Calamity Awakens

The snow never left the graves. Ten headstones on the plateau's edge wore white caps like helmets, their names carved deep enough to catch every flake. The storm hadn't blown them smooth. It wouldn't. That was honest, at least.

Everything below the graves changed.

Axes bit into spruce and fir. Sparks leapt from Illga's forge in coin-colored showers. Wolves ghosted the perimeter in a loose ring, ears forward, breath pluming in the cold. The longhouse breathed like a beast: smoke out, warmth in, voices rumbling under the rafters.

Harold put the recruits on the field at first light and kept them there until their shoulders trembled. Their barracks was taking shape now that the second longhouse was done. They held off on the walls and tower working to complete the actual barracks until it was done.

They were armed properly now. Shield strapped to the left arm, spear in hand, kobold crossbow slung across the back, a long dagger—too long for a knife, too short for a sword—at the hip. The kit was crude but uniform. Uniform meant expectations. Expectations meant orders could turn into instinct before panic did.

"Shields up!" the shield sergeant barked. The line came up crooked. Close enough.

"Loose!"

Bolts hissed and thudded against frozen timber. A few pinged off stone. One skated wide and sent a frost wolf flattening its ears with injured dignity until Ferin snapped his fingers and whistled the animal back to position. It was one of the unbranded ones and Ferin was trying to steal one of Hal's.

The boy with the Dao of Distance watched his target like a priest watches an altar and sent his bolt clean into the center. He didn't smile. The work was the smile.

"Brace!" Daran drove into the front rank and hammered a shield with a dulled axe. Spears punched through the gaps in a ragged thicket.

A bowstring snapped and whipped a recruit across the cheek. He hissed and fumbled at his pouch, hands clumsy in the cold.

Harold took the crossbow, strung it, and pushed it back into the recruit's chest.

"The bolt doesn't care if your hands shake," he said. "Neither will the enemy. Fire, reload, breathe. Do it again."

"Yes, Commander," the recruit managed, color draining from his face and then crawling back.

Rynar lingered at the edge of the yard with a ledger tucked under his arm as if it were a sleeping child. He scrawled notes and counted under his breath.

"That's five strings," he murmured. "Six silver if we pretend they're all accidents. Nine if we accept human nature."

Harold didn't bother looking at him. "Bill me and I'll put you in the front rank with a spear."

"Perish the thought," Rynar said. "Who would keep the numbers honest?"

By midmorning the line stopped being a line and started being one creature with poor grace and promising teeth. The girl with Balance flowed into a stumble that should have broken the formation and made it look intentional. The boy with Endurance set his shield and ate the sergeant's next hammering without letting the edge sag. The lad with Distance kept finding center, once, twice, five times, while his neighbors chased theirs.

They weren't discovering their Daos. The system had told them what they were when they had stepped into Initiate. They were learning to make those truths talk to each other.

When Harold finally called a halt, the shield sergeant walked the front rank and tapped knuckles and knicked leather. She had the tone of a woman telling men whether they would live or not. One nod meant yes. A knuckle rap meant "fix that or die." She rapped four knuckles, nodded twice, said nothing to the rest.

That night Harold ate stew that tasted like smoke and patience. Daran found the same bench and sat with a grunt that sounded like a prayer offered to the god of sore joints.

"They're shaping," Daran said, eyes tracking the yard even with his bowl in his hands. "Balance girl will hold a flank in a windstorm. That Endurance guy will be there when the wall needs a spine. Distance lad will shame half a garrison if we can keep him supplied. The real danger is that man that found the Lava Dao. He's gonna be a menace. Though how he will cultivate it I don't know."

"And the rest?" Harold asked.

"Most will hold," Daran said. "Some will always falter." He tore bread with thick fingers and dipped it. "Always the way."

Harold grunted. It was not comfort. It would be better if we could get them body enhancement skills. This next group we fight will not be simple."

On the second night, Ragna and Brannic were waiting in the snow outside the original longhouse with the look of people who wanted to start a friendly argument and win it. The second had been built but was mostly used to bunk people. The first was still the gathering place.

"We're dry," Ragna said. Her copper hair caught torchlight, her cheeks pinked by cold and annoyance. "Last barrel's gone. We can't brew without grain."

"And water," Brannic said mournfully, "doesn't buy nights like this." He jerked his chin toward the hall, where laughter spilled out into the cold.

"You talked to Meala?" Harold said.

"Aye. She told me no," Ragna said. "Food first."

