Dawn broke over the broken hills with the red glare of rifle-fire. The wind carried with it the smell of gun-oil and of pine, and the old trade road that had once carted copper and apples now marched with soldiers—booted, mud-caked, silent.
Three of them stood at the roadside just outside the hamlet of Three-Forks: Sergeant Yoren Hale, Corporal Lira Voss, and Private Fen Attal. Color of winter slate decorated their cloaks, stitched with the silver sigil of the War-Elders: an open gauntlet clutching a flame. They had not rested in three nights of travel. The horses were sweating and trembling.
Opposite the road, a woman with a threadbare shawl drew water from the cracked village well. Her hair once braided tight for battle now hung loose, lightly sun-streaked, and past her waist. A patched wool dress clung to her thin frame; her boots were the only things that still looked soldier-made, but kitchen twine had been used to re-stitch the toes.
Yoren dismounted first. He grunted slightly; his voice came out sounding hoarser than he had imagined.
"My lady! Arin Vale."
The bucket rope creaked in her hands. She did not turn.
"My lady! Arin Vale," he said again, louder. "We are sent by the Circle of War-Elders. They want you back."
Setting the bucket down on the stone rim, water sloshed over and sullied the dust. When at last she turned away to face them, her eyes held the same storm-grays every veteran of the Northern Reaches had long remembered—eyes that once commanded shield-walls to hold when the frost-lances came. But now dark half-moons lingered below them, and the rigid lines around her mouth softened with some gentleness, almost something fearful.
"I was told the war was finished," Arin said; her voice was low, yet the soldiers rallied, standing straighter as if the words had cracked like a whip.
Lira advanced with open palms. "The truce broke at High Summer's Eve. The Iron Coast lords crossed the river at five points. They need commanders who know the northern passes. No one ever held them like you did at Red Gorge."
Arin looked past them, toward the crooked row of cottages. Smoke rose from the chimney of the last one—her chimney. A man's silhouette moved behind the oiled-paper window, stoking the morning fire. She felt the warmth of that small life reach her even here at the well, and her shoulders relaxed further.
"I am married now," she said. The words came out steady, as though she were reciting an oath. "His name is Thom. He was a miller's son before the mill burned. He has a cough the surgeons can't mend. My place is beside him, warming broth, mending his shirts, counting his heartbeats while he sleeps."
Fen—barely twenty, still carrying his grandmother's prayer beads in one pocket—shifted uncomfortably. "But the elders—"
"The elders," Arin cut in, "once told me the war would end if I gave them five more winters. Then two more. Then one. Well, my winters are mine to give now." She lifted the bucket. "Tell them Arin Vale died at Red Gorge. Tell them whoever came home was only her shadow, and her shadow belongs to Thom."
The soldiers exchanged glances. Protocol demanded to press harder, reminding her of oaths sealed in blood and salt. But Yoren stood on the same wall where Arin had once dragged a dying standard-bearer to safety with arrows rattling down like hail. He could see her torchlight catching his helmet, turning her into something half-legend and half-lantern.
One step back he took, his boots creaking. "If we return without you, they'll send others."
"I know," Arin said. "Let them come. They'll find me at the hearth, not the ramparts."
Somewhere inside the cottage, a kettle began to sing. It sounded thin and ordinary and utterly unbreakable.
Yoren saluted—not the stiff parade-ground gesture, but the old salute of the shield-line, fist over heart, eyes lowered. Lira and Fen followed. When they looked up again, Arin was already walking away, bucket swaying, hem of her dress brushing the dust like a banner of truce.
Behind her, the soldiers mounted. They turned south, toward the war that waited like an open grave. Yet for a long moment none put heel to flank; they listened to the soft thud of Arin's boots on the path, to the kettle's rising note, to the small, impossible promise that somewhere, for someone, the fighting could actually be over.