Darth John snow's Arc

Chapter 6 of 10

Word came faster than riders could. A traveler stopped at the stream and spoke of three villages downriver that had already hung iron bells on roadside shrines, vines wrapped around the posts, waiting for help that did not yet exist. Darth John Snow read the news on a tall messenger post nailed with plaques from places he had never sent anyone. The order was outrunning him. The girl found him at the practice yard before dawn. She held out his oversized sword with both hands. She drew a circle in the dirt and tapped it: train harder, train faster. One rider who could do the work of three was the only way to answer bells in three places at once. He took the sword. He swung at the wooden dummies until the wood split. He drilled the two riders beside him through cuts they had never learned. A downward strike that broke a shield in one blow. A spinning step that cleared three attackers at once. A low sweep that took legs out from under a charging horse. The girl watched and nodded when a move looked right. They trained through the day and into the next. By the third dusk, the two riders moved like four. Their cuts were clean. Their footwork did not stumble. Darth John Snow watched the shorter rider finish a drill he had not been taught and start a new one on his own. The boy did not look up for permission. That was the sign. The order was real now, whether John Snow rode with them or not. He sent the two south at first light, toward the new bells, and stayed behind to build a stone waypoint past the stream so the next riders would have a roof between villages. A bell hung at its top. Shelves inside waited for supplies. The problem had not gone away. More bells would ring than riders could reach. But the riders he had were stronger now, and they were moving without him. The order had stopped being his alone. It had started belonging to them.