Radmila dropped the notched iron blade into the sawdust beneath the cot, her boot grinding dirt over the dark smear on its hilt. Before she could straighten, the exterior timbers of the sled groaned under a vicious blow. Wood splintered around the latch.
The reinforced hide curtain tore aside with the screech of rusted rings. Goran Vukovar, broad as an ox and reeking of rancid tallow, ducked under the bowed crossbeam. Three men flanked him, armed with lead-weighted clubs and notched butchering cleavers.
"Ozerov trash," Goran spat. His yellowed teeth bared in an ugly grin as his gaze swept the freezing interior. "Where is my brother? He came to claim our rightful tithe three hours ago and hasn't returned to our line. And which one of you dogs took his skinning knife?"
Kresnic, huddled near the cold hearth-box with grease still marking his chin, scrambled backward on his elbows. "We don't have it! I didn't take anything! Mother, tell him!"
Goran didn't bother looking down. His steel-shod toe drove into Kresnic’s ribs with a hollow thud. The boy folded, wheezing, violently thrown across the floorboards until his head struck the iron runner of the pantry chest.
Valeska moved before thought caught up with instinct. Her modern nurse's mind screamed against physical retaliation, but the ancient bones of this widow’s frame surged forward. She stepped directly across Kresnic’s shuddering body, placing her skirts between the brute and her groveling son.
"Back out the way you came, Goran," Valeska said, her voice dead flat.
"Move, dry hag," Goran growled, reaching out an enormous, calloused paw to tear her aside by the collar. "Or I’ll snap your neck and feed what’s left of your brats to the sled hounds."
A chiming bell chimed softly inside her skull, melodic and gentle against the cold reek of sweat and violence.
[Daily Sign-In available: Dawn of the Fourth March.]
[Claim gift: Two liters of rolling, scalding tallow-water, purified and held at three hundred degrees. Drink deep, little bird, or warm your hearth.]
[Claiming reward?]
*Now,* she willed.
The iron soup kettle hanging over the dead embers flared with sudden, unnatural heat. Steam hissed through its narrow spout, thick and smelling faintly of wild thyme and scalding tallow. Valeska didn’t grasp the handle with a cloth; her right palm seized the blistering iron bail without flinching, protected by the brief, warm hum of the system's grace.
She lifted the pot in one fluid, terrible motion.
Goran blinked, raising his club. "What are you—"
Valeska threw the boiling contents straight into his face.
The sound was not a shout; it was an explosive, wet hiss, followed instantly by a sound like tearing parchment as the boiling broth cooked the skin across Goran's cheeks and flooded his open eyes. The brute shrieked, dropping his weapon, both hands flying to claw at sloughing, blistered flesh.
"Pigs!" Valeska shouted, her voice cutting through the agony like a cleaver through marrow. She slammed the heavy cast-iron pot against the forehead of the second thug before he could raise his axe. The metal fractured bone; the man collapsed backward into the snowbank outside the door with a dull thud. "Get out of my wagon!"
The remaining two raiders froze, stunned by the ferocity of a woman they had seen begging for marrow bones three sunrises ago. Goran rolled on the packed snow just outside the threshold, howling, blistered fluid pooling on the frost.
Heavy boots crunched through the crust outside. The snap of crossbows being drawn taut silenced the chaos.
"Clear the path! Make way for the Fleet Commander!"
Vojin forced his way through the perimeter, his thick wool coat dusted with frozen grit. His scar, running from ear to chin, pulled tight as he took in the scene: Goran writhing and blinded, an unconscious man bleeding into the snow, and Valeska Ozerov standing in the open doorway, steam rising from her empty iron pot and her hair wild around her weathered face.
Vojin’s jaw tightened. He signaled his guards, who immediately leveled heavy poleaxes at the remaining men. "Explain this. Now. No blood is spilled within the caravan without the Council’s decree."
Goran scrambled upright on his knees, blind and weeping clear serum from ruined eyelids. "She attacked us! The mad crone scalded me unprovoked! We came looking for our scout—and she's harboring an assassin!"
Valeska held her ground, her voice icy. "He broke into my home and kicked my son until he bled. I defended my hearth."
"Lies!" spat the surviving thug behind Goran, pointing a shaking finger past Valeska's shoulder. "We followed tracks from the scout's last picket! Radmila—that bitch standing behind her—she slit his throat from behind! She’s carrying an imperial blade! She's an infiltrator, Vojin! They’re working for the Ashen vanguard!"
Silence dropped over the sled like a wet pelt.
Valeska’s gaze flicked to Radmila. Her friend stood stone-still against the rear partition, hands tucked deep into her frayed sleeves, her expression an unreadable mask of stoic calm. But Valeska knew what lay beneath the floor beneath that cot: a notched hilt bearing the fresh mark of the northern raiders.
Vojin looked at Radmila, then at Valeska. The faint flicker of respect that had begun to form between them over the past two days seemed to freeze into granite. His duties were clear. An infiltrator meant the entire fleet was compromised; thousands of lives hung on root-and-branch discipline.
"Step out of the wagon, Ozerovs," Vojin ordered, his voice clipped and devoid of warmth.
"Commander, this is their slander," Valeska began, stepping forward. "They came to steal our winter provisions—"
"Step down, Valeska," he cut her off, stepping so close she could smell the cold pitch on his armor. His dark gaze bore into hers, unyielding. "If your home is clean, you have nothing to fear from the fleet's law. If there is northern steel beneath your rugs, you hang before dusk."
He raised a hand and barked to the squad of six heavy guards behind him: "Tear the Ozerov sled apart. Check every seam. Pry up the boards."
Two guards shoved roughly past Valeska, boots thudding heavily against the timber, their iron pry-bars heading straight for the loose floorboards under Radmila's cot.