The bar snapped first. The sound reminded Caleb of a tree trunk cracking before giving way. Then the left hinge gave, the whole structure lurching inward at an angle, the bracing cart grinding back across the stone as the weight hit it. The gap it left was not wide, but it was enough.

  The first man came through at a low angle, his shield up, before being met by one of the guards. The guard was experienced and trained. He held his ground for three exchanges, and then he didn't.

  More came through behind.

  The yard collapsed into close fighting. What Caleb saw brutalized his stick fighting with Tomas and thrashed any fight from the tales he’d heard as a child. It was faster and uglier and louder and more chaotic than he could imagine. The loudest part of it was not the weapons but the voices, the raw animal sounds men made when they surrendered their minds to instinct.

  Elin moved close behind him and he felt her hand between his shoulder blades as they pressed toward the manor door with everyone else.

  The heavy door stood open in front of them. For such an imposing entrance, Caleb couldn’t help but note how small it seemed as everyone rushed inside, jockeying and squishing through. Everyone was retreating inside now, the last line pulling back. A guard held it, waving people through, watching the yard over their heads.

  Ten yards.

  Caleb looked back.

  An opportunistic marauder broke away from the main fight. His eyes found Caleb with the same flat assessment as the man in the orchard, measuring him. Man or not. Armed or not. Worth the time or not. All within a blink of the eye.

  The axe was in Caleb's right hand, blocked from view.

  The raider grinned devilishly and rushed forward. Caleb shoved Elin hard toward the door and stepped into the man's path and swung low, not at the man but at his knee, the way you'd strike the base of a stubborn root.

  The man went down. Whether he stayed down Caleb didn't see, because a familiar hand grabbed him and yanked him through the door.

  He and Elin were inside and breathing hard. A guard pulled the door and threw the bar.

  The sound of melee outside continued.

  They stood in the dimness of the manor's entrance passage, the stone cool and close around them. Caleb's hands were shaking again. He pressed them against the axe handle until they stopped.

  Elin's face was pale but her eyes were clear. She looked at him and he looked at her and for a moment neither of them said anything. They were here. They were inside. That was what was true.

  She smacked him across the back of his head.

  “You…damned foolish boy! What were you thinking? You could’ve been killed!”

  Caleb shrugged. “I–”

  “To me!” Lord Bramblewick’s voice boomed from down the hall, sharp and commanding, rallying his men.

  “This way! Promptly!” The steward, a thin older man, hurriedly directed the group that had escaped the yard toward the back of the manor.

  Caleb realized he had never actually been inside the manor until now. The stone floors were worn smooth in the center where feet had traveled them for generations. The ceiling beams were dark from age. Several doors lined the corridor, most of them shut. Narrow windows let in gray light without letting in much else. It was smaller than he'd imagined, or perhaps just more functional. There were no great tapestries or grand displays. There were just the bones of a house that had always been more interested in enduring than impressing.

  "Caleb," Elin said, shaking him from his daze. “We need to move.”

  He nodded and his feet moved of their own accord. He noticed that Bramblewick's voice had stopped.

  In its place rang the particular sound of fighting, a sound that was closer than it should have been and moving toward them.

  Elin's grip tightened.

  "Caleb," she said. "Come."

  They followed the steward and the others toward the back of the manor. The corridor turned once, then opened into a wider passage that ran alongside what looked like a storage room. The door stood open, the shelves visible within. The steward was counting people, lips moving, hands directing. A guard was with them now, positioned at the corridor's junctions.

  Caleb looked at the narrow window above the storage room door.

  The gray light that had been coming through it had changed in an odd way, almost like the beginnings of a sunset. Then the faint smell of smoke hit him.

  Something outside was burning. Something large.

  The steward put them in another room off the main corridor.

  The ceiling was low, a single window sat high in the wall, shelves along two sides held household accounts and rolled documents. A table stood at the center. Caleb saw nothing ornamental gracing the room. It smelled of candle tallow and old paper and the faint minerality of stone.

  They stood in that room, unsure and afraid. The farmhand with the cut eye, the blacksmith's boy, two kitchen women, a laundryman, an older man Caleb didn't know, and himself and Elin. The guard stood at the door, which remained open. From the corridor came the sounds of the manor organizing itself. Boots stomped across the stone, voices rang out, the occasional crash sounded from somewhere more distant.

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  Elin sat on the edge of the table and looked at her hands.

  Caleb stood near the window. It was too high to get a good look out of it. He watched the ceiling instead, as if he could read the sounds through the stone.

  "You should sit," Elin said.

  "I'm fine."

  She looked at him firmly. He sat.

  The room held its breath with them. The farmhand had pressed a folded cloth to the cut above his eye and was staring at the wall with the hollow concentration of a man trying not to think. The blacksmith's boy still had his hammer. One of the kitchen women was whispering something to herself. Something practiced. A prayer, maybe.

  Time moved strangely.

  He tried to measure it by the sounds of fighting outside. Moving, then settling, moving again. The guard at the door shifted his weight. He was watching the door when he saw his mother move toward the guard.

