The Storm That Doesn’t Sleep
(Anglo-Saxon Cycle c. 430 AD)
The horn sounded again at dawn. Not the long warning this time. But a shorter call closer. It seemed as if the forest itself had moved in the night. It had decided the estate no longer belonged to the people inside it.
Dægan woke already standing within an instant. In fact he hadn’t remembered leaving his chair. The solar was grey with early light, the candle burned down to a hard stub. His hands were on the window ledge, knuckles white. Below, the yard was already alive with movement.
Black Shields shifting positions, refugees herded into tighter clusters, Rægenwine barking orders like volume build walls.
Leofric sat at the table, ink-stained and unblinking.
“You didn’t sleep,” Dægan said.
“I blinked twice.” Leofric’s mouth twitched without humour.
A laugh threatened to escape but it didn’t come. As Dægan’s eyes stayed on the treeline.
“How close?”
“Close enough that the birds are leaving.”Leofric tapped a parchment with the end of his quill.
“And Thun?” Dægan swallowed.
“He’s awake.”Leofric’s gaze lifted. A warning without words.
Of course he was, everyone knew storms didn’t sleep. They waited. Thunorric was already in the corridor when Dægan reached the keep stair.
He stood bare-footed on cold stone, shirt open at the throat where bandages wrapped him like a promise. Bruising darkened his collarbone. Rope burn still carved lines into his neck as if the gallows had tried to write ownership into his skin.
He looked up as if he’d been standing there for hours.
“You’re early,” Dægan said tightly.
Thun’s smile was thin.
“So are they.”
Dægan stepped closer.
“You shouldn’t be out here.”
“Don’t start.”
“I’ll finish, actually.” Dægan’s voice lowered. “You can barely breathe.”
“I can breathe enough.” Thun’s eyes narrowed.
“That’s not the same as well.”
Thun leaned casually against the wall. Nonetheless, Dægan noticed the tremor in his hand. He also observed the way Thun braced his shoulder as though pain was trying to unseat him.
“Dægan,” he rasped, gentler than yesterday, “they’re here.”
“I know.”
“And you’re thinking like a lord.” Thun’s gaze flicked toward the yard. “Which means you’re about to do something stupid and noble.”
Dægan’s jaw clenched.
“And you’re thinking like a martyr.”
Thun smiled as if the word tasted familiar.
“Maybe.”
Dægan stepped in.
“No.”
Thun’s expression sharpened.
“What.”
“No offering yourself.”
“I haven’t offered” Thunorric smirked slightly
“You’re about to.” Deagan’s voice cracked, anger and fear braided together. “I can see it in your face like it’s written.”
“You can’t keep me in bed while they come for our people.” Thun’s eyes flashed.
“I can keep you alive.”Dægan’s throat worked.
Thun stared at him.
“…Alive,” he echoed quietly, like it was a strange thing to want.
Then the yard erupted with shouting below.
A runner’s feet on stairs.
A breathless boy one of the refugees, cheeks hollow, eyes too old burst into the corridor.
“My lord!” he gasped at Dægan. “They’re on the road. Banners.”
Dægan didn’t move.
“How many.”
The boy’s mouth opened, shut, opened again like numbers were too heavy.
“Lots.”
Leofric arrived behind them, cloak thrown over one shoulder, quill still tucked behind his ear like a weapon.
“Enough,” he said flatly. “Enough that they want to be seen.”
“Good.” Thun’s smile turned wolfish.
“No.” Dægan turned on him.
“You still got a bow?” Thun’s gaze slid to Leofric.
Leofric didn’t answer. His eyes were on Thun’s bandages.
He said softly, to Dægan, “He’s shaking.”
“I’m not.” Thun’s jaw tightened.
“You are.” Leofric lifted his chin.
Dægan’s stomach dropped.
Thun looked away first, that was worse than any confession. On the walls, the world looked too open.
The road cut through wet fields like a scar. Beyond it, trees dark as old blood. The sky was the colour of ash that hadn’t decided whether to fall.
Then the first line of men appeared not charging. But a simple slow March. The march which appeared slow, organised and confident.
Banners lifted in the wind. They displayed court colours and church colours. There was also something else: plain cloth marked with a simple sign. It looked like a warning carved into fabric.
A gallows.
They brought their symbol with them. As Dægan’s hands tightened on the battlements. While Leofric came up beside him. Quiet.
“See the wagons?” Leofric murmured.
Dægan followed his gaze wagons heavy and covered.
“Supplies,” Dægan said.
Leofric’s mouth twisted.
“Tools.” Dægan stared.
“Tools for what.” Leofric didn’t look away from the road.
“Siege. Fire. Rope. Timber.” Dægan’s skin went cold.
“They came prepared.”
“They wrote this weeks ago,” Leofric said softly. “We’re just catching up to their script.”
