The Unbound March

Chapter 1. Twelve Unbroken Steps

Aaron closed the door before the bolt arrived.

The iron head buried itself in the wagon’s thick door. Wood split, but it did not pass through. Inside, the boy clutching a water bucket sank to the floor.

Aaron gestured for him to keep low.

Then he stepped outside.

A little over forty soldiers stood on the bridge. The knight at their center watched him with a drawn sword. An imperial emblem marked his breastplate; a blockade enforcement unit’s black band circled his shoulder.

“That wagon is subject to seizure,” the knight said.

Aaron looked at the bucket lying beside the bridge.

Water drawn at dawn spread across the ice. People who had been collecting it had dropped their buckets and retreated. The wheel beneath the bridge still turned, but more slowly than usual.

“There’s someone inside,” Aaron said.

“He was ordered out.”

“And then you fired.”

Instead of answering, the knight raised his point.

The bolt shaft still trembled in the door. Aaron turned from shielding the boy to face the knight.

He placed his first foot on the bridge.

Lucen Arve’s name had appeared on the list received that morning. Ten days had passed since the homecoming meal at the outpost. Where the celebratory cloth had hung by the door, an imperial blockade order was now posted.

Commander of the military escort sent to enforce the central suspension of allocations. Resonance tier: Reach. A man who would have been briefed on what had happened to Aaron in the capital.

He had not blocked the road because he failed to realize Aaron could defeat him easily.

He stood in a position where striking him meant striking the imperial household.

Aaron saw that position.

A stamped document hung before the soldiers. Even residents who could not read could see the red imperial seal. Behind them, crossbowmen divided their aim between the wagons and the waterway.

Twenty-four of Aaron’s Company were on this side of the bridge.

The rest were deployed in the villages and at the outpost. Those who had come to escort this wagon today had not assembled for war against a central escort unit.

The power Lucen claimed lay in that difference.

Aaron drew his sword.

The blade slid smoothly from the scabbard Dorin had repaired.

It was time to show that the difference alone would no longer stop him.

Twelve steps would take him to the middle of the bridge.

Aaron measured the distance by eye.

On the first step, the nearest spear came in. He opened his Field over the narrow space containing its point and the approaching front rank.

He pushed the point aside and moved through. As the soldier pulled back on the shaft, Aaron briefly overlaid force on the sequence of mana descending toward the ankle.

The spear returned later than the hand expected.

On the second step, Aaron’s scabbard blocked the side of the soldier’s knee.

The man fell and released the spear.

Aaron crossed without treading on him.

The next two tried to widen the distance. They had heard reports of his Field. Aaron did not chase their decision. The bridge rails limited how far they could spread.

The third step.

Two blades came at different heights.

He received the low one first. Folding his shoulder, he avoided the high blade. After his waist returned, only the right arm followed a little late.

Between the isolated movements, his sword point changed.

One man’s guard flew aside. The other’s blade crossed the short force Aaron had left and struck the opposite rail.

Metal rang.

Aaron took his fourth step.

No fresh wound yet.

Lucen came forward himself.

Force extended beyond his sword. Frost scraped from the bridge deck. Aaron did not try to cut that power head-on.

He watched the order in which it would reach him.

He placed a foot to the side.

The fifth.

Before Lucen’s blade could rise again, Aaron entered. The swords met. His opponent had already sent out great force; now came the moment of withdrawing it.

Aaron’s Field touched that moment.

He did not need to add strength to his wrist.

Lucen’s point dipped slightly.

Aaron’s blade passed the guard and met the front of the breastplate. It did not pierce the metal. It pushed the body to change direction.

At the sixth step, Lucen retreated.

Aaron went with him.

A crossbowman behind shifted his weapon.

The commander now stood in his line of fire.

“Don’t shoot!”

Lucen shouted.

Before the words ended, Aaron made his next movement.

His left hand pressed beneath the opposing hilt. His right foot went outside the foot Lucen meant to withdraw. He turned his hips, leaving his shoulders behind for a moment.

His opponent gathered force to brace.

Before it reached the feet, Aaron’s shoulders followed.

The seventh.

Lucen went to one knee.

No eighth step was needed.

Aaron’s point stopped beneath the commander’s throat.

He had not even reached the middle of the bridge.

Nearby soldiers halted. One crossbowman in the rear still held his weapon ready. Aaron looked at his face.

Beyond the reach of his Field.

All that reached the shooter at the end of the rail was the sight of his commander held at sword point.

“Lower that weapon, and your commander lives, too,” Aaron said.

The crossbowman looked at Lucen.

Lucen moved his chin slightly.

The weapon lowered.

Bran crossed the bridge.

A mark from his earlier wound remained on his left arm, but did not hinder him. He collected Lucen’s sword and gathered the nearest soldiers’ weapons to one side.

Aaron moved his blade from the commander’s throat.

Lucen did not stand immediately. He checked his injured knee, then took a subordinate’s arm. Nothing suggested a broken bone.

Aaron returned to the wagon door.

The boy still sat inside.

“You can come out,” Aaron said.

When he offered a hand, the boy looked outside first. At the bolt in the door, at Aaron’s hand, then at the soldiers lowering their weapons behind him.

Only then did he emerge with his bucket.

As the boy stood clutching it, Aaron supported one side of the tilted handle.

About half the water remained.

The boy said, “Can I at least take this?”

“Of course,” Aaron answered. “It’s your water for today.”

The document Lucen had brought was genuine.

