"Aye, Aye, wake up!"

Ton's barking voice coupled with the smacking of his meaty fist against Aster's door was enough to jostle the boy from his sleep.

A single beam of sunlight trickling through a series of cracks in the walls was the only other indicator that morning had in fact come. Shaking off the thin flax cloth blanket that served as his sheet, Aster rolled from his straw pallet.

Rubbing his eyes, he reluctantly opened pulled the door open, grinding its uneven corner across the warped wooden floor.

"Hmph, it's about time you got up," the innkeeper grunted through his gaping mouth. He dropped a misshapen metal bucket on the ground, sending murky water sloshing from its lip, and thrust a rag in the boy's face. "Here, make the tables and mugs clean. And, and be sure to set up the chairs for the morning folks."

"Whatever you say," Aster nodded. His nose quickly recoiled, as he bent down to retrieve the bucket.

"This water - when did you get it? It smells like yesterday's wastewater."

Ton scrunched his bulbous nose. "My knee - it's been bothering me. Didn't get new water today, what of it?"

"Um, I think for washing the cups, you might let me get a knew bucket? The well isn't far, and this...." he stared blankly at the murky slosh, "is not ideal."

"Hmph, yes, alright then. But be quick about it, eh? Word is we've got visitors in town today."

"Visitors?"

Their conversation was interrupted by feet darting up the stairs. Canth's narrow face appeared down the hall, wide with excitement.

"Have you seen? He held his word!"

"What are you talking about?" Aster called back, retrieving the bucket and rag and squeezing past Ton.

"The elf - he's come back! And he's brought his army."

A reserved energy captivated the streets as Aster followed Canth down the road from the inn back to the square. People passed them, most walking or running in the direction of the square, while few walked the other direction. These cast wary glances over their shoulders accompanied by the occasional shake of the head.

The clear sky of the previous night was lost under a curtain of dark clouds that had rolled in during the morning, bringing a furthered sense of hazy anticipation.

Aster felt a drop or two of rain as he struggled to keep up. "He's back? When?"

"Sometime around dawn," Canth said. "Word has it that Endel is up in arms about the whole thing," the boy continued as he ran backwards into the vast square, "but clearly he isn't the only one."

It was just so. Gathered in the edges of the square and of the main street were crowds larger even than at the council the previous night. Women clutched their knee-high children to their legs and stared with mixtures of horror and awe at the spectacle. Men, scowls hidden under the threshing of their braided beards or armored pelts, stood clutching their axes and swords in hand. All eyes, men, women, and children alike, were fixed on the procession that paced through the wide space left by their brewing assembly in the city square.

Two ranks of figures drifted through the crowds in eerie, stoic silence that exuded the palpable tension flowing amid the shuffling, muttering assemblage. Silver and black hair adorned the brow of each, both male and female, in long, straight veils that fell past their ghostly faces. Piercing eyes of emerald blue, moss green, and richest brown scanned the people shielding every emotion save perhaps the smallest sparkle of disdain.

Or, Aster mused, that is just me.

He could not deny that the sight of the newcomers instilled something akin to disdain in his chest. It was not their appearance or the disquieting stillness with which they road and strode that set his skin simmering with chills, but the armament they bore with them. As Narenhior had assured the Timber Council, countless weapons adorned the saddles, belts, and backs of the riders. Broadswords fashioned of the darkest grey steel Aster had ever seen hung from nearly every hip while bows bent from horns hung from many of the rider's backs. Quivers fashioned of battered leather stained with sweat and other, darker marks bristled with arrows fletched by the fairest feathers he had ever seen.

It was this that shook him the most - the state of clear use that the armament bore. The rider's sheaths bore the tears and wear of battle. Occasional arrow shafts lacked the golden green feathers of their companions. The occasional armored plate revealed under the elves' shifting cloaks showed varied shadows of dents and cracks in the metal surface.

"Who are these people?" Aster breathed.

Canth shook his head. "Your guess his has good as mine." His fingers drummed the crinkled paper of the scroll under his arm as he nodded to the pavilion in the center of the square where Emereld and other men Aster recognized the night before were gathering. "I've been summoned take the writings for the Council's meeting with their leader. Maybe I'll hear something?"

"Mind if I join you?" Aster asked.

"You will be unavailable," a cavernous voice interrupted.

Aster turned to where two men had approached unnoticed. Each wore the full pelts of a grey wolf, a tanned maw hanging like a cowl over each gruff face and the claws of the pelt fastened to their wrists as a cape. The distinct garb, coupled with the swooping crescent axes in their hands, was unmistakable as Watchmen.

"Formal garb," Canth noted, clearly surprised. "Endel really is riled, isn't he?"

