Chapter 1 - The Hero Who Lasted
Ivander woke to the weight of smoke on the rafters and his father's voice at the door.
"Up," Meid called. "Ivander. Eric. Sun's already halfway to your lazy skulls."
Ivander blinked, staring at the familiar pattern of his ceiling: low beams, reed and clay packed tight, one thin crack where light sometimes slid through on full-moon nights.
His cottage wasn't much.
One room. Worn pallets along the wall. A three-legged table. A shelf with Father's few treasures: a chipped cup, a carved comb, a small wooden figure smoothed shiny by fingers and time.
Modest.
To anyone else, nothing.
To him, it was the entire world.
He rolled off his pallet, bare feet hitting packed earth. His blanket—patch on patch on patch—dropped around his ankles.
Eric was already by the door, of course.
He was always already something. Already awake. Already ready. Already better.
Two years older, and somehow that two years had stretched into a canyon.
Eric tightened his belt with quick, practiced fingers. His tunic sat better on broader shoulders. His forearms had the lean muscle of someone who had drawn a bowstring so many times his body just assumed it would always be there.
"You drool when you sleep," Eric said, not turning.
"You snore," Ivander muttered back.
"Snoring scares wolves."
"Who told you that?"
"Father."
"Father lies."
Eric's mouth twitched. He pushed aside the leather flap and stepped out into morning.
Ivander lingered just one more heartbeat, letting his eyes drift to the empty places in the cottage.
No extra cup.
No spare comb.
No soft shawl over the chair.
No mother-shape in his memories.
Eric claimed to remember. A laugh. A lullaby. A warm hand on a fevered forehead.
Whenever Ivander had asked, Eric went quiet and Father left the room.
So Ivander learned not to ask.
He pulled on his rough wool tunic, cinched his belt, and ducked outside.
The world hit him: cool air, burning dawn, the smells of wet dirt, shit, smoke, animals, people.
Their cottage stood a little above the other huts, on a small rise. Below, the village stirred: smoke from roof-holes, dogs barking, chickens scattering, women shouting, men already heading to the fields.
Beyond it all, the treeline crouched dark and deep.
Meid stood facing that treeline, back to the village.
Spear in hand. Shield on his arm. Short bronze sword at his hip.
The sword always caught Ivander's eye.
Leaf-shaped. Broad. The bronze had dulled with age, but its edge still gleamed like a quiet threat. Future scholars would argue in polished halls, calling it The Zel and debating what the word meant.
To Ivander, it was just his father's sword.
"About time," Meid said, glancing back. Grey threaded his dark hair and beard now, but his eyes were sharp as ever. "Thought I might have to drag you out by your toes."
"Was awake," Ivander lied.
Eric snorted.
Meid's gaze softened for a heartbeat.
"Today you hunt," he said. "Properly. Not just rabbits that let you trip over them. Stag, with luck. Boar, if the hills hate us."
"Stag," Eric said immediately. He straightened. "I'm ready."
"Boar is fine," Ivander offered. "Boar's smaller."
Meid's mouth twitched.
"The hills give what they give," he said. "We ask. We sweat. Sometimes we get what we want. More often we get a story and bruises. That's hunting. Come."
Ivander swallowed.
Today, he thought. Today I prove I can do one thing right.
***
The forest did not swallow sound. People lied about that.
It swallowed conversation.
Birds still cried. Leaves still rustled. Twigs still snapped.
Mostly under Ivander's boots.
Meid moved like he'd grown from the soil. Eric moved like he was trying very hard to be the same. Ivander moved like a boy trying to remember which foot went first.
He watched where his father stepped. Tried to place his feet in the same patches of earth. Tried to make his breathing small and his body smaller.
The forest did not care.
Twigs snapped anyway.
The bow felt wrong in his hands. Too long, too stiff. The string bit into fingers that never seemed to find the right angle.
They spotted the stag in a clearing dappled with light.
Young, horns still modest. Head down, chewing, ears flicking lazily.
Meid lifted a hand.
They stopped.
He pointed to Eric. Then, after a moment, to Ivander.
Both.
Ivander's stomach knotted.
