Chapter 61-long (Patreon)

Hale's boots hit dirt in the same rhythm they'd been hitting it for hours.

Forty-five minutes at a run. Fifteen to walk. Forty-five more. The cohort stretched behind him in a ragged column, armor clanking, breath rasping, but no one fell out and no one complained. They knew the math as well as he did. Every hour of delay was another hour Henri had to regroup, another hour the trap stayed open.

His thighs burned. His lungs pulled air that tasted like dust and old sweat. The wound on his forearm from the nest assault had scabbed over wrong, and every swing of his arm cracked it fresh. He ignored it. He'd ignored worse.

The sun had dropped below the treeline an hour ago, painting the sky in reds and oranges that were fading to purple. They'd been running since dawn, with only the brief rests to keep the men from dropping. Behind them, somewhere on the road, the wounded and the supply wagons crawled along with a rear guard. They'd catch up eventually. Or they wouldn't.

Parker kept pace to his left, the shield strapped to what remained of his arm bouncing with each stride. The man hadn't said a word about it since the healers had finished their work. Just adapted. Figured out how to buckle armor one-handed, how to grip a sword without the counterbalance he'd spent twenty years relying on. Hale had watched him practice during rest breaks, working through the movements with grim focus.

Garrick appeared from the treeline ahead.

Hale raised a fist and the column shuddered to a halt behind him. Men bent over, hands on knees, pulling air through open mouths. Someone retched quietly in the back ranks.

The scout approached at an easy lope, barely winded, which was either impressive or infuriating, depending on how Hale felt about him at any given moment. Right now, it was leaning toward infuriating.

"Report," Hale said between breaths.

Garrick's face was unreadable in the fading light. "It's not a village."

"What?"

"It's a town. They upgraded. Solid palisade, maybe twelve feet, looks fresh-built. Lord's hall sits on a hill in the center. The whole thing is lit up like they're expecting company."

Hale dragged a hand down his face, feeling the grit of the road scrape against his palm. Of course it wasn't a village. Nothing on this campaign had been what they expected. Why would this be any different?

"Garrison?"

"Hard to say. Less than I'd expect for a town this size, but more than we wanted. The quality looked mixed—some professional, some militia. They've got sentries in the woodland approaches, positioned well enough that someone who knows what they're doing set them up."

Parker spat into the dirt. "So we've run all day to assault a defended town at night with exhausted troops."

"Looks like."

"Wonderful."

Hale straightened and looked back at the column. The Prime Century stood at the front, his best troops, and even they looked hollowed out by the day's march. Behind them, the rest of the cohort sagged in the gathering darkness. These men had fought through a goblin nest, crossed a river, and run for sixteen hours. Now he was going to ask them to storm walls.

He turned back to Garrick. "How long to reach it?"

"Two hours at a walk. Less if you want to push."

"And the sentries?"

"Give me until midnight. I'll have every position marked and assigned. Three scouts to each sentry—simultaneous kills on your signal. They won't raise the alarm."

Hale rubbed the stubble on his cheek. Two hours to rest. Another hour or two for Garrick to work. Then the assault. His men would have maybe three hours off their feet before he sent them at the walls.

It would have to be enough.

"Get it done," he said. "Parker, with me. We've got planning to do."

The map was scratched into dirt by torchlight, a rough oval for the palisade, a circle for the hill, radiating lines for the approaches Garrick had identified.

Hale crouched over it with Parker and two tribunes, their faces shadowed and hollowed by the flickering light. Around them, the cohort had settled into a cold camp—no fires, no hot food, just men collapsing where they stood and eating whatever they had in their packs.

"The sentries are here, here, and here." Hale marked positions with the point of his knife. "Garrick takes them all at once. The instant they're down, the knights move."

Parker studied the crude map with narrowed eyes. "How high did he say the walls were?"

"Twelve feet. Fresh wood."

"Ladders?"

"We didn't bring any. Didn't expect to need them."

Parker grunted, the sound carrying a weight of professional disapproval. "So how do we get up?"

