The smoke of the burned village still clung to their cloaks by the time they reached the foothills.

  Two hundred men-at-arms, fifty archers, and Knights of Blackfyre in full war display.

  And Reitz.

  On paper, his retinue was excessive for a bandit suppression mission. On the field, everyone knew where the weight lay. The soldiers were the shield, the eyes, the hands that held the line.

  The real weight rode at the front.

  Reitz Blackfyre in black mail on a heavy warhorse. Cloak snapping. No banner near him—none needed.

  Earl of the Fulmen Marches. Augmenti of the Rex Imperia.

  Ashbringer

  The mountain range ahead rose like broken teeth against the afternoon sky. To the east, beyond those ridges, the land dropped into the Badlands: ravines and shattered stone that belonged to no House and answered to violence.

  The bandits should have stayed there, Reitz thought, eyes tracing the dark cave mouths along the cliff face. The Badlands were chaos, but chaos still respected deterrence.

  The wind shifted. Old smoke reached back from behind them—a reminder of charred beams, collapsed roofs, and shrouded bodies.

  “Column, halt,” Reitz called, raising a gauntleted hand.

  The order rippled back. Mail whispered. Hooves stamped. Shields knocked as men reset their weight—resting their feet without loosening their grip.

  Captain Ashen nudged his horse up to Reitz’s stirrup. Dark hair, streaked with grey. A face cut by old scars. One eye milk-white, the other scanning the terrain with veteran habit.

  “We’re at the outer ridge, my lord,” Ashen reported. “The cave mouths open into the Badlands.” He tipped his chin toward the cliff line where stone split into shadow. “Local scouts say the eastern tunnels run deep. Some connect to the ravines beyond our borders.”

  A perfect rat-hole, Reitz thought. Three hundred men could move through there without showing a banner.

  Caspian flickered through his mind—the skinny boy in ash-streaked rags, blue eyes too old, whispering of auras bright as campfires among the thieves.

  Two Knight-level signatures. For a bandit gang, that was a problem.

  And the timing.

  They struck the day I was called to the Tribunal, Reitz thought, fingers tightening on the reins. Not before. Not after. When the March was headless and the garrisons thin.

  Coincidence was noise. Timing like that was logistics.

  “My lord,” a smoother voice said.

  Sir Allister reined up on Reitz’s other side. Storybook knight: blond hair tied back, straps buckled, shield polished clean with the Blackfyre sigil picked out in crimson. Clean jaw. Composed eyes.

  To the men, an ideal.

  To Reitz, a good sword—reliable, disciplined, deadly.

  Or he had been. Until today.

  “We’re close enough that our men can’t be concealed on any approach,” Allister said. “If they’re watching, they’ve seen our dust for an hour. They won’t risk engaging you in the open, my lord.”

  “Of course,” Reitz said. “Only a fool fights a dragon under the open sky.”

  He studied the cliffs again. The main cave mouth was wide enough for a wagon. Two smaller mouths sat higher up like eye sockets. Pale, layered stone. Fault lines. Old fractures.

  Earth Mages’ ground.

  “Scouts first,” Reitz said. “I’m not walking into a bottleneck blind. Ashen—take your best. Feel out the main cavern. Keep it shallow. If you sense anything above a gutter-flame, you turn around and run.”

  “Yes, my lord.” Ashen saluted, fist to heart.

  “Allister,” Reitz said, “string the archers in a crescent along the slope. Ten-man intervals. Overlapping fields of fire on anything that steps out of those caves. Knights with me in the center. We don’t commit until we know what we’re cutting.”

  “Yes, my lord,” Allister said. “Firing line in ten minutes.”

  Orders spread. The column broke into structured motion. Archers jogged up the scree and tucked behind boulders. Spearmen built a loose shield wall facing the approaches.

  Reitz dismounted and handed the reins to a squire. Gravel crunched under his boots as he walked to a low outcrop for a better angle. From there he watched Ashen lead thirty men toward the main mouth, shields overlapped, wedge tight.

  Reitz kept his aura tight. A broad flare would announce him to any half-decent mage from half a mile.

