The frost had returned in the night, smoothing the yard with a crust of pale glass that gleamed faintly beneath the first touch of dawn. It cracked softly beneath the boots of the patrolmen as they moved among the stalls, saddling their mounts and muttering half-warmed curses into the cold. Their breath hung in the air like thin ghosts, vanishing before it reached the ground. Even the animals seemed subdued, their movements sluggish in the brittle morning light.
At first bell, it was Simon Braye who found it.
He’d gone to check the tether lines behind the paddock, moving with the bleary determination of a man trying to complete his chores before the chill fully bit through his cloak. He stopped at the edge of the fence, squinting at something hanging from the post near the water trough. At a distance, it looked like nothing more than a bundle of straw and bone, maybe something a crow had scavenged and dropped. But as he stepped closer, his stomach clenched.
It was deliberate.
Twisted stalks of winter reed, bound with braids of horsehair, the ends stained dark with ash. A small bead of pine, polished smooth and etched with a crude circle and cross, hung at the center like a staring eye. Beneath it, a single chicken’s foot dangled from a length of red thread, its claws shriveled and sharp against the pale sky.
Simon stopped short, his hand drifting instinctively to the hilt of his belt knife. His breath caught in his throat.
"Oswin!" he called, voice louder than he intended. It rang out across the yard, sharp and uneasy.
The gatehouse stirred. Oswin emerged moments later, his cloak still draped around his shoulders and a steaming cup of water in his hand. His eyes followed Simon’s gesture, and he frowned before he’d even reached the fence.
Wilmot appeared next, trailing behind with a bucket of grain in both hands. He stopped mid-step when he saw the expressions on their faces. His eyes followed their gaze to the object on the post. He said nothing, but his grip on the bucket tightened.
Halward came last. He crossed the yard in silence, the rhythm of his steps even as ever. He looked once at the effigy, then again more closely, his expression unreadable. He did not speak. He did not touch it.
Oswin broke the silence. "It’s a forest binding."
Simon glanced at him. "Is it a curse?"
"A mark," Oswin replied. "Could mean grief. Could mean warning. Could be both."
"It’s nonsense," muttered Hob Colling from the barn door, pulling his cloak tighter around his thick shoulders. "Old wives' tales with sticks and feathers."
Halward’s voice came quiet but unyielding. "It’s not nonsense. Not to the ones who left it."
He turned his gaze on Simon and Hob. "Saddle up. First patrol rides as planned."
Simon hesitated, clearly rattled. "You want us to ride with that thing hanging over the yard?"
Halward met his eyes without blinking. "Yes. You’ll ride faster for it."
There was a faint pause, filled only by the breath of horses and the crackle of frost. Oswin stepped forward and carefully unknotted the thread binding the effigy to the post. His fingers worked gently, as though unwrapping something sacred or dangerous. He lowered it into a burlap satchel without a word and turned away, heading back toward the chapel without looking back.
The yard slowly resumed its rhythm, but something had shifted. The men spoke in quieter tones. Even the horses, usually restless before patrol, seemed subdued. Saddles creaked. Steel buckles clicked. Hooves scraped against the frozen ground.
When Simon and Hob rode out, their mounts snorted nervously, ears flicking toward the forest as though listening for some sound not yet spoken. No one waved. The gate swung slowly shut behind them, the iron hinges groaning under the weight of the cold.
Halward remained in the yard long after they’d gone, the pale smoke of their breath still lingering like the trace of an old fire. He stood unmoving, eyes fixed on the empty post and the shadowed trails that wound into the waiting woods. His breath curled into the morning air, but he did not speak.
Out beyond the tree line, the forest was still. But something watched.
***
The chapel was quiet, its stone walls steeped in the scent of pine ash and old wax. The fire had burned low, casting long shadows across the flagstones. Tomas lay curled on a pallet near the altar, his face pale, his breath shallow. The bandage around his hand was dark and damp, the linen beginning to sour. Fever clung to his skin.
Oswin knelt beside him, murmuring quiet prayers as he pressed a cool cloth to the boy’s brow. Each movement was careful, almost priestly—less like tending to a wound and more like guarding a flame that guttered in the wind.
Wilmot hovered nearby, arms crossed tightly, more for comfort than defiance. His eyes kept drifting to the boy’s hand, the missing finger, the way the pain never seemed to fully let go. He didn’t speak. He didn’t know how.
The chapel door creaked, though no wind stirred.