"Knives." Hale pulled his own blade, the edge shimmering faintly with channeled mana. "Drive them into the wood, climb that way. It's not fast, but it works."

"Done it before?"

"Once. Training exercise. Hale rubbed at a scar on his palm without thinking. "The wall was shorter."

One of the centurions—Varus, a stocky man with a beard that had grown wild during the campaign—leaned forward. "What about archer support?"

"Scouts will cover the approach. Three arrows per guard on the walls, loosed together. By the time the knights reach the palisade, there shouldn't be anyone left to drop things on their heads."

"Should."

"If there is, that's what helmets are for."

Varus didn't look convinced, but he didn't argue either. They were past the point where anyone argued. The orders were the orders. They'd either work or they wouldn't.

Parker traced a finger along the line from the wall to the small square Hale had marked near the gate. "The gatehouse."

"That's the objective. Get inside, hold it, get the gate open. Once we're through, we drive straight for the stele." Hale tapped the hill at the center of the rough map. "Fast as we can move in formation. We take that, we take the town."

"And if they've got it heavily defended?"

"Then we'll find out what our boys are made of." Hale straightened, his knees popping as he rose. "We're not here to burn the place down. Lord Harold wants the stele intact, wants the town functional. We offer terms once we've got leverage. But first, we need the leverage."

Parker nodded slowly, his good hand resting on the pommel of his sword. The other arm hung at his side, the shield's straps digging into what the potions had left him.

"The knights will take the wall," he said. "I'll lead them."

Hale studied him. "You sure?"

"I can climb. Might need a hand at the top, but I can climb." Parker's jaw tightened. "And someone needs to coordinate once we're inside. Might as well be me."

There was something in his voice—not pride exactly, but close to it. The refusal to be diminished. Hale understood it. Respected it.

"Alright. You take the wall, get the gate open. I'll bring the cohort through."

He looked down at the map one last time, memorizing the lines, the distances, the timing. Then he scuffed it out with his boot.

"Get what rest you can," he said. "We move at midnight."

The hours crawled.

Hale walked the lines, stepping over sleeping men, checking weapons and armor and the small things that could mean the difference between success and disaster. A loose strap here. A notched blade there. A legionary whose breathing came too fast, nerves getting the better of him—Hale stopped and talked to him in low tones until the man's shoulders came down from around his ears.

The moon rose, a pale sliver behind scattered clouds. Somewhere in the darkness, Garrick and his scouts were moving through the woodland, finding the sentries, marking them for death.

Hale found himself at the edge of the camp, staring toward where the town lay hidden by the trees. Two hours away. Maybe less now. His men would cover that ground in the dark, silent as they could manage, and then the killing would start.

He thought about Harold's orders, delivered in that measured way the Lord had when he was thinking three moves ahead. Take the settlement. Secure the stele. Offer terms if you can—I want the people, not the ruins.

Convert, don't destroy. That was the doctrine. Hale understood it, even agreed with it. Dead villages didn't pay taxes or grow crops or send soldiers when you needed them. But understanding didn't make the execution any easier.

They were going to kill people tonight. Guards who were just doing their jobs, watching walls, protecting their homes. And then, if everything went right, Hale would stand in front of whoever ran this place and explain that they belonged to Lord Harold now.

Welcome to Gravesend, he thought. Where the wars never stop and the bodies stack up, and the best you can hope for is ending up on the winning side.

Garrick materialized from the darkness.

Hale didn't startle—he'd learned not to, over months of the man appearing like a ghost whenever he felt like it—but his hand did drift toward his sword before he caught himself.

"It's done," Garrick said. "Every sentry marked. We've got clean sight lines on all of them. Three arrows each, loosed on your signal. They won't know what hit them."

"The wall guards?"

"Same story. They're rotating, but the timing's predictable. We take the sentries, the scouts pivot to cover the walls, the knights go up." Garrick paused. "It's as good as it's going to get."

"That's not exactly comforting."

