Chapter III: Blood of the Oathbreaker

  The silver thread pulsed in Edryc's palm like a second heartbeat as the first gray light of dawn crept over the Dr?mspine foothills. He clenched his fist around it, welcoming the sharp sting as the glowing filament seared his flesh. The pain kept him anchored—a necessary counterpoint to the dull, spreading ache of the festering wound on his forearm. Black tendrils of corruption now spiderwebbed out from the pike gash, tracing the veins beneath his skin like ink spilled across parchment. Each throb carried a strange numbness that traveled up to his elbow, making his fingers twitch uncontrollably at odd moments.

  Líotha crouched on a nearby outcropping of weathered granite, her tattered cloak rippling in the cold morning wind. The bone charms woven into her hair clicked softly as she turned her head, nostrils flaring as she tested the air. "They're not following," she murmured, though her fingers never strayed far from the dagger at her belt. "Not yet. But the wind carries whispers from the bog. Your uncle's new pack grows restless."

  Edryc stared at the thread in his hand. Even in the dim light, he could see the way it shimmered—not merely reflecting the pale dawn, but glowing with its own faint luminescence. "This can't be his doing," he said hoarsely. The words tasted like ash in his mouth. "Théodred was many things—a traitor, a turncoat, a man who put ambition above blood—but he wasn't a fool. He wouldn't have..." The protest died in his throat as the memory of those human eyes staring out from the gutterwolf's distorted skull flashed behind his eyelids.

  The bog-witch turned, her tarnished silver eyes catching the light in a way that made them seem to glow from within. "You think this is just about your uncle?" She barked a laugh that held no humor, the sound as dry as dead leaves scraping against stone. "The Sleepers have been whispering to Vargor for years, planting dreams in his skull as he sleeps. Your father heard them too, in the end. That's why he went into the barrow when Brynwood burned. Not to flee. Not to hide. To bargain."

  A gust of wind carried the stench of rotting flesh from Edryc's wound. He grimaced as fresh pus soaked through the moss-and-spiderweb bandage Líotha had applied hours before. The bog-witch's remedies had slowed the corruption's spread, but not stopped it. "You keep saying that," he growled. "Prove it."

  Líotha's smile showed too many teeth. She reached into the folds of her cloak and produced a small leather pouch, its surface stained dark with what could have been old blood or tannin. When she upended it, a handful of finger bones clattered onto the stone between them—each one meticulously carved with intricate runes that made Edryc's eyes water to look upon.

  "Your father left these in Hár's Barrow," she said, arranging the bones in a semicircle with ritualistic precision. "Messages carved in flesh and bone for whoever came after. The last one—" she tapped the smallest bone, its surface nearly covered in tiny markings, "—reads: 'Forgive me. I thought I could control it.'"

  Edryc reached for the bone, but Líotha snatched it back. "Touch these unprepared, and you'll share whatever madness took him at the end."

  By midday they reached the edge of the Ashen Valley, where the skeletal remains of an ancient forest stood sentinel over the winding path that led to Brynwood's ruins. The blackened trunks rose like the ribs of some long-dead beast, their branches clawing at the overcast sky. No undergrowth grew between them—just a carpet of brittle gray moss that crunched underfoot like crushed bone.

  Edryc paused beside one particularly massive stump, running his fingers over the strange grooves carved into its petrified surface. The marks ran in parallel lines, too deep and regular to be the work of time or weather. "These aren't axe marks," he murmured.

  "Teeth," Líotha said without breaking stride. She didn't even glance back. "When the Sleepers first walked under the moon, they fed on anything that grew. The trees remember. The stones remember. Only men are foolish enough to forget."

  As if in response, the silver thread in Edryc's pocket grew suddenly, painfully warm. He drew it out just as the ground beneath them trembled—not the violent shaking of an earthquake, but the subtle vibration of something vast stirring in its sleep. The thread's glow intensified, pulsing in time with the distant, rhythmic thud that seemed to come from deep beneath their feet.

  Líotha froze, her head cocked like a wolf catching a distant scent. A drop of black blood trickled from her nose as she stood motionless, listening to something Edryc couldn't hear. "They're dreaming," she whispered at last, wiping the blood away with the back of her hand. "We need to move. Now."

  Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

  They hadn't gone fifty paces when the first arrow thudded into a stump beside Edryc's head, its black-fletched shaft vibrating with the force of impact.

  A dozen figures emerged from the dead forest's shadows, their armor pieced together from Legion scraps and the tattered remnants of House Bryn's colors. At their head stood a bear of a man with a rusted mail coif and a sword so notched from countless battles that its edge resembled a saw blade. The scar running from his hairline to what remained of his left eye pulled his face into a permanent sneer.

