Ewan Greenwood's Arc

Chapter 1 of 8

Ewan Greenwood knelt in the ash and dug for his neighbor's bones. The village had burned three nights ago. A conjurer's spell had jumped a hearth and eaten twelve houses in one hour. Ewan had seen it. He believed magic was a poison, and he meant to scrub it from the land. But he was one man with blistered hands and a shovel, and the fire had left him nothing to fight with. Callum found him at dusk. His younger brother carried a plank on one shoulder and a satchel of tools on his belt. He set them down without a word and began framing a new doorway from the wreck. That was Callum. He fixed things while Ewan raged at them. "You can't burn out every witch alone," Callum said. He drove a nail flush in two strokes. "You'll die tired and they'll still be casting." "Then tell me what I do." "Get stronger. Get people. Right now you have neither." Aisling stepped from the treeline before Ewan could answer. His wife wore her orange robe, and the pendant at her throat caught the last light. She had walked two valleys to reach him. She dropped a bundle of arrows at his feet, then a short sword wrapped in cloth. "I gathered them from men who'll ride with you," she said. "Eleven so far. They lost kin to spellfire, same as us. They only needed someone to stand first." Ewan stared at the weapons. "Eleven farmers." "Eleven angry farmers," Aisling said. "And me. I hate magic more than any of them. You know that." He did know it. She had buried her own mother after a curse rotted the woman from the inside. Her hatred ran deeper than his, and steadier. Callum wiped his hands. "I can build. Palisades, carts, a hall to gather in. But I need a place to build it, and you need men who'll obey you when the fear starts." Ewan understood then. Rage was not a plan. He had been swinging at smoke. He walked past the ruined houses to the far field. A horse stood there in the grass, dark-coated, her mane pale as frost. Aisling had brought her too. The mare let no one else near, but she pressed her nose to Ewan's chest at once. "She trusts you," Aisling said. "Start there." Ewan mounted. From the horse's back he saw the whole burned village, and beyond it the road. He was not alone anymore. He had a brother who built, a wife who burned, eleven grieving men, and a horse that carried only him. "We ride at dawn," he said. "We find the ones who'll train us to fight. Then we hunt the magic that did this." Callum picked up his hammer. Aisling touched her pendant. The plan had begun, and now it could fail in bigger ways than one man ever could.