The forest east of Runeward was thin and stony, more a frayed hem of trees than a true wood. Trunks leaned out over a slope of scrub and rock, and beyond them the road ran like a dark ribbon between Hammerdeep and the walled city. Twenty miles lay between this little clearing and Runeward’s eastern gate, but the sounds of the dwarven road still carried up when the wind turned right: wheel-clatter, distant voices, the slow clink of harness.

  Finbar sat with his back to the stolen courier wagon, boots stretched toward the campfire. The flames painted his small hands in orange and gold as he cradled them around a tin cup that had nothing in it. He swirled the empty cup as if it held the richest beer in Runeward, and his eyes were bright with ideas rather than drink.

  “First thing I do,” he said, “I find the cheapest, dirtiest tavern that still has decent beer, and I drink until the barkeep stops checking if I can pay. Then I buy pipeweed that doesn’t smell like boiled socks. Real leaf. From the south. Not the scraped-floor sweepings Hammerdeep sells its miners.”

  Orik snorted, the sound half amusement, half disapproval. The dwarf sat cross-legged near the flames, hands loosely folded over his knees. His leather shirt and prison-stained trousers looked wrong among the trees; every stitch of him still felt like stone and tunnel. “You think the taverns near Runeward’s walls sell real anything to the likes of us? They water beer with dishwater and call it ‘amber reserve.’” He spoke with the flat certainty of a man who counted coins more carefully than cups.

  “Then we go inside the walls proper,” Finbar countered. “Find a place where the tap lines don’t squeak when they’re pulled. Humans have standards when it comes to drink, you know. And someone in that city must import proper pipeweed, or the gods would have burned it down from embarrassment already.”

  “You’re assuming the gods care about your lungs,” Orik said. “Or your taste.”

  “The gods care about stories,” Finbar said. “Stories need small pleasures. Otherwise it’s all doom and chanting. No one listens to chanting unless it’s wrapped around a cup.” He grinned, the expression quick and a little sharp. “Besides, we earned it. We walked out of Hammerdeep, Orik. Out of their cells. Out past their sanctuaries. Right under the runesmiths’ noses.”

  Orik’s jaw tightened, but his eyes betrayed a flicker of pride. “We crept,” he corrected. “There’s a difference. And I don’t like thinking about how close those noses were.” The memory of the relic sanctuary’s carved vaults and polished floors still sat heavy in him. The sacred bracelet that now lay unseen around Finbar’s forearm had rested moments before under a crystal dome surrounded by wards and bells and a century of clan reverence.

  Finbar flexed his left hand without thinking, feeling the cool, invisible circle beneath his sleeve. The band hugged his skin like a second pulse, a quiet reminder that he had stolen something far worse than a mug or a purse. He forced his shoulders to loosen. “Close enough,” he said. “But we’re not there now. We’re here. Under trees. With a wagon and two Ironrams and a holy trinket no one can see. That’s a good day, by my count.”

  A little way off, Krasha sat with her back against a young oak, apart from both wagon and fire. She had wedged a thumb-thick oak sapling between her feet and was working it with a sharp stone. Strands of hemp—unraveled from the wagon’s heavy rope coil—lay beside her, braided tight into a sturdy bowstring. Her scarred forearms moved with steady, deliberate strokes. When Finbar’s last comment drifted over, she did not look up.

  The halfling waited a beat, then another. The quiet made his skin itch. “You hear that, Orik?” he said in an exaggerated whisper. “Silence. That’s the sound of someone not appreciating escape artistry.”

  Orik’s mouth twitched. “I imagine she’s counting how many ways this is likely to go wrong,” he said. “Dwarves call that prudence. Hunters call it survival. Thieves call it bad luck.”

  Krasha’s hands paused. She sat for a moment longer without moving, then set the half-shaped bow across her knees and rose. Her silhouette cut clean against the dim orange ring of the fire. She walked toward them with a hunter’s quiet, not bothering to disguise her tread, yet making barely a sound on the dry needles.

  “You talk as if the danger stayed back in Hammerdeep,” she said. Her voice carried the plains in it, low and level, each consonant clipped. “It did not. The Runesmith Clan is not a city watch you can trick and walk away from. It is a temple and an army. You stole from their heart.”

  Finbar tipped his head back to look up at her. In the firelight her yellow-green eyes looked almost gold. “We noticed,” he said lightly. “The cell helped make the point.”

  Krasha ignored the quip. “They are fanatics,” she said. “They do not count the cost of finding you in coin or in men. They count it in creed. A relic in their hands is a promise from their god. A relic stolen is a wound. They will follow that wound until it is closed.”

  Orik shifted, uncomfortable. “They will search,” he agreed. “They will send patrols along every road between Hammerdeep and the Oathgate. They will ask questions in Runeward. They will send word to other holds.” He had grown up with stories of the clans’ zeal, but some part of him had believed the stories were for children and sermons. The alarm bell in the sanctuary had sounded like both at once.

  Finbar’s smile thinned. “You make it sound as if we should have stayed in the cell and waited for a kind dwarf to bring us tea,” he said. “You know as well as I do what would have happened to you there.”

  “Execution,” Krasha said calmly. “Or a slow penance that ends the same way. I did not say escape was wrong.” She gestured with the stone toward the dark road below. “I am saying you must stop acting as if the priests will wake up tomorrow, shrug, and forgive. They will not. They will never ‘calm down.’”