Eric nocked an arrow in one smooth motion, drawing it back with the easy strength that made villagers mutter "good boy" under their breath.
Ivander fumbled for his own arrow.
You've done this, he told himself. Targets. Trees. You hit them sometimes. Once. Do it again. Just… on purpose.
He set the arrow.
Raised the bow.
His arms shook.
The stag's ear twitched.
Meid's hand dropped.
Now.
Two bowstrings sang.
Eric's release was clean. The arrow flew true.
Ivander felt his own fingers drag wrong. The string caught skin. The arrow wobbled as it left, veering wide like it suddenly remembered it had somewhere else to be.
Eric's shaft slammed into the stag's chest.
The animal reared, staggered, crashed to the ground with a choked, surprised grunt.
Ivander's arrow thudded into a tree trunk a man's height away, bounced, and vanished in the underbrush.
The stag kicked.
Meid stepped in, driving his spear down cleanly.
A flick. A twist.
Mercy.
Always mercy for animals. Men, he was less generous with.
Ivander stared at the place where his arrow had not gone.
Useless, the thought came, bitter as bile. Even now. Even when it matters. Always him hitting, you missing. Always.
Meid wrenched the spear free and wiped it on the stag's hide.
"Well," he said.
Ivander braced for anger. For disappointment. For the familiar weight of not-enough.
Meid looked at the tree.
"Fine shot," he said. "If we were hunting oaks. Dangerous beasts, trees. Stand there all silent, just waiting."
Eric snorted.
Ivander flushed.
"I missed," he muttered.
"You missed a deer," Meid said. "You didn't miss the sky. The land still turns. We bring home meat. The rest, you'll fix or you won't. The forest doesn't keep tally."
"I want to fix it," Ivander snapped. "I just—"
His voice broke.
He hated it.
He hated how thick his throat felt. Hated the way his eyes prickled, like a child.
"You always say it's fine," he said. "It's not. Eric hits. I don't. He learns once. I can't do anything right."
Meid's hand landed on the back of his neck.
Warm. Heavy. Not unkind.
"You're not him," Meid said. "He's not you. The land needs more than one kind of hand. Some hold bows. Some hold shields. Some hold other fools by the scruff so they don't die too early."
He squeezed once.
"You can carry," he added. "So carry. Stand here talking about what you can't do, we'll be eating while you're still arguing with your own head."
He turned away.
The words didn't fix the knot in Ivander's chest.
But they stopped it getting worse.
He and Eric hoisted the stag between them, sharing the weight, and trudged back toward the village.
Ivander's arrow stayed in the tree.
***
The tribute collector came weeks later.
Ivander had thought Meid's sword was impressive.
The man on the horse made it look small.
Bronze plate gleamed in the sun, covering chest and shoulders. A crested helmet made him seem taller. His cloak fell just so, heavy with dye and arrogance.
Behind him, perhaps twenty men. Spears. Round shields. Sandalled feet. All bronze bits polished like they'd been paid extra for it.
He spoke in that other tongue. The one with the hard edges.
Ivander caught nothing.
Meid, standing in the centre of the village, answered in the same language.
It sounded wrong in his mouth. Like he'd swallowed gravel.
Ivander shifted from foot to foot beside Eric.
"What are they saying?" he whispered.
Eric's eyes narrowed, watching mouths move.
"Names," Eric murmured. "Numbers. Grain. Men. 'Tribute.' I think."
"How do you know that word?"
"I listen."
Ivander scowled.
The conversation ended with a leather pouch changing hands and a clay tablet being held up like a god's decree, covered in strange marks.
The collector didn't look angry. Or pleased.
He didn't look much of anything.
He swept his gaze across the crowd and didn't even pause on Ivander and Eric.
Boys. Replaceable.
They rode away, dust rising behind their horses.
Villagers started talking again. Too loud. Too fast. As if noise could fill the space the men had left.
Meid stood there in the centre, jaw tight.
Ivander approached him later, at their cottage.
"Who were they?" he asked.
"Men who think owning the road means owning the people on it," Meid said. He took a long pull from a clay cup. "Greater tribe. Marches like a wall. They count everything and call it peace."
