The fine rain of the early morning still washed over the dark stone of Mirior's southern gates when Akel pulled on his reins.
Warm vapor rose in small puffs from the horse's nostrils, dispersing into the icy air that preceded dawn. Beneath the stone arch reinforced with iron beams, two figures waited, sheltered from the steady dripping of the walls.
Bjorn leaned against the stone parapet with impassive calm, his hands buried in the pockets of his leather jerkin and his hood pulled down to the level of his fair eyebrows. Beside him, mounted on a short, stocky pony with thick fur, Rurik stamped the soles of his boots against the stirrups to ward off the cold while unsuccessfully trying to secure a wool blanket beneath the saddle strap without letting go of his axe.
At the sound of approaching hooves echoing through the deserted street, the dwarf raised his head and let out a rough grunt.
"Didn't I tell you the bastard was coming?" Rurik exclaimed, pointing a gloved finger at Akel. "I told you he wouldn't last another three days eating boiled turnips at the Old Oak Inn."
Bjorn pushed himself away from the wall with slow, measured steps, a faint smile appearing beneath his neatly trimmed blond beard.
"You said he had already taken the northern road in the dead of night," Bjorn corrected, looking at Akel with calm attention.
"Insignificant details of a broader prediction!" the dwarf shot back, adjusting the brass rings holding the braids of his red beard. "The proven fact is that he's here. And now we can get out of this puddle of mud before my toes start growing mold."
Akel stopped his mount two paces from them. Water ran from the brim of his dark cloak, and the scabbard of his longsword rested firmly against his left thigh.
"The horse needed to walk," Akel said, his low voice cutting through the morning mist.
"Of course. It was the horse who made the decision," Bjorn remarked sarcastically, mounting his own chestnut horse with the ease of a man who had spent half his life in the saddle. "Let's go before the morning-shift guards decide to invent a new departure tax for armed travelers."
The three passed through the dark tunnel of the southern gate beneath the bored gazes of two sentries and entered the open road.
---
The heavy, sticky mud of Mirior took nearly an entire day of riding before it began to give way.
As they traveled south, leaving the province's swamps and dense forests behind, the waterlogged ground gradually turned into a bed of packed earth mixed with fine gravel. The smell of rotting vegetation and stagnant moisture that had clung to Akel's clothes slowly gave way to the cleaner, drier air of open fields, seasoned by the bitter fragrance of wild pines and the fine dust kicked up by the steady pace of their mounts.
The silence of the road, however, never lasted long when Rurik was around.
"Saying this saddle is made for long journeys is a direct insult to any creature with a spine," the dwarf grumbled for the fifth time that afternoon, shifting his weight in the saddle with an irritated click of his tongue. "Thornin swore he had greased the straps before we left Alfra. He lied shamelessly. The leather's hard as dried oak bark."
Bjorn did not even turn his head.
"The saddle is perfectly comfortable, Rurik. The problem isn't the leather. It's you, spending three weeks drinking at the outpost and then complaining when you have to sit for six hours without an oak bench with a felt backrest."
"Three weeks working, you absent-minded bastard!" the dwarf retorted, shaking his beard. "Someone had to check the iron ingots the merchants from Karnazad left for the company. And if I had a cup or two while counting the bars, it was merely to keep my throat clear of warehouse dust."
Akel watched the dust rise beneath his horse's hooves. He did not intervene immediately. There was something strange and almost forgotten in that exchange of jabs—a living routine he had not witnessed for four months, yet one that seemed untouched by time.
"How many ingots were missing?" Akel asked casually, his usual dry tone unchanged.
Rurik blinked, caught off guard by the intervention, and scratched the tip of his reddened nose.
"Two. Maybe three. But they were small ingots. They barely counted toward the total weight."
"Then four were missing," Bjorn concluded, raising an eyebrow slightly.
"They were small!" the dwarf insisted, scowling. "And I bet that empty-headed Pirk dropped them into the ditch while they were unloading the wagon. That boy has butter for hands. Give him an anvil and, within ten steps, he'll find a loose stone, trip over his own feet, and break the iron handle."
"It was Perk who unloaded the iron," Bjorn corrected in his calm, patient voice. "Pirk was helping Perta carry the flour sacks to the supply tent."
Rurik waved his thick hand dismissively.
"Twins. They wear the same patched boots, have the same dead-fish faces, and make the same idiotic mistakes. Blaming one or the other leads to the same practical result."
Akel felt the corner of his mouth twitch involuntarily. He gently pulled on the reins to avoid a depression in the ground.
"And Perta?" Akel asked. "Does she still threaten both of them with the wooden spoon if they try to touch the stew before it's ready?"
