The wind on the causeway was a living thing, a howling entity that tore at cloaks and tugged at balance. It filled the chasm between William and Harald with its voice, making words into weapons that had to be shouted to be heard. Twenty paces of naked, windswept stone separated the two kings, a bridge between two worlds, two claims, two definitions of power.
Harald's axe was a masterpiece of northern forge-work, its bearded blade catching the weak light like a slice of dirty ice. He held it not with rage, but with a terrible, focused certainty. He was a man who had sailed storm-wracked seas and taken fortified towns. A narrow bridge was just another obstacle to be crossed.
"King of Ledgers!" Harald's voice boomed, deeper than the wind's moan. "You hide behind wolves and trickery! You lack the courage to meet a king blade-to-blade on open ground!" His Common Tongue was accented but clear, learned for statecraft, not just for war cries.
William held his simpler longsword low and ready. The cold air burned his lungs. "There is no open ground, Harald. There is only the ground you stand on. And you stand on a path to something that is not yours."
"Everything is taken!" Harald roared, taking a step forward. The causeway seemed to tremble. "Your father took my family's birthright with fire and sword! I take it back with the same! Your sister' hand will seal what blood demands!"
Behind Harald, his remaining Norsemen shuffled, a bristling hedge of shields and spears trapped on the stone ribbon. Behind William, Morwen's clansmen and his own soldiers formed an unbreakable wall of pointed death. Any fight here would be a meat grinder, a slaughter where advantage meant little and the drop meant everything.
"Elyse is not a seal," William shouted back. "She is a person. And she chooses her own storms." He glanced past Harald, to the Pillar. The last of the stranded climbers had been picked off by Elyse's archers. The entrance to Aerie's Hold was empty. She was watching. He could feel it.
Harald followed his gaze, his face twisting. The sight of his dead, elite warriors, broken on the rock below the Hold, was a physical wound. His perfect plan—the guided approach, the swift climb, the decisive marriage—lay in ruins, shattered by mountain savages and a woman who shot arrows from a cliff.
"Then I will take her choice away!" Harald snarled. "I will reduce that eyrie to rubble and pull her from the ashes! And you…" He hefted the axe. "You will be the first stone."
He charged.
It was not a blind rush. It was a controlled, powerful surge, each foot placement sure on the treacherous stone. The width of the causeway meant William could not evade side-to-side. He could only meet the charge or be driven back into his own men.
William planted his feet, his mind emptying of everything but the geometry of violence. The wind, Harald's speed, the length of the axe, the reach of his sword—it was the most vital, terrifying arithmetic of his life. He did not move forward. He waited.
Harald closed the distance, his axe coming up in a murderous arc meant to split William from shoulder to hip. At the last possible moment, William dropped to one knee, not away from the blow, but inside its arc. The massive axe-head whistled over his head, the wind of its passage stirring his hair. Before Harald could recover, William lunged upward, his sword point aiming for the Norse king's exposed midsection.
Harald was shockingly fast. He twisted, letting the sword tip score a line across his chainmail, and brought the axe haft down in a brutal smash toward William's kneeling form. William rolled sideways, the haft cracking against the stone where his knee had been. Chips of rock flew.
They disengaged for a heartbeat, both breathing heavily, circling on the narrow stage. Below them, the chasm yawned, a mouth hungry for kings. The wind screamed its approval.
Harald attacked again, a series of controlled, powerful chops and swings, each one capable of shearing through mail and bone. William gave ground, step by careful step, parrying, deflecting, using his lighter blade's speed to turn the heavier axe away. The clash of steel on steel was a sharp, discordant clang lost in the gale. Each impact numbed William's arms. Harald was stronger, fueled by a lifetime of war and a towering, frustrated ambition.
William felt his heel slip near the edge. A spray of pebbles vanished into the void. He had no more room to retreat. Harald saw it, a grim smile touching his lips. He raised the axe for a final, two-handed overhead blow that would crush any block.
In that frozen second, William did not raise his sword to parry. He looked past Harald's shoulder and shouted, with all the breath he had left, "NOW!"
