The wind in the Weeping Valley did not whistle; it sighed. It was a hollow, mournful sound that swept down from the scarred granite peaks, through the stunted pines, and into the very stone of Riverwatch Keep, a structure more stubborn than grand. To its lord, Sir Roland of House Marren, the sound was the voice of the land itself—a tired, whispering litany of scarcity and slow decline.
He stood at the narrow window of his solar, a chamber as lean and austere as the man. The glass was old, distorting the view of his domain: a silver thread of river fighting through a broad, rocky valley, flanked by three villages whose chimney smokes were as thin and hesitant as the hopes of their inhabitants. The fields beyond were patches of stubborn green on grey, yielding a harvest that fed mouths but filled no coffers. His coat of arms, carved into the hearthstone, told the story: a gauntleted hand clutching a sword, point downward, on a field of iron grey. It spoke of duty ended, of vigilance become stagnation. The Marren motto, etched below, seemed to mock him in the firelight: "Steadfast." To what? To poverty? To obscurity?
A log shifted in the grate, casting a bloom of fleeting light over the parchments on his heavy oak desk. They were reports from his steward, lists of dwindling stores, a politely phrased but unmissable reminder of debt to the wool merchant in the nearest town of consequence. The figures were a quiet, constant siege against his pride. Behind him, he felt the presence of his son, William, a contained energy that seemed to make the very air in the cold room hum.
"The herald wore the King's own livery, Father," William said, his voice tighter, harder than it had been even a month ago. He stood by the map table, his fingers tracing a path north from their valley, across the printed mountains to where a crude illustration of a crowned lion represented the royal host. "The rebellion in the Northerlands is festering. Lord Borrell has declared his secession, seized the Silverflow mines. The call to arms is not a request. It is a summons."
Roland did not turn. He watched a lone farmer on a distant slope, guiding a wooden plough behind a weary ox. "I know what a royal summons is, William."
"Then you know what it means," William pressed, the restraint in his voice fraying. "The proclamation was read in the yard. 'Land and title commensurate with service and valor.' Commensurate. It is a promise. It is the promise."
Now Roland turned. His son was twenty, with the Marren build—broad shoulders, a lean strength—but where Roland's face was a landscape of weathered lines and resigned eyes, William's was all sharp angles and unconcealed fire. He wore his best tunic, the grey fabric bearing the faded hand-and-sword, but he wore it like a borrowed garment, too small for the ambition straining within.
"It is a phrase on parchment," Roland said, his voice the low rumble of stones grinding. "It is written in ink that will be paid for in blood. Our blood. The blood of every man and boy from this valley who can hold a pike."
"And what is their blood buying them here?" William gestured violently towards the window. "A life of scratching at this unforgiving stone? Watching their children grow thin in long winters? We are rusted, Father. Our 'steadfastness' has become a chain. The King offers a key. A sword can be a key."
Roland's gaze swept over the maps, the ledgers, the ancient sword on its rack. He saw not opportunity, but arithmetic. "To answer this summons with honor requires more than willing hearts. It requires fifty men-at-arms, at minimum. It requires mail that isn't thin with age, horses that are more than farm nags. It requires a wagon of grain, of salted meat, to feed them. Where is this to come from? The valley is already bled pale."
"Then we bleed it white!" William's words hung in the air, shocking in their starkness. He flushed, but did not back down. "A mortal wound now, for a chance at life later. We mortgage the future. We take the seed grain. We melt the village church bell for spearheads. We ask for their sons, and we promise them a share of a future that is more than this." He stepped closer, his eyes burning. "Or we sit here, and we wait. The world moves, Father. Lords rise on the backs of such chances. And when the war is over, and the rewards are given, and new powers are settled… what becomes of the little lord in his forgotten valley who was too cautious to answer his King's call? He becomes a footnote. A tax obligation to a new, greater lord. We lose either way. Let us choose the way that has a sword in its hand."
The sigh of the wind filled the silence. Roland looked at his son and saw the ghost of his own younger self, the one who had ridden out with his father, heart full of fire, and returned with a few extra acres of poor woodland, a body laced with scars, and a profound understanding of the gap between ballads and reality. That fire had banked over decades into the low, stubborn ember of stewardship. Now, here it was, rekindled and roaring.
