The King Who Broke Heaven’s Tithe

Chapter 86 The Strength He Still Had

Daren dropped the practice blade on the third turn.

It struck the yard stones with a sound loud enough to make Orin look up from the planting box.

His father left it where it lay.

The fifty third afternoon was not a good time to discover how little strength anger could replace. His shoulder ached from helping Teren. His knee had swollen after the climb. The small warmth in his palm felt like a coal surrounded by wet ash.

Selka picked up the wooden blade.

“You're trying to finish the fight before you've decided what the fight is.”

“I've decided.”

“Then say it.”

“Get the grain out of the shed.”

“Against Krail?”

“If she's there.”

“Then we need a different plan.”

He looked at her sharply.

She set the blade on the bench between them.

“You know that. I'm making you hear yourself pretend otherwise.”

Daren sat because his knee had begun to tremble. He wanted to be furious with her. Instead, he watched the tremor move into his fingers and felt a colder fear underneath.

What if every useful part of him belonged to a body he no longer had?

Selka sat across from him, leaving space between their knees.

“When you had a Spiritwell, what did you do before a breach?”

“Checked the ground. Counted defenders. Chose the point.”

“And after?”

“Committed.”

“You've been trying to commit before checking what you can carry.”

He stared at the practice blade.

For four mornings he had repeated the small returning circuit, resting between attempts. The current moved more smoothly now. That improvement was real. So was the shoulder that failed on the third turn.

Selka asked him to gather warmth only in his good forearm.

“No blade. No movement yet.”

He followed the known path. The coal brightened, then spread into a thin line along the muscles beneath his sleeve.

“Let it return.”

He released the pressure.

The line faded without the old clutching ache.

“Again after your breathing settles.”

Pella came to watch the second attempt. She checked the heat of his wrist, then the swelling above his knee. One improvement had not excused another injury.

They worked in short intervals. Warmth, release, rest. Then a small movement against a padded strap, with the shoulder supported and no twisting through the bad leg.

On the fourth interval, Daren felt the returning warmth catch along a shallow branch he had not sustained before.

He almost forced it open.

Selka saw his face.

“Leave it.”

He obeyed, badly enough that a curse escaped with his breath.

The branch relaxed. The warmth returned to the familiar path.

“What was it?”

“Something your body may learn to hold,” she said. “If you give it days instead of demanding it by dusk.”

Not Ironhide. Not even a promise of when Ironhide would come. A sign that practice could change the body he still possessed.

The shallow branch continued to prickle after he stopped. Selka asked him to describe the feeling precisely: heat, numbness, pain, or merely the sense of a path that had briefly carried more than before.

“The last,” he said.

“Then remember it. Don't chase it tonight.”

Pella made him drink and wait before standing. Cultivation had once let him ignore such ordinary demands until they accumulated into a punishment. He wondered how many of the warriors he had admired were simply men skilled at postponing the moment their bodies presented the account.

This time, he would have to learn strength while listening to the cost.

Daren rested his head against the wall and let that be enough.

Orin brought the dropped blade to the bench after Pella declared the practice finished.

“You didn't break it,” the boy said.

“No.”

“Then it can wait.”

Daren laughed, surprising himself.

Later, he asked Brida for a board, six stones, and a length of cord. He placed the stones where the shed's posts stood, laid the cord along the narrow road, and used a broken cup for the trough.

Selka watched from the other side of the table.

“The grain doesn't have to leave by the door,” he said.

“Who opens the hatch?”

“Someone who can reach it from the ditch.”

“And the guards?”

“We give them a reason to face uphill.”

“No fire. Dry sacks, trapped men, uncertain wind.”

“No fire,” he agreed.

Brida moved the broken cup.

“The trough has to be here. Otherwise the cart could turn.”

He corrected it.

They tested the plan by making it fail. A guard stays inside. Krail returns early. The hatch is nailed from within. A carrier falls. Each answer reduced what they could promise and sharpened what they would actually attempt.

Daren would direct from the drainage bend, where a low stone wall gave him cover and a route back. Brida would manage loads. Osric would watch the road with six usable arrows, not an endless quiver. Selka would control the withdrawal signal without being placed in charge of anyone's disputed labor.

Only willing adults would go. Anyone could refuse before departure.

The plan was still dangerous.

For the first time that day, it was also possible.

At sunset, Osric's signal appeared from the western rise. Krail had departed. Four soldiers remained at the shed, with two riding patrol beyond it.

Daren looked at the wooden blade.

Then he left it on the bench and reached for the map.

The choice felt less heroic than taking up a sword. That was no reason to distrust it, he was beginning to learn.