The Weight of Unwanted Blood
The road to Hollow's Edge wound through country that seemed to have forgotten the sun. Mist clung to the hollows between the hills, and the pines stood close together like mourners at a funeral no one had announced. Kael marched near the rear of the column, his boots sinking into mud the color of old bruises, and he kept his eyes on the back of the man ahead of him, because looking anywhere else invited trouble.
It always did.
Forty men moved with him under the banner of Varrowmere, its silver hawk stitched into cloth gone grey with road dust. Captain Dren rode at the head of the column on a chestnut mare, his spine straight as a spear shaft, his voice carrying back through the ranks whenever he wished to remind them all who commanded this misery. They had been walking since before dawn, and the cold had settled into Kael's joints the way it always did on these northern roads, a deep ache that had nothing to do with the weather and everything to do with the weight he carried that no one else in the company seemed to feel.
"Keep the pace, Stormeye," came a voice from somewhere to his left. Garrow, probably. It was usually Garrow. "Don't want you falling behind and getting lost.…