Ivor Mcdool's Arc

Chapter 1 of 5

Ivor stood at his door when the man fell against the frame. Blood soaked through the stranger's coat at the shoulder. The man gasped twice before he could speak. "Holensnow," he said. "The high ground. They're already there." Ivor caught him before he dropped to the stones. The stranger's hand thrust forward, fingers wrapped around something that gleamed in the lamplight. A blade, small and strange, with an edge that seemed to shift between metal and mist. "Took it from their camp," the man wheezed. "Near the old lighthouse. They're claiming the ground." Ivor took the weapon and turned it once in his palm. The balance was wrong for Holensnow steel. Foreign work. That meant coin behind it, and planning. Ivor knelt and pressed his hand to the wound. The blood came slow now. Not good. He pulled a folded letter from the stranger's coat pocket, its edges stiff with dried red. The words inside were brief: coordinates, names he didn't recognize, a date three days past. The high ground the stranger meant was the plateau where Ivor had planned to break earth for the fortress. He had surveyed it himself two seasons ago. It was the only site in twenty miles with bedrock close enough to support walls that could hold against siege engines. The stranger's breath went shallow. Ivor called for his men and stood, the letter still in his hand. The fortress was no longer a matter of negotiation and patience. Someone else had decided the same ground was worth taking, and they had moved while he wasted weeks managing a lord's pride and his son's ambition. The wound in his plan was as real as the one in the dying man at his feet. He would need to move tonight, or the realm's safety would be built on someone else's terms.