The morning began with a silence that didn’t feel like peace. The river kept to their left like a strip of dull steel, wide and slow. They followed it south through a morning that went nowhere. Mist hugged the water and dragged across the low ground in loose veils. The marshland rolled out in gray and brown, reeds whispering over pools gone stagnant, dead trees slumped on roots softened by rot. Hooves sank and boots pulled free with wet, sucking noises, their muttered curses carried off by crows offering the only commentary with the odd harsh squawk.

  By late morning Kay’s shoulders ached from riding hunched against the damp. The column moved in cautious stretches—Graves’ bowmen fanned ahead in thin screens, Vincent and Sid keeping their men close on either side of the main line. Pages ran messages back and forth, faces already streaked with mud. When Dylan raised his hand, the signal rippled down the line. The company slowed, then came to a halt on a slightly higher patch of ground that felt, if not dry, at least disinclined to swallow them outright.

  “This is it,” Dylan called back. “The bend.”

  Kay nudged Beryl forward. The place wasn’t much to look at—a low rise above the river, with the ground firm enough for spades and posts. The river curved in tight, giving them water at their backs and one flank no enemy could cross without showing themselves. The marsh stretched on everywhere else, a flat, colorless sea.

  Kay drew a breath of air that tasted of wet earth and tannin. “We start here,” he said. “Ser Dylan, Ser Sid—get the first wall up. I want ditches on the marsh side before dusk.”

  Orders moved out like stones tossed into a pond. Men-at-arms and mercenaries peeled away in squads. Carts creaked as wood was unloaded—rough-cut trunks, sharpened stakes, bundles of rope. Shovels bit into soil with thick, wet sounds. Someone cursed as a boot slid. Someone else laughed, offering a hand to help him up.

  Graves’ bowmen pushed out again, disappearing in ones and twos into the fog at fifty paces until only their horn-signals marked where they stopped and then returned. For a short while, it felt almost like any other hard job. Work, not war.

  The first length of palisade rose waist-high. A ditch opened up in front of it, shoulder-deep in places, mud thrown inward for a rampart. Kay walked the line, cloak pulled tight, watching men set posts and lash them together. The rhythm steadied him. It was something he understood. Build a wall. Hold a line. He was halfway through a thought about how many more carts Lawrence could reasonably send this far south when the sky made a sound like angry rain.

  An arrow hit the unfinished palisade with a hollow crack. Another hissed past a man’s head and vanished into the mist. A third struck the ground by Kay’s boot and quivered there, fletching dark and unfamiliar.

  “Ambush!” someone shouted.

  Kay was already moving. “Shields! Get behind the wall!”

  Arrows came in properly then—a scattered volley from the fogged marsh. No battle-cry. No shadows in the mist. Just shafts dropping out of gray. One man-at-arms screamed, lost his balance, and fell into the ditch, an arrow through his upper arm. A mercenary further along grabbed at his calf and swore, teeth bared.

  “Graves!” Kay bellowed.

  “On it!” came the answer from somewhere past the half-built palisade.

  Graves’ horn blew a long, sharp note. His archers rose in loose lines behind the half-finished works, bows already half-drawn. “Forward angle!” he snapped. “Loose on my mark.” Two heartbeats later he called: “Now!”

  Their arrows went back the way the first had come—not precise, but thick enough to answer. The shots vanished into fog at forty, fifty paces. Somewhere out there, something moved quick and low. Kay couldn’t see it. He felt it in the way the hair lifted on his arms.

  Dylan and Sid drove the front ranks together with curses and hands on shoulders. Shields came up. Men knelt or braced, forming a rough semi-circle facing the marsh, the half-fixed palisade at their backs. Sire George’s and Sire Gordon’s men filled the gaps as if they’d rehearsed it, timber markers forgotten in favor of steel.

  “Vincent!” Kay waved him in. “Rear and flanks. Anything gets past the first line, you cut it down.”

  Vincent nodded once, face set. “You heard him,” he called to his company. “We’re the door that doesn’t open.”

  They flowed to their positions, anchoring the curve, weapons out, eyes on the fog. The arrows kept falling, but not in great numbers. A few here. A few there. Testing. Feeling for weak spots. An old game.

  Sire Klod’s patience snapped first. He’d been hovering near the front along with his own men, horses fussing and stamping in the thin mud. When one shaft thudded into the earth by his mare’s hoof, he jerked his head toward the white wall of fog and barked a laugh that had no humor in it.

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  “At last,” Sire Klod said. “Something to hit.”

  Before Kay could call his name, Sire Klod had raised his sword high and was shouting to his riders. “With me! Yellowhill, forward!”

  They surged past the edge of the half-formed line in a churn of hooves and wet turf, pennon snapping, bright boar on yellow disappearing into the mist in less than ten heartbeats.

  “Sire Klod!” Kay snapped. “Hold—”

  Too late, the fog had swallowed him whole.

  “Hold the line,” Sid said low. “You tear after him on foot, you’ll lose more than he does.”

  Sid was right, and they both knew it. Kay stayed where he was, jaw tight.

