Chapter 1 #2
When I try to jerk my hands apart, pain shoots up both arms—lightning striking straight into my spine.
I gasp and go still, frozen by the intensity.
“Runechains.” Hadrun’s voice is almost conversational as if explaining the weather.
“Forged in the clan lord’s own fires. The more you fight them, the more they hurt.
They read your intent, you see. Try to break free, try to harm someone—they know.
” He pauses. “But don’t let that stop you from trying. It’s entertaining.”
“Go fuck yourself.”
His soldiers laugh again, but this time it sounds different. Uncertain. A couple of them exchange glances.
Good.
I won’t give them the satisfaction of seeing me break. Won’t beg or cry or plead.
My mother is sobbing, still holding Tavyn as blood drips from his chin onto her apron. My brother’s eyes meet mine across the distance, wide and helpless and furious. He mouths something I can’t make out.
I’m sorry. Run. I love you.
Maybe all three.
Other faces swim in my peripheral vision—neighbors I’ve known my whole life, people I’ve sewn clothes for, shared drinks with, laughed alongside at harvest festivals.
Not one of them says a word in my defense.
Not one.
I memorize every face.
I’ll remember this.
Hadrun jerks his head toward the boars. “Mount up. We ride before sunset.”
They haul me toward the biggest beast. I don’t fight. The chains hurt too much when I struggle—every instinct to pull away sends another jolt up my arms. I need to save my strength for later. For when it actually matters.
The orc behind me—young, with only small tusks and uncertain eyes—lifts me and dumps me onto the boar’s back in front of the saddle.
The animal reeks of musk and old sweat, its bristled hide scratching through my skirt and drawing blood from my thighs.
The boar shifts under the new weight, snorting.
The young orc climbs up behind me, one arm locked around my waist to keep me in place. His grip is tight enough to restrict my breathing.
“Move out!” Hadrun calls.
The boars wheel in formation and charge back the way they came. I twist in the soldier’s grip for one last look at Red Hollow—at the market square where I spent every day for years, at my stall with its scattered threads and abandoned silks.
At my mother’s tear-streaked face as she cradles my brother.
At Tavyn trying to stand, being held back by neighbors who suddenly care about his safety.
At the cowards who let me go without a fight.
The smoke from the hearth fires rises into the autumn sky, twisting and curling. The sun catches it, turning it gold and orange.
Beautiful, in its way.
My throat tightens. Burns. My eyes sting.
I bite the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste copper—sharp and metallic—and force the tears back down.
Red Hollow shrinks behind us, getting smaller with each pounding stride. Then it disappears behind a rise in the road.
Nothing ahead but wilderness.
The Bone March stretches out before us—a landscape from nightmares.
They call it that because of what’s left behind.
Skeletons of old war banners hanging from broken poles that lean at drunken angles.
Skulls mounted on pikes along the roadside, their jaws hanging open in permanent screams. The picked-clean bones of horses and men half-buried in the dirt, ribs jutting up.
Each one is a reminder of Clan Lord Vlorn’s victories. A warning to anyone stupid enough to challenge him.
The Iron Warlord doesn’t just win his battles. He makes sure everyone remembers.
We’ve been riding for hours. The sun has dropped lower, painting everything in shades of amber and rust. My thighs ache from gripping the boar’s sides, the muscles burning and trembling.
My wrists throb where the chains dig into skin—wetness spreads there now, probably blood.
My back is starting to cramp from holding myself rigid, from refusing to lean against the soldier behind me.
I won’t give him the satisfaction.
The landscape grows bleaker with each mile. The trees become twisted things, bare branches reaching toward the sky. The grass dies back to brown stubble. Even the air tastes different here—thin and sharp, with an edge of smoke that never quite fades.
More skulls leer from the roadside, empty sockets tracking our passage. Some are human. Some are orc. A few are things I can’t identify—too large to be human, wrong shape to be orc. The bones are yellowed with age, moss growing in the cracks.
How many of those were tributes?
The thought makes my stomach turn, bile rising in my throat.
I swallow it down and force myself to study the route instead. Every turn, every landmark. The split oak growing out of a boulder, its trunk divided. The dried streambed cutting across the road at an angle, stones worn smooth. The cliff face that juts up, jagged and sharp against the sky.
When I get the chance to run, I need to know the way back.
