Arlan took twelve men into the Blackwood before dawn.
Four had come from Raymond Weil's defeated guards and chose service rather than whatever punishment might follow their capture. They had military experience and knew enough to understand that their former master had already abandoned them; the other eight were men of FireStorm who had fought the Blacktooth band and survived.
Arlan equipped the group with Common-quality boiled leather armor, steel short swords, wooden shields, and short spears purchased through the Forging Group; the twelve sets consumed the five silver stags then available to him. Larry added thicker leather than the price ordinarily deserved and told him, in the dwarf's usual fashion, not to waste the favor by dying immediately.
Mist covered the forest floor when they approached Holt's camp; Arlan had chosen the hour because tired sentries made better openings than heroic assaults. The men behind him had been ordered to step where the man ahead stepped, avoid loose branches, and keep every piece of metal from knocking against another.
Two sentries had fallen asleep against trees.
Arlan motioned the others to remain back, and he came behind the first man, covered his mouth, and drove a short blade beneath the ribs into the heart. The second woke when the body settled; one of Arlan's men struck him with a shield before he could shout and bound him for questioning.
No alarm sounded. Arlan waited long enough to confirm that no other guard had noticed the movement before signaling the twelve forward. The point of the raid was not to prove courage; it was to reach sleeping men before twenty veterans could form around their leader.
The group entered the camp before most of Holt's men were fully awake; Holt himself came out with an axe and a scar running from his eye toward his jaw. He saw a sixteen-year-old at the front and charged him instead of taking time to understand the shield-and-spear groups entering behind.
Arlan waited until the axe began its descent, then drove one thrust through Holt's throat. The camp fell still.
Arlan's men worked in groups of three as instructed: shield in front, spear or sword behind, never chasing a target far enough to open the line. Against bandits waking without formation and suddenly without a leader, the simple discipline was decisive.
Within ten minutes the fighting stopped; men who surrendered were stripped of weapons and bound rather than killed after resistance ended. Those who kept fighting were cut down, and the three-man teams maintained their spacing instead of scattering after loot. FireStorm lost no one.
Holt's band was destroyed or captured. More than twenty sacks of rye were recovered, along with three horses, roughly a dozen usable weapons and pieces of leather armor, and seventeen people the bandits had taken or trapped around the camp.
An old woman among them knelt in the mud with two grandsons beside her; her own village had been destroyed. Her husband and son were dead, and she had gone three days with almost nothing to eat; Arlan lifted her before her forehead reached the ground.
If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
"Come to FireStorm," he said. "If you work, there will be land and a roof when we can build it. If we have food, you will share it."
The promise spread farther than the raid; seventeen rescued people returned with the force, and more than twenty sacks of rye meant FireStorm could feed them without immediately reducing everyone else's ration. Three captured horses improved movement between the holding and nearby roads, while the recovered armor and weapons equipped men who previously owned nothing better than tools.
For the next half month, Arlan used the warrant from Storm's End exactly as intended. His growing force cleared the bandits at Broken Stone Cliff and Dry Well Valley, then struck three smaller groups of raiders crossing from the mountains. He led each attack himself and concentrated on killing leaders before disorganized men could settle into a fight.
The campaign remained overwhelmingly successful; FireStorm suffered only minor injuries, never the losses that might have stalled its expansion, while each cleared road made the next movement easier and sent more displaced people toward the holding. Word moved through the southern marches.
Some called Arlan the Lone Wolf of FireStorm; others simply heard that there was a young landed knight's heir near Nightsong who killed bandits, shared recovered grain, and accepted people no other lord particularly wanted. Refugees began arriving.
A family driven off rented land by taxes came first; then survivors from a burned hamlet. Then widows, laborers, boys old enough to work but too poor to inherit anything, and men who preferred FireStorm's dangerous promise to starving somewhere quieter.
Within half a month the population rose from forty-seven to more than two hundred and ten; Morton had to count mouths against grain, place newcomers in repaired sheds and empty houses, divide work, and decide which able-bodied men could be spared from fields for the guard. Growth solved the labor shortage by creating new shortages of its own.
That changed the holding more than any speech could.
The burned fields were worked again where possible; the twenty acres of wasteland no longer looked empty when new hands began clearing stones; FireStorm's low wall was raised and reinforced, and a watchtower went up near the entrance. Empty structures were repaired for newcomers while Morton recorded names, households, skills, and food allotments with the grim concentration of a man who knew every added mouth was both strength and cost.
The fighting force grew to thirty; some were refugees with experience in levy service or caravan work, others were villagers who had survived the recent raids. Arlan selected for steadiness and willingness to hold a line rather than size alone.
Arlan trained them before dawn, and he did not teach elaborate dueling forms meant for tourneys. Shields overlapped. Spears stayed behind the front rank; men learned to hold formation, protect the person beside them, and aim for openings that existed rather than gestures that looked impressive.
A month after Michael Watson woke in Arlan Ashenblade's body, FireStorm no longer resembled the place that had waited for eight raiders to arrive and finish it. It was still poor.
It was still small. Its repaired walls would not stop a serious lord's host, and thirty guards did not make an army. But it had people, grain taken from bandits, a growing guard, stronger walls, and a warrant bearing the authority of Storm's End.
Arlan stood on the reinforced wall at sunset and watched workers below when a lookout rode through the gate at speed; the man nearly fell from the saddle.
"My lord! Nightsong men are coming." Arlan turned.
"How many?"
"More than three hundred household troops and ten knights. Five miles out. Gareth Caron leads them." Morton, climbing the wall behind the messenger, stopped halfway up. FireStorm had spent half a month learning how quickly circumstances could improve.
House Caron had apparently decided to remind them how quickly that could end. Three hundred household troops were more men than FireStorm possessed adults fit to fight, and unlike the Blacktooth band they would arrive with armor, horses, and officers accustomed to being obeyed. The next confrontation would not be solved merely by finding a narrower gate.