The nights were the worst.
When the blood was washed from their hands, the gear repaired, and the thin fires crackled low under the suffocating Marches mist — that was when the tension ripened.
Calder didn't sleep heavy anymore.
He dozed, one eye open, a blade never farther than a breath from his hand.
He wasn't alone.
The men he had gathered — the broken, the damned, the ones too cruel or too stubborn to die — circled each other like dogs chained too close to fight but too far to run.
Laughter was rare.
Trust rarer.
Deals were struck in murmured half-sentences.
Old grudges sharpened over shared meat.
Knives were polished not just for the next raid, but for the man who might falter beside you.
The camp stank of iron, sweat, and the slow rot of civility bleeding out.
Calder moved through them like a wolf through a dying herd.
Silent.
Patient.
Watchful.
A nod here to a man sharpening his spear.
A grunt there to a scavenger cleaning a blade too carefully.
A casual glance at a cooking fire where two deserters muttered low and quick before falling silent when he approached.
They feared him.
That was good.
Fear kept knives sheathed longer than respect ever could.
But even fear had limits.
And Calder could feel it — the slow, grinding inevitability — the warband would eat itself if he didn't feed it something worse to kill.
The Marches didn't allow friendships.
Only temporary alliances built on hate, hunger, and necessity.
Calder intended to use all three.
Dawn crawled over the Marches like a wounded beast.
Low mist.
The sky bleeding copper and gray.
Another day born in filth and old promises.
Calder crouched at the crest of a ridge, peering down into the shallow basin below.
A thin line of Thornhollow's men marched there — a supply caravan moving slow and easy, thinking the Marches too broken to rise against them.
Three wagons.
A handful of mounted guards.
Supplies heavy enough to feed an army.
Armor enough to arm a rebellion.
And death riding on their shoulders, unseen.
Behind Calder, the warband stirred.
Forty-three killers.
Hungry.
Restless.
Breathing hard through cracked teeth and tighter jaws.
They weren't soldiers.
They weren't an army.
They were a tide of knives looking for a throat to cut.
Calder turned, meeting each man's eyes one by one — cold, sharp, silent.
The plan was simple:
Hit fast.
Hit brutal.
Leave no survivors to tell tales.
It was the only plan the Marches respected.
He gave the signal with a low, curt gesture — a closed fist, then an open hand.
The warband moved like a landslide.
Scrambling down the broken ridge.
Weapons flashing in the gray light.
Snarling, roaring, a tidal wave of blood and iron.
The first wagon guards barely had time to raise a cry before the knives were on them.
Calder led the charge — Dog's Hunger roaring through the mist, shearing through armor and bone alike.
A spear glanced off his pauldron — he twisted, slammed the heavy blade down, split the spearman from collarbone to hip.
Branwen moved behind him — slower, more careful, a shield taken from a dead guard raised awkwardly.
Learning.
Bleeding.
Enduring.
The caravan erupted into chaos.
Horses screamed.
Men shouted.
Steel rang.
The warband tore through them like wolves in a slaughterhouse.
No discipline.
No mercy.
Just raw, desperate hunger.
The first wagon went down in a tangle of broken wheels and crushed bodies.
The second tried to flee — a whip cracked, horses screamed — but a half-dozen of Calder's men swarmed it, hacking at the beasts, dragging the driver down under a sea of rusted steel.
Calder fought like a man who had forgotten how to die.
Every swing of Dog's Hunger broke bone or blade.
Every step forward was over blood-slick mud and broken teeth.
He moved through the fray with cold precision:
Dropping a crossbowman with a thrown knife to the gut.
Splitting a mounted guard's horse out from under him and finishing the man before he could scream.
Parrying a desperate lunge and driving his pommel into the attacker's face hard enough to shatter cheekbone.
Branwen fought close by, guarded but ferocious.
No glory.
No pretty heroics.
Just survival, ugly and vicious.
Within minutes, the battle was over.
The mist hung heavy over the dead.
The survivors — Calder's warband — picked through the wreckage, looting bodies, finishing off the wounded with quiet, efficient thrusts.
No cruelty.
No honor.
Just work.
A crippled caravan guard crawled away, dragging one shattered leg, blood painting the mud behind him.
He looked up at Calder, eyes wide with terror, lips moving in a prayer the Marches had long since stopped answering.
Calder walked past him without a word.
One of the deserters — Varrick, the one with the scar that split his jaw — fell upon the man a second later with a broken axe.
The prayer ended in wet, chopping sounds.
When it was done, the warband gathered the spoils.
Food.
Armor.
Coin.
Enough to survive another month if they rationed carefully.
Enough to arm the next bloodletting.
They camped that night in the remains of a burned-out orchard.
No fires — only cold rations and colder stares.
Branwen sat apart from the others, cleaning blood from his blade with slow, shaking hands.
Not fear.
Not weakness.
Just the slow cracking of something inside that hadn't realized it was brittle yet.
Calder watched him for a long moment, sharpening Dog's Hunger with slow, deliberate strokes.
Branwen would break eventually.
Or he would harden.
There was no third path in the Marches.
Varrick swaggered by, a stolen chain wrapped around one massive forearm, sneering down at Branwen.
"Little lord's soft," he muttered loudly enough for half the camp to hear.
"Still thinks this is a game."
Branwen stiffened but said nothing.
Smart.
Words were invitations to death among wolves.
Calder said nothing too.
He just made a slow, deliberate pass with the whetstone over Dog's Hunger's battered edge.
A quiet reminder:
One wrong move, and the blood wouldn't stop with Thornhollow's men.
It would start here, in the dirt, among the broken blades that dared to think themselves kings.
As night dragged on, Calder walked the perimeter, boots silent on the churned mud.
The Marches whispered beyond the orchard — the low, endless sound of wind through dead trees and ruined bones.
No heroes here.
No lords worth kneeling to.
Just killers standing ankle-deep in the blood of other killers, waiting for their own knives to find them.
He liked it better that way.
No lies.
No illusions.
Only survival.
Only blood.
Only debt.
Tomorrow they would move again — eastward, toward the heart of Thornhollow's domain.
Toward bigger prey.
Toward the next link in the chain dragging them all toward ruin or redemption.
Calder Vane had no faith in gods, or destiny, or clean endings.
Only in the edge of a blade.
The stubbornness of a debt unpaid.
And the quiet, endless hunger to outlast a world that wanted him dead and forgotten.