The path to Nottingham remained unchanged in its contours, but Wilmot, journeying alone for the first time, found each rut and frost-heaved bend imbued with new gravity. Where once he might have skipped over stones or muttered songs to the birds, today he walked with measured step and silent breath. He felt the weight of Halward’s charge in every muscle, the burden of duty not yet earned. The folded list in his pocket—creased and softened at the edges—felt heavier than paper should.
He passed two carts stuck in mud, three pilgrims praying over a broken wheel, and an old woman selling boiled leeks for farthings beside the track. None acknowledged him, and he spoke to no one. The road narrowed as it climbed toward the city's outer wall, where the mist thickened into soot. Ash hung in the air.
As the forest receded behind him, its silence gave way to noise. The fields near the city were choked with smoke from cookfires and tannery pits, the roads crowded with travelers and animals, all converging toward the gate like veins toward the heart. In his ears rang Halward’s admonition, clear and spare: Take my name. Speak little. Return before dusk.
By midmorning, Nottingham emerged in full: a city not nestled but imposed. Its walls, high and grey, cast long shadows across the road. Towers bristled above the battlements like spears lifted in judgment. The sound was constant—metal on metal, the cries of traders, the bray of beasts and burdened men. The city was not welcoming. It was demanding.
At the city gate, Wilmot witnessed more than he ever had before. The crowd was dense, pressed like wool. A dozen families huddled beneath patchwork cloaks. A woman held an infant wrapped in torn linen, her eyes sunken from hunger. A boy not much older than Wil crouched near the ditch, trying to warm his hands by breath alone. A legless man sat on a wooden plank, his stump covered in frayed cloth, murmuring for alms to passersby who did not meet his eyes. There were three others just like him. One with burns across half his face. Another coughing red into a kerchief.
The gate itself was an iron maw, and the guards who manned it might as well have been teeth. They wore chain beneath boiled leather and bore spears polished not by ceremony but by use. Their faces held the slack, unmoved discipline of men long since divorced from sympathy. Some questioned travelers; others simply turned them away with a tilt of the head or a curt gesture. Those without coin or writ were pushed aside. One man begged with both hands raised. The butt of a spear nudged him back. Another was shoved so hard he fell.
Then came the sound of hooves—steady, deliberate, unlike the jostled chaos around them. A black charger emerged from the archway, its tack gleaming even beneath soot-stained banners. The man atop it did not shout, but all noise seemed to quiet as he arrived.
Sir Bertram de Gorse.
Bertram was a man never to be found without his sword. Clean and balanced to perfection, it was an essay in its craft. The scabbard, stitched from black leather, bore no sigils, no filigree, only the subtle gleam of oil and order. The hilt, tightly wrapped in the same obsidian leather, fit his grip from from hours of practice. And in the pommel, set like a sealed promise, gleamed an emerald—deep green, clear as river glass, its facets catching light with the authority of legend. It was said to be a gift from Henry II himself, given when Bertram was knighted after the campaign in Brittany. The sword was not merely his weapon; it was part of his presence, a statement without words. Its absence would have said more than its use. He wore it not to threaten, but to remind. It declared what kind of man he was—a man of order, precision, and favor. His cloak was lined with sable, his gloves laced with black thread. On his breast was the mark of the Sheriff’s Office, crisp and bright as if embroidered that morning. The guards straightened. The gate warden stepped aside and presented him a heavy pouch. Bertram took it without breaking stride, opened it just enough to glimpse its contents, and recorded something in the saddle-bound ledger at his side. Another smaller pouch was passed quietly—no note made. It disappeared beneath Bertram’s cloak.
He was not a man of haste, but of certainty.
Wilmot, pressed against a bread vendor’s cart, watched him with wide eyes. Here was a man the world obeyed. Where Halward ruled through silence, Bertram commanded by presence alone. Wilmot had never seen such precision. He tugged at the hem of his tunic, aware now of the smudges on his sleeves, the lopsided way he had tied his belt.
Bertram’s gaze swept the crowd and stopped—on Wilmot.
“You,” he said. The charger shifted slightly beneath him. “With the boots too big. Speak.”
Wilmot stepped forward, then faltered. He did not speak.
Bertram narrowed his eyes, already disinterested. “Not much for conversation, are we?” He looked him up and down, the threadbare tunic, the fear. “Let me guess. Apprentice. Forest-born. Overawed by walls and rooflines.”