Rafe o’ the Hollow stepped inside, silent and sudden. He moved with the presence of something both living and beyond life. The fire dimmed as he crossed the threshold. Arrow shifted high above in the rafters, wings rustling, but did not cry.
Oswin rose slowly.
“I knew you’d come,” he said.
Rafe nodded once, his eyes fixed on Tomas. “The wound is not clean,” he said. “If the rot takes him…”
He trailed off. The silence that followed said what he would not.
Oswin’s jaw clenched. “He’s only a boy.”
Rafe looked away, toward the narrow chapel windows. “The forest does not weigh age. But it remembers waste. And a boy who dies in pain, without peace—that memory festers deeper than flesh.”
Wilmot stepped forward. “Where would you take him?”
Rafe’s gaze returned to Tomas. “To Rowenna,” he said. “She of the white thread. She heals what others fear to touch. If healing can be had, it will be by her hands.”
“A witch?” Wilmot asked, uncertain whether to fear or hope.
“A healer,” Rafe replied. “Of leaf and bone. She does not ask for silver.”
He turned to Oswin. “He carries no coin.”
“I know,” Oswin said.
He reached into his cloak and drew out a token—smooth, pale wood, carved in the shape of a weeping willow. Its lines were clean and old, the mark of a keeper who had paid such debts before.
“For Rowenna,” he said. “For his life.”
Rafe took it without hesitation, nodding once.
Then, from within his own cloak, he retrieved another token—stone, cracked down its center, dark as river slate. He placed it gently in Oswin’s palm.
“A debt,” he said. “The weight will return.”
Oswin looked down at the stone, then closed his hand around it. “So be it.”
Rafe bent beside Tomas and lifted him with reverence, wrapping him in a fur-lined cloak of woven thistle and barkcloth. Tomas stirred faintly, but did not wake.
Wilmot stepped forward, eyes wide. “Let me come with you.”
Rafe looked at him—long and deep. “Not yet. You’re still of the stone. Your name has not yet been called.”
He turned to leave, the door creaking open without touch. Mist curled inward across the chapel floor.
At the threshold, Rafe paused.
“Pray that he lives.”
Then he stepped into the gray beyond.
Oswin looked up at the rafters, where Arrow still perched, feathers dark against the stone.
“Follow,” Oswin said, quiet but firm. “See they arrive safely.”
Arrow tilted his head, eyes catching the chapel firelight. For a long breath, he didn’t move—only studied Oswin with a strange, knowing stillness.
Then, with a single beat of his wings, he launched into the air and vanished through the open door.
Oswin and Wilmot stood in the doorway, watching the shapes fade into the woods.
The fire behind them flickered. The cot lay empty.
***
The frost had begun to melt beneath the midday sun, but only just. Shadows still held the cold, and the mist that clung to the treetops had not yet lifted. It lingered like breath upon the forest's lips, curling and fading with a will of its own.
The gate remained closed.
Wilmot stood just within it, broom forgotten in his hands, watching the tree line.
Then they appeared.
Hob Colling and Clement Ferren rode out of the mist, hooves muffled by thawing earth. Their mounts moved at a steady pace, but both men sat stiff in their saddles—upright, alert, their eyes drawn more behind than before them.
Oswin stepped into the yard, squinting toward the returning figures. He said nothing as they passed under the arch, only watched as they dismounted without words.
Clement moved slowly. His face was pale beneath the flush of windburn, and one glove hung loose from his belt, forgotten. Hob said nothing at all—only handed off the reins and began to unbuckle his gear with rigid, deliberate movements.
Oswin approached them quietly. “You were gone near four hours.”
Clement nodded. “We rode to the western bend. The trail was clear.”
“And?”
Clement hesitated. His eyes flicked toward the trees. “There was… a place. Off the trail. Neither of us remembered it. A yew tree, split at the base, but still standing. Something hung from the branches.”
Oswin’s brow furrowed. “What sort of something?”
“A nest, maybe,” Clement said. “But not made by bird or wind.”
He licked his lips, then continued. “It was woven. Twigs, hair, bits of bone. Strung up with thorn vine. Hung just high enough to be seen, just low enough to be feared.”
Wilmot stepped closer. “Did you touch it?”
“No.” Clement shook his head quickly. “We didn’t get that close. We heard—”
He stopped.
“Hob heard it too,” he added after a moment. “A creaking. Like rope under weight. But nothing moved.”
Oswin’s gaze drifted toward Hob, who met it for a moment, then looked away.
“You did well to return,” Oswin said.
Clement opened his hand. Caught between his fingers was a twig—short, blackened, bound at one end with a scrap of red thread. He didn’t speak, only held it out.
