CHAPTER 5 – Blackhold in the Ash
Wind clawed at the stone, a ceaseless wail in the high battlements of Blackhold Keep.
Winter had not yet fallen, but the northern winds had already begun their siege. Ash drifted across the frost-hardened earth from the charred remains of a treeline, felled and torched to clear sightlines for archers.
Lorien stood above it all, cloaked in roughened wolf-hide, watching his men drill in the yard below.
Not men. Soldiers. Or soon to be.
A hundred of them marched in bone-pale formation across the frost-bitten mud, axes slung, spears braced. Their breath came in visible bursts, but they kept in rhythm, every heel-strike timed to the beat of the drum—a deep, warlike cadence echoing off ruined walls.
They were the fifth cohort of his Ashen Vanguard.
Raw recruits culled from three villages and two broken tribes. Eighty-seven had survived the first rite. Fourteen had not.
Lorien's eyes were hard as he watched the drillmaster scream at a recruit who'd faltered in the turn.
"Form before strength. Discipline before valor," Lorien muttered. "Or they die in the first snow."
A voice behind him replied. "They will die regardless."
Lorien didn't turn. He knew the voice.
Captain Sarin, commander of the Emberborn.
She stood at his shoulder, wrapped in black leathers, ash-colored scarf trailing behind her. Pale hair cut short, eyes cold as the Keep's stone. Her role was clear—to see what others could not, and strike when others would not.
"I'm not training them to survive," Lorien said, finally. "I'm training them to make others die first."
She didn't smile, but the edge of her mouth twitched.
"Poetic."
"No," he said. "Practical."
---
Blackhold Keep was not a castle. Not anymore.
Once a garrison of eight thousand, it had been abandoned after the Second Northern Rebellion. Walls cracked. Inner courtyards collapsed. Waterlines ruptured in the siege. But Lorien had taken it anyway.
There was power in ruins, if you made them stand.
He'd rebuilt three watchtowers, dredged the southern cisterns, turned one hall into a forge and the other into a barracks. Everything was sparse. Everything functioned. He allowed no murals. No heraldry.
Only the ash-burned banner above the main gate: a gray flame on black.
The Warden's mark.
---
They descended the tower stairs. The halls of Blackhold were narrow, bitterly cold, lit by oil-fed sconces and the occasional ember-lamp—his mother's design, a technique known only to a few.
Outside the mess hall, a courier awaited him.
Northern-born, hollow-eyed, stitched with scarred tribal ink that had been half-burned off. Kneeling, he offered up a parchment without speaking.
Lorien took it.
The wax bore the sigil of Thornvale.
"Bandits?" Sarin asked.
"No," Lorien said, eyes scanning the coded marks. "Barbarians. From the Frostspine. Southward movement. Unseasonal."
"How many?"
"Unknown. But enough to burn two grain carts and gut a scout patrol."
Sarin's expression didn't shift, but he adjusted her scarf.
"They test the walls," she said.
"They want to know if Blackhold still bleeds."
---
By nightfall, the cohort had completed their drills. Two recruits collapsed. One was dragged off, limbs spasming from cold-crack and strain. The other rose slowly, shaking.
Lorien stood before them.
"You've survived the first step," he said, voice even. "That doesn't make you soldiers. That makes you useful clay."
No one spoke.
"Some of you were bandits. Some were beaten farmers. Others, disgraced sons of nobles who thought exile would be gentler than execution. It won't be."
He paced.
"This is the Ashen March. There is no capital. No court. Only stone and ruin and the enemies who think we've already died."
He stopped. Looked at each one.
"You'll train harder than any legionnaire. Fight sooner than any border conscript. And when the barbarians come, you won't retreat. You'll burn their chieftains in their own tents and take their spears for kindling."
The cohort didn't cheer. They stood, silent, chests rising.
Lorien nodded once. "Rest. At dawn, you run the Ridge Trial."
Groans echoed, faint and stifled.
He let them linger.
Then he walked away.
---
That night, in his chamber above the forge hall, Lorien unfolded a map.
Hand-drawn. Ink smudged from use. It showed five provinces—the shattered northern belt of the Wesidian Empire.
Blackhold. Thornvale. Greywatch. The Ravenspine Hills. And beyond them, the Frostspine tribes.
He placed three stones on the border. Then, with care, added a fourth.
It represented the warband gathering near the Ridge.
He marked it in red.
---
Sarin entered quietly.
"No word from the capital," she said.
Lorien didn't look up.
"They're watching," he said. "But not ready to act. Let them sleep."
"You're not concerned?"
He smiled, thinly.
"They've already forgotten me. That's the best time to build."
She watched him a moment, then stepped forward.
"I received a report," she said. "One of ours spotted a new standard flying near the Greywatch River. Tribal. But with a southern crest sewn in."
He looked up sharply.
"Foreign coin?"
"Or foreign promises."
He exhaled. "It begins."
---
Later, alone, he sat by the coals.
He didn't sleep. Not anymore. Not easily.
Too many nights burned into memory. The exile. The ride north. The winter that took sixty of his first hundred men.
He remembered his father's last words to him.
"You will die out there, and no one will mourn it."
But Lorien hadn't died.
He'd endured.
And in the silence of Blackhold, as the wind howled through broken towers and the recruits shivered in their bunks, the bastard prince smiled.
Because winter was coming again.
And this time, he was ready.