Still Wilmot hesitated.
Bertram rolled his eyes and turned his horse as if to go. “This is why the Sheriff drinks,” he muttered to no one in particular.
Wilmot finally found his voice. “Wa... Wa... Wilmot, sir. Of Woodgate.”
Bertram paused, hand tightening subtly on the reins. “Ah,” he said, dragging the word out as though it tasted bitter. “The Warden’s boy.”
He looked to the guards, then back again. “And how fares the keeper of sticks and stones?”
Wilmot hesitated. “He fares as always, sir.”
Bertram gave a sharp, short laugh. “Of course he does. That man could be buried alive and he’d still report the state of that heap.”
He leaned slightly forward in the saddle, his voice dropping just enough for Wilmot to know he was speaking only for him. “Tell your master this: One day, someone’s going to build a real gate. Out of coin, not conscience. And no one will remember the men who kept the old ones.”
He kicked his charger forward and was gone. The bag of coin swung at his hip, not jangling—well packed, heavy, purposeful.
Wilmot said nothing. He could not tell whether he had been insulted or dismissed. Perhaps both. And then, he passed through the gate.
***
The garrison was built not for comfort, but for control. Every corridor echoed with footfall and command. Walls of fitted stone, cold and uniform, framed the movement of clerks in livery, each bearing scrolls, tallies, or wax-sealed writs. The air was heavy with ink and authority, and each whispered conversation seemed to carry more weight than a shouted order in the woods.
And there he was again.
Bertram, dismounted now, but unchanged. His coat remained uncreased, his boots untouched by mud. He stood at a high desk, scanning reports and signing documents with fluid precision. Others deferred to him instinctively. His voice, when he used it, was soft but resonant—a blade sheathed in velvet.
Wilmot approached the counter with cautious steps and presented the folded list. A clerk, nose buried in a tome, reached for it absentmindedly.
Bertram turned. He didn’t smile, but there was a flicker of something like recognition.
“So you do speak,” he said, not looking up from his papers. “And you can walk a straight line. That’s more than some.”
He looked up. “You said you were from Woodgate. What’s your name again?”
“Wilmot,” the boy said.
Bertram raised an eyebrow. “Ah. Yes. Wilmot. As in Halward’s Wilmot. The boy with the dullest posting in Christendom.”
He gestured sharply. “Let’s see the color of your coin, boy.”
Wilmot hesitated, then fumbled with the small pouch tied at his side. He had a few silver pennies, carefully counted and re-counted by Oswin before he left. But as he poured the contents into his palm, a small disc of darker wood clinked softly against the metal.
Bertram’s hand moved faster than Wilmot expected, snatching the token before Wil could conceal it. “Ah. What have we here?”
The fox token.
Wilmot said nothing.
Bertram turned it over in his palm, once, twice. The corners of his mouth twitched, not in amusement, but in calculation.
“You carry it openly, as if it means something,” he said, voice low. “But you’ve no idea what it means, do you?”
Wilmot looked away.
Bertram narrowed his eyes. “Does Halward know you have it?”
“No, sir.”
Bertram grunted, then muttered almost to himself, “Of course not. A foundling finds a charm and thinks himself chosen.”
He examined the wood again. “Interesting grain. Too fine for trinkets. Too crude for tribute.”
He made a note in a small book with a clipped flick of the quill. “Noted. No charge. No penalty. No prize.”
He handed it back. “Keep it. Might buy you a story in the alehouses.”
Bertram glanced back down at the ledger, as if the matter were already forgotten. “Your provisions will be ready by the next bell. Speak with the storemaster. And Wilmot?”
Wilmot paused.
Bertram looked up, dry amusement playing at the corner of his mouth. “Try not to trip on the cobblestones. The city’s a bit sharper than your side of the woods.”
Wilmot nodded, unsure whether to be grateful or wounded. As he turned to go, he glanced once more at the man who had arrested the room without raising his voice. For a flickering moment, he felt a pull—not of admiration, but aspiration. He saw in Bertram the sharp outline of a life carved cleanly, unmarred by the compromises of old wood and worn stone.
He was everything Halward was not.
And Wilmot, though he would not say it aloud, wondered what it might be like to be shaped not by earth and ash, but by fire and form.