The trickle of water grew into a real sound, a steady splash and murmur over stone. A few more steps and the trees thinned enough to show the stream, narrow but fast, slicing silver through the dark undergrowth.

  Harn hurried to the bank first, boots sliding on damp moss.

  “Cold,” he yelped, yanking his fingers back out and flicking drops everywhere. “Clear as glass, though.”

  I barely glanced at the water. My eyes went up.

  There. Halfway along the bend, a giant oak leaned over the stream, its branches arched like ribs. From two of those ribs hung shapes the villagers would have walked under a hundred times without a thought.

  “Stop here.”

  They bunched up behind me, following my gaze.

  “Glowgourds.” I stepped closer, touching the trunk. “See the ribs along them?”

  Harn craned his neck until his cap slid back.

  “They look dead.”

  “They only light up once it’s dark. Trust me.”

  Kael came up on my left, one of his poles over his shoulder. The iron hook on the end caught the dull daylight, a simple L with a sharpened claw.

  “Those the height you remember?”

  “Perfect.” I pointed. “We take the lower cluster first. No climbers. We use the poles, twist the stem till it gives. And before we start—helmets.”

  A groan rippled through the group.

  Lysa rested her hand on the nearest cart.

  “Helmets? We’re not going to war with vegetables, Emily.”

  I tapped the side of my own.

  “These things are tough. One drops on someone’s head from that high, I’m not patching a bruise, I’ll be spooning brain back in. I don’t have the tools for that here.”

  Harn chuckled.

  “She paints nice pictures, doesn’t she.”

  “Helmets,” I repeated.

  Kael jerked his chin at the cart.

  “You heard her. Gear up.”

  They drifted toward the pile of spare kit we’d brought: old militia helms, leather caps, a couple of dented kettle hats. For those without proper gear, we made do with what we had.

  Harn's voice came muffled from under the rim.

  “If you laugh, boy, I’ll throw you in the stream.”

  One of the younger men grinned so wide his ears moved.

  “You look like a walking stewpot.”

  Laughter burst out around us, quick and rough, burning off the nerves.

  Beakly stalked to the base of the oak and peered up. His crest rose, then flattened.

  “You’re not flying up there,” I warned him. “You’ll snap the branch and the gourds, both.”

  He clacked his beak in disgust and stepped back, clearly wounded.

  Once everyone had something between skull and sky, I waved them into position.

  “Right. Two on the pole. Four on the sheet. The rest stand back with baskets and watch for anything that drops loose.”

  We stretched an old bedsheet between Lysa, Harn and two other villagers whose name I still didn't know. They gripped the corners like they meant it, knuckles white.

  Kael took the pole, muscles bunched under his shirt. I hovered near him, a second pair of hands ready.

  “Which one first?” Kael lifted the pole to test the weight.

  “Biggest gourd in that lower bunch.” I pointed. “Hook under the stem, twist toward you. Slow at first. Once it starts to give, short jerks. Don’t stab the thing, we want it whole.”

  “I know how to pluck fruit,” he muttered, though his mouth twitched.

  He raised the pole. The hook scraped bark as he guided it along the branch. I watched the angle, pushing the base a handspan left.

  “There. Up. A bit more. You’re right under the stem now.”

  He gave a short grunt and pulled. The gourd swayed. The vine creaked.

  “Twist,” I called.

  He shifted his grip, turned the pole. The hook took the weight, the stem fighting, fibres stretching white. The whole cluster rocked. One more twist. The stem tore with a sound like ripping cloth. The gourd dropped.

  For a breath it hung in the air, then it thumped into the sheet. The four holding the cloth dipped with the weight, knees bending. The gourd bounced once, rolled to one villager. He grunted and shoved the cloth up, tossing it toward Harn’s corner, and they guided it to a stop.

  Lysa whooped.

  “We did it! Worth looking a fool in a helmet for, that one.”

