Rowan stood waist-deep in the current, harpoon raised, the river humming under his boots. For a breath, he could hear the plan working on every side of him—Ari's bowstring snapping like a drum, men dropping before they even saw her; Brennar's roar shaking the choke where the front lane funneled tight; Nyx's kills—quick, quiet sounds that ended shouts before they turned into orders. The freed prisoners were moving. The cages were opening. The camp was cracking.
He drew water to his hands.
It climbed the haft, wrapped the twin prongs, and sharpened to a clear, cold edge. He turned his hips, thrust the harpoon, and broke the water off in flight. Not a spear—shards. A hard glittering storm scythed across the muddy bank and slammed into a knot of raiders. Shields splintered. Men staggered. Two fell with ice buried in the seams of their armor.
"Hold them!" Rowan shouted, though the ones who needed to hear him were far. Still, the freed line chased the gap he had carved. He saw it in the way backs straightened, in the way a dozen feet found the courage to step forward at once.
He did it again.
Water rolled up his arms. He threw it as a sheet, snapped it midair, and sent a second volley screaming low. It chewed through shins and knees. The men who tried to jump it landed on slick silt and sprawled. Someone in the freed line yelled a wordless, savage thank you and went in with a blade.
Rowan breathed with the river. Pull. Shape. Release.
To his left, Oriel screamed somewhere above the fog—Ari's arrow answered a beat later, turning a head into a dark bloom. To his right, Brennar laughed like a dare and met three men at once. Behind the wagons, the mist thumped quietly where Nyx and Pan worked like a needle through cloth. For a small, foolish heartbeat, hope felt simple.
Then bottles of oil arced out of the smoke.
The first broke against Ashwyn's living wall—a tangle of thorns and roots that gnawed up men like rope through a pulley. The fire crawled for a half-second, then ran, drinking sap, turning green to black. Heat rolled across the river. Rowan saw the barrier bow and heard the old Warden's breath hitch like a man burned from the inside.
Rowan set his jaw, lifted both arms, and dragged.
The river heaved. It rose under him as if a back uncurled. A long, dark wave gathered its weight, shouldered forward, and crashed across the burning thicket. Fire hissed. Steam rolled in a white wall. Char glowed and went dark. Voices that had been cheering turned to coughs and sharp curses.
The wall held. For now.
Rowan's legs shook. That one pull had taken more than he wanted to admit. When the steam thinned, he saw helms turning. Fingers pointed. A captain's voice cut clean through the din:
"The river! Take the river!"
Blades lifted. Dozens splashed into the shallows, eyes fixed on him. In an instant, he wasn't the storm behind the line anymore. He was the mark.
He set his feet deeper.
Water wrapped the prongs of the harpoon, bright as glass. The first raider hit him high with a shield. Rowan slid his body to the side, caught the rim with the haft, and shoved off. He stabbed up under the man's armpit. The edge went in smooth. The man's breath left him without a sound.
"Next," Rowan said to no one.
Three came together. Rowan swept the harpoon in a clean arc. The river rose with it and fell like a bar across shins. The front two dropped with their legs taken out; the third went over them and disappeared in the churn. Rowan didn't watch him drown. He didn't have the time.
Another cluster waded in with shields tight. Rowan slammed the butt of the spear into the silt, pulled hard, and froze the water at their feet. Ice crawled up their boots and locked their ankles for a heartbeat—one, two, three—and he used those three beats. He stepped in, straight, short, sure, and stabbed twice and wrenched the last man off balance with the hook of a prong. The ice broke; the bodies didn't rise.
He kept moving. If he stopped, they would swallow him.
A blade flashed low. He twisted late. Steel grazed his forearm. Heat flared under cold skin. He hissed through his teeth and let the river pack against the wound—cool and tight, not a heal, just a brace. He answered with a thrust that split mail from collar to rib. Blood washed warm around his knees and drifted away.
