Shadows

The supply convoy comes back early.

I'm in the warehouse when Marcus walks in, his face set like stone. He doesn't say anything at first. Just drops a pack on the table and starts pulling things out. Medical supplies. Bandages. A bottle of antiseptic that's half empty.

"Two of ours got hit," he says. "Arrows. Not bullets. Arrows."

"Arrows." I look at the pack. "That's new."

"Crossbows, we think. Silent. Effective. And someone's been teaching them how to use them."

I pull the map from my pocket. The one I've been marking with pins and annotations. The attack patterns. The routes that keep getting hit.

"Where?"

"North road. Two kilometres past the bridge."

I mark it. The pin goes in next to the others. And now I see it. Something I've been half-watching for weeks, something that only becomes clear when you've been staring at a map long enough.

The attacks aren't random. They're a line. A slow, deliberate line curving around the north and east of Mugdock's territory. Each one closer than the last.

They're probing. Testing our range.

"Marcus." I point at the pattern. "Look at this."

He leans over the map. His eyes move from pin to pin. His expression doesn't change, but his jaw tightens.

"They're not just raiding," I say. "They're learning. Every hit tells them something about our routes, our timing, our response speed. They're mapping us."

"We already knew MacLeod was a problem."

"Not just MacLeod. This is too organised for him. MacLeod throws men at problems. These attacks are precise. Deliberate." I trace the line with my finger. "Someone is planning these. Someone with training."

Eleanor.

The name surfaces before I can stop it. The spy I freed. The one sitting in MacLeod's camp right now, telling him everything she learned about our patrols, our schedules, our defences.

My fault. All of it. Every arrow, every wound, every supply we lose because they know where to hit us.

Marcus is watching me. "You've got that look."

"What look?"

"The one where you're blaming yourself for something."

"MacLeod has a spy." I keep my voice level. "One who was inside these walls for weeks. She knows our layout, our rotation, our numbers. I let her out."

Marcus doesn't say anything for a long moment. Then: "Hugh knows."

"I know he knows. That doesn't make it less my fault."

"Hugh also knows that the person who let her out was having a breakdown at the time. That's not the same thing as a strategic decision."

He walks out before I can argue. I look at the map again. The pins. The pattern. The slow encirclement.

She's out there because of me. Every attack from now on is on me.

---

Three days later, a man stumbles through the north gate at dusk.

He's not from Mugdock. I don't recognise him, and I know most of the faces by now. He's thin, dirty, shaking. His left arm is wrapped in a blood-soaked strip of cloth that might have been a shirt once.

Hugh meets him at the gate. I'm nearby, checking manifests. Close enough to hear.

"East settlement," the man says. His voice is flat. The kind of flat that comes after you've used up all the emotion you had. "Strathblane. We were forty people. Maybe."

"What happened?"

"They came at night. Same as always. Arrows first. Then the rush." He closes his eyes. "We couldn't fight. We tried. Twenty of us ran. I don't know how many made it."

"How many came?" Hugh's voice is steady. The same voice he uses for everything. Supply problems, wounded residents, collapsing walls. The voice that says: I am not panicking, so you don't have to either.

"Hundreds." The man shakes his head. "Not raiders. An army. Organised. Moving together like they'd trained for it."

An army.

Hugh glances at me. Just for a second. Then back to the man.

"Get him to the medical bay," Hugh says to Marcus. "Find out if anyone else from Strathblane made it."

Marcus leads the man away. Hugh stands at the gate for a long time, looking out at the darkening hills.

I walk over.

"You saw the map," I say.

"I saw the map."

"They're not just probing anymore. They're pushing. And they know exactly where we're weak."

Hugh doesn't argue. He doesn't tell me I'm wrong. He just looks at me with those tired eyes.

"I'm calling a council meeting," he says. "Tonight. I want you there."

"To do what?"

"To listen. You see things other people miss. I need that right now."

It's not a compliment. It's a job. The same kind of job he gave me with the supply routes. Practical. Necessary.

"Okay."

He turns and walks toward the main hall. I follow.

---

The council meets in a room I've never been in. It's off Hugh's office, through a door I always assumed was a closet. Six chairs around a table. Maps pinned to the walls. A lamp that smells of oil and smoke.

Five people. Hugh at the head. Marcus on his right. Sarah, who runs the kitchen and somehow knows everything that happens in this castle. A man named David who handles work assignments. A woman named Ruth who I've seen on the wall with a crossbow but never spoken to.

And me. Sitting against the wall, not at the table. Observer. Not participant.

The meeting is not what I expected. No grand speeches. No dramatic revelations. Just five people talking about problems they've been living with for months, with the kind of tired pragmatism that comes from knowing there are no good options.

"The eastern routes are compromised," Marcus says. "We've lost three convoys in two weeks. If this keeps up, we'll run short on medicine by next month."

"How short?" Ruth asks.

"Short enough that people start dying from things we could have treated."

Hugh listens. Asks questions. Doesn't dictate. Pulls information out of people the way he pulled the supply routes out of me. Patient. Methodical.

"There's another option," Sarah says. "We reach out. To the other settlements. Killin, Drymen, the group at Balloch. We're not the only ones getting hit."

"MacLeod's been hitting them too," Marcus says. "They're just as stretched as we are."

"Then maybe that's the point." I don't realise I've spoken until everyone turns to look at me. "Maybe the point isn't to destroy us. It's to isolate us. Hit everyone just enough that nobody can afford to help anyone else."

Silence around the table. Hugh nods slowly.

"Jamie's right. That's been my read too. The question is whether we stay isolated, or whether we find a way to change that."

"What do you need?" Ruth asks.

Hugh looks at the map. The pins. The slow encirclement that I drew, that Marcus confirmed, that the man from Strathblane just made urgent.

"Time," he says. "And the sense to know we can't do this alone."

The meeting ends. No vote. No formal decision. Just five people walking out of a room with a clearer understanding of what they're facing and a vague agreement that something has to change.

I stay behind. Hugh stays too.

"You saw it," I say.

"I've seen it for weeks. I was hoping I was wrong."

"Eleanor."

He doesn't flinch. "She knows more about our layout than most of the people living here. Patrol schedules. Supply timing. Guard rotations. If she's feeding that to MacLeod, or whoever is organising these attacks..."

"Then they know exactly where to hit us."

"Then they know exactly where to hit us." He says it the same way he says everything. Flat. Factual. Like acknowledging the size of the problem is the first step toward solving it.

"Is there anything we can do about it? Change the patrols, randomise the schedules?"

"Already done. Marcus and I started that before you came to me with the map." A hint of something in his voice. Almost amusement. "You weren't the only one who noticed the pattern."

We stand in the empty council room. The lamp flickers. Outside, the castle settles into its evening routine. Dinner. Watch changes. The sounds of three hundred people trying to stay alive.

"What happens now?" I ask.

"Now we wait. Watch. See if Strathblan's fall is the beginning of something bigger or a one-off." He picks up the lamp. "And we start thinking about who our friends might be. Because we're going to need them."

He leaves. I stay in the room a moment longer. Looking at the map. The pins. The slow, deliberate pattern that spells out exactly one thing.

They're coming. And they know us better than we'd like.

I turn off the light and close the door behind me.