The Blightlands were not land at all, not truly. Not in the way men imagined borders and provinces. They were ruin and rot made manifest, a cursed expanse of ash-choked valleys and blackened forests where the dead walked and rivers ran thick with sickness. Sunlight here was thin and mean, like a dying torch in a damp cave. The air stank of decay and magic gone sour.
Cairon had survived ten days before seeing his first monster, and by the third week he had seen too many to count. Wights in rusted armor, shrieking things made of bone and fungus, and once, a pale rider whose eyes burned blue as ice and left frost in the footprints of his horse.
Men died constantly. Some to disease, others to ambushes. Some simply wandered off one night and were never seen again. The ones who remained grew lean and silent, speaking only in whispers around fires that barely warmed their hands.
The penal levy was no army. It was a tide of the damned, chained men and desperate conscripts fed into the maw of something worse than death. Cairon had learned quickly how to fight and when to hide. He did not trust easily, but two faces came to matter more than the rest.
Shaku was a wiry man with dark skin and darker eyes. A former thief from the river cities, sentenced to death for robbing a merchant-priest and pissing on his holy ledger. He was quick with a dagger, quicker with a lie, and quicker still with a grin that had no warmth in it.
Ser Daric was the opposite. A knight stripped of name and title for failing to protect his liege lord's son during a skirmish. Older than the rest, heavyset, quiet, and sober even when others begged for drink. He fought like a man who knew the weight of regrets and never expected to live past winter.
Together, the three of them lasted.
They shared bread, fought back to back in the black mud, and whispered stories during the long nights when screams echoed from beyond the tree line. It was during one of those nights, beneath a crooked moon, that Shaku asked the question.
"Why are you named Blackthorn if you are the son of Lord Vael?"
Cairon sat with a wet cloak over his shoulders, steam rising off his bruised skin. He looked at the fire, its light soft on the broken shell of a burned-out village.
"Because I'm a bastard," he said. "My mother was a serving girl in a border village. Lord Edran Vael had sired me during a hunting trip. First few years of life were in that village. It was simple. Poor, but simple. I helped my mother in the fields. Then she died when I was seven. Illness. Fever took her in two nights."
Shaku tossed a pebble into the fire. "And then the great lord father came riding in on a white horse to rescue his son?"
Cairon snorted. "He came in a carriage. Brought me back to the keep. Thought it would soothe his conscience to raise his mistake. Forgot me in the stables by the end of the week. My life grew exponentially worse after."
Ser Daric raised an eyebrow. "Worse? Shouldn't your life be better in a keep than a village?"
"No. It was far worse," Cairon said, voice flat. "My father had a lady wife, Isolde Vael. Young and venomous. Only seven years older than me. Fourteen when she was wed to Edran, a man twelve years her elder. She saw me as filth. A stain on her husband's name. Had me beaten almost every day. Her pets, Alrik and Toman, men-at-arms with more muscle than brains, competed to see who could hit me harder."
Daric grimaced. "And your father?"
"Lord Vael? He never said anything. I was a mistake to him. A breathing embarrassment. His wife did what she liked. I was a servant. Less than a servant. The other servants at least got wages."
"You have siblings?"
"Yes. Four. Two brothers, two sisters. Children of Isolde and Lord Vael. Rylen, the eldest. Golden boy. Tall, handsome, strong. Then there's Idran, a weasel with curls and ambition. My sisters, Aelis and Mira. Spoiled brats. Grew up on honey cakes and lies. Not one of them ever spoke a kind word to me. They lived like royalty while I scrubbed chamber pots and shivered in the cold stalls."
Shaku spat into the snow. "Did she see you as a threat to her children?"
"Maybe," Cairon said, rubbing his jaw. "Or maybe I just reminded her that her husband had been with some village girl before she even had her first blood. She hated me. Watched every punishment. Smiled through every lash. Once she had me whipped shirtless in the courtyard during a snowstorm. I was nine."
Daric looked at him in silence for a moment. Then said, low, "Your stepmother sounds like a bitch."
Cairon looked up, eyes cold. "She is. A venomous bitch. But beautiful. Always beautiful. That was part of the power. She owned every room she entered. Controlled my father with a glance. Her men with a whisper. She spent years trying to get rid of me. When I killed the heir of Redmere, she got what she wanted."
"She had you sent here?"
"She made sure of it. Convinced Lord Vael it was the honorable thing. Penal levy to the Blightlands. A quiet execution in slow motion. No one returns from here."
Shaku leaned back, arms behind his head. "You plan to return?"
Cairon stared at the fire, voice low. "I plan to burn her house to the ground. One room at a time."
They sat in silence after that, listening to the wind howl beyond the ruined walls. The fire crackled. Somewhere in the dark, a thing with too many legs scuttled across the stones and hissed before vanishing.
Cairon did not move. The cold did not touch him anymore. Only the rage.
It kept him warm.