The Marches were never truly silent.
Even under the thick, smothering snow, the world groaned — old trees creaking, frozen rivers shifting, crows muttering in the high branches.
Tonight, though, even the land seemed to hold its breath.
Calder Vane sat by the dying fire, Dog's Hunger resting across his knees, slow rhythmic strokes of the whetstone whispering into the frost-heavy dark.
Each scrape marked the seconds until the blade work that would come.
The warband lay huddled in small clusters — not for warmth, but because isolation now meant death.
Old loyalties had frayed into suspicion.
Silent accusations traded over meat, over water, over nothing at all.
There were too many glances.
Too many fingers resting too close to hilts.
Too many whispered words slipping into the snow.
Varrick's campfire burned separately from the others — a quiet, sullen beacon of division.
He had gathered maybe a third of the surviving fighters: men and women too hungry, too scared, or too greedy to gamble their lives on Calder's thin promises of survival.
They sat closer to Varrick now, laughed too loud, sharpened their blades with a kind of mean eagerness that set Calder's teeth on edge.
They weren't preparing for Thornhollow.
They were preparing for Calder.
He could feel it as surely as he felt the ice in his lungs.
Branwen sat near Calder's own dwindling fire, shield across his knees, hands stiff from the cold.
He hadn't spoken much since the last raid.
Not out of shock.
Not anymore.
It was something deeper.
Something quieter.
Disappointment, maybe.
The kind that comes from realizing not even survival earned you loyalty — that men would trade their oaths for a scrap of bread and a lighter load.
Branwen finally spoke, voice low and rough.
"We survived Thornhollow's dogs.
We bled for each other.
And still..."
He trailed off, staring at the flickering flame.
Calder didn't answer immediately.
He scraped the whetstone down Dog's Hunger one more time before speaking.
"They were never loyal to me," Calder said.
"Only to the chance they might live one more night."
Branwen looked up, eyes hollowed out by frost and betrayal alike.
"And when that chance shrinks... they pick new gods."
The fire crackling between them.
The crows overhead circled lower.
The storm was coming.
The knives would be out before the sun rose.
Hours later, the first cracks opened.
It started with quiet movements —Varrick pacing among his circle of traitors, murmuring low, urgent words.
Promises.
Threats.
Dreams of a future that would never come.
And somewhere among them — Orlen and Jasp, a pair of killers who aligned with Varrick early on. Rats that Calder had already marked, but not moved on.
A mistake he would soon regret.
When the break came, it was fast.
One moment, the camp hunched in brittle, frozen misery.
The next, Varrick's roar split the night like a hammer through glass.
"NOW!"
Steel flashed.
Boots tore up snow.
Screams ripped into the still air.
Calder surged to his feet, Dog's Hunger a blur in his hands.
Branwen rose beside him, shield up, sword ready.
The 'loyalists' snapped to arms — no hesitation, no questions.
The traitors charged — a snarling mass of rage and desperation.
In the first mad clash, Calder caught a blade on his shoulder — the mail biting but holding — and drove his elbow into the attacker's throat, sending him sprawling.
Branwen slammed into a traitor with the flat of his shield, following up with a brutal thrust under the ribs.
The camp turned into a writhing pit of violence.
Axes rising and falling.
Boots slipping in blood-slicked snow.
Men dying with wet, gurgling sounds that froze into mist as it left their lungs.
And through it all — unnoticed at first — Orlen and Jasp slipped away.
While the blades clashed and the wolves overhead howled, the two cutthroats melted into the night's edge, packs tight against their backs, blades tucked low, footsteps swallowed by the snow.
They ran not toward safety, but toward Thornhollow.
Toward gold.
Toward betrayal.
They carried with them everything:
Calder's numbers.
Calder's position.
The bleeding fractures Calder had spent weeks trying to hold together.
And no one saw them go.
Not yet.
Back in the camp, Calder fought with grim, cold precision.
Every movement burned through old wounds and older rage.
He wasn't fighting for glory.
Not for hope.
Only for survival.
He found Varrick in the center of the chaos — the eye of the storm.
Axe red to the haft.
Face twisted in something that wasn't quite hate and wasn't quite triumph.
"You're finished, Stonewolf!" Varrick snarled, circling.
"You'll bleed out here with the rest of your fucking ghosts!"
Calder said nothing.
Just shifted his grip on Dog's Hunger.
Waiting.
Measuring.
Varrick charged first — a bull rush, stupid with desperation.
Calder sidestepped, pivoted, and drove his blade through Varrick's thigh — deep, crippling.
Varrick roared, swinging wildly — Calder ducked under the blow and slammed the pommel of his sword into the back of Varrick's skull.
The man dropped to his knees, dazed.
"All your noise, and you still die on your knees," Calder said, voice flat as the frozen ground.
He stepped behind Varrick and drove Dog's Hunger clean through his spine.
The man twitched once.
Twice.
Then sagged face-first into the snow.
When it was over, Calder stood amid the wreckage, blood dripping from his blade, breath steaming in short, controlled bursts.
The dead sprawled around him like broken dolls.
The living stood in battered knots, hollow-eyed and silent.
No victors.
Only survivors.
Branwen approached slowly, shield dragging in the bloodied snow, face unreadable.
He opened his mouth, hesitated, then just shook his head.
Words were useless here.
Only the dead spoke now.
They gathered the wounded.
Tended what they could.
Stripped the corpses of gear.
Calder moved among them without speaking.
Checking.
Counting.
There were fewer still now.
Far fewer.
And somewhere in the cold, Orlen and Jasp ran faster — carrying betrayal like poison in their veins toward Thornhollow's open arms.
Calder didn't know yet.
But he would.
Soon.
When Thornhollow's forces closed tighter.
When every blade sharpened against the Stonewolf's throat was guided by a map Calder himself had unknowingly drawn in blood.
The Marches didn't forgive mistakes.
And this one would cost more than he could yet imagine.