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POV: Arthur Snow
Location: Stonewatch, Western Coast
The last of the villagers were safe. That should have been the end.
But Arthur had seen the tracks.
Boot prints in ash—too many. And only three ships on the shore. The fourth had likely landed farther north, using the fire at Stonewatch as cover. It wasn't over.
He stood over the embers of the village longhouse, watching the wind drag smoke into the trees. Behind him, the freed villagers whispered prayers. One offered bread, hands shaking. Arthur took it gently and nodded, but said nothing.
A rider galloped up from the northern rise, breath steaming.
"Another landing," he said. "Smoke from the ridge trail. Small hamlet called Graystone's Edge."
Arthur didn't hesitate. "Mount up."
The forty riders left in silence. They didn't shout. They didn't chant. They moved with grim focus. If the Ironborn expected fear, they would find only steel.
They reached the ridge by twilight.
Below them, the hamlet burned.
Graystone's Edge had no walls, no guardposts—just seven homes built near a shallow river, with a mill and a fishing dock. And Ironborn were everywhere. At least sixty. Arthur's men would be outnumbered by nearly two to one.
But most were drunk, celebrating around a makeshift bonfire. Several had torn village cloaks and wore them as trophies. Four women were tied to the mill wheel, gagged but alive. Arthur noted every angle, every blind spot, every piece of higher ground. He crouched with Harwin and Lindel behind a boulder above the north trail.
"They won't expect a strike until dawn," Lindel said.
Arthur scanned the firelight. "We won't give them one."
He looked to the side. A narrow stream flowed behind the hamlet. Trees hugged its edge. One of the men had brought rope. Another, a pouch of crushed glass and bone ash.
They struck an hour later.
The rope team crept upstream and blocked the boats. Another group placed oil-soaked cloth in the dry grass along the southern route. Harwin and his best men crawled beneath the mill and placed torches in its rafters. Then Arthur walked into the firelight.
Alone.
The Ironborn saw him too late.
One rushed him with a hammer. Arthur ducked low, disarmed him in two movements, and struck his throat with the hilt. The man collapsed, choking. Two more came in from the sides. Arthur flowed past one, kicked the second into the firepit, then rolled to his feet as chaos exploded behind him.
The mill burst into flame. The riders charged from the ridge with war cries sharp as the wind. Arthur didn't watch them. He had locked eyes with the man in command—a tall reaver with chains on both arms and a beard soaked in blood.
The Ironborn grinned.
"Come on then, wolf pup."
Arthur moved.
The man swung first, fast and low. Arthur sidestepped, caught the chain mid-air, wrapped it around his forearm, and yanked. The reaver stumbled forward—right into Arthur's elbow. Bone cracked.
Still, the Ironborn fought hard. He broke free, kicked Arthur back, and drew a second blade from his belt.
Arthur breathed once. Then stepped forward.
He parried, deflected, cut once across the thigh, and finished with a clean strike to the back of the knee. The man dropped. Arthur didn't kill him.
Not yet.
The rest of the fight was shorter.
The stream ran red for only minutes before the last of the Ironborn fell or fled. One longship tried to escape, but it had already been sabotaged. The smoke from the mill curled into the night sky as Arthur pulled the women free.
One of them tried to kneel. He stopped her with a look.
"Stand. You're Northmen. Kneel to no one."
He turned to the reaver captain, who lay gasping in the mud, clutching his knee.
Arthur crouched beside him.
"You came to burn, so we gave you fire," he said.
"YOU !!," the man coughed."WHAT ARE YOU !!"
Arthur didn't answer.
He stood, nodded to Harwin.
"Bind him. Let him walk home on broken legs. That's more message than corpse."
Harwin raised an eyebrow but said nothing.
That night, the villagers rebuilt their fires. One gave Arthur a necklace of simple river stones.
"It's not much," the man said, "but it's what we have."
Arthur took it without a word and placed it in his satchel.
When the fighting was done, he sat alone beside the half-burned dock, eyes fixed on the water. Reaper rested beside him, still wrapped.
He didn't draw it once that day.
He didn't need to.
But his hand drifted to it in the quiet, and it pulsed again—not in hunger, not in triumph.
Only in recognition.
He thought of the boy he once was. Of the fields in his past life that had burned because of his pride. He thought of the man he had become, and the blade that had not seen the light tonight.
Then he closed his eyes and let the tide wash the blood from his boots.