"Are we… theirs now?" Ivander asked.
Meid looked at him over the rim.
"We are ours," he said. "Until we can't be. And when that happens, we'll see how many of them choke on us trying."
That night, when the sky had gone deep and blue and the village had settled, another visitor came.
This one didn't ride into the centre like she owned it.
She walked in from the woods.
A woman. Leather jerkin over a tunic. Sword at her side, not the shape of Meid's, not the shape of local blades. Her hair was braided tight back from her face, and the lines around her eyes said she'd seen more than one campaign.
She stopped in their doorway.
Meid looked up from mending his scabbard.
For a moment, neither spoke.
Then he said:
"You came."
His voice held so many things Ivander couldn't parse: relief, anger, hurt, something that might once have been love and now sat like a broken bone.
"I told you I would if they crossed this far," she replied. Her tongue moved from their language to the foreign one and back again with ease. "You didn't come to me."
"I like my skin attached," Meid said. "Your officers don't."
Ivander stood in the shadows, Eric beside him.
He shouldn't have understood the next part.
It wasn't spoken to them.
But he heard every word.
"They sent a tribunal legion south," the woman said. "Not mine. I argued. I shouted. They don't listen to a 'half-blood captain with too much mouth.'" She spat the title like it tasted bad. "So I followed without orders. My cohort is two days behind, coming as fast as we can without killing the horses."
"So those peacocks today—?" Meid began.
"Scouts," she cut in. "Writ-takers. Counting heads and stores. The real teeth are behind them. A full legion. They say rebels are hiding among the hills. They'll burn anything that looks like it might feed them."
Her gaze flicked to Ivander and Eric, then away, fast.
Her throat moved.
"You have to leave," she said roughly. "Now. Tonight. Take the boys. Take anyone who'll listen. Go deeper into the woods. Come north. My camp—"
"No," Meid said.
The word was quiet.
It hit like a hammer.
"Meid—"
"No."
He stood.
He didn't shout.
He didn't need to.
"This is my village," he said. "My father's. His father's. My people. My dead. I won't run and leave them to strangers with torches."
"If you stay, you die," she snapped. "Do you think your little bronze toy scares a wall of shields? I've seen them grind through men with twice your pride and four times your numbers."
"If I run, my people die without me," he said. "If I stay, they die with me. Maybe we take a few bastards with us. Maybe enough that the next village gets spared because some centurion doesn't want to explain why his century is half-gone. You do your counting. I'll do mine."
She flinched.
"Always stubborn," she whispered.
"Always running," he shot back.
Her jaw clenched.
Silence stretched.
Ivander watched from the dark.
The shape of her face prickled at him. Something in the way her nose sloped, the angle of her cheekbones.
"Come with me," she said, softer. "Just you and the boys. Let the others… choose. Live long enough to spite me. Live long enough to shout at me again in twenty years."
Meid's eyes slid past her to Ivander and Eric.
For a heartbeat, they softened.
Then they hardened like cooling bronze.
"No," he said. "If they burn this place, the last thing they'll see is me. Not my back."
Her shoulders sagged.
It looked like something inside her sagged too.
"I'll come back," she said. "With my own men. If I can. If they don't chain me before I get out of camp again."
She looked at the boys then.
Really looked.
Ivander saw surprise flash across her face.
"As tall as my shoulder now," she murmured. "Both of you."
Eric stiffened.
Ivander held still.
Her hand twitched, as if she wanted to reach out and didn't trust herself.
Meid's jaw clenched.
"Go," he said.
Her eyes shone.
She swallowed hard, turned sharply, and left.
Ivander watched her walk away toward the road, shoulders too straight to be anything but brittle.
He didn't know why his chest hurt.
He didn't ask.
Later, when they lay on their pallets, listening to the night, he whispered:
"Was that…?"
"Yes," Eric said quietly. "Mother."
Ivander stared into the dark.
He tried to fit that word onto that woman.
Captain. Stranger. Runner. Mother.
It sat wrong.
He rolled onto his side and pressed his face into his blanket.
He didn't cry.
Not for a mother who'd come with talk of legions and then walked away again with her cloak snapping behind her.