A shout rose from below it caught Thunorric’s attention. As Dægan turned sharply. Unaware He’d come up behind them without being heard silent as a knife sliding free.
He stood on the wall like he belonged there. His hair was damp with mist. His eyes were fixed on the banners as if he burn them down by looking.
“Stormwulf!” someone called the road below, voice carrying, bright with practiced cruelty. “Come out and be judged!”
Thun’s smile flickered it wasnt a smile of joy. But mere recognition that hed been in this position before.
“You know I have fought worse men. I have also fought in worse condition.” Thunorric smirked, his eyes blazing as he remembered the pits of Rome.
“Get back,” he snapped under his breath as his pulse hammered.
Thun didn’t move as he stared down. Another voice louder, carried by a man with a priest’s posture.
“Lord Dægan! By authority of High King Vortigern and the holy council, open your gates. Surrender the outlaw. Mercy will be extended!”
Leofric laughed once, low.
“Mercy,” he echoed.
“That’s the one that hung me.” Thun’s voice rasped, almost conversational.
Dægan stepped closer to Thun.
“You’re not answering.”
Thun’s eyes didn’t leave the road.
“They want me to speak.”
“They want you to step outside.”
“Same thing.” Thun’s mouth twitched.
Dægan grabbed his arm. A movement that made Thunorric flinch. But not from the grip but the simple touch.
Dægan froze.
Thun’s pupils were too wide. His breathing too shallow. Sweat beaded at his temple despite the cold.
Dægan felt it like a crack through stone.
“How long,” Dægan whispered, “have you been taking them again.”
Thun’s jaw tightened.
“Thun.” Leofric’s voice went very quiet.
Thun looked at neither of them.
“I needed my hands steady,” he rasped as he swallowed hard.
“You needed your mind quiet.” Dægan’s grip tightened.
“I needed to not hear the rope.”Thun’s eyes flashed toward him anger, shame, something darker behind it.
Silence fell between them like a blade. From the road a voice shouted again:
“Stormwulf! The king offers you trial! Surrender and your people may live!”
Dægan laughed sharp and broken.
“Trial,” he spat. “They built the gallows before they built the case.”
Thun’s gaze stayed on the road.
“…They’ll burn the cottages first,” he said softly. “They always do. Make the people blame the one they fear.”
“They will.” Leofric’s throat worked.
Thun’s fingers curled around the battlement stone.
“And I could stop it.”
Dægan’s heart lurched.
There it was the offer everyone knew would come. Their sister shook her head but the pain in her eyes spoke volumes. Thunorric the martyr, the sacrificial lamb everyone knew the pattern.
“No.”Dægan stepped in front of him.
“Move.” Thun’s voice hardened.
Dægan didn’t infact he remained like a brick wall but simply shook his head.
“Dægan.”
“No.”
“I’m not asking.” Thun’s eyes narrowed.
Dægan leaned close, voice shaking with fury he couldn’t afford.
“You keep thinking your death is cheap because you come back.”
Thun went still.
Dægan’s words poured out like they’d been waiting centuries too:
“Every time you die, you come back colder. Every time you return you lose something you don’t notice until it’s gone. And you stand there like it’s noble to keep bleeding for everyone else.”
Thun’s jaw flexed.
Dægan swallowed hard.
“I will not let you spend yourself into nothing.”
Thun stared at him for a heartbeat, he looked eighteen. “I’m immortal,” but in that moment, he neither looked it nor felt it. Thunnoric looked to his men, who saw the child, not Storm. Just a young man in many ways seeking safety but lost. It wasn’t long till the mask returned.
“You can’t stop me,” he rasped.
Dægan’s voice dropped.
“Yes I can.”
Thun’s lips parted half laugh, half threat.
“Try.”
Dægan turned without warning and signalled to two Black Shields behind them.
“Hold him,” Dægan said.
“…What.” Thun’s gaze snapped, violent disbelief.
“Sorry Thun” The Shields hesitated. Their loyalty tugged both ways like a rope.
“Now.” Dægan’s voice cut through it.
They moved as quick.as they could. But not brutal careful, like men handling a blade they respected. Thun reacted on instinct as he fought out
For a second, Dægan saw the old warlord shoulder shifting, body bracing, the storm rising.
Then pain caught him.
He hissed, staggered, and the bandages at his throat darkened with fresh blood.
Dægan’s stomach twisted.
Leofric swore.
Thun’s breath came ragged. His eyes went too bright.
“Don’t,” he rasped.
Dægan’s voice shook.
“You’re injured.”
Thun’s laugh sounded wrong.
“So was I on the cross.”
Dægan flinched like struck.
“Let me go.” Thun’s eyes locked on his.
“No.” Dægan swallowed.
Something in Thun’s expression shifted.
Not anger.
Not fury.
A quiet, terrible resignation as if he’d expected this eventually.
