The goblins stood at the treeline — a ragged crescent of grey bodies, yellow eyes, crude weapons — and stared at the clearing. At the fire pit, scattered and smoking. At the bodies of their own. At the burned one, still faintly glowing at the edges. At the trees behind Marshal, stripped of bark by the shockwave, pale wood exposed like bone.
They stared at him.
Marshal stood in the center of it, hammer in both hands, swaying. Blood ran from his forearm, his side, his thigh. The boy was behind him, pressed against his unconscious father, making no sound.
The goblins shifted. Low hisses passed between them.
He could feel their hesitation like a physical thing. The kind of pause an animal makes at the mouth of a cave that smells wrong.
Good. Stay there. Stay afraid.
A minute passed. Maybe two. His legs were shaking. The hammer's weight pulled his arms down like an anchor. But he didn't lower it. Didn't sit. Didn't show weakness. Some part of him — the same part that knew tactics, stances, the weight of command — understood that right now, the only weapon he had left was the illusion that he could do that again.
He couldn't. He knew it. They didn't.
* * *
The first stone came from the back of the group.
A small one — fist-sized, thrown in a high arc. It clattered against the ground two paces to his right.
He didn't move.
A second stone. Closer. It grazed his boot.
Then a third — not aimed at him. At the boy. It struck the dirt next to Aedan with a dull thump. The boy flinched but didn't cry out.
They're testing range. They're too afraid to charge but too many to leave. So they'll wear me down from a distance. Smart, for goblins.
More stones. From multiple directions now. The crescent was tightening, closing around the clearing like a jaw. They'd figured out the equation: the standing man wasn't moving. Wasn't casting. Wasn't chasing. He was stuck.
A rock hit his shoulder. Hard. The impact traveled down his arm and the hammer dipped. He heard the goblins hiss — excited, like dogs that smell blood.
He stepped back, slowly, and stood between the heaviest barrage and the tree where Aedan and Torben huddled. Stones struck his back, his legs, his raised arms. Each one a small detonation of pain. He hunched forward, covering his head with one arm, the hammer still in his right hand.
A stone caught his temple.
White light. The world tilted. He went down on one knee. The hammer slipped from his fingers and rolled.
He heard the goblins shriek. The hesitation was over. Footsteps rushed toward him from multiple sides.
He tried to reach the hammer. His hand closed on dirt.
Get up.
He couldn't.
Get up.
His face hit the ground. Leaves and blood and cold earth. The boy screamed — a single, raw syllable: "No!"
Then a sound cut through everything.
A horn. Short, sharp, military. From the east.
And arrows began to fall.
A volley — five shafts in quick succession, hissing like angry wasps. Each one found a target. The goblins closest to Marshal dropped mid-stride, feathered shafts sprouting from throats and chests.
The charge broke. The goblins scattered, shrieking, colliding with each other.
Figures burst from the eastern undergrowth. Four fighters in leather and chain, moving in formation — fast, tight, coordinated. Behind them, a fifth with a bow, already nocking another arrow.
The first fighter — tall, rangy, a short sword in each hand — carved through two goblins before they could turn to face him. No flourish. No wasted motion. He moved the way water moves around rocks: smooth, inevitable, fatal.
The second and third worked as a pair, shields locked, pushing into the cluster by the fire pit. Block, strike. Block, strike. Mechanical. Drilled. The ugly efficiency of people who kill monsters for a living.
And behind them all — a woman. Short dark hair, a scar through her left eyebrow, chainmail over a padded gambeson. A single-handed sword in her right hand, a buckler in her left. Every movement calculated.
A goblin leapt at her. She sidestepped, let the blade pass her ribs, and drove her sword through its chest. She pulled the blade free, stepped over the body, and kept walking.
Forty seconds. Maybe less.
The surviving goblins fled — crashing through the brush, shrieking. The archer dropped one more at the treeline. The rest vanished into the forest, leaving behind dead and dying.
* * *
Marshal lay face-down in the dirt.
He heard the fight end. Heard footsteps approach. Heard voices — calm, professional, the kind of voices that belong to people for whom this was a Tuesday.
"Clear east."
"Six confirmed. Two runners northeast."
"Leave them. Sweep the perimeter."
Boots stopped beside his head. He saw them through half-closed eyes — practical, worn, well-maintained.
"This one alive?" A woman's voice.
"He's breathing." The archer, crouching next to him, fingers on his neck. "Pulse is weak. Multiple wounds. He's lost blood."
"The civilians?"
"Man unconscious, head wound. Kid seems fine. Scared."
A pause. Then the woman's voice again, slower: "Terro. Look at the camp."
Silence. Then a low whistle from the archer.
