The hills stopped protecting us on the fourth night.
Not because the land changed—but because the war did.
Tarek adapted.
We felt it before we saw it. The pressure. The sense of being guided instead of chased.
Scouts stopped returning. Paths we'd used safely days earlier suddenly sprouted patrols like rot. Fires appeared on ridgelines at night, always just far enough away to deny us sleep.
The High Marshal wasn't hunting us anymore.
He was walking us.
"Fuck," Rethan muttered as we crouched behind a line of broken shale, staring down into a valley we'd planned to cross before dawn.
Council troops were already there.
Not camped. Positioned.
"Too clean," Lysa whispered. "They knew we'd come this way."
I said nothing. My jaw ached from grinding my teeth.
Tarek wasn't reacting to us now. He was predicting us. That meant one thing: he'd stopped thinking of me as a nuisance and started treating me like a rival commander.
That should have felt like respect.
It felt like a noose tightening.
We pulled back without contact, ghosts in the dark, and regrouped among a stand of twisted pines that stank of sap and old blood. The men were exhausted. Not just physically—mentally. You could see it in the way hands shook while tightening straps, in the way eyes snapped to every sound.
Fear wasn't spreading.
Anticipation was.
Which was worse.
"They're bleeding us slow," Rethan said quietly. "Skirmishes. Pressure. No big fight."
"Yes," I replied. "Because he doesn't need one."
"He's got numbers. Supply. Time."
"And we don't," Lysa finished.
Silence followed.
I knelt by the map scratched into the dirt and stared at it until it stopped being lines and became reality again. Valleys, ridges, rivers. Choke points.
And one answer.
"We stop letting him choose," I said.
Rethan looked at me sharply. "Meaning?"
"Meaning we turn around."
A few nearby men stiffened. Someone laughed, short and nervous.
"Turn around?" Rethan repeated. "Into him?"
"Yes."
Lysa studied my face. "You're serious."
"He expects flight. He's built the whole pressure around it. Patrols ahead, not behind. Screening forces designed to slow, not hold."
I tapped the dirt behind our current position.
"He doesn't think we'll strike backward."
Rethan grinned slowly. "You want to hit his teeth instead of his jaw."
"I want to remind his army that they can bleed too."
—
We moved at first light.
Not fast.
Deliberate.
The hills echoed with distant horns as Tarek's outer screens realized we'd reversed course. Patrols converged. Scouts clashed.
Steel whispered and screamed in narrow defiles as both sides tested reactions.
Then we hit them.
Hard.
The first engagement wasn't glorious. It was sudden and savage. We slammed into a Council vanguard holding a ridge pass—thirty men expecting shadows and scouts, not a full fucking countercharge.
Rethan took the lead, roaring like something feral as his axe caved in a shield and the man behind it. I cut down two in as many breaths, blade biting deep into mail and muscle. The fight lasted minutes.
When it ended, no one on that ridge was standing but us.
No prisoners.
Not today.
We didn't linger. We stripped weapons, burned their signal fires, and vanished downslope before reinforcements arrived.
An hour later, we did it again.
Different ridge. Same result.
This time, they were ready—but readiness only matters if it's enough. It wasn't. We flanked through scree and brush, hit their rear, turned discipline into panic.
One Council sergeant tried to rally his men.
"Hold, damn you! Hold!"
Rethan split him from shoulder to sternum
.
"Fuck your hold," he growled.
By midday, the hills were alive with movement. Tarek's army reacted fast—too fast to ignore the pattern. Units shifted inward. Formations tightened. Horn calls overlapped in sharp, clipped orders.
He was pulling forces back.
Not retreating.
Re-centering.
Smart bastard.
We regrouped in a narrow ravine choked with thorn and boulders. Men leaned on spears, chests heaving, blood streaked across faces and armor. Some were laughing. Some were shaking.
I walked among them, clapping shoulders, meeting eyes.
"You did well," I said. "But don't get drunk on it. He's not finished."
As if summoned by my words, a horn sounded from the ridge above us.
Not chaotic.
Measured.
Rethan's grin vanished. "That's not scouts."
"No," I agreed. "That's a hammer."
They came down the slope in tight formation—heavy infantry, shields locked, advancing with brutal patience. Behind them, archers took position, arrows already nocked.
And at their center—
A standard bearing the black knot of the High Marshal.
Not Tarek himself.
But his mark.
"Positions!" I shouted.
We formed fast, using rock and elevation, shields braced. Arrows rained down, thudding into wood and flesh. A man screamed as one punched through his thigh. Another went silent as one found his throat.
Then the lines met.
The impact was bone-shaking.
Shield slammed shield. Steel rang and scraped. Men cursed, screamed, grunted with effort. This wasn't skirmishing anymore.
This was real fighting.
A Council captain broke through on our left, blade flashing. I moved to intercept, parrying a killing blow meant for Joren and driving my shoulder into the man's chest. We went down together, rolling through dirt and blood.
He was strong. Trained. Furious.
"You should've run!" he snarled.
I headbutted him.
He reeled, and I finished it, blade sliding between ribs.
Nearby, Rethan was a whirlwind of violence, axe biting, ripping, killing. He took a spear through the arm and snapped it off with a curse before crushing the spearman's skull.
"Is that all you've got?!" he bellowed.
It wasn't.
A second wave crashed in.
Then a third.
They were grinding us down, inch by inch, forcing us back toward the ravine wall. Men slipped on blood-slick stone. A shield broke. Someone went down screaming under trampling boots.
I felt it then—the moment where momentum wavered.
Where battles are lost.
"Hold!" I shouted. "Hold the fucking line!"
I stepped forward into the press, blade moving without thought, killing not elegantly but efficiently. A slash to the knee. A thrust under the arm. A kick to the face.
Pain flared as a sword bit into my side. I ignored it.
We held.
Barely.
And then—
The horns sounded again.
Different tone.
Withdrawal.
The Council infantry disengaged with discipline, backing away under shield cover, archers laying suppressing fire as they retreated upslope.
They were leaving.
Rethan stared after them, chest heaving. "They had us. Why pull back?"
Because Tarek had learned what he needed.
He'd tested our willingness to turn and fight.
He'd measured our cohesion under pressure.
And now he knew something else.
We weren't breaking yet.
That night, the cost came due.
We lost twelve men. Another twenty were wounded badly enough to slow us. Supplies were low. Morale was… brittle.
I sat alone at the edge of camp, stitching my side with hands that wouldn't stop shaking.
Lysa approached quietly. "You're bleeding through again."
"I know."
She knelt and helped tighten the bandage. Her hands were steady. Too steady.
"He's pushing you," she said. "Trying to make you choose."
"Yes."
"And what will you choose?"
I stared into the darkness where Tarek's fires flickered like distant stars.
"I don't know yet," I admitted. "But whatever it is, it won't be what he wants."
She studied me. "You're changing."
I laughed softly. "I changed the day they put a knife in my back."
She didn't smile.
"Be careful," she said. "The realm needs monsters less than it needs men who know when to stop."
I looked at my blood-stained hands.
"I don't know where that line is anymore."
She stood. "Neither do I."
After she left, I lay back against the stone and stared at the sky. Sleep refused to come. My body ached. My mind raced.
Somewhere out there, Tarek al-Rhazim was doing the same thing.
Two commanders.
Two wills.
The hounds were closing.
And soon—
One of us would have to bare his throat.