Hassel came down from the outpost, and the local allocation keeper checked it with him. It bore the central seal and the responsible department’s secondary stamp. Its date was shortly after Aaron’s departure from the capital.

That explained why rumor had arrived before the messenger.

This time, it was no opinion warning of a possibility.

Aaron Vale was designated a traitor for disobedience to imperial command and disruption of imperial equipment.

Central approval of his military authorization and frontier defense commission was revoked.

Mana allocations and public military pay to the affected region were suspended.

Aaron read to the end.

No one around him spoke.

Disputing whether one sheet could extinguish every authority granted by Marquess Arden and every right of local residents would take time. But the order stated that those cutting the allocations need not wait for that dispute to end.

He read the final line again.

No exception for supplies essential to survival.

A short sentence.

Hassel’s hand went rigid beside the page.

Lucen sat on a bench, wrapping his knee with cloth.

He looked up at Aaron.

“Did you think beating me would end it?”

Aaron folded the order.

“No.”

Lucen’s eyes shifted slightly.

“But I stopped the bolts aimed at people collecting water,” Aaron said. “That part is over.”

He asked Lucen how the document had been transmitted and when enforcement would begin. The commander remained silent. When Hassel said they would record the enforcing officer’s name, a subordinate clerk answered first.

The central signal would change at noon.

The escort on site would prevent access to the allocation control room.

Other nearby outposts had received the same order.

Aaron looked at the wheel beneath the bridge.

One bell remained until noon.

He sent the clerk who had presented the order back with a message.

After obtaining a copy and statements from the scene, he placed Lucen and his remaining subordinates, disarmed, in an empty warehouse inside the outpost. He provided treatment and water and posted a separate guard. Each soldier’s actions would be examined individually.

Having been designated a traitor, he did not claim lawful authority to try them.

What mattered today was preventing more bolts from flying.

He would have to take responsibility for the other decisions and explain them.

Bran asked, “Shall I call the troops from the other roads?”

“Don’t pull them out of the villages. First, separate the people who will move water from those guarding the control room.”

Aaron asked Toma to bring more wagons down. He sent word to Mara not to empty the large outpost barrels, but to count the stored water first.

While giving the orders, he heard how fast his own voice had become.

He took a breath, then repeated the instructions briefly.

Toma confirmed them.

Wagons for water, separate from wagons for people.

Aaron indicated the yard where they would pass one another. As Toma ran toward it, he descended to the control room.

Liora and Dorin were already there.

Nima sat by the wall, taking the final readings. The local keeper introduced herself as Eda Salt. The forty-five-year-old woman touched a valve with practiced hands and told Aaron to stop at the foot of the stairs.

He stopped.

“The pressure is changing now,” Eda said. “Turn the handle any farther, and the opposite pipe won’t take it.”

Aaron held out the order.

Liora read it and pressed her lips together.

At the final line, Dorin swore very softly.

“Domestic supply, too?”

“It says no exceptions,” Aaron answered.

Eda pointed to the upper pipes.

The clinic, the communal washhouse, the village water points. Power for the defenses branched from the same control room. Cutting one handle would not darken every destination equally.

The weakest would stop first.

Aaron listened to the names.

His three hundred soldiers were not the only people on this land.

The noon bell rang.

The light did not go out immediately.

First, the line within the floor thinned. The waterwheel turned twice more. Air pushed through a pipe with a hollow sound.

Nima recorded the time.

Eda secured the handle. Liora laid a small barrier against a weak part of the wall. Dorin looked at the central seal they had agreed not to touch.

The seal remained intact.

Only the force inside it disappeared.

Aaron brought his palm near the wall.

With his Field spread, he could discern how the change traveled. But he could not spend all day substituting his own power for the mana cut off far away.

He said so immediately.

“I can see where it’s changing. I can’t replace the supply.”

Liora nodded.

“Then tell us where it becomes dangerous. We’ll distribute the remaining water meanwhile.”

She gestured to Eda, asking how many barrels they had.

Aaron pointed to the left pipe.

“That side first.”

Eda turned.

Voices came from the bridge above.

One water point had stopped, someone shouted.

Then came word that the outer defensive lights had gone out. Not every lamp was dark. Oil lamps still burned within the outpost. But the mana markers that lit the road at night and some clinic equipment had stopped.

Aaron climbed the stairs.

The boy’s bucket had left a trail along the road.

He had won the fight that morning.

Lucen could no longer aim weapons at people. Aaron’s sword was intact, and his Company had not scattered.

Yet the water had stopped.

Aaron faced that fact squarely.

Then he ordered the outpost bell rung.

It was no bell of surrender.

It was time to gather the people who would decide who took charge of each well and warehouse.

Chapter 2. The Price of Water That Does Not Freeze

The first argument was not over how much water to give.

It was over whose bucket to fill first.

When a woman from the clinic set down two buckets, an old man who had waited a long time struck the ground with his cane. Someone was sick in his house, too, he said. A uniformed soldier asked him to move aside, and his voice rose.

“If the people wearing swords drink first, when do we drink?”

The soldier opened his mouth.

Before he could speak, Aaron lifted the water bucket.

He poured into neither container.

“We’ll establish what the clinic needs first. Then we’ll record who is waiting at each home. Soldiers don’t go to the front simply because they’re soldiers.”

The old man recognized him, but did not lower his cane.

Aaron watched that hand.

Knowing the baron branded a traitor was strong was not enough for someone afraid his water would disappear today.