The morning of the meeting dawned clear and cold, the sky a pale, unforgiving blue. Arrion moved through the longhouse with a quiet that was deeper than silence, a calm that felt like the eye of a storm. He went first to the stables behind the tavern, the familiar scent of hay, horse, and honest sweat a balm against the dread coiled in his gut.
In the largest, furthest stall stood Briar.
The warhorse was a monument of muscle and midnight. Seventeen hands tall, his coat was a pure, depthless black, like a piece of the night sky given form. His chest was a barrel of power, his legs thick pillars that could shatter a man's ribs with a casual kick. He had been a foal, a extravagant gift from the Marquis to a favored scribe's son—a gesture that now felt like a cruel joke, a tether to the past. But Briar knew nothing of politics or pacts. He knew only Arrion's voice, his hands, the weight of him on his back for countless miles.
Arrion leaned his forehead against the horse's broad, warm neck, breathing in the honest smell of animal and leather. "Today, old friend," he murmured, his voice a low rumble in the quiet stable. "Today I ask more of you than I ever have. You must carry me true. You must be my swift shadow, my steady heart." He ran a hand along the powerful curve of Briar's shoulder. "We ride not for sport, but for survival. For family."
He spoke as much to himself as to the horse, the words a plea and a promise cast into the quiet of the stable. A plea to the fates, an affirmation of purpose. He watched through the stable door as the sun crested the distant mountains, painting the frost on the village roofs with fire, the sky in streaks of blood and gold. A good day for hunting, the old, cold part of his mind observed.
The rest of the day was a ritual of preparation, a slow, deliberate arming of body and spirit. In the longhouse, he ate a meal of hard cheese, dried venison, and dark bread—fuel, not feast. He sat by the low fire and fletched arrows. Not his usual hunting shafts of ash and goose feather, but heavy projectiles of ironwood, tipped with brutal, broad-heads of black iron.
He took down the great purple-wood recurve from its pegs. He inspected every inch of it, feeling for any weakness, running his fingers over the familiar, polished curves that fit his grip as if grown there. He restrung it with a fresh cord of woven sinew, the thrum of the tension a promising note in the quiet room.
Next came the axes. He unstrapped them from their place on the wall. He unwound the old leather from their hafts, his hands moving with a methodical, practiced rhythm. He replaced it with fresh, oiled strips, winding them tight to ensure a perfect, unshifting grip. The broad felling axe and the lighter hand-axe now felt like extensions of his own will, their edges honed to a whispering sharpness.
He avoided his aunt. Maren, cradling the glowing moss, was having her best day in months. Colour touched her cheeks, and her smile was less a ghost. He could not darken that with truth. He knelt before her chair, his massive frame making him seem like a devoted son, not a man going to war.
"Aunt. I must go on a long hunt. Deep into the Weald. There's a white stag the Guild has a bounty on. It may take a few days."
Her green eyes, so unlike her children's and his own, searched his face with an intensity he recognized. She saw the hunter, the provider. She did not see the fear. She placed a thin, warm hand on his cheek. "You are so like your father, Bunnor," she whispered, using the name Arrion had only heard in stories until yesterday. "He had that same still purpose before a journey. Go with the forest's blessing, my boy. And come back with your prize."
The lie tasted like ash, but he kissed her brow, breathing in her fragile, moss-scented warmth. "I will."
With his uncle and Orryn, there were no lies. The farewells were silent, grim, and full. In the yard behind the longhouse, Borryn gripped Arrion's forearm, his tavern-keeper's hands like iron vices. His eyes were red-rimmed but dry. "You bring that fairy-cursed sword back. And you bring yourself back. We'll be ready." Ready to run, if the worst happened.
Orryn, the headsman, offered a sharp nod. He had spent the day quietly moving trusted men to watch the forest roads. "Draw them deep, cousin. So deep they forget the way to our door."
Near sunset, as the long shadows reached for the village, Arrion left. He carried his gear in a heavy pack, his bow across his back, the axes at his hips. He did not take Briar. The warhorse would be needed for a swifter flight if he failed. His destination was not the standing stones, not yet. It was a hunter's hide, a place of his own making, deep in a crook of the black creek.
He reached it as true dark began to fall. It was little more than a natural overhang reinforced with woven branches, hidden by a thick curtain of ivy and thorn. Inside, stored in an oiled leather wrap, was his legacy.
He built no fire. By the faint, greenish light of glow-worms in the moss, he laid out the black leather and iron plates. He began to strap and buckle the armor of Bunnor,—his father, the Thundering. As he fastened the greaves, secured the black iron cuirass over his heart, and settled the pauldrons on his shoulders, a strange sensation settled over him. It was not the weight of the gear, but a pressure, warm and sure, on each shoulder. He could almost smell it—on one side, the honey-sage-jasmine of his mother's love; on the other, the ozone-and-iron scent of a storm, the imagined presence of the golden-haired giant. Their hands, guiding him, armouring him in more than leather and steel.
Lastly, he took Nightshade from its star-dusted scabbard. The blade drank the dim light, its smoke-grey length feeling alive in his grip. It was not a fencer's weapon. It was a tool of decisive, overwhelming force. He sheathed it across his back, the long hilt rising above his right shoulder.
He was no longer just Arrion the hunter. He was Arrion Haelend, clad in his father's purpose, carrying his mother's secret, walking into a trap to turn it into a battleground of his own choosing.
He slipped out of the hide, a shadow among shadows, and turned his face towards the standing stones. The moon was rising, cold and high. It was time.