Dawn in the fen was not a triumph of light over dark, but a reluctant seepage of grey into black. The mist clung with tenacious fingers, turning the world into a monochrome study of damp and despair. The fire had guttered to ashes, and the cold had sunk into their bones. But it was the sound that truly announced the morning, a sound that froze the blood more effectively than the chill.
Birdsong.
But not the cheerful, territorial chirping of sparrows or the melodic call of a thrush. This was a dissonant, rasping chorus. It came from unseen perches in the skeletal trees—a cacophony of sharp clicks, dry rattles, and mournful, wailing whistles that rose and fell in a rhythm that felt intrinsically wrong. It was a dirge. A song of death for the fading night, a welcome for a day that promised only more damp misery. Kestrel, wrapping her damp cloak tighter, spat into the mud. "Carrion-crows and bog-larks. They're not singing for the sun. They're singing for us. They think we're already dead."
Arrion ignored the ominous choir. His focus was on Briar. The great warhorse stood with his head lowered, a faint tremor running through his massive flanks. The shallow cut from the Fen-Lurker's barb was no longer just an angry red line; it was a blazing, swollen welt, the skin around it taut and shiny, leaking a thin, yellowish pus. Infection had set in with a vicious, supernatural speed. Briar's breathing was laboured, and when Arrion touched his neck, the skin was hot and dry. The horse was fighting, but the fen's poison was winning.
Kestrel came to stand beside him, her sharp face etched with a grim understanding. "Lurker venom. It rots from the inside. He'll be dead by noon if the fever doesn't take him first. We can't move him like this."
A cold, helpless fury clawed at Arrion's throat. Briar was more than a mount; he was a companion of years, a last, steadfast link to the life before the shadows. To lose him here, to the slow seep of this cursed place, was an insult he could not bear.
His hand went to the leather cord around his neck, to the warm, living thorn gifted by the Verdant King. In the places where the Glutton's breath is thick, it may anchor you to life. The King's words echoed. This poison was a cousin to the blight—a corruption of nature. The thorn was pure, defiant life.
It was a risk. The King had warned it was an eye as well as an anchor. Using its power here, in this blighted landscape, would be like lighting a beacon in the dark.
He looked at Briar's suffering eyes, at the trust still flickering in their depths. He made his choice.
"Stand back," he told Kestrel, his voice gruff.
He knelt before Briar, placing one hand on the fevered wound, the other clutching the thorn. He closed his eyes, not in prayer, but in focus. He thought of the deep, green heart of the Weald. He thought of the Verdant King's breath, of moss growing on sun-warmed stone, of clean sap rising in an unblemished tree. He poured that memory, that feeling of untainted growth, through the conduit of his will and into the thorn.
The thorn reacted.
It grew warm, then hot in his palm, not burning, but pulsing with a vibrant, emerald light that seeped between his fingers. A low hum filled the air, a note so deep it vibrated in the peat beneath them, momentarily silencing the death-birds. The light flowed down his arm and into his hand on Briar's wound.
Where the sickly yellow pus met the light, it hissed and evaporated into harmless steam. The angry inflammation receded like a tide pulling back, the swollen flesh smoothing, the vivid red fading to a healthy pink, and then to the dark black of Briar's hide, leaving only a faint, silvery scar. Briar shuddered, a great, full-body tremor, and then let out a deep, relieved snort. He lifted his head, his eyes clear, nuzzling Arrion's shoulder with renewed vigour. The fever was broken. The poison was purged.
The emerald light from the thorn faded, and the deep hum ceased. Arrion slumped, a wave of exhaustion washing over him. Using the thorn wasn't a physical drain, but a spiritual one—it felt like he'd channeled a river through a single crack in a dam.
Kestrel stared, her earlier assessment of the sword now compounded by this new, blatant magic. "You're just full of surprises, aren't you?" she breathed, but her awe was cut short by a new, more immediate dread. The death-birds had fallen utterly silent again.
The sudden quiet was more terrifying than their song.
Then, from the surrounding fog, came new sounds. Not the heavy squelch of the Lurker, but the soft, almost inaudible pads of multiple feet on wet ground. A low, collective growl, not from one throat, but from several, a rumble that seemed to come from the fog itself. It was a sound of pure, coordinated hunger.
Arrion was on his feet, Nightshade already in hand. "To the stockade! Now!"
They barely made it. As Kestrel scrambled over their crude wall and Arrion turned to follow, the predators emerged from the mist.
They were like lions, if lions had been forged in the fen's deepest, oldest nightmares. Their bodies were sleek and muscular, covered in short, damp fur the colour of rotting peat. But they had six legs—two powerful pairs at the front for running and pouncing, and a slightly smaller, more dextrous pair just behind the shoulders, ending in paws with long, gripping digits. Their heads were feline, but their muzzles were elongated, filled with needle-like teeth designed for holding struggling prey. And their eyes… they glowed with a sickly, phosphorescent green, the same colour as the will-o'-the-wisps that sometimes danced over stagnant pools. Fen-Stalkers. Pack hunters drawn to surges of life-energy, the natural counter-balance to the Lurker's decay. The thorn's burst of vitality had been a dinner bell.
