Chapter 17 –

  The green-and-orange glow of Elystra clung faintly to the fog, painting the Withering Yew in strange, quivering colors. Ash stirred under the damp cloak he had left over his shoulders, eyes opening to the last hour of the third moon. Its light was softer than the candle flicker he had sneaked by Hagrin’s window, and yet it revealed more than the flame ever could—the endless silvered shapes of trees, roots twisted like grasping hands, moss that shone like wet emerald under the faint luminescence.

  Rain whispered across the leaves, a delicate percussion that slid through the fog. A bead fell to his cheek, cool and steady. It did not chill; it reminded him that the world was alive, breathing around him. The Withering Yew, so often a stage of screams and clashing steel, felt almost… peaceful here. If it weren’t for the distant echoes of morning drills, it might have been a sanctuary.

  He stepped out onto the soft moss, water beading on his boots. Roots curled underfoot, slick with rain and slime, yet firm. Somewhere nearby, a bear stirred, shaking off droplets from its thick fur. A wolf’s eyes reflected Elystra’s glow from the misty ridge, studying the riverbank before disappearing silently into the fog. In quiet corners, frogs croaked in steady rhythm, a low, wet chorus that made the riverbank seem alive in more ways than one.

  The flora fascinated him as always. Towering trees loomed overhead, some bent at impossible angles, silver bark glinting faintly. Their roots spiraled across the earth like veins, and some dripped faint, phosphorescent sap, glowing a pale green-orange that matched the moon’s light. Ferns and mosses carpeted the ground; luminous mushrooms clustered near wet soil, while delicate flowering vines crept along low branches, petals catching Elystra’s glow like tiny lanterns. A few of the vines twitched slightly as he brushed past, reacting to movement—but they seemed harmless, more curious than dangerous.

  Ash’s boots carried him past the stables, and he paused to look at Hagrin’s mare. She was enormous, tall as four royal cubits and nine digits, light brown with black streaks across her flanks. She stood calmly, ears twitching at the soft rain, eyes bright and aware as if she had been waiting for him to notice. He imagined the strength in her legs, the weight she could carry, the steady patience it took to be the mount of a man like Hagrin. One of the few in this place whose calmness never betrayed the ferocity beneath.

  Somewhere in the fog-shrouded ridges above the river, the mercenaries whispered of sabertooth cats. No one had ever seen one here—not really—but the stories were persistent. Hunters spoke of long shadows in the mist, of enormous teeth glimpsed just before the creature melted back into fog, and of guttural roars that left even seasoned men uneasy. Ash had never seen proof, but the rumors fascinated him. The idea that such a predator might roam unseen, shaping the edges of the Withering Yew with its presence, fit perfectly with the lessons he was learning here: the world was alive, sharp, and patient—and even the strongest could vanish without warning.

  The riverbank came into view. The water moved slow and steady, tinted slightly green in Elystra’s glow. He knelt to inspect the fishing traps, small wooden contraptions held in place with river stones. Carefully, he lifted the first: two silvery river trout, still glistening with the morning mist. He transferred them into the cloth sling at his side, watching the smooth movement of their fins. Next, a dark-scaled catfish wriggled beneath his fingers, heavy and slick. A carp, large and ponderous, nearly slipped from the trap, its scales reflecting the moon’s ghostly light.

  Ash set the traps right, adjusting stones, checking nets, ensuring none were loose. A sense of satisfaction crept through him—the rhythm of the river, the small diligence of tending life and food, mattered just as much as any training session. Here, the world followed rules he could understand. Nature’s edge was quiet, and its lessons were immediate.

  Above him, the fog drifted in slow, deliberate waves. Somewhere deeper in the mist, the shape of an unseen creature stirred—a wolf, a bear, or perhaps just a trick of the light—but he neither feared nor sought it. The Withering Yew had more than enough danger for the day, yet in these quiet moments, he could appreciate the balance. Life here moved in soft pulses: the river, the rain, the frogs, the rustle of leaves, and the faint hiss of small insects through the fog.

  Ash straightened, shaking off droplets from his cloak. The traps were checked, the fish secured. He inhaled the damp, earthy scent of the forest, letting it fill his lungs. This was a place of rest as much as a place of forging—peace tucked into chaos, a fragile rhythm beneath the roar of training. And for a moment, he allowed himself to notice it, to catalog it, to learn.