"She's right," Harold said. "Grain feeds bellies before barrels. What we loot from the dungeon next, you'll get your cut once a week. Make it stretch."

Brannic started to speak. Harold raised two fingers and Brannic closed his mouth with a click of teeth.

"That's the deal," Harold said. "I don't like making it more than you like hearing it. But that's the deal."

Ragna studied his face, weighing steel for flaws. Then she nodded. "Once a week."

"Sad day when a dwarf rations the brew," Brannic muttered, then brightened. "We'll make even water taste like a feast until then. But when the grain comes, you'll see men sing again. And you'll see me proud of it."

Harold believed him. He also believed Meala. Meala fed the living. Brannic fed the parts of them that wanted to keep living. He needed both a cook and a brewer if he wanted to keep an army in one place without it turning on itself.

Inside, Meala was running her kitchen like a battle. The big pot hissed. Children ran bowls. Two of the axe brothers argued amiably over who had cheated at cards, each accusing the other of being too honest. Lira was at the end of the table closest to the fire, leaving a space beside her that Harold ignored for about four seconds before he sat in it. She pushed him a bowl without looking. He took it and pretended she needed convincing to do the obvious.

"You're late," she said.

"You're warm," he said.

"That is one of my better virtues."

He grunted. The stew was hot. That was a virtue too.

The third day belonged to Master Olrick.

He claimed the longhouse, chalk in hand, circles already smeared across the table. The recruits crowded in shoulder to shoulder, the air wet with their breath and their wet clothes. Their shields leaned against the wall like sleeping turtles.

"Dao isn't tricks," Olrick said, chalk rapping the table. "It's the spine of you driven so hard into the world the world starts to bend to it. Sharpness. Endurance. Balance. Flame. Storm. Life. Death. Don't memorize them. It's not poetry. It's bones."

He pointed at the boy with Endurance. "What happens when something big and stupid runs at you?"

"I don't fall."

"Say it like you mean it."

"I don't fall."

"Louder."

"I don't fall!"

Olrick pointed at the girl with Balance. "What happens when the line shifts like a drunk on a galleon?"

"I stay upright."

"Good. Again."

"I stay upright."

"Again."

The third time cut the air.

A murmur rippled around the room. Some recruits leaned forward. Some leaned back. All of them looked less like boys and more like people deciding what they would be when hit.

At the back, Jerric stood. The shame was carved out under his eyes like someone had scraped him there with a spoon, but he held himself straight.

"What about when the world listens back?" he asked.

The longhouse went quiet. Even the fire stopped popping, as if it had an opinion.

Olrick rested the chalk in his beard. "Explain."

"The second time I went in," Jerric said, "I spoke to it. The dungeon. It heard me. It wanted to bond, to grow." His voice shook. He made it stop shaking. "I offered blood. Two mountain goats, I asked Hal and his pack to get them. When the blood hit the stone, the dungeon bound me to it. A thread from me to it. My Dao went to Squire immediately."

He raised his hand. Mana gathered like breath. A kobold snapped into being beside him—snarling, blade up, eyes bright with a light Jerric hadn't given it. It lasted three heartbeats and then collapsed into shadow.

Someone swore. Someone else crossed themselves with a trembling hand. Hal's lips peeled back to the gums in a smile wolves use for all occasions.

"Summoning," Harold said, and the word felt heavier than the room.

Jerric nodded. "I can call what the dungeon has birthed. The stronger it is, the more mana it eats. The cap isn't my level. It's my Dao, every time I'm near the dungeon I can sense things about it. How deep it goes, how strong it is. How I could make it better."

Olrick rubbed chalk into his beard until he looked like a snowstorm. "Dungeon Dao," he muttered. "Of course. That's why you kept pestering me about walls and triggers. Affinity, not curiosity. Gods take me, I should have seen it."

Harold crossed the room with enough weight that the new stone underneath complained. Jerric didn't flinch. That was either bravery or exhaustion, and Harold would take either.

"You're dangerous," Harold said. "That draws eyes. If you lose control, it won't just be you who pays."

"Then teach me," Jerric said. It wasn't a plea. It wasn't bravado. It was a statement of intent. "I'll make it worth the cost."

Harold looked into his eyes and reached out with Oath Perception, he saw a boy with a thread tied to something old and hungry and indifferent. He nodded once.

"Don't waste it."

Olrick clapped chalk dust from his hands. "Lesson stands," he said. "Some of you are spears. Some are shields. Apparently one of you is a door. You, he pointed at a red haired man in the back, are an angry mountain. Hone what you are. Or it will eat you alive."