It was a bluff. But Harald, his senses heightened by combat, his mind poisoned by the day's tricks and whispers, hesitated. His eyes flickered, just for an instant, toward his own men behind him, fearing another rockfall, another ghost-whisper, another stab in the back.
It was the opening William needed. He didn't attack Harald's body. He attacked his foundation. He dropped low again and swept his leg in a savage arc, not at Harald, but at the base of Harald's leading foot, kicking not the man, but the small, loose stones beneath his boot.
Harald's footing, already precarious on the wind-lashed stone, betrayed him. The stones skittered. His weight shifted. The mighty overhead blow faltered, the axe swinging off-balance. With a roar of pure effort, William surged upward, inside Harald's guard, and slammed his shoulder into the Norse king's chest.
Harald staggered back, arms windmilling for balance. For one eternal moment, he teetered on the very edge of the causeway, the chasm gaping behind him. His axe fell from his grip, tumbling end over end into the depths without a sound.
He did not fall. With a desperate, cat-like twist, he threw himself forward, crashing onto the stone of the causeway at William's feet. He was disarmed, beaten, but alive.
Silence, save for the wind. William stood over him, his sword point hovering at the base of Harald's neck. The Norse king lay prone, breathing in great, ragged gasps, his eyes fixed on the grey sky. His men watched, frozen. William's men watched, poised.
Kill him. The arithmetic was clear. Slay the rival claimant. Decapitate the invasion. End the saga here and now. It was what his father would have done. It was what any secure king would do.
William looked from Harald to the Pillar. Elyse had emerged again from the entrance. She stood, small and distant, her hand shading her eyes. Watching her brother. He looked down at the conquered king, not at the symbol, but at the man: a warrior-king who had sailed across a sea, woven alliances, and almost changed the fate of a nation. A man who had, in his own way, believed in his right.
"Get up," William said, his voice hoarse.
Harald turned his head, his eyes blazing with defiant shame. "Finish it. Give me a king's death, if you have the stomach for it."
"Your death serves me less than your life," William said, lowering his sword. The words felt alien as he spoke them. This was not in the ledger. "If I kill you, you become a martyr. Your sons, your jarls, they will raise a hundred longships to avenge you. The war never ends. It becomes a blood feud sung for generations."
Harald slowly pushed himself to his knees. "What then? Chains and a cage? To be paraded through your streets?"
"No." William took a step back, opening the space between them. "You came for a kingdom. You failed. But you are still a king of your people. You will take your remaining men, and you will walk back the way you came. You will return to your ships at Riverton. And you will sail away."
A murmur of disbelief, then outrage, rippled through the Norsemen. One of Harald's captains shouted, "A trick!"
"It is no trick," William said, raising his voice to address them all. "You will leave. But these are my terms. You abandon Riverton. You take your Purifier allies with you—Silas and all who will follow. They are your problem now. You renounce, publicly and in writing, any claim to this throne, now and for all your line. And you swear a ten-year peace, bound by whatever gods you hold holy."
Harald stared, comprehension dawning. William was not offering mercy. He was offering a bargain. A way to salvage something from the wreckage. A ten-year peace was time to rebuild his own standing, to deal with the fanatics he'd partnered with, to avoid the utter humiliation of dying for nothing. But the cost was the dream. The crown.
"And if I refuse?" Harald asked, his voice thick.
William gestured to the walls of spears at both ends of the bridge. "Then you and all your men die here, today. Your saga ends with a whimper on a mountaintop. Your name becomes a cautionary tale about overreach."
Harald looked at his men, saw their grim, trapped faces. He looked at the empty axe-hands of his dead climbers. He looked, finally, at the distant, unattainable figure of Elyse on the Pillar. The fight drained from his shoulders, replaced by the heavy weight of realism. He was, above all, a pragmatist. It was why he had used the Purifiers. It was why he sought a marriage. He knew when the calculation had turned.
Slowly, stiffly, he got to his feet. He met William's gaze, and for the first time, there was something like a grim respect there, the acknowledgment of one predator for another.
