The Gallows Were Built First
(Anglo-Saxon Cycle – c. 430 AD)
The estate did not sleep.
Not after the hill ran red. Not after the rope swung empty. Not after the sound of villagers cheering had turned into the quieter work of surviving.
Torches burned along the walls. Men moved in pairs, not because Dægan ordered it, but because nobody trusted the dark anymore. The yard smelled of wet hay, blood, and crushed herbs.
Smoke curled from the kitchen chimney and drifted low, as if the wind was tired too.
Refugees kept arriving.
Not in neat lines. Not in dignified caravans.
They came in broken groups, families wrapped in blankets, old men leaning on sticks, children with hollow cheeks and eyes too sharp for their age. Some had carts. Most had nothing but what they could carry.
A woman arrived barefoot, her feet raw and split, holding a baby so tight it barely breathed. They kept asking the same question in different voices.
“Is the Stormwulf here?”
Dægan heard it from the battlements. From the gatehouse. From the barns.
He hated the name. Not because it was untrue but because names like that turned men into banners, and banners drew armies.
A captain approached him on the wall, rain dripping off his helmet rim.
“My lord. The lower barns are full. The hall’s full. The stables are full.”
Dægan didn’t look down. He watched the treeline instead black teeth against a grey sky.
“How many now?” Lord Daegan asked
The captain swallowed.
“Near a hundred, my lord. Maybe more by sundown.”
“And the wounded?” Dægan exhaled slowly.
“Twenty-three. Three bad. One spearhead still in a thigh. Two fevered.” The captain replied
Dægan’s jaw tightened. He could picture it. A spear shoved in, snapped off, left to rot. That kind of cruelty was common now.
Not even hatred just economy. Why waste time killing clean when pain could do the job for you?
“Put the fevered in the far loft,” he said. “Keep the children away. Boil water. Twice.”
The captain nodded and hesitated.
“My lord… we’re running low on grain.”
Dægan turned his head sharply.
“How low?”
“Enough for the household and guards for….” the captain tried to calculate, then abandoned the numbers, “not long, if we keep feeding this many.”
Dægan stared at him for a heartbeat.
Then he looked down into the yard.
A boy was carrying a bucket of water too heavy for him. A girl helped, shoulder under the rim. A woman was bandaging a stranger’s arm without being asked. Men who had never spoken to each other were repairing a cart wheel together.
The estate was turning into something else.
Not a lord’s home.
A shelter.
A statement.
A target.
Dægan’s hand tightened on the stone.
“Open the east stores,” he said finally.
“My lord”
“Open them.”
The captain bowed and went.
Dægan stayed on the wall until his knuckles stopped aching.
Below, Raegenwine moved like a man who had forgotten what fear was supposed to do. He cursed at refugees as he fed them, shoved bread into hands, barked orders at boys twice his size, and threatened anyone who tried to steal. He was rude, loud, relentless.
And it worked.
A Black Shield approached Dægan with a limp, blood seeping through his sleeve.
“Wolf’s awake?” he asked quietly, as if speaking too loud might jinx it.
Dægan’s mouth tightened.
“For now.”
The man nodded once, reverent, then vanished back into the crowd.
That was the part Dægan hated most.
Not the hunger.
Not the violence.
Not even the court.
It was the way people looked at Thunorric now.
Like he belonged to them.
As if his life was a fire they could warm their hands on.
Dægan descended the stairs, boots heavy.
Inside the keep, everything smelled wrong-beeswax and linen and clean stone, like the world was pretending yesterday hadn’t happened.
Thunorric was in the solar, propped against pillows like an insult to nature. Bandages wrapped his throat. A bruise darkened half his jaw. His eyes were open, sharp despite the pain.
He looked up as Dægan entered and managed a crooked smirk.
“You look like you swallowed a priest.”
Dægan didn’t smile.
“I’m about to swallow a war.”
Thunorric’s gaze flicked past him, toward the window.
“Hear ’em?”
“I hear everything.”
“Good,” Thunorric murmured. “Means we’re still alive.”
Dægan stepped closer.
“You were hanged yesterday.”
“Aye.”
“You stopped breathing.”
“Aye.”
“You started a riot.”
Thunorric’s smirk returned, faint and bitter.
“They started it. I just refused to die quiet.”
Dægan stared at him for a long moment at the bruises, the rope burns, the stubborn fire still sitting in his eyes like it owned the place.
Then he said the thing he hadn’t allowed himself to say yet.
“This is not going to end.”
Thunorric’s face didn’t change.
“I know.”
Leofric had locked himself in the small room he called a study, though it looked more like a scribe’s battlefield.
Scrolls lay open on the table. Wax seals in fragments. Parchment tubes stacked like bones. A pot of ink sat beside a bowl of hot water and a knife blade so thin it looked like it could cut a whisper.
He didn’t look up when Dægan entered.
He was listening to the paper.
Leofric always listened to paper.
Because paper remembered what men lied about.
“You’re not eating,” Dægan said.
“I ate yesterday,” Leofric replied, voice flat. “That should last.”
“What are you doing?” Dægan moved to the table.
“Proving something I already know.” Leofric’s fingers traced a line of ink.
He slid one scroll toward Dægan.
The arrest writ. The one delivered with the wrong wax. Beside it, another document shorter, cleaner, stamped with a different seal.
