Litany of Winter

Two days after the archive, the nine left Kronvaal aboard a northbound military train. By dawn, it was slowing outside Northmark.

Severin woke to the brakes dragging under the carriage and Martin’s boot pressed against his ankle. He pushed it away and sat up, wiping a clear patch in the frost on the window. Northmark’s outer yards slid past in rows of lamps and black roofs. Freight wagons stood three deep beside warehouses. Beyond them, cranes showed against a gray strip of sea.

Neumann was already awake. He took a packet from his coat and dropped it onto the table between the benches. ”Kaltenpost. Fishing town northeast of here. A week ago, three Deep-touched came up onto the working dock before dusk.”

Johann pulled the packet closer. The others leaned in without being told.

”Several civilians were injured, but no one died. We already had a Warden in Northmark on other business, so he reached the town first and kept the creatures at the waterfront until a second Warden came from Bergwacht to assist him. Together they killed all three.”

Neumann opened the packet and turned one page with his thumb.

”Both Wardens were injured, but they’re stable in the temple’s healing wing. The bodies were brought here. We’ve already questioned the witnesses, and they all reported overlapping voices. The Wardens confirmed the same thing. They also reported nausea and loss of balance, with direction becoming difficult to judge.”

Rafael opened the packet. ”What’s the status of the site?”

”Marked Order personnel already did an initial sweep, but the affected section is still closed.” Neumann looked around the carriage. ”Today you’re going to reconstruct what happened and identify anything that remains unresolved. Then give me your recommendation on what can be released.”

”Released to who?” Thomas asked.

”To the people who work there.”

Before anyone asked another question, the train rolled under the station roof.

Northmark was already moving when they stepped down. Porters pushed carts between military wagons and civilian coaches while whistles sounded farther down the platforms. A uniformed official checked Neumann’s papers, then counted the nine behind him before snapping an instruction in Vhaldrik toward the marked exit.

Severin caught enough of it to pull his papers free and move with the others before Martin translated under his breath. The official stamped the packet and waved them through.

Carriages waited outside the station, and stone warehouses soon gave way to lower brick buildings. Beyond the last yards and sheds, the road ran beside the coast. By the time Kaltenpost appeared ahead, the harbor cranes were gone. Fishing boats sat beyond a short breakwater, and most of the waterfront was timber.

The closed section was impossible to miss. Two military policemen stood at the road barrier beneath black-and-red pennants. Another pair guarded the approach to the pier. Nets hung untouched behind them. Several townspeople watched from beyond the cordon while a fisherman argued quietly with a local policeman over access to a boat.

Neumann stopped beside the barrier and held out the incident packet. Rafael took it.

Rafael looked toward the pier, then back at the group. ”Johann, keep the sequence. Martin, move between the groups and keep us connected. Andreas, Anna, Madeleine, take the witnesses. Severin, Thomas, Paul, check the waterfront and the warehouse. If you find anything that changes what we know, bring it back here first.”

No one objected.

The first black stain was under the main pier rail. Someone had scrubbed the boards, but blood remained in the gap between two planks and around the head of an iron bolt. Farther down, one section of railing had been replaced with raw timber. Chalk numbers marked three separate positions along the dock.

Thomas crouched near the broken section and ran two fingers along the new bolts. ”It gave way inward.”

Paul checked the chalk line painted across the lower stairs and stopped beside it. ”Restricted below.”

Severin followed the damage toward shore. Long gouges scored the outer faces of the pilings, deep enough to lift curls of wet wood. The marks changed near the narrow part of the pier. There, boot scars crossed the boards beside a split post. Two dark sprays of blood marked opposite sides of the walkway.

”The first Warden held here,” Thomas said.

Severin looked past him toward the town. The pier narrowed between a storage shed and the water. Three creatures coming off the outer dock would have had to pass the same point.

”Looks like it.”

They did not need to guess at the rest. Johann’s copy of the Warden report put the first body near the shed and the other two farther out after the second Warden arrived.

At the road, Andreas kept the civilian witnesses apart. One fisherman had a healing cut above his eyebrow, while another walked with his left wrist bound. The third sat on an overturned crate with both hands around a mug.

”I saw two of them,” the man with the bandaged wrist said.

The fisherman with the cut shook his head. ”No. There were four.”

”Think carefully. You told the police there were three last week,” Andreas said.

The fisherman spat into the dirt. ”That’s because I was throwing my guts up last week.”

Anna asked where each man had been standing when the singing began. Their answers moved farther apart. One had fallen from the lower ladder after the dock seemed to tilt beneath him. Another ran toward the warehouse because he thought the sound was behind him and struck the wall hard enough to split his brow.

The third remembered two men dragging him away but could not say which direction he had been facing. Anna checked the bound wrist and the healing cut against the Warden notes. Both injuries, along with the nausea, matched the effects already recorded.