“Don’t bother.”
I jerk at the sound of Hadrun’s voice, the movement sending fresh pain through my shoulders. He’s pulled his boar alongside mine, matching pace easily. Watching me.
“Don’t bother what?” I keep my voice flat. Bored.
“Memorizing the road.” His tusks gleam in the dying light. “You’re never going back to that shit village, girl. The sooner you accept that, the easier this’ll be.”
“Fuck you.”
“So creative.” He almost sounds amused, the corner of his mouth twitching.
“You know, the clan lord prefers his tributes broken in already. Meek little things who cry and beg and piss themselves.” He pauses, studying me.
“But you...” He tilts his head. “Real fire, not just the kind that burns out quick. He’ll either bed you or feed you to his wolves. Maybe both.”
The soldier behind me chuckles, his chest vibrating against my back. Other voices join in—rough laughter that sets my teeth on edge.
Heat crawls up my neck. But I force a smile—all teeth and no warmth. The kind that says I’ll gut you given half a chance.
“I’ll sew your mouth shut first chance I get, Captain. Then we’ll see who’s creative.”
The laughter cuts off.
Dies.
Hadrun stares at me for a long moment. His expression doesn’t change, but something shifts in his eyes—calculation. Reassessment.
Then he spurs his boar ahead without another word, taking the lead of the column again.
Several soldiers mutter as they ride past. I catch fragments over the steady rhythm of hoofbeats:
“—mad bitch—“
“—break her in a day—“
“—too much spirit—“
“—should gag her before she curses us—“
Good. Let them worry.
The soldier holding me shifts, his grip loosening slightly. Suddenly less sure about keeping me this close. His arm around my waist isn’t as tight anymore—I breathe easier.
Even better.
We ride on as darkness falls properly, the sun finally dropping below the mountains and taking the last of the light with it. The temperature drops fast—autumn nights in the borderlands bite deep, and I’m not dressed for travel. Just my work dress and an undershirt, both too thin.
I start shivering within minutes. The cold seeps into my bones, making my teeth chatter.
Then the howling starts.
Real wolves this time. Not orcs. Their cries echo across the valley from multiple directions, rising and falling in waves that make my skin crawl.
The boars snort nervously, their ears flicking.
One of the younger soldiers mutters a prayer to whatever gods orcs worship—something guttural that I don’t understand.
The howls grow closer.
I start counting my heartbeats, focusing on the steady rhythm to keep the fear at bay. To keep myself from thinking about those skulls on the roadside, about tributes who never came home.
One. Two. Three. Four.
I will survive this.
Five. Six. Seven. Eight.
The howls grow louder. More insistent.
Something crashes through the underbrush to our left—heavy and fast. The boars squeal, pulling at their reins. Soldiers draw weapons with the rasp of steel on leather.
But nothing attacks.
The sounds fade back into the darkness.
We ride faster.
We crest a black ridge just as the last light bleeds from the sky, and there it is.
Ironhold Fortress.
It doesn’t look real. Can’t be real. Too massive, too brutal, too much nightmare given form.
The main structure is carved directly into the mountainside—or maybe grown from it.
Black iron and basalt fused together into something that’s half castle, half living thing.
The walls rise up and up and up, disappearing into shadow.
Towers spike toward the sky, crenellated and sharp.
Smoke pours from forges built into the cliff face, casting everything in shades of red and orange that make it look like the mountain itself bleeds fire.
The outer walls bristle with battlements and arrow slits, scarred and pockmarked from old sieges. Some of the stones are scorched black. Others look melted, warped by impossible heat.
Wolf banners snap in the wind, silver on black, dozens of them. Maybe hundreds. They cover every tower, every wall, proclaiming this territory belongs to the Iron Warlord.
And the howling. Gods, the howling. It comes from inside the fortress itself, echoing out from somewhere deep within. Dozens of voices, maybe more, all crying out at once in a chorus that sounds almost human.
My stomach tries to crawl up my throat.
This is where they’re taking me.
I force my face into a mask of boredom. School my expression into something that suggests I see fortresses every day. Not terrified down to my bones. Not shaking in these chains.
Hadrun glances back at me, checking my reaction. Whatever he sees makes him grunt. “Impressed?”
“I’ve seen bigger.”
