And though he did not send it, he whispered it once into the dark, as if Clyde might hear across the leagues of mud and fire:
“Be my sword, Hound. Strike for me.”
The wind cut sharp across the camp that morning, carrying the stink of smoke and wet iron. The sky was a flat sheet of pewter, promising more snow. The men muttered about omens—ravens on the ridge, a fox found strangled in the snares.
Clyde heard them, but the words barely touched him.
He was bent over his shield, as he so often was, fingers tracing the grooves of Aerion’s name carved into the wood. His breath steamed over the letters, his gloves roughened by blood and ash. For weeks, the shield had been his anchor. A reminder. A vow.
But today—today, something was different.
He could almost feel it, like a pulse under his skin. A whisper carried on wind that should not have reached him:Be my sword.
The words slid into him as sure as any blade. They rooted themselves deep in his chest, warm where the cold never reached. He knew Aerion hadn’t written it—couldn’t have. Not here, not now. But the truth of it was undeniable.
His jaw set.
He could not wait any longer.
The war stretched endless before them, a beast that refused to be sated. For years he had endured it, endured silence, endured the ache of distance and the hollow of longing. He had told himself patience was duty. That waiting was devotion.
No more.
If Aerion’s name was his shield, then Clyde would be the sword. He would carve through the ranks of demons, rebels, whatever this cursed war spat at them, until the path home was clear.
He rose from his seat, strapping the shield back across his arm. His men looked up from the fire, startled by the sudden weight in his step.
“Drills,” he barked. His voice was iron again, steady and cutting. “Sharpen your blades. Oil your mail. We break their line at dawn.”
A murmur of disbelief rippled through the camp—too soon, too bold—but Clyde’s stare burned it down before it could spark. The men obeyed.
Renn, hovering at the edge, dared to ask: “Sir… why the rush?”
Clyde’s gaze flicked to him, grey eyes storm-bright, and for a heartbeat the boy thought he saw something—something fierce, something alive—instead of the weariness that had haunted him for months.
“Because waiting is killing us,” Clyde said simply. “And I have something worth surviving for.”
He didn’t explain. He didn’t need to.
That night, he didn’t sleep. He stood with his back to the fire, staring east, his hand over the ribbon in his chestplate, heart pounding like a drum of war.
Soon.
He would end this. He would come home.
To his lord. To his love.
The council chamber stank of ink and old incense. Maps lay sprawled across the oak table, rivers drawn in blue, mountains marked in soot, and red pins bristling like wounds where the war gnawed hardest. Aerion sat at the head, draped in black and red, one arm resting across the carved lion of the Archduke’s chair.
His daughter perched on his lap, small legs dangling, a doll clutched in one hand. She leaned against him as if she belonged there—which she did, more than any of the lords and vassals who circled the table with their ledgers and their quills.
“The eastern front bleeds men faster than we can send them,” Lord Baedwin intoned, his finger stabbing at Maeren’s Hollow. “At this rate, Valemont’s coffers will be drained within a year.”
“Then fill them again,” Aerion said, sipping from his goblet. His voice was velvet over steel. “Raise tariffs, squeeze the merchants. We can’t buy back men, but we can buy steel.”
A younger lord, too soft in jaw and too quick in tongue, scoffed. “What good is steel if the men wielding it are already dead? Sir Clyde and his ilk should know better than to grind themselves to dust for a war that cannot be won.”
The chamber stilled.
