Three weeks after Torren came home, the camp began speaking of raids again.
Not quietly. Not shamefully. The Painted Dogs had buried their dead, burned fouled cloth, marked bowls, and learned to curse anyone who crossed from watched fire to clean fire without thinking. The sickness had not vanished, but it no longer ruled every breath. Men who had been too weak to stand were walking. Women who had spent days boiling water now counted food stores and found them thin.
Winter had not finished closing the mountains yet.
That meant they still had time.
It also meant they were running out of it.
The first argument began near the main fire after a hunting party came back with two goats and bad news. The lower villages had moved grain behind walls. Herb bundles were no longer left in sept sheds or healer huts. Clean linen, willow bark, bitterleaf, salt, iron scraps, and even old cooking pots were being gathered into holdfasts, road towers, and castle stores.
"They are hiding everything," Pyk said.
He was still too thin, but he had a spear in his hand again and seemed determined to make everyone notice it.
Rusk grunted. "Lowlanders learn when you hit them enough."
"They learned too fast," another young man said. "So we hit the walls."
Harrag looked at him from across the fire. "Say that again."
The young man hesitated. His name was Vonn, and he had not been sick. That made him louder than men who had spent days fighting for breath.
"If the villages are empty, we go where the stores are," Vonn said. "Road towers. Outer walls. Castle yards."
"Castle yards," Rusk repeated, amused. "Hear him. He wants songs."
"I want food."
That shut some of the laughter down.
Vonn pointed toward the lower path. "We lost days to cough. We burned cloth. We used bitterleaf. We ate winter stores before winter even bit. If we wait, we starve. Red Smiths went down and came back with jars and linen."
Torren sat near Hokor, saying nothing.
Hokor had a cloak around his shoulders and a bowl of broth in his hands. He looked better now, but not well. He had stopped coughing every hour. Now it came only when he laughed too hard, walked too fast, or lied about being ready to raid.
Harrag looked to Torren. "You saw Red Smiths come back."
"Yes."
"With stores?"
"Yes."
"With wounds?"
"Yes."
"With enough?"
Torren looked at the fire. "No."
The young men shifted.
Vonn said, "Because they failed at the castle."
Torren lifted his eyes. "Because they went to the wall."
"That is where the stores are."
"No," Torren said. "That is where the wall is."
Rusk laughed once. "That was almost good."
Torren ignored him. "Stores move before they reach stone. Men carry herb chests. Carts carry grain. Pack animals carry linen and salt. If they pull everything to towers and castles, then the road before the tower matters more than the tower."
Harrag watched him.
Hokor frowned. "You mean hit the carrying."
"Yes."
Vonn scoffed. "Convoys will have guards."
"Walls have more."
No one answered quickly.
Torren continued, keeping his voice plain. "Red Smiths bled at Strongsong because they tried to reach what was already behind stone. If we do the same, we bleed too. Hit small stores outside the wall. Hit carts before the gate. Hit road towers if they are weak. Leave the big walls alone."
A young woman near Pyk said, "And if the bitterleaf is inside?"
"Then we take what is outside and live long enough to try again."
That answer did not satisfy her. It was not meant to.
Harrag leaned forward. "Raid will happen."
The fire quieted.
"Not because Vonn wants to die under a wall," Harrag continued. "Not because Pyk wants everyone to see he can stand again. Raid happens because winter is coming and our stores are thin."
Pyk opened his mouth.
Harrag pointed at him. "You are not going."
Pyk shut his mouth, then opened it again. "I can walk."
"You can annoy. Different skill."
Some men laughed. Pyk looked furious.
Hokor said, "I can go."
Torren turned on him. "No."
Hokor glared. "I did not ask you."
"You coughed this morning."
"I coughed because you were talking."
Torren stared at him.
Harrag said, "Hokor stays."
Hokor looked at his father. "I can hold an axe."
"Holding an axe is not carrying stolen grain uphill in snow," Harrag said.
That ended it, though Hokor's face promised the argument would return later.
...
The rules came next.
That was when the young men grew restless.
Harrag did not care.
"No bedding from sick houses," he said.
Vonn muttered, "Bedding keeps men warm."
"So does not dying," Edda said from behind him.
She had come with Nella, both carrying bundles of clean cloth and looking like women who had spent too many weeks keeping men alive to tolerate stupidity.
Harrag continued. "No cups from fever houses. No cloth from dead beds. No long stay inside lowlander huts. Grain, salt, animals, clean linen if it is packed dry. Bitterleaf, willow, useful tools. Metal. Needles. Rope. Pots if clean."
