Kay took in a deep breath and calmed himself. The way he portrayed himself would go a long way to encouraging the men as they scouted deeper in the marshes. Part of him failed, but only for a moment. He worried that Toby, Reece, Zak, and Maxwell weren’t going to make it back. Then he remembered Toby and the rest confidently kneeling in front of him. It was similar to the crowd now. They all looked to him, and he couldn’t fail them by showing fear.

  “You all know why we’re doing this,” he said. “Scouts went missing out here. We will find the elves’ location and put an end to them.”

  A few men shifted feet. One spat into the dirt—probably in agreement with that latter statement.

  “We’re not wandering blind,” Kay went on. “You have set paths. Half a day out, half a day back. You carry horns and you use them. If one party runs into trouble, the nearest two move to support them. No one is left alone in the reeds.”

  He let his gaze sweep them—Yellowhill, Timberlake, Shimmerfield, Highmarsh, mercenary leather.

  “If you see signs—tracks, cuts, burned ground, odd marks on trees—you mark them and send a runner back. We’re looking for patterns. Not glory.”

  Sire Klod snorted loudly at that, but kept his tongue for once.

  Sid stepped forward just enough that his voice carried too. “You hear the long horn,” he said, “you pull back toward the river and the camp. I don’t care how promising the trail looks. I don’t care if you think one more bend will give you the elves’ chief by the hair. You hear it, you turn. We’ll make our stand where there are walls and friends behind you, not knee-deep in mud with your line stretched thin.”

  There were a few grim smiles at that. Some men made the sign of the saints over their breastbones.

  Kay nodded. “You come back with nothing, you haven’t failed,” he said. “You come back with half your number died chasing one elf into a fog bank, that’s failure.”

  That touched upon some nerves. He saw it in the flicker of eyes toward Yellowhill’s line—the gaps that still hadn’t closed since the day before. Sire Klod’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t protest.

  Kay stepped back. “Mount up. Move on the horns.”

  They didn’t have drummer boys here, only breath and brass. The first horn gave a single, low call. The parties began to roll out in sequence. One by one, the banners faded. Color sank into gray. Heads turned to silhouettes. Then they were gone, swallowed by distance instead of fog this time.

  The camp felt bigger and smaller at once. Kay stood by the gate until the last horn note faded. He’d expected his hands to shake when he sent them out. They didn’t. The shaking sat somewhere else—deep in his chest, where no one could see it.

  Sid watched with him, arms folded. “There they go,” he said quietly.

  “There they go,” Kay echoed.

  Work resumed in the camp, because it had to. Graves set his remaining bowmen in pairs along the palisade and at each redoubt, positions chosen so that any approach could be answered twice before it reached the ditch. Pages carried new bundles of arrows to them, wrapped in oilcloth against the damp.

  Men-at-arms took shifts on the walls. The ones off duty went back to hauling timber, deepening trenches, or tending to the wounded from the day before. The elf head on its pike had clouded at the eyes overnight; one of the men had tied a strip of cloth over its face when no one was watching.

  Kay walked the inner circuit with Sid. He climbed one of the redoubt ladders and looked out again. The marsh didn’t look any different than it had an hour ago. The same dead trees. The same slick patches of water. Somewhere out there, ten little threads of their strength were weaving through it, feeling for the knot in the dark.

  He thought of Toby again, unbidden—of how Toby smiled before the hall when he had given him the task to scout the south in the first place. The fierce, quiet light in his eyes. The way his hand had settled on his sword as if it had always been there.

  Where are you now? Kay wondered. What are you walking into while we walk into this?

  He almost reached for the thought that maybe Toby had already found what they were still looking for. He stopped, not wanting to build hope on guesses. Either way, the hunt had them all by the throat. It was only a matter of time before the elves were caught in their tracks.

  By noon, the fog was still hiding from sight. The marsh lay dull and flat under the weak light, as if nothing out there had teeth at all. It was time to see to the dead with honor. They’d dragged the bodies and stacked them on a rough pyre of wood and hacked branches. There’d been talk of burying them, but the ground was too wet, too close to the water. Fire would have to do what earth could not.

  All of the corpses wore Yellowhill’s colors. One of Klod’s knights stepped forward to do the honors—a square man with a broken nose and a boar tusk tied to his belt. He knelt, touched two fingers to his brow in a quick sign to the saints, then took the torch from the waiting page.

  Kay stood on the near side of the ditch with Sid and the other knights, watching. The knight held the torch a moment longer than needed. Kay saw his jaw work once, then he shoved the flame into the kindling at the base of the pile. Pitch caught with a cough. Then the fire climbed—slow at first, licking at cloth and hair, then faster as the heat found dry patches.

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  Smoke rolled up in a thick, black column. The wind took it and dragged it sideways over the marsh. Too soon had Kay sent his father off the same way. The thought and the smell combined into one and he pictured his father’s pyre instead. Men watched in silence. A few murmured prayers under their breath. Someone spat into the dirt, the gesture hard to read—bitterness or blessing or both.

  Kay’s eyes tracked the smoke out of habit, following the way it streamed away from the camp. He froze as he saw another column. Thinner, to the right. Further down the line where no pyre had been lit. His brow furrowed.

  “We only set the one,” he said quietly.

  Sid grunted. “Aye.”

  A third smear of smoke rose a heartbeat later, this one from beyond the outer redoubt to the east. Kay’s stomach tightened. He stepped up onto the berm for a better look, narrowing his eyes against the glare. Beyond the ditch, near the bend where the river shouldered closer, something moved. Shapes pulled themselves out of the water.