“What’s this?” Dægan frowned.
“A requisition order. For timber.” Leofric’s eyes were red-rimmed, but his focus was sharp enough to cut stone.
“Timber?” Dægan repeated, confused.
Leofric nodded once.
“Fresh-cut. Fast delivery. Marked urgent. Signed by a clerk in the council hall.”
“What timber?” Dægan’s stomach tightened.
“Gallows timber.” Leofric tapped the parchment with one stained finger.
The words landed like a stone dropped into a well.
“You’re sure?” Dægan stared.
“Look at the phrasing.” Leofric didn’t blink.
Dægan leaned in. The same turns of language. The same neat, clipped formality. The same little curl at the end of certain letters like the hand couldn’t help showing off.
Leofric slid another scrap forward.
A church condemnation letter written after the riot, supposedly. A bishop’s anger, righteous and stern.
“Same hand.” Leofric pointed to a line.
“A bishop didn’t write this.” Dægan’s mouth went dry.
“No.” Leofric slid a fourth document onto the table.
A payment note.
Not sealed. Not ceremonial. Something that wasn’t meant to be seen by anyone outside the clerk’s circle.
“Hunter’s stipend,” Leofric said quietly. “Issued before the arrest writ ever reached your gate.”
Dægan’s eyes flicked across the ink.
Date markers. Witness marks. A note about ‘public order’ and ‘deterrence’.
Issued early.
Too early.
“You’re saying…” Dægan looked up slowly.
“I’m saying the execution was arranged before they had the prisoner.” Leofric’s voice softened not with kindness, but with the cold certainty of someone watching a trap close.
“That’s impossible.”Dægan’s pulse thudded once, hard.
“Nothing is impossible in a kingdom made of fear and parchment.” Leofric’s mouth twitched. Not a smile. A flinch.
“Who signed it?” Dægan leaned closer.
Leofric’s eyes flicked to the seals.
“That’s the clever part,” he murmured. “Nobody important. Just names that look respectable. Clerks. Minor men. Useful men.”
“And the king?” Daegan stammered slightly
“Vortigern’s name is used,” Leofric hesitated a fraction.. “But this isn’t his hand. Not the flourishes. Not the phrasing. Not the dating.”
“So someone is writing in his name.” Dægan’s jaw tightened.
“Yes.”
“And why?”
Leofric’s gaze drifted to the window, to the yard where refugees clustered like birds before a storm.
“To force a reaction,” he said. “To bait you into defiance. To make the countryside explode. To justify a purge.”
“Why would anyone want that?” Dægan’s fists clenched.
Leofric’s eyes snapped back to him, dark and bright.
“Because chaos makes men powerful,” he said. “And because if the land rises, they can claim to be the only ones who can ‘restore order’.”
Dægan stared at the documents again.
The neat lines of ink. The polite words. The quiet violence wrapped in formality.
Leofric reached into a small pouch and produced a broken piece of wax green, stamped faintly.
“The seal they used,” he said. “It’s not today’s seal, like I said. But it’s real. Which means…”
“Someone has access,” Dægan finished, voice low.
“Someone close.” Leofric nodded.
The room fell silent except for the distant sound of shouting outside refugees, guards, hungry children, life pressing against stone.
Dægan exhaled slowly.
“They want blood,” he said.
“They want you to spill it,” Leofric corrected.
“And Thunorric?” Dægan’s eyes narrowed.
Leofric’s expression tightened.
“He’s the spark,” he said simply. “Whether he wants to be or not.”
Dægan turned away from the table, pacing once like a man trying to outwalk a noose.
“So what do we do?”
Leofric watched him.
“Now?” he said softly. “Now we stop pretending we’re still a private estate.”
Dægan froze.
Leofric pushed one last parchment toward him.
Dægan didn’t want to look.
He looked anyway.
It was an incomplete draft half-written, ink still fresh. A proclamation template. The kind scribes used when they needed to send the same threat to ten villages quickly.
Leofric’s voice was almost a whisper.
“They were ready to announce him dead before dusk,” he said. “Ready to declare victory and crush anyone who resisted.”
” They expected him to die.” Dægan’s throat worked.
“They expected you to kneel.”
Dægan looked out through the slit window at the yard again.
At the refugees.
At the boys being fed by strangers.
At the archers on the walls.
At the Black Shields moving through the crowd like wolves in plain sight.
He realised, with a slow, sick clarity, that the line had already been crossed.
Not by Thunorric.
Not even by him.
By whoever wrote these chains with ink instead of iron.
Leofric stood, crossing the room, and placed the timber requisition in Dægan’s hand.
His fingers pressed down, firm.
Grounding.
Final.
“They built the gallows first,” Leofric said.
Dægan held the paper like it weighed a thousand lives.
Outside, the estate roared with need.
And somewhere beyond the trees, riders would already be moving.
Dægan whispered, more to himself than anyone else:
“Then they intended this.”
Leofric’s eyes didn’t blink.
“Yes,” he said. “Whatever comes next… they intended it.”
© 2026 Emma Hewitt – StormborneLore.
The Stormborne Saga, including Thunorric, Dægan, Leofric, the Black Shields, and all associated lore, are original works of the author. Unauthorized reproduction in any form is prohibited.
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