The trail dipped beyond the boundary posts, and the last light caught in the orchard trees below us. White blossom crowded the branches. Fallen petals lay bruised in the grass, browned where rain and passing hooves had pressed them into the earth.
Oren pointed with the butt of his spear. “There. Don’t step on it.”
I stopped with my boot raised. A narrow track ran along the bank, hidden beneath nettles and dead grass. The stems leaned inward, bent at wolf height. Beside them, the mud held three sets of prints.
“More than one,” I said.
“Unless the same wolf has learned to walk sideways,” Oren replied. “In which case we’ve got a more interesting problem.”
Bram glanced at him. “You’d complain about an interesting problem.”
“Only if it came near the inn.”
Kade crouched at the edge of the trail. His fingers hovered over the prints without touching them. “How many?”
I moved my eyes along the bank. The marks vanished where the grass thickened, then appeared again beside a shallow drainage ditch. Another paw print showed on the far side, its edges sharp.
“At least four,” I said. “Maybe five. They’re using the ditch to stay out of sight.”
“Hungry ones,” Oren said. He came nearer, keeping his spear angled down. “The rabbits went thin after the rain. Farm dogs have been penned at night, too. Wolves learn the easy roads faster than men do.”
“The orchard has goats,” Perin said.
“Had goats,” Oren corrected. “Old Hask drove them back before noon. One of them still thinks it’s a wolf. Bites anything that reaches for its feed.”
Perin’s mouth tightened. “That explains the missing hens.”
“It explains the surviving hens,” Oren said.
A laugh tried to rise in me and came out as a breath through my nose. The sound seemed too loud afterward. I scanned the hedge again, searching for movement instead of merely admiring the signs. Somewhere beyond the thorn wall, a branch gave a soft scrape.
I wanted Kade to see that I’d heard it. I wanted him to turn and find me already prepared, the one man in the patrol who noticed danger before it showed its teeth. The wanting made my shoulders creep forward.
Kade’s hand caught my sleeve.
“Stay in the line.”
“I heard something.”
“So did the hedge.”
He released me and pointed with two fingers. “Bram, right side. Perin, stay behind Oren. Edrin, you’re with me. Don’t chase anything into cover.”
My pride took the order like a slap, which was childish and therefore stung twice. I settled my weight beneath me and drew my sword only halfway, keeping the scabbard from catching on the thorn branches.
We advanced by steps. Kade took the center of the path. I kept just behind his right shoulder, close to the old nicks along his blade without fouling his swing. Bram moved along the field side while Oren and Perin watched the ditch.
The orchard breathed around us in ordinary ways. Leaves rustled. A thrush burst from a tree and flew low over the grass. From Brookhaven came the faint clatter of a cart returning late, followed by a dog barking twice and then losing interest.
Another patch of grass lay flattened near the ditch. Gray fur snagged on a bramble. Beneath it, the earth had been churned where something had lain waiting.
Oren saw it at the same time. “They’re bedding here.”
Kade raised his fist.
We stopped.
My mouth had gone dry. The smell reached me then, rank and warm beneath the crushed nettles, carrying hunger, wet fur, and the sour reek of an animal that had spent too long without a proper kill. All my bright ideas about danger had left room for a clean blade and a brave expression. None had included that smell crawling into my throat.
Something shifted in the ditch.
Kade lowered his fist and drew.
The hedge burst apart beside me. A gray wolf came through at arm’s length, jaws open, thorns snapping back from its shoulders as it lunged for my chest.
I got my sword free.
Not cleanly. The scabbard caught, the blade scraped leather, and the wolf struck before I could bring it around. Its weight hit my shoulder and spun me half sideways. Teeth snapped where my throat had been.
I drove my elbow into its neck. The wolf twisted, hot breath washing my cheek, and I shoved the hilt up beneath its jaw. Kade’s sword flashed past my ear. He cut once, close and economical, and the animal dropped against my boots.
“Back!” he shouted.
The hedge erupted again.
