I reassessed the weapon in light of this information. What had seemed a well-crafted but otherwise unremarkable tool suddenly represented something more significant—a tangible connection to Earth, to heritage, to prosperity before isolation.

  “The Tyrant controls all metals,” Svensson continued. “He rations out every ounce of steel as if it were gold. So many years after colonization, we should have foundries, refineries, manufacturing facilities built from the ship’s components. Instead, we’re reduced to fighting over scraps, treasuring a simple axe because it contains metal we cannot produce ourselves.”

  Svensson studied the roof of his hut as if seeing through it to the distant ship in the sky.

  The colony ship’s continued orbital presence represented not just political control but economic strangulation. By orbiting and never landing, the Tyrant ensured the colonists had remained dependent on his tender mercies.

  “This is why they treated my taking the axe so seriously,” I realized aloud. “Not just because I’d bested the Halversons, but because I’d taken something genuinely valuable.”

  “Exactly.” Svensson gestured toward the door where sounds of the camp awakening to full morning activity filtered through. “Out there, that axe is worth more than any three railguns. The guns are relatively fragile, and they will eventually run out of charge. But good steel, properly maintained—that blade will last generations.”

  This perspective shed new light on the colony’s situation. The systemic impoverishment wasn’t just a byproduct of the Tyrant’s control—it was a deliberate strategy. Keeping technology scarce, keeping resources limited… these colonists were forever preoccupied with survival rather than resistance.

  After a long piss and some breakfast, Lars accosted me. His youthful face showed the fatigue our journey had imposed. “Tormund’s asking for you both. The homesteaders are gathering near the central fire. I think… I think something bad is going to happen.”

  We followed him into the crisp morning air. Jarl’s binary stars had fully risen, casting their distinctive reddish glow across the land. The homesteaders had assembled in a rough semicircle, their faces showing both exhaustion and excitement.

  Tormund stood at their center, his imposing frame drawing all eyes. Beside him, Kelda had found a seat on a fallen log. Her finely shaped injured leg was stretched out, bare and enticing, while a rebel medicine woman examined the wound.

  I noticed that half the men present were staring. It’s funny how much more interesting a woman’s bare skin was to the male eye when you were wrapped up in heavy clothes all the time.

  “There he is!” Tormund called as I approached. “The Drengr himself has awakened!”

  The gathered newcomers turned as one, their expressions ranging from cautious respect to open admiration. Some nodded in acknowledgment, others raised hands in greeting. Even those who had participated in my capture seemed to have revised their assessment in light of subsequent events.

  “I’ve been talking with my people,” Tormund continued as I joined him. “It seems we owe you a proper apology. Not just for the cage, but for doubting your intentions afterward.”

  Olaf stepped forward, the gray-bearded homesteader who had been among the most suspicious.

  “I called you the Tyrant’s dog,” he said bluntly. “I was wrong. A man who comes back to fight for strangers who treated him poorly—that’s a man of honor.”

  Agreement rippled through the gathering. I nodded acknowledgment, uncomfortable with the direction the conversation was taking. Hero worship was neither my objective nor a useful dynamic for what lay ahead.

  “I didn’t do it alone,” I reminded them, gesturing to the assembled homesteaders. “Every person here took up arms when the moment came. The victory belongs to all of us.”

  “But you provided the spark,” Kelda interjected, eyes intense despite her wincing pain as the medic worked. “You showed it could be done. That the enforcers weren’t invincible.”

  “The girl’s right,” another homesteader added. “Been twenty years a colonist, never thought I’d see the day anyone stood against enforcement and won.”

  The conversation might have continued in this vein, building a mythology I had no interest in cultivating, had Cassius not approached from the direction of the command center. The tall, thin man’s expression remained skeptical, his posture radiating disapproval.

  “Yes, celebrate the great hero,” he said, sarcastically. “Perhaps you’ll still be cheering when the Tyrant’s full forces descend on the remaining homesteads. When families who had nothing to do with your little rebellion are rounded up for processing.”