Rusk added, "And if you find a coughing lowlander?"
"Don't stand close enough to smell his breakfast," Edda said.
Harrag nodded once. "D0 not bring every found thing into camp. Spoils wait on the lower stones. Watched line for men returning. Goods sorted before they enter clean fires."
Vonn looked disgusted. "We raid and then sit like sick children?"
Torren answered before Harrag could. "Yes."
Vonn turned to him. "You like rules now?"
"No. I like not starting over."
That one landed.
A few men looked away.
Everyone remembered the first days: Gorren dead in his sleep, blood on his face; Hokor burning with fever; women praying to gods they hated; bowls everywhere and no one knowing which had touched sickness.
No one wanted to start over.
Harrag pointed to Oren. "Small groups. Fast. Scouts first. No big charge. No fire unless needed."
Oren nodded. "Which road?"
"The lower Belmore road is watched now," Torren said. "Strongsong is awake. Avoid it unless you want arrows."
Rusk looked at him. "You sound sure."
"I saw what happened to Red Smiths."
"Red Smiths are not Painted Dogs."
"No. They had bronze swords and still came back bleeding."
That made even Rusk pause.
Harrag's eyes shifted to Torren's cloak, where the bronze pin Tarn had given him still hung hidden. "What about smaller towers?"
"Maybe," Torren said. "But not blind. Watch first. If stores are there and men are few, hit fast. If sick villagers are gathered there, leave the cloth and take grain only if sealed."
Edda said, "And boil whatever you can boil."
Vonn muttered, "We are raiders, not washerwomen."
Nella looked at him. "Washerwomen lived longer than half the fools who ignored bowls."
No one laughed at Vonn this time.
...
Harrag sent messages before he sent raiders.
Not a summons.
He was careful about that.
"This is not a gathering," he told Torren while the bark strips were being cut. "No chief comes here thinking I call him like a dog."
"What do we call it?"
"A warning."
Torren sat beside the Tree Speaker near the weirwood, helping mark the strips. His own marks had become clearer over the weeks, though the Tree Speaker still corrected him when a line looked too much like Moon Brother style.
The message was simple.
Lowlanders move stores behind stone. Do not spend men on walls. Watch roads. Watch carts. Watch lower towers. Take what moves before it reaches gates. Burn or leave sick cloth. Sort spoils. Returning men watched.
The Tree Speaker read it once and said, "Too many words."
"It needs the rules," Torren said.
"It needs to be remembered."
So they cut it shorter.
Not walls. Roads.Not sick cloth. Clean stores.Fast hands. Watched return.Boil. Sort. Burn foul things.
"That sounds like a child's chant," Torren said.
The Tree Speaker nodded. "Good. Children remember."
Runners carried the warning out through paths that had carried medicine before.
One went toward Stone Crow ground, with Lysa's feather tied to the bark so Varok's people would not shoot first. One went toward Ash Pass for the Burned Men. One toward the lower Moon Brother stones. One toward Howler ground, where calls could push the warning farther than feet. A Black Ear runner took no bark at all; he listened once, repeated it correctly, and left. For Milk Snakes, the message went to the spring marker and no farther. For Red Smiths, the bronze pin was copied in red clay at the edge of the strip, because Tarn would not like it but would understand it.
Sons of the Mist and Sons of the Trees were sent fewer words and more caution.
Maera's people knew how to listen.
The clans would not raid together. Not yet. Maybe not ever. Stone Crows would choose their passes. Burned Men would choose fear. Howlers would listen for wheels and hooves. Moon Brothers had numbers, if Ulmar dared use them. Milk Snakes would probably close three roads and open one nobody knew existed. Red Smiths would look at locks, hinges, and tools with private eyes. The smaller fires would do whatever hunger made them brave enough to do.
But the warning would move.
That mattered.
Torren did not like that it mattered.
The hidden voice spoke while he watched the last runner leave.
Information network reactivated. Tactical doctrine spreading through prior medical channels.
Torren kept his face still.
It is a warning.
Warnings alter behavior.
That is the point.
Correct.
Torren hated when the voice agreed.
...
Hokor found him later near the lower stones.
He had walked there slowly, with a spear used more like a stick than a weapon. Torren pretended not to notice.
"You told Father I shouldn't go," Hokor said.
"No."
"You looked at him like I shouldn't go."
"That is different."
"It worked."
"You coughed this morning."
Hokor sat on a stone with a scowl. "Everyone coughs."
