The seventh?bell horn sheared through Zeltzerheim’s dawn like steel on slate and, to my surprise, I surfaced from sleep clean—no deck pitching beneath me, no sand rasping my lungs. A bastion infirmary cot is no featherbed, yet it is level and silent, and I would have blessed it as holy ground had anyone been listening.

  I dressed with the deliberate reverence of a man rebuilding his armour: dust brushed from my long blue courier coat, cuffs straightened, the Free League seal aligned over my heart as though that thin disk of bronze could still command worlds. When the battered mirror finally offered me a face that belonged behind a ledger, I allowed myself one curt nod. Breakfast—black bread, olives, a miraculous sliver of pork—vanished before the chill had left the stone floor.

  Mikel found me cinching my satchel. His hair dripped from the pump, hat crushed between nervous fingers.

  “Morning report, Factor,” he said.

  “No one burned, no one turned, and the Blemmye have already hauled half the garrison upstairs?”

  “Near enough,” he admitted, handing over a slate. “Touched slept quiet. Villagers rotated kitchen

  watch. And Captain Grave says the east yard hardly smells of oxen anymore.”

  “How many hands restless?” I asked, ignoring the slate.

  “All of them. They want orders—or at least rumours worth sharpening for.”

  “Then today we stop staring at clouds and start looking for neighbours.”

  The command walk skirts the bastion’s star?wall, wide enough for four men who trust each other. I arrived to find Grave already planted there, cloak cracking in the terrace wind. Lieutenant Gelt, hovered at his shoulder—hawk?nosed, armour more patch than plate. Issak and Sul, the Blemmyes names I had finally learned, waited with unnerving stillness, ration slates dangling from cords like priestly tablets.

  Grave jabbed a chalk map he’d scratched straight into the parapet. “Seven villages sit inside a day’s ride. Standing, they need warning; fallen, they need counting. Light horse, twelve. Two Blemmye runners. Out at dawn, back by second dusk. I ride point.”

  Mikel spoke before I could. “Captain, who does the talking when steel isn’t welcome?”

  Grave’s gaze clipped to me. “Our factor.”

  I cleared my throat, boots suddenly feeling far too clean for any real road. “Me? A?rough rider? I keep ledgers! I don’t charge on horseback. I certainly can?not—”

  “You certainly will,” Grave cut in, velvet laid over gravel. “Your voice got you through yesterday; your face will get us through tomorrow.”

  He leaned close enough for me to taste black?leaf on his breath. “Think of it as another audit, only these figures might carry musket.”

  I tried again. “Captain, a fortnight ago my greatest hazard was a spilled inkwell—”

  Gelt’s hawk?eyes pinned me. “Ride, or ride?along, Factor,” he said, voice flat as whetstone. “The saddle tutors quick once the shooting starts.”

  Grave straightened, slipping into something almost cordial for the onlookers. “Quills and sabres, Allemand—each has its edge. Out there we need both. Consider this your probationary commission.”

  Gelt’s grin re?emerged, all blade. “You parleyed a bastion yesterday; villagers’ll be kittens by comparison.”

  Issak stepped forward, voice deeper than the stone beneath us. “We run with the horses. The hills still dream of storm; we must wake sooner.” Grave nodded—necessity has no pride.

  The armoury reeked of tallow and stale powder. Gelt unclasped a velvet box: a brace of League wheel?locks, gilt dulled by campaign grime. I cradled one; it weighed twice what memory had promised. I remembered salon lawns, saints?shaped targets, applause polite as drizzle—never consequence.

  “I shot for wagers,” I muttered.

  “Unpaid wagers grow heavy,” Gelt replied, shoving a powder?horn into my belt. “Half?dram prime, full charge if you expect armour. Do not drop the doghead, it’ll chew your thumb off.”

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  Mikel thrust a rolled map at me. “Routes, wells, elevation. Debtor hamlets circled—they hide better. Grave says it is their only copy, so keep it in one piece, factor.”

  My thought lingered on the gun in my hands. They bring a “fractor”, and ready him to shoot debtors? “What use will I have of this?” I inquired Gelt.

  “Allemand, you think we expect you to carry justice in the land by yourself?” He took a step closer, as if to give his words better aim. “We will be the fire. Your piece is to make sure your only protection are not merely arithmetic and soiled britches.”

  We mustered in the south yard: twelve lean horses, mail flashing; Issak and Sul pacing beside them. Grave swung astride last, clasped my wrist instead of saluting. “East is memory and promise,” he said beneath his breath. “Let’s learn whose.”

  The portcullis groaned; sunlight struck fresh limewash, painting the wall a blade?white glare. Hooves clattered, then thundered onto packed earth. I exhaled—dust, olive smoke, the iron tang of choices—and kicked forward.

  Villages ahead might already be graves. Rumours out here walk on two legs. Debts out here demand payment in more than coin. The pistol at my hip, polished bright as doubt, grew heavier with every beat of the ride.

