The King Who Broke Heaven’s Tithe

Chapter 2 What the River Carried

Daren held his son above the black water while the village burned behind them.

The drainage tunnel narrowed beneath the mill. He had to turn sideways, broken spear trapped under one arm, Orin balanced on the other. Every step scraped his injured ribs against stone.

Selka followed with eleven villagers. An old cooper. Two sisters carrying their grandmother. A mill boy with an empty cage. The others were shapes moving through smoke.

Eleven, Daren counted again. He could not stop counting.

There had been more than two hundred people in the square.

“Keep your mouth above my shoulder,” he told Orin.

“The song is louder down here.”

“What song?”

“The one inside my teeth.”

Daren nearly lost his footing.

Selka caught his elbow. “Let me look at his wrist.”

He pulled away.

“After we reach the river.”

Behind them, something struck the tunnel mouth. Mortar fell into the water. A second blow sent a crack racing overhead.

The sect did not intend to follow them underground.

It intended to bury them.

“Move,” Daren said.

The cooper slipped. The mill boy dragged him upright. Daren heard a cry farther back and forced himself not to turn until everyone ahead had cleared the narrowest passage.

A girl had trapped her skirt beneath a fallen block.

He passed Orin to Selka.

“Hold him.”

She took the boy without speaking.

Daren went back. He could not lift the stone. He cut the cloth with the broken spearhead, catching the girl’s trembling fingers when she tried to help. The tunnel shook again.

They stumbled into daylight as the mill collapsed behind them.

The river carried flour, roof tiles, and one burning door.

On the opposite bank, a man in white stood beside a bronze hound.

Daren pushed the girl down.

The hound turned its narrow head. Gold shone between its metal teeth.

“Don’t run,” Selka whispered.

The creature stepped into the river. Water steamed around its paws. Its handler held a chain made of light, but the chain hung slack.

It was hunting a scent.

Daren looked at Orin’s wrist.

Five golden lines circled it, thin as hairs.

“What did they put in him?”

“A gathering brand,” Selka said. “The scale marks what the sect has claimed.”

“Remove it.”

“I need salt, clean iron, and time.”

“You had time this morning.”

She accepted that without looking away. “Yes.”

The hound reached the middle of the river.

Daren studied the current. A fallen willow lay upstream, its roots tangled in the bank. Beyond it, the water dropped over an old weir.

He handed the broken spear to the cooper.

“Get them behind the willow.”

“What about you?”

“Do what she says.”

He hated the words as soon as he spoke them.

Selka understood what they cost. She carried Orin toward the tree while Daren waded into open water.

The hound’s head snapped toward him.

His sleeve had soaked through with his son’s blood from the branded wrist. He tore the cloth loose and wrapped it around a stone.

“Here,” he called.

The handler raised his hand.

The hound leaped.

Daren threw the stone downstream and dropped beneath the surface. Bronze struck water above his back. The current rolled him across submerged rocks. He lost his breath and clawed for the riverbed.

For a moment, he was back at Corren, trapped under a siege ladder with men walking over him.

Then his fingers closed around a root.

He hauled himself into the willow’s submerged branches.

The hound pursued the bloody cloth over the weir. Its chain straightened. On the bank, the handler staggered, caught between his beast and the rushing water.

Selka’s knife took him below the jaw.

He fell without another command.

The chain vanished. The hound disappeared into the gorge.

Daren remained in the river until his hands stopped shaking.

When he climbed out, Selka was kneeling beside Orin with the dead handler’s salt pouch open on her lap.

“Ask him first,” Daren said.

She looked up.

“He’s frightened. Tell him what you’re doing.”

Selka turned back to the boy. “This will hurt. Your father can hold your hand. May I try?”

Orin looked at Daren, then nodded.

She pressed salt around the golden lines and laid her sword flat against them. Pale light passed through the blade. Orin cried out once, then buried his face against Daren’s coat.

Four lines faded.

The fifth sank beneath his skin.

Selka went very still.

“Say it,” Daren told her.

“That one reaches deeper. I can quiet it. I cannot cut it here.”

“How long?”

“Until sunset tomorrow, perhaps.”

Across the river, Bracken’s bell rang a final time and stopped.

The refugees watched the smoke. Nobody asked to go back.

Daren touched the copper scar on his arm. He could feel something pulling him north, toward the limestone hills and a fort he had passed years ago. Hearthfast. Empty since the border wars.

It had walls, a spring, and a road narrow enough for ten people to hold.

It was also three leagues beyond the nearest shelter.

Selka followed his gaze. “Nothing lives there.”

“Then nobody can sell us out.”

The cooper began to laugh, stopped, and wiped his mouth.

Daren offered him a hand. The old man took it reluctantly, watching Orin with an expression Daren was too tired to understand.

Daren lifted Orin again.

Under the boy’s skin, the last golden line pulsed in time with something far away.

On the hillside above them, a stone watchtower answered with a single flash of light.