A second wolf burst from the ditch at Bram. Bram swung the broken strap like a club, caught it across the muzzle, and bought himself half a heartbeat. Kade stepped between them. His blade took the wolf across the face, not deep enough to kill, but enough to turn its leap. Bram kicked it hard in the ribs. It landed badly and scrambled into the field.
Then four more came at once.
One seized Perin’s cloak and dragged him to his knees. Another shouldered through the hedge toward Oren. The third vanished beneath the thorn branches, moving low where I could see only the twitch of grass. The fourth broke wide through the grass and circled beyond my right shoulder.
“Perin!”
I moved before Kade could order me not to.
The wolf had its teeth in the shrine cloak, worrying the fabric while Perin clawed at the ground. I reached him in two strides and cut downward. My sword struck behind the animal’s shoulder. The blade lodged. The wolf yelped and released him.
Perin rolled away. I wrenched the sword free, but the motion pulled me out of Kade’s line and opened the space between us.
“Edrin, hold!”
Oren was near the ditch. His spear lay in the trampled grass behind him, the haft snapped where the first rush had caught it.
He had his knife out, but the blade looked pitiful beside the animal rushing him. It was larger than the others, gray along the shoulders and black around the muzzle, with a broad head and legs that seemed too long for its body. A dire wolf, though I had only seen one before, chained behind a merchant’s wagon and made to look harmless by iron.
This one wasn’t harmless.
Oren backed toward the ditch. His heel slipped in the torn grass. He caught himself, raised the knife, and the wolf hit him before I reached them.
There was no warning cry. One moment Oren stood upright, and the next the wolf had him by the upper chest. Its jaws closed. His knife fell point-first into the mud.
I stopped.
Oren’s boots kicked once. His hands struck the animal’s neck. The wolf shook him with a brutal jerk, and then Oren went loose.
“Oren!”
I ran anyway.
The dire wolf dropped him and turned. I saw its eyes, its blood-dark teeth, the torn front of Oren’s coat. I saw all of it too late. My sword came up as the animal sprang.
The impact drove me backward. Its claws raked my jerkin, then found my right leg. Pain burst through my thigh as its teeth tore in below the hip. I heard the ripping before I understood the pain belonged to me.
I struck at its neck. The blow glanced off thick fur. The wolf pulled, and my leg nearly came out from under me.
Kade’s voice cracked across the field. “Knee! Edrin, knee!”
I jammed my free hand against the wolf’s skull and drove my knee into its chest. The animal’s grip shifted. Kade came in from my left, not fast, not wild. He placed his feet, waited for the opening created by my struggle, and cut into the dire wolf’s throat.
Blood struck my hand.
The jaws opened. I fell away, dragging my sword with me, and the wolf collapsed between us.
My right leg folded.
“Stay down,” Kade said.
“Oren’s there.”
“Stay down.”
His sword was already turning toward the hedge.
I looked past him. Perin had crawled behind a low rise beside the ditch. The wolf I’d cut was still moving, dragging one foreleg as it circled toward him. Perin tried to rise. His cloak snagged on a thorn, holding him in place.
Perin pulled at the trapped cloak. The injured wolf circled toward him.
I pushed myself up.
The wound in my right leg opened under my weight. Warmth ran down my boot. I nearly fell, caught the hedge with my left hand, and shouted through my teeth.
Perin was within reach.
I hacked through the thorn branch pinning his cloak. The injured wolf lunged. Perin ducked. I swung from the hip and caught the animal across the muzzle. It recoiled, whining, and Perin tore free.
“Ditch,” I said. “Get low.”
He obeyed without arguing. Sensible man. I had no argument left to offer him.
Behind me, Bram shouted. Steel rang against a snapping jaw. I turned too far, searching for Oren, searching for Kade, searching for some shape that would make the field simple again.
Oren lay beside the ditch.
He didn’t move.
The sight pulled my attention like a hand around the throat. I took one step toward him.
“Edrin!” Kade barked.
A wolf came through the grass at my side. I saw it in time to raise my blade, but not in time to make a proper cut. Steel opened its shoulder. Its body slammed into me anyway, and we went down hard.
