The path to High Roost was a knife carved into the mountain.

  It twisted up in tight switchbacks, hugging cliffs that dropped away into misty voids. Patches of ice hid in the shade of overhangs; more than once, a horse slipped and had to be coaxed carefully onward. The air thinned as we climbed, growing sharper, colder, tasting of stone and sky.

  By the time we reached the plateau, my thighs burned and my face stung from the wind.

  High Roost sprawled across the flat like a stubborn scar. A waist-high wall of piled stone ringed the settlement, more symbolic boundary than real fortification, but behind it stood low, round huts of fitted rock, roofs thatched with turf and straw held down by nets of rope and stone.

  And everywhere, sheep.

  They packed the pens in woolly waves—white, off-white, dirty grey—pressed so close they looked like a single living carpet. The smell hit me in the chest: lanolin, dung, damp straw, and the sour tang of overcrowding.

  Mara met us at the gate, leaning on a gnarled shepherd’s staff. She was short and broad-shouldered, her hair a frizz of grey braids, her face carved in deep lines from a lifetime of squinting into wind and sun. She wore layered wool and a cloak that might once have been white.

  “So the Lord finally remembers we exist,” she said instead of greeting.

  “I’ve been a little busy keeping the walls from falling,” I answered, swinging down from my horse. “Now I’m keeping what’s behind them from starving.”

  Her eyes flicked to Hareth. “You look worse,” she told him.

  “Still prettier than you,” Hareth said automatically.

  She snorted, then jerked her chin toward a charred skeleton of a building near the pens.

  “They came at night. Ash Wolves,” she said. “Ten riders. Maybe more in the dark. They didn’t come down to the wall. Just stood off, loose formation, and lit arrows. Barn went up like a dry hedge. We got the flock out, but the hay… gone.”

  “Did they try for the sheep?” I asked.

  “Snatched a score on the way out,” she said grudgingly. “Young ones. Fattest. Could have run them before setting the fire. They didn’t.”

  I looked at the burned barn, then at the pens. The sheep huddled together, wool thick, ribs showing beneath.

  “They burned feed they could have eaten,” I murmured. “Uncle Hareth’s right. They’re not just raiding. They’re trying to hollow you out. Empty this place.”

  Mara jabbed her staff into the snow. “They can try. We’ve held this Roost since before your grandfather was a pup. Wolves or no.”

  I walked to the nearest pen, gripping the railing. Sheep eyes watched me warily. Their breath steamed in small clouds. Beneath their coats, their spines were too easy to see.

  My mind began tallying.

  Too many bodies for the grazed-down pasture. No barn hay. Hay can’t be regrown in winter. Remaining scrub won’t sustain them. They will eat the last stems down to mud and then die standing on it.

  My invisible interface whispered probabilities of death and lambing losses.

  Mara watched me. “You see now? We can’t take them up there.” She jerked her chin toward the upper slopes, where the snowline was broken by streaks of wind-swept brown. “Grass is sweeter, yes. But the Wolves know where we’d go. They’ll be waiting.”

  “If you stay,” I said, “they starve in these pens.”

  She shrugged, bitter. “Life on the mountain. Too many sheep, not enough grass. You pick the losses, try not to cry about it.”

  “Or,” I said, “you change what you’re asking from them.”

  I turned to face her fully. “Right now, you’re trying to get three things from the same animal: meat, lambs, and wool. In a good year, that works. This isn’t a good year.”

  She folded her arms. “What do you suggest we tell them to stop making, then? Meat? We’ll need to eat. Lambs? Then next year’s flock shrinks. Wool? Then we’ve got nothing to bloody sell.”

  “Not nothing,” I said. “But you can’t maximize all three with feed this low. So we pick the one that keeps the most of you alive.”

  I gestured at the flock.

  “Wool,” I said. “This year, you raise coats, not carcasses.”

  “Speak sense, boy,” Mara said. “Fast.”

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  “Keep enough animals for breeding,” I said. “Cull the weakest for slaughter before they drop, yes. But the backbone of your wealth is this.” I plucked at a clump of fleece. “Not the mutton underneath it.”

  “You shear the flock now.”

  Her eyes went wide. “In the dead of winter? The wind will flay them to the bone.”

  “You don’t leave them out in the pens,” I replied. “You cram them into your stone barns. Pack them tight. Wool or no wool, a thousand bodies in one place stays warm. You rebuild what you can of the burned barn’s walls, make a roof fast. You use turf, wagons, anything. No drafts, and they’ll live long enough for the feed to arrive.”

  “What feed?” she demanded. “You see any grass sprouting from that ash? We can’t eat rock.”

  “Grain,” I said. “From Clasta. From my maternal uncle. Viscount's caravans are here now, bringing food into Blackwood. They’ll ride back half-empty unless I stop them.”

  She eyed me. “And you’ll send them back up here? Past the cliffs, bandits, and your own starving peasants?”

  “Not all of it,” I said. “Enough. Enough to keep your barns full of feed until the thaw.”

  I drew in the snow with the tip of my boot: a scribbled map of supply and demand.

  “You shear, bale, and send the wool down. Sledges to The Crossing. Elian loads it. Wool is costly now—war in the eastern Kingdoms has choked other routes. He sells high. He buys grain and cheap feed in return. We bring that back here.”

  “And what does Blackwood charge for playing mule?” Mara asked, suspicious.