"Wasn't meant to be." The scout's teeth flashed in the darkness, something that might have been a smile. "You want comfort, you should've stayed home."

Hale snorted. "Wake the cohort. We move in ten."

They were still miles out when Hale gave the order.

"Do it," he said.

Garrick nodded once, then vanished into the darkness with three of his scouts. The rest of the cohort settled into a cold halt, men sinking to their haunches or leaning against trees, grateful for even a few minutes off their feet. No one spoke. No one needed to.

Hale stood at the edge of the column and waited.

The woodland sentries were spread across a network of positions—Garrick had mapped them during the earlier reconnaissance, marking each one for elimination. Some were paired, some alone, all of them watching the approaches for exactly the kind of force that was now crouched in the darkness a few miles away. They had to die quietly and they had to die together, or the alarm would reach the town before the cohort could.

Time stretched. The moon crept higher. Somewhere in the darkness, men were dying without ever knowing why.

Garrick reappeared an hour later, materializing from the shadows like he'd never left.

"Done," he said. "All of them. Route's clear to the treeline."

Hale pushed himself off the tree he'd been leaning against. His legs protested—they'd been protesting for hours—but he ignored them.

"Get the men up. We move."

They reached the edge of the woodland as the moon began its descent toward the horizon.

The palisade rose before them, maybe three hundred yards of open ground separating the treeline from the walls. Torchlight flickered along the wall walk, casting pools of orange light that made the darkness between them seem deeper. Hale could see guards moving up there—silhouettes against the glow, their movements professional and regular.

He raised his fist and the column halted, four hundred men going still among the trees.

Garrick appeared at his elbow. "Give my boys some time to get into position. The wall guards are too far for clean shots from here—we need to be closer, and we need angles."

"How long?"

"Couple hours, maybe. They've got to creep, not walk. One snapped twig and this whole thing goes loud."

Hale looked at the walls, at the guards pacing their rounds, at the town beyond with its lit windows and sleeping population. Two more hours of waiting. Two more hours for something to go wrong.

"Do it," he said. "Signal?"

"One wave of a torch. We'll see it." Garrick's teeth flashed in the darkness. "After that, anyone who sticks their head above that wall is gonna have a real bad night."

He slipped away, taking a dozen scouts with him. The rest stayed with the cohort, arrows nocked and ready for the fighting to come.

Hale found a tree to lean against and settled in to wait.

The wait stretched longer than it should have.

Hale watched the guards on the walls, tracking their patterns, counting their rotations. Two at the gatehouse, swapping position every few minutes. Three more spread along the southern stretch, their movements synchronized in a way that spoke of professional training. Whoever commanded this garrison knew what they were doing.

It wouldn't save them.

Parker crouched nearby, his knights gathered in loose clusters among the trees. They'd checked their weapons, tested their grips, gone through the silent rituals that soldiers used to prepare themselves for violence. Now they just waited, their faces hard and focused in the faint moonlight.

"Helluva thing," Parker said quietly. "Running all day, then sitting on our asses for hours."

"Beats running straight at the walls."

"Does it?" Parker flexed his maimed arm, the shield strapped to the stump shifting slightly. "I'm starting to cramp up. Another hour of this and I won't be able to climb worth a damn."

"Then stretch."

Parker snorted but didn't argue. He began working through a series of movements, slow and controlled, loosening muscles that had tightened during the long wait. Around him, other knights did the same.

Hale kept his eyes on the walls.

The torch waved once, somewhere in the darkness to the left, from the tribune responsible for the signal.

Hale almost missed it—a flicker of orange against the black, there and gone in a heartbeat. But Garrick's scouts had seen it, and that was what mattered.

Arrows whispered out of the night.

The first guard on the wall staggered and fell, three shafts buried in his chest before he could draw breath to scream. The second dropped a heartbeat later, then the third. Along the southern stretch, more bodies crumpled—the scouts had positioned themselves for overlapping fields of fire, and they weren't missing.

"Go," Hale said.

Parker was already moving.