  The halfling opened his mouth with another joke ready, then saw Orik’s eyes on him. The dwarf looked troubled in a way that had nothing to do with lash counts or stolen beer. Finbar let the quip die.

  “So,” he said, setting the empty tin cup aside, “since my cheer is offending the spirits, let’s be practical. You heard Orik’s plan. We take the wagon into Runeward at dawn, buy supplies, then go west. He says King Aldren won’t let a dwarven clan drag fugitives off human soil. That seems reasonable to me.” The image of Everhall’s white crowns and sea-bright harbor floated in his mind like a storybook cover—far away and untouched by all this. He had never set foot there. He still imagined the king on his throne, lines of command clear, laws unbent.

  Krasha’s gaze flicked between the two of them. “You still think kings have time to care about three strangers with a stolen wagon,” she said. “I think kings care about their borders and their thrones. And I think dwarves care about their gods. If they have decided that bracelet is holy”—she glanced meaningfully at his sleeve—“then no human king’s pride will stop them sending killers after you.”

  “We don’t know that,” Orik said, though the words felt thin even as he spoke them. “Order matters. Jurisdiction matters. There are treaties.”

  “Treaties are words on paper,” Krasha said. “Faith is written in blood.”

  Finbar rocked back on his heels and let out a long breath through his nose. The fire threw up a small shower of sparks that drifted, then died. “All right,” he said quietly. “Say you’re right. Say the fanatics are out there polishing their hammers and oaths. What would you have us do?”

  “Watch,” she said simply. “Listen. Move like hunted things, not like merchants late to market.”

  Orik’s frown deepened. “We cannot live in this patch of trees. We need grain and cloth and coin. That means a town. It means Runeward or somewhere beyond.”

  “I did not say we never go near a town,” Krasha replied. “Only that we do not walk into one blind.” She stooped to pick up her half-finished bow again and tested the heavy snap of the green oak with her thumbs. “Maybe your plan works. Maybe it does not. But tonight we watch the road. We see how many torches your ‘temple and army’ has lit. Then we decide if Runeward’s walls are a shield or a trap.”

  Finbar opened his mouth, closed it again, and nodded. “Fine,” he said. “We watch. No beer, no pipeweed. Just trees and my own company. Truly a punishment beyond imagining.”

  “Better than lashes,” Orik muttered. “Or hooks.”

  Krasha returned to her tree, sat, and began working the bow again. The stone made a soft rasp with each stroke. Finbar pushed himself to his feet with a sigh, walked to the edge of the clearing, and peered down at the dark thread of the road. The sky had gone from copper to bruised blue; the first stars pricked through in places where the smoke haze from distant hearths thinned.

  For a while there was nothing but the occasional distant rattle of a cart and the whisper of night as it settled over rock and branch. Orik dozed sitting up, head nodding, hand still near the haft of a borrowed mining pick they had found on their way and turned into a makeshift weapon. Finbar’s thoughts wandered: to Amberveil’s rumored markets, to Everhall’s harbor, to the bracelet on his arm and what it might fetch if he had been stupid enough to try to sell it instead of hide it. He scratched the invisible band with one fingernail. It tingled faintly in response.

  Krasha froze.

  She lifted her head, nostrils flaring, and shifted from stillness to alert just enough that Finbar felt the change rather than saw it. Her hand closed around the half-strung bow.

  “Fire,” she said, low and sharp. “Out. Now.”

  Finbar blinked. “What—?”

  She didn’t raise her voice, but the command in it cut clean. “Out. No sound.”

  Orik was awake before the last word finished. He lunged for the blanket, threw it over the flames, and stamped on the edges with heavy boots. Smoke billowed, then choked, then thinned. In the sudden dark, the stars seemed brighter.

  Krasha moved toward the drop of the hill, already an outline among outlines. Finbar and Orik joined her, kneeling in the brush. From here the road was a dark line below, curving east and west between low ridges. The night wind shifted.

  Light bloomed in the distance like a swarm of fireflies.

  Finbar’s breath caught. Torchlight, dozens of points, maybe more, moving in a slow, organized flow along the road. The glow outlined helmets and spear tips, painted armor in brief flashes. The faint sound reached them a heartbeat later: the dull clatter of metal, the jingle of harness, voices raised in terse calls.

  “A column,” Orik whispered. “Too many for a patrol.”

  Krasha’s jaw tightened. “Searchers,” she said. “From Hammerdeep, riding under their runes. They are not marching to war. They are looking for something that is already gone.”

  Finbar’s stomach gave a small, unwelcome lurch. “Us,” he said. “That would be us.”

  Below, the column moved steadily westward. Dwarves marched in ranks, torches held high, the light sliding over mail and plate. A banner with a stylized anvil and rune flickered in and out of sight at the head. Smaller knots of riders flanked the main body, likely scouts and messengers. It was impossible to tell at this distance whether any of them glanced toward the slope, but Finbar felt exposed all the same.

  “That is… more effort than I had hoped for,” he murmured.

  Krasha did not look away from the road. “You stole from their sanctum,” she said. “You shamed them. They will want to show the world how quickly they can set the shame right.”