  Let them assume the Lord sat farther back with the bulk.

  Give them the first move.

  Then take everything.

  “Worried, my lord?” Allister asked, stepping up beside him.

  Reitz snorted. “If I start worrying about bandits, you have my permission to hit me over the head.”

  “Begging your pardon,” Allister said, “this was more than banditry. The village was wiped out. The guards were veterans. There were no survivors among our men.”

  Reitz remembered the corpses. The guards had died in a line, shields up, wounds to the front. They held.

  “Exactly,” Reitz said. “Bandits cut and run. They hit cargo on roads. They don’t stand toe-to-toe with Knights. Yet here we are.”

  He glanced at Allister.

  “Do you trust the boy’s assessment?” he asked. “Caspian.”

  Allister’s mouth set.

  “He’s seven, my lord,” he said. “Trauma can warp perception. I won’t stake tactics on a peasant child’s aura-sense.”

  Reitz’s jaw shifted.

  “I asked if you trust it.”

  Allister hesitated a beat.

  “No, my lord,” he said.

  Reitz looked back to the cave mouths.

  “I do.”

  Allister didn’t argue. He stood with hands folded behind his back—professional patience, polished still.

  Ashen’s wedge reached the mouth.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  A subtle ripple stirred as Ashen expanded his aura—light, like a dog testing the wind.

  “Anything?” Reitz murmured.

  “Nothing alarming,” Allister said, eyes narrowed. “If there are mages, they’re masking well or deeper in.”

  The scouting party disappeared into dark.

  Minutes stretched.

  The sun sank and wind scraped along the ridge, bringing a mineral smell from the Badlands.

  Behind him, the line waited. Men tightened straps, checked fletching, murmured prayers.

  Reitz listened to the small sounds of an army poised for violence.

  Fifteen minutes. Twenty.

  Then steel rang in the depths. Muffled shouts. Close work.

  No elemental detonation. No roar. Just wet, ugly fighting.

  “Sounds like they found them,” Allister said.

  Reitz folded his arms.

  He didn’t like it.

  If it was ordinary thugs, Ashen and two Knights would reap them fast. The noise should have ended clean. Instead it dragged—messy, crowded, too many moving pieces.

  “Archers, ready,” Reitz called. “If they break toward the mouth, feather them.”

  Fifty bows rose.

  The sound shifted—pain cries under deeper bellows. Ashen, barking orders.

  Then it thinned.

  A few men stumbled into daylight, dragging a limping companion. A Knight followed, armor smeared red but intact.

  Nobody fled.

  Relief moved through the line.

  “Captain Ashen was right,” Allister said. “Ragged equipment. Poor discipline. Nothing noble.”

  Reitz watched Ashen trudge up, saluting with a blood-slicked gauntlet.

  “Report,” Reitz said.

  “We flushed them from the first tunnel system, my lord,” Ashen said. Hard breathing, controlled. “About thirty. Leather armor. Rusted blades. They set choke points, but their line broke quick.”

  “Casualties?”

  “Four wounded. None dead.” Ashen nodded toward the injured. “Shallow cuts. They fought like cornered rats. We saw no sign of the Knight-level mana the boy described.”

  Reitz held Ashen’s gaze.

  “None?”

  Ashen shook his head.

  “If stronger mages are here, they weren’t in that cave,” he said. “Or they’re deeper. The network runs east. We hit the first branch only.”

  Reitz tapped a slow rhythm on his bicep.

  Yesterday: slaughtered ten trained veterans.

  Today: died like gutter-thieves.

  He looked up.

  The higher cave mouths sat dark. The ridgeline above them held too still. Birds absent. Loose stone undisturbed.

  “This is wrong,” Reitz said.

  “My lord?” Allister asked.

  “Different force,” Reitz said. “Or the real opponents weren’t in that cave. They’re watching.”

  Allister let out a measured breath.

  “If a Noble House laid this,” he said, “walking deeper into prepared tunnels plays into it. We’ve bloodied expendables. We can withdraw and fortify the border.”

  “Withdraw,” Reitz said.

  The village rose in his mind again.

  “No,” Reitz said.

  He raised his voice.