The knights broke from the treeline at a dead sprint, armor clanking, boots pounding the earth. Three hundred yards of open ground, and every step of it felt like a mile. Hale watched them run, watched the walls for any sign of response—

A head appeared above the palisade. An arrow took it before the man could shout.

Another guard stumbled onto the wall walk, drawn by the sound of falling bodies. Two arrows caught him in the throat, and he went down gurgling.

The scouts were good. Garrick had trained them well.

Parker reached the wall first, his sword already drawn, the mana-sharpened blade trailing faint light in the darkness. He drove it into the wood at chest height, gripped the hilt with his good hand, and pulled himself up. A knight appeared at his maimed side without being asked, boosting him from below, and then Parker was climbing—blade, grip, pull, braced from below, blade again—his movements awkward but relentless.

More knights hit the wall, driving their own blades into the palisade, beginning the ugly work of the ascent. Above them, the scouts kept firing, putting arrows into any defender who dared show themselves on the wall walk.

Somewhere in the town, a bell began to ring.

Too late, Hale thought. You're already dead. You just don't know it yet.

He drew his sword and started forward, the cohort rising behind him.

The wall walk was chaos.

Parker crested the palisade and immediately had to parry a spear thrust aimed at his face. He knocked it aside, stepped inside the guard's reach, and put his blade through the man's throat before the poor bastard could recover. The body hadn't finished falling before another defender came at him, this one with a sword and the wild eyes of someone who knew they were losing.

Parker killed him too.

More knights were pulling themselves over the wall now, adding their blades to the fight. The defenders—a mix of what looked like professional soldiers and militia in mismatched armor—fell back toward the gatehouse, trying to form a line, but there weren't enough of them and they were facing men who'd trained for this.

"Gatehouse!" Parker shouted. "Push to the gatehouse!"

The knights surged forward, a wedge of steel and violence driving along the wall walk. Arrows still hissed from the darkness below—the scouts had repositioned, finding new angles, picking off any defender who showed themselves above the palisade.

Parker led with his shield, using it to catch blades and shove men off balance, his sword flickering out in short, economical thrusts that didn't require the follow-through his missing hand made impossible. He'd adapted. He'd had to. The alternative was to die, and Parker wasn't interested in dying tonight.

The gatehouse loomed ahead, a small timber structure built over the main gate, arrow slits facing outward. Men were crowded into it—he could see movement through the gaps—and they'd have to dig them out one by one.

"I need three with me," he called. "The rest hold the wall."

A knight appeared at his side—young, barely any beard, but his eyes were steady. "We're with you, Primus."

Parker nodded and went in.

The gatehouse fight was brutal and close.

The space was too cramped for proper swordwork, so it became something uglier—daggers and elbows and men grappling in the dark. Parker took a cut to his thigh in the first seconds, then another across his ribs, but he kept pushing forward because stopping meant dying.

He got his blade into one man's gut, ripped it free, drove his shield boss into another's face and felt something crunch. The knight beside him went down with a spear through his shoulder, screaming, and Parker stepped over him to put steel through the man who'd done it. Mana empowered their every movement.

Blood made the floor slick. The air stank of copper and sweat and bowel. Someone was praying in a language Parker didn't recognize, the words breaking into a gurgle as a blade found their throat.

And then, suddenly, there was no one left to kill.

Parker stood in the red ruin of the gatehouse, his chest heaving, his sword dripping. Two of his knights were down—alive, by the sounds of their groaning, but out of the fight. The third was wiping his blade on a dead man's tunic with shaking hands.

"The bar," Parker said. "Get the bar."

They lifted it together, the heavy timber beam that held the gate closed, and shoved it aside. Parker gripped the iron ring and pulled, and the gate swung outward into the night.

He turned back to the two knights on the ground, already reaching for the healing potions at his belt—but both men were tucking empty vials back into their pouches, grimacing as the magic did its work. The one with the shoulder wound gave Parker a pained thumbs up with his good arm.