  “Not done yet,” I reminded them, though the grin itched at my own mouth. “Kael, again. Try for two this time, a whole cluster.”

  He reclaimed the pole from where it leaned against the cart.

  “Greedy already.”

  “Efficient.” I nodded toward a higher branch. “See those three hanging together?”

  “I see them.”

  He adjusted his stance, feet braced, and lifted the pole. I moved in front of him, hands on the shaft to help steer.

  “Easy,” I called. “Hook behind the vine this time, not just the stem. You take the branch, the lot will come.”

  It took longer to place the hook this time. The pole wobbled, iron claw scraping wood. Kael hissed through his teeth.

  “Little more… there. Hold. Right there.”

  Kael’s shoulders rolled. The hook caught behind the twisted vine, and when he pulled, the whole run of gourds bobbed.

  “Twist,” I shouted.

  We twisted together, Kael doing the heavy work. The vine strained. One of the gourds bumped the trunk with a hollow knock.

  “Sheet!” Lysa barked.

  They shuffled under, arms locked, the sheet stretched like a drum between four of them.

  With a sharp crack, the vine parted. Three gourds dropped at once.

  The impact drove the sheet down to their waists, but they held. The cluster bounced, rolled, then settled in the hollow of the cloth, all intact.

  For a second, nobody moved. Then the clearing exploded with cheers and laughter. I caught Kael’s eye. Sweat ran down his temple, but there was a gleam there I hadn’t seen at the forge. He rested the pole on his shoulder and nodded once. We repeated the process until we had enough glowgourds to fill the carts, a surprisingly easy task now that we had the rhythm of it. When the baskets and carts were filled, we turned toward the river in a rolling knot of good mood and creaking wheels.

  Glowgourds thumped soft in their baskets with every rut in the path. Harn tried to balance one on his palm as he walked, made it wobble, caught it again to scattered hoots. Lysa whacked his arm with a twig.

  “Drop that and I drop you in the brook with it.”

  Kael pushed one of the wagons from behind, shoulders set, but his mouth eased, less grim than at the forge. The air smelled of damp leaf mold and the sweet, faintly peppery tang from a cracked gourd.

  Beakly padded ahead of us, neck loose, feathers fluffed in lazy contentment. Mud clung to his talons, dark against the pale roots of his scales.

  We hit the stretch where the trees opened toward the water, and his whole body changed.

  His head snapped up. Crest flared. Wings lifted a finger’s breadth from his sides. He froze mid-step, then slid one talon back to plant himself across the path, a living barricade.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  I almost walked into his flank.

  “What is it, Beakly?”

  He didn’t glance back. One eye stayed locked on the scrub along the riverbank.

  The hairs on my arms went up under the linen. I stepped around his shoulder, hand finding the familiar weight of my shield.

  The river ran high from last rain, its course a band of quicksilver through brown reeds. At first I saw nothing but overturned roots and last year’s brush.

  Then one of the roots blinked.

  Jaw like a cobblestone wall fused to a wolf’s skull, all smooth wet stones pressed in alongside yellow teeth. Moss-dark fur streaked with slime green. Its body lay crouched in the shallows, half-submerged, so it looked like someone had dumped a sodden, overgrown rug against the bank.

  “Warg,” I breathed.

  “What?” Harn’s voice pitched up behind me.

  “Everyone back to the carts.”

  I stepped forward, drawing my blade. Steel rasped against scabbard, bright in the dim undergrowth.

  The warg’s ears flicked at the sound. It rose from the water in one fluid surge, sending a spray of muddy droplets across the reeds. The smell hit first—wet dog, pond muck, and a sharp, crushed-herb scent that scraped straight into the sinuses.

  Its lips peeled away from those river stones.

  “Back,” I snapped, raising my shield. “Now.”

  Boots scuffed on the path as villagers stumbled backward. I heard Kael’s low curse, the creak of leather as he shifted.

  The warg gave itself a violent shake, water flinging off its coat in a dirty halo. Then it lunged.

