The Iron Judgement Chapter 23. The Name That Still Held Him

(Anglo-Saxon Cycle — c. 430 AD)

The lower chamber smelled of stone, sweat, and old fear. It was the kind that lived in walls.

Thunorric lay strapped to the narrow bed. He looked like a man being kept safe. However, his body didn’t believe in safety anymore. The leather held his wrists. The iron ring in the floor held the straps. The candlelight held shadows in place.

None of it held him not really. The moment the name reached him through the keep, something stirred inside him. It rose like a knife pulled from mud.

Varro.

Not a memory.

A verdict.

Thun’s eyes snapped open. They weren’t storm-grey. Not properly. The colour was there… but buried under something darker, older like ash under snow.

His breath came shallow but it was not from pain or from the restraints.

He could not stand. Somewhere out there, beyond stone and walls, Rome was speaking again. It was beyond Dægan’s orders and Leofric’s ink. Thunnoric pulled against the straps. Not violently at first just testing.

A small flex of his wrists. A twitch of forearm muscle. The leather creaked, warm from his skin, and that sound alone made something in his skull fracture.

Leather.

Rope.

Restraint.

His throat tightened around a breath that did not want to come.

“Don’t,” he whispered. The word came out like a child’s plea and a soldier’s threat at the same time.

The guard outside the door shifted.

Thun heard it instantly. Boots. Weight. Breath. He had always heard guards. Even when he wasn’t looking, even when he couldn’t see them especially when he was half-dead. Because you don’t survive pits and arenas by sleeping like a normal man.

He swallowed.

“…Varro,” he said again, and the candle flame jumped as if the stone itself disliked the sound.

Above Stone

On the battlements, Dægan did not move.

The smoke from the villages kept rising beyond the fields, black and ugly and deliberate. Each new curl of it felt like a message written in fire.

Look what we can touch. Look what we will touch next. Leofric stood beside him, parchment folded in his hand like a weapon he hadn’t chosen yet.

“They’re still burning,” Dægan said, voice low.

“They will,” Leofric answered. “Until someone gives them what they came for.”

“They want Thun.”Dægan’s jaw flexed.

“They want Stormwulf.” Leofric didn’t blink.

The name tasted wrong in the cold air. As Dægan’s hands tightened on the stone.

Behind them, the yard swelled with restless movement. Refugees pressed toward the walls. Men carried buckets. Women gathered children. Black Shields moved like shadows between people, placing knives in hands that were shaking too hard to hold them.

Rægenwine strode through the yard like a man born to survive burning worlds.

“Keep ’em inside! Keep the little ones away from the gate! If anyone panics I’ll crack their skull myself and call it mercy!”

A woman sobbed near the stables, a young 10 year old boy asked where his father was. As a man stared at the smoke like his soul was leaving him through his eyes.

And somewhere beneath their feet, Thunorric was hearing a name he had tried to bury under centuries.

Leofric watched the treeline, then muttered:

“He didn’t come with paper.”

“No.” Dægan’s voice went hard.

“He came with history.” Leofric’s gaze narrowed.

The Messenger From Rome

Cassian Varro did not shout he did not need to. He sat beyond bowshot. It was like placing a stone on a table. He waited for someone to admit it was a threat. The sun streaming down on his face. The stolen spiral banner lifted behind him and dipped like mockery.

Leofric’s stomach turned every time he saw it.

“They took our mark,” Dægan said.

“They took it because they understand it,” Leofric replied. “And because they want the people to fear us as much as they fear him.”

As if summoned by the thought, Cassian lifted his voice again calm, clear, and cruel in its certainty.

“Stormwulf!”

His sound carried on the winter air as if the land itself wanted it heard.

“You don’t have to burn with them. Come out.”

Dægan leaned over the battlement.

“YOU burn them,” he shouted back. “You’ve already proved what you are.”

Cassian’s eyes rose to the wall.

A slow pause.

Then, almost polite:

“I am what survives.”

Leofric’s mouth went thin.

Then Cassian said the line that made the yard below go still:

“Tell the immortal he can stop the fires.”

A murmur moved through the refugees like wind through grass. Stop the fires You could feel the thought spread. One man’s body, traded for a village roof. One life, offered so others don’t burn. That was how tyrants trained people to sacrifice their own saviours.

Dægan felt rage climb his spine.

“They’re trying to make us hand him over,” he spat.

Leofric’s voice was quiet.

“They’re trying to make him hand himself over.”

Beneath Stone

Thunorric heard the name again. This time not directly. Infact it came like whispers and not clearly. But the world had a way of carrying danger like scent.

He heard it in the way distant shouting sharpened. In the way the guards outside the room began to shift more often. In the way the keep’s heart had started beating faster.

The straps held him but his mind was no longer in the room. As his mind drifted he saw sand. The iron smell of blood filled the air. The chants of the arena’s crowds were loud and vibrant as the day he fought. He saw a man with Roman discipline in his posture. It was the kind that never slouched, even when the empire died.

Cassian.

Not a boy bot then but a man with a coin in his fist and a chain in his hand. Thun’s fingers curled into fists against the leather. He tried to pull again this time harder.