"Didn't need you anyway," he managed through gritted teeth.

"Clearly." Parker clapped him on his good shoulder. "Stay down until that sets."

Hale was waiting outside with the cohort at his back.

"Took you long enough," Hale said.

"The hospitality was better than expected." Parker stepped aside, his legs threatening to buckle. "All yours, Captain."

Hale nodded and drew his sword. Behind him, four hundred men began to move.

"For the Landing," he said, and led them through.

The town fought. It didn't have a choice.

But the outcome was never in doubt.

Hale led the cohort up the main street toward the hill at the center, formations tight despite the chaos around them. Defenders appeared from side streets, from buildings, from the shadows between houses—and the legionaries cut them down with mechanical efficiency. Shield. Thrust. Step. Shield. Thrust. Step. The rhythm of violence that Hale had drilled into them until it was reflex.

Resistance crumbled as they advanced. The town's garrison—whatever remained of it—couldn't match the cohort's discipline, couldn't slow the armored tide rolling toward their lord's hall. Some threw down their weapons and ran. Others stood their ground and died.

Hale stepped over bodies and didn't count them.

The lord's hall rose on the hill ahead, a wooden structure larger than the buildings around it, torches blazing at its entrance. And there, at the base of the hill, the stele stood—a pillar of pale stone that pulsed with faint light, the heart of the town's existence.

A group of guards had formed up around it. Maybe thirty, better equipped than the rest, their formation disciplined. These were the elite, Hale realized. The best they had left.

"Century halt," he called. "Shields up."

The cohort crashed to a stop, the front rank raising their shields into a wall. Behind them, the rest of the formation stacked tight, javelins ready.

Hale stepped forward, alone, until he stood a dozen paces from the enemy line.

"You've lost," he said. It wasn't gloating—just fact. "Your walls are taken. Your gate is open. My men are in your streets. This fight is over."

No one answered. The guards stared at him from behind their shields, their faces hard with the kind of desperate resolve that got men killed.

"I don't want to slaughter you," Hale continued. "Believe it or not, I'm not here for that. Drop your weapons and step aside. Let me speak with your lord."

Silence. Then, from behind the guards, a voice.

"Let him through."

The guards hesitated. Then, slowly, their line parted.

A woman stood at the base of the stele, her hand resting on its surface. She was smaller than Hale had expected—slight build, dark hair pulled back from features that marked her as Japanese or something close to it. Her clothes were rough-spun like everyone else's in Gravesend, but cut with a precision that spoke of care, and she wore them like they were finery. Her posture was utterly composed despite the blood and chaos around her.

She studied him the way someone might study an interesting insect. Then she bowed—a small, precise movement from the waist, formal even now.

"You command these soldiers," she said, straightening. Her voice was quiet, precise, each word placed with care.

"I do."

"And who do you serve?"

"Lord Harold of the Landing."

Something flickered behind her eyes—recognition, maybe, or calculation. "The potion lord."

"Some call him that."

She looked past him to the cohort, to the bodies in the streets, to the smoke beginning to rise from somewhere near the walls. When her gaze returned to Hale, something had shifted in it.

"I am Lady Aiko. This is my town." She paused. "Was my town, perhaps."

"That depends on what happens in the next few minutes, my Lady."

Lady Aiko had not expected to die tonight.

She had expected many things—another report from Sato, perhaps word of Henri's progress toward Haven, the quiet tedium of managing a town while her best soldiers fought someone else's war. She had not expected to wake to alarm bells and fire, to watch her walls fall in the span of minutes, to stand at her stele while foreign soldiers filled her streets.

But here she was.

The man before her was not what she had expected either. She had heard about Harold's forces—brutal conquerors, monsters, the enemy of everything Arjun was building. This captain looked like a soldier. Tired, blood-spattered, professional. His eyes held no cruelty, only the flat assessment of a man doing a job.

"You took my town very efficiently," she said.

"We've had practice."

"I noticed." She let her hand fall from the stele. "You said you don't want to slaughter my people. Is that true?"