  “Graves! Hold your fire!” Kay called instead. “But keep your eyes open!”

  “Already trying,” Graves muttered.

  Graves ordered his men to ignore Sire Klod’s direction and focus on all others. The river slid by on their left, wide and uninterested. The fog over the marsh thickened until, past fifty paces, it might as well have been a wall. Muffled noise rolled back out of that gray—faint, but clear enough to understand. Steel on steel. The ugly sound of a horse going down hard.

  Kay’s hands clenched on the top of the nearest stake. He wanted to see. He wanted to know. Instead he forced himself to watch the men in front of him—the way they gripped their shields, the way their eyes kept flicking left and right.

  “Hold,” he said, loud enough for the line. “We’re not chasing ghosts. Let them come to us or chase Klod. Either way, we make this ground ours.”

  Minutes stretched. Graves lowered his bow a fraction, listening as much as looking.

  “They’re shifting,” he called. “Can’t see where. Feels like they’ve pulled back.”

  Kay didn’t trust the quiet. “Be ready to volley,” he said.

  He sent runners along the inside of the half-circle, checking for gaps. Men-at-arms adjusted positions, some stepping back to widen spots where the line had bunched too tight. Vincent’s mercenaries stayed loose and ready at the rear, watching the fog as if it might sprout teeth.

  At length, hooves thudded out of the gray. Sire Klod’s riders came back in ones and twos, then a larger clump. They were fewer than they’d charged out with; Kay could see that even before he counted. Mud streaked their legs to the knee. One horse was limping. One wasn’t bearing anyone at all.

  Sire Klod rode at the front, helm gone, hair plastered to his skull with sweat and mist. In his right hand he held something by the hair. An elf head—its eyes fixed open with shock, features sharp as a knife, brown braid hacked halfway through. He reined in just outside the ditch and hauled the thing up high.

  “They bleed!” Sire Klod shouted, voice raw. “They flee!”

  Sire Klod’s men cheered, ragged and full of pride. A few of the others lifted their voices too, more from habit than joy.

  “How many?” Sire George asked, stepping forward, counting what was left of Yellowhill’s riders with his eyes.

  Sire Klod’s grin flashed. “Enough,” he said. “Twenty? Thirty? Slit-thin things. They thought to bite and flee. We bit back.”

  Sire Klod shook the head for emphasis, as if the marsh itself needed to see it. Kay’s gaze moved over Sire Klod’s men. He counted gaps where there had been no gaps before.

  “You’ve lost a quarter,” he said quietly.

  Klod’s jaw tightened for a heartbeat, then he shrugged as if shedding it. “They died with blades out, not in their sheaths. Better that than rotting in bed.” He jerked his chin toward the palisade. “Besides, you wanted proof they’re here. Here it is.”

  The elf’s wet hair dripped on the trampled ground. Kay let it stand. There was no time for argument now—not in front of the men, not with the marsh watching.

  “Back into the line,” he said. “You and yours. We’re not done. Any badly injured, send them into the camp.”

  Sire Klod snorted, but he wheeled his horse and folded in where Dylan pointed, Yellowhill’s survivors slotting into the semi-circle with the rest. Whatever else he was, he knew how to hold when told. The mist didn’t bring another attack. Slowly, like a breath let out, the camp eased.

  Graves called his archers in tighter, stationing two dozen inside the curve of the semi-circle with clear lanes between shields and stakes. The rest rotated to the outer edges, tasked to watch and warn more than shoot. Strings stayed waxed. Bows stayed strung until the light began to fade.

  Vincent spread his men along the rear and flanks—they didn’t relax, nor were they at full stretch anymore. A few sat on overturned logs, eating hard bread as they listened, weapons within easy reach. Work picked back up, more purposeful now. Men went back to the palisade, hands moving faster as if the attack had carved any hesitation out of them. Posts went in deeper. Cross-bracing was lashed tight. Wooden redoubts began to rise at the corners of the line—rough towers barely taller than a man, but high enough for a bow or a watchman.

  Others took to the ditches, deepening them, shaping the spoil-heap into a berm that would break charge and arrow both. Shovels clinked on hidden stone. Curses floated up and were swallowed by the damp air. Axes rang from the near copse of trees. Sid had ordered every trunk within sight-line felled. Men hacked at roots slick with mud, dragged branches back for fuel and stakes, left stump fields where the elves would have to show themselves if they wanted to come close again.

  By late afternoon the ground around the outpost looked different—a little spot claimed by civilization. The river slid by at the rear, patient as ever. Smoke from new-built cook fires drifted low, carrying the smell of wet wood and thin stew. The men were tired, jumpy, but they moved with a kind of grim satisfaction now. They’d seen the enemy. They’d bled. They were still standing.

  Sire Klod had planted the elf’s head on a stake beyond the ditch. It watched the mist with empty eyes as the light began to go. Kay stood on the packed earth behind the palisade and looked out at the fog. The elves knew exactly where they were now. The first day in the marsh had drawn blood on both sides. The next would decide whether they were hunters or hunted.