Harrag sent six men to the road.
Not six eager men. Eager men died loudly and came back as stories if they came back at all. He chose two Painted Dogs who could move without making every loose stone announce them, two Stone Crows who knew how to look down from rock without showing a head, and two Moon Brothers because Ulmar would not trust a count brought back only by Harrag's people.
Rusk wanted to go.
Harrag looked at the blood crusted down his arm and the way he held one shoulder lower than the other.
"No."
Rusk's face twisted. "I can still walk."
"You can still bleed too."
"That happens while standing here."
"You are staying."
Rusk looked ready to argue, then saw Harrag's face and chose to spend his anger on the wall instead. He kicked a broken shield across the floor hard enough to make two boys jump.
Harrag turned back to the scouts. "You see. You count. You come back. No cart is worth dying before we know how to take all of them."
Lenk, the Stone Crow Sella had sent through the ash passage hours before, gave a tired grin. "And if they see us?"
"Then you were too close."
Sarra pointed at one of the Moon Brothers, a lean woman with a flat nose and a cut across her scalp. "You come back even if these fools want a closer look. You hear me?"
The woman nodded. "I hear."
Kedge looked to his two. "No glory. No knife work. Eyes only."
One of the Stone Crows made a face.
Kedge stepped closer. "Eyes only."
The face disappeared.
Torren watched from near the door with his cloak pulled tight around him. He had slept, but his bones still felt scraped hollow. Every sound in the hall seemed too sharp. Boots on stone. Rope sliding over wood. A man coughing blood into a rag. Somewhere outside, an Andal prisoner crying softly until someone told him to keep quiet.
The scouts left through a side postern under a grey sky.
For a while, everyone pretended not to watch them go.
Then the waiting began.
...
Waiting inside a taken fortress was different from waiting in the mountains.
In the mountains, waiting had wind in it. Birds. Goat bells, sometimes. Snow falling from branches. The scrape of a knife over bone. Here the stones kept sound and returned it changed. Men muttered in one room and seemed to whisper through the next. A wounded man groaned two passages away, and it sounded like the Gate itself was complaining.
The three clans tried to become owners and failed at it in different ways.
Moon Brothers held the main passage because Ulmar wanted the road watched by his own eyes. They stood under the raised portcullis and around the wood wedges jammed beneath it, staring up at the iron teeth as if the grate might suddenly remember what it had been made for. Two men worked under Sarra's orders to add more timber beneath the lifted edge. She cursed them whenever they put hands where only poles should go.
Stone Crows had the wall walk, or most of it. They moved through arrow slits and stair turns with the ease of men who trusted narrow places more than open floors. Every so often one of them called down that another bow had been found, or another Andal hiding under a cloak, or another corpse that had not yet been moved.
Painted Dogs guarded the stores, the prisoners, and the winch room. Harrag had put men at the drum, the brake, the chain, and the door leading to it. He had not trusted the machine when it was closed. He trusted it even less now that it had opened for them.
Torren walked because standing still made the apple brighter in his mind.
He saw it whenever he blinked.
Red in snow.
A cart wheel hitting a rut.
A guard looking down and leaving it there.
He was near the lower passage when Oren found him.
The older man leaned on a spear someone had cut down for him to use as a staff. His bad ankle was wrapped thickly, and his face had the pale, pinched look of a man holding back pain by habit. He stopped beside Torren without greeting him.
"Dead Andals speak better after Harrag has been alone with them," Oren said.
Torren looked at him.
Oren's eyes stayed on the main passage. "I did not ask."
"I didn't answer."
"Good."
For a moment neither of them spoke. Men moved past carrying a door torn from its hinges. Someone had decided it would make a table, stretcher, shield, or firewood. In the Bloody Gate, everything was being turned into something else.
Oren shifted his weight and winced. "Whatever this is, keep your mouth tied unless Harrag cuts it loose."
Torren's throat tightened. "You think I know something."
"I think you look like a boy standing beside a snare he helped set, wondering whether it catches rabbit or wolf."
"That is a lot of words for not asking."
"I have pain in my foot. It makes me talk."
Torren almost smiled.
Oren turned his head then. The tiredness in his face did not soften the sharpness of his eyes. "I do not need to know everything today. But if something follows you back from wherever your eyes have been, make sure it does not step over the rest of us while you are looking the other way."
Torren said nothing.
Oren tapped the butt of the spear against the stone once. "Now help me to the hall before someone starts counting food again and gets it wrong on purpose."
...
The scouts returned before the light had fully changed.
They came through the postern one at a time, breathing hard, cloaks crusted with snow at the hems. The Moon Brother woman came first. One Painted Dog followed with a cut across his cheek from ice or branch. Lenk came last, grinning no longer. That told Torren more than the blood on their boots.
The lower hall filled quickly.
