Chapter 7: Across the Thorn River¶
Prologue - Grotdor¶
The river wind bit cold, but my hands were warm. They always are when trouble closes in. We walked the north bank of the Shrike, rain needling the cloak and the mud grabbing at our boots. Ruins showed ahead—burned timbers and a rope long gone slack—and the water stank of old death. Something here had been broken by bandits and left to fester. I don’t stomach that.
When the drowned keeper rose, I kept my fire in check. There’s a time to scorch and a time to listen. He wanted the Stag Lord’s body given to the river. A clean end. We promised it. The current was only knee‑deep, heavy with silt; we waded through and camped on the far side where the wind cut less.
Cooking drew an owlbear the size of a shed—screech like tearing iron, the kind that crawls under the skin. It rushed us. Elroy planted himself between the beast and the rest of us, which is his way. I lit it. Flames took and would not let go. Dravyn finished the work with force as precise as a scalpel. Rust’s steady hands kept Elroy standing after a hit that would fell a lesser man. We slept light after that.
Morning came clear. New ground, harsher ground. Wolves came fast—too fast—and packed tight. Elroy held them and I burned a path while the others moved for the wagon. We were still fighting when the sun tipped; steel, breath, and heat in rhythm. I don’t run from a fight, but I do prefer to pick the ground. We’ll finish this on our terms.
Nettles Crossing | 4 Pharast 4610 AR¶
Rain came in needles off the Shrike, driven sideways by a cold river wind that found every seam in cloak and collar. The company moved east along the north bank in a long, wet line—Elroy’s broad-shouldered steadiness at the fore, Dravyn’s hooded stillness just behind, Perry picking his steps with careful economy, and Rust a restless shadow near the packs with his wolf pacing close. Grotdor walked like a man who’d been forged rather than raised—upright, purposeful, hands half-curled as if heat lived in the knuckles.
They had come hunting rumors and veins of promise—silver, they’d been told, somewhere in these hard hills and rocky folds—but the north side gave them only stone and disappointment. The ground rose and fell in mean little ridges, and every promising outcrop turned out to be nothing more than slick, rain-dark rock. Their search widened, then tightened, then widened again; it didn’t matter. By late day, the truth settled in with the same stubborn weight as the mud on their boots: no mine here. Not on this side.
And then the river bent—low and calm in a way that felt wrong, like a held breath.
At the bend, the remains of a crossing waited like a wound that refused to scab over. Burned timbers jutted from the bank in blackened angles. A single thick rope—long slack and half-submerged—hung across the water, a useless remnant of what had once been a ferry or rope-bridge. The Shrike ran steady through it all, muddy and silt-heavy, as if it had been grinding its teeth for months. In the shallows, pale shapes rolled and bobbed: old corpses, waterlogged and caught in the slow eddy.
The air stank of old death.
No one spoke. Even Rust’s wolf went quiet, hackles lifting as it tested the scent.
The revenant rose without drama—no thunder, no flash—just the river giving up what it had kept. A drowned keeper, long-dead and relentless, hauled itself from the silt and stood dripping on the ruined edge of its domain. Water streamed from its ruined clothing; rot clung to it like a second skin. It did not lunge. It did not howl. It simply waited—a cold, implacable demand given shape.
Dravyn’s bright, unnatural eyes narrowed under his hood. He didn’t approach with steel raised, nor with hands out in placation. He studied the thing the way he studied runes: precise, controlled, and unwilling to waste motion. Whatever he recognized in it—a name for the curse, a shape for the hunger—made the company’s caution harden into something careful and deliberate.
The drowned keeper wanted proof. It wanted an end.
Not to this crossing, not to the broken rope and the corpse-choked shallows—those were already dead things. It wanted the Stag Lord’s body given to the river. A clean end, offered to the Shrike like a debt finally paid.
So the company gave what they could give: their oath.
They promised to hunt the Stag Lord down. Promised to restore the crossing that bandits had broken and left to fester. Promised that when the Stag Lord fell, the river would have what it was owed.
The revenant accepted the vow with the terrible patience of something that could afford to wait. Safe passage was granted—not with warmth, not with gratitude, but with the simple act of not attacking. That was gift enough.