***
Meid woke them before dawn.
"Up," he said. "Pack."
"For the lodge?" Eric asked, voice thick with sleep.
"For the lodge," Meid confirmed. "Do as I say. Not as the world wants. That comes later."
They took what they could carry on their backs. Dried meat. Bread. A water skin. The old sickles.
At the edge of the village, Meid knelt, gripped the back of their necks, and pressed his forehead briefly to each of theirs.
"Listen," he said. "This is not a story test. Not 'hide, then jump with sticks and impress me.' This is life or not. Stay at the lodge. No fires. No wandering. I will come if I can. If I don't—"
He hesitated.
Ivander's stomach dropped.
"If I don't," Meid continued, "live long enough to remember I told you to stay. Be useful. Live. Don't die stupid in someone else's story."
He took his spear and shield.
Strapped The Zel to his hip.
And walked back toward the village without looking back.
***
They lasted at the lodge longer than Ivander thought they would.
First day, he still half expected Meid to stride in at sunset, grumbling about "stubborn southern fools" and patting their necks for obeying for once.
Second day, the forest gave them hints instead of answers.
Distant horn calls. A hollow thump that might have been a ram or a battering ram. Once, very faint, a roar of many voices, not birds.
At night, when Ivander closed his eyes, he saw men in bronze like the tribute collector, walking through his village, turning it to ash with each step.
On the third day, Eric stood in the doorway, eyes fixed on the direction of the village.
"We have to go back," Ivander said.
He'd meant to open with something softer.
It came out raw.
Eric's hands tightened on the doorframe.
"Father said—"
"Father isn't here," Ivander snapped. "If he's alive, he might need us. If he's not… someone has to at least look."
"And do what?" Eric demanded, rounding on him. "Charge a legion with sickles? Throw berries at them? You think wanting to help is enough?"
Ivander's throat burned.
"It's better than hiding and never knowing," he said. "I can't… I can't sit here and imagine everything and know nothing."
For once, Eric didn't have a ready answer.
He looked at Ivander.
Really looked.
Some of the contempt he carried for his younger brother's clumsiness wasn't there right now.
Just… shared fear.
"Fine," he said finally. "We go. Together. You're not getting the 'brave idiot' song without me in the chorus."
***
They knew something was wrong long before they saw smoke.
The forest around the village was different.
Quieter.
Hollow.
The birds had gone somewhere else.
By the time the smell hit them—ash and cooked things and something underneath that Ivander refused to name—he already knew.
He stepped out of the tree line and his mind still tried to tell him he was wrong.
The huts had collapsed in on themselves. Black ribs of charred wood stuck up like broken teeth. The well's stones were cracked, water inside gleaming foul and oily.
The place where the central fire had burned was a scar now, white ash blown across the ground like bones.
No bodies.
No villagers crying.
No dogs.
Just silence and ruin.
Ivander's feet wouldn't move.
His mind scrambled for possibilities.
They fled. They hid. They're in the woods, like we were. The soldiers just… broke things.
Then he saw the bronze.
Half-buried under a fallen roof: a glint of metal.
Another, by the well: a twisted, charred greave.
And there, in the centre, where the villagers used to gather to argue and laugh and decide, a darker stain under the ash.
Boot prints. Dozens. Overlapping.
And between them, broken things that had once been men.
The bodies had burned until bone showed through. Armour fused with flesh. It was hard to tell which limbs belonged to which, but here and there, Ivander saw familiar shapes.
A local spear haft, snapped in two.
A shard of a shield painted in village colours.
Meid had not gone quietly.
He had taken as many as he could, right at the heart.
Ivander stared at the smashed mess around that dark centre and thought, numb:
Of course you did. You stubborn old bastard. You made them pay.
His throat closed.
His eyes burned.
He still didn't cry.
Not yet.
"Father?" Eric called, voice brittle.
The ruins did not answer.
Ash crunched under their feet as they moved further in.
"Maybe he… ran," Ivander said. "Maybe he broke through. Maybe he—"
Hoofbeats cut him off.
Closer this time.
Different.
He froze.
Eric grabbed his arm and yanked him behind the cracked wall of a hut.