Harrag stood at the center table. Ulmar came in with Sarra. Kedge arrived with Sella at his shoulder. Rusk leaned against the wall instead of sitting, which meant either his wound hurt badly or he wanted to look as if it did not. Oren was already seated, eyes half-lidded and listening.
Harrag did not ask if they had seen anything.
He waited.
The Moon Brother woman spoke first. "Carts."
No one moved.
Ulmar leaned forward. "How many?"
"Too many for fingers while hiding," she said.
Sarra snapped, "Use better words."
"More than twenty. Maybe thirty. Some heavy enough the oxen were fighting the road."
Kedge looked to Lenk.
He nodded. "Food under canvas. Barrels. Sacks. Crates. Wool too. I saw dried fish tied in bundles. Cheese wheels in straw."
The Painted Dog added, "Apples."
Torren's hand closed before he could stop it.
Oren saw.
No one else did.
"Apples?" Rusk said, as if the word offended him.
The Painted Dog shrugged. "A crate near the front. Red ones."
Torren could see it again. The apple falling. The one left behind. The crate open under a canvas lip.
Harrag's eyes did not move to him.
"Guards," he said.
The Moon Brother woman answered. "Some riders. Men walking with spears. Crossbows on two carts, maybe more. Not an army."
"Knights?" Ulmar asked.
"One man in better mail," Lenk said. "Maybe a knight. Maybe a man who likes shine. Hard to see under cloak."
"How far?" Kedge asked.
"If they keep pace, they reach the western bend before dark," the Painted Dog said. "Gate by dusk if road stays kind. Later if snow thickens."
The room changed.
Not into joy. Joy needed sleep and full bellies. This was something harder. Men who had been angry at scraps now saw meat close enough to smell. The Gate no longer looked like a bad bargain. It looked like a trap already built by dead Andal hands.
Ulmar looked at Harrag. "Your dead man told true."
Harrag said nothing.
Oren's eyes stayed on Torren a moment longer, then drifted back to the table.
Sarra set her tally cords down. "If we take the carts whole, the count changes."
"How much?" Kedge asked.
"Enough that men stop talking about chewing leather for a while."
"That is not a count."
"It is the best you get until I see the sacks."
Rusk pushed off from the wall. "Then we go down the road and hit them."
"No," Harrag said.
Rusk stopped. "No?"
"No."
"They are out there with the food."
"And they are coming here with it."
Kedge's mouth twitched. "Let the goats walk into the pen."
Ulmar looked toward the main passage. "They will see the Gate wrong."
"Yes," Harrag said. "So we make it look less wrong."
Sella laughed under her breath. "The stones are full of blood."
"Then cover what they can see."
"They will smell it."
"Smoke covers blood."
"They will ask for Harlan," Sarra said.
Harrag looked toward the prisoner chamber. "They will not get him."
Ulmar folded his arms. "If they ask for the commander and no one answers, they stop outside."
"Then someone answers," Kedge said.
Everyone looked at him.
Kedge shrugged. "An Andal answer. Short. From far enough away."
Rusk grinned. "We make one sing?"
Sarra's face hardened. "If he sings too much, he warns them."
"He sings with a knife at his back," Rusk said.
"He can still choose to die usefully for his people."
Harrag nodded once. "No long talk. No open gate until the first carts are close. Portcullis stays as it is unless needed. We do not drop it on food."
Kedge leaned over the table. "Stone Crows on the wall and side cuts. Hidden. If the guards look up, they see shapes where shapes should be."
"Can your people stand still?" Ulmar asked.
Sella smiled. "Better than yours breathe quietly."
Ulmar ignored her. "Moon Brothers outside the western rocks. Not at the gate mouth. If the escort turns or tries to pull back, we close the road."
"Painted Dogs inside the gatehouse," Harrag said. "Both sides of the passage. No one touches the carts until I call. If a man starts looting before the guards are down, cut his hand."
Rusk raised a finger. "Which hand?"
"The one on the food."
"Fair."
Sarra picked up her cords again. "We need the carts whole. Wheels, oxen, harness. If we break them, we carry sacks in snow until men start dropping."
"Drivers alive if they do not fight," Harrag said. "They know how to move the carts."
Kedge looked displeased. "And if they shout?"
"Then they stop being useful."
That answer satisfied everyone enough to be ugly.
A prisoner was brought in after that.
Not Harlan. A younger Andal guard with bruises across his jaw and one eye swollen nearly shut. He was shaking before they made him kneel. Harrag asked him what call the convoy might expect. The man said he did not know. Rusk hit him once. The man still said he did not know, but now with blood in his mouth.
Sarra stepped in before Rusk hit him again.
"Ask what they say at the outer bend," she said.
Harrag did.