  “Form line! First spear and shield company, forward. Two Knights in front. We push to the second branch and stop there. If we sense high-ranked mana, we fall back. Ropes on every man. If the mountain comes down, we drag them out if we can.”

  “Aye, my lord!” answered the line.

  Reitz turned to Allister and Ashen.

  “Everyone else holds here. If the cliff starts to move, pull uphill. Don’t try to outrun a landslide on level ground.”

  “Yes, my lord,” Allister said. “I will keep the line intact.”

  Reitz weighed him.

  Seven years. Broken Valley. Frostbite on the Northern Campaign—two fingers gone, and Allister joked about it after.

  Trust came from time and blood.

  Reitz nodded once.

  “Good. Ashen, you’re with me.”

  “Gladly, my lord.”

  They moved.

  The second push ran fifty men. Shields overlapped. Ropes tied at the waist, anchored to stakes in the scree outside. Two Knights on point. Ashen central. Reitz just behind.

  Cool, damp dark swallowed them. Torches flared low, kept out of the eyes.

  Reitz opened his Field—tight and dense, skimming walls and men. Old, dry stone. Quartz veins. No foreign pulses ahead. No flared auras.

  Empty rock.

  They advanced at a crawl. Boots ground gravel. Water dripped deeper in.

  Fifty yards in, the tunnel split: one path sloped down toward the Badlands; the other ran east, parallel to the cliff.

  “Tracks this way,” a man said, pointing to the eastern branch. Scuffed dust. Broken pebbles. Bare footprints.

  Reitz skimmed his Field that way.

  Smooth.

  Too smooth.

  Like a polished lid over a pit.

  “Stop,” he ordered.

  The line locked.

  Two careful steps. Field probing.

  Sculpted stone.

  Earth Magic.

  The ground shuddered.

  “Back!” Reitz barked, mana driving into his legs as he jumped.

  The floor dropped where they had been. Half the line stumbled back, ropes snapping taut and hauling them; the rest scrambled, cursing.

  The collapse stopped shallow—a sinkhole into a lower tunnel. A catch for the fast and careless.

  “They wanted us to rush,” Reitz said. “Chasing ghosts.”

  He had the ropes cut and ordered the retreat.

  “This is enough,” he told Ashen as they backed out, faces kept toward the dark. “They know we’ll enter. That’s what we needed. The real trap will be outside.”

  Ashen grunted. No argument.

  They broke into daylight, blinking.

  “Pull everyone back fifty paces from the cliff,” Reitz called. “Regroup on that ridge. If this is their stage, we step off it.”

  The men moved fast—too fast. Ropes came off. Stakes ripped free. Shields lifted as the formation peeled away.

  Then the mountain moved.

  Vibration in Reitz’s boots. A low hum—like a great beast waking.

  “Hold!” Reitz shouted.

  Too late.

  The cliff above the main mouth shuddered. Cracks laced through pale stone. The cave entrance flowed.

  “The rock—!” someone screamed.

  “Terramancers!” someone else bellowed.

  Stone poured down like a waterfall. Ropes snapped tight as their buried ends crushed, then whipped loose through the air.

  The fifty men still inside—even near the outer passage—vanished behind twenty feet of rock.

  Ashen spat a curse.

  “Pickaxes! Get—”

  “Forget the tunnel!” Reitz roared, senses flaring outward. “Form ranks. Shields up!”

  The second hit came from above.

  Boulders—wagon-sized—tore free and slammed down in a grinding avalanche. The first impact crushed a dozen archers who hadn’t cleared the fall line. Stone fragments tore through armor like shrapnel. Men went down screaming.

  “Raise shields!” Allister shouted along the line, voice ringing clean. “Brace! Brace!”

  Front ranks hunched under shields, building a rough shell. Stones hammered iron rims, split wood, bounced away.

  Reitz drove his aura up into a half-dome of fire over the densest knot of men. Falling rock hit the blaze and broke into glowing rubble. Heat rolled out, searing hair and cloth.

  His core clenched.

  Too much output. Too many bodies.

  And this was only the opener.

  They’re trying to break spacing, he thought. Make us clump.

