The Weight of Steel
The wall was cold beneath Sir Alaric's palms, its stones slick with the dew of a night that had refused to yield easily to morning. He had climbed to this height before the sun had fully cleared the eastern ridges, drawn by something he could not name—a restlessness that had crawled into his chest sometime after midnight and had not left since. Now, standing at the parapet with his cloak snapping in the wind, he understood why.
To the north, where the hills folded into darker country, three thin columns of smoke rose against the paling sky. They did not billow like campfires or the friendly chimney-smoke of villages waking to their bread ovens. These were black and vertical, stubborn things, climbing straight up before the wind bent them westward, and they did not stop. They had, by the look of them, been burning for hours.
Alaric's jaw tightened. He had seen smoke like that only once before, long ago, in a memory he kept locked away like a blade too dangerous to carry loose.
"You should not be up here alone," came a voice behind him, and he did not need to turn to know it was Captain Rowan, his oldest companion-in-arms, whose boots always struck the stone with the same…