  His words landed like sleet on the gathering, dampening the nascent optimism. Tormund’s expression darkened, his massive hands clenching with barely suppressed anger.

  “The Tyrant was already coming for us,” Lars countered, stepping protectively closer to his father. “My sister was abused in the attack on our compound, and we’d done nothing to provoke it.”

  “Nothing except harbor this stranger,” Cassius retorted, jabbing a finger in my direction. “This man, who conveniently appeared just before the raids intensified. A man who carried enforcer equipment but claimed to oppose the Tyrant. You admit yourselves he fought with unnatural skills for a mere traveler.”

  The accusations weren’t entirely unfounded, which made them more difficult to dismiss. I remained silent, allowing the homesteaders to mull over the facts.

  “I saw what I saw,” Olaf declared after a moment’s consideration. “This man fought for us when he could have saved himself. That’s a simple truth, whatever else may be hidden.”

  “Simple truths can mask complex deceptions,” Cassius insisted. “Ask yourselves: who benefits from accelerating conflict between homesteaders and enforcement? Who gains from drawing our rebel group into open confrontation before we’re prepared?”

  I eyed Cassius harshly. He’d left me contemplating murder once again.

  Before the debate could escalate further, Kelda slapped her hand on her bare leg, the sharp sound cutting through the irritable conversation. “Enough! While you argue about intentions, enforcers are undoubtedly organizing pursuit. We should be preparing defenses, not questioning the one person who’s given us an actual victory.”

  Her outburst silenced both sides momentarily. The medicine woman had reopened the wound, dug out some material, doused it with a homemade antibiotic and started sewing it back up.

  Kelda’s youthful vehemence, combined with her visible injury sustained during the enforcer raid, seemed to move the crowd. Maybe she’d lent moral weight to her position that was difficult to dismiss—or maybe they liked her fine thigh, which was now completely exposed up to her waist.

  Whatever the case, Tormund placed a supportive hand on his daughter’s shoulder. “Kelda speaks sense. We’re going to stop bickering among ourselves and plan a raid against the enemy.” He turned to address the wider gathering. “Our own homestead is lost. Many of you have lost homes as well. But we’ve gained something too—proof that resistance is possible. That the Tyrant’s control isn’t absolute. Let’s carry the fight to him!”

  The crowd nodded, and the discussion shifted from questions of my trustworthiness to planning a counterattack. They’d become refugees and then rebels, their lives transformed in a few desperate days.

  Leaving the circle at the fire, I pondered making an exit. This rebellion was fine and all—but it wasn’t my fight. My mission involved finding Dahl and dealing with the Tyrant directly.

  Kelda soon noticed my retreat, and she followed, hobbling on her injured leg despite the medic’s obvious disapproval. The stitches bled on the white snow between her boots, but she paid no heed.

  “They need a symbol,” she said quietly, joining me at the edge of the gathering. “After years of submission, they need to believe victory is possible. They need you, Tanner.”

  “I have my own concerns,” I told her.

  “Maybe.” She studied my face with those perceptive violet eyes. “But without a heroic leader, without someone to follow into battle—they might all perish in this raid of theirs. Will you help?”

  Her hand was up and grazing my bristly cheek again. She was calling upon our two nights of shared passion. I was a sucker for colonist girls who pulled this kind of string—how did they all seem to know that?

  Her question burned between us, unanswerable in any simple way. The practical part of me recognized the tactical disadvantages of being elevated to heroic status—the limitation of movement, the expectation of leadership, the inevitable disillusionment when human frailty revealed itself. Yet I couldn’t dismiss the transformative effect the canyon ambush had clearly had on these people, shifting their perspective from victims to potential victors. If I was going to take down the Tyrant, could I really do it alone? Maybe I needed them as much as they needed me.

