CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
-VAELEN-
The road narrowed exactly where we needed it to.
I’d walked that stretch four times in three weeks, twice in daylight, twice at night, and the night surveys were the ones that mattered most.
You learn different things in the dark, like the way sound carries off the ridge, the way the river noise swallows footsteps at the third curve, and the way a man’s eyes adjust slower when light isn’t involved.
The fallen tree was ours. We’d placed it there ten days ago and let it sit long enough to look accidental.
There were six of us in total, and I was at the point.
Hailey was at my left and slightly behind, which was where she preferred to operate: close enough to communicate without speaking, far enough that she had a full view of everything ahead of me that I might miss.
She’d developed that positioning herself early on, and I’d never suggested she change it because it worked.
She had a talent for seeing the things that happened at the periphery of whatever you were looking at directly.
We moved at the second hour before dawn because that’s when the body most urgently wants to be horizontal.
This meant the guards would be cold; they’d be thinking about the warmth of their beds, a good meal, and the end of their shift.
They wouldn’t be thinking about the shadows between the river and the ridgeline.
This wasn’t a criticism of them; it was simply a fact.
The outriders separated from the convoy at the third curve, as they always did, navigating wide around the fallen tree while the wagons slowed. There were now forty feet between them and the main group. We’d timed it perfectly because we’d timed it four times.
Hailey had been the one to clock the forty-foot gap on the second survey.
I’d clocked it too, but she’d been the one to say it aloud first, and she’d said it the way she said most things: quietly, without flourish, as though it were obvious and she was simply being polite by mentioning it.
I’d told her it was good work. She’d said she already knew and to stop complimenting her because it was patronizing.
Forty feet was enough.
The process took precisely eleven minutes.
One cart tipped onto its side in the ditch. Three guards fled, and by doing so, they did the correct thing. What was more, I was happy they did, as I had no interest in anyone dying on the road an hour and a half before daybreak over something as ridiculous as missing arrow shafts.
Two guards didn’t run. And that was a pity.
The first one was quick about it. He came at me with real conviction, and I respected that even as I stepped inside his reach and ended the conversation.
The second one took longer. He was experienced; you could tell by the way he positioned himself and angled his body: how he didn’t overcommit.
We circled each other for four seconds that felt considerably longer.
All the while, I was aware of the clock, aware of my team moving around us, and aware that I needed this done.
So, I made the decision to end him, much though I didn’t want to.
When you ended a man’s life, it was a burden you carried with you for the rest of yours.
I knew I’d carry him with me the way I carried all of them.
After all, there’s a particular weight to men who choose to fight rather than run.
It’s not a heavier weight, exactly. It’s just more specific.
I remember their faces in a way I don’t always remember the others.
When it was done, Hailey appeared at my shoulder.
She didn’t say anything about the man on the ground, but she didn’t look away from him either.
She just stood there for a moment in the way she had of acknowledging things without editorializing them.
I knew what she was doing. It was her way of saying: I’m here if you need me.
I know this is hard on you but you did what you had to do.
I looked at her and nodded and she looked at me and nodded, then she moved on to the next task.
I’d noticed she did that with difficult things: she looked at them directly and then she kept working.
I’d never told her I thought that was one of the better qualities a person in this line of work could have.
I suspected she already knew and, what was more, she didn’t like my compliments because they were patronizing.
We took what we could carry and burned the rest, though not with any satisfaction.
There’s a version of this work where the burning feels like something righteous, or cathartic, or at least meaningful.
But this didn’t feel like any of those things.
Instead, it felt like a practical problem that required a practical solution.
We couldn’t have Arthur’s garrison recovering the supply because we couldn’t have Mordred’s ward-stone materials going back into service.
So, they burned.
Hailey stood beside me while we watched the fire take hold. The others had spread out along the ridge to keep watch, which left just the two of us.
“The ward-stones burn differently,” she said.
“Blue-green at the edges.”
“I’ve never seen that before.”
“You won’t see it often. Mordred guards his supply carefully.”
She was quiet for a moment, her eyes on the distinctive color at the flame’s border. “How far behind does this put the old bastard?”
“Weeks,” I answered with a shrug. “Maybe more, depending on what he had in reserve.”
She nodded slowly. I could see her doing the math, building the calculation from the ground up rather than starting with the answer she wanted and working backward. It was the thing that made her useful in a room full of men who did the opposite.
“So it compounds,” she said.
“Everything compounds,” I answered. “That’s the whole point.”
She looked at me sideways. “You could have just said ‘yes’, Vaelen. You didn’t have to channel Merlin and the way he doesn’t talk to you, but talks at you.”
I smiled as I considered it. “He does do that, doesn’t he?”
She gave me a look and nodded. “Yeah, and it’s fucking annoying so don’t you start being fucking annoying too.”
“Where would I be without you?” I asked with a laugh.
“Dead,” she answered, then made a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh but was adjacent to one.
We continued to watch the fire consume the warding supplies, watched as they burned with their own distinctive color.
It was then that I thought of Mordred and how he’d have to explain why his ward maintenance was going to be weeks delayed to Arthur.
Ah, to be a fly on the wall during that conversation...
-VAELEN-
We arrived forty miles to the north just at sunrise, after which the supplies were delivered to three caches before the sun rose over the ridge.