"Down," Eric hissed.
They crouched.
Ivander peered through a gap.
A small contingent rode into the ruined village.
Not the polished arrogance of the first tribute party. These men's armour was scuffed, their cloaks dusty. Their formation was still disciplined, but there was a tiredness in the set of their shoulders.
Their standard was different. A different animal stamped into the bronze disc. Same Empire. Different teeth.
At their head rode a woman.
Ivander's breath caught.
It was her.
Leather under a commander's cloak. Sword at her side, the same strange make. Braids tighter now, a few grey threads at her temples that Ivander didn't remember seeing before.
Her face, when she took in the destruction, went white around the mouth.
She swung down from her horse before it had fully stopped, boots hitting ash, and walked forward with the gait of someone who'd seen battlefields and hated this one more than most.
"Hold here," she told her men in the foreign tongue. "No torches. No shouting. This place has had enough noise."
Her voice carried just enough that Ivander heard the shape of the orders.
She walked alone into the centre.
Her eyes moved over the burnt huts, the dry well, the fused mass of bronze and bone.
She stopped at that centre.
Ivander watched her shoulders stiffen.
One gloved hand came up and covered her mouth.
"Meid," she whispered, in their language. "You stubborn, beautiful fool."
There was no triumph in her posture.
No relief at work done.
Only grief and fury that had nowhere left to go.
She turned slowly.
"Boys?" she called, louder. "Ivander? Eric? Meid told me you'd run like smart ones, for once. If you're here—answer. Please."
Eric sucked in a breath.
Ivander felt his heart slam so hard he thought it might burst.
Her voice—rougher now, frayed around the edges—still held the same cadence as in their cottage.
It felt like hearing a ghost remember your name.
Eric moved before Ivander could stop him.
He slipped from behind the wall, ash puffing under his feet, sickle already in his hand.
The woman's hand flew to her sword hilt, half-drawn, then stopped.
For a heartbeat, she stared like she was seeing a spirit.
"Eric?" she breathed.
Everything crumpled at once in her eyes: surprise, hope, guilt.
Eric's jaw clenched.
"You're late," he said.
His voice shook.
The sickle in his hands trembled.
She flinched like he'd struck her.
"I came as fast as I could," she said. "We trailed them south. Your father… he made them pay for every step. There were bodies in the road, Erikos. Their armour. Their blood, all the way from the pass. My men muttered about curses." She laughed once, short and bitter. "He was always good at being a curse."
Eric's knuckles went white on the sickle handle.
"You weren't with them," Ivander realised, the thought forced through shock. "You weren't with the first ones."
Different standard. Different cut of armour. Different feel.
Two sets of invaders.
One to demand. One too late to stop.
"No," she said, sharp. "I told you. The first were tribunal. I command a frontier legion. We were sent after them when word of their 'efficiency' started making senators nervous. They burn everything and call it duty; someone has to clean the bones after."
Her gaze dragged back to the fused knot of death at the centre of the village.
Her voice dropped.
"He made them break formation," she said. "He dragged them into houses. Into the well. Into the gods-damned pigpens. When we followed, we walked through a map painted with his stubbornness and their arrogance. I thought… I hoped…"
Her eyes shut briefly.
When she opened them, she looked at Eric again.
And saw the sickle.
Her mouth twisted.
"You think I brought them here," she said quietly. "You think I'm their blade in your backs."
Eric's breath shattered.
"You spoke their words," he said. "You left with them. You always leave. You came back with more of them. What else am I supposed to think?"
She took a step forward.
Slow.
Careful.
Like approaching a wounded animal that might bite.
"I left because staying would have gotten you killed," she said. "I spoke their words because someone had to understand what orders were coming. I came back with these men because they are mine, not the tribunal's. Because I could make them stop. Or try."
He held the sickle up higher.
"You failed," he said.
Her expression broke in a way the burned huts hadn't managed.
"Yes," she said. "I did."
She looked smaller, just for a heartbeat.
Older.
Then she straightened.
"I won't fail now," she said. "If you'll let me not fail."
She held out a hand.
Empty.