  “And stroll that shame straight through Runeward’s gate,” Orik said grimly. “If they bring that many torches to the city walls, even the gate captain will listen. They’ll have warnings posted before dawn.”

  “The Oathgate will shut like a jaw,” Krasha said. “They will watch every wagon, every stranger. They will whisper your descriptions in every guardhouse and tavern. If you drive that courier wagon down the road at sunrise, you might as well deliver yourselves gift-wrapped.”

  Finbar rubbed a hand over his face. The torchlight below guttered briefly as the column dipped into a lower stretch of road, then flared again. “All right,” he said. “All right, then Plan Runeward needs a small adjustment.”

  “A large one,” Krasha said.

  “Fine,” he snapped, then caught himself and softened his tone. “Fine. A large one. Orik’s idea—the one about hiding the wagon outside the walls and sending one of us in on foot. That could still work. No wagon, no Ironrams, no stolen clan paint. Just one sad halfling in an ordinary coat looking for bread and beans.”

  Orik blew out a breath. “We could stash the wagon in a copse halfway between here and the city,” he allowed. “Take the tack off the Ironrams, mask the clan marks, scatter dung to hide their scent. One of us goes in at dawn, buys what we need, slips out. We keep the sacred bracelet on the move and hope the search parties are too busy looking for a wagon to worry about a single small man.”

  Finbar tapped his chest. “I vote for the single small man. I’ve slipped past more serious faces than any gate guard. I can vanish in a crowd faster than you can say ‘audit.’”

  Krasha’s head tilted. Her eyes had gone from gold to flint. “You both talk as if the city is merely inconvenient,” she said. “Look.”

  She nodded toward the receding column. Already, scouts were peeling away from the main body, turning up side tracks toward hilltop beacons and way-inns. A few torches broke off and headed toward the low country that led to Runeward’s fields.

  “They will not just guard the Oathgate,” she said. “They will plant eyes in every inn between here and the city. They will make the road itself the trap.”

  Finbar opened his mouth to argue, but she was already moving, the bow in her hand forgotten for the moment. She drew the stone from her belt, reached for an arrow shaft she’d stripped earlier, and began carving, even as her gaze tracked the searchers.

  “You want food and cloth and tools,” she said. “Good. You will need them. But you do not need them from Runeward. We circle the city. Stay outside the walls. Take the road west and south.”

  “Rockwood,” Orik said, following the imagined line in his head. “There is a road from the south side of Runeward that cuts through the range. It comes out near Rockwood’s north gate. From there, Amberveil lies a week west by cart.” His mind turned over distances, bell counts, the feel of a pick in his hands, as if the world could be measured as neatly as a tunnel.

  Finbar chewed his lower lip. “A week,” he said. “Another week after that to Everhall, if we wanted to be fools and go that far.” He had never planned farther than the next town before; now the map in his head stretched wider than was comfortable.

  Krasha nodded without looking at him. “You two can take that path,” she said. “Amberveil, Everhall, all your human stone piles.” The stone in her hand moved with sure strokes, shaving wood to a point. “I go south from Rockwood.”

  Finbar blinked. “South? Toward what? The Barrens? That’s the opposite of away from trouble.”

  “Toward my people,” she said simply. “Toward Smokethorn Heath. If war is coming between orcs and your mountain folk, I will not be the stray dog left north of the line. No orc will be safe in these lands if the Runesmiths start calling our raids ‘invasions’ and your kings listen.”

  Orik grimaced. “Smokethorn hunts along the Oathforge slopes,” he said slowly. “If Hammerdeep has been cracking down, their patience will be thin. The clans have been snapping at each other for a while now.”

  “That is why I need to go back,” Krasha said. “If someone is stirring the Ashmaw in Blackhorn to push north, Smokethorn needs to know why. There is sense in our raids. Hunger, land, old debts. There is no sense in burning cities for sport.”

  Finbar hesitated, tracing the invisible bracelet under his sleeve. Somewhere south, beyond the Oathforge Mountains and the Ashmaw Barrens, orc drums might already be beating. Somewhere west, King Aldren’s city had already fallen to its own rebellion, though none of them knew it. The world was tugging at itself in too many directions.

  “Say we do it,” he said. “We skirt Runeward, head for Rockwood, part ways there. How long to reach that city?”

  Orik’s brows knotted as he did the math. “From here to Runeward’s south road, half a day with the wagon if the Ironrams hold. From there through the range, another half day. We could reach Rockwood by this night if we push and don’t rest long.”

  Finbar made a face. “So no proper sleep and no proper beer.”

  “You can sleep when you’re not on a wanted slate,” Krasha said. “Or when you’re dead. It is the same amount of rest.”

  He snorted despite himself. “You’re very comforting, you know that? Fine. Rockwood it is.”

  The last of the torchlight slid around a bend in the road and vanished, leaving only the memory of its glow hanging over the stones.

  They ate rabbit, thin slices roasted on green sticks over a rekindled, carefully banked fire. Krasha’s arrow had taken the animal through the neck with such clean precision that Finbar had looked for a moment at the entry wound before remembering he was hungry. Orik said a brief, awkward thanks to whatever spirits of rock and root listened to dwarves and hunters alike. The meat was stringy but real, better than the prison’s thin gruel had ever been.