"Lord Harold's standing orders are to convert, not destroy. We want the town functional. The stele intact. The people..." He gestured vaguely. "Cooperative."

"And if I'm not cooperative?"

The captain's expression didn't change. "Then things get uglier than they need to be. But I'd rather they didn't."

Lady Aiko considered him. Behind him, his soldiers stood in perfect formation, shields raised, javelins ready. Her own guards had lowered their weapons at her command, but they watched the exchange with the desperate hope of men whose lives hung on her words.

She thought about Arjun. About the day he'd appeared at her walls with his new weapon, his demands, his ultimatum. Swear fealty or watch your town burn. She'd chosen survival then. Pragmatism. The coward's choice, some would say, but her people had lived.

Now another army stood at her stele, and she faced the same decision.

"I'm sworn to Lord Arjun," she said carefully. "My oath binds me to support him in all things."

The captain's eyes narrowed slightly. "Arjun. You're part of the coalition."

"I was not given much choice in the matter."

"Most people aren't." He paused, and she saw something shift behind his expression—calculation, the recognition of opportunity. "Your troops. The ones with Arjun. Where are they now?"

"With Henri's army. Marching on a village called Haven, last I heard." She tilted her head. "Why?"

The captain didn't answer immediately. He stood very still, and she could almost see him working through the implications. Then his mouth curved—not quite a smile, but something close.

"Two hundred soldiers?"

"Approximately."

"Under whose command?"

"Commander Sato. My best."

"And if you ordered them to stand down?"

Lady Aiko's breath caught. She understood now. This wasn't just about her town—this was about removing a piece from a much larger board. Two hundred elite soldiers, pulled from Henri's army at a critical moment.

"I..." She stopped herself. Considered the question properly.

Her oath to Arjun. Support him in all things. But she'd never sworn to fight to the death for him. Never sworn to sacrifice her lordship, her stele, her people. And right now, all of those things were very much at risk.

"I swore to support Arjun," she said slowly, working through the logic aloud. "But I never swore to die for him. And I am..." She glanced at the soldiers surrounding the stele. "...in considerable danger of dying, aren't I?"

"Your town is taken. Your stele is surrounded. If you force us to destroy it, you lose your lordship entirely. So, yes, you are very much in danger of dying." The captain's voice was matter-of-fact. "I'd rather not do that. Lord Harold wants allies, not refugees."

"Lord Harold." She tasted the name. "The potion lord. The one Arjun says is a tyrant and a monster."

"I’m sure Arjun says a lot of things," Harold replied dryly. “Some of them may even be true.”

"Mm." Lady Aiko looked at the stele, at the pale light pulsing within it. Her lordship. Her people's future. Everything she'd built since arriving in this terrible new world.

"If I surrender," she said, "if I order Sato to stand down... what happens to my town?"

"You keep it. Under Lord Harold's authority, but you keep it. Your people live. Your stele stays intact." The captain shrugged. "Better terms than Arjun gave you, I expect."

Better terms. Yes, she thought. Much better. Arjun had given her a choice between submission and annihilation. This man—this captain of the potion lord—was offering her a way out that let her keep something.

She thought about the oath. Arjun had forced it from her with spears at her walls. She'd said the words because she had to, not because she meant them. And the oath bound her to support him in all things, yes—but what did support mean when her life was threatened? When her lordship was at stake?

The oath never required her death. She'd never sworn to sacrifice everything.

If she surrendered now, if she ordered her troops to stand down, she wasn't betraying Arjun. She was simply... choosing to survive. The oath couldn't demand more than that. It had never demanded more than that.

She waited for the system to punish her. For some invisible force to stop her, to remind her of her obligations, to enforce the words she'd spoken under duress.

Nothing happened.

Something loosened in her chest. Relief, maybe. Or just the absence of the weight she'd been carrying since the day Arjun arrived.

"I will need to send a forum message," she said. "To Commander Sato."

The captain nodded. "We can arrange that."

