They reached the old crossroads when the sky decided to do mood swings: first a stubborn gray, then quick, angry sun, then the kind of rain that makes promises of mud and forgetfulness. The cart wheels hummed like a tired choir; the caravan's breath came in measured puffs. People spoke in low voices now, not because they were scared of being overheard—though that was true—but because they'd learned silence is a kind of armor.
Aras rode at the front, Keen sheathed, a scrap of Lina's ribbon tied to his coat like an emblem of ridiculous bravery. He kept scanning the treeline out of habit and bad training; every rustle could be a leaf or a spear. The girls had already mapped the route with the precision of cartographers who'd learned to love crooked roads. Serane rode beside him, knuckles white where she held the reins; she had that look men used when they were about to do something unnecessarily competent.
"Crossroads here," she said, voice low. "We split. Left is longer but safer—more villages, more eyes. Right is shorter, through the ravine; faster, but prone to ambush."
Aras grinned. "Ambushes make for romantic stories," he said, which was his way of not sounding like he preferred danger.
Lina, who sat with a bundle of blankets and a child that took naps like a political statement, looked between them. "Faster," she said quietly. "We don't want the priests to organize. Let's risk the ravine."
Serane's jaw tightened. "It's a dangerous gamble."
"It's a gamble with bread and boots," Aras countered. "If we buy more time, we buy more lives."
Serane's eyes lingered on the kid who slept in Lina's arms and then on the faces of their caravan. She breathed out and, with the solemnity of a general who knows how to pick the lesser disaster, said, "Ravine. Move fast. Twins on point."
Mara and Fina sprang into their positions with the kind of eager grimness that made them look like toy soldiers come alive. The caravan tightened its formation as they rolled toward the ravine mouth, the trees closing behind them like a curtain being drawn on a stage of terrible taste.
The first arrow hit the cart's side before anyone could count the quiver. It thunked into wood like a punctuation. A shout then—sharp, angry—and men in the black-sun standards spilled from the undergrowth like a bruise opening. The ambush had been waiting for them, as predictable and as cruel as a tax collector.
Aras slapped the reins, and the caravan snapped into rehearsed chaos. The shoemaker shoved kids under a tarp; Matri pushed a bundle of herbs into small hands; Lira began to sing a low, distracting hymn that tangled with the shouts. Serane drew steel with the efficiency of practice; Aras drew the grin that claimed whatever small courage it could borrow.
The fight was messy and beautiful in the way trained chaos can be: Mara and Fina's traps flashed, snaring ankles; Lina, who had learned more than baking, drove a pitchfork with surprising accuracy; the baker heaved a bag of flour into a cloud that turned the world white and made the ambushers cough like embarrassed men. Aras moved through the scene like a story in motion—flash of blade, joke in the mouth, hand caught where it needed catching. Keen rang when it left the scabbard, a silver voice that made a man's spear hesitate.
"Hold the line!" Serane barked. Her voice cut through the rain, and for a sliver of time everyone obeyed like a single creature. She didn't just command; she steadied. That steadiness held them through the worst of the first wave.
But the black-sun riders were organized; they'd come with more than cruelty—there was a deliberate patience to their movement, an intent that smelled like old money and new hatred. They pressed, and a rider with a mean smile and a scar that looked proud led the charge straight at Aras.
"You are the one who mocks the ledger," he growled as his horse slammed into the mud. "You stole what the Light wanted. Return it or die with your charms."
Aras laughed—an ugly, bright sound that worked like a grenade. "I stole a lot of things," he said, and then, because he could not resist, "but I always return the compliments."
The rider lunged. Aras ducked, rolled, and in a motion half-poetic, half-petty, launched himself at the rider's flank with Keen singing. The rider's horse reared. Aras landed, breathed, and found his opponent's eyes. There was a beat—a heartbeat where two men saw the distance between their reasons—and Aras chose not to kill.
"Why are you doing this?" he hissed as they wrestled, rain slicking their clothes.
"For the ledger," the rider spat. "For order. For men who cannot stomach chaos."
Aras shoved him back. "For men who cannot stomach other men living," he said. "And for those who profit from counting."
