Walls improve enough to repel scouts. Militia readiness increases after live action.
Oren Pike lit the tower brazier with shaking hands and a strip torn from his own sleeve.
For a moment, nothing happened. Rain hissed on the iron basket. The pitch smoked black, then caught with a low orange bloom that climbed the North Wall and showed every patch, brace, wet rope, and exhausted face Adrian had paid for with barley, coin, and curses. Below the parapet, Greyhold held its breath.
Then the first scout horn sounded beyond the ditch.
Lyra Stone raised her fist. "Militia to marks."
Men and women who had been names on a rotten levy roll three days ago stepped into chalked positions along the wall walk. Harl Vey took the left slit. Caro Venn braced a spear by the repaired stair. Tomas Reed crouched beside a basket of sling stones too large for his wrists and too important for anyone to send him away.
Adrian stood near the brazier where the Duchy System painted the rain in hard blue edges.
NORTH WALL WATCHTOWER: FUNCTIONAL.
WALLS: 23 -> 29.
RAID PROBE: IMMINENT.
MILITIA READINESS TEST ACTIVE.
Oren wiped rain from his beard. "If the lower brace goes, the tower stays lit while it falls. Thought you should know."
"How long until it gives?"
"Depends how politely they shoot it."
The second horn answered from the dark. Three riders emerged first, then two more on foot dragging brush bundles. Not a full raid. A test. The kind House Marrow could deny buying and border raiders could deny understanding.
Lyra watched their spacing. "They want the ditch filled under arrow cover."
"Can we stop them?"
"If no one wastes fear."
Adrian looked along the wall. Fear was everywhere: in white knuckles, shallow breaths, the way Caro Venn kept touching the oath mark on her sleeve. But the line held because Lyra had given each person a task small enough to obey.
"Front riders!" Lyra called. "Hold until the tower shows eyes."
The brazier flared as wind pushed flame through the basket. Light spilled over the ditch. Two men on foot froze with brush in their arms, suddenly visible to every slit.
"Now," Lyra said.
Arrows snapped down. One brush carrier fell. The other dropped his bundle and ran. A rider loosed toward the tower; the shaft struck new timber with a deep thunk. Oren flinched as if hit in his own ribs.
Tomas lifted a sling stone. His hands trembled.
"Not yet," Adrian said.
"I can hit him."
"You can miss and lose the stone. Wait until he crosses the white ditch marker."
Tomas swallowed. Waited. The rider angled closer, laughing because the wall had been blind last week and memory made him careless.
"Now."
Tomas threw with his whole body. The stone struck the rider's horse above the knee. The animal screamed, reared, and dumped the man into mud. The wall shouted, not triumph exactly, more disbelief that Greyhold's children could change the shape of a fight.
The system flickered.
MILITIA READINESS: 31 -> 34.
LIVE ACTION COMPLIANCE: IMPROVING.
A third rider cut toward the weak lower brace with a hooked rope. Adrian saw the line before anyone else because blue light marked the brace as critical.
"Lyra, lower right!"
She moved without asking how he knew. "Harl! Hook man!"
Harl fired. His arrow missed the rider and sliced the rope. The hook spun harmlessly into the ditch. Harl stared as if astonished by his own usefulness.
Oren grabbed Adrian's arm. "Brace held."
"Keep it that way."
"With what?"
Adrian pulled off the last dry cloak he owned and shoved it at him. "Tar it. Wrap the joint. Bill me later."
Oren barked a laugh and ran.
The probe broke after the third failed approach. Raiders preferred rotten walls and unpaid men. Greyhold had offered them light, named posts, ration-fed archers, and a tower stubborn enough to offend their expectations.
One wounded raider crawled near the ditch until Lyra's spearpoint touched his throat.
"Alive," Adrian called.
The militia groaned. Lyra did not. "You heard him."
They dragged the man through the West Gate after dawn because the North Wall stairs were too narrow for a prisoner and too damaged for pride. Citizens gathered despite the rain. They looked up at the lit tower and then at the mud-covered raider with the strange expression of people afraid to believe their city had survived a test.
Nahla came from Ashwell Chapel with bandages and a scowl. "If he has fever, I am blaming your mercy."
"Fair."
The raider spat near Adrian's boots. "Useless duke."
Harl Vey laughed first. Others followed, rough and dangerous. The insult had lost some teeth in the mud.
Lyra searched the prisoner's belt while Mara stood ready with a page. Out came a dull purse, two bone dice, a strip of dried meat, and five small stamped tokens dark with grease.
Mara picked one up and went still. "Greyhold tax token."
Adrian held out his hand. The token lay cold in his palm, minted with Greyhold's old wall mark on one side and altered on the other by a tiny Marrow sheaf. Not a rumor. Not a wax scrap. Currency made for buying violence with the city's own stolen authority.
The Duchy System sharpened every edge of the coin.
TAX RECORDS: FALSE TOKEN TRAIL DETECTED.
FAMINE ENGINE LINK: HOUSE MARROW MINT CHANNEL.
Lyra looked from the token to the tower flame. "We held."
"Yes," Adrian said.
"And now?"
At the gate, Tomas Reed stared at the coin as if it were a door opening onto a much larger room.
Adrian closed his fist around the token. "Now we find who taught raiders to spend Greyhold."