"That burned goblin — that's not from a campfire. And look at those trees. Bark's stripped clean in a radius. Something hit this clearing."
The twin-sword fighter wandered over, wiping his blades on a dead goblin's vest. He looked at the devastation, then down at Marshal's prone form. Then back at the clearing.
"Wait. You're saying this guy did all that?" He nudged Marshal's hammer with his boot. "With a smith's hammer?"
"Renn, his hands are burned at the fingertips. Mage-burn."
"He's a mage?"
"Seems like that."
Renn crouched and tilted his head, studying Marshal's unconscious face. "Huh. He looks like a blacksmith's apprentice who got lost."
"A blacksmith's apprentice who took down a goblin camp solo," Terro said.
Renn stood, looked at the clearing again, and shook his head. "Captain, if this is the recruitment standard nowadays, I want a raise."
"Shut up, Renn," the woman said, but there was a crack in the flat tone. "Patch him up. Forearm, side, back, thigh. Field kit."
* * *
He woke on a stretcher.
Moving. Swaying gently, like a ship — though he didn't know how he knew what a ship felt like. Trees above, dappled light. The creak of leather, the steady crunch of boots on a forest path.
Pain arrived next. Everywhere. His back was a solid wall of it. His head throbbed where the stone had hit. But the wounds had been wrapped — tight, professional bandages, the kind that hurt more than the wounds themselves.
He turned his head. The twin-sword fighter — Renn — held the front of the stretcher. At the back, a broad, silent man with a face like carved stone.
"He's awake," Renn called forward. "Sleeping beauty returns."
Footsteps. The woman appeared in his peripheral vision, walking beside the stretcher.
"Veyra Senn," she said. "Fourth Company, Ashford Mercenary Guild."
"Marshal," he managed. His throat was raw. "Some call me Empty."
"I'll go with Marshal." She studied him as she walked. "You attacked a camp of goblins alone."
"They had prisoners."
"I see that. What I don't see is a reason for a lone traveler with a hammer to walk into that and expect to walk out."
He closed his eyes. "I didn't expect anything."
"That's either very brave or very stupid."
"I've been told both aren't mutually exclusive."
"Renn's philosophy," Veyra said drily. "Don't encourage him."
"Too late, Captain!" Renn called from the front. "I already like him."
* * *
The boy found him an hour later. Small, quick, quiet feet appearing by the stretcher. Aedan. His face was still streaked with dirt and dried tears, but his eyes were steady now.
"Thank you," Aedan said.
Marshal looked at him through half-closed eyes. The gratitude was genuine — open, raw, the kind only children and dying men produce. It sat uncomfortably on him, like a shirt that didn't fit.
"Don't thank me," he said.
"But you saved us."
"I saved myself. You happened to be there."
The boy frowned. "That's not true. You walked into the forest. You left the road."
Marshal was quiet for a moment. Then: "I did it because I wanted to. Not for you. Not for your father. Your lives, honestly, mean nothing to me. I don't know you. A stranger's life has no weight."
Aedan stared at him. The words should have stung.
"Then why did you want to?"
Marshal closed his eyes. Behind them — only darkness, fatigue, and the dull pulse of wounds.
"I don't know," he said. "And that's the honest answer."
Aedan walked in silence for a while. Then, quietly: "My name is Aedan. My father is Torben. He sells grain."
"I know. The grain was on the road."
"They broke everything." Flat. Factual. "Papa tried to fight. They hit him."
Marshal said nothing.
"Can you teach me? The fire."
"No."
"Why?"
"Because I don't know what I'm doing."
Aedan nodded, as if that was a perfectly acceptable answer, and fell back to walk beside the second stretcher.
* * *
Ashford appeared in the late afternoon.
The forest ended — one moment trees, the next, open fields. And beyond the fields, on a rise above a wide, slow river, the town. Stone walls, dark with age, broken by two gate towers. Buildings of timber and stone rising two and three stories. A cluster of taller structures near the center: a keep, or a guild hall, or both. The river wrapped around the eastern wall, spanned by a stone bridge wide enough for two carts.
After Riverside's mud and silence, Ashford looked like a different species of place.
Veyra stopped the patrol at the edge of the treeline.
"Can you walk?" she asked Marshal.
He climbed off the stretcher. Stood. The world wobbled but held. Everything hurt.
"I'll take that as yes."
He looked at the town. Guilds. Answers. Or at least a bed.
The hammer bumped against his hip. The token sat in his pocket. His bandages were already seeping through. Every step sent a pulse of pain up his spine.
But the gates were close. And behind the walls there would be a roof, and a floor, and the possibility of not being attacked for eight consecutive hours.
That was enough. He didn't need it to mean anything more than that.
He walked toward the gates.