"Rowan!" someone shouted from the bank. He looked up in time to see a freed fighter hack a man away from his back and get dragged down under two more. Rowan snapped his wrist and sent three hand-sized darts of ice into the mess. One dart struck a neck. One shattered on a helm. One hit a wrist and made the blade fall. The man under the pile crawled toward the tree line, sobbing.
Rowan pulled and the river resisted.
It wasn't a refusal, not a full one. But it was weight. A sense that he was trying to lift something that had already given more than it should. He took what it would give him—a lace of water around the edge, not a wave—and made do.
He threw short bursts like artillery—five shards, then three, then five again—aiming for elbows, for the soft triangle under a jaw, for the gap in a visor when a man bellowed. Each throw bought breathing room. Each throw asked his arms for more.
They kept coming.
A man lunged with a spear. Rowan parried on the haft, stepped inside, and slammed the iron hook of the harpoon across the man's mouth. Teeth broke. The man gagged. Rowan drove the point through his chest and felt the shiver run up his hands when the tip struck the spine. He pulled free and the man folded into the brown water.
Another wave. Another set of boots found the slick bed of the river. Someone fell into him from behind and tried to knife his kidney; Rowan turned his hip, caught the wrist, and drowned the hand in a fast wash. The knife hand went numb; the man screamed and let go; the current took him down.
Rowan's shoulders burned. His breath turned thin, like he was breathing through cloth. He made the edge of the weapon ice again and held it there until his forearm shook. He told his hands to stop shaking. They didn't listen.
"Left!" a voice from the bank cried. Ari's, sharp as flint.
He pivoted left without arguing and slammed the harpoon into a face that had just risen from the water with murder in its eyes. An arrow sang past his ear and killed the next man behind that one. He didn't look back. He didn't need to. Ari watched his blind side. He trusted that.
Something heavy hit his ribs. A shield. He went under. Mud filled his mouth. For a strange, slow second all he could see was brown. His ears rang. He thought of the first time the river had answered him at Verdant Hollow—how it had caught him under the shoulders and lifted him like a friend.
Lift me.
Water swelled under his back and popped him up into air. He spat grit. A sword came down. He caught it on the haft. The edge didn't bite. The water wrapped there thickened like hard leather for a blink and turned the cut. He hammered the man's wrist with the butt and hit him again in the throat when he opened his mouth to swear.
Rowan risked a glance over his shoulder toward the thicket.
The fire had found the wall again. The first drenching had starved it, but men with bottles kept coming, and the flames walked the black bark with new hunger. Ashwyn's silhouette stood inside the smoke, staff dug into the ground, roots rising and skewering and dragging. Even at this distance, Rowan could feel the old man strain. A wrong step here and the flank would open and fold around them like jaws.
He dragged both palms through the water, gathered what weight he could, and sent a long, low surge crawling across the ground toward the flames—less a wave than a heavy blanket. It hit and soaked and smothered enough that the fire had to start climbing again.
"Hold," he breathed to the wall, as if the wood could hear him. "Just hold."
A roar answered from the choke—Brennar's voice, then Toren's close behind, bright and fierce in a way that made Rowan's chest ache with a sting of pride. He couldn't see them through the bodies in the river, but he felt the push, the way the front bulged and then steadied. Good. Let them live a little longer.
A man in lacquered leather waded straight at him, short sword held low, eyes fixed and calm. Captain. The others made space for him without meaning to. Rowan lifted the harpoon to meet him—then checked, just for a thumb's width of time.
The captain smiled like a teacher telling a student the right answer was No.
He lunged. Rowan twisted. The blade grazed his hip and bit a line of heat. Rowan stepped onto silt that wasn't there and slid half a foot. The captain's second cut came for his throat. Rowan snapped the haft up and caught it, wood and water together. The impact shook his teeth.
He shoved forward and iced the head of the harpoon as he moved. He didn't stab hard; he stabbed smart—angled under the captain's guard and into the soft meat where neck met shoulder. The point kissed bone and stopped. Rowan yanked, hooked the prong inside, and pulled down. The captain dropped like a sack and didn't get up.