That night Lira sat with the black focus across her knees, the bone cap catching firelight and drinking it like wine. Harold took his now-usual seat. He didn't ask. She didn't pretend to refuse it.

"You've been staring at that thing like it owes you rent," he said.

"It pays in a currency I like," she said. "Death bends through it cheaper. Raising the dead costs less mana. I can do more. And faster."

She flicked her fingers. A ribcage assembled in the air and fell apart without a sound.

"With this I can solo the first chamber," she said. "Before, that left me shaky. Now I can finish, turn around, and do it again."

"I'll be relying on you when this timer hits," Harold said. "I'm glad you're getting stronger"

"Yes." She looked up from the focus at him. "But not enough. Life and death don't sharpen like stone. Kelan's Dao is simple to hone. Mine is not."

"You'll get there."

Her mouth tilted. "I know."

They ate in the quiet that follows difficult truths. It was a good quiet. It didn't need filling.

Hal tried to sleep on Harold's cot again that night. Harold shoved him off. The wolf hit the floor, stared at the cot, then at Harold, then slid one foreleg across Harold's shins with the slow inevitability of a glacier and went to sleep.

In the morning Harold limped to the fire and Lira lifted her eyebrows.

"Don't," he said.

She said nothing at all and looked very pleased.

If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

On the fourth day Illga dragged Harold to the forge by the elbow like an aunt pulling a child to a gift he would pretend not to want. Soot darkened her forearms. Her braids were tied back. The heat in the little smithy was the first real heat the settlement had seen it could trust.

She slapped something onto the anvil hard enough to ring it.

A double-bearded axe. Steel, not the dull gray of kobold scrap. Its edge had been kissed by a whetstone until it refused to be anything but a line.

"The miners found a seam of coal in the ridge," Illga said. "Not rich, but good enough to make real steel. You've been sparring with those axe brothers like a man who wants a second profession. Use something worth bleeding over. And you better take care of it, this took me a long time to make and its the first time I've made something this large with steel."

Harold picked it up. The haft fit his hand like the hand had been made for it. He swung it once. It sang.

Illga grinned. "That'll do."

She lifted a shield next. Iron-rimmed, its wooden face banded and braced. "This goes to your shield sergeant. If she's got to keep you alive when you're trying to do your Calamity thing, she'll do it with steel."

Harold weighed the shield in his hand, then held it out.

The sergeant took it with both hands, eyes steady. "I'll use it," she said, "but only if you can tell me my name."

He didn't look away. "Sergeant Holt," he said. "Rheya."

A breath she hadn't meant to hold eased out of her. "Good. Because 'Shield Sergeant' isn't going on a headstone."

"Won't need one," Harold said. "Not while you're between me and the bolts."

Rheya's mouth tipped, almost a smile. She slid her arm through the straps, tested the weight with a short, brutal shove against his shoulder to see if he'd rock. He didn't. She nodded once, satisfied, and stepped back behind him.

Illga wasn't done showing him her work. Three hammer recruits had taken to her forge like ducks to water pipes. All of them had picked up smithing. One thin-armed boy had done more. When he struck the item he was working on, the sound changed. The metal shivered not with fear but with recognition.

"He's touched the Dao of Metal," Illga muttered, pride stingy and real. "Doesn't mean much now. Later? It will mean I don't have to work alone. And it might mean the difference between scrap and steel when we're counting coins and days. I might send him down to drill with your group in the mornings so he can see how metal behaves."

Harold nodded. "We'll take him, he would be a force multiplier."

Snow softened the world that afternoon. The children made it their task to make wolves into horses. The Ashen wolves rolled onto their backs with the unbothered patience of beasts who had decided these small humans were oddly shaped pups. Frost wolves crouched so braver children could swing their legs over their backs and shriek into their fur. It was chaos. Good chaos.

Only the black wolf stayed apart. It slid from shadow to shadow like spilled ink.

Meala and Brenn's eldest boy decided that was an invitation. He crouched behind barrels, ghosted along fences, lay flat and slid like a soldier in mud. The wolf slowed just enough to let the boy think he had a chance, then vanished and reappeared behind him to nudge his calf with a cold nose. The boy yelped, spun, laughed, tried again.

By dusk the game had a name: stealth tag. The wolf always won. Barely but on purpose.

Harold watched from the longhouse steps with his arms crossed. The corner of his mouth twitched traitorously. He did not stop it.

On the fifth morning a boy named Torren stood in front of the longhouse and tried not to shake. The system light made a pale smear in the air before his face, invisible to everyone but him.