For the next few minutes, I rode in silence.
My stallion was a gray, and he understood not to press his speed unless I ordered him to do so, and I respected him for it.
The sky began in total darkness, then transitioned to charcoal before becoming a pale blue that hadn’t yet made its decision on whether to allow the sun to break through the clouds.
Hailey pulled up next to me, and then we rode in silence for a quarter mile.
With Hailey, silence was never uncomfortable.
It was one of the things I’d valued about her when we were something other than what we were now, and it was one of the things I continued to value.
She didn’t fill space with noise simply because space existed.
She waited until she had something worth saying, and then she said it without preamble.
And whatever it was that she said, it usually included the word, “fuck.”
“The one who didn’t run,” she said finally.
I knew which one she meant. “What about him?”
“He positioned well. Whoever trained him knew what they were doing.”
“Yes.”
“Arthur’s standards are improving.”
It wasn’t a question, but I answered it anyway. “They have been. Slowly, but consistently.” I kept my eyes on the road. “You noticed that from where you were standing?”
“I notice most things,” she said, without particular pride, just the fact of it.
“I know you do.”
Another quarter mile passed.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
I considered the question the way she’d have wanted me to consider it: honestly, rather than reflexively. “I’ll carry them with me for a while,” I said, “the way I always do.”
She nodded. She didn’t tell me that was good or that it meant something about my character. She didn’t offer comfort that would have reduced the weight of the deaths to something more manageable. She just accepted the answer and let it sit. And that was a comfort in and of itself.
That was the difference between Hailey and most people. Most people, when you told them something difficult, tried to make it smaller so they could hand it back to you more easily. Hailey left things the size they actually were.
It was, I reflected, probably why she’d been wise enough to walk away from me when she had. She’d seen me clearly, the full and unedited version, and she’d made her assessment without sentiment. I’d respected her for it then. I respected her for it more now.
She asked if we’d won.
I looked at the road ahead. The others were spread out behind us, conversation-quiet and clearly tired.
“This is what winning looks like,” I said, “when you can’t afford to win larger.”
She absorbed that. A quarter mile passed under the hooves of our mounts. She was quiet long enough that I thought she might leave it there. Then: “I think I understand that.”
“Tell me,” I said.
She looked at me. “You mean actually tell you, or was that rhetorical?”
“Actually tell me.”
She considered it. “It means every action has to serve two purposes simultaneously: the immediate one and the one three months from now. You can’t afford a win that only wins once.”
I looked at her. “That’s exactly what it means.”
“I know,” she said. And then, because she was Hailey: “You’re the one who fucking-well asked.”
I laughed. It surprised me, the way laughing sometimes did after a night like this one: the way it arrived without permission and felt, briefly, like proof that something functional was still operating underneath everything else.
She glanced at me when I laughed, and something in her expression shifted slightly. It was the look of a person who’d wanted a specific outcome and had gotten it.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing,” she said.
“Hailey.”
“You needed to laugh,” she said simply. “I’ve noticed that... after anything that hits hard... you need to laugh.” She returned her eyes to the road. “That’s all.”
I didn’t have an answer for that, so I didn’t offer one. We rode north in the pale morning, and I thought about accumulation and the type of person who paid attention to you without making a performance of it.
Morgan paid attention to me too, in her way. But Morgan’s attention was always slightly angled, always measuring something I couldn’t quite identify. Hailey’s attention was just direct. It landed on you and stayed there without agenda.
They were, I reflected, entirely different kinds of formidable, but they were also so similar. Both of them cut from the same cloth but opposite sides.
The thing to note was what we’d just accomplished.
It wasn’t just about stopping the convoy; it was about what would happen in the days and weeks from now.
First, the gap in the garrison’s arrow count would show up in the quarterly report.
A clerk somewhere would note it, and a requisition would be filed.
Somewhere between the filing and the fulfillment, weeks would pass, and during those weeks, the eastern garrison would be marginally less capable than it was this morning.
Mordred’s ward maintenance would slip. Not by much, maybe just a mere fraction, but multiply a fraction by time and you’ve got something.
I continued to ride and thought about all the fractions that were now accumulating: the ward-stone cycle running short, the arrow count coming up wrong, the three guards who’d fled and would have to report what had happened and live inside that report for the remainder of their service.
I smiled because I relished these small interruptions to the smooth administration of Arthur’s authority, each one individually forgettable, yet collectively something less forgettable.
Yes, this was what winning looked like.
Of course, the two men on the road at the second hour before dawn weren’t winners. I wondered if they would have chosen differently if they’d known what would happen. It was a thought that always crossed my mind in the wake of death.
Beside me, Hailey rode quietly, her eyes forward, her posture easy in the saddle despite the long night. She’d asked if I was all right, and she’d accepted the answer, and she hadn’t pushed further. She wouldn’t bring it up again unless I did.
That was the agreement we’d arrived at, not through negotiation but through the gradual accumulation of knowing each other for as long as we had.
Some things you discussed. Some things you simply carried together in parallel, each of you aware of what the other was carrying, neither of you requiring it to be said.
It was, I thought, one of the better arrangements I’d managed in a life that hadn’t always produced good ones.