Chapter 17 – Winter Without Wal
The wind sang through broken trees and across the Greywatch, cold enough to split skin and silence song. It howled through the canvas of the command tent pitched on the far bank—a makeshift nerve-center for an army far from home. Smoke curled from low chimneys and shielded cookfires, blurring the first sunrise of the month.
Inside the war tent, Lorien stood with his hands behind his back, eyes fixed on the crude map pinned to the table. It was parchment stitched from two scavenged documents and hastily updated by Emberborn scouts. The Greywatch River wound thick through the middle like a blade, and a series of newly marked encampments dotted the northern terrain—his doing.
"Ten strongpoints in ten days," Vale murmured, her fingers tracing one of the red-circled hills northeast of the river bend. "That's a pace, Warden. Fast. Perhaps too fast."
Lorien did not look away from the map. "Speed was the only advantage we had in crossing. If we wait, they'll dig in. If we press, they scatter."
"And if we break, they devour." Sera Thornvale entered from the rear flap, snow crusting her shoulders. She peeled her gloves off with a crisp snap. "Your Emberborn report movement in the treeline east of Barrow's Span. Something's watching us."
Lorien turned, noting the wear in her voice. Thornvale had taken command of the first crossing companies—a patchwork of militiamen, auxiliaries, and veteran scouts—and held the far bank long enough for the full force to push over. She had not rested since.
Vale took a breath, slow and deliberate. "Let's assume we've made noise. They'll gather. Tribes, clans, scattered warbands. But they don't fight like we do. No siege lines, no field engagements."
"They bleed into the land," Lorien said. "And that means we have to root them out before they bleed into us."
A moment passed. Then: "So," Sera said, "we build."
---
By midmorning, the orders had gone out. Three new redoubts were to be raised within the week—timber forts with earthwork palisades along the eastern ridge of the occupied territory. Each stronghold would guard the supply corridors stretching back to Greywatch Crossing, which now pulsed with the blood of a growing army: convoys of carts, engineers, field cooks, apothecaries, armorers.
The army that had crossed with Lorien numbered just under 17,000, but another 4,000 had since followed. And more were coming.
But winter would not wait.
The first spades broke frozen earth by dusk. Sappers cursed as they split stones and drove sharpened stakes. The Emberborn, rarely seen in full light, moved like ghosts among the edges—scouting ahead, mapping trails into the deep woods, and returning with strange marks and totems carved from ashwood.
"They leave warnings," Serin Vale explained to Lorien that evening. She held up a charm made of bone and twine, pulled from a tree near Barrow's Span. "Old tongue. From before the tribes fractured. This one means curse upon the blood."
"Is it?" Lorien asked.
Vale gave him a look. "I don't believe in curses. I believe in fear. And symbols like this feed it."
---
The next morning, the Warden walked the camp. Fires burned low and men worked in bitter silence, but their formations were tight, their discipline intact. A unit from Burnedge drilled in the frostbitten yard, pikes sweeping in slow, synchronized arcs. Lorien stopped to watch.
These weren't the riotous conscripts of his earliest days. His army was becoming something else now. Hardened. Trained. Purposeful.
He found Sera with her captains near the forges, reviewing logistics. "What do you need?" he asked her plainly.
"A break in the snow. A proper quartermaster. And steel, not patched bronze. But since I'm not getting any of those..." She smirked, then sobered. "Morale's holding. But only because they believe you know what's coming. Do you?"
Lorien didn't answer right away.
"I know this much," he said finally. "The tribes we've seen are scattered. Frightened. But something drove them south—something strong enough to push a dozen clans off ancestral land. And if it kept them moving through winter..."
"...Then it's still coming," Sera finished.
---
That night, Emberborn scouts returned with the first real intelligence from deeper north. Serin Vale spread the reports out in the war tent by firelight. Scratched ink. Sparse detail. But chilling.
"A ruin here," she pointed. "Old Imperial site—burned out, looted, reoccupied. They're using it as a mustering ground. About thirty miles past the treeline. Four, maybe five clans. That's a thousand men if they're blooded."
"Are they coordinated?" Lorien asked.
"They're chanting the same name."
Vale flipped the last parchment over. A symbol was drawn there, rough and jagged: a hand carved from bone, fingers wreathed in flame.
"Never seen it before," she murmured. "But the tribes call it the Hand of the Mourning God."
Lorien stared at it in silence. The fire cracked. Something primitive stirred beneath the words.
"Whatever that is," Vale said, eyes narrowing, "it's more than a warband. It's a movement."
---
By the end of the week, the first redoubt was complete. Named Fort Kalen, after a fallen officer from the crossing, it stood on a bluff overlooking the Barrow valley. From its tower, one could see the curling frost breath of riders far to the north—watchers, waiting.
The war was no longer a chase. It was becoming a siege of the land itself.
A final report reached Lorien by courier near midnight—an Emberborn scout, bloodied, half-frozen, dragged in from the wilds by two of his own. They'd found something in the forests west of the river bend. Something unnatural.
"They don't bury their dead," the scout rasped. "They build them into the trees. We saw... faces. Bones stretched into bark. Singing."
Lorien dismissed the room and stood alone with the parchment in hand. He stared at the ink bleeding across its edge from frost.
He folded it. Looked to the fire.
This was not the war the Council had imagined.
It was older. Hungrier. And only just begun.