The prisoner swallowed and gave them three possible answers, all of them useless without knowing who commanded the convoy. He begged after that. Harrag sent him away alive, which seemed to frighten him more than another blow would have.
In the end they did not trust the words.
They trusted distance, dusk, smoke, and hunger.
...
All afternoon, the Bloody Gate pretended to heal.
It did not heal.
It hid.
Dead men were moved from the main passage and stacked behind closed doors. The worst blood near the western approach was scraped with snow, then rubbed with ash until the stone looked merely dirty. Broken shields were taken away. Andal cloaks were sorted from clan cloaks. Helmets were wiped clean enough to pass at a distance. Two Moon Brothers too broad to look like any gate guard were told to stay out of sight after Sarra looked at them and said no lowland man had shoulders like that unless he was half cow.
The portcullis was left raised enough for carts to pass only after the wedges were checked three times. The chain still worked, but no one trusted it. Men stood in the winch room with orders to hold, not drop, unless everything went wrong and the food had already entered.
On the wall, Stone Crows wore stolen cloaks over their own and kept their faces low. A few actual prisoners were placed where they could be seen from far below, each with a knife just under the ribs and a Stone Crow behind them whispering what would happen if they waved too hard. Most were too frightened to try anything clever.
Smoke was the best lie.
They built it from damp wood and old rushes so it drifted over the gate mouth and clung to the stone. From the road below, it might look like morning fires still burning after a hard night of cold. It hid stains. It softened faces. It made every shape uncertain.
Torren helped carry a broken bench into the side chamber and then stood too long staring at the place where the dead Andal had been strangled.
The body was gone.
That did not help.
The voice spoke while he looked at the empty floor.
Deception increases convoy capture probability.
Torren's jaw tightened. Do not talk about him like a tool.
He is dead. He can no longer be affected.
I can.
A pause.
Noted.
Torren almost hated it more for that.
He left before the room could shrink around him.
Outside the western murder slit, the road lay quiet under late light. The High Road bent out of sight beyond rock and snow. Somewhere beyond that bend, wheels were turning. Oxen were breathing steam. Men who did not know the Gate had changed hands were walking toward it with enough food to make chiefs stop shouting and start planning.
Harrag found Torren there.
For a while they stood without speaking.
"Scouts confirmed it," Harrag said at last.
"I heard."
"They would have found it without what you saw."
Torren looked at him.
Harrag's face gave nothing away. "That is what we say inside our own heads too, if needed."
"I don't know if I can."
"Learn."
Torren looked back through the slit. "The apple was real."
Harrag did not ask what apple.
Maybe he remembered.
Maybe he did not want to know.
"You stay inside when they come," Harrag said.
"I can help."
"You helped."
"I can still help."
"You will be near the winch room. If the chain slips, shout. If men break ranks for food, shout louder. If someone asks how you knew any of this, say nothing and look stupid."
Torren almost laughed. "I can do that."
"You have practice."
For the first time that day, the edge of Harrag's mouth moved.
It was gone quickly.
Then a horn sounded from the wall.
Not alarm.
Signal.
One long note. Low. Controlled.
The road had shown something.
Harrag turned from the slit.
"Go."
Torren went.
...
Near dusk, the first cart appeared on the western bend of the High Road.
Torren saw it from behind a murder slit above the gate passage, shoulder pressed to cold stone, breath held until his chest hurt. The canvas was white with frost. The oxen moved slowly, heads low, steam rising from their nostrils. A driver walked beside the lead yoke with both hands tucked under his arms for warmth. Behind him came the second cart, then the third, then more sliding into view around the bend like a thing too long for the road to hold.
The guards rode tired.
That was the first thing Torren noticed. Not careless. Tired. Men who had watched snow and rock for too many hours. Men who expected danger from above, from clans in the rocks, not from the Gate ahead of them. Their cloaks were stiff with frost. Their horses placed each hoof carefully. One rider near the front lifted his head toward the wall.
Torren stopped breathing.
On the wall above, a bound Andal in a cleaned helm raised one hand.
Slowly.
Not too much.
A Stone Crow behind him held a knife where no one below could see.
The rider lowered his head and continued.
The convoy crept closer.
In the fourth cart, under a canvas flap tied badly, Torren saw a crate packed with straw.
Something red sat inside it.
Not the fallen apple.
Another one.
Bright as blood.
Below the slit, in the gatehouse passage, Painted Dogs waited behind doors with axes held close. Moon Brothers crouched behind the western rocks, hidden until Ulmar gave the sign. Stone Crows lay along the wall walk under stolen cloaks, still as bad memories. In the winch room, men held the crank and brake. In the lower hall, Harrag, Kedge, Ulmar, Sarra, Rusk, and Oren waited for the first cart to pass the teeth.
The Bloody Gate smoked.
The road narrowed.
The food came on.
And the trap was ready.