  Afterward, they settled in to sleep in shifts. Finbar wrapped himself in a blanket and burrowed near the wagon’s wheel, the wood at his back a blunt reassurance. Orik lay on his side a few paces away, boots still on, one hand near the mining pick. Krasha sat up most of the night, her new bow across her lap, eyes turning again and again to the dark line of the road and the direction of Runeward’s walls.

  Dawn came gray and cold. Mist clung to the low ground, pooling in hollows and turning the road into a ghostly stripe. The Ironrams snorted and stamped as Orik harnessed them back to the courier wagon. They were broad-shouldered beasts, taller at the shoulder than Krasha, with thick curling horns scarred from years of pulling and the occasional ill-tempered charge. Their breath steamed in the chill air.

  “Easy, lads,” Orik murmured, checking the leather straps. “One more stolen day. Then we’ll find you a pasture where no one knows your names.”

  “They don’t have names,” Finbar said as he clambered into the back of the wagon. “Yet. I was thinking ‘Luck’ and ‘Poor Choices.’”

  “You don’t name draft animals that can trample you,” Orik replied. “It puts ideas in their heads.”

  Krasha climbed up beside Finbar, settling with the bow braced against her boots. She had tied her ragged prison clothes tighter, turning them into something closer to a tunic and leggings. Her hair, shorn short at the sides, showed the stubbled growth that marked years of practical cuts.

  “You two bicker like old miners,” she observed as Orik flicked the reins and set the wagon moving. “It is better than listening to you talk about beer.”

  “You’ve never had proper beer,” Finbar protested. “You’ve probably had orc blood-brew in a cracked clay cup and think that’s all there is.”

  She gave him a sideways glance. “Smokethorn makes better drink than your Hammerdeep tap-rinse.”

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  Orik coughed. “Careful,” he said. “Blasphemy carries a penalty under the Oathforge.”

  “I am already sentenced,” she said dryly. “For hunting goats.”

  They fell into an uneasy, almost companionable rhythm as the wagon rattled westward. The road rose and fell in gentle waves, the land here more orchard and field than forest. Low stone walls marked property lines. A few early-rising farmers trudged along with baskets or tools, giving the courier wagon cursory glances and then looking away. The clan markings on the wagon’s side were standard enough; no one cared which dwarf carried which crate as long as the road was clear.

  As the sun fought its way through the mist and climbed, Runeward came into view ahead: gray walls catching light, towers hunched against the sky, the faint glimmer of the Oathgate’s distant portcullis beyond. Smoke rose from chimneys within, a normal city’s breath.

  Finbar shifted forward, peering around the wagon’s side. “There she is,” he said. “Runeward the dull. I’ve seen her from the other side, once. Never been inside.”

  Orik hunched his shoulders a little, every line of him tightening. “Keep the wagon to the south road,” he called back to Krasha without turning. “We don’t go near the main gate.”

  They didn’t have to get close to see something was wrong at the gate. Even from the distance of the southern road, the cluster at the eastern gate was obvious: carts backed up, people massed, a glint of spearpoints and armor. The gate itself was only half open, and a row of guards had set up a makeshift inspection point beneath its shadow. From time to time, the line inched forward, a wagon or a group of travelers admitted, others turned away.

  “By the deep seams,” Orik muttered. “They’ve put checks in. That’s not market traffic. That’s a search.”

  Finbar’s throat felt suddenly dry. “Well, that answers the question of whether the Hammerdeep column talked to them.”

  Krasha watched the gate with narrowed eyes. “They are looking for something,” she said. “Or someone. They will ask names, look at faces, check cargo. Anyone matching your description won’t make it three steps beyond the arch.”

  Finbar tried to imagine himself slipping through that crowd, invisible among the cloaks and carts. He had confidence in his skills. He had walked past kings’ men and guild enforcers before. But this was different. Here, the whole point of the gathering was to notice.

  “Maybe we could still hide the wagon,” he said, more from stubbornness than hope. “We stash it in a hollow, walk around the walls, find a side gate—”

  “Side gates will be watched too,” Orik cut in. “The Runesmiths will have made sure of that. And if they’ve already described us to the gate captains, we might as well walk in wearing signs that say ‘Stole Your Favorite Toy.’”

  Krasha’s lips twisted. “You are learning.”

  The courier wagon rolled on along the southern verge. They kept their distance from the city, skirting fields and stone fences, until they struck the road that swung southwest, away from Runeward and toward the darker line of the mountains.

  Behind them, the city stayed small and gray, a lump on the horizon slowly shrinking. Ahead, the land lifted and roughened. Trees thickened. The air grew cooler.

  By late afternoon they had climbed into the foothills. The road wound between rocky outcrops and patches of fir. Orik guided the Ironrams around ruts and stones, muttering encouragement to the beasts under his breath. Finbar dozed in fits on a burlap sack, waking whenever the wagon jolted too sharply. Krasha sat upright almost the entire time, watching the slopes.

  “You don’t have to stare at every bush,” Finbar said at one point, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “If there’s a dwarf behind one, I’m sure he’ll yell.”

  “Dwarves are loud,” she agreed. “Orcs are not. Neither are elves. The woods near Rockwood are closer to the Silvergrove border than you think.”

  Finbar shifted. He had heard stories of the Silvergrove Dominion: quiet elves among deep trees, all arrows and rules. They did not enter his plans often, mostly because he didn’t plan far enough south for them to matter. The idea of adding a suspicious elf patrol to their list of problems made his stomach knot.

