The first column arrived at dawn.
Thirty knights in the kingdom's colors, their horses lathered from a hard night's ride, the kind of arrival that told you everything about how seriously the message had been taken before anyone said a word. Their commander, Aldous, had a grey beard and the permanent squint of a man who had spent decades reading landscapes for threats, and he stood in Harrowfield's harbor square and looked at what was left of the trap structure and the scorch marks on the dock walls and the two ruined ships visible in the bay and did not say anything for a long moment.
Then Egor walked through the village's north entrance with Roland and Marcus behind him and Davos bringing up the rear, all four of them carrying the road on their clothes and the look of men who had been riding since a message found them somewhere they had not expected to need to leave in a hurry.