"Threaten is a very mild word," Bjorn said with a quiet laugh, adjusting his cloak over his broad shoulder. "Last week Atreus tried to pull out a piece of smoked rib before the stew had boiled. She hit the top of his helmet so hard with the iron ladle that the man was dizzy for half an hour. And you know Atreus. The man can knock down a calf with a headbutt and laugh about it, but when Perta raises that iron ladle, he backs away like a frightened dog."
"Sensible man," Rurik commented, adjusting the straps of his leather breastplate. "Food is sacred territory. Especially when the alternative is chewing the dried meat Borges buys from the traders. That crap tastes like salted boot leather."
"Borges buys whatever fits the budget Selena sets," Bjorn reminded him, his eyes focused on a bend in the road ahead where two merchant wagons were traveling. "If it were up to you, the company would spend half its wages on black Karnazad beer and smoked cheese, and by the end of the month we wouldn't even have enough silver to pay the entry fees at Umbria's gates."
"And we'd be much happier until the gates closed," the dwarf retorted without hesitation.
Akel kept his eyes on the horizon. The mention of those names brought faces, voices, and smells to the surface with almost disconcerting clarity.
Selena sitting at the campaign's folding table, the tip of her quill suspended above the ledgers as she glared someone down with a sharp and precise remark; Rodric standing directly behind her, rubbing his graying temple with the stern patience of a man who had to keep twenty armed mercenaries under control without drawing his sword; Ian cleaning his blade while pretending not to hear his father's tactical instructions; Elbi, the elf with rigid posture and noiseless steps, organizing contracts with the cold efficiency of someone who despised human chaos; and Alpe, sitting in a distant corner of the campfire, carving pieces of wood with an empty gaze fixed on the smoke, still carrying the weight of the daughter fever had taken from him years before.
All of it was still there. Existing day after day.
For four months, Akel had awakened in damp clearings, abandoned barns, and cheap inn rooms where the only presence at dawn had been the breathing of his horse and the weight of his runed sword against his travel pack. In the solitude of the wilderness, it was easy to forget that the world was not limited to bloody contracts, monster carcasses, and the clinking of coins counted across a Guild counter.
"And Almir?" Akel asked after a moment, his voice sounding almost too casual.
Bjorn turned toward him, his pale eyes studying Akel's posture with that calm attention that never seemed intrusive, yet rarely allowed anything to escape notice.
"The old man is still the same. Complaining that the new recruits don't know how to hold a blade without cutting their own heels and challenging anyone brave enough to enter the training ring."
"And did anyone dare?" Akel raised an eyebrow.
"Atreus tried at the beginning of the month," Rurik said, releasing a rough laugh that sent several crows flying from the bushes along the roadside. "The brute thought size and weight would solve everything. Old Almir took three steps back, used the guard of his wooden sword to hook his ankle, and threw the giant face-first into the dirt before the boy could land a second strike. Then he sat on his chest and asked for a mug of cider to celebrate."
"And Carina?" Bjorn added, his voice dropping half an octave, without any forced teasing, placing the words down as casually as setting a glass on a table. "She was the only one who managed to strike her father in the ribs twice in the same bout. The old man spent the entire afternoon telling anyone who would listen that he had taught her everything she knew, but spent the entire night applying vinegar compresses to his ribs to hide the bruising."
Akel did not answer immediately. His left hand remained still upon the horse's mane, feeling the animal's warmth through the leather of his glove.
The memory of Carina came without embellishment. It came in practical details: her brown hair tied carelessly before the morning training sessions, her steady breathing as she wiped the sweat from her forehead with her forearm, and the direct, unembellished way she spoke to him. Carina never hesitated before his crimson eyes, nor lowered her voice when the other mercenaries took a step back.
She simply sat nearby. Sometimes to sharpen a dagger, sometimes to complain about the cheap wine Borges brought back from the fairs, or simply to remain silent while he dismantled and cleaned the tack, never demanding that unnecessary words fill the air.
"You think too much before saying anything, Akel," she had told him one night, while the embers of the campfire died between them. "One of these days, the sentence is going to freeze in your throat before it gets out."
He had merely nodded and taken a sip of cold water.
She had laughed. A frank, unrestrained laugh that often eased the tension in the back of his neck for a few moments.
"She asked about you," Bjorn commented, keeping his eyes on the road ahead as though he were merely talking about the weather. "Shortly before we left for Mirior. She wanted to know whether we had heard anything about the contracts you'd taken up north."
"And what did you tell her?" Akel asked.