  “Good,” he said anyway. “We’ve run out of people who aren’t chasing us. Might as well complete the set.”

  “They aren’t chasing us,” Krasha said. “Yet. They are watching orcs. They are always watching orcs.”

  “Comforting,” he muttered.

  Evening came on slow and smoky. Clouds gathered over the range ahead, catching the low sun in bruised colors. When they crested one particularly high bend, the world opened for a moment: hills falling away to the south, a wide valley beyond, and, on the far side of that, Rockwood’s location marked not by walls or towers but by smoke.

  At first, Finbar thought it was mist. Then he saw the color. Not the thin white of cook fires, but dense gray-black pillars smeared across the sky.

  He sat up straight. “What in all the cracked tunnels is that?”

  Orik pulled the Ironrams up short. The wagon shuddered to a halt. Krasha was already on her feet, braced against the side, eyes narrowed.

  “Smoke,” she said. “A lot of it. From the direction of Rockwood.”

  As they watched, another plume rose, thicker, catching an orange flicker at its base.

  “Forges?” Orik suggested weakly. “A festival? A… something?”

  Krasha shook her head once, sharply. “No forge burns a whole horizon. That is a city on fire.”

  The air was wrong, too. Even at this distance, when the wind shifted, it carried a thin, acrid tang that cut through pine and earth: burning wood, burning cloth, something else underneath that made Finbar’s skin prickle.

  “Maybe it’s just a quarter of it,” he said. “Not the whole. Maybe—”

  “Listen,” Krasha interrupted.

  From somewhere beyond the next rise came a new sound: the muddled noise of many feet on stone, the distant clamor of voices not in formation but in panic. The wagon creaked forward as Orik, without thinking about it, flicked the reins to move closer.

  The road looped down through a notch and then up again to a narrow saddle on the ridge. When they topped it, they saw them. A stream of people, flowing up from the south along the same road—men and women, children clinging to bundles or to hands, dwarves with half-packed satchels, humans with soot-smeared faces and eyes too wide.

  Refugees.

  Finbar swallowed. “Well,” he said softly. “That answers what kind of smoke that is.”

  The refugees filled the road ahead in a loose, desperate current, some staggering, some running, some looking back over their shoulders as if the fire itself might crest the hills behind them. A few carts creaked along, piled with trunks or mattresses, but most of the people were on foot, carrying what they could.

  Orik pulled the Ironrams to the side of the road, making space. The beasts tossed their heads, anxious at the smell of smoke and sweat and fear.

  A woman came near the wagon, face streaked with ash, hair escaping from a kerchief. She had a child on one hip and a sack over the other shoulder, and her breath came in harsh gasps. Orik leaned down from the driver’s bench.

  “Hey!” he called. “What’s happened? What’s going on in Rockwood?”

  She looked up, eyes unfocused, mouth open. “They’re burning it,” she managed between breaths. “Rockwood—is burning. Orcs. Orcs at the walls. The south gate’s gone—”

  Krasha leaned out from the wagon bed. “How many?” she asked. “What banners? From which clan?”

  The woman’s gaze slid to her and froze. For a heartbeat, everything in her face went blank. Then terror flooded in.

  “You,” she choked. “You’re one of them!”

  She jerked away so fast the child on her hip almost spilled. The little boy wailed as she dragged him into the press of bodies, pushing through until the crowd swallowed her. Others nearby, hearing “orc,” turned to look. Eyes landed on Krasha’s greenish-gray skin, her tusks, the scars on her arms.

  “She’s with them!” someone shouted. “Orc!”

  A ripple of fear and anger ran through the crowd. A dwarf near the front grabbed for a stone from the roadside, thought better of it when he saw Orik and the clan-marked wagon, and instead hustled his family faster up the slope.

  Finbar’s stomach lurched. He had grown up knowing that some humans were wary of halflings, that dwarves and elves had their prejudices, that thieves earned their own. He had not often seen fear this naked and blunt. It wasn’t directed at him. That did not make it easier to watch.

  “Well,” he said grimly as the refugees streamed past. “Looks like your clan got tired of hunting goats in the mountains and decided cities were more interesting.”

  Krasha’s head snapped toward him. Anger flashed, hot and immediate. “You think every orc answers to the same horn?” she said. “Smokethorn hunts along the slopes. We raid caravans. We do not burn cities full of children for pride.”

  “Then who is it?” Orik asked, voice low. “Those people aren’t running from shadows.”

  Krasha looked back toward the smoke, eyes narrowing as if she could see through distance and rock. “Ashmaw,” she said after a moment. “Blackhorn’s war band, perhaps. The Barrens have been dry. If someone in Blackhorn decided they wanted a northern tribute, they could send a raid this far. Or another clan entirely. Not everything north of the Barrens is our doing.”

  “And the people up here won’t care which clan’s paint is on the shields,” Finbar said.

  “No,” she agreed quietly. “To them, an orc is an orc. They see my face and they see the flames under their walls.”

  A child’s cry rose from the crowd as someone stumbled. A dwarf man stooped to grab the kid’s arm, jerking him upright with more urgency than gentleness. A human boy limped past with a bloodied knee, tears cutting clean tracks through the ash on his cheeks. A soldier with no helmet and a torn surcoat marched with three others, their formation shattered but their eyes still searching for danger.