"I can't give you the village back," she said. "I can't dig your father out of their bellies. But I can take you away from the next wave. Because there will be one. They always send another, with cleaner sandals, to write reports about the last."
Eric's arms shook.
The sickle wavered.
"You're still one of them," he whispered.
"I am one of you," she shot back. "And one of them. That was always the curse. It means I can stand in the way sometimes. It means I can make them look at you as something other than numbers. Let me."
Her gaze flicked past him then, to the broken wall.
To the shadow Ivander was desperately trying not to be.
She went still.
"…Ivander?" she said, voice gone hoarse.
He realised he'd stopped breathing.
His legs carried him out before his brain caught up.
Ash crunched under his boots.
He stepped beside Eric, sickle still at his brother's throat-level, and met her eyes properly for the first time.
He saw himself in them.
Same dark colour. Same angle at the corners. Same too-serious lines.
Her face crumpled.
"You're both alive," she said.
It sounded like she'd bitten into something and found it sweet after expecting poison.
She laughed once, choked on it, and scrubbed a hand over her face.
"You're taller," she blurted, wild. "Gods. Of course you are. Time passed. That's what it does. Stupid. I'm being stupid. I rode here with a cohort behind me and now I can't speak to my own sons."
She didn't reach for them.
Not yet.
Her hand stayed out, palm up, fingers shaking just a little.
"I am late," she said. "Too late to save this place. Maybe not too late to save you. Please. Don't make me leave you twice."
Eric's fingers loosened.
The sickle slid from his hands and dropped into the ash.
He stared at her, lips trembling, anger and grief and some desperate, starving hope all fighting for space on his face.
"Please," he whispered. "Save us."
The last word cracked.
He took one step.
Then another.
The word tumbled out after, raw and too big for a boy his age:
"Mom…?"
She staggered like someone had slammed a spear into her chest.
Then she crossed the distance and pulled him in, arms wrapping around him with a fierceness that said she had been holding herself back from this for years.
"I'm here," she said into his hair. "Too late for so much. Not too late for you. I swear it. I swear it on every stupid god who let this happen."
Ivander stood there, watching his brother disappear into a shape that was half-armour, half-embrace.
Part of him wanted to run.
Part of him wanted to shove them both away.
Part of him wanted to step in and see if those arms felt any different around him.
He did none of those things.
He just stood, ash in his lungs and burned bronze in his nose, staring at the ruins of everything he'd known and the ugly, complicated knot of what might come next.
I couldn't stop this, a quiet voice whispered inside him. I missed. I hid. I obeyed. I'm still alive because I was less brave than him.
He looked at the fused mass of bronze and bone where his father had made his last stand.
At the woman holding Eric like the world might snatch him away.
At the horses waiting beyond, the legionaries glancing around uneasily, obviously wanting to be anywhere but here.
Fine, Ivander thought, and something in him went from shaking to hard.
If I couldn't save this, I'll live long enough to save something else. I'll last. I'll be there when other boys come home to villages that haven't burned.
He stepped forward.
Ash puffed around his ankles.
The woman—mother, captain, traitor, salvation—looked up at him over Eric's shoulder.
Surprise hit her again, sharper this time.
Then something like pride.
She held out an arm.
He hesitated just long enough to know he could walk away if he chose.
Then he stepped into the half-circle of warmth and leather and metal.
Her hand landed, heavy and careful, on the back of his head.
"I should have been here sooner," she whispered, voice breaking. "I should never have left. I cannot change that. I can only… do better now."
Ivander let his forehead rest, just briefly, against the dent in her cuirass.
He didn't forgive her.
Not yet.
He didn't forgive himself either.
But as the wind stirred the ash of his home and the shadows of foreign banners flickered across the wreckage, Ivander Ghede, who had never managed to hit a deer clean, made a new kind of promise:
If the world insists on burning, then I will be the one who lasts long enough to drag something living out of the fire.
Later, scholars would write his name in neat ink next to that of a bronze sword called The Zel.
They'd argue about titles.
They'd call him many things.
The one that mattered started here, in the ruins of his first failure, with his brother's tears on his sleeve and his mother's late arms around his shoulders.
The hero who lasted.