The rider sneered, and the fight folded into the bigger skirmish. Nearby, Lina found herself facing a younger man with hollow eyes who flinched at her voice. She did not strike. Instead, she spoke words she had learned at the barn: a teacher's way of cutting through fear.
"You don't have to be anger," she told him. "You can be someone who hands someone a loaf."
His face flickered—confusion like sunlight through leaves—and he lowered his spear for a fraction. That fraction was enough for Mara to trap his foot and take him out of the fight without killing him.
The clash thundered on, and then a screeching sound like metal on bone stilled the air. From the ravine's mouth a horn—older and slower than the temple's—blared. The black-sun riders froze as if a command had been barked. In the distance, another line marched: spearmen with the Light's banner, the priests having rallied militia.
The skirmish pivoted into something larger and more dangerous. The caravan was a wedge between two powers that could not be made polite with jokes or bread. The last thing anyone needed was to be caught in the middle when both sides decided they were hungry.
"Plan B," Serane said into Aras' ear, voice a knife folded into velvet. "We draw them aside—make them chase us—and we break toward the river bend. There's an old ford there. We can cross and scatter."
Aras nodded, heart pounding with that peculiar mix of fear and thrill that made him feel ferociously alive. "On three," he said. "One—two—three."
They moved as if rehearsed. The caravan broke like a wave. The shoemaker's boots squealed; the baker shoved more flour into the air to blind; Lira cried the loudest note she had left and it became a signal. Aras led, Serane covering the rear. The river's edge loomed, water black and patient, and then the ford, a narrow throat where only two carts could cross at once.
They reached it with half the riders on their heels and the priests' men closing in. Aras glanced back. A line of ropes and traps lay in the mud—Mara and Fina's last gift. The riders stumbled. Men fell and cursed. In the confusion the caravan spilled across the ford, one cart at a time, the water up to the axles and cold like a new truth.
Aras shoved a cart over the ford and then, with a reckless grin, leapt onto the nearest rider's horse as if it were a stage prop. He drove the beast forward, a white flag in hand not for surrender but for confusion. The riders faltered, and Serane, with the calm of a blade used to the exact cut, held the rear line like a gate.
They made it across, not cleanly, not without loss—a few bruises, a splintered crate, a wagon wheel that would need the shoemaker's particular fury to mend—but alive. On the far bank, soaked and shivering, they breathed like people who'd been given another day.
In the quiet afterward, Lina sat on a crate and pressed her hands to her palms until the tremor left. The children clutched loaves like talismans. The shoemaker checked boots like a priest checking relics. Serane wiped mud from her cheek with an absent, small smile that said what warriors rarely say aloud: we held.
Aras went to Lina and sat beside her, not the theatrical flirt but the man who had just watched people trust him with their lives. "You were brilliant," he said simply.
She shoved a soggy loaf at him. "You were loud," she retorted, which in their language was the same as praise.
Later that night, under a tarp smelling of wet straw and victory, Aras found himself lying awake while others slept. The letter with the black-sun mark burned in his pocket like a thought that would not be quiet. He thought of the rider on the horse—the neat anger in his face—and wondered how many men like that were raised to count instead of care.
Serane woke beside him to check the perimeter and found him staring at the stars. She sat without asking and, after a moment, said, "You could have killed him."
Aras smiled, small and honest. "Killing makes for tidy stories," he said. "We do messy ones."
She looked at him then, not as enemy or lover but as a companion who knew the cost of mercy. For a fraction of a breath, words that wanted to be softer danced on her tongue. "Do you ever think you'll stop stealing?" she asked, voice almost sheepish in the night.
Aras considered. He glanced at Lina's ribbon fluttering in the dark and at Keen's silhouette against his belt. "When the world finds a better way to count kindness," he said. "Until then, we keep borrowing time."
She nodded like someone who'd been hoping for a different answer and then smiled—a small, private thing that hid more than it said. "Borrow carefully," she said.
He promised, in his way, which meant nothing and meant everything: a grin that was also a vow.
Far off, a horn blew—distant, patient, and full of counting. The ledger would keep trying. They would keep finding ways to be messy in its margins.
And they would keep crossing rivers until the world understood how to forgive itself.