  Orik watched them, jaw working. “We can’t go to Rockwood now,” he said. “We’d be riding into a siege. Or what’s left after one.”

  “We also cannot go back to Runeward,” Finbar said. “Not with the gates choked and the Runesmiths stirring them up. So where does that leave us? Sitting on a mountain watching everyone else run by?”

  Krasha’s gaze flicked between the burning horizon and the refugee stream. The wind shifted again, bringing the smell of smoke sharper, tinged now with something uglier: burned pitch, scorched metal, and a faint whiff of something that might have been flesh.

  “We keep to the plan,” she said. “But we change where it ends. We still go to the forest north of Rockwood. The trees there run west. You and Orik can follow them toward Amberveil without touching the road again. No walls, no gates, no dwarven priests. Just woods and distance.”

  “And you?” Finbar asked, though he already knew.

  “I go south,” she said. “Toward the smoke. Toward my people. If this is Ashmaw’s doing, Smokethorn needs to know why they chose that city. If it is another clan, I need to hear whose drums they followed. If war is coming, I must be there when the first songs are sung.”

  Finbar wanted to laugh, wanted to point out that “songs” was a generous word for whatever blood pact had just put Rockwood to the torch. Instead he found himself thinking of Hammerdeep’s sanctuaries, of the way men and women had knelt in rows before runes carved into stone; of Everhall’s king, who had refused to trade his children for peace and had paid for it with his city. Neither of those stubborn stands had ended peacefully, but both had been… something. Steady.

  “You don’t have to run toward a war just because it might be your people fighting it,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said. “I do.”

  Orik exhaled slowly. “How far is the forest?”

  “Another few hours,” he answered himself, thinking of the map. “If we push the Ironrams. We follow the ridge, keep away from the flames. The trees start where the ground softens again.”

  “Then we move,” Krasha said. “Before the Runesmiths decide to send their own patrols to check this road. They will want to know why Rockwood burns. They will not enjoy seeing an orc standing at a wagon while their own men march.”

  Orik flicked the reins. The Ironrams lowed and strained, dragging the wagon forward through the refugee stream. People parted around them, some muttering, some staring. A few spat when they saw Krasha; one man made a warding sign with his fingers as if she were a curse given flesh. She stared back until he dropped his gaze.

  The road turned northwest along the ridge, putting the worst of the smoke at their back. The sky glowed a sickly orange for a long time, then slowly dulled as distance and darkness did their work. Below, the fire still ate. Above, stars pricked through the haze one by one.

  Night deepened. The wagon’s wheels creaked wearily. The Ironrams’ steps grew shorter, their breaths harsher. Orik murmured to them until his voice went hoarse. Finbar fought sleep in the wagon bed and lost, waking in startles whenever the wagon hit a rock. Each time, he saw Krasha still awake, still watching, as if she could hold the entire slope in her gaze and keep it from shifting under them.

  Finally, after what felt like hours of darkness and creaking and the steady grind of fear, the trees thickened again. The ridge leveled into a broad, sloping shelf of earth. The road split: one branch leading down toward where Rockwood would be seen by day, the other continuing along the northern edge of the forest.

  “Here,” Krasha said. “Stop here.”

  Orik pulled the Ironrams to a halt. The beasts sagged gratefully, heads lowering. The wagon rocked once, then stilled.

  They sat in the quiet a moment. The forest before them was dark and close, the trunks packed tight, the underbrush thick. To the south, the sky still glowed faintly, a reminder that Rockwood was not so far behind.

  “This is it,” Orik said at last. His voice sounded smaller than it had on the open road. “Our fork.”

  Finbar hopped down from the wagon bed, knees wobbling as they took his weight after so many hours of sitting. He walked a few steps toward the trees, then back again, as if the simple act of pacing might change the shape of what came next.

  “You know,” he said, forcing lightness into his tone, “you could come with us. Amberveil’s a fine goal. No burning cities, no priests with grudges, fewer people trying to stab you on sight.”

  Krasha dropped from the wagon with a cat’s ease. Her boots hit the dirt with a soft thud. Up close, in the dim starlight, she looked tired—but not uncertain.

  “In peace,” she said, “maybe. In war, no. Once word of Rockwood spreads, every human and dwarf north of the front will see orcs as enemies. It will not matter if I hunted goats or guards. It will not matter if I bled for your escape from Hammerdeep.” She shook her head. “I will be a target wherever I go. Except among my own.”

  Finbar flinched at the mention of Hammerdeep’s cells. He remembered iron bars, the smell of stone dust and sweat, the way Krasha’s voice had first joined theirs from the dark, mocking and sharp, and then the moment she had thrown herself into their escape, as committed to the path as if she’d planned it.

  “You could hide,” he said weakly. “The bracelet—”

  “Only hides what you can hold on to,” she said. “It does not rewrite bones or skin.” Her gaze softened a fraction as she looked at him and Orik. “You are stubborn. Both of you. Too stubborn to lie when a lie would have bought you time. Too stubborn to walk a straight road when a crooked one takes you further. That will keep you alive, if you listen to it.”

  Orik’s throat worked. He climbed down from the driver’s bench and came to stand beside them, his boots crunching softly on fallen needles. He looked up at her.