  "Eradoc's whelp," the man spat, leveling his battered sword. "I'd know that arrogant jaw anywhere. Still sticking out like you've got a mouth full of piss to spit at the world."

  Edryc's hand went to his sword, but stopped short of drawing. "Garric? By all the gods—you were my father's captain!"

  "Was," the man agreed grimly. He shifted his weight, revealing a pronounced limp that hadn't been there when Edryc last saw him at Brynwood's training yards. "Before he led my brothers into that cursed barrow. Before the Sleepers took their minds and left their bodies to wander the moors, moaning for blood and salt." His remaining eye—the other was a mass of knotted scar tissue—glittered with barely contained rage. "You'll answer for his sins, boy. One way or another."

  Líotha's dagger was in her hand before Edryc could respond. "Fool," she hissed, her voice dropping to a guttural register that didn't sound entirely human. "Can't you feel it? The Black Wind comes for all of us!"

  As if summoned, an unnatural fog began creeping between the dead trees, moving against the wind in slow, purposeful tendrils. Where it touched the gray moss, the vegetation blackened and curled inward, letting out soft hissing pops like fat in a fire. Garric's men shifted uneasily, their weapons wavering as they glanced between their leader and the approaching mist.

  Edryc saw his chance. He raised the silver thread high, letting it catch what little light filtered through the clouds. The filament blazed suddenly bright, casting their faces in stark relief. "My father made mistakes," he called, his voice echoing strangely in the still air. "But I carry the last thread of the Banner's oath. Help me mend what was broken, or stand aside and watch Hárthal fall when the Sleepers wake completely."

  For a long moment, the only sound was the creeping fog whispering through the dead grass. Then Garric lowered his sword with a weary sigh that seemed to come from the depths of his scarred soul.

  "Damn you," he muttered, spitting into the ashen dirt. "Damn you for having his eyes."

  That night in Garric's hidden camp—a series of shallow caves carved into the hillside by some ancient river—Edryc watched as Líotha prepared the ritual. She'd arranged the finger bones in a spiral pattern around a shallow depression filled with water from a nearby spring. Now she added pinches of various powders from different pouches at her belt, each one making the water shimmer with a different hue before settling into an eerie, opalescent glow.

  "It's not enough to have the thread," she explained without looking up. Her hands moved with practiced precision, measuring each component by some internal calculus Edryc couldn't fathom. "It needs to remember its purpose. Needs blood to wake the memory sleeping in the silver."

  Garric grunted from where he leaned against a mossy boulder, sharpening his notched sword with methodical strokes. "What kind of blood?"

  "The kind that remembers oaths." Líotha's gaze locked onto Edryc's festering wound. "And the kind that breaks them."

  Understanding dawned as Edryc unwrapped his bandage. The corruption had spread nearly to his elbow now, the veins standing out black beneath his skin like tributaries on a map of damnation. A foul-smelling yellow fluid seeped from the wound's edges, soaking into the already stained cloth. "You mean to use my blood. And his."

  The bog-witch nodded, producing a thin blade carved from what looked like a human femur. "One to call the magic. One to bind it." She held the knife out hilt-first. "Your uncle's taint runs in your veins now, Brynson. Time to spill it out before it spills you."

  The cut burned worse than the original wound. Edryc's blood dripped black and viscous into the waiting pool, each drop hissing like water on hot coals as it struck the enchanted surface. The water churned violently, its opalescent glow darkening to the color of a fresh bruise.

  Then Garric stepped forward, rolling up his sleeve to reveal a forearm crisscrossed with old battle scars. He took the bone knife without hesitation and drew it across his palm, letting his blood—still a healthy, vibrant red—drip into the pool alongside Edryc's corruption.

  As their blood mingled, the silver thread suddenly leapt from Edryc's pocket into the roiling water. The pool erupted into furious motion, bubbling and spitting like a living thing in its death throes. Plumes of acrid steam rose from the surface, carrying the scents of lightning and old bones and something deeper, older—the smell of stone that has never known the sun.

  When the mist cleared, the thread floated serenely atop the now-calm water—transformed. No longer frayed and tarnished, it gleamed as if newly forged, its surface covered in tiny, intricate runes that hadn't been there before. The symbols seemed to shift when looked at directly, rearranging themselves into patterns that danced at the edge of comprehension.

  Líotha retrieved it with trembling fingers, her normally pallid skin gone ashen with exertion. "The first oath is remembered," she whispered, her voice hoarse as if she'd been screaming. Then her head snapped up, eyes wide with sudden alarm. "But the Wind comes for its due!"

  Outside the circle of bones, beyond the flickering firelight, the Black Wind howled through the dead trees—a sound of hunger and rage and terrible, relentless purpose.

  Edryc felt the corruption in his arm pulse in response, as if something deep within the wound had awakened.