"I've chosen," he said, voice steadying on the second word. "Archer. It's a common class. I'll make it matter."

Daran clapped his shoulder with a hand that had never been gentle and never needed to be. "Then you'll join the platoon or Ferin hunting. Or maybe the scouts. Crossbow first. Bow when you show me you can count."

Torren nodded like a man receiving a blessing and a debt in the same purse.

That afternoon a different kind of light came to the yard. A girl of thirteen, hands red with cold and work, stacked wood and felt something crackle in her chest. Frost leapt from her fingers and webbed the bark until the log glittered.

Olrick sucked air through his teeth. "Prodigy," he muttered. "Rare enough it writes its own odds. What is this place? She'll need teaching or she'll shatter herself."

"She'll get it," Harold said. He wasn't sure from where yet. He wasn't sure how much of Olrick's teaching would keep a child alive when the Dao of Winter decided it wanted to be the only season, but he said the words like a promise and meant to keep them. "You'll need to tier up as well Master Olrick."

By the sixth day Kelan's tower almost had a second floor.

Stone flowed under his palms, blocks rising and locking as if the mountain had been a sleeping thing waiting for the right voice to tell it a story. He had that voice now. Sweat ran into his beard. His eyes were bright with strain and certainty. When he sat back on his heels he looked like a man who had found something taller inside himself than his body.

At night Harold found him at the tower base, staring up past the ridge to where the peaks cut the sky.

"Your hands look like you've been strangling God," Harold said.

"That is what it feels like," Kelan said, and smiled. "Stone isn't enough anymore. The mountain listens. I think my Dao isn't Stone. I think it's Mountain."

"Stone is a rock," Harold said. "Mountain sounds like youre upgrading your Dao like Lira did. If it fits, take it."

Kelan nodded, mouth tilted. "I will."

The mushroom caves glowed like a low sky. The drow farmer added rows until the fungi made a false dawn under the mountain. He didn't talk. He placed. He sometimes watered. He cut and made baskets. The mushrooms needed time to grow but already the cave glowed luminescent.

"They grow better quiet," the drow said once, when Harold brought a torch to set in a bracket and a man to sit outside and not speak.

"We can do quiet," Harold said. It was the easiest promise he had made all week.

Jerric practiced his summoning in the yard under Harold's eye. The boy could pull more than kobolds: cave rats with mean little minds; a chittering carpet of bone-bugs the dungeon made to clean its own teeth; a pale, long-fingered thing that moved wrong and regretted it when Jerric's mana dipped. Each came with a puff of cold air, fought with whatever intellect it had been born with and whatever will Jerric could borrow from the thread, then vanished when the boy dismissed it.

"How long?" Harold asked, watching Jerric's face, not the thing.

"If I have the mana they'll last until they die," Jerric said, sweat standing out on his lip. "I summon the toughest one my mana will allow, then regenerate it, then summon the same one again. But each one reserves a small portion of my mana to maintain."

"And your cap?"

"My Dao and mana, I don't know how many of those I can handle. I can direct them at the bad people though." Jerric said, eyes flicking to him and away. "If I concentrate on it, I can pull harder. If I level I can do more with more mana."

"Then concentrate. We can't afford any of these getting away from you when battle starts.."

Jerric took that like a weight and nodded. Hal lay nearby, head on paws, eyes flat with patience. He looked at Jerric the way an old wolf looks at a river and decides whether it's learning to flow in the right direction.

Every night ended the same way. The longhouse roared, then softened. The last bowl scraped. The last laugh rolled off the rafters. Lira waited by the fire with a place beside her staked by a look more than a hand. Harold took it and pretended he had any say in the matter.

They talked about the things you talk about when you're not ready to talk about the other things. The dwarves argued about malt. Meala bullied a stubborn kettle and won. One of the axe brothers cheated at cards loudly and then loudly argued he was too honest to cheat. At least they could be told apart now. He was considering Branding them. They were good people.

Harold described how the Dao in him had sharpened, how mana empowerment slid into his Dao easier, how he could make the qi answer him faster by giving it what it wanted. Lira described how death listened more easily when life permitted it, which made as much sense in her mouth as any complicated thing could. Sometimes they ate and said nothing. Sometimes that did more than any lecture. These nights were what he looked forward to.

Hal tried the cot every night. Harold shoved him off every night. Harold woke every morning with his legs pinned by a paw that weighed as much as a sack of coal. Lira raised one eyebrow and drank her tea without comment every time and managed to say a great deal that way. And where she got the tea leaves she never said.

