The dawn that followed was a dull, gray bruise across the sky.
The cold sank deeper into the bones of the Marches, thick and slow, like a corpse refusing to rot.
Calder Vane stood alone outside the crumbling millhouse, Dog's Hunger slung across his back, breath misting in short, even bursts.
His eyes were on the valley below — the ridge where Thornhollow's banners still floated in sullen defiance.
The enemy hadn't broken.
And Calder hadn't bought enough time.
He flexed his fingers against the frozen grip of his blade, the old fractures in his knuckles grinding together like stones.
The loss gnawed at him — not for Thann Veyr, not for whatever bright, foolish future the boy had once dreamed.
No.
The loss was colder, heavier.
Manpower.
Steel.
Breath.
Another sword gone.
Another shield lost.
Another body that wouldn't stand in the breach when the wolves came clawing again.
Every death thinned their odds by inches.
And in the Marches, inches were life.
Or extinction.
He hadn't wanted to camp at the millhouse.
He hadn't trusted the sagging beams, the rotted foundations, the open sightlines.
But the gamble had seemed necessary:
Throw Thornhollow's men into disarray.
Break their momentum.
Buy breathing room to regroup.
And now Thann was dead.
Saelen was nursing a gut wound that would slow her blade hand.
Half the others were battered, bloodied, colder in spirit than body.
A poor trade.
Behind Calder, the warband stirred.
Quiet.
Bleeding.
Reduced.
Branwen moved among them, checking bindings, murmuring low reassurances he didn't believe.
Varrick sat alone on a broken grindstone, whetting the edge of his axe with long, slow strokes, his eyes sharp and calculating.
Varrick hadn't mourned Thann.
Hadn't spared a look for the dead boy's body.
Calder didn't blame him.
Mourning was for men who had something left to lose.
Varrick understood the truth:
The living owed the dead nothing but survival.
Calder turned back toward the ruins.
His warband — what was left of it — needed a new plan.
A new direction.
Staying in the millhouse was death by inches.
Staying anywhere was death now.
They needed to move.
Strike.
Bleed the enemy harder, deeper.
Force Thornhollow to overreach — or drown him in his own losses.
He called them together with a sharp bark.
No ceremony.
No rallying cry.
Just grim faces gathering around the dying embers of the fire.
"Supply lines east," Calder said, voice cutting through the brittle air.
"Thin. Lightly guarded. If we take them, Thornhollow bleeds."
Varrick's mouth twitched — a smile, almost, but without humor.
Saelen grunted, pressing a hand against her stitched flank.
Branwen's face stayed blank — the fire that had once burned there guttered to stubborn coals.
No one argued.
Not because they agreed.
Because there was no other choice.
Before they moved, Calder crouched beside Thann's body.
It had stiffened during the night, frost riming the edges of his torn cloak.
Calder stared at the boy for a long, silent moment.
No prayers.
No words.
Then he stripped the shield from Thann's limp grip and passed it to another soldier.
Iron was too rare to leave rotting with the dead.
The body stayed where it lay.
Let the crows have him.
They left the millhouse before the sun cleared the horizon, moving in staggered groups across the broken fields.
Boots crunching through thin ice.
Armor muffled under stolen cloaks.
The Marches swallowed their tracks almost before they were made.
Ahead, the eastern supply lines crawled sluggishly through a shallow valley — wagons laden with winter stores, guarded by a handful of mounted outriders and shivering footmen too young or too broken to hold a proper line.
Calder grunted low under his breath.
This wasn't a battle.
It was an execution waiting to happen.
He split them into two prongs:
Varrick leading the left — a hammer to break the guards' spine.
Calder taking the right — a dagger to open their throats.
Branwen stayed with Calder.
Saelen limped after Varrick, sword dragging a line through the frost.
No glory here.
Only necessity.
They hit the wagons at a dead sprint.
The attack was a scalpel, not a hammer.
Calder moved through the chaos like a ghost with a butcher's bill to collect.
Dog's Hunger snapped out once, twice — severing a wrist, splitting a helm.
The guards barely had time to scream before death found them.
Branwen struck at Calder's side — no longer tentative, no longer slow.
He fought with tight, vicious movements, stabbing low, driving his blade between armor gaps instead of swinging for showy kills.
Good.
The Marches had taught him properly now.
Varrick's side hit harder, cruder.
He barreled through the defenders like a bull in a slaughterhouse, axe carving brutal arcs that sent blood steaming against the frozen ground.
He fought like a man who expected betrayal at any moment — killing faster, harder, as if every corpse under his boots was one less blade at his own back.
Saelen kept pace, barely. Her frame slamming aside foot soldiers, her battered sword punching through shields without slowing.
The wagons' guards tried to rally once — a brief, desperate stand.
Calder shattered it.
He smashed through their thin line, Dog's Hunger cleaving downward in a brutal arc that split shield and arm in a single blow.
Branwen followed close, stabbing low into a guard's exposed thigh, dropping him with a scream.
The survivors broke and ran.
Few made it far.
Varrick's crew chased them down mercilessly — no prisoners, no mercy.
Only the ugly business of survival.
By the time the sun dragged itself overhead, the supply column was a wreck.
Dead men sprawled in frozen drifts.
Wagons burned, the scent of scorched grain and salted meat filling the air.
The warband looted quickly, stripping usable gear, stuffing what supplies they could carry into battered sacks and makeshift sleds.
Calder moved among them, methodical, cold.
Checking wounds.
Counting heads.
Calculating how much longer they could bleed before the marrow finally gave out.
At the base of one overturned wagon, Calder found a wounded Thornhollow knight — silver circlet half-crushed into the bloody ruin of his brow.
The man looked up at Calder, defiance burning behind broken teeth.
"You're no king," the knight spat, voice raw with hate.
"You're nothing but a wolf gnawing at dead bones."
Calder crouched, studying him the way a butcher studies a carcass for useful cuts.
"I'm not trying to be a king," Calder said, voice low and sure.
"Kings rot just like the rest."
He drove his knife into the knight's throat and moved on before the body hit the ground.
Later, they camped in a hollow between two dead hills, the fires hidden, the wounded silent.
Saelen stitched her own side without a flinch.
Branwen sat apart again, gaze distant, the blood still drying on his sword.
Varrick prowled the edges of the camp, axe resting across his shoulders, eyes flicking from face to face like he was already weighing how many of them would still be breathing come morning.
Calder cleaned Dog's Hunger in the snow, wiping away the blood, the dirt, the echoes.
It was all the same.
The same ruin.
The same endless march toward nowhere.
Branwen approached as the stars began to cut through the night sky, harsh and sharp above the Marches.
"You killed them all," he said quietly.
Not judgment.
Not horror.
Just fact.
Observation.
Calder didn't bother looking up.
"They would've done the same."
Branwen crouched beside him, the cold seeping into the battered joints of his armor.
"You really believe there's no way back from this?"
Calder paused.
For a moment, the only sound was the whisper of snow against dying embers.
Then he spoke, voice soft but unyielding.
"I don't believe in roads.
Only graves.
And I plan to be the one digging, not rotting."
Branwen said nothing more.
But Calder saw it:
The final cracks running spiderweb-thin across the boy's soul.
Not broken yet.
Not completely.
But it was coming.
Inevitable.
They would march at first light.
The Marches demanded it.
Thornhollow's armies demanded it.
The crows overhead — black against the bruised sky, waiting, circling — demanded it.
Calder Vane — the Stonewolf — tightened his cloak against the cold, sheathed Dog's Hunger, and closed his eyes for a few stolen hours.
He dreamed of nothing but snow, and blood, and the endless gnashing of unseen teeth.