"A ten-year peace," Harald said, the words tasting like ash. "The Riverlands abandoned. The claim renounced. The fanatics… we will take the fanatics." The last part was said with a curl of his lip. Silas had outlived his usefulness.
William nodded. "Your weapons stay. You walk out with your lives and your honor as warriors, but not as conquerors."
It was a delicate balance. Disarming them completely might provoke a final, desperate fight. Letting them keep side-arms was a risk, but it preserved the fiction of a negotiated withdrawal, not a total surrender. It allowed Harald to save face enough to enforce the peace on his own people.
Harald turned to his men and barked an order in Norse. Reluctantly, they began to lay down their primary weapons—spears, axes, bows—in a pile on the causeway. They kept their knives and seaxes.
"The causeway is yours," William said, and signaled his own men to pull back from the entrance, creating a corridor off the stone bridge. Harald, back straight, led his diminished company off the deadly span and onto the solid ground of the main cliff. They passed through the gauntlet of William's and Morwen's warriors in a tense, silent procession, their eyes fixed ahead, their world shrunk to the path of retreat.
Morwen came to stand beside William, her expression unreadable. "You let the bear go, Stone King. He will lick his wounds and remember the one who spared him. That is a dangerous memory."
"It is," William agreed, watching the last Norseman disappear down the trail. "But a dead bear makes every other bear your eternal enemy. A living, defeated bear might just steer clear of your den in the future. For a time."
"For a time," Morwen echoed, skepticism in her voice. But she did not argue. The wolf understood survival, and this was a survival move, not a victorious one.
With the immediate threat gone, the focus shifted to the Pillar. The causeway was now clear. William looked across at Aerie's Hold. Elyse was gone from the entrance.
"I must cross," he said to Morwen.
She shrugged. "Your bridge. Your sister. We will secure this side and sweep the trails. The wolves have feasted enough on Norse steel today."
William sheathed his sword and stepped onto the causeway alone. The wind still howled, but it felt different now, carrying the scent of resolution instead of impending blood. The crossing was the longest twenty paces of his life. He did not look down.
On the other side, he found the beginning of the climbing route, now a mess of shattered rock, broken ropes, and dark stains. He picked his way carefully to the base of the Pillar and found a narrow, rough-hewn staircase hidden in a fissure—the secret, easier access known only to the family. He took it, his legs burning with fatigue.
The entrance to Aerie's Hold was a door of aged, iron-bound oak, set deep into the rock. It swung open before he could knock.
Elyse stood there. She looked older, the mountain air and solitude having etched fine lines around her eyes that hadn't been there before. She wore a practical dress of grey wool, a fur mantle around her shoulders. Her gaze was calm, appraising, and utterly weary.
"William," she said. No title. Just his name.
"Elyse." He stepped inside. The Hold was a single, large chamber, carved from the living rock, furnished with simple, elegant pieces that had been brought up piece by piece over generations. A fire crackled in a hearth cut into the wall. "You are safe."
"I was never in danger from him," she said, moving to tend the fire. "Not in the way you think. His guides would never have found the staircase. My archers would have picked off his climbers long before they reached this door. He would have battered himself against this rock until he gave up or you arrived." She turned, her eyes meeting his. "The danger was always what his coming meant. The war. The claim. The fracturing of everything."
William sat heavily on a stool by the fire. The adrenaline was leaching away, leaving a hollow exhaustion. "He is gone. He has agreed to leave, to renounce the claim, to take the Purifiers with him."
Elyse's eyebrows rose. "You let him go."
"I did."
"Why?"
He told her. The calculation of martyrdom, of endless war, of the pragmatic value of a living, bound enemy versus a dead, inspirational one. He told her of the mountain clans, of Ferdinand's cold neutrality, of the merchant council. He laid the ugly, patchwork reality of his kingship bare before her.
She listened, her face impassive. When he finished, she said, "So the kingdom is saved by a web of bargains, threats, and temporary alliances. There is no victory. Only a precarious, purchased peace."
"Yes."