  The horse I’m given is a rangy roan with a scar along the withers—nothing regal, everything reliable. I swing up awkwardly, muscle memory protesting, then settling. I have not kept a proper seat in years, but the smell of sweat and tack tugs ancient lessons to the surface. A few practice circles in the yard remind both mount and rider that we can still negotiate.

  Issak and Sul keep to the verge, pacing the column in long, tireless surges. They run with backs straight, arms relaxed, covering ground our horses labour to hold.

  We ride east, dust whipping off the chaparral, the bastion already a memory and the unknown widening ahead like a wound.

  The first hour stretches my thighs until they hum. The roan’s gait is smoother than memory, but riding muscle has its own calendar, and mine thinks it is still in port—soft, indolent, unready. I let the reins drape long, trusting the beast to match the column’s rhythm, and concentrate on the land. Every sense feels sharpened after so many days battered and wounded: crushed sage rising through the dust, sun?glare flashing like knives from shale seams, the dry click of tiny stones ricocheting under iron shoes.

  When Grave reins back to trot, I draw level with him. Wind hauls our cloaks westward; his voice has to lean hard against it.

  “Uldorf first,” he growls. “Frost killed half their barley last winter. They’ll have lost men to the pass taxes—thirty fighters if we’re lucky. But there’s a stone spring that never fails. We refill skins there or we waste a day looping north.”

  “And if the spring’s fouled?” I ask. Private dread keeps my tone level. “Then we drink brine?”

  “Then we will make do on mud,” he answers, eyes never leaving the road. “Next hamlet, Brekkel—wood stockade, goats without number, a smith who can weld a barrel band with his eyes shut. He owes me two favours and a debt of iron.”

  Gelt rides three lengths behind us, close enough to overhear. He spits a pith of leaf, then calls out: “Brekkel’s debt is hunger, not gratitude. They’ll beg grain before they trade shot.”

  Grave only smiles—tight, satisfied, a black?tooth grin. “Hunger is leverage. Tally it.”

  I feel the shift in him: captain becoming quartermaster, general, perhaps executioner, all forged from the same scarcity. Numbers become bodies; bodies become resolve. The more he lists, the heavier the air feels—like every furlong we cover drags a fresh wagon of expectation behind it.

  I breathe through the ache in my seat bones and look sideways. Issak passes us again, legs pumping in an effortless lope. He runs as if the earth itself craves his footfalls, as if weight has become a rumour. A line of dried blood freckles his shoulder where rags have chafed, yet his expression stays serene. Sul keeps farther out, scouting the crest of every ridge, pausing to taste the wind like a hound.

  “To see them in cuirass and buff,” Mikel mutters from my other flank—he has edged his mare beside me, voice low so Grave won’t hear. “Imagine wooden wheels rolling behind those two and twenty more like them—all steel, no rope.”

  “Imagine the faces in the capitals,” I answer, “seeing their dock labour march in polished mail. They’d choke on the difference between fear and respect.”

  I glance back once more—the bastion is gone now, swallowed by a low crest. Only the dust plume tells me we still belong to something. An unreasonable part of me wants the walls back in sight; an even more unreasonable part is relieved we have truly left, because now the only course is forward. No place for second thoughts when the tracks behind are already fading.

  The pace lifts again. Hooves hit harder ground, each strike carrying a hollow drumbeat as if the valley hides a vault beneath its crust. Sweat darkens my sleeves; dust cakes my tongue. Overhead, a lone vulture spirals, patient as debt.

  Grave resumes the litany. “Mairsholm: shallow well, barley sheds, a crooked mill—if it still stands. They’ll contribute little but gossip. Yet a single rumour is better than a blind ride.”

  “And if they’re burned?” I ask.

  “Then we mark the ashes and keep counting.”

  Simple calculation, spoken like scripture.

  By midday the sun is a white coin hammered flat. The roan’s hide twitches under biting flies; my knees creak every time I rise in the stirrups to ease his back. I catch myself humming an anthem from academy days—something jaunty about frontier promise. The irony tastes bitter; promise is the first thing we traded away when the storm cut our sea?roads.

  We pause at a narrow arroyo, horses drinking from a thin thread of water. Issak kneels beside the stream, cupping his palms but never lowering his gaze—eyes roaming the scrub as though threat might sprout from stone. Sul jogs back down the line, reports a fallen oak across the main track ahead—fresh split, no tool marks. Grave’s jaw sets; lightning?felled trees are a new motif out here, one he mistrusts.

  While men piss and tighten girths, I unroll Mikel’s map on my saddle and trace the ink circles. Nine miles to Uldorf as the crow flies—twelve by the goat?track we must stay on. The pistol at my belt knocks the hilt against my ribs when I turn. I flex my hand, remembering salon afternoons and powder singeing silk cuffs; here the stakes run hotter than fashion.

  The column mounts up. I draw a last lungful of shade, taste the loam and distant smoke, then heel the roan forward into sunlight that stings like fresh brandy on a cut. Every hoofbeat drums one message through the soles of my feet: debt, hunger, hope, dread—repeat.

  And somewhere, threading through it all, the imagined clang of armour on Blemmye shoulders—future or fantasy, I do not know, but the echo quickens my pulse.