  Impact slammed into my shield like a medicine ball hurled full-force. The Stonewall Regalia drank the hit, weight spreading across the cuirass and down into the rooted soles of the sabatons. My arm jolted, but ribs and spine took it like a shove in a crowded subway, not a mauling.

  Cold crawled through the plates where the wet soaked in. My teeth clicked together.

  “Cute,” I grunted.

  It scrabbled for purchase on the steel, smooth stones along its gums scraping with a hollow clatter. Teeth couldn’t get past the rim of the shield to soft flesh. It dropped, circled, mud churning under its paws.

  Two shadows slipped from the reeds to my right. More moss-logs unfolding, jaws studded with slick river stones, eyes flat and intent.

  “Of course there’s a pack.”

  They fanned out. One kept my shield busy. The others moved for my legs, almost lazy, knowing their ground. Mud sucked at my boots.

  I pivoted to keep them front-facing, shield high. They tested my range, darting in and back. The first winced as its teeth scraped my greaves and found only dressed steel.

  Behind me, Kael’s boots pounded closer.

  “She needs help!”

  “Stay back!” The shout tore out of my chest, sharper than I meant. “You’re meat in that shirt, Kael. Guard the others.”

  Another lunge. I angled my shield late. Stones thudded into my hip plate; the force twisted me. My back foot slid in the muck. One of the flanking wargs darted in and latched onto my sabaton, teeth clamping around metal and trying to wrench.

  The third took my exposed thigh, jaw gaping.

  They all heaved at once.

  Mud, water, claws—my center of gravity tipped. Stonewall or not, heavy plate armor met coordinated carnivore physics. For a breath I felt the world tilt, the sick, familiar weightless beat right before a fall.

  A shriek split the air. Not canine.

  Feathers blurred over my shoulder as Beakly launched.

  He hit the warg on my thigh with both talons, each foot closing like a bear trap. Stone-studded jaw crunched under his grip with a sound that churned my stomach far more than any gore.

  The pressure on my leg vanished. The other two wargs flinched, their rhythm ruined.

  Beakly drove his beak down once, twice. Wet, tearing cracks. The warg under him spasmed, then went limp, jaw hanging at an angle that didn’t exist in nature.

  Mud surged under my feet again as the remaining two regrouped, hackles up, tails low. Their eyes flicked from me to the raptor that had just turned part of their pack into carrion.

  Beakly flared his wings wide, casting both of them and me in shadow. Feathers dripped mud and blood. He loosed a sound I’d never heard from him before, something between a trumpet and a roar, all fury and warning.

  The wargs broke.

  They spun and bolted along the bank, bodies stretching into a ground-eating lope that kicked clods of wet earth behind them. In seconds they merged with the reeds and vanished, only the crushed-mint smell lingering.

  I stayed braced a moment longer, lungs working, shield still raised.

  “Anyone bitten?” I called over my shoulder.

  Silence, then Lysa’s shaky laugh.

  “Not unless you count you and… your bird.”

  Beakly didn’t look at her. All his focus locked on the corpse under his claws.

  He lowered his head and tore the belly open with one clean, practised rip. Steam rose from the wound into the cool air. He plunged his beak inside, came up with a length of glistening intestine that he tossed back to swallow in three heavy gulps.

  Harn gagged behind me. The sound of retching joined the rush of the brook.

  “Welcome to the food chain,” I muttered.

  Beakly dug deeper, triumph in every line of him, tail feathers shivering. Blood streaked the hooked curve of his beak, bright against iridescent blue. He cracked ribs to get at the liver, wrenching it free and gulping that down as well.

  Kael edged up beside me, sword in hand, knuckles white.

  “You all right?” His eyes darted over the gouges in my shield, the mud-smeared plates of the Stonewall.

  “Bruised ego. Armor’s fine.” I flexed my shoulders, feeling the protest in the straps, not in my bones. “They don’t have the bite for plate. Just don’t let three of them hang on you at once.”

