Dawn was no softer than the night before. The wind had scoured the hills clean, leaving only hard-packed snow and brittle branches beneath a pale sky. The bell atop the old watchtower rang once, a dull note muffled by the thick frost.
Mera pulled her cloak tight as she crossed the yard. Her boots crunched through snow hardened by the night's chill. She passed the training circle where a few of the younger men worked through their forms with wooden staves, breath steaming in the cold. Even in weather like this, Garran insisted the drills continue. A man who forgot how to move with his weapon in winter was one that didn't last to see the thaw.
At the gate, the riders waited.
Six of them, all handpicked by Mera and Jorik. Two were old Black Harp veterans, rough men with weathered faces and crooked teeth. The others were from Bram's band. She'd made sure of that. A mixed group kept tensions from knotting too tight. Everyone knew there'd been scuffles between the old company and the newcomers. A fistfight last night had bloodied two men over a bone-dry cask of cider.
Jorik stood at the front, wrapped in a thick bearskin cloak. His great axe hung across his back, a weapon half as tall as the man himself. He was chewing on a strip of dried meat as if nothing in the world could touch him.
"Snow's good for covering tracks," he said as Mera approached. "Bad for staying warm."
"It'll get worse before nightfall. Make good speed."
She handed him a rough map, lines scrawled in charcoal on stiff parchment. The valley road twisted north through what the old maps called Woldmere's Gap, though no one had claimed Woldmere in a generation. Garran had told her it was once a modest hold, with a watchhouse and a stone marker bearing the names of lost kings. Now it was likely nothing more than frost-bitten earth and wind-scoured ruins.
Jorik tucked the map into his belt. "We'll see what stands. If it holds, we send word by noon tomorrow."
Mera gave a nod and turned away, but one of the Grellan men spoke up.
"I heard tale of Woldmere," he said, tightening the leather strap on his bracer. His name was Halric, a lean man with the hollow cheeks of a long campaigner. "Old place. Folk say it was cursed after the stone lord fell. No one's lived there since the kings war."
Another veteran, a wiry man named Lann, spat into the snow. "Place is cursed because lords left it to rot. Same as the rest of this land."
Jorik grinned at that. "Then we ride into ghosts' ground. That'll be a good tale for the fire."
Without another word, he swung into the saddle, the other riders following. Mera watched them file through the gate and vanish into the mist-bound trees, their cloaks trailing behind like fading banners. The crunch of hooves on snow soon disappeared into the hush of the woods.
She turned back toward Thornholt, already thinking of the tasks ahead.
There were walls to be inspected. A portion of the north palisade sagged where the ice had eaten at its footings. Masons would be needed, though most were farmers before the war and wielded hammers now out of necessity, not craft.
Beyond the walls, the woods held old game paths and half-collapsed shrines. She made a note to send a pair of scouts westward as well. No telling who else might creep through these hills, and not every threat wore iron and bore a banner.
As she crossed the yard, a voice called down from the rampart.
"Ho, Mera!"
It was Orlin, one of the younger lads, barely past seventeen but sharp-eyed and eager. He leaned on his spear, frost gathering in his beard.
"Smoke on the ridge, west by north," he called. "Thin, but steady."
Mera squinted toward the line of trees beyond the river cut. A faint thread of smoke curled skyward, too thin for a hearth fire, too steady for random kindling. Could be hunters, could be worse.
She raised a hand. "Keep watch. If it moves, send word."
"Aye, captain."
As she made her way back toward the hall, Mera's mind turned to the others within Thornholt's walls. Bram's men kept to themselves more than she liked. Half of them still clung to the old customs of Durnfeld. They prayed in whispers at dusk, using charms she didn't recognize. Superstitious lot. Good swords, but uneasy company.
Aldric, too, was restless. She'd seen it in his eyes at council, the hunger for something more than garrison duty. A man like him didn't stay still long, and if Garran didn't find him work soon, he might start carving out his own.
The hold was growing, slowly, day by day. Every scrap of land held meant something. Every small steading that bent the knee tightened Garran's hold, made Thornholt's name stretch a little further. But with it came the weight of hungry men, old grudges, and the fragile stitching of loyalty.
Mera knew what men did when hunger gnawed deep and old blood debts lingered.
And winter was far from done.