The Shrike was only knee-deep at the bend, though the mud made each step a slow fight. Silt wrapped their boots, tugging as if the river tried to keep them. Cold water found the gaps in leather and laces, climbed to the shins, numbed. They crossed in silence, the drowned dead watching, the old corpses turning in the shallows as if listening.
Riverbank Camp | 5 Pharast 4610 AR¶
On the far side, the wind still cut, but not as sharply. The bank rose just enough to offer a sliver of shelter. When they made camp, it was with the weary efficiency of people who had learned that comfort in the Greenbelt was something you built yourself—one careful choice at a time.
Rust moved through the work like he’d been made for it. Small, quick, and precise, he read the ground with an instinct that didn’t need words. He chose the place where the earth was less likely to turn into a sucking pit when the night rain came again. He set the camp with a care that made the darkness feel… less hungry. His wolf circled, then settled, attentive and ready.
Then he went to the river and came back with fish.
Not a few scrawny catches, but enough to make the camp smell like a real meal—bright, sharp, and tempting. Perry took over from there, laying out the simple ingredients with the neatness of a man who believed order could be a small shield against the wild. He cooked a hearty meal, and for a little while the camp felt almost like something that belonged to them.
That was the mistake.
Food smell carries on cold air. It rides the river. It slips between trees. It calls to the hungry.
The owlbear arrived like a nightmare given muscle—a hulking, shed-sized brute that looked like someone had stitched predatory instincts together and dared nature to complain. It came out of the dark with a screech that sounded like tearing iron, a sound that clawed at the spine and made the heart stutter. The night itself seemed to recoil.
The cry hit the group hard. Fear isn’t always a thought; sometimes it’s a reflex, an animal thing that shakes the hands and makes distance feel too long. The campfire snapped and flared, throwing wild light across faces gone taut and pale.
Elroy stepped forward anyway.
That was his way. When danger rushed the line, he became the line—shield raised, stance planted, body set between claw and companion. He put himself where the impact would come, because that was the only place it could come if he had any say in it.
The owlbear barreled in, fast for its size, screech still echoing in the trees. It tried to break past Elroy’s guard with brute insistence, to reach softer targets near the fire.
It didn’t get the chance.
When the monster’s first savage strike came in toward Grotdor, Elroy moved without hesitation. He intercepted the blow the way a wall intercepts a storm—taking the force into his own armor, his own ribs, his own breath. The impact rang through the shield and into his bones, but he held.
Grotdor didn’t waste the opening. Heat had been building in him since the river; now it had a direction. He drove fire forward—controlled, decisive, a lance of flame that struck true and stuck. The owlbear’s fur went up in a hungry whoosh, and then the flames clung, persistent and punishing, refusing to be shaken off.
The beast fought on through the burn, rage and instinct pushing it deeper into the camp. It pressed the melee under licking firelight, a moving furnace that smelled of wet feathers, blood, and smoke.
Perry, despite the fear still prickling the edges of his composure, did what he always did: he observed. His eyes tracked the beast’s movement, the density of muscle beneath its hide, the way it shifted weight before a strike. Even in chaos, he found a thread of understanding—enough to warn the others where its defenses were thickest and where it could be punished.
And Dravyn—cold-eyed, restrained, and exact—waited for the moment when certainty outweighed cost.
The owlbear landed a brutal hit that would have dropped a lesser defender. Elroy absorbed it with a grunt that sounded like stone cracking. His steel shield took the brunt—took too much. Metal screamed. The shield failed in his hands, sacrificed to spare his arm, his shoulder, his life.
Even then, Elroy did not fold.
Rust was there the instant the line threatened to break. He wasn’t big, and he wasn’t armored, and he wasn’t built to trade blows with nightmares—but his hands were steady, and his gift was the refusal to let allies fall when they still had something left to give. Warmth surged into Elroy at the edge of collapse, knitting and bolstering, pulling him back from the thin ledge where consciousness becomes a question.
That was all the time Dravyn needed.
A precise volley of force struck out—clean, surgical, final. Not fire, not steel, but something harsher in its clarity: invisible impact that hit like judgment. The owlbear’s forward momentum faltered. Its bulk shuddered, then slumped, flames still crawling over it like an accusation that wouldn’t be silenced.