There were five of them. They fanned out with a terrifying, intelligent coordination, surrounding the hummock. They didn't charge the stockade immediately. They paced, their six-legged gait unnervingly fluid, their green eyes fixed on the two humans and the horse. Their growls were a conversation of anticipation.
Briar, restored to health, stamped and snorted, his battle-training asserting itself. He wouldn't bolt, but he was a large target.
"Can your sword do to them what it did to the slug?" Kestrel asked, her voice tight. She had her boar-tusk dagger in one hand and a heavy, fire-hardened stake in the other.
"I don't know," Arrion admitted. "They're flesh and blood, not magical conglomerates. But they're fast. And smart."
As if to prove his point, one of the Stalkers on the left feinted a charge towards Briar, drawing Arrion's attention. The moment he shifted his weight, two others on the right launched themselves at the stockade. They didn't try to break the logs; they used their rear gripping paws to scramble up them with terrifying agility, hooking over the top.
Arrion was there. Nightshade swept out in a horizontal arc. The lead Stalker tried to twist in mid-air, but the blade caught it across the ribs. It screamed—a sound like a rabbit being torn apart—and fell back, a deep gash weeping dark blood. But the second landed inside the enclosure, right in front of Kestrel.
It lunged for her throat. She didn't try to match its strength. She dropped, sliding under its belly, and with a vicious, upward thrust, drove her boar-tusk dagger into its soft underbelly. The creature yowled, twisting to bite at her, but she was already rolling away, coming up with her stake ready.
Arrion finished it with a downward chop to the neck before it could recover. But the distraction cost them. The other three Stalkers were now all scrambling at different points of the stockade. One went for Briar again, who met it with a devastating kick that shattered its shoulder with a audible crack. But another got a grip on the logs near Arrion, and the third, the wounded one, was circling, looking for an opening.
It was a losing fight. They were pinned, and the pack's tactics were whittling them down.
Arrion made a snap decision. He couldn't fight them all from inside this trap. He needed to break their coordination.
"Kestrel! The moment I move, you and Briar head due east! Don't stop!"
"What are you—?" she began, but he was already moving.
Instead of defending, he attacked. He vaulted over the stockade, away from the main pack, landing directly in front of the wounded, circling Stalker. It snarled, backing up, its green eyes wide with pain and fury. The other Stalkers, confused by this sudden, aggressive move from the prey, hesitated for a critical second.
Arrion didn't engage the wounded one. He turned his back to it—a supreme act of trust in his own speed—and charged the two Stalkers who were still focused on the stockade.
He was a whirlwind of water-grey steel. He moved not with finesse, but with overwhelming, thunderous force, the nascent power of his Adept rank fuelling his limbs. He didn't aim to kill instantly; he aimed to maim, to cause panic. A sweeping cut severed the back leg of one Stalker. A reverse stroke opened a deep gash along the flank of another. Their coordinated growls turned to shrieks of pain and surprise.
As he'd hoped, the wounded Stalker he'd left behind, seeing an opening, forgot its injury and leaped at his exposed back.
Arrion spun, dropping to one knee. He didn't bring his sword up to parry. He lifted his left arm, clad in the black iron of his father's vambrace.
The Stalker's jaws clamped down on the metal with a horrific screech. Teeth snapped. The creature's green eyes went wide with shock and agony.
Arrion drove Nightshade up under its jaw, through its palate, and into its brain. It died instantly.
He shoved the corpse off his arm and rose. The two he'd wounded were limping away, their hunt ruined. The one with the broken shoulder was already vanishing into the mist. The last, seeing its pack broken, gave a final, frustrated snarl and melted back into the grey.
Silence returned, broken only by Arrion's ragged breathing and the soft, terrified nicker from Briar. He looked back at the stockade. Kestrel was still there, her weapons held ready, her face pale.
"I said run east," he grunted, wiping black Stalker blood from his sword.
"Didn't seem like you needed the distraction," she shot back, but the bravado was forced. She was looking at the three dead monsters, at the ease with which he'd shattered their attack. "Remind me never to try to steal from you again."
They didn't linger. The thorn's beacon and the blood would draw more than Stalkers. They quickly broke camp, Arrion shouldering their wet gear, Kestrel leading a now-healthy but skittish Briar. They moved east, into the heart of the fen, the dirge of the death-birds starting up again behind them, a grim soundtrack to their flight.
The Verdant King's gift had saved Briar, but it had also painted a target on their backs in a land that hated life. They had traded a slow death for a frantic, hunted dash. The hills had eyes, the fens had teeth and now, glowing green eyes. And Arrion had just announced their presence to all of them.