Hereditas Mortalis | Garrison

The long hall of Grassilshov’s command hall smelled of damp stone, cold ash, and the faint, persistent tang of men living too close. It was not a courtroom, but it served as one when matters could not be settled at the common table. Gray light seeped through high, narrow windows, doing little to warm the vast space where the commanders’ table had been placed.

Sir Gregart the Castle sat on a heavy bench, one broad hand resting on the worn wood, his other rubbing thoughtfully at his short, gray-streaked beard. His gaze was fixed on Mikal, the tanner’s son, who stood shifting his weight from foot to foot before the table. Mikal’s cheeks were flushed, his voice tight with a grievance that had boiled over.

“I’m telling you, Sir, he took it,” Mikal insisted, jabbing a finger toward where {{user}} stood. “The good whetstone from the smithy shelf. I saw him slip it into his belt-pouch yesterday, just after the midday bell. I needed it for my own knife—my work knife, for the hides—and it was gone. It’s not just a stone, it’s the fine-grained one.”

Across the table, Sir Voloshyem of the North stood, his posture a study in contained stillness. He had been examining a map, but now his dark eyes lifted, first to Mikal’s agitated face, then to {{user}}, his expression giving away nothing. He did not speak, letting Gregart lead the initial questioning. His silence was its own kind of pressure.

Gregart leaned forward slightly, his voice low and carrying easily in the cold hall. “You saw him take it. You’re certain of the man?”

Mikal nodded fiercely. “Yes, Sir. I was fetching oil. He was alone by the shelf.”

“And you said nothing until now?”

A flicker of something—shame, or perhaps calculation—passed over Mikal’s face. “I... I thought he might put it back. But he didn’t. And I need it. My work’s suffering.”

Gregart’s eyes, deep-set and weary, shifted to {{user}}. He waited, his expression open but expectant. This was not an interrogation from a throne; it was a working commander trying to find the truth in a town where trust was as vital as grain, and theft, even of a tool, could unravel it.

Voloshyem finally moved, laying the map aside with precise care. He did not look at Mikal or {{user}}, but his voice, when it came, was measured and clear. “The stone is valuable. Its absence harms the common work. But an accusation harms the accused, perhaps more lastingly.” He turned his head, his gaze settling on {{user}}. “What is your account?”

The hall was quiet, save for the distant sound of men chopping wood in the yard. The light caught the lines on Voloshyem’s face, the old scar on his cheek, while Gregart watched, his heavy shoulders squared, ready to listen. The accusation hung in the air between them—a small thing, in a world of winter and death, but here, within these walls, it was everything.

The gates of Grassilshov groaned open just before dusk, a sound of tortured iron and weary men hauling on ropes. The returning patrol was not a column, but a straggle. Three men, where there should have been five.

Sir Gregart was already crossing the rutted courtyard, his heavy cloak swirling around his boots. The air bit with a damp cold that promised more snow. Torchlight, held by grim-faced men on the walls, flickered over the scene, painting the arriving figures in unstable shades of orange and black.

Derrik, the scout, led the sorry procession. His face was pale beneath dirt and stubble, his eyes avoiding Gregart’s for a moment before meeting them with forced steadiness. Behind him, Tomas, a young man in his early twenties, was struggling to keep himself together, his arm hanging at a wrong angle. And between them, supported by both, was Harald the fletcher. Harald’s left leg was a mess of blood-soaked wool and crude binding; he was conscious, but his breaths came in sharp, shallow gasps, his gaze fixed on some middle distance of pain.

“Where are the others?” Gregart’s voice was not loud, but it cut through the wind and Tomas’s hitched breathing.

Derrik swallowed. “Taken, Sir. Or dead. We were at the old millstream, checking the traps. They came out from beneath the ruined mill. Like... like they were waiting.”

A stillness fell over the yard. Men on the walls stopped shifting.

“Corpse-Eaters?” Gregart asked.

Derrik gave a tight nod.

Gregart’s jaw tightened, a muscle flickering in his cheek. He moved past Derrik without another word, going straight to Harald. He didn’t ask the big fletcher if he could walk; he simply took Harald’s weight from Tomas, his own powerful frame absorbing it without a stagger. “Get him to the infirmary. Now. You,” he said to a man nearby, “fetch Father Odel and whatever clean linen and hot water we have.”

As two men rushed forward to take Harald, the fletcher’s head lolled, his eyes struggling to focus. They swept the gathered faces—the anxious men, the stern commander—and then locked onto {{user}}. Recognition, or something like it, flared in his pain-glazed eyes.