If this was a life built in the lee of graves, it was still a life.

On the sixth morning the sergeants took their run into the dungeon.

Not Daran. He stayed outside with Harold, arms crossed, expression set hard as a millstone. The platoon sergeant's job was to see and remember, not to stand in the doorway and be a hero.

The three squad leaders led: shield, spear, axe. They were the ones who would turn people into formation and formation into survival. If they couldn't do it, Harold's storm wouldn't buy them more than a minute, and he had already learned how expensive minutes could be.

They formed up at the mouth. Crossbow strings checked. Buckles tugged. The girl with Balance flexed her toes in her boots like she was already feeling the floor. The boy with Endurance rolled his shoulder so his shield caught three flakes of snow and held them.

"On me," the shield sergeant said. "Standard breach. First volley at thirty. Spear thrusts at forty. Step-and-shoot on my call. If I say down, you're on the floor before your mother could smack you."

They went in.

Harold and Daran followed to the threshold and stopped. That was part of the lesson too.

The first chamber was all bad architecture and cheap malice. The ceiling hung low enough to make tall men think about stooping. The floor had the slick sheen of stone that had been polished by feet and blood. The passage opened into a broad oval with murder holes in the walls and places to hide behind rough-gathered barricades. Kobolds liked a kill-box; it saved them the trouble of learning new tricks.

Auren and Ferin had gone in early while the platoon stayed just inside the entrance, so the traps they knew would be there, weren't. The tripwires lay cut. The pressure plates were chalked. A single dart trap near the left entrance was left intact on purpose and marked with an X so they'd remember what failure felt like when it hissed harmlessly into a raised shield.

The shield sergeant took the center lane. The spear sergeant slotted behind her, then slide-stepped left to keep his thrusting angles clean. The axe sergeant held the right, one rank back, to break anything that tried to come through the line instead of at it.

"Up!" the shield called.

The line raised as one. Crossbows came over the rims like a tide. The sergeant lifted two fingers. "Thirty."

Bolts hissed and hammered into the far barricade where a couple kobolds fired back. The sound came back different—wood and flesh. Good. They were learning to aim at where the enemy would be.

"Advance two," she said. "Brace!"

They moved forward two steps. Shields bumped. Spears slid into the slots they had been practiced into like men fitting a hand into a glove.

"Forty," she said. "Loose!"

The second volley came tighter. They watched three bolts land in a handspan against a charging group of kobolds. The boy with Distance had to be one of them. They could feel the line breathe around the impact: anticipation, release, discipline returning like an elastic that had been stretched and let go.

"Down!"

The front rank dropped to a knee while the second rank fired over them. The motion wasn't graceful. It didn't need to be. It needed to be what it was: a wall with teeth changing levels without making a hole in itself.

The spear sergeant's voice cut in, precise. "Thrusts at my mark. Now. Now. Hold. Now."

Spearheads flashed, kissed air where throats were. The lesson wasn't about killing. It was about rhythm. Anyone can stab. A line can kill.

Auren and Ferin shot momentary shapes in the murder holes. Their job had been to make sure the fight belonged to the platoon but they handled any actual threats. They had done that before the first bolt flew. Ferin's hounds paced in heel positions that made sense to them and would make sense to men if they lived long enough to keep watching.

The axe sergeant called the first rotation. "Right echelon. Two back, two forward. Flow."

The back rank on the right side thumped forward and became the front. The front rank on the right side slid backward and became the second. No one shouted. No one asked where to go. They just went. The left mirrored it on the spear sergeant's "Match." The shields overlapped. The spears corrected. The angle of angles stayed something close to clean.

"Step-and-shoot," the shield sergeant called. "Left foot, loose. Right foot, load. Left foot, loose. Right foot, load."

The platoon moved forward and fired in a stuttering heartbeat that put bolts into the barricade as if it were breathing with them. The couple kobolds that were there hunkered down behind it. The girl with Balance made the flow easier around her like a river that forgot it had rocks. The boy with Endurance soaked a mistimed bump that would have staggered two men yesterday and turned it into nothing at all. The lad with Distance was not thinking about anything but the line his next shot would draw in the air and the point it would end in.

"Down!"

Shields kissed stone. A pair of bolts bounced off them and clattered away. The dart trap they had left on purpose hissed like a snake in a dream and spat three darts into a raised shield. The line didn't twitch. That was a good sign or a sign they were too tired to be afraid.