  Ash straightened, lifting the heavy baskets of fish from the trap lines. Each basket was drenched with river water, scales slick under his fingers, the weight of them straining his arms and back. He stepped through the wet moss, dragging the bundles toward the camp, the rhythm of his footsteps punctuating the faint hiss of rain and the distant croak of frogs. This was no delicate study; the Withering Yew demanded endurance as much as thought. Yet even in this labor, the world felt alive, teaching him balance, strength, and patience all at once. The faint light of Elystra guiding him silently through the fog.

  Ash walked slower once the baskets were set aside, letting the rhythm of camp settle back into him. The rain clung to his hair and beard, thin fingers tracing paths along his jaw and down his throat. He barely noticed the cold. That, too, was new.

  Yewblight came first to his thoughts—as it always did when he allowed himself quiet.

  The pain had been total. Not sharp, not clean, but vast. As if his body had been unfolded, every memory of damage laid bare and burned into something else. He remembered screaming without sound, remembered the sensation of being rewritten while fully awake. And then afterward—clarity. Strength. Recovery so fast it bordered on obscene.

  Muscles no longer needed time to grow. There was no waiting, no slow ache of healing fibers. They tore and returned stronger within hours. Fatigue burned away like fog under sun. He could train until collapse, drink the bitter red fire, and rise again before the world had time to catch its breath.

  It was efficient.

  And that bothered him.

  Some scars had faded.

  Not the new ones—the hammer-breaks, the cuts, the fractures that returned again and again—but the old ones. The thin white lines on his ribs. The shallow mark near his collarbone. The jagged reminder along his thigh that once ached when winter deepened. They were still there, but dulled, softened, as if the world were trying to forget what had shaped him.

  Ash did not want them forgotten.

  Those scars were not weaknesses. They were records. Proof that something had been endured, survived, learned from. Yewblight erased time too easily. It smoothed history into something usable. That efficiency came at a cost he wasn’t sure the others noticed—or cared about.

  His thoughts drifted, as they often did, to the others.

  Corwin was the easiest to read on the surface and the hardest underneath. Loudness as armor. Motion as avoidance. But Ash had watched the way his hands stilled before a strike now, how his breathing slowed before violence. Something in Corwin had learned restraint—not discipline, but intention. Ash catalogued it. Filed it away.

  Jarro fascinated him differently. Silence layered on silence. Jarro spoke only when function demanded it, but his eyes never stopped measuring. He learned by watching consequences, not instruction. Ash suspected Jarro would survive almost anything—not because he adapted fastest, but because he accepted loss without needing meaning.

  Halvek…

  Halvek was complex. Structured. A man built from doctrine and repetition. Every movement anchored to something learned long ago. Ash felt Halvek’s eyes on him constantly—not hatred exactly, but pressure. Comparison. The discomfort of a rule being bent without breaking.

  Ash did not dislike him.

  But he did study him.

  He studied all of them.

  Not as brothers—not quite. That word carried expectations he did not yet trust. Instead, he treated them like living texts. Each man a volume written in scars, habits, silences, and reactions. He watched how they stood when tired. How they spoke when frustrated. Who they deferred to without realizing it. Who they avoided.

  And yet… beneath the analysis, there was something else.

  Affection.

  It surprised him when he noticed it.

  These men—these mercenaries—were closer to family than anything he had known in years. Not warm. Not gentle. But present. Reliable. They bled together. They broke together. They returned together. That counted for more than shared blood ever had.

  Only Commander Draven had occupied a similar space in his life before. A distant gravity. A presence that shaped without coddling. Ash still measured himself against lessons learned at Fort Drelnath, but the Withering Yew was different. Drelnath had taught obedience. The Fold taught survival beyond rules.

  Ash decided then—quietly—that he would speak more.

  Not because he desired conversation, but because language revealed patterns. Men betrayed themselves in words far faster than in action. Jokes, complaints, boasts—each was a doorway. Listening would always be his strength, but participation would sharpen it further.

  The instructors, too, were worth studying. The warriors who followed them even more so. How discipline spread. How fear shifted shape when leadership changed. How loyalty formed without being demanded.

  Hagrin stood apart from all of them.

  Ash felt it even when the man was not present. Weight. Stillness. Hagrin did not command attention—he occupied it. Ash respected him instinctively, a rare thing. Not because of rank or strength alone, but because Hagrin watched the way Ash watched others. There was no illusion there. Just awareness meeting awareness.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  Hagrin, too, was a book.

  A dangerous one.

