"He’s right," Resven sighed, shaking off the unease crawling up his spine. "Whatever is happening in the south will have to wait. If something massive is coming down from the peaks, we need to return at sundown and give our report."

***

House Osric

A few moments ago...

The plateau at the crown of the High Reach was a raw, wind-scoured place. Ancient pines clung to the slopes below, their dark canopies rolling like a slow green tide down the mountainside, but up here there was only open sky and short, tough grass bending in the highland wind. To the west, the Shatter-Cliffs broke the world’s edge in a ragged line of pale stone, and beyond them, far below, the cold grey sea glittered in the midday light.

Inside the newly raised iron-oak palisade — its timber still pale and fresh-cut against the mountain air — there was no proper training yard. Just the clearing. Just the grass, the wind, and the hiss of steel.

Bramm moved like the mountain itself. No wasted motion, no unnecessary step. He kept his Dane axe low and easy in a two-hand grip, the long oaken haft settled across his forearms, the broad, oil-dark head hovering just off the ground. His dark blue eyes tracked her from beneath heavy brows, steady as still water.

Adara circled him the way a hawk circles a draft horse. Her round shield hung loose at her side, arming sword resting back across her shoulder, amber eyes bright with that particular gleam that always preceded trouble. The woad tattoos along her collarbone caught the light with each easy, rolling step.

"You know," she mused, tilting her head, "most men with axes that size compensate for something. Still can’t figure out what in your case, m’lord." Her lilt carried the words, sweet and flowing—right to the edge.

Bramm didn’t rise to it. "Watch your feet," he said flatly. "You’re drifting wide."

"I drift exactly as wide as I intend to, darling."

She came in fast on the left — not a committed lunge but a probing dart, her sword flicking out at his lead arm. He turned it without panic, rolling the axe haft up to let the blade skate off the wood, then stepped into the bind to shove her point offline with raw leverage. She felt the sheer mass of him in that single motion and danced back immediately, two quick steps, letting the space open again before he could follow through.

"Mmm." She reset her guard with a small, satisfied sound, like a cat that had just confirmed the temperature of a puddle.

Bramm exhaled through his nose and advanced in a short, controlled motion. He wasn’t chasing her — he was compressing the ground she had to work with, backing her toward the palisade line with measured pressure.

When she angled to break left, he pivoted wide with the axe in a low, sweeping arc — not to strike, but to cut off the lane and force her to stop or eat the flat.

She stopped. Just barely. The axe head passed a hand’s breadth in front of her leading knee.

"That," she conceded pleasantly, stepping back right instead, "was politely rude."

"You talk too much."

"You talk too little. Between the two of us we make one perfectly adequate conversationalist." She feinted high with the sword tip — a tight, economical flicker meant to twitch his guard upward — then immediately drove the edge of her shield low and forward in a short shoving bash aimed at his lead knee.

He read it late. The shield rim caught him on the outer thigh instead — still solid enough to knock his forward step off its line, and his recovery brought the axe haft up instinctively in a defensive cross-guard rather than a counterattack.

Adara was already back out of range, circling again, sword resting on her shoulder once more as if the exchange had been a mild inconvenience.

"Better," Bramm said, with what might have been approval.

"Don’t patronise me, m’lord. It doesn’t suit your face."

He almost smiled. Almost.

They exchanged two more short passes — aggressive, technical, neither giving the other a clean opening. Bramm’s axe work was minimal and devastating in its economy: every swing was a genuine threat that covered the line of its own withdrawal. Adara moved around it as if she were solving a puzzle in real time, probing, retreating, stealing half-beats wherever she could find them.

Then Bramm’s eyes went distant.

It was nothing outward — barely a flicker, a single half-second where his focus lifted off her and settled somewhere above and behind his own shoulder, the unmistakable pull of the system notification tugging at the edge of his awareness. He caught himself almost immediately.

Almost.

The punch came from nowhere. Not a sword, not the shield — just her right fist, closed and fast and driven from the shoulder with everything her frame could put behind it. It cracked him square across the jaw.

Bramm stumbled back. Two hard steps into the grass before he planted himself and stopped, head snapping back to her, axe coming back up by reflex.

Adara stood where she’d launched from, fist still raised, chin tilted, looking for all the world like a woman who had just made a very reasonable point in a very reasonable debate.

There was a beat of silence.

"You," Bramm said, very carefully, "just punched me."

"Aye," she agreed, with great serenity. "I did."

"In a spar."

"In a spar," she confirmed, her lilt dipping just slightly toward something sweeter and more dangerous. "With a sword. And a shield. Both of which I set aside briefly to punch you in the face." She paused, letting that breathe. "You were distracted, m’lord. In a real fight, I’d be using something considerably less polite than my knuckles."

Bramm worked his jaw once, checking. He looked at her for a long moment with those steady dark blue eyes.

"That’ll bruise," he said.

"Consider it a love tap."

He let out a slow breath through his nose — something that, in another man, might have been a laugh — and lowered the axe. He crossed the clearing to where his mantle hung over the palisade rail and lifted it free, rolling one shoulder as he did.