One of the men shoved the boy toward the pavilion, sending him nearly tripping into the dust. "Run along, scribbler. The Watch's business is its own."

Canth's gaze flickered between the men and Aster before stepping back toward the pavilion and darting through the people.

"Now," the other Watchman sneered, "you're coming with us." He fastened an iron grasp on the boy and steered him away from the pavilion down the wide main street of the city toward the gate where he had been stationed the night before.

Any anxieties from the host of strangers was quickly lost at the touch of the Watchmen. Their unshakable grasps lead him along the edge of buildings that rimmed the square, through the crowd of people who spared hardly a glance, and past the rear of the elven column toward the gate they had entered earlier that morning.

"What's this about?"

The men remained silent except to grunt and prod him forward

Following the slight curve of the road they passed whispering vendors and collections of people who cast nervous glances toward the square. After walking the length of the street they came to the looming presence of the gate that arched over the final bit of the road like a gaping mouth through the stone barrier of the great wall that edged the city.

Despite having seen it only the night before, the wall never ceased to amaze Aster. Hazy light from the cloudy morning bathed the dull stone in a nearly celestial glory. No adornment or armament particularly contributed to its imposing presence, but the sheer mass of its stones and the seamless height to which they were stacked never ceased to amazing him. Each boulder of shaped stone nestled perfectly with its neighbors until the wall appeared like a single formation rising almost thirty feet above the paved road.

At its gate stood four men Aster failed to recognize, but were dressed in the same similarly hostile garb as the Watchmen who escorted him.

He could remember no previous instance when so many were posted inside of the mouth of the wall. It struck him as particularly odd considering the stout timber doors had already been closed and fastened.

But he had no time to dwell on these thoughts as he was driven up the steps that switched back up the wall until he was standing at its height beside many Watchmen all dressed in the same wolf hides.

Amid them stood the towering shape of Endel. His muscular frame stood as the only unclad in pelts, but it was no less terrifying for it. His dense knot of beard thrashed with his shouting mouth as he barked orders like a swarm of bees stinging each man around him with each vicious word.

As Aster stepped onto the top of the wall, he edged towards its outer side hoping to blend in amid the bustling men who passed on either side of him.

His hopes were quickly destroyed.

"You," the commander bellowed over the sound of the moving men.

"Your name," he growled in repugnant malice that cut like an ax through any semblance of confidence Aster carried.

"He's Aster, Captain," one of the Watchmen who had escorted him answered. "Pheor's grunt."

A new flame kindled in the warchief's smoldering eyes. "Pheor... A captain of the rangers wasn't he? Went and got himself killed in the foliage and now I get to deal with his brat."

Aster felt fire rise to his cheeks. "I am my own."

Endel sneered until his thorny beard stretched to revile his scarred cheek. "Then your the only one to blame for your pervasive foolishness. Arcath is no place for those blind to its dangers and dumb to their orders."

At this Aster's brow furrowed. "Dumb to my orders?"

The captain's callused paw pointed below where the four Watchmen stood beside the door. "The portal is closed, yes?"

The boy hesitantly nodded.

He abruptly felt his collar jerked by the trunk-like arm of the commander as a brutish hand lifted him above the floor. Wrenching at the stone-like grasp, Aster could only watch as Endel drew him close until they were eye to eye.

"And why wasn't it last night?"

Horror flooded over the boy's rigid form as he fought the grip that was suspending him above the wall. His eyes widened with realization - it never had been. In escorting Narenhior to the square he had forgotten. Nor, he realized with even further despair, had the wolf carcasses of the battle been delivered to the tanner's.

Endel's sneer widened. "You understand." Twisting his arm, the captain carried Aster to the edge of the wall until his feet hung over the dirt-smeared street far below.

For only a second Aster fought the urge to look down before finally succumbing. His heart dropped from his chest as he saw the spectacle.

It was not the height, but what lay at its bottom. A corpse, unrecognizable at the distance, save for the puddle of tar-like gore that stained its clothes and the cobblestones around it. It lay on its back, face-down against the road with its limbs rigid as a breeze absentmindedly tossed dust over it in a futile attempt to bury the sight.

"A beast, not part of the pack," Endel continued, "found its way in last night. Some of the woodsmen in the street, they saw it and made swift work, but not before it had claimed its meal."

"I - I'm sorry," he rasped through Endel's clenched fingers.

The chief scoffed. "Let your apology bring back his life. Until then, a life for a life is at least fair?" His fingers tightened around the boy's throat until not a single breath could escape his lips. "What say you?" Endel held him closer. "Aye? Nothing? Well enough then."

An smooth motion brought Aster's quivering body back over the height of the street as he felt the chief's fingers loosen.