The horns sound before dawn.

  Eric wakes to darkness and cold so deep it feels solid, pressing against his chest. Frost crusts the inside of the tent, glittering faintly in the lantern light. Someone nearby coughs, a deep, wet sound, and another groans as stiff muscles protest movement.

  “Up,” a voice calls. “Supplicants, up.”

  The column forms quickly, breath fogging the air in uneven clouds. Fires are stamped out, tents folded with numb fingers. No one lingers. The road waits.

  They move south as the sky begins to pale, boots crunching over frozen mud and old snow. The king’s men walk at the front and rear, cloaks heavy, pace relentless but not cruel. Just enough to keep them moving.

  As the road bends through low hills, the first village appears.

  Eric feels it before he sees it, the quiet watching.

  People stand near doorways and fences, bundled in wool and fur. Some bow their heads. Some avert their eyes. A few stare openly, faces tight with calculation.

  More supplicants join the column there, falling in without ceremony. Boys and girls Eric has never met, packs slung low, eyes already dulled by fatigue.

  Eric counts without meaning to.

  Edgebrook had seven.

  This village adds five.

  The next adds four.

  Each time, Eric notices the same thing.

  Someone missing.

  A house too fine for its door to be empty. A young face absent from the line. One or two per village, always one or two.

  “They left early,” Emil murmurs beside him. “Paid for wagons.”

  Eric nods. He has already guessed.

  By midday, the snow thickens. Wind rises, driving it sideways until the road becomes a shifting white veil. The column tightens instinctively, bodies pressing closer, heat shared without acknowledgment.

  A girl near the front slips. She goes down hard, cry sharp in the cold air. A king’s man hauls her up without a word and pushes her back into line.

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  No one stops.

  That night, the tents go up slower.

  Fingers fumble with ties. Stakes refuse to bite into frozen ground. Someone swears softly. Someone else laughs, high and brittle, then stops.

  Eric helps where he can, driving pegs with a stone, bracing poles with packed snow. When his own tent is finally secure, he crawls inside and sits hunched, knees drawn to his chest.

  The cold does not ease.

  It settles.

  The first night, Eric tells himself this is a test. That the discomfort has meaning. That this will forge them into something better.

  By the second night, that thought has thinned.

  The ground steals heat relentlessly. Blankets are never quite enough. The wind finds every weakness in the canvas and worries it open. Sleep comes in broken fragments, dreams chased away by shivering.

  By the third morning, illusions crack.

  They pass another village, and again supplicants join, but fewer this time. A boy no older than Bram stumbles as he falls into step, eyes wide and frightened.

  “Where’s your sister?” someone asks him.

  He shakes his head. “She’s sick. Father paid.”

  The words follow Eric down the road like a shadow.

  At a brief halt, he watches a wagon crest a distant rise ahead of them, moving easily, wheels cutting clean tracks through the snow.

  Already gone.

  Marrius Jr. and Marvin are not among them today. Their carriage left before dawn, banners snapping smartly in the wind.

  “Figures,” Emil mutters.

  Cathryn says nothing, but her jaw tightens.

  By evening, a boy collapses two tents down from Eric’s. His name is Jonel.

  They carry him to the fire, wrap him in cloaks, press warm cups into his hands. A king’s man kneels, checks his pulse, his breathing.

  “Exhaustion,” he says. “He’ll walk tomorrow.”

  No one asks what happens if he doesn’t.

  Eric lies awake listening to Jonel’s ragged breaths and the endless whisper of snow against canvas.

  This is not about building character, he realizes.

  It is about endurance.

  And endurance does not care who you are.

  The next day, the column grows again, then shrinks.

  A girl from the river village turns back at midday, escorted by a guard. Her face is blank, eyes red-rimmed. No one speaks to her as she passes.

  Eric watches her go, heart heavy.

  That night, Cathryn sits beside him as they eat thin stew.

  “This isn’t what they said,” she says quietly.

  “No,” Eric agrees.

  Emil huddles closer, voice low. “They want us tired. Easier to shape.”

  Eric stares into the bowl. The broth is barely warm.

  “They won’t break me,” he says, surprising himself with the certainty in his voice.

  The snow keeps falling.

  The next morning, the guard returns much to soon to have escorted the girl all the way back.

  Villages blur together, names forgotten as quickly as faces. The column stretches longer, thinner, more uneven. Some supplicants talk less. Some stop talking entirely.

  Eric learns the rhythm of walking through pain. He learns how to keep his feet warm just enough, how to eat slowly to make food last, how to sleep despite the cold.

  He learns who cannot be relied on.

  He learns who can.

  By the fifth night, no one speaks of purpose anymore.

  They speak of warmth.

  Of dry socks.

  Of the capital, close or far, depending on who is asked.

  Eric looks south whenever the road allows it, eyes scanning the horizon for something, anything, that matches the stories in his books.

  He finds only snow.

  But beneath it, the road continues.

  And so does he.