My right leg screamed. The wolf snapped at my face. I shoved my forearm across its throat and smelled rot in its breath. Its claws raked my ribs through the leather. I twisted, found the hilt between us, and drove the point upward beneath its jaw.
The animal jerked once and sagged.
For a moment I lay beneath it, unable to breathe. Then Bram hauled it away by the hind legs.
“You alive?” he asked.
“I’m considering it.”
My voice sounded thin. Bram’s face had gone gray beneath the beard, and his left hand was clamped around a bleeding forearm. He glanced toward the ditch.
Kade stood over Perin, sword lowered. The wolf that had attacked him lay dead in the grass. The one from the field was running east, limping hard. Another gray shape vanished through the hedge, branches whipping behind it.
“Four down,” Kade said. “Two gone. Don’t chase them.”
No one did.
The orchard settled around us in broken pieces. Leaves trembled. Apple blossoms drifted from a shaken branch and landed on the blood-dark grass. One white petal stuck to Oren’s sleeve.
I tried to crawl toward him.
Kade caught the back of my jerkin. “No.”
“He might be breathing.”
“He isn’t.”
The words entered me slowly. Oren was dead. His knife still stood point-first in the mud, less than a foot from his open hand.
I reached for him anyway. Kade held me where I was.
Kade crouched beside me and pressed his palm above the tear in my right leg. The pressure made my vision flare white.
“Don’t move,” he said.
“That advice has become tiresome.”
He looked at me. Whatever answer might once have met the joke stayed behind his teeth.
Perin emerged from the ditch on hands and knees. Mud streaked his cloak. He looked at Oren, then away.
“The pack’s gone,” he said.
“Good,” Kade replied.
He took Bram’s broken strap and folded it against my wound. I gripped the grass before he even pulled it tight.
“Wait.”
“No.”
He hauled the leather binding around my thigh. Pain tore through me, hot and immediate, and my fingers dug into the earth. I made a sound I’d have preferred to blame on the wolves.
Kade tied it off, checked the blood soaking through, and pressed once more near the bite.
“You might warn a man,” I said.
“That was the warning.”
My fingers found the pouch at my belt. Dalla’s vial lay inside, whole, and I thought about it the way a man thinks about his last coin. Brookhaven was a mile off and Dalla was in it. Oren had no use for the thing at all. I left it where it was and hated the arithmetic.
My foot tingled. The whole leg throbbed with my heartbeat. Standing had become a foolish ambition, which didn’t stop me from wanting to try.
Kade rose and drew his sword again.
Perin flinched toward the hedge. Bram reached for a weapon he didn’t have, found only the broken strap at his side, and closed his fist around it as if stubbornness might sharpen leather.
Nothing came through the thorns.
“Bram,” Kade said, “you and Perin carry Oren.”
Perin’s mouth tightened. “And Edrin?”
“I’ll get him home.”
Kade returned my sword. My hand closed around the hilt, though I had no strength for another swing. Bram and Perin went to Oren. Together they lifted him from the ditchside grass.
I watched the white apple blossom fall from his sleeve.
Then Kade put my arm over his shoulders, and we started toward Brookhaven.
The East Trail narrowed between the orchard ditch and the bean fields, forcing us into a crooked line. Perin walked backward at Oren’s shoulders while Bram bore the legs. Oren’s heels cleared the ruts by less than a handspan.
I followed on a leg that wanted no part of the journey. Kade kept to my wounded side, close enough to catch me without making an offer of it. He watched the hedges and the eastern rise, his old blade low and ready. Whenever the path dipped, his free hand closed beneath Oren’s shoulder and took some of the weight from Perin without a word.
“Still with us?” he asked.
I nodded. Breath was dearer than pride by then.
Evening gathered beneath the hedges. Gnats turned in the last shafts of gold, and frogs called from the drainage hollow Oren had warned us against. Perin’s boots struck the earth in a steady backward rhythm. Bram breathed through clenched teeth. Between them, Oren swayed with each hurried step, his open hand brushing the heads of roadside grass.
