The King Who Broke Heaven’s Tithe

Chapter 21 The Road He Could Not Guard

Daren found Orin sitting on his empty grain sack before dawn, wearing boots that belonged to neither of them.

“They fit,” the boy said.

His heels were lost somewhere inside the leather. Daren set down the waterskin he had just filled and crouched as far as his knee allowed.

“You’re staying.”

“Because I’m small.”

“Because I need you alive.”

Orin looked past him toward the wounded men sleeping beside the hearth. Daren heard his own mistake before the boy answered.

“Everybody needs that.”

The hall smelled of pea water and damp wool. Beyond its shutter, the monastery glimmered above the eastern mountains, too distant to hear and too near to forget. By sunset, Maera’s promise would no longer stand between it and Hearthfast.

Daren wanted to cancel the journey. He wanted to put his body in the gate and let hunger argue with him there.

Instead, he sat beside his son.

“Yes,” he said. “Everybody does.”

He explained the grain, the road, and the people who would remain. He did not promise safety. Orin listened while working a loose thread from the borrowed boot.

“Who tells Brida if the gate breaks?”

“Brida will probably hear it first.”

“Who tells you?”

That question had no answer Daren liked.

Orin pulled the boots off. One sock had been darned with thread from his mother's old apron. Daren recognized the color and looked away too late.

“Pella said I can carry clean bandages,” the boy said.

“Ask her where she wants them.”

“And you won't tell her a different thing after?”

“No,” Daren said. It was a promise he could actually keep.

He gave Orin the wooden horse from his belt. The boy had let him carry it since the night of their flight, as if fathers also needed something small to hold.

“Keep this until I return.”

“You’d better want it back.”

“I do.”

Outside, Brida waited beside the shortened gate with Iven and Pella. Jun held the mule’s rope. Selka carried two rolled blankets and the ash staff she had scraped smooth during the night.

Daren began listing repairs. Brida stopped him at the third.

“You’re leaving us a fortress, Holt. Leave us room to use it.”

They settled the questions that mattered. Brida would direct defenses and building work. Iven would control the food stores and could stop work that exhausted people faster than the rations sustained them. Pella would decide who was fit to labor. If attack came, they would abandon the outer yard before risking the hall.

“No one opens the casket,” Daren said.

“No one was hoping to,” Brida answered.

Edrin stood beneath the surviving stable roof, listening. His wrists were bare, but Berrit remained nearby. He offered to show Brida how to recognize a return tongue before she entered the flooded chamber.

“Show me on a piece of wood,” she said. “We’re not going down there today.”

The young man nodded.

Iven handed the travelers a small bag of peas, weighed from their own portions. They would need food even while searching for it. Daren disliked carrying anything away from the hall. She made him look at the measure before tying it shut.

“Come back by the ninth evening,” she said. “After that, we begin another plan.”

He almost asked her to wait longer.

“What plan?”

“Ask nearer farms. Split gathering parties. Whatever is left.”

She would not let his absence suspend everyone else’s life.

Daren accepted the bag.

They reached Rillmarket as the first sunlight struck the bridge rails. Halvek was already standing by the toll house, holding the spare chisel that secured his mule.

“You’re late.”

“By half an hour,” Jun said.

“Then my beast has been stolen for half an hour.”

He scratched the mule behind an ear before examining its feet. His annoyance eased when he found them sound. Daren asked for a renewed loan and explained the road to Harrowmere.

Halvek glanced at Selka’s stitched lip.

“Buying from Renn takes longer than fighting her.”

“We’re buying from the village,” she said. “If they’ll sell.”

“Better answer.”

The bridge keeper would lend the mule through the ninth evening. The chisel stayed with him. His carter, Vann, was due to haul empty baskets toward Harrowmere that morning; the travelers could ride where the cart allowed. For bringing back a paid load from the village, Vann would require twelve pounds of grain.

Daren had nothing yet with which to pay him.

“Then don’t promise it yet,” Halvek said. “Ask him.”

Vann was a narrow man with a heavy cart and a habit of checking every knot twice. He agreed to take them north and wait one day at Harrowmere. If there was no bargain, he would return with his baskets. He would not become a starving stranger’s hostage to hope.

Daren agreed.

Before they left, Halvek took him aside.

“A road steward has been stopping village carts at the ridge. Asking where their grain is going.”

“Summit men?”

“Men who like Summit money.”

Daren looked at the empty cart. There was nowhere to hide a purchased harvest, no secret pass that would make its weight disappear.

Behind him, Jun helped Selka lift the blankets. Neither woman pretended the other was absent. It was a small improvement, made awkward by everything that remained.

Halvek pressed a short coil of rope into Daren’s hand.

“For the mule. Bring that back too.”

The cart began to move. Daren climbed aboard without looking toward Hearthfast again.

Ahead, beyond the bridge, a line of stalled wagons stood motionless beneath the ridge.