Roland Ironheart needed three guards before the spring raids came, and he had no idea where to find them. He stood at the gate of his castle and stared at the black-and-white panther banners snapping overhead. The stone walls looked strong. They were not. One old man with a rusted spear could not hold them alone, and that old man was Roland. He had inherited the castle from an uncle he barely knew. He had also inherited its enemies. Every winter, raiders tested the walls. This spring, he was sure, they would break through. Three loyal fighters could turn them back. But Roland had spent his life farming, not soldiering. He knew no warriors. He did not even know where warriors gathered. He checked his supplies near the gate: a food box, a box of tools, and a ladder leaning against the wall. Enough to fix a hinge. Not enough to hire a single sword. He could ride to distant towns and ask strangers. That could take weeks he did not have. Every wasted day brought the raiders closer. Roland pressed his fists against the cold stone and forced himself to think. Fighters needed food. They needed drink. They needed somewhere warm to sit when the snow fell. He had passed such a place. Down the road stood a small wooden house, its porch strung with painted hearts and flower boxes. He had thought it a strange, soft little place. Now he remembered the noise from inside. Loud voices. Laughter. The clink of cups. He grabbed his cloak and walked to the little house with hearts on its walls. He pushed the door open. Warm air hit his face. The room was packed. Men with scarred hands leaned over tables. A woman in mail arm-wrestled a bearded stranger. Weapons hung on pegs by the door. This was no romantic cottage. It was where the region's fighters drank away the winter. A man near the fire looked up. "You lost, farmer?" he said, eyeing Roland's mud-stained boots. "No," Roland said. His voice held steadier than he felt. "I'm hiring. I need three guards for my castle. Good pay. A warm bed. A fight worth having." The room went quiet. Cups stopped moving. Every face turned toward him, measuring the plain man in the doorway. Roland stood still and let them look. Then the man by the fire laughed. Not cruelly. "A castle," he said. "The one with the panthers?" He set down his cup. "Sit down, farmer. Tell us what you're paying." Roland pulled out a chair. He had found the fighters. Now he had to convince three of them to risk their lives for a man who had never held a sword in anger. The hardest part was only beginning.

Roland spread his coins on the table and counted them twice. The pile was too small. Two guards ate through his money faster than he had planned. A third would want the same good pay, and he had nothing left to promise. Outside, the woman drilled with the wall while the bearded man sharpened blades. Roland needed a fighter he could not afford. He walked the frozen hills to think. Snow crunched under his boots. He passed a small cottage, its walls hung with old iron keys, its windows glowing warm. A boy sat on the step, thin, hair like a bird's nest, red shoes soaked through. He was breaking ice off a puddle with his heel and watching the sky. "You're the man with the striped castle," the boy said. He did not look up. "A bear told me to find a princess. I found a river instead. Now I'm here." Roland stopped. The boy spoke plainly, like each word cost him something. "I'm looking for a guard," Roland said. "But I can't pay one." "I don't want coin," the boy said. "I want a place. I slept under a tunnel once. No one looked for me." He met Roland's eyes then. "I'll watch your wall for food and a roof." Roland studied him. He was small. He could not hold the oak beam. He could not swing a sword like the other two. But Roland had put sharp eyes on the watch before, back on his farm. A boy who slept in tunnels and rivers learned to notice things others missed. "Show me," Roland said. "What do you see right now?" The boy pointed past Roland's shoulder without turning. "Wings. Pink. It's been circling since you came up the path. It hunts what moves alone." Roland spun. High above, the pink dragon drifted low over the hills, butterfly wings catching the gray light. He had not heard it. He had not seen it. The boy had marked it long before. "What's your name?" Roland asked. "Timothy. Timothy Holloway." "You'll eat at my table and sleep behind my walls," Roland said. "You'll be my third watch. No pay. A home." Timothy stood and knocked the ice from his shoes. "Then I'm yours." Roland walked him back down the hill. His coffers were still thin, but they held. He had his third hand, and the money problem was solved not by more coin but by a boy who wanted none. Overhead the dragon banked toward its nest in the hills. But Roland's two guards had earned their places holding the beam. They had tested each other by strength. Timothy had passed no test but a glance at the sky. Roland led a thin boy through the gate and knew the woman would want to know why. He had no strong hand for her. He had only a sharp eye, and now he had to make her trust it.

Roland gathered his three guards in the courtyard at dawn. The woman in mail stood with her sword drawn. The bearded man leaned on the wall. Timothy sat on a crate, watching the sky. None of them had ever fought side by side. If a raid hit the walls, each would run their own way. Roland needed them to move as one, and he had no idea how to make it happen. "Give me a drill," he told the woman. "Something that forces you all to work together." She frowned at Timothy. "He can't hold a line. He'll break the first time steel comes near him." Roland did not argue. He pointed past the gate, toward the hills. "Then let's test it in the open. Not with words. With a real problem." He led them out through the snow. Near a low ridge they found what Roland had spotted the day before. A baby bear cub had wandered from its den, mewling, stuck in a frozen gully. Above the hills the pink dragon circled low, wings flashing, hunting anything that moved alone. "The cub is bait," Roland said. "The dragon wants it. We get the cub out before the dragon strikes. All three of you, one plan." The woman took command. "Timothy, watch the sky. Call the moment it dives." She sent the bearded man to the far side of the gully with a length of rope. Timothy's eyes never left the dragon. "It's turning," he said. "It sees us. Ten breaths." The woman ran for the cub. The bearded man threw the rope. Roland braced it. Then Timothy shouted, "Now! It's coming down!" The dragon dropped fast, wings tucked. The woman heard the warning and rolled clear. The bearded man hauled the rope. The cub scrambped up the slope into Roland's arms. Wind from the dragon's wings knocked snow across their faces. It missed. It banked hard and climbed back toward its nest, empty-clawed. They stood breathing hard in the snow. The cub trembled against Roland's chest. The woman looked at Timothy. "You called it three seconds before I saw a thing," she said. "I'd have been caught in the open." Timothy shrugged. "I only watch. You do the rest." The woman sheathed her sword. "Then you watch. We move on your call." She gave the bearded man a nod. For the first time, the three of them had trusted one order and one voice. Roland carried the cub back through the gate. His guards walked together now, not scattered. The wall had a plan. But the dragon had marked them all. It knew their scent, their number, and the ground they held. Roland set the cub by the fire and looked up at the hills. The next time those wings came, they would not be hunting a lone cub. They would be coming for the castle.