The spear sergeant called for a push. "Three steps. Thrust. Set. Three steps. Thrust. Set."

The line moved like a stubborn door learning to swing on its hinges. Where a formation would have broken and scattered in the dungeon last week, it held now and jabbed back.

"Hold," the shield sergeant said. "Cease fire. Clear."

The line froze with shields forward and spears held. They cleared the chamber at the end because it wouldn't have been moral not to, even in a training run. The few kobolds who had trickled back while they practiced got cut down by the front rank with the exact lack of ceremony that belonged to vermin and war. Lira didn't need to lift the focus to keep anyone standing. She had found that she could use her death mana to eliminate fatigue in a very undead type of way. Rysa had her hands on two men and shook them when their knees got the idea of buckling.

The sergeants collected their people, stacked the shields, counted heads in a tone that told the heads this was not a suggestion, and brought them back out with sacks of grain and a handful of tools. The room smelled less like stale fear and more like nothing. That was a win. It meant next time they'd make it smell like oil and boiled leather and then maybe hope.

Daran watched them return without letting pride push his mouth around, which was his way of saying yes. Harold didn't say anything either. The sergeants didn't need praise they hadn't asked for. They needed the understanding that they had done a thing and would be expected to do it better tomorrow.

Meala rationed the grain with a spoon that had a sharper edge than most knives in camp. When the sacks had bulked the larder and the pot, Harold gave Ragna and Brannic a nod.

"Once a week," he said. "What's pulled goes to you after the bellies."

"Once a week," Ragna said, chin up, tone like a contract. Her Dao of Community hummed like a hearth at his back when she turned away to start planning.

Brannic clapped his hands. "Then we'll sing."

"You sang anyway," Harold said.

"We did," Brannic agreed, unoffended. "But now we'll be in tune."

The settlement sounded different at the end of the sixth day.

Crossbow strings snapped forward with a cleaner bite. The cadence of step-and-shoot had stopped sounding like a drunk falling down stairs and started sounding like stairs someone had built on purpose. Spears went where they were told. Shields didn't wander. The wolves' circuit tightened by a heartbeat. The kids game with the wolves in the evening had grown to be the gathering spot for everyone in the evening. Illga's hammer rang with a new note that meant steel.

Ragna had a barrel bubbling in the corner of the longhouse again. Brannic listened to it like a priest listening to a confession. The smell lifted spirits the way the promise of a roof lifts sleep.

Kelan's tower shouldered the sky. It looked like a thing that would still be there when the people who had raised it were ghosts. It's walls were thick and if he planned on building the rest of the walls that way then this place would stand the test of time. Kelan's hands shook less when he worked, but his eyes shook more, because the farther you go up a thing the more you can see down from it. That was just geometry applied to men.

The drow's caves glowed. Men who had laughed at mushrooms now looked at them appraisingly.

Torren learned where the crossbow string wanted to live in his fingers. He put two bolts side by side close enough that Rynar tried to invent a word that would make them count as one for ledger purposes. Rynar failed, but he looked pleased. Rynar often looked pleased when his ledger failed to cheat him.

The girl with the Dao of Winter learned how to breathe without frosting her cup. Olrick talked to her about cost and control in a voice that could have been scolding or love and probably was both. He still swore that there was something about this place but hardship pushed people in mysterious ways.

Jerric learned not to call something he couldn't pay for. He also learned how to pay for more. The dungeon went so far even he couldn't feel.

Lira ate stew with Harold every night and bumped her shoulder against his when the benches were crowded and didn't move it away. They were crowded every night. Even when they wernt. Hal draped a foreleg over Harold's legs every night and Harold woke up pinned and swore exactly once before deciding it wasn't worth waking a wolf to argue.

Children played stealth tag with a shadow until all of them could say they had touched its back and none of them could prove it.

Not just a camp anymore.

The beginning of a town and fortress.

Harold went to the longhouse doorway like a man who had learned the trick of being still and looked out at the graves and the tower and the wolves and the forge and the mouth of a cave pouring low blue light.

The air had that taste that sits on your tongue when lightning is deciding whether to be polite. He knew that taste the way he knew the weight of a blade in his hand and the whine a man makes when he realizes the hole in him is not going to close.

The storm was coming.

He let that knowledge settle into the places where fear used to sit. Fear didn't help. Work did. He turned back inside to sleep with a wolf on his feet and a war on his calendar, and the knowledge that the six days he had been given had not been wasted. That was not victory. It was the floor he would push off of when he had to jump.

In the morning he woke up and checked how much time he had left.

The answer was none.