“You’re afraid of me,” Thun said softly.
“I’m afraid for you.” Dægan’s chest tightened.
Thun blinked once, slow.
Then his voice dropped into something almost childlike not in tone, but in the way it slipped past pride.
“I can’t sit still,” he whispered.
“I know.” Dægan’s throat burned.
“And if they burn them…”Thun looked past Dægan to the banners on the road.
Dægan answered, voice breaking, “Then we fight them here. With walls. With arrows. With strategy. With time.”
Thun’s mouth twitched.
“Time,” he murmured like it was a foreign word.
Leofric stepped closer, eyes sharp.
“You don’t get to decide you’re expendable,” Leofric said quietly. “Not because you resurrect.”
Thun’s gaze flicked to him.
Leofric’s voice softened, just a fraction.
“Especially because you do.”
Thun stared. Trembling.
Then he laughed one breath of sound, bitter as ash.
“You think chains stop a storm.”
Dægan leaned in.
“No,” he whispered. “I think family does.”
Thun’s eyes flashed.
And for one frightening moment Dægan thought he would break free just to prove he could.
Instead…
Thun sagged. But not in surrender, not in defeat but a deep set exhaustion.
The Black Shields tightened their hold instinctively as his weight shifted. As Dægan felt his own knees threaten to give.
Leofric muttered, barely audible, “That’s it. That’s the crack.”
Dægan whispered back, “Aye.”
On the road, the herald shouted again, frustrated now.
“Open the gates!” Dægan turned toward the battlements.
He lifted his voice, calm forced over fury.
“This estate is under my protection,” he called. “Any man who crosses my boundary does so as an enemy.”
A ripple of sound rose from the road laughter, anger, the clink of armour.
The priest’s voice carried, smooth as oil.
“You shelter the damned, Lord Dægan.”
“Then you’d better pray your god likes smoke.” Dægan’s eyes went cold.
“Bold.” Leofric exhaled beside him.
“Necessary.” Dægan didn’t look at him.
Below, the crown men began to spread out but not charging. They was encircling the lands around them. Like wolves that had learned patience. Thun’s head lifted slightly, eyes tracking the movement.
“They’re building something.” He whispered, so low only Dægan heard:
“What.” Dægan’s stomach tightened.
“…A frame.” Thun swallowed. Winced.
“A gallows?” Leofric’s voice went tight.
Thun’s smile was faint and wrong.
“No.”
His eyes fixed on the wagons.
“A pyre.”
Dægan’s blood turned to ice.
Leofric swore softly, vicious.
“They’re going to burn the cottages.”
Thun’s fingers twitched against the Black Shield’s grip.
And Dægan felt it felt the battle inside him like pressure building behind a dam.
“Don’t make me watch.” Thun whispered, voice rough with something like panic:
Dægan closed his eyes for half a breath.
Then he made a choice.
Not as lord.
As brother.
“Take him down,” Dægan said to the Shields. “To the lower chamber. Lock the door. Post two men outside.”
“…No.” Thun’s head snapped up.
“Yes.” Dægan’s voice shook but held.
Thun struggled weakly at first, then harder, anger surging as pain allowed.
“You can’t,” he rasped. “They’ll….”
“They’ll do what they do,” Dægan said. His voice was low and shaking. “I will not have you die trying to stop every cruelty in Britain with your throat.”
“You’re caging me.” Thun’s eyes went bright, furious, wounded.
“I’m holding you.” Dægan leaned in close, so only Thun hear him.
Thun’s breath hitched.
Dægan whispered, raw:
“Because you’re slipping. And I can feel it.”
Thun’s lips parted and for a moment, Dægan saw fear underneath the rage. Not fear of chains but the fear of himself. The Black Shields hauled him back gently but firmly.
“Dægan!” Thun’s voice echoed down the stairwell, rough as thunder behind stone:
Dægan didn’t move.
Leofric stood beside him, face pale.
“That was… risky,” Leofric said.
“Aye.”Dægan stared at the road.
“…But right.” Leofric’s voice softened.
“I don’t know how to do this.” Dægan’s throat worked.
Leofric’s eyes stayed on the banners.
“No one does,” he murmured. “That’s why the world keeps breaking the same men.”
Below, the pyre frame began to rise on the road like a threat given shape.
And the crown’s men lit their first torch.
Not aimed at the keep.
Aimed outward toward the nearest village roofs in the distance.
It was A message.
Dægan’s hands clenched on stone.
Leofric’s quill hand flexed like he would stab the sky with it.
And somewhere deep beneath the keep, behind a locked door, Thunorric’s breathing changed. It became like a storm trying to swallow itself.
Dægan stared at the first flame and realised the truth with a cold clarity that felt like grief:
This wasn’t a siege.
It was a lesson.
And the crown intended to teach it in fire.
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