  “You are who you claim to be, aren’t you?” Kelda asked suddenly. “An opponent of the Tyrant, here to help?”

  I met her gaze directly and nodded. “Yes.”

  “But… you’re not a typical a traveler from the remote wilds of Jarl.”

  “No,” I admitted. “Not typical.”

  She nodded, accepting my partial explanation without pressing for details. She was a smart girl, and she sensed I wasn’t going to tell her my full story. “The others will come around. Even Cassius will, eventually—but not if you run off and disappear in the night. He’ll claim you’ve gone to inform the Tyrant. That you were a spy all along.”

  I could almost hear that skinny bastard speaking the words in my mind. She was right, of course. He would use my disappearance to get his way, to reinstitute a paralyzing fear upon these people.

  “What will you do now?” Kelda asked, watching me closely.

  “I’ll see how the Tyrant responds,” I replied honestly. “I suspect it will be with great force.”

  “And you’ll ride to meet his men?”

  I didn’t answer her immediately. “Your leg needs to rest,” I noted, changing the subject. “The medic—she looks concerned.”

  There were now a dozen droplets of blood on the icy ground at her feet. She didn’t seem to care at all. “It’s nothing serious,” she dismissed. “It’ll heal.”

  “Still, rest would be advisable.”

  She laughed, a genuine sound. “So says the man who climbed down a mountain with cracked ribs to fight twelve enforcers with nothing but an axe!”

  “Do as I say, not as I do,” I replied with a slight smile.

  “Too late for that,” she countered. “You and I…”

  She came closer, moving in for a kiss. I was a bit alarmed, not everyone in this village knew we were bed partners. But I didn’t dodge her, and her lips were soft.

  Svensson cleared his throat and approached from where he’d been consulting with other rebel leaders. “Our scouts have returned. They’ve reported movement from Northaven.”

  “Are they coming here?” Kelda asked, her strange eyes wide.

  “Not directly. But this is a significant enforcer patrol. They’ll be tracking your route, following the walker trails in the snow… eventually, they’ll probably come here.”

  “How long?” I asked, immediately shifting to the tactical situation.

  “Day, perhaps two if the weather turns,” Svensson replied. “We’re evacuating this location immediately. We have a secondary camp that’s better fortified, more defensible.”

  “Let me guess: it’s on some frozen mountaintop?”

  He nodded and pointed vaguely in the direction of the massive Matterhorn-looking peak nearby.

  As the camp erupted into organized evacuation activity, Tormund rejoined us. He eyed me and Kelda—no doubt noticing how closely she was standing at my side. Her hands had dug into my outer coat, as if to hold me in place.

  “A new chapter to my family’s life begins,” he said simply. “For better or worse.”

  “For better,” Kelda insisted with conviction. “Whatever comes, we’ll stand against the Tyrant.”

  Her father nodded soberly. Then he looked at me. “The world changed for us when you came to our mountain.”

  The statement required no response.

  As evacuation preparations continued, I found my gaze drawn upward toward the partially visible colony ship beyond the mountain peak. It hung up there like the eye of a devil in Jarl’s orbit. Somewhere aboard that vessel was the key to the Tyrant’s power—the technology, resources, and control systems that enabled his dominance of the surface.

  But how was I to get up there—and not as a helpless prisoner?

  As Jarl’s binary stars climbed higher in the reddish sky, casting that distinctive crimson light across the dismantled camp, I made mental notes of faces, names, capabilities. These people had unexpectedly become assets in what had started as a simple reconnaissance.

  “We’re ready to move out,” Svensson announced at last. “The western scouts report the enforcer pursuit has already reached the canyon where the ambush occurred. They’re tracking methodically, bringing significant firepower.”

  “Then we’d better not be here when they arrive,” Tormund replied, hoisting a pack containing his share of the camp’s supplies.