Madeleine kept her pencil moving. ”Did any of you see one enter the warehouse?”

None of the three answered at first.

”No,” the fisherman said.

”Did anyone tell you they had?”

No one answered immediately.

”No.”

By midday, the warehouse had taken more of their time than the pier.

Its seaward wall carried two long scratches and one broken shutter. The main door on the landward side had a damaged lock and a split frame. Several sealed crates of imported marine hardware were missing from the inventory.

Paul compared the scratches outside with the damage recorded in the incident packet while Thomas checked the frame. Severin walked the inside wall twice before returning to the door.

The break at the lock kept pulling his attention back.

He crouched beside the broken jamb. The timber had opened in a narrow wedge near the lock. A second mark sat lower down, straight and shallow. Neither looked like the torn wood along the pier.

”What?” Paul asked.

Severin put his thumb beside the lower mark without touching it. ”That was made with something flat.”

Thomas leaned closer. ”Pry bar, maybe.”

”Maybe.” Severin stood and looked across the warehouse floor.

Dust had settled again over most of it, but under the racks the boards were cleaner. Two parallel tracks ran from the empty crate spaces toward the door, faint where boots had crossed them and clearer beneath an overhanging shelf.

He went back outside.

Rafael was with Johann near the barrier when Severin reached them. ”The warehouse door doesn’t match the pier damage,” Severin said. ”Looks like it was forced with a tool, and there are cart tracks inside.”

Rafael glanced toward the building. ”You think someone robbed it during the attack?”

”I think someone forced the door and moved the crates. I don’t know who.”

Rafael called Andreas over, and for the next half hour they pulled the original report apart.

No witness had seen a creature enter the warehouse. Madeleine found the wording in the first local statement: warehouse discovered breached during incident. Johann set that beside the estimated time the civilians had fled the dock.

Martin returned from the perimeter office with the inventory sheet and a police note. The missing crates had come from two racks, while heavier and more valuable machinery had been left behind.

Thomas tapped the paper with one dirty finger. ”They took what they could move fast.”

”We’ll leave that to the police,” Rafael said. ”Let’s focus on the occult part.”

The tide had already turned.

Water slapped higher against the pilings when they went back to the outer pier. The lower landing, dry when they arrived, now took spray across half its boards. Thomas watched it flex through two swells.

”We’re running out of time down there.”

Paul leaned over the rail. A brace below the landing had a pale strip of fresh wood through its dark surface.

”There’s more damage on that one.”

He moved toward the lower stairs, then stopped at the chalk line.

”Are we cleared below?”

Rafael turned to Thomas.

”Not with the water coming up,” Thomas said.

Paul stayed where he was.

Severin looked over the side. From above, the brace could have been clawed or split during the fight. A boat might have struck it instead. The water covered the lower half before the next swell dropped away.

Rafael closed Johann’s notebook. ”Mark it unverified. The lower landing stays closed.”

Neumann had said almost nothing since they arrived. He followed them back to the barrier while Johann read the final sequence aloud and Rafael checked each point against the packet.

When they were finished, Rafael faced him.

”All three Deep-touched are accounted for, and we found no sign of anything active in the areas we checked. The warehouse looks separate, so that goes to the local police. We can reopen the main pier and the warehouse frontage. The lower landing and outer pilings stay closed until marked personnel can inspect them at low tide.”

Neumann looked toward the water. ”Did you find anything alive down there?”

”No.”

”Then why are you keeping it closed?”

”Because we didn’t clear it.”

Neumann waited a moment, then held out his hand for the packet. ”Accepted.”

The change at the perimeter took less than ten minutes. One barrier moved closer to the lower stairs. A military policeman in a black uniform trimmed with red retied the cordon, the Empire’s twin-headed eagle stitched onto both shoulders. A local policeman waved two fishermen toward the cleared side of the pier. Neither thanked the Order. One went straight to his boat and started checking the lines.

Neumann watched the nine pack their notes. ”You lost too much time on that warehouse.”

”We treated the breach as part of the same incident for too long,” Rafael said.

”You did.” Neumann tucked the packet under his arm. ”Next time, test the connection before you waste half your tide proving it.”

The carriage ride back to Northmark was quieter. Martin slept against the window until the wheels hit the first city stones. Salt had dried white across one of Paul’s sleeves, while Johann kept the incident notebook on his knees and checked the cord around it twice.

Night had settled over the station when they returned. Their southbound train waited under a roof full of smoke and yellow lamps. Neumann checked the carriage number against their travel papers, then pointed them toward the rear platform.

”Get your things aboard.”

Severin lifted his bag while Neumann folded the papers and slipped them back into his coat.

”Your training is almost over. No more field exercises before Gravewatch.”