When Wolves March

The trees thinned as the road climbed. Night had fallen fully now, cold and dry. Mist drifted low along the gully, curling around the hooves of horses and boots of tired men. No one spoke.

Varrik rode at the head.

His cloak was drawn tight, helm at his side, and his eyes scanned the ridgeline without expression. Behind him, two thousand Harkoraal soldiers moved in practiced silence. They did not march in a line they slithered like shadow between the woods and slope.

To their right, the ridged cliff rose sharply.

At its crown stood Valmere's Watch.

It loomed like a beast carved from the mountain itself. Thick walls. Ironwood gates. Two outer towers that stood like twin fangs against the sky. Fires burned along the battlements, but faintly. The defenders were watchful, but they weren't yet afraid.

They thought they had time.

Beside Varrik, a figure emerged from the fog as if drawn from wind itself. Corien, hair pulled back beneath a hood, walked beside his horse as though strolling through an orchard.

"They're not sleeping, but they're not ready," he said softly.

"I know," Varrik replied.

Corien smiled. "You want me to help them sleep?"

"Not yet."

They reached the edge of the ridge, where the trees broke open to reveal a narrow valley sloping upward toward the fortress wall. Varrik raised a hand. The army behind him stopped.

Scouts moved forward. One returned quickly young, fast, blood on his sleeve.

"Five hundred men in the castle," he reported. "Some militia, some regulars. Light cavalry stabled inside. They've doubled the watches on the south wall."

Varrik glanced up. "And the towers?"

"Outer one to the west is undermanned. Only three archers at the peak."

Varrik looked at Corien.

"You can clear them?"

Corien gave a slight bow. "Wind can nudge a man when he's near sleep. Or throw him off a tower when he's not."

Varrik nodded once.

"Do it."

Corien vanished into the trees.

Varrik turned to the second-in-command, a wiry captain with a hawk nose.

"We take the western tower before the sun breaks. Quiet. I want ladders up before they even know we're here."

"Yes, General."

"And after that?"

Varrik's eyes narrowed on the distant walls of Valmere's Watch.

"Then we knock."

The mist clung to stone and branch alike. It muffled footsteps, blurred torchlight, wrapped the whole valley in a shroud of waiting breath.

Corien moved like a phantom between the rocks.

He didn't wear armor. His cloak was long, dark green, barely distinguishable from the wet leaves he passed through. His boots didn't crunch. His fingers flexed, relaxed, flexed again. The mana inside him wasn't heavy it was awake, alert, curled just behind his ribs like a patient animal.

The western tower rose in pieces between the trees, flickering orange from its crown where three archers paced lazily. One leaned on his bow. Another stretched. The third took a piss over the side.

Corien stopped twenty paces from the base, crouching behind a rotted stump.

He closed his eyes.

The wind answered.

It didn't blow it tilted. Shifted sideways in a way the forest didn't expect. Leaves trembled without direction. A bird took flight far off. At the edge of the tower wall, the archers felt the world slip half a step.

Corien whispered, "Sleep or fly, your choice."

Then he drew a slow breath and pushed outward not hard, not loud. Just a twist. A flick of thought and will. The air thickened around the tower top, suddenly heavy and thin at once, like sea wind before a storm.

One archer stumbled backward, dropped his bow.

Another took a step toward the edge and the wind caught his ankle just enough.

He tipped forward.

The scream was short.

The third reached for the horn at his belt.

Corien snapped his fingers, and a coiling gust struck him in the gut like a battering ram. He slammed against the crenellation, bounced twice, then disappeared over the ledge.

Silence returned.

Corien waited. Counted his breath to ten. Then twenty.

Nothing.

He smiled.

Behind him, the ladder teams were already moving silent men with coils of rope and hooked rungs on their backs.

He stepped aside and let them pass.

One soldier glanced at him as he climbed by.

Corien winked.

"Nice night for a walk."

At the base of the hill, Varrik saw the torch signal from the treeline. A quick flare then gone.

The western tower was theirs.

No alarms.

No bells.

He turned to his captains.

"Up the wall. Take it quietly. No screams. No mercy."

The men nodded and moved.

Corien rejoined him a minute later, brushing pine needles from his cloak. "Tower's empty now. The wind, however, remains loyal."

Varrik grunted.

"They'll know soon."

Corien stretched his arms. "Let's hope not before breakfast."

Varrik's eyes returned to the fortress walls.

"We're not waiting for breakfast."

The first bell rang.

It was late. Too late.

The guards atop Valmere's outer walls staggered from sleep, grabbing for helms, buckling belts, peering into fog that didn't feel natural. The gatehouse still stood silent until the second bell followed.

Then came the shouting.

And then came the ram.

A half sphere of iron and oak, carved with the black wolf, smashed into the outer gate with the low, wet thud of wood on wet wood. Harkoraal soldiers pushed it forward, boots steady in the mud, shields locked around them like a shell. Rain began to fall in sharp lines as if summoned.

Behind them, Varrik raised his sword.