  Ash reached up absently and brushed his beard again. Thicker now. Darker. His jaw broader beneath it. His shoulders sat differently on his frame. He had grown—not just in muscle, but in density. Focus had sharpened into something almost constant. His thoughts no longer scattered. They aligned.

  He was stronger. He was faster. He healed wrong—too well.

  And he was becoming someone who could choose what to keep and what to discard.

  Ash stood in the light rain and accepted that truth without judgment.

  Whatever the Fold was making him into, he would understand it completely.

  Before it understood him.

  **

  The day burned past in pieces.

  Training swallowed it whole—hours torn into manageable fragments by pain, breath, and weather. Rain gave way to low cloud, then broke apart entirely, leaving the air sharp and clean. Mud clung to boots and skin alike. Steel rang. Bones complained. Someone always fell.

  Brannoch Vale said little, as always. A nod here. A shift of stance there. Correction delivered by consequence rather than voice. The drills came fast and layered—movement within movement, exhaustion stacked atop precision. Ash lost count of how many times he was knocked down, dragged up, or forced to repeat a motion until the world narrowed to nothing but angle and balance.

  Corwin fainted first. Again.

  It happened during a river carry—four men, one stone sled, current up to the thigh. Corwin made it halfway before his knees buckled and his face went slack, eyes rolling back like a drunk’s. Jarro cursed, Halvek hauled him upright by the collar, and someone muttered, “That’s three Pale Blue on Corwin before noon.”

  Ash filed the observation away.

  Meals were another contest. No one said it aloud, but the same men always watched the same things: who finished first, who struggled, who stared too long at their hands as if unsure they belonged there. Jarro ate like a machine. Halvek ate like a soldier racing a clock. Corwin complained through every bite and still scraped his bowl clean. Ash finished last—not from weakness, but because he paused. Tasted. Noted what the food did to him now. How fast warmth spread. How little heaviness followed.

  Someone bet that Ash would never finish a meal before sunset.

  They lost. Quietly.

  By dusk, the rain had fully passed. The clouds tore open, revealing a sky washed clean—stars sharp and plentiful, the third moon already climbing, painting the clearing in muted greens and ember-orange highlights. Campfires bloomed one by one, low and controlled. Smoke drifted upward in lazy ribbons.

  Men gathered.

  Armor was loosened. Boots came off. The noise softened into something almost human.

  Hagrin joined them for a time, rare and noticeable. He sat on a low stone, cloak draped loose, expression lighter than usual. Someone made a remark about the river nearly claiming Corwin as tribute, and Hagrin snorted. Not a glare. Not a warning.

  That alone drew a few stares.

  Hagrin did not sit at the center of the fire, nor did he stand apart from it. He chose a place just off the curve of the circle, close enough to hear everything, far enough that no one felt watched. When laughter broke out, his mouth tugged at one corner—not a smile meant to be seen, but one that happened anyway. When a joke went too far, he did not correct it with words. A single look, brief and measured, was enough to steer the tone back without breaking it.

  Men leaned unconsciously toward him when they spoke, the way sons leaned toward a hearth, even when pretending they didn’t need the warmth.

  Someone complained about Vale’s river drills again, loud enough to be brave. Hagrin answered without lifting his voice. “The river doesn’t care how strong you think you are,” he said, eyes still on the fire. “It only respects balance.” A groan followed, then a few muttered curses—but also nods. When Corwin tried to defend himself, blaming the current, Hagrin cut him off with a quiet, almost amused, “You fell because you fought the water instead of listening to it.” No ridicule. No praise. Just truth, given cleanly. Corwin grumbled—but he remembered.

  Later, when food was passed and hands were busy, Hagrin shifted just enough to rest a forearm across his knee, posture loose. He asked Halvek about his shoulder—not in front of everyone, not loudly. When Jarro boasted about a past kill, Hagrin let the story run its course before adding a single detail Jarro had missed, one that only someone who had been there—or somewhere worse—would notice.

  The boasting softened after that. Not diminished. Guided. Ash watched it all with careful interest. Hagrin did not command the group like a captain or bind them like a priest. He watched them the way a father watched children who were almost grown—ready to step in if needed, content to let them stumble if it meant they would learn to stand on their own.

  Then a runner came—quiet, respectful. A murmur. Hagrin rose, rolled his shoulders once, and headed toward his office without comment. The fires crackled on without him.

  Conversation filled the space he left behind.

  Crude jokes surfaced like clockwork. Someone mimed a hip thrust too exaggerated to be serious. Another added commentary that would’ve earned a broken jaw during daylight hours. Laughter came easy now—loose, unguarded. Stories tangled together. Who’d bedded whom. Who hadn’t. Who claimed to have survived something no one believed.