  As our makeshift caravan formed up to depart, I found myself at its center rather than its periphery—a position I hadn’t sought but couldn’t easily avoid given recent events. The homesteaders looked to me with varying degrees of expectation, their perception colored by the mythology already forming around the canyon encounter.

  Kelda fell into step one pace behind me as we began our march. Her injured leg was now properly bandaged and supported by a walking stick cut from local wood.

  As we moved deeper into Jarl’s wilderness, leaving behind all traces of our presence, I considered her. My mission goals were still my top priorities, but Kelda couldn’t be dismissed. These colonists had endured years of oppression, their resistance hampered not just by material limitations but by the psychological burden of believing opposition was futile. The canyon ambush had shattered that perception, creating an opening where none had existed before.

  The ‘drengr’ identity that had been thrust upon me carried responsibilities I hadn’t anticipated when descending from my shelter the previous evening. Yet it also offered opportunities—cover, access, motivation among potential allies—that could serve the bigger picture’s objectives.

  I decided to stick with the rebels for now—and not just because Kelda was an amazing nighttime companion.

  Chapter 18

  The secondary rebel camp proved more substantial than I was expecting. Unlike the temporary encampment we’d evacuated, this location showed signs of permanent habitation—structures built into the mountainside, camouflaged roofs that blended with the surrounding terrain, even rudimentary defensive positions carved from the rock face.

  Our arrival triggered a flurry of activity as the existing inhabitants helped integrate our expanded group. The wounded were taken to a medical facility tucked into a natural cave deep within the mountain.

  I was stunned by the ingenuity of the hidden base. These people had created a functioning society outside the Tyrant’s control—growing food in concealed greenhouses, maintaining equipment with salvaged parts. They even had a small school for the handful of children among them.

  “This is impressive,” I commented to Svensson as he guided me through the compound.

  “Necessity breeds ingenuity,” he replied. “The Tyrant controls the ship and Northaven, but he can’t watch every mountain, every valley. We’ve carved out our spaces around and between his surveillance.”

  The tour ended at what appeared to be a communal gathering area where the people from Tormund’s group were being welcomed with food and drink. The atmosphere had shifted from the wary vigilance of our escape to something approaching celebration.

  “Word of your victory at the canyon has spread,” Svensson explained, gesturing toward the animated conversations taking place. Someone had made a few jerky seconds of video, recording the fight. The file had spread like wildfire from one device to the next. “These people have heard stories of resistance for years, but seeing enforcers die with their own eyes is something else.”

  The new rebels had already begun sharing their accounts, each retelling more elaborate than the last. The number of enforcers seemed to increase with each version, as did the details of Drengr’s involvement. In one particularly enthusiastic rendering, I’d apparently taken down three walkers single-handedly while wielding the ironwood axe like some mythological weapon.

  “Legends grow quickly on Jarl,” Svensson noted, amusement evident in his tone.

  I suspected Kelda was behind both the video and the boasting, but I said nothing of it.

  As evening approached, the celebration evolved into something more formal. Tables were arranged in the large central cave, food prepared, instruments produced from hidden storage. A proper feast—the first the homesteaders had experienced since the Tyrant’s restrictions had intensified.

  “Tonight, we celebrate,” Tormund declared, raising a mug of what smelled like Jarl’s potent local spirits. “Tomorrow, we plan. But this moment belongs to victory.”

  The gathered rebels and homesteaders cheered in response, their enthusiasm echoing off the cave walls. Someone started a song—a melancholy tune that gradually shifted into something more upbeat as others joined in. The lyrics spoke of resistance, of maintaining hope through dark times, of remembering Earth while building new lives.

  I kept to the periphery, accepting food and drink when offered but avoiding the center of attention. The role thrust upon me by circumstance was one I couldn’t easily shed—but I didn’t want to blow it up any further either.

  “Not one for celebrations?” Kelda appeared beside me, violet eyes reflecting the firelight. Her injured leg had been properly treated, now wrapped in a clean bandage and clearly causing her less discomfort.