Aldric was in a good mood.

He sat at the head of the council table with his advisors and Bravar beside him, and the mood in the room was lighter than it had been in weeks. The barracks situation: the deaths, the invisible illness, the nights of full wakefulness had been difficult.

He wouldn’t pretend otherwise. Nearly five hundred knights lost to something they still didn’t fully understand was not a trivial matter.

They found a figure but that figure had not retuned since. He was still on the watch though, and he hoped he found the person soon.

But the Percvale operation had gone exactly as planned. Houses had been burnt, the farmland destroyed and the livestock killed. A message delivered clearly and without ambiguity.

The surviving knights of Percvale had watched and done nothing, because there was nothing they could do.

"Three more days," Aldric said. "Then I send another two hundred with a final letter. Sign the transfer or we come back and finish it."

"They’ll sign," one of his advisors said. "They have nothing left to fight with."

"They had nothing to fight with before," Bravar said. "They still refused."

"Because the Baron is stubborn," Aldric said. "Stubborn and young and convinced that stubbornness is the same thing as strength." He leaned back. "I thought he had something. When I met him. He was this young and direct young man, I thought he might surprise me when he refused to sign the lands over. Thought he might have something up his sleeve that justified the defiance."

Aldric smiled slightly. "Arrogance. Just arrogance. The stubbornness of a man who doesn’t fully understand the distance between what he has and what he’s opposing." He looked at the map on the wall, the southeastern corner where Percvale sat. "He’ll sign. They always sign when they’ve seen what the alternative looks like."

The room laughed, some of them.

Bravar didn’t laugh. He looked at the map, his expression serious.

"Three days," Aldric said again. "Then we end it."

———

They ate well that morning.

Maret had used the last of the reserve meat, the portions Darion had been rationing carefully, stretching across weeks, the supply that had been the buffer between eating properly and not eating at all.

She put it all on the table and they ate it. Every knight in the castle, every servant, Vera, Seren and Garren.

All of it, gone.

Tomorrow there would be no meat left in Percvale’s castle.

Tomorrow was Valdenmoor’s problem to solve.

If the plan worked, they would come back with livestock. Aldric’s livestock, taken as compensation for what had been slaughtered on Percvale’s farmland. Cattle, goats and whatever was in the pens. They would load it and bring it back and Percvale would have more than it had before the attack.

If the plan didn’t work, they would all die and the meat situation would stop being a relevant concern.

Darion ate his portion and looked around at the people eating theirs. Fifty knights who had been starving two months ago, now fed and trained and about to march on a barony that had three times their number.

Ten archers who had been ordinary citizens of a place that everyone had written off, now good enough with a bow that they had taken thirteen of Valdenmoor’s knights in a defensive action while outnumbered two to one.

Garren, who had been cracked and grey four days ago, eating with his arm working properly again, whatever Vera had done to him apparently holding.

Seren, who was going with the archers.

He had not tried to talk her out of it. She had come to him the previous evening and said she was going.

He did not refuse, it would be stupid if he refused.

She was accurate with a bow, she understood the fire accelerant better than most of the archers because she understood Vera’s work, and she was not the kind of person who accepted being left behind when she had a useful role to play.

She was also going to be in trees, which was considerably safer than being on the ground.

He had said fine and she had nodded and that had been the conversation.

Vera was not coming. She had made that clear from the beginning. She supplied the tools, not the fighting. She would stay in Percvale and wait.

After the meal, Darion stood.

He had thought about giving a speech. Something that captured what this was,the weeks of work, the fifty-two dead, the farmland, the livestock, all of it.

Something that sent them toward Valdenmoor with fire in their chest.

Some Motivation!

He decided against it. They already had fire in their chest. He could see it in how they were sitting, how they were looking at him. They didn’t need words. They needed to know their roles and be trusted to execute them.

They already had motivation! The loss they had witnessed was enough motivation than his words.

He told them their roles in the plan though.

"Archers," he said. "Eleven of you, Seren included. Seven with fire arrows for the barracks wall and the knights who come out. Four with the disorientation bundles, you throw them on my signal, not before. You are in the trees before the main force moves. You do not climb down until I say."

He looked at the main force.

"The undead go in first when the fire is established and the confusion compounds are working. Fifty undead knights, the wolves and the Rops. They don’t need your help in the first phase. Your job in phase one is to hold position and not be seen." He paused. "Phase two is when I give the signal. You advance through whatever is still standing after phase one. You push inside."

He looked at Garren.

"You lead the main force in phase two. I go for the stone building with six of the senior knights and the original wolf."

Garren nodded.

"Questions?"

Nobody had questions.

"May it go as planned," Darion said.

And to his surprise, it came back from fifty mouths at once, not rehearsed, just happening:

"May luck be on our side."

They walked to Valdenmoor.

Ten horses between fifty knights and eleven archers meant most of them were on foot, which meant the journey took two days instead of one. They moved along the route Garren had identified. It was less traveled, further from the main road, the kind of path that added distance but removed the chance of being seen by a Valdenmoor patrol or a traveler who might carry word ahead.

The first night they stopped in the forest. Darion summoned the wolves before anyone had settled and posted them at the perimeter without being asked, and the night passed without incident. He had been half-expecting something to come through the trees, maybe creatures, trouble of the kind of thing that seemed to find him when he was in forests, but nothing came. 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

Seemed creatures and wild animals did not stay in this place. it was safe from this type of creatures.

They arrived at Valdenmoor in the grey hour before proper dawn.

The forest on the western side was exactly what Garren had described, dense, close-growing, the canopy overhead thick enough to swallow the last of the night’s dark and hold it there even as the sky above it started to lighten.

Through gaps in the trees, the barracks structures were visible in the distance. Torchlight at the entrance. The shapes of buildings against a slightly lighter sky.

The main force held back in the treeline. Horses tied, men crouched, weapons in hand and not drawn. They were Waiting. They were waiting patiently for their turn in the mission.

Darion moved forward with the archers.

They went slowly, picking their way through the undergrowth. They moved very carefully, they understood that one snapped branch at the wrong moment ended the plan before it started. Seren was behind him, the others spread out to either side.

They found their trees.

Darion pointed, whispered directions, used hand signals for the ones further away. This one for height and angle on the western wall. That one for the entrance approach. The four with the disorientation bundles positioned furthest back, upwind, where the compound would carry toward the barracks when released.

They climbed.

It took several minutes for everyone to be in position. Darion stayed at ground level, watching, checking.

The barracks below was mostly quiet. Early enough that the night watch was winding down and the morning watch hadn’t fully replaced it. Two guards visible at the main entrance, talking to each other. The kind of conversation that happened at the end of a long night.

Darion looked up at Seren in her tree.

She looked back down at him.

"All good to fire?" he asked, barely above a breath.

She checked her arrow. Checked the sealed accelerant wrapping around the head. Looked at the barracks wall visible through the branches.

She nodded.

"Then shoot," he said.