The bear cub slept by the fire, but Roland could not rest. The pink dragon knew his guards now. It knew their smell, their number, and the ground they held. When it came for the castle, it would come ready. Roland needed to blind it before that. He climbed to the wall and looked at the hills where the dragon nested. Timothy sat on the parapet, watching the sky as always. Roland knew him now as the boy who saw what others missed, the third guard who worked for food instead of coin. "The dragon learned us in the open," Roland said. "How do we hide from something that hunts by scent?" Timothy did not turn his head. "You don't hide the scent," he said. "You give it a bigger one." Roland stared at him. Timothy pointed past the hills, toward the far ridge. A dark shape moved there. Then Roland saw it. A massive green dragon stood on the rocks, sweeping horns curved back, red wings folded high. It dwarfed the pink dragon. It had come to hunt this valley too. "Two dragons can't share one range," Timothy said. "They never do." Roland understood the plan in a breath. He did not need to hide his guards. He needed the pink dragon to fear something worse. He ran for the storeroom and grabbed the bear cub. The cub's mother would follow its cry. Down in the courtyard a black panther paced the pen where Roland kept beasts for the kitchen, restless and loud. "Wake the others," Roland told Timothy. "We drive the noise toward the ridge." The woman took command at once. The bearded man carried torches. They led the cub, the panther, and the caged beasts out past the gate and toward the green dragon's rocks. The cub mewled. The panther snarled. The sound rolled across the snow. The pink dragon lifted from its nest, drawn by the cries. Its butterfly wings flashed in the gray light. It dove toward the noise. Then the green dragon rose from the ridge, huge and slow. It roared. The sound shook snow from the pines. The pink dragon pulled up hard. It saw the bigger dragon in its hunting ground. For a long moment the two circled. Then the pink dragon banked away. It climbed fast, left its nest behind, and flew north until it was a pink speck, then nothing. Roland stood in the snow, breathing hard. "It's gone," he said. "For now," Timothy said. "But that one stayed." Roland looked up. The green dragon settled onto the pink dragon's empty nest. It folded its red wings and turned its horned head toward the castle below. It watched them lead the cub and the panther back through the gate. Roland had driven off one dragon. In its place he had drawn a larger one to his own door. The castle was no longer marked by a hunter of lone cubs. It was watched by something far bigger, and it had seen everything.

The green dragon watched the castle for three days. It was bigger than the pink one. Its horns swept back like curved knives, and its red wings never fully folded. Roland stood on the wall and studied it. His three guards had trained to fight men and to hunt small beasts. They had no plan for a dragon striking the walls themselves. Timothy sat beside him, eyes fixed on the hills. "It's not hunting," Timothy said. "It's guarding." Roland frowned. "Guarding what?" Timothy pointed past the ridge, to a second castle Roland had never marked. Its towers wore black-and-white stripes. Panther banners hung from the walls. A man in mail paced the gate below, sword drawn, watching two other guards who stood stiff and afraid. "That one keeps guards who don't run," Timothy said. "The dragon keeps them there." Roland understood then. The green dragon did not serve him. It served the striped castle. The bearded commander down there had bound it to his gate. Any guard who fled, the dragon hunted down. Roland had drawn that dragon to his own door by accident. Before morning the next day, Timothy shook Roland awake. "It moved," he said. Roland ran to the wall. The green dragon had left the hills. It climbed the striped castle's tallest tower and stood on the peak. The bearded man came out onto the wall below it. He raised a whistle and blew one long note. The sound carried cold across the snow. "That's a call," Timothy said. "He's calling it home." Roland watched the dragon spread its wings at the whistle. It did not look at Roland's castle at all. It looked at the striped walls beneath it, waiting for the next order. The commander lowered the whistle and pointed his sword north, away from Roland. Roland felt his chest ease. The dragon was never his threat to fight. It belonged to another man's gate. His mistake had been to think it hunted him. It only guarded what its master pointed it toward. The woman climbed up beside them, sword ready. "Do we defend the wall?" she asked. "No," Roland said. "It's not coming here. It answers that whistle, not us." He watched the green dragon lift off the tower and glide back to the hills, settling on the nest to wait. The bearded commander turned and went inside his striped castle. The threat had a leash. Roland's walls were safe for now. But Roland saw something else. The commander down there kept his guards through fear. A dragon hunted anyone who ran. Roland had no dragon. He had only three people who chose to stay. "We can't win them with fear like he does," Roland told the woman. "We win them another way, or we lose them the first hard night." Timothy kept watching the whistle-man's gate. "He's afraid too," the boy said. "He just hides it better."