The roofs of Brookhaven rose beyond the fields, thatch and timber catching the last light. Lamplight blinked awake behind windows. Chimney smoke flattened in the cooling air, carrying supper toward us. Someone drove geese between two cottages. A cart rattled home with wheel rims striped in fresh green paint.
All of it looked unbearably ordinary.
A woman at the first cottage looked up from driving geese. The switch fell from her hand.
The eastern boundary posts stood ahead, their carved distances softened by rain and passing hands.
“Get him to Dalla,” Kade said.
“I can walk,” I said.
My right knee buckled before the lie had finished leaving my mouth. Kade caught me beneath the ribs. His shoulder struck mine, hard enough to jar my teeth.
“You can limp,” he said. “That’s different.”
At the first houses, people began to notice us. A woman carrying a basket stopped beside a fence. Two children abandoned a game in the road. Bram kept his eyes on Oren. Perin muttered something beneath his breath and adjusted his grip.
“Don’t let them crowd,” Kade ordered.
He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to. The people nearest us stepped back, and the children were pulled out of the road by their sleeves.
Oren’s body seemed heavier with every yard. I watched Bram’s hands beneath his knees, the leatherworker’s fingers trembling despite the strength in his arms. Perin had gone gray around the mouth. Neither man complained. I wanted to say something useful and found only the old habit of making a joke.
“He’ll be furious about the mud,” I said.
Perin looked at me.
“That’s a poor one,” he said.
“I’m injured.”
“So is the joke.”
It landed badly, or perhaps honestly. I looked away.
At the turn toward the common, a boy saw Oren’s boots and ran ahead of us, shouting for the inn.
Kade’s hand tightened under my arm.
“Keep moving.”
“I am.”
“Then keep doing it.”
Every face turned toward us. One man recognized Oren and took off his cap. The people beside him followed.
I kept trying to find a pace that would bring us home before Oren's name did.
Kade steered me toward the healing room. Bram and Perin came behind with Oren, because Dalla’s was the only door in Brookhaven wide enough to take a bier. I watched them go until the crowd closed around the body and took him from sight.
Then my leg gave another wet, shaking pulse, and Kade dragged me onward.
Dalla’s healing room smelled of boiled linen, crushed lavender, and the sharp spirit she kept in a blue glass bottle. The familiar scent should’ve made the place smaller, safer. Instead, every breath carried me back to the hedgerow, to Oren’s boots dragging through the grass and the sudden weight that had vanished from between Bram and Perin.
“On the table,” Dalla said.
“I’m fond of the floor.”
“The floor doesn’t need tending tonight.” She put her hands on her hips. “Up.”
Kade and Maren got me there between them. My left foot found the stool beside the table; the right leg refused every attempt at dignity. I told it we could argue later and nearly believed myself.
Maren caught my hand. Her fingers were dry from the shop and tight around mine. She didn’t say anything about the blood on my trousers, or the mud on my boots, or the way my breath had gone thin. She only shifted closer when my knee buckled.
“There,” Dalla said. “Let them hold you still.”
“I can hold myself still.”
Kade leaned his weight against my left shoulder. “You couldn’t hold a gate latch still in a storm.”
“That latch was poorly made.”
“The latch had been hanging there thirty years.”
“Then it’d grown careless.”
No one answered. Beyond the half-open door, Oren lay covered on the bier while Perin and Bram waited beside him. Bram shifted once, and the scrape of his boot closed my throat.
Dalla cut away the torn cloth around my thigh and knee. Cold air touched the wound. I looked down once, saw ragged flesh dark with dried blood, and decided the ceiling had more to offer.
She opened the split in my jerkin next. The claw tracks across my ribs were shallow; she cleaned them, bound a strip of linen around my middle, and returned to the leg.
“Look at me,” Dalla said.
“The ceiling’s doing fine.”
“Edrin.”
Her voice had no sharpness in it, which made obedience harder to refuse. I met her eyes. She took the blue bottle from the tray and poured spirits over the wound.
I made a noise that had once belonged to an animal.
Maren’s grip crushed my fingers. Kade’s hand locked on my shoulder. The room narrowed to the sting, the pressure of their hands, and Dalla’s warm palm braced above my knee.
“Breathe,” she said.
