew and loosed in one motion. The arrow sang down, but the angle, the distance, the chaos— it only clipped the rider's pauldron, not enough to turn him.
William heard the hooves but his body lagged. When he tried to turn, his leg nearly buckled.
Too slow, that voice said again.
He gritted his teeth and forced his sword up anyway.
He wasn't going to make it.
Something hit him from the side.
Osric.
The sergeant slammed into him shoulder-first, knocking him clear. William stumbled, half-spinning, landing on one knee.
The spear drove through mail instead—Osric's mail, right where the plates ended.
The point punched out between his shoulder blades.
For a second, everything went very quiet.
Osric blinked, as if surprised.
He turned his head enough to find William. His eyes were very clear.
"On your feet, my lord," he said. His voice sounded like gravel ground soft. "Up."
William's stomach dropped. Blood soaked his hands before he realized he'd grabbed for the shaft.
"Osric—"
"Up." Osric's tone hardened. "You're not dying in a puddle next to me. That's an order."
Up on the wall, Halden didn't waste the opening. "Again!" he shouted.
Jory's second arrow flew truer. It buried itself in the rider's throat. The Germanian toppled from the saddle, the spear wrenching free with a wet, awful sound as he fell.
Osric's legs failed.
William caught him under the arms on reflex, hauling him toward the gate.
"Brace!" Marsh yelled from inside. "Make a gap, quick! Then shut it before the rest grow a brain!"
Hands grabbed the brace from within. A broken plank shifted. The wagon creaked enough to make a narrow slit.
William dragged Osric through it, every step sending knives up his own battered spine.
"Save your back," Osric muttered, blood bubbling at his lips. "You'll—need it."
"You can complain at me properly in a minute," William said hoarsely. "That's an order."
Osric tried to laugh. It came out as a cough.
They cleared the line.
"Now!" Marsh roared. "Shut it!"
The beam slammed home. Men shoved the cart back into place. Someone kicked the plank shut and rammed a wedge under the wheel.
Outside, the last of the cavalry peeled away, following the horn and the drawn-up infantry line. They'd had enough of the gate for now.
Inside, the roar of battle dulled. It was still there—north wall, fires, shouted orders—but it was muffled by timber and stone.
William sank to his knees with Osric as gently as he could manage.
Up close, there was no pretending.
The wound in the sergeant's chest was too deep, the blood too much. It soaked the mail and the tunic beneath, pooled black in the dirt. His breath came shallow, catching.
"You... did what you came for," Osric said quietly. "Gate's still ours. Cavalry's not keen on coming back."
William's hands shook on torn mail. "You shouldn't have— I should've seen him—"
"Should've, could've." Osric's fingers twitched, catching William's sleeve. "We go where we're needed. You were needed out there."
His gaze flicked toward the wall, where Halden's archers still moved and shouted, where smoke still rose.
"Listen," he murmured. "They'll call you mad. Reckless. The court... they like tidy maps. But those folk?"
His eyes tracked villagers crowding the yard, faces pale, blood-splattered, alive.
"They'll just remember who didn't run."
He swallowed, grimaced.
"A commander's not... fancy armor or light in his eyes," he went on, words slower now. "He's just the bastard too stubborn to lie down while there's someone left to stand for."
His grip loosened.
"Be that," he whispered.
The next breath didn't come.
For a few heartbeats, William didn't move.
The yard around them was all sound and blur—Marsh shouting orders, someone sobbing, someone laughing the high, hysterical laugh of a man who'd lived through something he shouldn't.
Marsh's hand settled on William's shoulder, fingers gripping hard.
"My lord," he said, voice rough but steady. "I'm sorry. Truly. But we need you on your feet. North wall's still holding, but Hobb won't keep it forever. Felix will pull those horsemen behind shields and come at us thick and slow now."
William didn't look up.
"He died saving you," Marsh said. "Don't make that a waste by falling to pieces. You stand, you make this hurt them for ten bloody years, that's worth the trade. You crumple, it's just another dead man in the mud."
Slowly, William raised his head.
Osric's face was slack now, all the lines of command and annoyance smoothed out.
Something in William set.
He got to his feet.
His legs felt wrong, too light and too heavy at once. His shoulder burned. Blood glued cloth to skin. His sword hand trembled until he forced it still.
"Right," he said. His voice came out low and rough. "We hold. We make them pay."
He wiped his blade on what was left of his tunic and slid it back into the scabbard.
"Halden!" he called up toward the wall. "How's your quiver?"
"Light," came the answer, "but not empty. I've still got a few nasty surprises for any man who thinks he can walk up to my wall."
"Good." William grabbed the ladder with one aching hand. "Then let's go see what Felix Blackwell wants to try next."
They'd wanted him to be a symbol.
Up on the wall, with Osric's blood stiffening on his sleeves and the villagers' eyes following him, he supposed he finally was.
Just not the kind anyone in Albion had pictured.