"That you were alive," Bjorn answered simply. "Because if you were dead, we would have already heard the story of some bizarre creature that required an entire army to bring down after swallowing a stubborn man with black hair."
Rurik snorted, adjusting the wide belt around his belly.
"And she just shrugged and said the camp was too quiet without someone cutting conversations short with two-word answers. But I'll bet three copper coins that she's already repaired the straps on your training rig in the weapons tent."
"You bet too many coins on things you don't understand, Rurik," Akel said firmly, though without harshness.
"I understand people," the dwarf replied, pointing his thick index finger toward Akel's chest. "Your problem, humans, is that you spend half your lives pretending not to see what's right in front of your noses, and the other half complaining when things break. Among dwarves, it's simpler: if you like the steel, you forge it; if you don't, you throw it back into the furnace."
"Not everything in life is made of cast iron," Bjorn observed.
"Thank the ancestors," Rurik grumbled. "If it were, you'd have rusted during your first winter with that habit of yours of thinking before acting."
The conversation continued uphill, shifting between discussions about the southern trade routes, the outrageous prices charged by weaponsmiths in Umbria, and the small everyday disputes of camp life. As the hours passed, the steady rhythm of hooves against the packed earth became almost hypnotic. The tension in Akel's shoulders—that constant, vigilant strain cultivated over months of solitary hunts—began to loosen, dissolving into the warm afternoon air and the familiar sound of voices beside him.
He did not need to watch their rear every thirty paces.
Not here. Not with these two.
When afternoon began to fade, the sky over the hills lost its blue hue and dressed itself in broad bands of amber, copper, and violet. The wind descending from the slopes carried the scent of distant campfires, warmed dust, and the deep, continuous murmur of thousands of people living together in the same space.
The final ascent was steep, bordered by outcroppings of gray stone and low shrubs whose leaves gleamed beneath the slanting light of sunset.
The three horses reached the crest of the hill almost at the same time.
The road ahead stretched down in a gentle descent through a broad, rolling valley, and it was there, bathed in the golden light of the setting sun, that Alfra revealed itself.
Akel gently pulled on the reins.
The horse stopped, releasing a long breath through its nostrils.
The sight was grand, almost overwhelming for someone coming from Mirior's cramped and muddy outskirts. Alfra was not merely a fortress or a fortified trading post; it was a metropolis that seemed to have swallowed the hills upon which it had been built.
First rose the great towers of white and gray stone, thrusting toward the reddening sky like ancient spears driven into the earth. Beneath them, concentric walls of massive masonry embraced the heart of the city, dotted with bastions where the distant reflections of helmets and patrol armor gleamed. But the city had long since spilled beyond the boundaries of its original defenses: entire districts of red-roofed houses, masonry workshops, and wooden warehouses stretched across the outer slopes, forming a dense, living mosaic that seemed to have no end.
Dozens of banners—the heraldic colors of local barons and the pennants of Umbria's merchant guilds—fluttered above the most prominent buildings, stirred by the evening breeze.
Three roads paved with regular stone converged upon the city's great outer gates, crowded with movement: long lines of canvas-covered wagons, formations of mercenary troops, knights wearing aristocratic livery, supply carts, and crowds of pedestrians flowing endlessly in and out.
Even from miles away, the sound of the city rose through the valley like a distant tide—the metallic ringing of smithies, the muffled cries of market criers, the heavy rumble of iron wheels, and the constant murmur of urban life from one of the largest centers on the continent.
Alfra did not rest. It did not close its eyes to the night like the isolated villages of the north.
Bjorn urged his mount forward a few yards, stopping at the edge of the rocky slope. The gentle wind tousled a few strands of his blond hair as he rested one hand on the saddle pommel, gazing down at the vastness below with solemn calm.
Rurik let out a long, low whistle, folding his thick arms across his chest and leaning forward.
"Missed this place, hunter?"
Akel remained still.
His crimson eyes reflected the golden, blood-red glow of the sun touching Alfra's stone walls. His pupils, adjusting to the light slowly dying on the horizon, remained fixed on the secondary camp visible east of the city walls—where small dark canvas tents and thin columns of gray smoke marked the territory occupied by the free mercenary companies.
The Levis were there.
Four months had passed since the last time he had stood before those gates. Four months since he had decided to put distance between himself and the only people who had taken him in after the blood and snow of the Order had destroyed everything he knew.
Now he was back.
But as twilight spread across the valleys of Umbria and the first lanterns began to dot the distant towers like sparks in the fading light, Akel felt a faint tightness in the pit of his stomach.
He did not know whether he was returning to the same place he had left behind.
Or to something entirely different.