  Ash sat among them, listening.

  Then—speaking.

  It was subtle at first. A question. A short remark. Heads turned. Someone blinked, surprised. Ash didn’t raise his voice. Didn’t posture. He simply joined the current.

  Corwin stared at him openly. “Did… did you just ask me where I learned that knife trick?”

  Ash nodded. “It was inefficient. I wanted to know why you keep it.”

  That earned a laugh—not loud, but real.

  The complaints start, as they often do, with Raskel.

  He joined the Yew barely a half-cycle before Ash’s group arrived—already blooded, already passed, already sworn—but the place still gnaws at him. Broad-shouldered and long-limbed, built for charge and cleave, not repetition. He rubs his hip as he speaks, voice loud enough to be heard over the fire.

  “Swear the ground here hits back,” Raskel mutters. “Didn’t fall like this in the south. Every time Hagrin runs us through ground drills, I feel something crack that shouldn’t.”

  A few men laugh. Someone tells him to stop landing like a sack of grain. Another says pain means it’s working. Raskel scowls, spits into the dirt, and keeps rubbing his side.

  Ash has been watching him during training.

  Not his face—his falls. The way his body stiffens just before impact. The way he tries to fight the ground instead of meeting it.

  After a long moment, Ash speaks.

  “I’ve noticed how you fall,” he says quietly.

  The fire pops. Conversation thins.

  “You lock your joints just before you hit,” Ash continues, tone even, almost curious. “Your shoulder takes the force first. Then the hip. It travels badly through your spine.”

  Raskel frowns. “You saying I fall wrong?”

  “Yes.”

  A pause.

  “If you relaxed instead,” Ash adds, “the impact would spread. Less pain. Fewer fractures.”

  Another pause—longer this time.

  “Of course,” Ash says, eyes still on the fire, “that would require thinking before you hit the ground. Which seems… ambitious.”

  For a heartbeat, no one reacts.

  The silence stretched—just long enough to be uncomfortable.

  Then Jarro exhaled through his nose. Halvek’s mouth twitched. Someone chuckled despite themselves. The sound caught, spread, and suddenly the whole group was laughing harder than they had all day—not because the joke was outrageous, but because it wasn’t. Because it came from Ash. Because hearing that calm, measured voice land something meant to be funny broke some unspoken tension none of them had admitted was there.

  Ash smiled—small, quick, gone.

  As the fire burned lower and the sky sharpened with stars, the stories began—slow at first, then stacking on one another like thrown dice.

  One of the older mercenaries, Tovan, leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. He had been stationed near Nareth Kai for a short time the previous season, guarding caravans and escorting scholars, never close enough to the city’s heart to claim truth—only proximity. “Didn’t see the Games myself,” he said, voice rough with smoke. “But you couldn’t walk a street without hearing about them. Whole city buzzing like a struck hive.”

  He spoke of daylight spectacles meant for merchants and nobles—beasts racing under banners, trained creatures performing tricks so precise they looked almost sacred. Then his tone darkened. “Night games were different. That’s what people whispered about. Blood in sand. Things brought in chains that shouldn’t have fit through gates at all.” Someone asked what kind of things. Tovan shook his head. “Depends who you ask. Everyone swears it was worse than the last story you heard.”

  Another man added to it, claiming a scholar he escorted had gone pale after reading a betting slate, as if the numbers themselves were obscene. Someone else said the city priests pretended not to know, which only made it worse. Ash listened, weighing the way rumors mutated as they passed from mouth to mouth, wondering which parts survived because they were true—and which survived because people wanted them to be.

  The talk drifted westward, carried by men who had bled there or knew someone who had. Stories of broken lines and screaming charges, of enemy tribes fighting with a coordination that felt wrong—too learned, too deliberate. Then someone brought up the Brenari woman. Laughter followed, thick and eager.

  They painted her taller than she could possibly be, stronger than three men, hair wild as a storm banner. One claimed she split a shield with a single axe blow. Another swore she charged at the front, bare-armed, laughing as arrows struck around her. A third insisted she took lovers from among her warriors the night before battle and left them broken by morning, exhausted before the fighting even began. The details grew wilder with each retelling, less about truth and more about awe.

  Ash watched the firelight dance across their faces as they spoke of her—how admiration slipped easily into myth, how fear softened itself by becoming desire. He noted how quickly a real commander became a legend in the telling, shaped by men who needed her to be larger than life. Somewhere beyond the fire, beyond the fog and the stars, she existed as something solid and breathing. Here, she was already becoming something else entirely.