"And I will need assurances. For my people. For my guards." She looked at the men who'd fought for her, the men who'd surrendered on her command. "They followed my orders. They shouldn't suffer for that."

"No one's going to suffer who doesn't force us to make them." The captain's voice was tired but sincere. "We're not here to punish people for defending their home. We're here to take the town and move on."

Lady Aiko studied him for a long moment. Then she inclined her head—a small gesture, but significant.

"Very well, Captain..."

"Hale."

"Captain Hale." She tested the name, filed it away. "I surrender my town to Lord Harold of the Landing. And I will order Commander Sato to stand down." A pause. "I trust your lord will be more... reasonable than my last one."

Hale's mouth twitched. "He's got his moments."

The dawn came slowly, gray light seeping over the walls like water filling a basin.

Hale leaned against the palisade near the gate, watching his men secure the town. Legionaries moved through the streets in pairs, collecting weapons, tending wounded, marking buildings for requisition. The violence was over. Now came the ugly work of occupation.

Lady Aiko had retired to her hall to compose her message to Sato. Two of Hale's men stood guard outside—not quite prisoners, not quite hosts. The relationship would take time to define.

Parker appeared at his shoulder, limping slightly, a fresh bandage wrapped around his thigh as the healing potion worked on him.

"Casualties?"

"Eight wounded, three serious. No deaths." Parker shook his head. "Could have been worse."

"Could have been better."

"Could always be better." The knight commander leaned against the wall beside him, taking the weight off his injured leg. "The Lady's people?"

"Thirty-two dead, best I can count. Maybe twice that wounded." Hale watched a pair of legionaries carry a body toward the growing pile near the gatehouse. "They fought hard. Just... not hard enough."

"They didn't have a chance and they knew it. That's a special kind of brave."

Hale grunted. He didn't disagree.

They stood in silence for a while, watching the town come to terms with its new reality. Somewhere, a child was crying—the sound drifting over the rooftops, lost and frightened. Somewhere else, a woman was shouting at a legionary, her voice sharp with fury. The legionary just stood there and took it. That was the job.

"Two hundred soldiers," Parker said eventually. "That's what she's got with Henri?"

"So she says."

"And she's going to pull them out? Just like that?"

"The oath she swore to Arjun didn't include dying for him. Her words." Hale scratched at the stubble on his jaw. "I believe her. She was forced into it. She's been looking for a way out."

"And now we've given her one."

"Now we've given her one."

Parker was quiet for a moment. Then he laughed—a short, tired sound. "Harold's going to love this. He sends us to take a village and we hand him an entire town plus two hundred soldiers pulled from the enemy's ranks."

"We haven't handed him anything yet. The message still has to reach Sato. Sato still has to obey. And we still have to march south and actually close the trap." Hale pushed himself off the wall, feeling every bruise and cut the night had given him. "Get the men fed. Real food—find the kitchens, requisition whatever they've got. Four hours of rest, then we move."

"South?"

"South. To Arjun's village before they can prepare for us."

Parker nodded and limped away to give the orders.

Hale stayed where he was, watching the sun climb higher. Somewhere nearby, he could smell cookfires starting—his men had found the kitchens, or built their own, and the first hot meal in days would be coming soon. The cohort had earned it. They'd run all day, fought all night, and now they'd rest for a few hours before doing it all again.

His legs ached. His arms ached. The wound on his forearm had cracked open again at some point during the assault, and dried blood crusted the inside of his vambrace. He needed food and sleep and probably a healing potion, but what he had was four hours and whatever the cooks could scrape together.

It would have to be enough. It always had to be enough.

He found a spot against the wall where the morning sun hit warm, and let himself slide down until he was sitting in the dirt. His sword lay across his knees. His eyes stayed open, watching the town settle into occupation, but his body was already shutting down—the deep exhaustion of a man who'd pushed past every limit and was now paying the price.

Not bad for a night's work, he thought. Not bad at all.

Four hours. Then south.

He was asleep before the smell of cooking meat reached him.