  For a heartbeat, his mind refused it—made them stumps, old logs, tricks of light. Then one of them straightened, water sluicing off dark armor. Another crawled up the bank on hands and feet like some pale, hairless spider before unfolding into a man-shape.

  Elves.

  They’d been in the river. The elf’s hand flicked. The movement was small, almost lazy. The first arrow slammed into a man-at-arms on the wall, punching through his throat. He toppled without a sound, shield clattering. Kay’s breath snapped back into him.

  “Arms!” he bellowed. “Ambush! To me!”

  The camp jolted. Men turned. Some froze for a heartbeat, eyes following the line of the falling body. Others grabbed for weapons on instinct, half-drawn swords catching the light. Another arrow hissed past Kay’s ear and buried itself in the berm behind him. He dropped down off the lip of the ditch, drawing as he fell. The sword came clean from the scabbard, familiar weight in his hand.

  “Elves from the river!” he shouted. “Ser Sid—wall! Ser Dylan—form on the ditch! Shields up, pikes forward!”

  “Aye!” Dylan’s reply cracked across the camp like another horn. “Highmarsh, on me! Line on the left! Move!”

  Sid was already moving, shoving men toward the wall with more curses than ceremony. “Shields to the parapet! You there—helm on, or I’ll nail it to your skull myself!”

  Graves’ archers reacted quickest. Well-drilled, they dropped what they were doing and ran for the firing steps, hands already on bowstrings. Those closest to the gate clambered up onto the palisade, ignoring splinters, unwrapping oilcloth from arrow bundles as they went.

  “Loose!” Graves roared. “Any movement, you put shafts in it!”

  Arrows began to answer arrows—first ragged, then in cleaner volleys, gray-fletched shafts vanishing into the reeds where the elves had risen. It didn’t stop them. Nothing stopped them. More shapes were climbing out of the water now. Elves flowed out like they were stepping out of doorways, armor slick with river-muck, blades already drawn.

  They came in a horrible abundance of movement. In moments their camp was already overrun. On the right, where the ditch shallowed, one group of men-at-arms were still hauling timber. An elf slid over the berm behind them, blade low. Two men fell before they even understood the angle of the attack.

  Kay ran. The Art rose with him—that familiar, dangerous quickening under his skin, the way sound and color seemed to sharpen on the edges. Every step struck the ground a fraction harder than it should have. His sword felt both heavier and more precise, as if the weight knew exactly where it needed to be.

  “Hold the line!” he shouted. “Shields together! Don’t break!”

  He hit the first knot of fighting near the half-finished gate. A Yellowhill man staggered back, clutching his belly. An elf slid in behind his falling shield, twin blades already turning toward the next throat. Kay stepped past the dying man, sword coming in at a clean diagonal cut. Steel met pale metal with a shriek that jarred his teeth. Sparks spat white.

  The elf flowed with it, turning, trying to bleed the force off. Kay didn’t let him. He leaned into the bind, twisted his wrist, then snapped the blade back the other way. The second cut wasn’t pretty but it did its job. It bit across the elf’s throat just below the helm. Blood oozed, a shade darker than his own, then steamed as it hit the cooler air and the elf dropped without a sound.

  Another elf replaced his comrade. It came in low, stabbing for Kay’s knee. He felt the intent more than saw the blade—that quick, cold line threading through the moment—and let the Art pull him half a breath to the side. The point skimmed past his greave. He answered with a short, brutal cut down onto the elf’s wrist. Bone cracked. The sword spun away. Kay stepped in and drove his shoulder into the elf’s chest, knocking it back over the berm. It vanished into the ditch with a wet crunch.

  “Left!” someone shouted.

  Kay turned. An elf had vaulted the rough earthwork to his left and was on one of Graves’ archers, knife already stabbing down. Kay moved before he had time to think, the Art pulling his body faster than his fear could catch it. Three strides, then he was in it, sword lancing out in a straight thrust. The point took the elf under the armpit where the armor gaped, sliding in up to the hilt. He felt the resistance—ribs, then something soft—then he yanked the blade out with a slight twist, boot on the elf’s chest to shove it off.

  Three down, Kay thought. He had enough time to survey the battlefield. Everything was dire, every front was losing ground. There were at least two elves for every man, and yet more were still climbing from the river. There was nowhere to retreat.

  His breath came hard now. The world had narrowed to the press of bodies around him, to the hiss of arrows overhead. Somewhere to his right a horn blared two sharp notes—warning, not retreat. Men shouted. Horses screamed as someone tried to bring mounts up to answer a gap.

  “Keep the line!” Dylan’s voice cut through the noise. “Spears! Brace!”

  Kay spun toward the sound, looking for the weakest point, the place where his weight would matter most. A shadow detached itself from the side of a supply cart—a pale blur against the darker wood. An elf had crawled under the wagon, used it as cover, waited.

  The blow came in from his blind side—not a blade, but something heavier. A club, or the flat of a sword, swung two-handed. Pain exploded along the back of his skull. Bright, white, blooming pain that obliterated thought. The world lurched. His knees went soft. The Art slipped from his grasp like water poured from open hands.

  He tasted dirt and iron as he fell. Sound stretched, then collapsed—shouts folding into a dull roar, the hiss of arrows turning distant, Sid’s voice lost in the rush. The last thing he saw, as the ground rushed up, was a smear of movement—elves spilling over the ditch, men closing to meet them, the half-built palisade standing like a broken jaw.

  Then the mud greeted him in a dirty embrace.