“I found it tucked into my cloak,” he said. “Didn’t feel it until we were nearly back.”
Oswin took it with care and walked to the brazier. He tossed it into the coals. It hissed, popping sharply as the thread curled and vanished in smoke.
Wilmot stepped closer. “What was it?”
“A message,” Oswin said softly. “One not meant for us to keep.”
Clement sat down on the edge of the water trough, shoulders sagging. “It wasn’t fear,” he said quietly. “Not exactly. Just… we didn’t belong there.”
From the stable doors, Halward emerged, arms folded beneath his cloak. His face gave nothing.
“Did you see anything?” he asked.
Hob finally spoke. “Nothing that stood still long enough to name.”
Halward nodded once. “The forest let you return. Remember that.”
No one spoke after that.
Wilmot looked at Clement, whose hand now trembled where it rested on his knee. He did not ask what he saw.
Some things didn’t need speaking.
The forest had looked back.
***
The sun was already leaning westward by the time Simon Braye and Alan Wode rode out from Woodgate. Their cloaks snapped in the cold breeze that funneled down the old Forest Road, and the hooves of their horses struck a dull, frozen rhythm into the half-thawed earth. The chapel bell had not yet rung None, but the shadows of the trees had grown long and eager, reaching across the road like dark fingers.
Halward had sent them off with few words, standing just beyond the stable doors with arms folded beneath his cloak. “You know the road,” he said. “Stay to it. Speak little. Be back before dark.”
No ceremony. No blessing. Just the old rule of the gate.
The forest, he’d said once, remembered everything.
Now, a mile along the main Forest Road, Simon and Alan rode in uneasy silence. The trail was broader than the winding footpaths of the eastern thickets, but no less forsaken. Deep ruts from forgotten carts pocked the ground, and bramble-choked ditches lined either side. Frost clung to the low branches of birch and ash where the sun had not yet broken through.
Simon rode with his head slightly bowed, eyes scanning each bend with quiet dread. A squirrel leapt across the path and disappeared into shadow. A crow flapped overhead and vanished without calling. The silence pressed like a hand to the throat.
Alan shifted in his saddle. “You’d think the King might spare coin for a proper road crew.”
Simon didn’t answer.
Alan sniffed. “All this talk of forest tokens and witch-signs. It’s just stories to keep folk frightened and taxes high.”
Simon’s gaze drifted to a twisted elm where something had been carved into the bark—deep gouges like claw marks, long scabbed over. “You didn’t see what I saw yesterday.”
Alan smirked. “I saw a doll made of straw and rabbit bone. I’ve seen worse hanging from a midwife’s door.”
He tugged at the wolf-tooth talisman around his neck. “The forest makes strange things. Doesn’t make them sacred.”
Simon said nothing. He could feel it in his bones now—the weight of the woods, thickening with every step. The wind had stopped moving. The light seemed to bend around the boughs instead of through them.
Then they rounded a bend—and stopped.
The Forest Road ahead was blocked.
An overturned cart lay across the track, its wooden slats shattered and spoked wheel cracked at the rim. A dead mule slumped beside it, its eyes crusted in frost, tongue blackened and curled. A few splintered crates lay scattered, their contents spilled like entrails: cracked pottery, grain soaked in thaw, a small wrapped bundle torn open and empty.
Alan let out a low laugh. “You see? Just rot and happenstance.”
Simon did not laugh. “No blood. No drag marks. No wheel tracks. It’s too clean.”
Alan was already dismounting. “You let your nerves ride ahead of you, Braye. Happens to men when the trees get too quiet.”
He stepped toward the cart, his voice still carrying the thread of a smirk. “Come on. We clear the mess, mark it, and return. Maybe I’ll ask Halward for double watch pay.”
Simon opened his mouth to speak—but the forest moved first.
A sound like a split in the air. Thwip.
The arrow struck Alan in the throat just above the collarbone, driving deep. He staggered, mouth opening in shock. His sword fell. His knees buckled. He collapsed hard against the frozen earth and did not move again.
Simon froze. Another arrow hissed past him and shattered bark from a tree behind.
That broke the spell.
He wheeled his horse and kicked hard. The beast reared, then thundered down the road, hooves pounding mud and slush.
Branches tore at him. Mist slapped his face. He did not look back.
Behind him, the forest closed.
***
The clearing was still.
Alan Wode’s body lay where it had fallen, blood pooling black across thawed ruts. The trees stood quiet. Nothing stirred.
Then a figure stepped from the forest.
