Chapter 203: Getting Tired Of Old Men

Chapter 203: Chapter 203: Getting Tired Of Old Men

On the return road Nils fell in beside me for a stretch.

"Father thought it might be worse," he said.

"So did half my yard before Jonas opened his mouth."

"And you still came."

"I said I would." I adjusted the reins. "That’s the whole trick of neighbouring, Nils. Do what you said. Don’t invent dragons when the problem is mud."

He almost smiled. "I’ll tell Father you said that. He’ll pretend he doesn’t agree."

"He always does."

--

We reached Frostfang after dark. The keep took the Bjornvik crew in without theatre—food, dry rooms, a proper look at the captain’s leg from our own healer. I stood in the yard long enough to see them settled, then sent Nils to the message desk to write Harald before rumour did it for him.

Magnus found me near the stables while I was checking the horses we’d pushed hardest. He had a heel of bread in one hand and a look that said he’d already heard the short version from Anders.

"Mud," he said.

"Mud."

"You’re disappointed it wasn’t more interesting."

"I’m relieved it wasn’t more interesting." I ran a hand down the nearest horse’s neck and felt the heat of a long ride still under the coat. "Interesting is expensive. Mud only costs a day, a splint, and some coastal pride."

He tore the bread and gave me half. We ate in the stable smell and the low noise of animals settling. Somewhere inside, the Bjornvik captain was almost certainly being told off by a young man who still called him by rank out of habit. Somewhere else Sigrid was already rewriting tomorrow’s lists to account for guests who hadn’t been in the morning count.

"Halvar asked about the hunt again," Magnus said after a while.

"Of course he did."

"I told him the draw worked. He told me your mother preferred the ridge. I told him the deer preferred the draw. He went away annoyed. I counted that as a win."

I laughed, quiet and unexpected. "You’re getting diplomatic."

"I’m getting tired of old men measuring you against a ghost. Same thing, different spelling."

We finished the bread. The horses breathed around us. The freighter was no longer missing. The day had been long and mostly mud and still better than the alternatives Jonas could have ridden in with.

I wiped my hands on my cloak and tipped my head toward the keep.

"Come on. If I don’t show my face in the hall, someone will decide the coastal crew is a political problem instead of a logistics one."

"And if you do show your face?"

"Then someone will still try, and I’ll get to be irritated about it in person."

Magnus snorted and fell into step beside me. We walked back toward the light and the noise and the ordinary work of a keep that had, for once, been handed a problem it could actually put its hands on and fix.

---

Late, after the hall had thinned and the Bjornvik crew had been settled into sleep, I sat on the edge of our bed and worked my boots off while Magnus barred the door. My shoulders ached from the ride. My mind kept circling the listed freighter and the captain’s closed eyes and the simple fact of a channel that had changed.

"Stop replaying it," Magnus said.

"I’m not."

"You are. Your jaw does a thing." He came over, put his thumb against the hinge of my jaw, and pressed until I noticed and loosened it. "It’s mud, Lila. You solved mud. Tomorrow you can solve something else."

"Tomorrow Sigrid will put a list in my hand before I finish breakfast."

"Tomorrow Sigrid will put a list in your hand before you finish breakfast," he repeated and agreed, and kissed me.

It started tired and turned warmer. I pulled him down with me, both of us still half-dressed, and for a while the freighter and the lists and the coastal pride went away under the familiar weight of him.

We didn’t make an event of it. Hands, mouths, the slow working out of a long day’s leftover tension. When he pushed inside me I held on and let the rhythm be enough. We finished quietly, tangled, the keep settling around us into the deep quiet of a night that hadn’t cost anyone a grave.

Magnus’s breath evened against my shoulder. I stared at the ceiling beams until the circle of the day finally loosened its grip.

Mud. A grounded ship. Twelve people still breathing.

I could live with that kind of hard.

==============

~Lila~

The argument started in the training yard before breakfast had properly finished.

I heard it from the upper walk—Johan Berg’s voice, flat and carrying, and a younger male voice pushing back with more heat than sense.

By the time I reached the rail, a small ring had formed in the packed snow. Two of the newer border recruits stood in the middle. One had a split lip. The other had his shoulders up around his ears and the particular red face of someone who had already said too much and couldn’t find the road back.

Johan saw me and didn’t break his stance. "Queen. Timing."

"Always is." I came down the steps. The ring opened. "Someone talk. Short version."

The red-faced one—William Hauge, nineteen, strong, still convinced strength was a personality—jerked his chin at the other. "He said my patrol form was lazy. I said his mother taught him to watch borders. He swung."

The one with the split lip, Lucas Ruud, spat pink into the snow and said nothing. His silence had more dignity than William’s explanation.

Johan folded his arms. "They were supposed to be running the paired lateral drill. William decided a correction was an insult. Lucas decided a fist was an answer. Now they’re both useless for the morning rotation and I’ve got a yard full of wolves who think this is theatre."

Astrid stood at the edge of the ring with her arms wrapped around herself against the cold, watching William with open disgust. Sigrid had appeared from somewhere with her slate, expression already committed to whatever punishment I handed down. Anders waited further back, not interfering, just present.

I looked at William. "Did Lucas’s mother teach him to watch borders?"

William’s jaw worked. "No."

"Did he say your form was lazy?"

"...Yes."

"Was it?"

Silence. Then, forced: "It was wide on the turn."

"So he was right, you got embarrassed, and you hit him." I shifted my attention to Lucas. "And you hit back."

Lucas shrugged one shoulder. "Yes."

"Good. You’re both honest. You’re also both off the border rotations for a week. You’ll run Johan’s full correction course at dawn and dusk. You’ll mend every strap and rail in this yard that needs it. And if either of you swings on a pack-mate over a form note again, you’ll be hauling kitchen ash until your shoulders forget the shape of a fight." I let that sit. "Questions."

William’s face had gone from red to blotchy. "He—"

"No."

He shut his mouth. Lucas nodded once. Johan’s mouth tipped in something that might have been approval if you knew him.

"Break it up," I said to the yard at large. "If you have energy for a ring, you have energy for the north slope clear. Move."

They moved. William and Lucas stayed long enough to receive Johan’s detailed version of the same order, which was longer and less polite than mine. Astrid fell into step beside me as I headed back toward the keep.

"William’s been looking for a reason since he got his full border mark," she said.

"I noticed."

"Lucas didn’t deserve the split lip."

"I noticed that too." I glanced at her. "You want to say something else."

Astrid hesitated, then pushed on. "If I’d been the one who said his form was lazy, he wouldn’t have swung. He’d have smiled and done it again wrong just to prove he could."

"Probably."

"So why does he take it from Lucas and not from people he thinks matter?"

"Because Lucas is his equal and equals are where pride gets thin." We reached the inner door. Warmth hit my face. "Keep an eye on both of them on Johan’s course. Not to protect them. To tell me if William’s learning or just waiting."

Astrid’s expression sharpened. "I can do that."

"I know."

She went. Sigrid appeared at my elbow as if she’d been built into the doorway.

"You didn’t take their border marks."

"They didn’t earn the loss of them. They earned a week of humiliation and labour." I rubbed my hands together until the cold left the fingers. "If William does it again, I’ll take the mark. If Lucas starts swinging first, same. One stupid morning doesn’t get to rewrite a recruitment."

Sigrid made a note. "Halvar said you’d go softer than Elena."

"Halvar can say what he likes. The rails still need mending."

Her mouth moved. Not quite a smile. "I’ll tell Johan to use the old straps. The ones that fight back."

"Do that."

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