  “We should leave that… thing,” Harn called, voice thin. “Let your beast have it.”

  Beakly lifted his head at the word “beast,” one eye narrowing. A loop of intestine hung from his beak like a grisly moustache.

  “We’re not wasting a whole warg.” I stepped closer to the carcass, ignoring the heat and smell rolling off it. “Meat, pelt, even the stones in its jaw. Village can use all of it.”

  Kael lowered his sword, jaw still tight.

  “You’re sure it’s safe to handle?”

  “I’ve stood in worse.” I put my boot on an unchewed patch of flank and tested the give. “Help me get it on the wagon before he eats the good bits.”

  That earned a weak snort from Lysa.

  Kael sheathed his blade and grabbed the hind legs. I took the fore, fingers sinking into wet fur. Together we heaved. The corpse slid half a handspan, then stuck in the mud.

  “Again,” I grunted.

  We rocked it, timing our pull to the sway. Mud released its grip with a wet slurp. The body rolled, spilling a little more of what Beakly had missed. Harn yelped and jumped aside as a coil of intestine nearly wrapped his boot.

  “Watch your feet,” I called. “You step in that, you’re washing in the river before we go home.”

  We reached the nearest wagon, already half-full of glowgourds. Kael braced his back against the sideboard.

  “On three.”

  We heaved the warg up, using the wagon’s rim as a fulcrum, and dumped it in among the gourds. Yellow-green rinds and mossy pelt made a bizarre still life, broken only by the slow drip of blood onto the wood.

  I wiped my hands on the least filthy part of my tabard and glanced at the others.

  “Load up. Eyes on the treeline. If any more show, we’re not hanging around for round two.”

  Beakly hopped to the path with a last, satisfied crunch of bone, then fell in at my side, taller than the wagon wheels, feathers ruffled but proud as a conquering general escorting his prize.

  We pulled away from the river in a tighter bunch than before.

  Nobody tried to walk ahead of Beakly this time. He moved with his neck high, eyes sweeping the undergrowth, the odd wet stone still clinging to his talons. Every crack of a branch drew a flinch from someone behind me.

  Harn cleared his throat.

  “Reckon the boar fences won’t look so bad after that lot.”

  Lysa’s hand tightened on her pole.

  “Reckon you shut your mouth so I can hear if something’s sneaking up on us.”

  We cut back toward the stand of sap trees. When the pale trunks came into view between the oaks, the air shifted; the resin smell wrapped around us, sweet and sharp, almost clean.

  Our buckets and jugs still hung where we’d left them, wedged beneath shallow cuts in the bark. A few of the jugs had overflowed, sap crusting in amber curtains down the trunks.

  “Move fast,” I called. “Same as before. Pairs. One watching, one working.”

  Kael strode to the nearest tree, grabbed a bucket, peered inside.

  “Still mostly clear. Could’ve been worse.”

  “Could’ve been wargs chewing on our faces,” Harn muttered.

  He caught my look and busied himself wrestling a bucket free.

  We fell into a rhythm. Pull the buckets and jugs off their pegs, pour into the waiting barrels in the wagon, wedge the empties back under the cuts. Sap glugged into the casks, pale-gold and thick as cough syrup. The smell clung to my nose and hair.

  Lysa stood with her back to Kael, eyes on the trees.

  “If Beakly gives that scream again, I’m dropping everything and running,” she announced.

  “Fair,” I answered. “If Beakly gives that scream again, we all run.”

  He paced the edge of the clearing, claws scraping bark where he stepped onto roots, feathers slicked tight to his body. Every so often he stopped, head cocked, listening to something only he could hear. His gaze met mine once, sharp and measuring, then moved on.

  The barrels filled, inch by inch. I watched the liquid line creep up the inside staves.

  “One full,” Kael grunted, rolling the first cask back to the wagon bed.

