Chapter 18 — Ashes and Echoes
The wind from the Greywatch carried the scent of iron and pine.
Dawn broke over the river like a knife through smoke. No fanfare. No horns. Just a cold, wet mist that rolled low across the silted shore. Lorien stood on the eastern bank, boots sunk deep in dark mud, watching his men complete the last of the landings.
The bridgehead held.
Behind him, planks groaned as oxen pulled the last wagons ashore. The engineers—wrapped in cloaks soaked through with dew—had already laid the first stretch of corduroy road beyond the waterline. The camp was a skeleton of lines and stakes, a few tents rising now in neat columns. Flags of ash-gray silk, marked with no crest but Lorien's own—the sword wreathed in fire—fluttered limp and heavy.
He turned to Lady Sera, who wore no armor, only a woolen coat belted tight at the waist. Mud streaked her hems. Her eyes, gray as slate, didn't stray from the northern tree line.
"No resistance," she said. "But not because no one's watching."
Lorien nodded. "They'll wait. They'll watch."
"How long until they press us?"
"Depends," Lorien murmured. "If they're wise, they'll harass the flanks. Try to bleed us before we can build a road deep."
Sera didn't respond. She was already moving, calling orders to the Thornvale scouts. Thirty riders, half of them former poachers. The kind of soldiers who moved with the land, not over it.
Further inland, the Emberborn had begun their own sweep. Serin Vale had deployed them in pairs, each with strict timings, staggered across four directions. They returned silent and grim, cloaks wet and blades clean—except for one pair. That one returned with blood.
A border village razed. No survivors. The flames were fresh.
"Ravener work," Vale said. She crouched before the map table inside the forward command tent. Her dark hair was braided back, her armor plain but impeccably maintained. She pointed to the mark she'd drawn in charcoal—barely a day's march ahead. "Small raiding party. But it means they've scouted our crossing. They're calling the tribes."
Lorien looked up. "Then we've begun."
Vale met his eyes. "We have."
---
Three days later, the first test came.
It wasn't an army, not yet. Just teeth. Thirty riders struck the eastern patrol. Spears, short bows, horses lean and tall. Painted faces, blackened gear. Ravener outriders. They didn't seek to hold ground—just to harass, to draw blood.
But they found Lorien waiting.
He had placed light cavalry behind a narrow ridge, with infantry feigning weakness across the forward slope. When the Raveners crested the hill in pursuit, the Thornvale cavalry surged up from behind them.
It was over in fifteen minutes.
Not a decisive engagement. But blood on the grass. And word sent by smoke and whisper across the forests: the Warden had crossed.
---
Each day after, the men pushed deeper. Engineers extended the road. Supply wagons followed, and new watchtowers rose, crude but steady. Lorien rotated his companies, kept them lean and moving. No one camped twice in the same place.
He moved like a knife through cloth.
And the north answered.
Smoke rose from abandoned steadings. Old paths were blocked with felled trees. Twice, scouts vanished. The war wasn't shaping as a single line—it was a net. Lightly strung, hard to see. But it was tightening.
On the seventh night, in the ashes of a ruined village, Lorien found a stone circle carved with runes.
Not magical. Not glowing. But ancient. And recent blood had been spilled there.
Vale ran a hand across the carvings. "They're binding rites. Old ones. Not for show. For uniting clans."
"You think they've begun to gather?"
"I'd bet on it."
"Then we move faster."
---
By the end of the second week, Lorien had taken three river villages and seized the eastern heights above the Hallowpine Basin. He left garrisons in each, small but disciplined, drawn from the Emberborn and Thornvale veterans.
The offensive wasn't a blaze. It was a steady burn. Ash spread. And with it, a name—whispered now in Ravener camps, across cold fires and sleepless nights:
Ash-Warden.
Not prince. Not bastard. Just that.
Ash-Warden.
And still, the true war had not begun.
Only the drums in the deep woods.
Only the watchers, gathering.