The Unknown Enemy.Chapter 7.

Chapter 7.

 

The Palace. Orders Given in the Quiet Hours.

 

The council chamber was warm, almost stifling after the winter air outside. Braziers glowed along the walls, and the scent of burning cedar wood clung to the tapestries. The King sat at the long table, his fingers pressed together, listening as Captain Mylon finished his report.

“…and the shepherd says the bridge simply gave way beneath him, Your Majesty. He’s lucky he only fell a few feet.”

The King frowned. “Rotten wood?”

Mylon hesitated. “Possibly. But the Foresters say the ropes were loose. Not cut. Not broken. Just… worked free.”

A murmur ran around the table. The Chancellor sniffed. “Shepherds mend their own bridges. If they can’t tie a knot properly, that’s hardly a matter for the King.”

“The Foresters believe it was deliberate,” Mylon said quietly.

“Deliberate?” The Chancellor scoffed. “Who sabotages a footbridge? Children?”

“Bandits,” Mylon said. “Or someone who wants it to look like bandits.”

The King leaned back. “Is this connected to the tower incident?”

“No, sire. Different valley. Different track. And no sign of the green fire.”

“So not the same group,” the Chancellor said, sounding relieved. “Just mountain trouble. It happens.”

Mylon didn’t argue, he just frowned. The King noticed. “Speak freely, Captain.”

“Sire… it’s the pattern,” Mylon explained. “Small things. Scattered. A missing guard here, a strange fire there, now a sabotaged bridge. None of it is serious on its own. But it’s… unusual.”

“Unusual is not the same as dangerous,” the Chancellor argued.

“No,” Mylon agreed. “But unusual becomes dangerous if we ignore it.”

The King drummed his fingers on the table. “What do you recommend?”

“Send a pair of Foresters to inspect the other bridges. Quietly. And perhaps a small escort to reassure the villagers.”

The Chancellor sighed. “More men pulled from the capital.”

The King gave him a sharp look. “We will not leave our people unattended. Send your men, Mylon.”

When the door closed, the King and Chancellor were alone. Neither of them noticed the clerk still standing by the side table.

He was exactly where he always stood—pen behind his ear, ledger under his arm. He had been there for the entire meeting, quietly recording every decision. No one ever addressed him. He simply faded into the room like a shadow.

He kept his eyes lowered as the King spoke. “Another small group of men,” the King murmured, rubbing his temples. “We can spare them, but not many more. It is odd that we have not heard from Captain Smike yet.”

The clerk did not move. He did not even blink. But he heard every word—the number of men being sent and exactly where they were going.

When the King finally left, the clerk bowed. It was a small, precise gesture he had performed a thousand times. Only when the room was empty did he straighten. He closed his ledger with a soft snap. He didn't look like a traitor; he looked like a man going to file his notes.

He was not. He was going to deliver news.

The clerk slipped out of the side door into the stable yard. He caught the eye of a boy named Tom, no older than fourteen.

“Tom,” the clerk murmured. “Take this to your cousin when you go into the city.”

Tom tucked the folded scrap of paper into his boot. By dusk, he was in a loud, warm tavern in the city. He passed the note to his cousin, a barman, who tucked it into his apron. Near midnight, a mountain trader in a heavy cloak stepped inside. He ordered a drink, warmed his hands, and when he left, he palmed the paper from beneath a tankard.

He left the Tavern. To anyone watching, he was just another trader heading home with the money he had earned from his business in the town.

By mid‑morning he reached the first cluster of trees. The road narrowed, the shadows deepened, and the air took on that resinous scent that only came from the high woods. He guided his mule off the main track and onto a lesser path , one that wound between boulders and vanished into the undergrowth.

He knew it well.

A small clearing opened between the pines, marked only by a fallen log and a ring of stones where someone had once kept a fire. The trader halted, listening. The forest was quiet except for the distant croak of a raven.

He didn’t call out. He didn’t whistle. He simply waited.

After a few minutes, a man stepped out from behind a spruce trunk. Broad‑shouldered, wrapped in a patched cloak, face half‑hidden by a hood. Not one of Tizard’s men, this man was older, steadier, with the look of someone who’d lived his whole life in the mountains.

“Morning,” the trader said mildly.

The mountain man nodded. “Road clear?”

“As ever.”

The trader reached into his glove and withdrew the folded scrap. He didn’t hand it over directly. He placed it on the fallen log, weighed it down with a pinecone, and stepped back.

The mountain man waited a moment, then picked it up. He didn’t open it. He didn’t need to. Even if he had, it would have meant nothing to him, he could not read.

“Same route next week?” he asked.

“If the weather holds.”

The mountain man gave a grunt of approval, tucked the scrap into his belt, and melted back into the trees without another word.

The trader clicked his tongue to the mule and continued up the path, as if nothing at all had happened.

The mountain man walked another hour before he passed the note to a quiet woman who lived alone near a stream. She passed it in turn it to a shepherd, who carried it to a hidden hollow where Tizard’s people waited.

By the time the scrap reached Tizard’s hands, it had changed pockets half a dozen times, each transfer as ordinary as breathing. Only the clerk who wrote the note and Tizard himself knew what was written on the scrap of paper.

Only the clerk who wrote the note and Tizard himself knew what it said. The palace still believed its secrets were safe.

While the King waited for news, Captain Mylon and his six Foresters were following the tracks of the bandits who had sabotaged the bridge.

The next "pin-prick" happened at the edge of the grazing lands. Old Hebb, a shepherd who had lived eighty years without ever seeing a ghost, stood shivering in the grey light of dawn.

He didn't find his flock killed. Instead, he found them scattered. Every gate on the stone pens had been lifted off its hinges and laid neatly on the ground. Not broken. Just... removed.

But it was the smell that made his knees shake.

A thick, rotting scent of pine hung in the air. And there, smeared across the wool of his lead ram, was a streak of glowing green slime.

“The Greencoat,” Hebb whispered, remembering an old grandmother’s tale. “The witch is calling the herd.”

By noon, the rumour reached the village. By nightfall, the farmhands had quit, terrified of the "unnatural" things in the hills. Mothers barred their shutters. Dogs refused to go out.

And the King received another frantic message: The sheep are lost. The shepherds have fled. The mountain is haunted.

Mylon and his men reached the Black-Wood Pass—a narrow cut where the rock walls rose like a cathedral.

"Hold," Mylon commanded.

Boulders the size of barrels blocked the path. But they hadn't fallen; they had been piled. And between the stones were the belongings of the missing watchmen. A notched belt. A leather flask. A single, muddy glove.

"They’re taunting us," one Forester hissed, gripping his sword. "They’re right above us, aren't they?"

Mylon looked up at the ridges. He saw nothing but swaying pines, but he felt the weight of a dozen eyes.

"Don't clear it," Mylon ordered. "If we spend the afternoon moving stone, we’re targets. They want us to stay here or take the thick scrub where we'll be slowed down."

He scanned the ridge again. The silence had a shape to it—like a held breath.

“They want us to choose,” he murmured. “So, we choose neither. We climb.”

He pointed to a narrow, dangerous ledge on the rock face. “Single file. Slow and quiet.”

The Foresters followed, boots scraping softly against the stone. Below them, the piled stones sat like an accusation. Halfway up the ledge, Mylon glanced back. The pass was empty, but the feeling of being watched had only grown stronger.

Someone was tracking their every move. And someone wanted them to know it.