It’s a blatant lie, and we both know it. The biggest building in Red Hollow is the elder’s hall, and you could fit three of them in just the gatehouse.
But his mouth twitches. Appreciating the lie.
We descend toward the fortress, following a switchback road carved into the mountainside. The howling gets louder with each turn. Closer. I hear individual voices now—some high and keening, others deep and guttural.
More soldiers appear on the road ahead, pouring out from hidden positions in the rocks. They line both sides, forming two ranks that stretch all the way to the gates. At least a hundred of them, all armed with spears, axes, and swords that catch the torchlight.
They pound the butts of their spears against the stones in rhythm—BOOM, BOOM, BOOM. The sound shakes through my bones, up through the boar’s body and into mine.
Then they start chanting:
“Iron Warlord! Iron Warlord! Iron Warlord!”
The sound is massive. Overwhelming. It echoes off the cliff face and comes back doubled, tripled. The boar beneath me shudders with each impact, its muscles jumping under my legs.
My heart hammers so hard, it hurts, bruising my ribs from the inside.
Torches flare to life, one after another, illuminating the approach. The soldiers’ faces are shadowed, made monstrous by the flickering light. Their eyes track me as we pass—hungry, curious, contemptuous. Some leer, their gazes dragging over me. Others look away quickly, ashamed.
A few spit as we pass.
I lift my chin higher and meet every stare that comes my way.
Let them look. Let them see I’m not afraid.
Even if it’s a lie.
Even if I’m so terrified, I can barely breathe.
The outer gate looms ahead, twice as tall as any building in Red Hollow, made of iron so black, it seems to drink the light. Wolves are carved into the metal, so realistic, they look ready to leap down and tear into flesh. Their eyes are inset with something that glows—amber or topaz maybe.
As we approach, a figure steps forward from the shadows beside the gate.
An orc woman, ancient and bent, wrapped in layers of dark fabric that make her look like bundled rags given life. Her skin is mottled gray and white, stretched tightly over bones. But it’s her eyes that make my breath catch—milky white, completely blind. Clouded over.
Yet she turns toward me. Seeing without sight.
The procession halts.
The chanting stops.
In the sudden silence, I hear my own ragged breathing. The crackle of the torches. The distant howling from inside the fortress.
Hadrun dismounts with practiced ease and walks over to haul me off the boar. My legs nearly buckle, numb from hours of riding. The chains make it impossible to catch myself properly, and I stumble forward.
He steadies me with a hand on my elbow, almost gentle. Then pushes me toward the old woman with significantly less care.
She raises one gnarled hand, fingers twisted. Someone—a younger orc woman in similar robes—presses a clay bowl into her palm.
Black ash. I smell it from here—burned bone and something else, something that makes my nose itch and my eyes water. Something wrong.
“Kneel,” Hadrun says behind me.
“No.”
His hand finds the back of my neck and pushes, forcing me down to my knees on the cold stone. The chains rattle as I try to catch myself. Pain shoots through my kneecaps, sharp and immediate.
The old woman steps closer, her movements slow but steady. She dips her fingers into the ash, coating them until they’re black to the second knuckle.
Then she starts muttering in a language I don’t understand—guttural and harsh, sounds that scrape against my ears and make something in my chest tighten. The words have a rhythm to them, a cadence that speaks of age. Ancient.
She presses the ash to my forehead.
It burns.
Not hot—cold. So cold, my skin cracks. Ice spreads through my skull and down into my brain, freezing everything it touches. I gasp and try to jerk away, but Hadrun’s grip on my neck holds me in place, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise.
The old woman traces a symbol on my skin with deliberate strokes. Up. Across. Down. A rune carved into me even though there’s no blade.
A brand.
Property of the Iron Warlord.
The words echo in my head even though nobody’s said them.
“I am no one’s property.” I force the words past clenched teeth.
The old woman pauses. Her blind eyes seem to focus on me for a heartbeat, actually seeing me despite the milky cataracts.
Then she pulls her hand away and steps back without a word.
The cold sensation starts to fade immediately, but I still sense the rune. A weight on my forehead. Something foreign pressed into my skin.
“Get her inside,” Hadrun says, releasing my neck.
They haul me to my feet, and I sag forward for a moment before locking my knees. I won’t let them carry me. Won’t give them that either.
Two soldiers grab my arms and shove me toward the gate.