Nyssa found him where he kept his maps, where the smell of smoke and leather lived in the corners. Gonzalo had been awake, poring over lines, tracing rivers like a man who tried to possess the land with his fingers. He looked up when she came in, tall, squared, the kind of man who had no trouble making the world small by squeezing it between his hands.
She closed the door quietly and stood for a breath, hands clenched at her side. The healer's face was pale in the lamplight. She had not come for strategy. She had come with a single thing heavy and sharp: a plea.
"Alpha," she said, and the word trembled against the lintel. "If you will only hear me—"
Gonzalo did not rise. His eyes moved to her with the patience of a man who listens because he allows it, not because he is moved by it. "Nyssa," he said. "This is not the hour for women's petitions. Vanya manages the women. We have the rogues to close on. Speak quickly."
She stepped forward then, the healer's gait small but determined. "It is Liora and Elira. You must..." Her voice broke once. "You must set them free. Please, Alpha. I beg you. They are not enemies. They are not rogues. They are beaten down and bound. Elira will not survive what Vanya plans. Liora is a woman of strength. Let her stand with you in the field. She will fight."
Gonzalo's jaw tightened. He pushed a stray map aside, dismissing the world like a thing that could be reordered. "The Luna handles such matters," he said. The sentence was a flat wall. "Politics of the court are Vanya's. I have no time for—"
"For mercy?" Nyssa snapped, quicker than she'd meant. Her hands found each other again and she pressed them together as if gathering courage like a stone. "For common sense?" She paused, the words catching on the undercurrent she could not make a crown for. "Alpha, if we are fighting tonight, if the rogues break the line, Liora can help. We need every blade. Even Vanya's cruelty does not make Liora useless."
He watched her then with the coolness of someone measuring currency. "You come to me and speak of blades as though they are currency to be spent." There was something like impatience in his voice. "Nyssa, you know the rules. Vanya takes what she will. You heal. You bind. You do not meddle in the matter of punishments."
"My hands are not made only for binding," she said loud enough that the maps fluttered. "I've delivered more than babies. I have patched men who bled to the hilt. Let Liora fight. Let her wear her cloak. If she turns the tide, what difference is it that Vanya's orders are bruised? You will keep your kingdom."
Gonzalo held her gaze for a long moment. Then he shook his head, a slow, weary movement. "We have plans. I have plans. You speak as though a woman's past is of no account. Vanya's will entails consequences. We cannot be seen to countermand her on the eve of war."
Nyssa's mouth formed a protest that sank before it left. She left the tent with the taste of iron on her tongue and the world pulling at the seams beneath her feet. She understood the calculus of power; she had survived it by learning when to use her soft voice and when to keep her hands busy. But she did not leave empty. She carried the plea like a tinderbox and hoped it might catch.
Night fell soon after, and it came with a quiet that was not peace. The moon rode low, fat with a rumor of blood. The wind smelled of change, wet turf, smoke, the metallic whine of sharpening steel. The camp lit torches in neat lines and men checked armor like liturgy.
The Blood Moon rogues came on time where they were not expected.
Their attack was not the loud charge of some proud force. It was a ripple at first, scouts slipping shadow to shadow, fires flaring in the wrong place, a scream that might have been a warning until it was not. Then the sky filled with the sound of wolves and men moving as one. The rogues hit soft points: supply lines, outer watch posts, stables. They moved like a blade finding an opening, not an army trying to smash a gate.
Gonzalo's camp reeled. The first volley scattered the outer ranks. Men fell and rose in a scramble that smelled of pine and iron. Gonzalo found himself unready in the way a man whose eyes had been on maps could be unready. He barked orders, sharp, precise but the rogues had already threaded themselves into their nerves.
The beta, a heavy shouldered wolf with both scars and something like anxiety in his eyes, moved to Gonzalo's side. "Alpha," he said between shouts, "we did not expect them from the east. They've lit the ridge. Men are cut loose. We are losing the line."
Gonzalo's jaw worked. "Hold," he said. But the voice had small fissures in it. Men collided. The rogues had a feral rhythm and their blows carried the dark of exile. Angles born of hunger and lawlessness. They struck at torch bearers, at the men who tried to hold spears in the mud. In the confusion a pack of rogues scaled a low palisade and went through stores. A stable burned.
The beat of the battle swallowed speech. Metal rang. A cry split the night and then another. Men's armor flashed and then was dark. The rogues did not come for trophies only. They came to carve a ruin, to make the Alpha's authority feel thin as cloth.
The beta saw it in a way the Alpha must have missed, a backward edge, a notch where a different hand might force a new path. He came up close and gripped Gonzalo's arm hard enough that it hurt. "Release Liora," he said, blunt and quick. "Give her the cloak. She is bound, yes but she can fight. She will turn like a spear. The pack needs her now, Alpha. Vanya's orders be damned. If we falter, the rogues will take the hold and we lose more than honor."
Gonzalo looked at him then like a man who had been given a mirror he did not want to see. For one shimmering heartbeat he remembered Nyssa's words in the lamplight, the healer's trembling plea. But pride is its own strategy. "No," he said, first like an anchor. "We cannot—" He cut himself off as a scream tore across the field and a man he had trained for a season went under a rogue's blade.
The line teetered. The beta rapped him again with the blunt argument of survival. "If we do not act fast, we will be crushed. Release her. Send men to the tree. If she fights with us, we may yet hold."
Gonzalo's hands clenched into fists. He smelled smoke and blood and the taste of iron rising behind his teeth. He was a man who had held command by a combination of force and delay. But commanders must unlearn delay when the sky is falling. He opened his mouth and the word came out flat. "Fetch her," he ordered. The command was small and sudden as a lightning strike. "And give her cloak. Now."
It was enough to move the night. Runners dashed. Orders flew like sparks. Men who had been tasked with the unthinkable walked fast with the ledger of authority in hand. Some snarled that the Luna would burn their names for this choice, others did not care as they ran because men in war le
arn to answer to what saves flesh, not pride.