The attack came at dawn, as most honest violence does.
Not with banners or horns, but with the sound of steel striking bone somewhere beyond the fog. One scream—cut short. Then another.
I was on my feet before the second cry ended.
"Positions!" Rethan shouted as tents erupted into motion. Men rolled from sleep into armor, hands finding weapons by instinct alone. The civilians were already being herded inward, toward the ring of wagons and earthworks we'd thrown up the night before.
This wasn't an assassination.
This was a purge.
Arrows hissed through the mist, thudding into shields and flesh alike. A man went down near the cookfire, clutching his throat, blood pumping between his fingers. The fog swallowed the attackers, but I could hear them now—boots splashing through wet grass, disciplined, spaced, advancing.
"Council infantry," I said. "Regulars."
Rethan grimaced. "So much for shadows."
I strapped on my gauntlets as I ran. Pain flared where Serak had cut me days ago, but it dulled beneath adrenaline. Ahead, the eastern perimeter was folding inward under pressure.
They were pushing hard there.
Of course they were.
That side bordered the shallow ravine leading down toward the old trade road—wide enough for a formation to move, narrow enough to funnel defenders. Someone had studied the map. Someone competent.
"Hold the wagons!" I shouted. "No one breaks line!"
I vaulted a fallen crate and hit the line just as the first wave emerged from the fog.
They came in shields locked, iron-rimmed and scarred, armor dulled to avoid reflection. No insignia. No colors. The Council denied involvement even as it sent its best to kill me.
I stepped forward.
The first soldier saw me—and hesitated.
That hesitation saved my life.
His spear glanced off my shoulder instead of piercing my chest. I knocked it aside, stepped inside his guard, and drove my sword up beneath his ribs. He sagged, shock written across his face, and I shoved him backward into the man behind him.
Then everything broke.
Steel rang. Shields splintered. Men screamed as formations dissolved into killing knots. I moved without thinking, letting instinct and training take over, striking where armor gapped, shoving enemies into each other, never stopping.
A hammer took a man's jaw off beside me. Rethan was there, blood on his beard, roaring like a madman as he crushed a shield inward and finished the soldier behind it.
"They're pressing left!" he shouted.
"I see it!"
A second wave surged through the ravine, faster than the first. These weren't line infantry. Lighter armor. Short blades. Shock troops.
They crashed into us with reckless speed.
One slipped past our line and lunged for a woman clutching a child. I turned, threw my sword, and watched it punch through his back. He collapsed at her feet.
The woman stared at me, frozen.
"Move!" I barked.
She ran.
I yanked my sword free and spun just in time to block a blow that would've split my skull. The man grinned at me, eyes wild.
"For the realm," he hissed.
"For yourself," I replied, and cut his leg out from under him before finishing it.
Minutes blurred together.
The fog thinned, burned away by blood and breath and rising sun. Bodies piled near the wagons. Our line bent but did not break.
Then the horns sounded.
Not ours.
Deep. Commanding. Measured.
I felt it in my gut.
"They've got cavalry," Rethan said grimly.
"Not here," I replied. "Too tight."
"No," he said, pointing past the ravine. "There."
The fog finally lifted enough for me to see it.
Mounted troops forming along the road, lances down, armor gleaming now that stealth no longer mattered. They weren't charging yet. They were waiting.
Waiting for us to break.
I laughed.
Rethan looked at me like I'd lost my mind. "This is funny to you?"
"No," I said. "It's predictable."
I turned and shouted, "Shield wall! Pull back in threes! Archers—fire low!"
Our men obeyed without hesitation.
That was new.
Arrows flew—not in high arcs, but flat, skipping along the ground, punching into legs and horses' chests as the cavalry began to move. One mount screamed and went down, throwing its rider into the dirt.
The charge slowed.
Then stopped.
Confusion rippled through their line.
And that's when I did something the Council hadn't planned for.
I raised my sword and stepped forward into open ground.
"Cairos!" Rethan shouted. "Don't—"
"Listen to me!" I roared, voice carrying across the field.
The cavalry commander rode forward, helm crested, face hard. He raised a gauntleted hand, halting his men.
"You send assassins," I called. "You send blades in the night. You send soldiers without banners so you can pretend this isn't war."
My voice echoed, carried by morning air and fear.
"Come closer," I said. "Look at me."
He did.
I pointed my sword at him.
"I am still standing."
Murmurs rippled through his ranks. I could see it in their posture now—the doubt.
"You want me dead?" I continued. "Then come and earn it. Or turn around and explain to the Council why you failed again."
The commander's jaw tightened.
He wasn't stupid.
Charging into a fortified camp with wounded horses and shaken men was suicide. But retreating without blood would cost him his position—or his head.
He made his choice.
"Advance," he ordered.
They came—not in a glorious charge, but a grim, grinding push.
And we met them
.
The collision was brutal.
I ducked beneath a lance, sliced at a horse's knee, rolled aside as it collapsed. Rethan dragged a rider down by his leg and crushed his throat. Men swarmed, stabbing upward, pulling cavalry off saddles, turning the ground into a tangle of steel and screaming animals.
It was chaos.
It was real.
I fought like a man possessed—not with elegance, but with purpose. Every strike aimed to end the fight, not win applause. I broke fingers gripping swords. I rammed pommels into faces. I kicked a man under a horse and let the animal finish him.
At some point, I realized something had changed.
They were falling back.
Not tactically.
Emotionally.
The commander shouted orders, but his men were no longer listening. They disengaged in clumsy bursts, dragging wounded, abandoning the dead.
I saw my chance.
"Push!" I shouted. "Now!"
We surged.
Not chasing—but advancing with discipline. Step by step, shields up, blades ready. We took ground they'd expected us to die on.
The cavalry broke.
They turned and fled down the road, leaving bodies and shattered pride behind them.
Silence followed.
Broken only by groans and the hiss of cooling blood on steel.
I stood there, chest heaving, sword hanging heavy in my hand.
We had held.
No.
We had won.
Rethan came to my side, eyes wide, disbelief warring with exhaustion. "That was… that was a battle."
"Yes," I said. "Our first."
Men looked at me differently now.
Not like a hunted man.
Like a leader.
We counted losses as the sun climbed higher. Too many—but fewer than there should have been. The civilians were shaken but alive. The wagons still stood. The camp still breathed.
Scouts returned by noon.
"The Council force is retreating toward Blackwater Ford," one reported. "They're not regrouping."
I nodded slowly.
They wouldn't.
Not after this.
This wasn't an assassination failed.
This was a battle lost.
And the realm would hear of it.
That night, as fires burned low and the wounded slept, Rethan sat across from me, sharpening his axe.
"They'll call this treason," he said.
"They already do."
"They'll escalate."
"Good," I replied. "Let them."
He studied me. "You planned this."
I shook my head. "I prepared for it."
There's a difference.
Beyond the camp, the road lay quiet, stained dark where the cavalry had fallen back. Somewhere beyond the horizon, messengers were riding hard, carrying news the Council did not want to hear.
I stared into the darkness and felt it settle into my bones.
This was the iron wake.
And everything behind me would have to follow it.