Ash and Oath

The frost hadn't touched the barley yet, but it would. The wind had turned—a slow, deliberate thing crawling down the valley like a wounded ox. It scraped along the dry stone of the terraces and bent the tallgrass around the peasant fields, just enough to remind the workers that the season was ending, and something else was coming.

Darin bent his back into the furrow again. The spade, worn near blunt, bit into the soil with a sound like a grunt. He was already half-mud from the waist down, the damp seeping into the threadbare wool that clung to his legs. Another half-row, and the patch would be cleared enough to count toward the corvée tally. Maybe.

He paused, pressing his palm against the small of his back as he straightened. The slope gave him a view down over the vale—the clustered hovels of Barley-Hook hamlet, the chapel's broken bell-tower half-rebuilt after last spring's storm, the faint shimmer of the river glinting like a rusted blade beneath the evening sky.

Then the horn sounded.

One long note, stretched too far, untrained. From the manor. Not for feast. Not for saint's hour.

Darin dropped the spade.

By the time he reached the gathering yard, most of the village had already formed loose, murmuring ranks before the knight's steward—Sir Cestel's son, Rhoran, sharp-faced and hung with the red-and-white sash that meant he carried writs of levy. The old soldier beside him was holding the actual banner: House Thirel's colors, faded red over black, stitched into a pennant that looked like it had seen more rain than war.

Rhoran's voice cut through the crowd. "By order of Lord Sir Cestel of Halrix Vale, sworn to Baron Tenne, sworn to the Crown under charter law, the autumn levy is declared. All able-bodied males of binding age shall report to the hall before moonrise."

A collective breath seemed to vanish from the crowd.

Marta, the brewer's widow, whispered something that made her boy pale.

Josen the thatcher spat in the dirt.

Darin said nothing.

He had no brothers. No father left. No coin to pay his way out. No blood ties to a guild.

He stepped forward. Rhoran barely glanced at him, just dipped the quill and took his name.

"Darin of...?" the scribe asked.

There was no surname. No house. No forge-mark or crest or guild-badge to claim.

"Just Darin," he said.

The scribe hesitated, scratched a line anyway. "Just Darin," he muttered, then moved on.

By torchlight, they were issued their war-things. A wool tunic marked with faded colors. A spear with splinter scars down the haft. A round shield, wood-braced, rim rusted. Darin's shield had a faded sun emblem—some noble's cast-off from wars long past. The leather strap tore when he tested it, and the quartermaster just grunted and tossed him a new one, still slick with sheep-grease.

The other conscripts talked in low voices—farmhands, brick-pullers, sons of coopers and swineherds. Most had never marched farther than the next village. None of them had trained. Their only uniform was the tension in their shoulders and the smell of their own fear.

At nightfall, the chapel bell rang. Once. Then again.

The priest was old and half-blind, but still stood to bless them before they left.

"May the Saint of Holding grant your feet do not falter," he said, raising his hand. "And may no man's blood stain you unjustly."

Darin held still. He watched the priest's hand hover over each man's forehead like it weighed more than the world. The other villagers stood behind them in silence—mothers with lips pressed white, old men holding hands over hearts, children too young to understand.

Someone pressed a bundle into Darin's hands. A leather-wrapped loaf, hard and sour. A ribbon from his mother's hair—though she'd died two winters past. He didn't know who had saved it.

He bowed his head. Said nothing. And walked with the others into the night.

The road was mud by the second mile. A merchant's cart had broken an axle and was half-abandoned in the ditch, its crates split open and spilling barley into the ditch. A dog lapped at the grain like it was meat. No one stopped.

They reached the main road by morning—five dozen of them, now called a levy. An officer barked orders, arranging them in fives, then tens. Darin did what he was told.

They were footmen now. Nameless, unblooded, untested. The bottom rung of a ladder they couldn't even see.

And at the front of the camp, beneath a sky still iron-gray from the night, Darin saw his first knight in full armor. Polished. Silent. Hood down. The man's eyes were like twin iron coins. Cold. Not cruel—just far away.

That, Darin thought, is the kind of man who never forgets your name—only that you ever had one.

But he didn't look away.

And the knight saw him. Paused. Just half a second.

Then walked on.