  Ash listened. Learned.

  Time slipped.

  The fire burned low. Laughter softened into murmurs. One by one, men drifted toward sleep.

  Ash noticed the absence before anyone else did.

  Hagrin hadn’t returned.

  He watched the dark path leading back toward the office. Listened—not with ears alone, but with that quiet sense under his ribs that had learned when something was off.

  The night was too still.

  Ash didn’t say anything. Not yet.

  But he stayed awake long after the fire died, eyes tracking shadow and star alike, certain—without knowing why—that something had shifted while they were laughing.

  **

  Morning did not arrive gently.

  The fog was thicker than usual, clinging low to the ground as if the land itself had decided to listen. Elystra had already faded, leaving behind a washed-out sky the color of damp stone. The air smelled of wet bark, iron-rich soil, and horse sweat long before the first orders were spoken.

  Ash noticed Hargrin immediately.

  He stood apart from the others near the stables, hands clasped behind his back, his broad shoulders unmoving while men passed him without comment. His eyes were distant—not scanning, not watching—gone. When they finally settled on Ash, there was no warmth in them. No familiar measuring calm.

  It was not anger. It was assessment.

  The look of a man who had learned something he hadn’t wanted to know.

  Ash met his gaze without resistance. He felt the shift, felt the unspoken line drawn cleanly between them. The ease of the night before—the faint sense of belonging, the almost-family warmth—was gone.

  A small, quiet disappointment passed through him.

  Then it was done.

  He accepted it the same way he accepted cold rain or pain during training: acknowledged, absorbed, moved past. Whatever Hargrin had learned was Hargrin’s burden to carry. Ash had learned long ago that affection was temporary, and approval even more so.

  The order came shortly after.

  “All of you,” Hargrin said. No raised voice. No explanation. “Mounted.”

  That alone was unusual.

  This was not recruit training. This was not correction or punishment. This was the kind of order given only when everyone was expected to perform—to remember what they were beyond drills and walls.

  The horses were already restless.

  They were massive beasts, bred for endurance rather than speed—thick necks, deep chests, hooves wide enough to sink into mud without losing balance. Steam curled from their nostrils as tack was thrown on and straps tightened. Ash moved among them easily, accepting a dark-coated gelding whose patience felt earned rather than trained.

  Hargrin’s mare stood taller than the rest—light brown with black along her legs and mane, her presence alone enough to quiet the smaller animals nearby. She watched Ash as he passed, one dark eye turning, intelligent and unafraid.

  They rode out together.

  No formation at first. Just movement—hooves thudding softly against wet ground as the Yew fell away behind them. The fog thinned as they climbed higher, revealing rolling stretches of pine and stone, river bends cutting through the land like old scars that never quite healed.

  The drill unfolded without explanation.

  Ride hard. Dismount fast. Swim cold water with armor stripped but weapons kept dry. Regroup silently. Scout wide, then narrower. Report with precision. Repeat.

  Ash found himself riding beside , the hammer instructor, for much of it. He learned his name one night reading close to Hagrin's office by candle light. Urdh.

  Stange name by all means.

  The man said nothing.

  He did not need to.

  Most recruits feared Uldh—everyone remembers his hammer.

  Ash felt none of that fear. The silence between them felt… balanced.

  Equal.

  When they dismounted together near a ridgeline, Uldh simply nodded once and split off without gesture or command. Ash mirrored him, moving low through brush and stone, counting steps, noting wind direction, memorizing bird calls that stopped too suddenly.

  The terrain shifted constantly—soft earth to shale, moss to roots, narrow ravines where sound carried too far. They worked in pairs and trios, rotating without complaint, trusting one another’s signals without ever needing them explained.

  When they regrouped, reports were brief and exact.

  Not what was seen. What could have been missed.

  They rode again.

  By the time the Withering Yew came back into view, horses lathered and men soaked to the bone, the fog had lifted entirely. The hall waited for them the way it always did—unchanged, patient, unconcerned with who returned stronger or weaker.

  Hargrin dismounted last.

  His movements were precise, controlled—but his eyes were still far away. Whatever had reached him during the night had already taken root, already grown beyond the moment. His body returned with the others.

  His mind did not.

  Ash watched him walk into the hall without looking back.

  He did not wonder if news had come.

  Only what kind.

  And whether it would demand blood—or truth—before long.