The straps creaked.

The bed frame groaned.

His breathing hitched.

And for one brutal second, he wasn’t in a keep in Mercia. He was back in Londinium. Back in the sands. In a place where men paid to watch him die he remembered the worst part. It was not the pain, not even the wounds he’d sustained but the waiting.

The waiting before the gate opened, the voice of the handler as he spoke. The waiting while a name was used like a collar.

Varro.

Thun’s throat tightened.

“I’m not yours,” he rasped.

The door opened and Daegan entered with Leofric followed behind they both froze when they saw his eyes. Not because he looked possessed. But because he looked awake in the wrong way.

“Thun.”Daegan stepped forward slowly, voice careful.

Thun’s gaze snapped to him like a blade.

“…He’s here,” Thun whispered.

“I know.”Dægan swallowed.

“You don’t know him.”Thun’s breath trembled.

Leofric’s voice came cold.

“We know enough.”

Thun laughed once but it wasn’t humour.

It was recognition.

“He paid for my death before he had me,” Thun said, voice rough. “That’s how Rome works. They don’t need the body first. They just need the decision.”

“He won’t have you.” Dægan stepped closer.

“You can’t promise that.”Thun’s eyes flashed.

Leofric moved to the straps, checking the leather like he was inspecting a weapon.

“You’re bleeding again,” he muttered, seeing the dark stain at Thun’s throat bandage.

Thun didn’t answer.

His focus had gone distant. Like he was listening to something only he can hear.

“What did he do to you?”Daegan’s voice lowered. The silence that followed was deafening as Thun’s jaw tightened.

Then, hoarse:

“He taught me to stand back up.”

Leofric froze, Dægan’s stomach dropped the guards paled. Bu Thun stared at the ceiling.

“I died,” he whispered. “And he watched. And then… he waited. Like it was a test.” Thunorric stated as Daegan’s breath came sharp. Leofric’s voice went quieter as he checked the straps.

“He did it more than once.” Thun didn’t deny it.”not often a man survives the cross three times then the pits” thunnoric smirked

That was enough.

Outside, a scream carried over the walls far off, faint, but unmistakable. Another cottage another roof another lesson.

Thun’s eyes squeezed shut.

“No,” he whispered.

His wrists flexed violently. The straps creaked under strain.

“Thun—” Dægan flinched.

“I can stop it,” Thun rasped, voice breaking. “I can… I can go out and he’ll stop the fires.”

“No,” Dægan said instantly.

“Yes,” Thun snapped, and the storm finally broke through his voice. “Because they’ll burn children, Dægan. They’ll burn them and they’ll laugh and they’ll call it mercy.”

“And if you go out, he’ll burn them anyway, later.”Leofric stepped forward.

“You don’t know that.” Thun’s eyes locked on him.

Leofric’s voice sharpened.

“I do. Because he stole our mark. Because he forged our names. Because he doesn’t want obedience he wants ownership.”

Thun’s breathing hitched.

Daegan leaned in, voice low, fierce, shaking with it.

“Listen to me.”

Thun glared.

Daegan didn’t back off.

“You are not paying for their cruelty with your life.”

“Then what do I do?”Thun’s voice cracked.

That was the moment, the real crack. There was not rage. Not defiance everyone expected. But the simple and honest raw question, stripped of the legend.

A man who had spent centuries being used as a solution, suddenly asking what else exists.

Dægan swallowed hard.

“You stay,” he said, voice breaking. “You stay while we fight like men who still believe in tomorrow.”

Thun blinked slow. The blink that meant he was trying not to fall apart. Leofric exhaled just for a short moment. And outside, the war horn sounded again.

This time a lot sharper and closer. More impatient than before yet again came Cassian’s voice carried faintly, calm as a knife:

“Stormwulf… you know what happens to villages that shelter storms.”

Thun’s muscles tensed, his eyes went distant again. It was then that Dægan realised the truth with cold clarity. Cassian wasn’t trying to breach the walls. He was attempting to start the part of Thun that had been conditioned to walk into a cage. Daegan leaned close, his forehead almost touching his brother’s.

“Thun,” he whispered, fierce and pleading all at once. “Come back to me. Not to Rome.”

Thun’s throat worked.

His eyes flicked just once to Dægan’s face. Then to Leofric. Then, quieter than breath:

“…Don’t let me go.”

Dægan went still, Leofric’s eyes widened.

“If he calls me… if he hooks me with that voice…”Thun’s voice trembled.

“I won’t,” Dægan’s hand closed over Thun’s wrist, firm, grounding. promised.

“We won’t.”Leofric stepped closer.

Outside, smoke kept rising , the king’s men kept burning. Cassian kept waiting because he wasn’t hunting the estate. He was hunting the part of Thunorric that still obeyed Rome. In the candlelit chamber beneath stone, the Stormwulf lay strapped down. He was not like a prisoner or a weapon. He was like a man fighting his own past.

Thank you for reading.
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Further Reading:
The Iron Judgement — Chapter 22 The Man Who Hunts Storms
The Iron Judgement Chapter 24

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