Chapter 10.1 | The Veteran

The tavern had three exits. Aldric had counted them before his first drink, mapped them before his second, and planned his route through each before his third.

Old habits. Dead habits, really. He wasn’t a soldier anymore. Wasn’t a commander. Wasn’t anything but a bitter man with correct instincts and no authority to act on them.

The ale was weak, but weak ale was cheaper than strong ale, and Aldric’s coin had stopped replenishing itself around the same time his commission had. Dismissed with honors, they’d called it. The kind of honors that meant please stop embarrassing us with your inconvenient observations.

He drank and tried not to count the days. Three hundred and forty-seven since his dismissal. Ninety-three since Varian’s body had been found. Eighty-eight since Elric’s. Two men who had trusted him, followed him, died because the people with authority had refused to listen to the man without it.

Organized, he had told them. The Grukmar raids aren’t random. They’re coordinated. Someone is unifying the tribes.

They had smiled the way powerful men smiled at inconvenient subordinates. Nodded the way they nodded when they had no intention of acting. And then they had sent him away, and two of his scouts had died because no one was watching the patterns he had identified.

The ale tasted like regret. Most things did, these days.

“Aldric.”

He looked up. A woman stood at his table—middle-aged, travel-worn, with the kind of practical clothing that said she’d walked a long way and expected to walk further. Her face was familiar in the way faces became familiar when you’d spent years stationed in the same region.

“Sera.” He gestured to the empty chair across from him. “Didn’t expect to see you this far from Zuraldi.”

“Didn’t expect to be this far from Zuraldi.” She sat, ordered nothing, and fixed him with a look that was equal parts exhaustion and purpose. “I’m looking for Xandor. The druid. Word is he’s in Riverhold.”

Aldric’s interest stirred despite itself. Xandor was one of the few people who had believed him. An old friend from before the military, from the days when Aldric had been young enough to think that being right would be enough.

“He’s here. Has a room at the Scholar’s Rest.” He watched her face carefully. “Why are you looking for him?”

Sera hesitated. The hesitation told him more than her words would. Whatever had brought her here, it wasn’t casual.

“There’s something happening,” she said finally. “Something I can’t explain. Xandor studies the old systems. The artifacts. I thought…” She trailed off, shook her head. “It sounds mad when I try to say it.”

“Most true things do.”

She looked at him sharply, reassessing. He recognized that look. It was the look people gave him when they realized he wasn’t as broken as he appeared.

“Dwarves came through Zuraldi,” she said, lowering her voice. “Stonehold folk. An old merchant and his nephew, carrying something that made people nervous without knowing why. They left heading this direction, and the people who followed them…” She paused. “The people who followed them knew exactly why they were nervous.”

Aldric’s mind was running patterns before she finished speaking. Stonehold dwarves, traveling with something significant. Pursuit that suggested knowledge of what they carried. Movement toward Riverhold, where Xandor happened to be.

Coincidence was a word lazy people used to avoid uncomfortable connections.

“When did they pass through?”

“Four days ago. Maybe five.”

He nodded slowly. Four or five days. If they’d moved at merchant pace, they’d be in Riverhold by now. If their pursuers had moved faster…

“I need to see Xandor,” he said, standing before he’d consciously decided to move. “Now.”

Sera stood with him. “I’ll take you.”

The streets of Riverhold were crowded with the usual chaos of a crossroads town—traders, travelers, people moving goods from everywhere to everywhere else. Aldric moved through them with the automatic awareness of a man who had spent years watching crowds for threats.

Organized, the pattern in his mind whispered. Everything connects.

He had been right about the Grukmar. Right about the raids. Right about the coordination that no one else had seen. And being right had cost him everything—his career, his authority, his belief that the people in charge would act on good information.

But if Xandor was involved in something…

Xandor had never dismissed him. Xandor had listened, had believed, had said you see patterns that others miss, and one day that will matter.

Maybe that day had finally come.

The Scholar’s Rest was a modest inn near the market district, the kind of place that attracted academics and scribes who valued quiet over comfort. Aldric found Xandor in a private room on the second floor, surrounded by books and papers and the comfortable chaos of a man who had spent his life collecting knowledge.

“Aldric.” Xandor looked up from his work, and his expression shifted through surprise, warmth, and then something more complicated. “I was about to send for you.”

“Why?”

Xandor exchanged a glance with Sera. Then he gestured toward a chair, and his voice dropped to the careful tone of someone delivering news they weren’t sure how to frame.

“Because there are people here who need someone who sees patterns. And because what they’re carrying…” He paused, choosing his words. “What they’re carrying changes everything.”

Aldric sat. His hands were steady—they were always steady—but something in his chest had begun to shift. Purpose, maybe. Or hope. Or just the familiar weight of knowing that he was about to be proven right again, and that being right was never as satisfying as it should be.

“Show me,” he said.

Xandor nodded and led him to the door.

Next: The Knot at Riverhold: The Summons