“I’m breathing.”
“You’re attempting to murder the air. Try again.”
I dragged in a breath. The spirits ran pink into the basin beneath my leg. Dalla used a strip of clean cloth to work through the torn places, lifting out clots, dirt, and pale strands of fur. Dirt and fur. A wolf, nothing stranger. I watched her find every piece, because looking away made my imagination much worse than the wound.
“Nothing left,” she said at last. “You were lucky.”
“I’ve been told I have a winning nature.”
Kade’s thumb pressed once into my shoulder. “Don’t spend it all at once.”
Dalla dried the skin and placed both hands around the injury. The gold began in her fingers, not bright enough to fill the room, but warm and steady, like sunlight caught beneath the skin. Lines of it moved into the torn flesh. Then the pain changed.
The wound pulled together under her hands. Not gently. Flesh tightened with a force that drove heat through my leg and into my teeth. I tried to jerk away. Kade held me down. Maren’s other hand came to my wrist, and her thumb moved once over my knuckles before she stilled it.
“Stop fighting me,” Dalla said.
“I’m not fighting you. I’m expressing a disagreement.”
“Express it quietly.”
The golden light sank deeper. My back struck the table. I heard Oren’s name outside, muffled by the door, and tried to make another joke. Nothing came.
My fingers closed around Maren’s hand. The sound that escaped me was ugly, and no one mocked it. Dalla worked until the gold faded and the torn flesh lay sealed beneath a red, swollen line. Then the mending took its due. My arms went slack. Dalla glanced at my face and nodded once, as though the collapse belonged to the cure.
She wiped the sweat from her cheek with her wrist, then pressed a thumb beside the new scar. The sealed line blanched and slowly regained its color.
“Tender,” she said. “It’ll be for some time. Keep it clean. No riding today, and no sword drills until morning. If the leg doesn’t hold, you stop.”
“You’ve taken away my finest qualities.”
“I’ve taken away your excuses.” She packed the blue bottle back into its tray. “And the mending spends you, not just me. Whatever the leg saved in weeks, the rest of you pays in being tired. Eat double. Sleep like you mean it. Don’t argue with either.”
Maren reached down and straightened the blanket over my uninjured leg. Her hand remained around mine.
I fumbled for the purse at my belt and pressed it toward Dalla. She caught it without looking.
“We’ll settle this tomorrow.”
“Tonight.”
“Tonight you’ll lie down before you fall down.”
Kade released my shoulder and moved to the bench angled toward the entrance. His bad knee stiffened as he sat, calloused hands resting on his thighs. He watched the door, the window, and the people gathered beyond them.
Dalla left first, wiping the stubborn residue from her fingers as she went. Kade waited until her steps faded, then looked across the room at Perin and Bram.
“Bring him out.”
That was all.
Perin took the front of the bier. Bram took the rear. The covered body rose between them, the cloth pulled smooth except where Oren’s boots made two blunt shapes at the end. I’d watched those boots pick through orchard mud only hours before. One still carried a pale scrape where he’d cleaned it against a stone.
I wanted them to hurry. The wish came mean and immediate, born from some wretched hope that if the door closed behind Oren quickly enough, I wouldn’t have to stand there while his covered body passed from face to face.
Kade gave me no such mercy.
“With us, kid.”
We followed the bier onto the common near the healing room. My right leg moved cleanly, though the new scar tightened with every step. Beneath the healing, it remained tender enough to remind me that sealed wasn’t the same as untouched.
People had gathered without anyone calling them. The Sleeping Badger’s common pot had been carried beside the supper fire when the patrol returned. Its loose lid chimed as broth spat over the rim, but no one had begun the usual argument over whose onion had saved it. Beneath a bench lay the healed boy’s painted wooden bird, one jointed wing still fluttering in the wind. Nobody bent to retrieve it.
Perin and Bram stopped where Kade indicated. Neither lowered the bier until he gave a small nod. Doors stood open around us. Faces filled them.
A woman near the front looked once at the covered body. Her hand closed around the edge of her shawl.
“Who?” she asked.