  “Nothing for the first run,” I said. “I consider it an investment. A living High Roost can watch the passes, warn of raids, supply wool in better years. A dead one just leaves me another hole to garrison.”

  Hareth gave me a sideways look. The words were cold, but the logic was clear.

  Mara’s gaze wandered over her people—lean, windburned faces; children with raw red cheeks and chapped hands.

  “You shear them now,” I said softly, “you lose some to cold. You shear them never, you lose more to hunger. The numbers are ugly either way. I’m offering you a way where more of those children you’re staring at live to swear at you as adults.”

  She huffed, breath steaming. “You think numbers make this easier?”

  “No,” I said. “They just make it honest.”

  Silence stretched. The wind keened against the stone wall.

  At last, Mara thumped her staff. “Get the shears!” she barked at her people. “You heard the lord—if his mad plan kills us, at least we’ll die warm from the work!”

  That grim humor broke the tension. A few shepherds laughed weakly. Others moved at once, falling into habitual patterns. Pens shifted, sheep funneled into smaller enclosures. Old women fetched heavy iron shears that had been waiting for spring, sharpening them on whetstones with angry efficiency.

  I stepped aside, letting the organized chaos swirl around me. The System overlaid statistics on everything: fleece weights, estimated sale values, mortality curves.

  I tuned it out halfway. This wasn’t just columns; it was people’s lives.

  “We need sledges,” I told Uncle Hareth. “Sturdy ones. Low, wide. Heavy wool will tip anything too tall.”

  “We’ve got old plough frames,” Mara said, overhearing. “We lash boards across them, drag them with oxen. Done it before, just not in winter.”

  “Then winter is learning a new trick,” I said.

  I pulled Elias aside. “Once the first sledges are loaded, you ride ahead. Shadow the path down. Watch the ridges.”

  Elias nodded. “Ash Wolves won’t just watch all this wool roll away if they know what it’s worth.”

  “They may not know what coin is worth,” I said. “But they understand feed, and they understand denying it.”

  The first massive fleece came off a ewe in a single practiced peel. The animal stood there, shivering and suddenly small without its coat. A girl bundled the fleece, tying it into a tight roll. Another child dragged it toward the growing pile.

  I watched, jaw tight.

  I was asking these people to risk everything on a chain of promises—a friendly Viscount, safe roads, predictable markets. But the alternative was watching them slowly eat the last of their hopes.

  I walked to the edge of the plateau.

  From here, the valley spread below like a white-and-brown tapestry. I could just make out the faint line of the road to The Crossing, a darker thread through the snow.

  Something moved above my line of sight.

  Elias’s sudden whistle made me turn.

  The scout was atop a boulder, one hand up, pointing upward.

  I followed the gesture, squinting into the wind.

  A shape stood on a rocky spur overlooking the plateau. Cloak torn in a jagged pattern of grey and white, blending with the stone and snow. A lean, fur-ridged helm. A narrow shield. Slung at its back, a bow.

  Even at this distance, the posture was unmistakable.

  “Wolves,” Hareth growled softly. “Scouts.”

  The figure lifted a horn and blew.

  Not the deep, full-chested roar of a warhorn. A thinner note, long and piercing, carrying across the plateau like a knife.

  A mark. A warning to others. Here. Something worth watching. Worth taking.

  Then the scout lowered the horn, turned, and vanished behind the broken ridge line.

  “He’s running to his pack,” Elias said. “They’ll want those bales. Or they’ll want to stop them.”

  My fist clenched on the railing.

  “Then we don’t give them time to gather,” I said. “Mara!”

  She stomped over, a lock of white fleece stuck to her boot. “Already working as fast as they can, Baron. You can’t shear sheep by shouting at them.”

  “The first sledges go as soon as they’re half-full,” I said. “Not at dawn. Tonight.”

  Her brows shot up. “Down that slope in the dark? You’ll break your necks and the wool both.”

  “Better a broken neck than a slit one on the path,” I said. “We move under cloud and whatever moon we get. No torches unless absolutely needed. Elias will mark the worst ice spots ahead.”

  I looked at Hareth. “We’ll escort the first run. You, me, ten of our best, and—”

  “And half a dozen of my boys,” Mara cut in. “With slings and pockets full of river stones. Wolves from up-valley think we’re just sheep farmers. Let’s remind them we throw rocks for a living.”

  For the first time that day, I smiled.

  “Good,” I said. “Ash Wolves think in terms of blades and fangs. Let’s see how they handle hail.”

  The sky had darkened while we talked; clouds were drawing in, the wind picking up that fine sting of oncoming snow.

  “Load what you can,” I told Mara. “We’re racing a pack we can’t see yet.”

  As I turned away, the System pulsed at the edge of my vision.

  [Stabilize the Barony – Progress Update]

  Stonewell: Health protocols initiated; hidden resource located.

  High Roost: Emergency shear-and-trade plan underway.

  Overall Settlement Stabilization: 3 / 8

  Risk Indicators:

  Stonewell – Structural hazard (sealed for now)

  High Roost – High ambush risk on trade route

  I exhaled. There was no safety, only choices.

  I mounted up as the first loaded sledge creaked toward the narrow path down the mountain—fleeces piled high, ropes straining, oxen snorting clouds into the freezing air.

  “Stay close,” I told Hareth and Elias. “If the Wolves want wool…”

  I drew my sword, the blade whispering free.

  “…they’ll have to pull it from our hands on the edge of the world.”