  The second followed quicker. People hurried now, hands sure from repetition, the earlier joking gone. Harn slopped a little over his boots and didn’t even swear, just wiped his fingers on his tunic and reached for the next jug.

  By the time we finished, the third barrel held only up to its iron hoops.

  “Two and a half,” I counted, palm flat on the cool wood. “Good enough. Let’s not get greedy.”

  No one argued.

  We lashed the barrels down, glowgourd baskets wedged around them so nothing shifted. Beakly took point again as we turned toward the village, the wagon wheels biting into the ruts with a sticky squelch.

  The walk back felt longer.

  Every birdsong sounded like a warning. A squirrel shot up a trunk and half the line jerked, tools raised. The fence finally rose ahead, patched and splintered. Shapes clustered by the gate.

  Finn spotted us first.

  He stood on a fence post by the gate, hands cupped around his mouth, squinting into the trees. When Beakly’s silhouette broke the last line of trunks, Finn’s whole body bounced.

  “They’re back!”

  He didn’t wait. He jumped down, hit the ground in a puff of dust and sprinted for the village, hair flying.

  By the time we reached the gate, half of Oakhaven had flowed into the gap in the fence. Mayor Brody hovered at the front, Myriam a quiet knot at his shoulder.

  Brody’s eyes went straight to the wagon, then to us, skimming faces, hands, tunics.

  “No one’s hurt? Truly?” His voice came out rough.

  “We’re all in one piece.” I tapped a gauntlet against my breastplate. “Armor earned its keep.”

  Myriam’s gaze slid over the sap barrels, then to the lump of warg pelt and stone-jaw wedged between baskets.

  “You brought back a guest,” she murmured.

  “Guest tried to eat us.” I rolled my shoulder. “Beakly responded with a negative RSVP.”

  The crowd pressed closer. Murmurs swelled as people took in the barrels, the piled glowgourds, the dead warg. Awe looked strange on faces I’d only seen lined with worry.

  “Is that all sap?”

  “So much—”

  “Look at the gourds—”

  Brody straightened a fraction, shoulders squaring as if someone had handed him a script he understood.

  “All right, all right, give them room.” He lifted his hands. “Listen now. Harlan, Elric, you take four men and get those barrels down to the old mill shed. Careful with them. They’re worth more than my chain.”

  Harlan puffed up, already motioning people forward.

  “Kael,” Brody turned, “you and two of yours see to the warg. Skin it, save the stones from its jaw, bones as well if they’re sound. Ask Mara which bits she needs for her… mixtures.”

  “Lysa, Mara, Elna—you’re on sap. Get with Emily later for the method. For now, keep it sealed and away from the children.”

  Three women broke from the crowd, eyes bright, already planning.

  “Glowgourds to the inn cellar,” Brody went on. “Elspeth knows the cool corners. Finn—where’s that boy—”

  Finn wriggled to the front, cheeks flushed.

  “Here!”

  “You help with the gourds. No dropping. Any that split, straight to Elspeth for stew, not into your mouth.”

  Groans and a few laughs, tension leaking out of the group as people scattered toward their new jobs.

  Elspeth emerged from the knot around the wagon, wiping her hands on her apron, flour dust flying. She took one look at my face and reached up, thumb brushing a smear of dried mud from my cheek.

  “You look like something the cat brought in, love.”

  “Feel like it too.”

  “There’s dinner, a bath, and a bed waiting for you,” she told me. “Order’s your choice, so long as you don’t fall asleep in the tub and drown.”

  “Deal.” My shoulders sagged, weight finally catching up now that the gate stood between us and the trees. “I’ll take all three.”

  “Good.” Her palm pressed warm against my arm. “We’ll keep them busy. You’ve done your share today.”

  Behind her, villagers swarmed the wagon, hands careful on wood and barrel hoops, voices overlapping. Beakly watched it all with one golden eye, then ruffled his feathers and stalked toward the inn yard, as if he’d heard “dinner” as clearly as I had.