Kade took one of his long pauses. There was no impatience in it now. He was making certain the name reached everyone.
“Oren Varn,” he said. “He didn’t come back.”
A sound escaped somewhere behind the front row. Not a scream, only a breath that failed halfway out. The woman stepped forward. Perin moved aside to let her reach the bier, and Bram lowered his eyes.
She laid two fingers against the cloth near Oren’s shoulder.
The woman bent over him. Around her, Brookhaven made room.
My mother’s grip closed around my forearm. She didn’t pull me away. Her gray eyes stayed on the bier, and when my weight shifted toward the healing room, her thumb pressed into my sleeve.
“Stay,” Maren said quietly.
So I stayed.
The pot lid kept chiming. The wooden bird worried the ground beneath the bench. Someone finally lifted the pot from the fire, but nobody argued over it and nobody returned to eating.
Perin and Bram waited beside Oren until his people were ready to take him. Kade stood between the gathered town and the eastern road, his old sword still at his side. He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to.
Oren’s people came from the western side of the common with a door-wide litter and a blanket folded over one arm. I stepped back with the others while they lifted him. The woman who had touched the cloth walked beside the bier, her fingers still curled as if they held a piece of it.
Then they carried him away through the road, and the crowd thinned around the empty space he left behind.
My mother stayed until the last footstep faded. She touched my cheek, checked the cloth Dalla had bound over my ribs, and looked toward the healing room.
“Home,” she said.
I tried a smile. It came out crooked. “I’ve had more convincing orders.”
“You’ve had worse faces.”
That was nearly a joke, which made it worse. I wanted her to fuss over me, to drag me indoors, to shrink the whole night beside the kitchen fire. Instead, she glanced at Kade, then back at me.
“Don’t be long,” she said.
She left by the road toward our house. I watched her go until the dark took the gray of her hair, then followed Kade toward the eastern gate.
The watch had already begun its work. Two lamps burned on the gate walk, their flames tugging in the wind. The posts on either side had been doubled, with one man facing the road and another turned toward the houses. A pair of handlers brought the last goats and penned them deeper inside town while a boy chased three stubborn sheep from the verge with a switch.
Nothing about it resembled the orchard. No torn grass. No blood. No body under a blanket. Just men fastening hinges, checking spearheads, and arguing softly over whether the livestock gate had been barred properly.
I leaned against the stonework because standing without leaning had become an argument my leg kept winning. Kade moved along the gate, testing the crossbar, then the smaller side door. His bad knee made him favor one step, but he never let the favor interrupt his hands.
“The next patrol waits until daylight,” he told the watchmen. “Pairs only. No one follows sign into the hedges alone.”
“What if the pack circles back?” one of them asked.
“Then it finds lamps, horns, and more people than it wants.”
He checked the road beyond the gate. The lamps reached only as far as the first ruts. Past that, the trail ran pale beneath the stars.
I kept looking at him, waiting for the words I needed. Perhaps he’d say I’d done what I could. Perhaps he’d say Oren had been too close to the ditch, or that the wolf had come too fast for anyone. I’d have accepted almost any lie if Kade delivered it with enough certainty.
He gave me nothing. His thumb rubbed the scar at the base of his palm while he watched the watchmen work. The silence might’ve been blame. It might’ve been exhaustion. It might only have been Kade paying attention to a gate that needed tending.
“I broke formation,” I said.
“You did.”
My throat tightened. “Perin would’ve been dead if I hadn’t moved.”
“He isn’t.”
That was all. I hated him for making the truth so short.
Kade finally turned toward me. “Go home, kid. Sleep. Report after sunrise.”
“And then?”
“Then we train.”
My leg throbbed under the fresh scar. “You’re serious?”
“I’ve never been funnier.”
I wanted to stay. There were straps to check, lamps to refill, some necessary task waiting if I searched. But work hadn’t saved Oren, and limping beside the gate would only give Kade another injured man to watch.
“After sunrise,” I said.
“After sunrise.”
I pushed away from the stone and took the road home. Behind me, Kade tested the crossbar once, twice, then leaned his weight against it until the timber groaned and held.