It took four days to make the journey. It can be done faster; a Griidlord alone is faster than a convoy, both in body and with the strength of the smaller, more concentrated Footfield.

There are well-worn paths between the cities where roads don’t exist. Trade is always moving, people always traveling, and so the best paths are well established. Still, the wilds bring delays. Wagons break axles or throw wheels. Weather has its effect.

Four days meant three nights in camp. Three nights to better acquaint myself with those who traveled with us.

Zeb was even more silent than usual, sulking darkly. He had spent some time in the ruins of Dodge, searching for something alone. Shortly before our departure, he’d emerged with a small satchel, but he carried a shadow with him. Throughout the journey back to Boston, he stayed apart from the others, brooding. Occasionally, he’d peek into the satchel he kept with him at all times, wearing an expression that was hard to read. Fascination mixed with something just short of sadness, like he was wearing the feeling right before sadness as a cloak.

I pondered what to do with him over the days of travel. Zeb was an exceptional warrior, a rare breed of cold-blooded killer, or so his reputation went. But I couldn’t very well take him to the Falling Fields to battle other Griidlords.

He’d been with me so long, I couldn’t remember a time before he was there. I don’t believe he was my bodyguard until I regained the use of my body, but he’d become a fixture. There was some sentimentality. I had no concerns about his ability to find lucrative work—men like Zeb would always find a purse. Still, I felt I owed him a place in my new life. The contrast from a few days before, when I managed only myself, was strange. My gaze drifted to the wagon carrying Father’s body as I thought that.

The old priest Jacob had a knack for finding me at the worst times. I’d be seeking privacy, and he would appear. Even polite explanations of my intentions wouldn’t dissuade him from talking. When I tried to turn in for the night, rolling over to sleep in the dark outskirts of the camp, the old bastard would appear, sit down, and start talking.

He was not like other priests I knew. He directed no venom or judgment at me. Maybe now that I was Sword, I could expect this from all priests, but Jacob was different in other ways. He lacked their usual haughtiness and sense of superiority. He expected respect for his station, yes, but he spoke to both Griidlord and commoner alike.

And what did he speak of? Fiends. Storms. Entropy. He quizzed me endlessly about the creature that had emerged in the arena. Did it have glands? Did it seem smart? Did it have glands? He asked about glands a lot.

He treated the equipment salvaged from the Hordesmen I’d killed as fondly as another priest might treat a precious relic. He spent countless hours dismantling, inspecting, and staring at the gear. And when he wasn’t looking at it, he was talking about it. Incessantly. I honestly couldn’t tell when he slept, if he slept at all.

I couldn’t discern his age. Space in the Tower was highly valued, and not all priests—nowhere near all—were given lodgings there. But Jacob lived there, which I gathered indirectly from his references to events he’d witnessed more than 100 years before. The man had been in the Tower a long time, suggesting he held substantial rank. And, to me, a ranking priest was a dangerous political animal. Yet, there seemed to be no guile to this strange old man.

And then there was Chowwick. What could be said about the man? He was loud and boorish. He drank every night to wild excess. He plagued, with pinches, the bottom of any woman foolish enough—or perhaps willing enough—to pass near him. He told outrageously filthy jokes. He recounted tales of battles with an enthusiasm that seemed completely detached from the bodies he’d crippled and the lives he’d ended.

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His roughness seemed at odds with his nobility. The Chowwicks were one of Boston’s founding families. They had been there the day the Tower emerged from the ground, but they were a different sort. When the other old families were building their castles near the city’s heart, the Chowwicks built theirs far from the population. They were of the city but set apart.

Chowwick was impossible not to like. The man welcomed me like a son or a little brother from the start. But, for all that, he deferred to me. It mightn’t have made sense; he was the veteran, the man with decades of experience, yet from the very outset, he embraced the idea that he was the Shield and I was the Sword. He was my protector; I was his leader. It didn’t sit right. It felt awkward and difficult. It made me anxious for the day I would meet the other Griidlords of Boston. Would they, too, treat me as their leader? Among them were warriors who had lived in their suits for decades longer than Chowwick.

Would Magneblade defer to me?

And then there was Dirk. My mind reeled at Dirk.

On the one hand, he was a Burghsman. A Burghsman with a power weapon. A Burghsman with a power weapon who was utterly deferred to by his Burghsman companions. Chowwick hadn’t been hyperbolic when he’d placed the men of Pittsburgh and the men of Minneapolis apart from the rest of the world. This isn’t to say they were necessarily deadlier than the warriors of other lands. The Free Men of Dallas were legendary for both skill and numbers. The armies of isolated Denver were rightly feared. But the wild men of the North and the Hills were distinctly savage and tough. That Dirk was venerated by the others spoke to a prowess that made him desirable to retain.

The North and the Hills shared more than just landscapes; each city was a world unto itself. Epic wars were fought in the valleys between lords within each region, but the men of the North and the men of the Hills were different. Chowwick had said the Northmen liked nothing better than killing fiends and raiding. Killing each other might have been a close third. These tribal peoples united against outside threats, yet within their borders, they seemed to be in constant warfare. These wars were dreadful, wasteful affairs, but they honed the men of those lands and allowed the truly gifted to prove themselves.

I felt that Dirk must have been one of these exceptionally dangerous humans. And as we traveled, he was in my employ. Some base instinct, maybe something inherited from Father, warned me not to let him go. A man like this, a clan of men like this, would be invaluable. A Griidlord was a lord. I was to have lands and would be expected to maintain fighting men to protect those lands—men the city could call upon in times of need. It wasn’t hard to imagine what a clan of Burghsmen could do as retainers.

But Dirk would not commit.

He spoke openly and often about his dissatisfaction with the world order: Flows expended to pamper the rich while factories went quiet and hospitals ran without power. A world where men fought and died over resources that could be more wisely managed and shared. A history rich in empires that had been forged in blood and dismantled by the sword. Dirk envisioned a united land where brigands would face justice, and the least among us would be treated as well as the most noble. It was hard not to be affected by such thinking.

The nights were difficult. I found myself less troubled by taking men’s lives than I’d imagined. Maybe it was easier because of the cultural divide between us and the Horde, who barely seemed human, more like monsters or boogeymen in the flesh of men. Regardless, those first nights, when I’d close my eyes in search of sleep, it was the cleaved faces and staring severed heads that found me instead.

***

So, it was that I found myself sitting in the wagon as the city of Boston began to peek over the distant horizon. Farms and cottages swept by now, rather than forests and prairies. Chowwick was asleep. He seemed less affected by the pain of his injury, though its long-term consequences were harder to predict.

I stared at the city walls as they grew closer, my heart tense with the decisions yet to come. I would see Baltazar again and finally understand what he had planned for me. The team of Griidlords I was meant to lead awaited. The public that had been so ravenous for me was there. Harold, my Father’s business, Lauren, and Katya—all pressing on my mind.

What I didn’t expect was the sight of the assembly gathered by the gallows.