The camp went quiet again—this time not from caution, but from the sudden absence of threat.
They didn’t sleep deeply after that. Even with Rust’s careful preparations, even with the fire banked and the watches set, the night had proven that the Greenbelt could reach into safety and snatch it away. The river splashed in the dark. Wind hissed through wet leaves. Somewhere beyond the circle of firelight, something else might have been listening.
Still, dawn came.
Direwolves | 5 Pharast 4610 AR¶
Morning on the 5th of Pharast broke clear and sharp, sunlight flashing on the river like a blade laid flat. The rain was gone. The sky was clean. The world looked almost forgiving—until you remembered how easily it had tried to kill you in the dark.
They broke camp with practiced motions. The owlbear’s head was taken—proof of the danger survived, and a grim trophy besides. They stripped what meat and usable parts they could, gathering more ingredients for the road. Salt was set aside for curing, because waste was a luxury they couldn’t afford.
Then they moved on.
Beyond the Shrike, the ground changed. The uplands rose harsher, more open—terrain that favored things that ran in packs and loved nothing more than to see prey out in the clear. The company felt the shift the way you feel a storm before the clouds arrive: a pressure in the air, a tightening behind the eyes.
The ambush came fast.
Four dire wolves—gaunt, powerful, built for long pursuit—hit the group like thrown knives. They moved with the brutal coordination of hunters that had done this before, sweeping in as a unit. Their speed was shocking, their timing worse. They had the initiative, and they used it without mercy.
They didn’t circle. They dogpiled.
Elroy caught the first wave the way he had caught the owlbear: by simply refusing to be anywhere else. When a wolf lunged for Dravyn, Elroy intercepted—again—putting his body where the bite would land. Teeth snapped into armor meant to be broken in battle, not in retreat, and the force of it rocked him.
Then the wolves went for his footing.
One slammed in low. Another hit from the side. The pack’s weight and leverage took him down—tripped, knocked prone, surrounded in a snapping ring of fur and fangs. In an instant, his shield was gone, his stance erased, and the fight became a question of whether he could endure being buried.
Rust reacted not with panic, but with triage. He snapped a command to his wolf—an urgent release, a demand that it break free and move. The animal surged, muscles bunching, tearing itself out of the crush and away from the snapping jaws. Rust began pulling back toward the wagon, toward the horses—the only real advantage they had against pack hunters: speed, if they could reach it without being torn apart.
Perry, ever the man who treated time like another tool on his belt, made a quick decision and executed it with clean efficiency. In a blink, he repositioned—slipping into or onto the wagon in a way that looked less like a leap and more like an edited moment, as if the world had simply agreed to place him where he needed to be. He downed an elixir meant to sharpen the senses, eyes brightening with a new, alert intensity as he tracked the wolves’ angles.
And Grotdor—hands warm even in clear morning cold—burned a path where he could. He didn’t waste flame in wide, wild arcs. He shaped it into pressure, heat into threat, making the wolves pay for every step they took toward the retreat.
The problem wasn’t whether the horses could outrun dire wolves.
The problem was whether the company could get to the horses. Whether the wagon—and everything on it: supplies, trophies, hard-won loot—would be left behind if they broke too soon. Whether retreat was even possible with Elroy pinned under snapping jaws.
So they did what they always did in the Greenbelt: they made the best decision they could with the time they had.
A fighting retreat took shape—messy, desperate, but deliberate. Rust and Perry consolidated toward the wagon. Dravyn held himself poised in the teeth of danger, calculating where his next decisive strike would matter most. Grotdor kept the air hot and hostile for anything that tried to surge through.
And Elroy, on the ground, surrounded, bought them seconds with blood and grit—refusing to be dragged under, refusing to let the pack turn his friends into scattered prey.
By the time the sun tipped toward mid-day, the fight was still unresolved—wolves pressing, the wagon and horses close enough to matter, and the company caught in the thin, brutal space between escape and loss.
The Shrike lay behind them. Ahead, the uplands waited.
And the wolves did not intend to let them choose their ground.