David of Doncaster—slender, swift-footed, hooded in grey and green—moved across the road like a shadow come loose. He crouched beside the corpse. His face showed no triumph. No fury. Only purpose.
He drew a long, narrow blade and set it carefully to Alan’s wrist. The knife worked quickly. The forest watched, and said nothing.
When the hand came free, the body fell aside with a dull thump.
David stood.
“Justice,” he said, not aloud, but clearly—so the trees would hear.
He crossed to a bare alder and placed the severed hand against it, palm outward, fingers splayed. He drew a single nail from a pouch and drove it in with a small mallet—each strike clean, measured, final.
He tied a red strip of cloth around the wrist, knotted tight. Then he stepped back, looked once more toward the body, and vanished into the underbrush.
The cart wheel creaked once in the breeze.
Then silence returned.
***
The gate came into view as the light failed.
Simon’s horse burst from the treeline at a desperate gallop, its sides lathered and eyes rolling. Mud clung to its legs. Frost clung to its flanks. Simon hunched low in the saddle, teeth clenched, one glove missing, his cloak torn down the back as if the forest had tried to keep it. Blood—someone’s—was smeared along his cheek, dried in a crooked line.
Oswin saw him first.
He was at the brazier, stirring coals, when the sound of hooves cracked the quiet. He dropped the iron rod and stepped forward. Wilmot followed, grain sack half-tied in his arms.
Simon did not slow until the last moment. He hauled the reins hard, and the horse half-stumbled in the slush. He slid from the saddle, boots skidding on the thawed yard, and staggered toward the gatehouse, breath coming in gasps.
“Open the gate,” he rasped. “Halward—get Halward—sound the bell—”
Oswin reached him. “Simon. What happened?”
Simon looked at him, eyes glassy. His mouth opened, closed. Then a single word fell out:
“Dead.”
Behind him, the horse snorted and shook its head, steam rising from its back like smoke from a struck forge.
Halward emerged from the far end of the yard, already fastening his cloak. His boots crushed frost as he walked, steady and fast. Hob and Clement appeared behind him, called by the bell rope Wilmot now yanked in frantic bursts.
Halward spoke low and clear. “Talk.”
Simon nodded, once, twice. His jaw worked. “The cart. On the main road. Looked broken. Mule dead. Alan dismounted, went forward. I told him it was wrong. Too clean. Then—”
He broke off, chest heaving. Oswin gripped his shoulder.
“Take your time,” the old man said.
Simon closed his eyes. “I heard the arrow. Didn’t even see it first. Just the sound. Alan—he dropped. No time. Another arrow came past my head. I didn’t wait. I ran. I rode.”
Halward’s voice was even. “Did you see them?”
Simon looked up. “No. Just shapes. Shadows. The woods swallowed them. It wasn’t a fight. It was a killing.”
Halward turned to the others. “Saddle what you can ride. Light gear only. We go before the frost hardens again.”
Clement hesitated. “Do we know who did this?”
“No,” Halward said. “But they left their answer.”
He looked back to Simon. “You said nothing moved after?”
Simon nodded. “It went still. Still as a grave.”
Halward turned to Wilmot. “Gate stays shut. No one in, no one out. If Oswin says open, you open. Otherwise, you keep it barred.”
Wilmot swallowed. “Yes, Warden.”
Halward swung up into the saddle that Hob had brought around. His voice rang out across the yard.
“We ride to the body.”
No one cheered. No one shouted.
The gate opened, slow and groaning, and the men rode out beneath a sky the color of old lead.
Behind them, the chapel fire hissed in its hearth.
And above it, the bell still rang.
***
The frost had returned. It clung to the grasses beneath the trees and dusted the ruts of the Forest Road like white ash. Mist hung low, stirring at knee height, and the branches above were motionless.
The cart was still there. So was the mule.
So was Alan.
His body had not been moved. He lay on his side where he had fallen, eyes glazed and half-lidded, mouth open, arm bent beneath him like a broken doll’s. The arrow was gone.
But the hand remained.
Nailed to a tree just off the road, low to the ground—one long, black iron nail driven straight through the wrist. The hand hung limp, palm outward, fingers splayed as if pleading. A strip of red cloth had been tied tight around the base—offering or curse, it was impossible to know.
Halward dismounted in silence. Clement and Hob followed, grim and slow. Simon stayed with the horses a few paces back, his knuckles white on the reins. Halward had said nothing to him, and that silence was enough.
