The mountains, in their stark majesty, were a brutal remedy for the court's perfumed illusions. With every league William's company climbed, the weight of the capital—its whispered intrigues, the phantom touch of Lady Elyse's hand, the cloying sweetness of spiced wine—sloughed from him like a discarded skin. The air grew thin and sharp, scouring his lungs clean of intrigue. Here, there was no subtlety. A misstep on a switchback trail meant a broken neck. A sudden squall from the north meant frostbite. The land itself was the first and greatest adversary.
They reached Blackcliff in a lashing rain that turned the world to grey slurry. The keep, his keep, loomed through the mist, no longer a trophy but a grim bastion in a hostile sea of rock. No cheers greeted him. The faces of the guards at the gate were pinched with cold and fear. Cuthbert met him in the dripping courtyard, looking older, the lines on his face deepened by anxiety.
"Stoneford," William said, the single word cutting through the steward's flustered greetings.
Cuthbert nodded, swallowing. "Aye, my lord. They struck at the blackest hour. Killed Old Man Grigg and his sons at the door. Took his daughters, Maren and Lissa. Burned the storehouse. The tracks led north into the High Crags, towards the Borrell Marches." He wrung his hands. "I sent riders to the border, but they found nothing. It's… it's as if the mountains swallowed them."
William strode into the great hall, his boots leaving muddy prints on the stone. He did not sit in the high chair. He stood before the hearth, letting the meager heat fight the chill that had entered his bones. Elric and the other valley men gathered, their expressions a mix of relief at his return and grim expectation.
"They test us," William said, his voice flat, carrying in the cavernous space. "Daerlon's words in the capital were not just boasts. He has allies, or at least uses tools, in the north. They seek to prove me weak. To prove Blackcliff cannot protect its own. So that whispers reach the king: 'The boy cannot hold his prize. Give it to a stronger hand.'"
"What is your will, my lord?" asked Elric. There was no "William" now. The formality was a wall, and behind it, William saw the unspoken question: You won this place with a daring climb. What do you do now?
He had spent the journey thinking, the rhythm of the horse's gait ordering his mind. He was done reacting. Done being the needle. It was time to be the anvil.
"We will not chase them into the crags," William declared. A murmur of surprise rippled through the men. "That is what they expect. A furious, blind rush into ambush country where they know every cave and defile. We would be slaughtered, and they would laugh."
He moved to the rough-hewn table where a map of the fief was spread, weighted with stones. "Cuthbert, you will draft a proclamation. Every head of household from every village and hamlet is to send one able-bodied man to Blackcliff. They will serve in a rotating levy for one month. We will double our patrols, not just on the northern border, but on every trail, every valley approach."
"Forced service, my lord?" Cuthbert ventured nervously. "The people are frightened, not angry. They may resent—"
"They are my people," William interrupted, a new iron in his tone. "Their safety is my duty, and their labor is the price of it. I did not ask for their love. I require their obedience. And in return, I will give them walls." He pointed to the map. "Here, at Stoneford. And here, at the entrance to the Ironwood Valley. And here, at the high pass to the east. We will build watchtowers. Simple, stout, stone and timber. Each will hold a beacon and a garrison of five men from the levy. They will be eyes on the mountains. When one beacon lights, the next will see it, and the next, until the fire is seen from this very keep. We will turn this land into a net."
It was a lord's plan, not a knight's. It spoke of permanence, of systemic defense, of grinding labor and taxed resources. It was the antithesis of the glorious, single-handed climb. He saw the understanding dawn in Elric's eyes, and the faintest nod of approval. This was the language of rule.
The reaction from the villages was as Cuthbert predicted: a sullen, fearful resentment. The men arrived at Blackcliff, a ragged collection of farmers, shepherds, and woodcutters, their eyes full of suspicion. William addressed them in the outer bailey, standing in the rain.
"Grigg of Stoneford is dead," he said, his voice carrying over the drumming water. "His daughters are gone. Taken while you slept safe in your beds. You can grumble about a month of your time. You can curse my name. But while you curse, you will be building a wall between your families and the wolves in the crags. You will build watchtowers so no other Grigg will die unawares. Your labor is your shield. Choose now: wield a pick for me, or wait in your homes for a knife in the dark."
There was no choice. They took the picks.
William worked alongside them. He did not command from a horse. He hauled stone from the makeshift quarries, his lord's hands blistering and callousing anew. He ate the same thin gruel, slept in the same drafty tents at the construction sites. He was not one of them—the divide of title was too vast—but he was there, a shared layer of grime and exhaustion covering the distinction. Slowly, the sullen silence gave way to a weary, pragmatic camaraderie. They saw he asked nothing of them he did not do himself. The first tower, at Stoneford, rose from the ashes of the storehouse, a squat, defiant finger of stone.
It was during the raising of the second tower's timber frame that the raiders struck again. They had grown bold, or desperate. They bypassed the now-watched northern hamlets and aimed for the heart: a supply train carrying iron tools and hard-won grain from a southern village to Blackcliff. It was brazen, an attack in the harsh light of a mid-morning.
