My mother is sobbing, still holding Tavyn as blood drips from his chin onto her apron. My brother’s eyes meet mine across the distance, wide and helpless and furious. He mouths something I can’t make out.
I’m sorry. Run. I love you.
Maybe all three.
Other faces swim in my peripheral vision—neighbors I’ve known my whole life, people I’ve sewn clothes for, shared drinks with, laughed alongside at harvest festivals.
Not one of them says a word in my defense.
Not one.
I memorize every face.
I’ll remember this.
Hadrun jerks his head toward the boars. “Mount up. We ride before sunset.”
They haul me toward the biggest beast. I don’t fight. The chains hurt too much when I struggle—every instinct to pull away sends another jolt up my arms. I need to save my strength for later. For when it actually matters.
The orc behind me—young, with only small tusks and uncertain eyes—lifts me and dumps me onto the boar’s back in front of the saddle. The animal reeks of musk and old sweat, its bristled hide scratching through my skirt and drawing blood from my thighs. The boar shifts under the new weight, snorting.
The young orc climbs up behind me, one arm locked around my waist to keep me in place. His grip is tight enough to restrict my breathing.
“Move out!” Hadrun calls.
The boars wheel in formation and charge back the way they came. I twist in the soldier’s grip for one last look at Red Hollow—at the market square where I spent every day for years, at my stall with its scattered threads and abandoned silks.
At my mother’s tear-streaked face as she cradles my brother.
At Tavyn trying to stand, being held back by neighbors who suddenly care about his safety.
At the cowards who let me go without a fight.
The smoke from the hearth fires rises into the autumn sky, twisting and curling. The sun catches it, turning it gold and orange.
Beautiful, in its way.
My throat tightens. Burns. My eyes sting.
I bite the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste copper—sharp and metallic—and force the tears back down.
Red Hollow shrinks behind us, getting smaller with each pounding stride. Then it disappears behind a rise in the road.
Nothing ahead but wilderness.
The Bone March stretches out before us—a landscape from nightmares.
They call it that because of what’s left behind. Skeletons of old war banners hanging from broken poles that lean at drunken angles. Skulls mounted on pikes along the roadside, their jaws hanging open in permanent screams. The picked-clean bones of horses and men half-buried in the dirt, ribs jutting up.
Each one is a reminder of Clan Lord Vlorn’s victories. A warning to anyone stupid enough to challenge him.
The Iron Warlord doesn’t just win his battles. He makes sure everyone remembers.
We’ve been riding for hours. The sun has dropped lower, painting everything in shades of amber and rust. My thighs ache from gripping the boar’s sides, the muscles burning and trembling. My wrists throb where the chains dig into skin—wetness spreads there now, probably blood. My back is startingto cramp from holding myself rigid, from refusing to lean against the soldier behind me.
I won’t give him the satisfaction.
The landscape grows bleaker with each mile. The trees become twisted things, bare branches reaching toward the sky. The grass dies back to brown stubble. Even the air tastes different here—thin and sharp, with an edge of smoke that never quite fades.