  “You helped us out of that cell,” he said. “You didn’t have to. You could have left us to our penance and taken your own chances. I won’t forget that.”

  “You shouldn’t,” she said. “I may ask you to pay it back someday.” There was a hint of humor in it, but also a seriousness that made Finbar shiver.

  “You could still change your mind,” he tried one last time. “Come to Amberveil. We find a place where no one asks questions, and you hunt something other than trouble for a while.”

  Krasha shook her head. “If war is truly breaking,” she said, “then it will not stay at Rockwood. It will roll. It will swallow towns and roads. You will be safer moving ahead of it. I will be safer walking into it with my people around me.”

  She stepped back, away from the wagon, toward the faint glow to the south. For a moment, Finbar saw her as the refugees had: an orc silhouette against a burning sky. Then he saw her as he had in the cell, leaning against the iron bars, eyes bright with contempt for dwarven justice. Both were true.

  “Take care, then,” he said. The words felt smaller than they should have, inadequate to the shape of the choice before them. “If you die, I’ll never find out if Smokethorn beer is better than Hammerdeep’s.”

  Her tusks flashed in a brief, crooked smile. “Stay off the main roads,” she said. “Trust no priest. And when you lie, lie like you mean it.”

  “That one he’s good at,” Orik muttered.

  Krasha turned, shoulders squaring, and took her first step toward the south. She had gone only three paces when both Ironrams collapsed.

  The sound was wrong. Not the stagger and fall of exhausted beasts, but a sudden, almost simultaneous thud as if the ground had jumped up to hit them. The wagon lurched as the harness went slack; the shaft dug into the dirt with a crunch. The Ironrams themselves flopped onto their sides, legs twitching once or twice, then gone still. Their eyes were open, glassy, but their chests still rose and fell.

  “What—?” Orik started, taking a step back in instinctive alarm.

  Finbar stumbled, thrown off balance by the sudden drop. He caught himself on the wagon bed, heart hammering. “What happened to them? Did they—?”

  “Down!” Krasha barked.

  She spun, her hunter’s instincts filling in what her eyes had not yet seen. Animals did not just drop like that without a mark. Not unless something had struck them faster than sight.

  Finbar froze for half a heartbeat. The order in her voice broke the spell. He dove for the far side of the wagon, throwing himself into the thin shelter of its wheels.

  Orik ducked reflexively behind the Ironram closest to him, even as it lay still, and swore under his breath, his mind already ticking through possibilities: gas, spell,—

  Krasha herself was moving before her own command had finished leaving her mouth. She dropped into a crouch, hand going for the bow at her back, eyes scanning the tree line.

  That was when the dart hit her.

  It was a small thing, no longer than her thumb, its shaft a slender dark line against the night. It buried itself in the side of her neck with a soft, ugly thwip. For a heartbeat, she did not feel it. Then heat spread under her skin, followed by a suffocating heaviness.

  Her fingers flew to the wound. The dart’s feathered end brushed her fingertips. She tried to yank it free, but her hand did not seem to belong to her anymore. The forest swam, edges smearing.

  “Ambush,” she managed, the word thick on her tongue. “Elves. They—”

  The ground tilted. She saw shapes moving between trees, pale flashes in the dark: cloaks, bows, the subtle gleam of arrowheads. Someone shouted something in a language of leaves and water. Her legs buckled, and she went down hard, the world narrowing to a tunnel of shadow and stars.

  Finbar heard the thwip and Krasha’s choked warning, but he couldn’t see her fall from where he crouched. He pressed himself tighter against the wagon, heart slamming. Another soft sound came—then another—and a sharp sting burned across his shoulder as something grazed him. He bit back a yelp.

  “Orik?” he hissed.

  “Here,” came the tight reply from the other side of the fallen Ironram. The dwarf’s voice held more anger than fear, but only just.

  Shadows detached themselves from the forest. Figures slipped into the open with a smooth, economical grace that made Finbar think of water flowing around stones. Bows were already drawn, strings taut, arrows nocked.

  Elves.

  They moved in a half-circle, fanning out to encircle the wagon, each step placed with care on rock or root. Their leathers were mottled in greens and browns, cloaks blending with the dark. None of them spoke now; the only sounds were the faint creak of bowstrings and the soft rustle of leaves as they shifted.

  One of them approached Krasha’s body, keeping an arrow trained just ahead of her in case she moved. He prodded her shoulder with the tip of his bow, then knelt and checked the dart in her neck, fingers light and quick. Satisfied, he straightened and called something back into the trees. The words were low and melodic to Finbar’s ears, but the tone was all business.

  A second later, three more elves stepped fully into the clearing. Two of them moved to flank the wagon, bows leveled at where Finbar and Orik crouched. The third, taller than the rest, lifted a hand.

  “All right,” he said, his Common accented but clear. “Out from behind the cart. Slowly. Hands where we can see them.”

  Finbar weighed his options in a flash. The bracelet on his arm pulsed, a cool circle against his skin. If he grabbed a knife, it would vanish within his hand. But an invisible knife was only useful if you lived long enough to use it. Against this many bows, any sudden movement was a gamble.

  He raised both hands instead. “I surrender to the owner of the nicest bow,” he called, letting the words carry just enough humor to sound less like fear. “That is, whoever is least likely to shoot me over a misunderstanding.”

  “Finbar,” Orik hissed.