William was at the eastern site when the beacon from the half-built Stoneford tower flared, a column of dirty smoke against the clear sky. Then, from a hilltop cairn, another. The net, though incomplete, worked. He knew the road. He took twenty men, his valley veterans and the fittest of the levies, and rode hard.
They arrived to a scene of chaos. Two carts were burning. Three teamsters lay dead in the road. The remaining drivers and a handful of guards were making a desperate stand behind an overturned wagon, assailed by a band of fifteen or so rough-looking men clad in furs and rusted mail. These were not disciplined soldiers. They were savages, whooping and hacking with a brutal, unskilled ferocity.
William did not shout a challenge. He gave a single, sharp hand signal. His men, drilled in the weeks of construction, moved not as a heroic mass, but as two wings. One group, led by Elric, flanked left through a scree slope. William took the right, up a shallow rise. They hit the raiders from both sides as they were focused on the beleaguered wagon.
The fight was short and brutally conclusive. William fought with a cold efficiency that had been forged in the skirmish at the stream, tempered on the ledge of Blackcliff, and hardened in the court of foxes. He was not a hero seeking glory; he was a mechanic removing a broken part. He broke a man's arm with his shield boss, drove his sword into another's side, moved on. He saw Elric dispatch two men with his hunting axe, his movements swift and lethal. The raiders, ambushed and outmaneuvered, broke. They tried to flee back into the broken ground.
"Take one alive!" William roared.
It was Elric who brought him down, throwing a weighted net used for hauling stone. They dragged a writhing, cursing man back to the road. He was young, with wild eyes and a matted beard, his face contorted with hate and fear.
William stood over him, his sword point resting lightly on the man's throat. The smell of blood and smoke was thick in the air. The surviving teamsters and levy men gathered, their eyes wide.
"Who sent you?" William's voice was quiet, all the more terrible for its lack of rage.
The man spat, the spittle landing on William's boot. "Go to hell, cliff-climber. You stole this land!"
William increased the pressure on the sword point. A bead of blood welled. "The land is mine by the king's grant. Your master's quarrel is with the crown. But you… you killed my people on my road. That quarrel is with me." He looked up at the gathered men, his people. "You. The families of the dead. Step forward."
Three men, faces ashen, stepped out from behind the wagon.
"This man is yours," William said, stepping back and sheathing his sword. "The king's law would hang him. My law gives him to you. He is worth nothing to me as a prisoner. Let his fate be a message to the mountains."
He turned and walked away, ordering his men to see to the wounded and salvage the carts. He did not look back as the cries began—not the man's screams, which were short, but the raw, guttural sounds of grief and vengeance from the men he had wronged. It was not justice as the capital would understand it. It was mountain justice. Visceral, immediate, and horrifying.
When it was done, and the grim party made its way back to Blackcliff with their salvaged goods and their dark satisfaction, a profound silence hung over them. William rode at the head, his face set in stone. He had not just defeated raiders; he had wielded the fear and grief of his people as a weapon. He had made them complicit. He had bound them to him not through loyalty, but through shared blood guilt.
That night, in the solitude of his chamber, the shaking took him. Not from fear of battle, but from the cold, calculated choice he had made. He had become the unforgiving mountain. He had given a piece of his soul to the stone, and in doing so, had cemented his hold on it. The raiders would think twice now. The people would obey faster. Daerlon's whispers would meet a new, grimmer truth.
A soft knock came at his door. It was Elric. He entered, holding two cups of harsh barley spirits. He handed one to William. They drank in silence.
"My grandfather… Hagar," Elric said finally, staring into the fire. "He would not have understood what you did today. The man you were in the valley would not have done it."
"I know," William whispered, the liquor burning a path to his hollow core.
"But the man you are," Elric continued, his voice low and steady, "the lord of this black rock… he did what needed doing. It was ugly. It was right." He met William's gaze. "The mountain doesn't care for pretty justice. It only respects strength. You showed strength. Not just of the arm. Of the will."
William looked at his friend, seeing the change in his own eyes reflected back at him. The hopeful fire was gone, replaced by a banked, enduring heat. "I am losing myself, Elric. Piece by piece."
"No," Elric said, finishing his drink. "You are finding the man who can hold this place. The boy from the Weeping Valley is gone. He died on the cliff, or in the capital, or on that road today. Mourn him if you must. But the lord remains. And we," he gestured outward, to the keep, the land, "we need the lord."
When Elric left, William stood again at the narrow window. The stars were diamond-sharp over the black peaks. The beacons of his new towers glowed like steady, low stars on the land below. They were his now, truly his, bought with more than daring. They were bought with calculated terror, shared complicity, and a soul slowly transforming into something as hard and unyielding as the foundations of his keep.
He had gone to the capital a hopeful lord. He had returned a ruler. The crown of Blackcliff was no longer hollow. It was filled with the chilling, necessary weight of absolute, lonely responsibility. The path forward was clear, lit by beacon fires and paved with hard choices, leading away from the man he had been, and deeper into the heart of the unforgiving mountain he had become.