He walked to the sword rack. He did not take the beautifully balanced, ancient longsword of the family. Instead, he took his own battle sword—a heavier, simpler, brutally efficient piece of steel, notched along the edge, the leather of its grip stained dark with years of sweat and fear. He held it out to William, flat across his palms.
"This is the key you speak of," Roland said, his voice hollow. "It is heavy. It fits only one lock. And when you turn it, you can never close the door again. You speak of mortgaging the valley. You are asking to mortgage our souls. Their souls." He nodded towards the window, towards the invisible villages.
William's hand closed around the grip. He took its weight, his arm dipping slightly before steadying. The fire in his eyes did not dim, but it gained a new, harder quality. "Then let the interest be paid in glory, and the debt settled in land."
The decision, once voiced, became a vortex that sucked the entire valley into its grim momentum. The next morning, Roland stood in the muddy courtyard as his steward, a man named Alton with a face perpetually pinched with worry, read the levy. There was no cheering. The farmers, the woodsmen, the smith, the brewer—they stood in a silent, drab cluster, their faces masks of resignation. They heard the numbers: every third household to provide a fighting man; a quarter-share of all grain stores; the bronze bell from the shrine of Saint Anias, the valley's protector, to be brought to the forge.
A low murmur went through them. An old crofter named Hagar stepped forward, his back bent. "My lord, the bell… Saint Anias's favor…"
"Saint Anias will understand that the best protection is a sharp spear," Roland interrupted, the words ash in his mouth. "The King's justice is God's justice in this realm. To serve one is to serve the other." It was the feudal catechism, hollow and ringing. He saw the disbelief in their eyes, the fear. He saw Jacob the smith's young apprentice, a boy of sixteen with wide eyes, being nudged forward by his master.
William, wearing his father's old brigandine, moved among them, clapping shoulders, speaking of honor and future bounty. His words sounded brighter, but they fell on the same stony ground. The men looked at him, then at their lord, reading the grim truth in Roland's silence. This was not a grand adventure. It was an extraction.
The following weeks transformed the quiet valley. The rhythmic clang of the smithy became a constant, day and night, not the gentle tap of horse-shoes but the angry, percussive beat of metal on metal as scythes were straightened and reforged into crude bill-hooks, and the beloved bell melted into a screaming, molten stream to be cast into spear points. The granary doors stood open, and measured sacks of oats and barley, the lifeblood of the coming winter, were hauled away to the keep's cellars. The air, usually scented with pine and damp earth, now carried the acrid tang of coal smoke and fear.
Roland oversaw it all, a spectral figure. He inspected the pathetic armory: recycled leather jerkins stuffed with wool, shields of green wood with hide coverings already warping. He walked among the "men-at-arms"—boys he had watched grow, their hands better suited to plough-handles than polearms, practicing their clumsy drills in the lower bailey. Their faces were pale. The fire William spoke of was not in their eyes; it was a cold dread in their bellies.
The night before the march, Roland climbed the worn steps to the keep's roof. The sighing wind was colder here. Below, the valley was a pool of darkness, punctured by the few, feeble lights of his people. He tried to memorize it: the sound of the river, the dark outline of the pines against the stars, the absolute, fragile quiet. He was leaving it defenseless. He was taking its strength with him.
He heard a step. William joined him, his face a pale oval in the starlight. He looked out, not with nostalgia, but with impatience. "Tomorrow, we start for a better place," he said, his breath misting.
"We start," Roland corrected softly, his eyes on the dark villages. "We do not leave this place behind, William. We carry it with us. Every man out there carries the weight of this valley in his pack. Its hunger, its fear, its hopes. It is a heavier burden than any armor. And if we fail…" He let the sentence die, carried off by the weeping wind.
"We will not fail," William said, the certainty in his voice a young man's armor against the dark.
Down in the yard, a sentry coughed. The sound was small and lonely. Roland looked at his son, then back at the sleeping land he was about to gamble. The final tally was not in men or bushels, but in this: the silence where a bell used to toll the hours, the empty space in a dozen hearths, the trust he was breaking. He had drawn the sword from the stone of his steadfastness. Now, he had to see what king it would serve, and what kingdom it would buy. The journey had not yet begun, and already, the Weeping Valley lived up to its name.