  “What? They were going to see us anyway.”

  He straightened slowly and stepped out from behind the wagon, hands high, keeping his movements exaggerated and unthreatening. An arrow tracked the center of his chest as he moved. From the other side, Orik rose as well, his broad hands open, jaw set.

  The nearest elf’s eyes narrowed as he took in Finbar’s small stature, Orik’s stocky frame, the fallen Ironrams, and the unconscious orc at their feet.

  “Step away from the weapons,” the elf said. “And the animals. Slowly.”

  Finbar glanced at Krasha. She lay on her side in the dirt, breathing shallowly, eyes closed. The dart in her neck stood out at an ugly angle. He swallowed hard.

  “They aren’t dead,” he blurted. “The Ironrams, I mean. And she isn’t either. Right?”

  “She will wake,” one of the elves said curtly. “If we choose to let her.”

  Hands bound them with practiced efficiency. Elven rope bit into the thick wool of Finbar’s sleeves, pressing the hidden bracelet unnoticed against his skin with a smooth, corded strength that told him struggling would be stupid. Orik submitted without fight; he knew the weight of odds when he felt it.

  Once the three fugitives were secured, the elves moved to secure the site. Two scouts checked the wagon’s contents, tossing aside sacks and crates with minimal interest. Another examined the Ironrams, pulling back eyelids, checking their pulses. Satisfied that the beasts were merely sedated, he began unhooking them from the wagon with swift fingers.

  At a slight remove, beneath the shadow of a broad pine, two elves stood watching. One was lean and upright, his tightly bound brown hair catching what little starlight filtered through the branches. His bearing spoke of years spent in command: not ostentatious, but steady, as if the ground shaped itself around where he chose to plant his feet. The other was slightly shorter but still taller than any human in the clearing, his short blond hair visible in the gloom, his green eyes taking in every detail with a strategist’s care.

  Lethien nodded toward the bound trio. “Spies?” he asked quietly.

  Serael studied them, his gaze moving from Finbar’s restless hands to Orik’s rigid posture to Krasha’s unconscious form. His face gave little away, but his eyes were sharp.

  “The halfling?” he said after a moment. “Too quick with his tongue. Maybe a thief. The dwarf has a miner’s shoulders, not a soldier’s. Neither of them looks like anyone’s idea of a hidden blade.” He tilted his head toward Krasha. “The orc… is another matter. She carries herself like a hunter. And orc hunters do not wander this far north for pleasure.”

  “Yet here she is,” Lethien murmured. “On our border. With two strangers and a stolen dwarf wagon in the middle of a night when Rockwood burns.”

  Serael’s mouth flattened. Smoke from the south had reached even here, a faint, bitter smear on the wind. “It may be coincidence,” he said. “Or a very unlucky alignment of paths. Either way, we do not take chances.”

  Lethien’s gaze lingered on Krasha’s prone form. “You think Ashmaw would send a single orc scout ahead with two decoys?”

  “I think Ashmaw would send a warband and try to hide it between the roots if they thought it would give them an advantage,” Serael said. “But I also think hunger makes all kinds of people do foolish things.”

  He turned his attention back to Finbar and Orik. The halfling had gone very still now, his earlier bravado banked. The dwarf met Serael’s gaze with tired defiance.

  “No,” Serael said finally. “If they are spies, they are clumsy ones. But the orc…” He let the thought hang. “We will not assume. We will ask.”

  “You’re suggesting interrogation,” Lethien said.

  “I’m suggesting questions,” Serael replied. “How sharp the questions need to be depends on how convincing their answers are. For now, we bind them, get them under cover, and keep them away from both Rockwood’s fire and the Runesmiths’ search parties.”

  Lethien nodded once. “Very well. We take them back to the forward camp. The council in Fenrialis can decide what to do with them once we know what they are.”

  Serael lifted a hand, and the nearest scouts moved at once. Krasha’s unconscious body was lifted carefully and laid in the wagon bed, tied at wrists and ankles for caution. Finbar and Orik were guided—gently, but with absolutely no give—toward the same.

  Finbar glanced once more toward the south. The glow over Rockwood’s unseen walls flickered in the distance, a smear of red against the night. Somewhere beyond that, Smokethorn drums might be beating. Somewhere west, in a city they still imagined as whole, a king was already dead.

  He swallowed, throat tight, and tried for a last, thin thread of humor.

  “Well,” he said under his breath to Orik as an elf tightened the knots at his wrists, “we wanted to be under someone’s protection. Human king, dwarven law, orc clan, elven border. We’re making excellent progress at offending everyone.”

  Orik snorted, the sound half a choked laugh, half a groan. “Shut up, Finbar,” he said quietly.

  The wagon jolted as elves hitched four of their mounts to the harness lines where the Ironrams had been, horses taking the weight to drag the load into cover. The forest closed around them, dark and dense.

  Between Hammerdeep’s zeal, Rockwood’s flames, and the Silvergrove’s suspicion, the Crownless Lands had offered them no crown to kneel to and no road to walk without someone’s shadow on it. Bound in the back of their own stolen wagon, lulled by the creak of wheels and the distant crackle of a burning city, Finbar, Orik, and Krasha were once again prisoners—this time of the elves, and of a war they had only just realized they were standing inside.

  Episode 25 continues in Episode 33.