"And what of me,William? Was I just another variable in your ledger? A piece to be offered to Ferdinand in marriage to buy his spears?"
He flinched. "I… proposed it. In desperation. It was a move on the board. It was not my wish."
"But it was your calculation," she said softly. There was no accusation in her tone, only a profound sadness. "You have become the king you had to be. The Forge King, they will call you. The king who remade the realm in fire and deal-making. But what is left of my brother? The man who climbed mountains for the joy of it? Who fixed broken things?"
The question hung in the firelit air. William had no answer. That man felt like a ghost, a story about someone else.
"I do not blame you," Elyse continued, turning to look out the narrow window at the vast, plunging view. "The world forced your hand. But I cannot live in that world of ledgers and loans and political wives. Not anymore."
A cold dread, deeper than any he'd felt facing Harald, settled in William's gut. "What are you saying?"
"I am leaving, William. Not to a convent. Not to another lord's keep." She turned back, her eyes shining with a resolved light. "Greyport. The merchant republic. They have… inquired. Through back channels. They value stability. They see a ruler in the mountains who understands trade and pragmatism. They have offered asylum, and a role. An advisor on northern affairs. A liaison."
It was a bolt from the blue. Greyport, the viper at his eastern border, talking to his sister. Ferdinand's contact. But of course. They played all sides. And they saw in Elyse what William had once been: a figure of integrity, of legitimacy, now alienated from the hard new kingdom. She would be a valuable asset, a potential puppet, or a genuine bridge.
"You cannot," he said, the words choked. "It is a nest of vipers. They will use you against me."
"Or I will use them to moderate you," she replied. "To ensure your 'calculations' do not completely consume the soul of this land. Someone must remember what we were supposed to be, William. It seems I am the last one who can."
He saw then that her mind was made up. The solitude, the attack, his own cold bargains—they had pushed her to this. She was choosing a different kind of exile, a proactive one. She would become a power in her own right, beyond his reach, a permanent, living critique of his reign.
"Will you at least… wait?" he asked, the king gone from his voice, only the brother remaining. "Until the Norsemen are truly gone? Until the peace is settled?"
She studied him for a long moment, then gave a slow nod. "For a time. I will witness the end of this chapter. But do not ask me to stay, William. That path is closed."
He left Aerie's Hold as the afternoon shadows grew long, the weight on his shoulders heavier than any crown. He had won the day. He had turned back the invasion, outmaneuvered a rival king, secured a peace. But the cost was written in the resigned eyes of his sister and the knowledge that his kingdom was held together by promises as fragile as the ice on a high tarn.
He recrossed the causeway to where Morwen waited. The clansmen were already stripping the Norse dead of anything valuable, a grisly but practical task.
"Well?" Morwen asked.
"The immediate threat is over," William said, his voice flat. "Harald retreats. We return to Blackcliff."
"And your sister?"
William looked back at the silent Pillar, its entrance now a dark, unblinking eye. "She remains. For now."
Morwen seemed to understand what he did not say. She clapped him on the shoulder, a gesture surprisingly free of mockery. "Come, Stone King. The wolves have done their work. Now we must see what the carrion-birds have done in our absence." She meant the political vultures in his capital.
The descent from the Sunless Peaks felt like a return to a more complicated, more treacherous world than the one of simple survival they had just inhabited. William had faced a beast of fire and blood and conquered it with a combination of wolf-cunning and cold bargain. But the beasts that waited in Blackcliff—the Dukes, the merchants, the silent, judging populace—were of a different kind. Their teeth were made of whispers, their claws of gold and precedent. And he was returning to them not with a glorious victory, but with a messy, morally ambiguous peace bought with the soul of his reign and the impending departure of his only family.
The climb of kingship, he realized, had no summit. There was only a series of ever-narrower, ever-more-exposed ridges, with the wind of consequence always threatening to pluck him into the abyss. The ledger was still open. The next entries would be in the ink of diplomacy, reconstruction, and a lonely, hollow crown. The Forge King had survived the fire. Now he had to live with the metal he had shaped.