He approached the tree. The frost creaked under his boots. He studied the nailed hand. His own—scarred, calloused—lifted and hovered just beneath it, not touching. The red cloth stirred in the breathless air.
“They’re still here,” he said.
An arrow sliced the world.
It struck Hob in the thigh and dropped him instantly with a shout. Another hissed past Halward’s ear and buried deep into the tree, quivering just above the hanging hand.
Clement yelled and dropped, scrambling behind the cart. Hob dragged himself with clenched teeth, blood streaking the ruts. Arrows snapped into the wood. A cry in the trees—high, wordless, not human.
Simon ducked and clutched the reins, too stunned to move.
Halward stood. Still.
Another arrow flew. He didn’t flinch.
Instead, he drew his blade.
It came from the sheath with a whisper like breath drawn before a killing blow. The steel caught no light, only shadow.
He moved into the trees.
Not quickly. Not recklessly.
With purpose.
He passed between roots and branches like a force older than language. His boots made no sound. The forest did not resist him. It accepted.
All of Halward’s practiced control—every measured breath, every prayer, every withheld blow—let loose in a single moment of blood and death.
He became not a man, not a warden, but a reckoning long delayed.
The sword did not swing wildly.
It knew the way.
And it had been waiting.
The first man barely turned before Halward's sword entered his side and exited through his ribs. He gasped once, and the Warden moved on.
The second stood his ground and raised an axe. Halward didn’t break stride. He knocked the weapon aside, stepped close, and brought his blade down through collar and heart. The man fell in two motions—his body, then his scream, severed.
A third man stumbled back, hands raised. “Please—”
Halward did not hear him. He did not stop. The blade went in clean. The body crumpled to its knees.
He did not breathe heavily. He did not speak. His heart did not race.
There was no rage in him.
Only order. Cold, clean order.
He was not the Warden now.
He was the crusader.
He was death.
In the mist, across the clearing, one figure remained.
A bow lowered. As it did, his hood fell back.
David of Doncaster.
For a breath, they looked at each other—soldier and ghost, Warden and exile. Recognition passed between them, quiet and final. Two predators.
David turned and ran.
Halward stepped forward once.
Then stopped.
The forest swallowed David without protest.
Halward lowered his sword.
The mist was quiet again. The frost unbroken. The trees, still.
Behind him, Clement was helping Hob to his feet.
Halward turned back toward the road.
It was over.
***
The clearing was still.
The fog had thinned with the dying light, parting just enough to show the truth of what remained. Blood darkened the ruts in the road. Broken arrows jutted from the earth like grave markers. The cart stood tilted, its wheel cracked, half-filled with silence and the scent of iron.
Halward knelt by the tree.
With steady hands, he pulled the long black nail free from the bark. Alan’s severed hand came away limp, still marked with the red cloth, fingers curled slightly inward as if in shame.
He wrapped it in a strip of linen, folding the cloth twice before tucking it inside his cloak. He stood without sound.
Clement approached from the road, one arm beneath Hob’s shoulder, guiding him forward. Hob’s face was pale, jaw clenched, his leg wrapped tight with a strip of his own torn tunic.
Simon emerged from the trees a few paces behind. His eyes went to the bodies before they reached Halward’s. He didn’t speak. He simply stepped forward and began to lift the dead.
They came to the three fallen attackers.
Hal didn’t know their names.
He doubted anyone would say them aloud again.
One was barely older than Wilmot—a boy in patched boots and a tunic three winters too small. Another’s face was streaked in dried red ochre, painted in crude lines of battle that had not saved him. The third lay sprawled on his side, his hand outstretched toward the boy’s body.
Halward paused beside him, brow furrowing.
A guess. A weight.
The boy’s father, perhaps.
He said nothing.
The sword in his hand felt heavier than it had in battle.
They lifted the bodies carefully and laid them in the cart. No one spoke.
They came to Alan last.
Halward knelt beside him. The frost had begun to cling to the fabric of his cloak. Alan’s eyes were half-closed, his mouth still open from the moment he’d fallen.
Halward reached down, touched his forehead once, and then gently shut his eyes.
He removed the wolf-tooth talisman from around Alan’s neck. For a moment, he held it in his hand.
Then he placed it back into Alan’s palm, curled the fingers around it, and let it rest there.
They lifted him together.
The cart creaked under the weight.
Halward did not mount. He walked beside it, the linen-wrapped hand beneath his arm, his sword still drawn in the other.
Clement took the reins.
Simon followed behind.
No one spoke.
The road back to Woodgate opened like a wound.
The mist parted as they passed.
And behind them, the forest was quiet.