"Not like you."
"I'm not dying anymore."
"No."
"Then stop treating me like I am."
Torren sat across from him. For a while neither spoke.
Below them, men sorted raid gear: ropes, hide packs, hooks, spare bowstrings, old sacks, cloths that would be used to wrap clean goods and not sick ones if Edda had anything to say about it. The camp sounded more alive than it had in weeks. That should have been good. It was good.
It also sounded like men preparing to risk everything they had just survived.
Hokor watched them. "You don't want raids."
"That is not true."
"You argued against walls."
"That is not the same."
"You sound like Oren."
"That is cruel."
Hokor's mouth twitched. Then he coughed once into his cloth, and the smile vanished from Torren's face.
Hokor saw it and looked away. "I hate that."
"What?"
"The way everyone stops when I cough."
"I don't stop."
"You freeze inside. Same thing."
Torren did not deny it.
Hokor looked toward the men again. "If I don't go now, they think I'm weak."
"You nearly died."
"That does not help."
"It should."
"It doesn't."
Torren understood that more than he wanted to. In the mountains, living was not enough. A man had to be useful quickly, sometimes before his body agreed. Pyk was already trying. Others would too.
"You'll go later," Torren said.
Hokor looked at him. "You decide?"
"No. Harrag does."
"Father will listen to you."
That made Torren uncomfortable.
"He listens to himself," Torren said.
Hokor snorted. "You are a bad liar."
...
The first raid parties left before moonrise.
Not many. Harrag did not empty the camp. Oren took one group toward the lower road, not to strike, only to watch. Rusk took another along a side ridge where wagons sometimes passed toward a small Belmore tower. Vonn went with Rusk, which made Torren uneasy and Rusk look happy for the wrong reasons.
Edda gave each group a cloth packet and instructions.
"Do not bring back plague blankets," she told Rusk.
Rusk looked offended. "I know."
"No, you know after I say it."
Vonn rolled his eyes.
Edda pointed at him. "You. If you take a dead man's bedding, I will make you sleep in it outside camp."
Vonn opened his mouth, saw Harrag looking, and closed it.
The Tree Speaker marked the raiders with ash and red sap, not as cure, but as reminder. Watched return. Clean hands. No deep cuts in trees. No foolish pride. Harrag stood by the lower path as each group passed.
Torren stood a little behind him.
"You are not going either," Harrag said without looking.
"I know."
"You thought about it."
"Yes."
"Good. Think. Then stay."
Torren glanced at him. "Is that an order?"
"Yes."
That was simple enough.
Rusk passed last, axe on his shoulder. He looked at Torren. "If we find a cart full of bitterleaf, I will tell it you said hello."
"Don't stand in front of it if it has guards."
"I was planning to ask politely."
"No, you weren't."
"No."
Then Rusk grinned and followed his men into the dark.
The camp watched them go.
There was excitement in it. Hunger too. Fear, but not the helpless fear of sickness. This was older. Cleaner in some ways. Men knew raids. They knew arrows, snow, dogs, angry farmers, and running uphill with stolen grain. They did not know what the lowlands had become after plague and war began tightening every road.
That was the part Torren feared.
Not enough to stop them.
Enough to watch until the last shape vanished.
...
Harrag remained by the path after the others left.
Torren stayed beside him.
For a while, only the fires spoke.
Then Harrag said, "You gave them the road idea."
"Yes."
"It is good."
Torren looked at him.
Harrag did not praise twice. He barely praised once. "It may get some killed anyway."
"I know."
"Good."
"That word is doing too much work lately."
Harrag's mouth moved slightly. Maybe amusement. Maybe not.
"Lowlanders are fighting each other," Harrag said. "They are sick. They hide stores behind stone. They cannot climb in strength, not now. But they can shut doors. They can move grain. They can starve the hills by keeping what we need just out of reach."
"So we hit before the doors close."
"Yes."
"And tell the others."
"Yes."
Torren looked down the dark path. "That sounds like coordination."
"It is information."
"Different?"
"For now."
For now.
Torren hated those words too.
Harrag looked at him then. "Do not make this larger than it is."
"I'm trying not to."
"Try harder."
Torren almost laughed, but did not.
The raiders were gone, the messages were moving, and winter waited above the camp like a second sky. The Painted Dogs had survived the sickness, but survival had emptied more than bowls. Now they would go back to the old work of taking from below.
Only the rules had changed.
Not walls.
Roads.
Not sick cloth.
Clean stores.
Fast hands.
Watched return.