  “Line, pull back!” he shouted. “Up the slope. Clear the wall!”

  The order ran. The men withdrew step by step, shields still high.

  The third hit came from the treeline.

  “CONTACT!” a soldier screamed.

  Figures burst from sparse pines and scrub—four first, then more behind. Dull grey cloaks. Featureless masks. Movements too synchronized for bandits.

  Assassins. Or mercenary mages.

  “Spears!” Ashen shouted. “Brace!”

  The first four fanned out instead of charging. Palms hit ground.

  The earth bucked.

  A jagged wall erupted between Reitz’s vanguard and the bulk of his force—man-high stone that tore through retreating ranks and stranded men on both sides.

  “Separate them!” one masked figure shouted in a clipped, professional tone. “Front unit only—”

  Reitz answered with flame.

  Fire punched toward the speaker’s face. Stone surged up to catch it, charring black.

  “Fall back to me!” Reitz shouted, voice reinforced by mana until it boomed across the canyon. “If you hear me, rally on the Blackfyre banner!”

  On the far side of the wall, the Blackfyre standard snapped in the heated air—a crimson-thread dragon on black.

  Arrows hissed over the barrier. A few struck grey cloaks and skittered off sudden earth plates that hardened into shields.

  “Shit,” Reitz said grimacing. “More mages.”

  “Milord!” Allister rode up on his warhorse, kept to the rear as ordered. Two Knights flanked him, shields raised, eyes cutting between the cliff and the new enemies. “We have to get you out of here.”

  “We have to relieve the front,” Reitz snapped, pointing at the melee trapped beyond the wall. Grey-cloaked fighters poured from a side ravine, pressing the stranded men.

  “This position is compromised,” Allister said. “If they bring the cliff down in earnest, you die here. Our duty is your life, my lord. Your House. Lord Ezra.”

  Ezra his son, a baby with serious eyes and an impossible mouth.

  One heartbeat.

  Reitz set his teeth.

  “If I retreat while my men are butchered,” he said, “I’m a coward with stolen land. Let go of my reins, Allister.”

  “Please reconsider,” Allister said, grip whitening on the bridle. “This ambush is built to kill Nobles. They sealed the cave. They’re cutting us from the rear. This is assassination, my lord.”

  Heat shimmered around Reitz as his aura rose with temper.

  “Then let them try,” Reitz growled. “I’m not some magistrate. I am—”

  “ASHEN!” someone screamed from the front. “CAPTAIN DOWN!”

  Reitz snapped toward the shout.

  Through a gap in bodies and jagged stone, Ashen staggered with a spike of rock through his thigh. A masked mage advanced, fists wrapped in stone.

  No time.

  Reitz tore his reins free and spurred forward.

  “Guards!” he shouted. “With me. Break that wall!”

  His personal Blackfyre Guard—sixteen men in darker armor, unmarked but for a small red flame at the throat—closed around him in a protective wedge.

  “Milord—” Allister started.

  “You want to protect me?” Reitz roared over his shoulder. “Follow my orders.”

  Mana gathered into Reitz’s right hand. The familiar pressure of the [Flame Sabre] built along his forearm—burning potential waiting for shape.

  Punch a hole. Burn a lane. The Guard pours through. Stabilize the front.

  A hand closed on his side.

  Firm. Precise. Intimate.

  Reitz frowned, breath catching.

  “Allister, what—”

  Cold bit into flesh.

  A blooming chill ran down his flank, then a spreading heat that didn’t belong.

  He looked down.

  A dagger hilt jutted from the gap in his armor, buried deep into his kidney. Dull grey metal. Faint runes glowing along the blade, stuttering his aura.

  Blood spilled hot over his hip, soaked his tunic, dripped onto his boot.

  The [Flame Sabre] guttered out before it formed.

  His horse stumbled as his weight shifted.

  Reitz stared at the hand on the hilt.

  Sir Allister’s hand.

  Reitz lifted his gaze.

  Cold calculation remained on Allister—the look of a man who had already spent his guilt and now only had a task.

  “Sir… Allister…?” Reitz rasped, blood rising in his throat. “Why?”