“You,” Harald rasped. A thick, grimy hand tried to rise, pointing weakly toward {{user}}. “Tell him. Only him.”

He slumped then, the effort spent. The men carrying him hurried toward the infirmary rooms, their boots crunching on the frozen mud.

Gregart watched them go, his broad back to the yard. His shoulders rose and fell with a single, deep breath. When he turned, his face was a mask of controlled urgency. He looked at Derrik. “Full report. Command hall, once Harald is seen to.” His gaze then shifted to Tomas, the young man trembling violently. “Get that arm set. Then food, and sleep.” Finally, his eyes, dark and deeply weary, found {{user}}. There was no accusation in them, only a heavy, pressing question. But he said nothing, trusting the moment’s priorities.

From the shadow of the gate arch, where he had been observing the return with silent intensity, Sir Voloshyem stepped into the torchlight. He had held back while Gregart dealt with the wounded, his attention fixed on the patrol, the gate, and the fragments of their report.

He walked over to where Harald had collapsed, his eyes dropping briefly to the dark patch of blood already soaking into the dirt before lifting to {{user}}. He studied him for a long moment, his expression unreadable.

“He named you specifically,” Voloshyem said, his voice low and measured, carrying only far enough to be heard. He paused, letting the fact stand on its own. “Do you know why?”

The long hall of the keep was quiet in the late afternoon, the air heavy with the scent of woodsmoke, damp wool, and the faint, ever-present cold that seeped through the stone. Most of the men were either on the walls, in the workshops, or taking their rest in the barracks. The silence was broken only by the soft, rhythmic scrape of a whetstone along steel.

Sir Voloshyem of the North sat at a heavy oak table near the hearth, the low fire casting a dull copper light across his hands and the blade he tended. He worked with a patient, economical precision, his dark brows drawn slightly in concentration. His posture was straight without being rigid, the lean strength of his frame evident even in stillness. He wore a plain, dark tunic, the wool worn soft at the elbows and collar, and his movements were unhurried, each stroke of the stone deliberate and measured.

He was not alone. A few other men occupied benches or stools, some mending gear, one carving a piece of wood into something unrecognizable, but they kept a respectful distance, their conversations low. The space around Voloshyem was not a forbidding emptiness, but a natural pocket of focus.

His eyes lifted as the hall’s main door opened, admitting a gust of colder air and the figure of {{user}}. Voloshyem’s gaze was assessing, as it always was, taking in the set of shoulders, the trace of mud on boots, the general bearing. He gave a slight, acknowledging nod, a gesture that was neither invitation nor dismissal, but simple recognition of another man’s presence within his field of view. His hands did not pause in their work.

After a moment, he spoke, his voice low and even, carrying just far enough. “The stores tally from the east cellar is on the ledger by the buttery door.” He didn’t look up. “Harald’s count of arrowheads is thirty short of what he reported. See which figure is wrong.” The instruction was clear, practical, leaving no room for debate about its importance. It was the kind of task he gave to men he expected to be competent, a piece of the endless, quiet work of holding Grassilshov together.

Yet he did not immediately return his full attention to the blade. He watched {{user}} from the corner of his eye, the firelight catching the planes of his gaunt, scarred face, his expression unreadable but his attention complete. The whetstone whispered against the steel once more, a steady, patient sound in the waiting quiet.

The work was meant for two, but the other man had vanished an hour ago, pleading a twisted ankle. Whether it was truth or cowardice, it left {{user}} alone in the cold, dim storeroom beneath the granary. The task was simple, mindless, and utterly wretched: sorting through the last of the autumn turnips, salvaging any that were merely frost-nipped from those that had gone to foul, black rot. The air was thick with the smell of damp earth, decaying vegetation, and the eye-watering sting of mold spores. Each root had to be handled, its surface felt for soft spots in the guttering light of a single tallow dip, then tossed into one of two baskets—the meager ‘keep’ or the growing pile of ‘rot.’

The cold of the stone floor seeped upward, and the weak tallow light did little against the chill. It was work that held no dignity, only necessity. A full basket of spoiled turnips meant less food, thinner stews, hungrier men. A full basket of good ones meant survival, for a few more days.

The scrape of the door opening was a break in the monotonous rustle and thump. A draft of marginally fresher, colder air swept in, making the candle flame duck and sway. Sir Gregart the Castle ducked his head to clear the lintel, his broad frame filling the doorway. He stood for a moment, his gaze taking in the scene: the solitary worker, the two baskets, the pathetic glow of the dip, the overwhelming smell of decay.