  "I need water," she said to the guard. "We have wounded here and those wounds will turn if we don’t see to them. We’ll need spare cloth, too, if there’s any of that."

  The guard hesitated. "I shouldn't leave–"

  "I didn't ask you to leave," Elin said. "I said we need water."

  A beat. The guard looked down the corridor, then back. "There's a pitcher in the steward's room. Three doors down."

  "I'll fetch it and be right back," she said.

  "Mum," Caleb said.

  She looked at him. Her expression said several things at once. That she had been sitting still for as long as she could stand it and was going to be useful because being useful at a time like this was not a small thing.

  "Only three doors down," she said, and went.

  Caleb watched the doorway where she had been.

  He counted.

  He didn't know he was counting until he noticed himself doing it. The guard shifted again. The prayer grew quieter. The blacksmith's boy set his hammer down against the wall, carefully, as if that still mattered.

  She had been gone long enough.

  He stood.

  The guard put a hand out. "Stay inside."

  "My mother," Caleb said.

  "She'll be righ back."

  Caleb looked at him. The guard was maybe twenty years, maybe a little more. Scared beneath the trained stillness of his face, the way water showed beneath the ice of the river on a cold winter day. He was doing his job, however reluctantly.

  Caleb sat back down.

  More seconds ticked away.

  He stood again and this time didn't stop.

  He was past the guard and into the corridor before the man could decide what to do about it, and then he was moving, axe still in his hand, counting doors.

  One.

  Two.

  The third door was open.

  His mother was in the corridor just past it, the pitcher in her hands, her back flattened against the wall. Sounds of fighting intruded from the narrow window that looked out over the inner yard.

  She looked at him when he appeared.

  He looked at her.

  He let out a breath.

  She held up the pitcher, briefly, and he almost laughed. He moved to her and she handed it to him and they went back together, close to the wall, quickly.

  They were almost at the door when he heard it.

  He didn’t quite understand it at first. It was a flat, thudding sound that was not unlike Tomas throwing another bag of flour onto the pile at the mill. Then his mother made a sound he had never heard from her before and her legs gave way mid stride.

  He caught her before she reached the floor.

  The pitcher hit the stone and shattered.

  He didn't know how he came to be on the ground. He was simply there, Elin's weight against him, his back against the wall, her head against his shoulder. The bolt had taken her in the side, high, below the arm. He could see it. He couldn’t bear to look at it.

  He looked at her face instead.

  Her eyes were open. He could feel her breathing, shallow and fast and laboured, against his arm. Her hands had found the front of his shirt and clung to it.

  "Mum?"

  She didn't answer right away. Her mouth moved. He put his ear close.

  "Remember…what I said. Run." The words were more breath than anything.

  The guard from the room appeared in the corridor. His eyes went wide and his jaw dropped when he saw them.

  “Please help!” Caleb cried out.

  The guard said something but Caleb couldn't hear it. The world had gone very narrow and very quiet. He pulled his mother closer.

  "I'm here," he said. "I won’t leave you."

  Her hands tightened on his shirt.

  He thought about the orchard in the early morning, the smell of thyme on her hands. The low stone wall they sat on to eat bread and apples and cheese. The way she looked at a damaged tree, the way she now looked at a damaged son. The same practical love that believed in the certainty that things could be salvaged if you cared enough. The ruffling of his hair, the smack on the back of his head. Both of them meaning the same thing.

  Her breathing was changing.

  "You may look like your father, but you’re mine. My baby boy," she said. Clearly, this time. Her eyes were on his face. “I love you.”

  "I love you mum," he cried. "Please don’t–"

  The fingers on his shirt loosened, yet he held on.

  He held on for a long time after, even when the cold of the stone floor gave way to the wet warmth of his mother’s blood. The sounds at the manor continued as if it had not just become an altogether different place.

  The guard was still there, standing in the doorway. Caleb became aware of him as his senses slowly came back to him.

  "She's gone," the guard said quietly.

  Caleb said nothing.

  "You should come back over here, where it’s safe."

  Caleb looked at his mother's face, into the pale glaze of her eyes. He carefully set her down against the wall. It reminded him of how she sat when they would eat, with her back straight and her hands in her lap. It was not enough, but it was all he could manage.

  He grabbed the axe and he stood.

  The guard took a step back.

  Caleb didn't say anything. He turned toward the sounds at the end of the corridor, toward the window the bolt had come through, toward whatever was on the other side of the stone.

  "Oi, get back here!" the guard yelled.

  Caleb stopped.

  He breathed.

  The guard was right. Going toward the fighting was not the smart thing to do. It was an impulse, and impulses were how you died in a situation like this. He knew that, but right now it didn’t matter.

  Caleb stood for a moment, the axe in his hand, the blood on his shirt, the anger rising inside of him. He gripped the axe harder, and made his decision.

  Caleb took off down the corridor without looking back. He already knew that if he looked back he wouldn't be able to keep moving, and right now he just needed to keep moving.

  He steeled his eyes forward, tears streaming down his cheeks.

  He kept moving.