Chapter 6 – The Weight of Ruin
The frost never left the stones of Blackhold Keep. Even in the brittle morning light, its walls sweated cold, as though the land itself rejected the castle's resurrection.
Lorien stood atop the northward battlements, a worn wool cloak draped over his shoulders. The highland wind tugged at the dark strands of his hair, and his eyes, ringed with the sleepless red of long nights, watched the slow plod of carts crawling up the path from Thornvale. Supplies. Firewood, salted pork, crushed stone, barley. Barely enough to scrape through the next two weeks.
Below, in the half-cleared courtyard, his soldiers moved with the rigid choreography of men pretending they were still an army. Scattered drills. Muffled orders. Scarred veterans commanding ash-smeared peasants with old hunting spears and rusting mail. He didn't blame them. Not yet. Discipline came second to survival, and they were failing at both.
He turned as footsteps echoed behind him. Captain Merad, the interim quartermaster and his oldest surviving retainer, appeared with a stiff salute and a grim face.
"You're early," Lorien said.
"I waited until the report could be confirmed."
Lorien raised an eyebrow. "That bad?"
Merad nodded. "We lost a second cart in the pass. Sabotaged. Bolts loosened. Rolled straight into the ravine."
"Saboteurs?"
"Or incompetence. Or hunger. The drivers were ours—Thornvale men. Their families haven't eaten meat in ten days."
Lorien exhaled. Cold vapor spilled from his mouth.
"We hang the guilty," he said, "after we find a way to feed the rest. What else?"
Merad hesitated.
"The greycloaks," he said, using the name their men had coined for the barbarians who haunted the edges of the marches. "They're watching us. More than before. Our scouts found seven cairns built overnight outside the eastern woods. No tracks. Just stone markers and feather talismans."
Lorien's jaw tensed. The barbarians had their own languages, their own signs. The cairns meant something. And they had not appeared this close in months.
"They're testing our response," he murmured. "Watching how we react."
Merad said nothing. The silence stretched, filled only by the faint clangor of distant drills below.
"How long until Thornvale's road is snowbound?" Lorien asked.
"Two weeks. Less if the wind turns."
"Then we double the foraging patrols."
"With respect, my lord, they're already stretched thin."
"Then stretch them thinner."
Lorien turned his gaze back to the horizon. In the far distance, the grey line of the frozen hills cut across the morning like a knife. Somewhere beyond them, the barbarians gathered. And within his keep, cold, disease, and the slow collapse of morale festered like a rot.
The empire had left him here to die. That much was certain. Five years of exile, forgotten letters, and supply trains that never came. Even the Ember Guard had gone silent, and their silence was worse than threats.
Yet he had not died.
Not in the first winter, when the keep had been roofless and his men nearly burned the library for warmth.
Not in the second, when the mountain tribes had breached the southern wall, and he'd killed their chieftain with a spear taken from a fallen horseman.
And not in the third, when the fever had taken half the garrison—including two of his officers—and he'd dug graves himself because none of the others could stand.
He had not died. And that, he thought, was reason enough to keep going.
"Summon the officers," Lorien said quietly. "Tonight."
"All of them?"
"All who remain."
Merad hesitated. "Even—?"
"Yes. Even the ones who drink too much and speak too loudly when they think I've left the room."
The captain gave a tight nod and left.
---
They gathered in the old war chamber—once a storage vault beneath Blackhold, now cleared and reinforced. A crude map of the Ashen Marches had been scratched into the wall, and iron sconces burned low over the corners.
Only seven officers remained. Lorien studied them as they arrived. Most wore patched armor. One was missing a hand. Another limped from a healed arrow wound. He trusted three. Tolerated two. And knew the last two were one harsh winter away from desertion or treachery.
He didn't care.
"We're out of time," he said without preamble. "We will not survive another winter like this—not if we remain passive."
The officers shifted. One cleared his throat. Another grunted.
"Three options remain," Lorien continued. "We either die waiting for the capital to remember we exist, break apart and scatter into the mountains... or rebuild. Here. Now."
No one spoke.
"We need food. Stone. Firewood. Tools. More than the Thornvale caravans can bring."
He pointed to the northeast section of the map.
"The Greywood Vale is still contested. There are ruined villages along the tree line—abandoned in the last purge. If we take them, fortify them, and station our best scouts there, we can open new routes for hunting and lumber."
Captain Verric, his youngest officer, leaned forward. "You mean to provoke the greycloaks?"
"They're already watching us," Lorien replied. "Better to face them on ground we choose."
"And if they attack in numbers?"
"Then we show them we are not the same empire that burned their temples and left."
Another pause.
"And who do you send, my lord?" Verric asked. "We are not full legions."
"No," Lorien said. "We are not. But we're better."
That night, under moonlight and frost, the first strike team of Ashen Vanguard departed from Blackhold. They wore black leather reinforced with scaled iron. Their faces were masked in soot and cloth. They carried torches and axes, not swords. The march to Greywood Vale had begun.
---
Lorien remained in the courtyard long after they left.
The sky above the Ashen Marches was a frozen sea of stars, sharper than anywhere else in the empire. He looked at them now, hand resting lightly on the hilt of his sword.
"Let them come," he whispered, not to the stars, but to the cold, and the ghosts buried beneath the keep. "Let them send more cold, more barbarians, more silence from Vesdil."
He did not speak promises aloud. Promises were for those who expected others to remember them.
He made plans.