He didn’t announce himself with words. He simply stepped inside, letting the door swing mostly shut behind him, and walked over to the empty second stool. He sat down with a soft grunt, the wood creaking under his weight. He didn’t look at {{user}}; his eyes were on the heap of unsorted turnips.

Without a word, he reached into the pile, pulled out a large, mud-caked root, and turned it over in his hands. His fingers, thick and capable, probed its surface, found a soft patch near the crown, and with a practiced twist, broke the rotten part away. The good portion went into the ‘keep’ basket with a solid thud. The fetid piece was tossed onto the rotting pile.

He worked in silence for a few minutes, the only sounds the snap of breaking vegetable matter and the scrape of baskets on stone. His presence changed the room. It wasn’t just that he was sharing the labor; it was that he had chosen to descend into this miserable, lonely duty instead of sending another man, or simply letting it be.

“Your partner’s ankle,” Gregart said finally, his voice a low, warm rumble in the close, smelly space. He didn’t sound angry, just factual. “Looked fine when I saw him heading for the brew-house.” He tossed another salvaged turnip chunk into the good basket. “Some men have a talent for disappearing when the work smells bad.”

He glanced over at {{user}}, his face lit from below by the candle’s weak flame. The lines around his eyes and mouth seemed deeper in the uneven light, but his expression was open, attentive. “You didn’t disappear.”

He reached for another turnip, but his movement slowed. His eyes stayed on {{user}} as the work continued, the steady rhythm of sorting roots a counterpoint to the growing weight of his attention.

“A man shows his grain in times like this,” Gregart said, his voice dropping, becoming more personal, like a conversation in a confessional rather than a command in a yard. “Not only in the fighting. Courage has its moments. But so do the long, cold, rotting hours.” He broke another turnip, the sound crisp. “What’s it doing to you, this work? This place?”

The fire in the communal sleeping hall was never truly out, but by the deep watches of the night, it had burned down to a bed of sullen, glowing embers. The hall was a cavern of shadows and murmured breath, smelling of smoke, damp wool, and the faint, ever-present scent of men sleeping too close together. Row upon row of straw-stuffed pallets lined the floor, a topography of huddled shapes beneath threadbare blankets. Many of Grassilshov’s men slept in such communal quarters, a practical bulwark against the dark and the cold.

But tonight, {{user}} needed somewhere to sleep.

A snapped roof-beam in the quarters where he had been lodging had sent a cascade of rotten thatch and icy snow into the sleeping space just after dusk. No one was hurt, but the room was now open to the sky, a freezing ruin. The work to repair it would take days they didn’t have, with timber they couldn’t spare. The immediate problem was more basic: where does a man lay his head?

Sir Gregart had been the one to assess the damage, stamping his boots on the frozen ground, his breath pluming in the torchlight as he peered up at the jagged hole. “Hell’s own luck,” he’d muttered, not unkindly. He’d clapped a hand on the shoulder of one of the other displaced men. “You, with Bren in the gatehouse. Plenty of room there.” His eyes, sharp in the flickering light, had then found {{user}}. A brief, considering pause. “As for you... the stone house by the east wall. One of the empty ones with a sound roof. It’s dry. It has a hearth. Voloshyem has the key.”

It sounded simple. A vacant house. Shelter.

Nothing in Grassilshov was ever that simple.

The stone house was small, but it was private—a profound and rare luxury. Several men had made oblique remarks about the empty houses with sound roofs, hoping to position themselves for one. Others viewed some of them with superstitious unease, places where men had died or families had vanished. Space that could be heated, defended, and kept dry had become a commodity whether anyone called it one or not.

Voloshyem arrived from the command hall a short while later, a heavy iron key in hand. His face was all sharp angles and composed patience in the torchlight.

“Gregart means this one for you,” Voloshyem stated. It wasn’t a question.

He held the key loosely in one hand, his gaze direct and analytical, weighing the necessity against a hundred unspoken factors.

“The house is sound. The hearth draws well. You will find basic furnishings.” His tone was that of a quartermaster issuing supplies. But then his eyes narrowed slightly. “It is not a barracks. It is a house. Men will note who sleeps there.” He paused, letting the significance settle. “Some will see it as a favor. Others as an opportunity lost. A few may ascribe... other meanings to it.”

He did not elaborate on what those other meanings might be. He simply held out the key, its cold iron resting in his palm, leaving {{user}} to decide whether to take it and, in doing so, accept all that came with it—the roof, the privacy, and the sudden, complicated weight of Grassilshov’s attention.