The call was not shouted it was struck. His blade hit the iron bell fixed to his belt, a single, ringing tone, clear through the valley.

To the west, rope ladders already dangled over the stone. Harkoraal climbed like ants, knives between teeth. A silent shadow of men moving in sync.

The defenders finally lit firepots. Too slow.

Corien moved with the front ranks near the gate. He didn't shout. He didn't need to. Wind gathered around him like a memory, pulsing against the pressure of stone.

Above them, arrows began to fall.

"Shields!" came the cry from Varrik's second, and the men locked their tower-shields overhead.

Thock. Thock. Thock.

Arrows bit into wood. A few men cried out wounded.

"Now," Corien muttered.

He lifted one hand.

The air before the gate shimmered.

Then it rushed a focused gust, pressed flat and wide like a battering wave. It struck the tower above the gate, sending the defenders stumbling back, firepots tumbling, flames catching their own hay fed defenses.

Below, the ram struck again.

The gate splintered.

A third time this time, a deep cracking sound, a wound opening in the heart of the fortress.

"Breach!" Varrik shouted.

And the wolves poured in.

Inside the gateyard, chaos bloomed. Imperial soldiers barely armed spilled from barracks and side-halls, clashing against the sudden tide of steel and black cloaks.

Varrik rode at the center now sword high, face set. His men carved into the courtyard like floodwater. Archers set fire to the inner barracks. Spears held the flanks.

Corien reached the inner gate and flung both hands forward.

Wind screamed through the portcullis. The chains strained. The gate rattled.

Then crack.

A hinge snapped free, and the wind wrenched the doors wide open like a god's shout.

Harkoraal surged through.

By sunrise, the banner of Harkoraal flew over Valmere's Watch.

Varrik stood atop the inner wall, sword planted in the stone beside him, as soldiers secured the final tower.

Corien appeared beside him, soaked and grinning.

"Well," the wind mage said, "that was louder than I intended."

Varrik didn't smile. But his eyes held something like satisfaction.

"Send word to Arl," he said. "The castle's ours."

The sky had only just begun to pale with the first breath of dawn when the sound of horns echoed from the ridge to the west.

Not Harkoraal horns.

Three blasts long, hollow, carried by the wind.

Varrik stood on the battlements of Valmere's Watch, hands clenched on the stone edge. The castle behind him still smoked from battle, its lower halls dark with soot and drying blood. Corpses had been cleared from the yard, but the scent remained.

He turned to the scout beside him. "Say it."

The scout reported. "Renualt's banners. Five thousand strong. They've made camp two hills out. They march at dusk."

Varrik looked to the sky. "Then we have till sundown."

Corien emerged from the inner keep, cloak snapped by wind that hadn't settled since the siege. His eyes were sharper now. No grin.

"We need time," he said. "Or we die here."

Varrik didn't answer right away. He looked out across the plain toward the faint lines of the approaching army.

Then he turned.

"Send riders. Two. Get to Senjar."

The scout hesitated. "There are no clean roads."

"Then dirty ones will do," Varrik snapped.

Corien stepped beside him. "I can cover them with wind. Mask their tracks. But I can't slow five thousand men."

"You don't need to," Varrik said. "You just need to make them hesitate."

The mage raised an eyebrow. "How?"

Varrik turned back to the inner wall, where black powder kegs captured from the Imperials were being stacked near the curtain towers.

"You light the air," Varrik said. "I'll light the rest."

By mid afternoon, the defenders of Valmere's Watch had turned from victors to shadows on ramparts.

Only a thousand stood guard now. The rest were dead or buried or wounded from the siege.

Varrik walked the walls, checking positions shortbows, stones, boiling oil gathered from the keep's ruined kitchens.

He paused beside a boy, no more than seventeen, knuckles white on a spear.

"What's your name?"

"Ren, my lord."

"You hold the gate," Varrik said. "If they breach, you fall back to the keep and hold again."

The boy nodded.

"And if I fall?" Varrik asked.

"Then we fall harder," Ren said.

The older commander gave a grim nod.

From the ridge, they heard the Empire's horns again.

At sunset, Baron Renualt's army came into view.

Armored knights, flanked by disciplined infantry. Siege towers began rolling down the slope. Engineers marched behind them with carts and scaled ladders.

Renualt himself rode beneath a white banner, trimmed with gold.

He made no call for parley.

This was not war.

This was punishment.

Inside the keep, Corien stood on the highest tower, his fingers stretched wide, wind coiling around him in unseen layers. Beneath him, the main courtyard had been rigged with powder traps, narrow corridors, hidden tripwires all of it ready to collapse inward like a dying star.

"They'll come for the gate," he murmured. "So we'll make it bite."

Varrik stood below, armored, helm at his side. His sword was clean, but not for long.

He watched the dust rise from the Baron's approaching host.

Then, he turned to the banner bearer beside him.

"Raise the black wolf," he said. "And fire the first volley."

In the east, behind a different ridge, two riders galloped hard toward the dawn.

Toward Arl Senjar.

Toward the war to come.