For three breaths, the ones nearest him hesitated.
Rowan tried to use those breaths to shape something bigger. The river said no. It was a quiet no, but it was still a no. He took the hint and used the moments to breathe instead.
Ari's arrow took a horn before it could blow.
Nyx appeared for a heartbeat behind a man on the bank and made the man into a red question that never got answered. Pan was a darker shape behind her, low and sure and deadly. Oriel screamed and dragged a handler's eyes into ruin. From somewhere near the wagons came a sound that made Rowan grin despite himself—Bramble's rolling snarl, like stone breaking loose inside a mountain.
It still wasn't enough.
The men who had hung back stopped hanging back. Someone on shore found nerve and shouted, "Push him under!" Ten heard the words. Ten obeyed them. They surged in together, shoulders and shields, not caring who drowned as long as he went under too.
Rowan slammed the haft against a knee, cracked it, and then the weight hit him. A shoulder in his chest. A boot on his shin. A shield smacking the side of his head. He went under again—deeper this time. The world turned dark and thick and very far away. He tasted iron and river and smoke.
He reached for the surface and felt hands on him, not lifting—dragging.
Cold flared up his back. Not from fear. From anger.
He whipped the harpoon sideways underwater and felt it tear across meat. A hand let go. He kicked off a shin and broke the skin of the river in a snarl, lungs burning. He spat and saw three faces, close enough to touch, and behind them more.
He didn't think of numbers. He thought of space. He made some.
A ring of frost snapped up in a small circle around his legs and theirs, locking six ankles for exactly three heartbeats. He counted them out loud because counting made him calm. "One." He stabbed the first man in the gut and shoved him off the prongs. "Two." He cut low across a thigh and felt the edge bite clean. "Three." He head-butted a nose and heard it break under his brow. The ice broke. The rest closed.
"Rowan!" someone yelled. He wasn't sure if it came from the bank or the trees or his own head.
He dragged water along the haft again. The glow on the edge flickered like a lantern in wind. His arms hurt so much he thought of dropping the weapon and using his hands. He didn't drop it. He stepped into the next strike instead of away from it, because Brennar had told him once that a man who steps forward isn't prey.
Steel glanced off the haft. Rowan hooked the prong behind the man's knee and pulled. The man fell backward into another, and their tangle bought Rowan a breath. He used it to throw three palm-sized ice pebbles at the eyes he could see. One found an eye. One hit a cheekbone hard enough to stun. One missed and smacked a helmet like a rude tap. He took the space that opened.
The river tugged at him. Not gentle. Not cruel. Just steady. Like a friend who meant well but didn't understand.
"I know," he said to it, voice raw. "I know."
He shoved a wavelet hard at the shins of a fresh line that was wading in to replace the men he had just dropped. It wasn't much. But it turned one man, tripped another, and made two look down when they should have been looking up. That was enough to live another few breaths.
Heat blew across his cheek. The fire had eaten past the drenched patch and found dry wood again. Ashwyn's wall cried out like a living thing. Rowan's mouth shaped a curse he'd learned from Brennar and pulled for more water.
The river gave him less.
"Fine," he whispered. "Then fight small."
He did.
He let the water cling only to the edge and nowhere else, saving the weight he didn't have for the thin line that mattered most. He stabbed short—no big swings, no hero cuts, just ugly, honest work. Hands. Wrists. Throats. Knees. He felt the haft jump with each bone it met. He felt his own bones start to ring like iron.
Something slammed his shoulder from behind. He spun and brought the haft up fast enough to knock a blade aside. A second blade slid under and nicked his ribs. A third caught the leather at his hip and cut a line through it. He bared his teeth and pushed back with everything left in his legs.
Men filled the river in front of him. Men filled it to his left. Men filled it to his right. He could feel more behind, waiting their turn like men at a well.
Rowan set the butt of the harpoon, dragged one last lace of water to the edge, and lifted his chin.
"Come on," he said. Not to them. To himself.
The nearest lunged. The river surged to meet him. And the circle closed fast.