The smoke from the fires drifted through the ruined village, thick with the smell of charred wood and drying blood.
The place was dead.
Only silence and flames remained.
Dozens of villager corpses lay scattered across the mud — men and women alike — broken and twisted, eyes wide open in death.
They had not died easily.
Every door and window had been smashed in.
Furniture lay in splinters.
The houses were nothing but shattered walls and blackened beams.
The granary doors had been hacked apart with axes.
Golden grain spilled across the ground, trampled into the dirt by boots and blood.
More than forty Burned Men warriors sat or lounged among the ruins.
They wore animal skins and reeked of smoke, burnt flesh, and old blood.
They had built fires in the broken houses and were roasting stolen chickens and tearing into half-cooked meat with their teeth.
Some sharpened their axes and swords.
Others sorted through the loot they had taken.
Most of them carried horrific burn scars on their faces and bodies — the marks of their coming-of-age rites.
To the lowlanders these scars made them look like monsters.
To the Burned Men, they were proof of courage.
One warrior whose left ear had been burned away until only a blackened hole remained muttered as he tied a heavy sack of plunder onto his small, goat-like mountain pony.
“Big haul.
Enough for Wok son of Nego to live warm through several winters up in the hills.” His companion grinned, teeth black as charcoal.
“Those valley men only know how to hide in their stone houses and cry like children!” “They don’t deserve any of this.” They had already burned several villages and killed hundreds of lowlanders.
While the Burned Men were resting and enjoying the spoils, a figure came stumbling into the square.
The warriors recognized him at once.
It was Val, son of Nango — a small, skinny man who had only dared to burn off his own right little toe during his rite.
A coward by Burned Men standards.
“What’s the matter, Val son of Nango?” one warrior jeered.
“Did the dead valley folk scare you?” Val ignored the mockery.
His voice was tight with fear.
“Men!
Armed valley men!
A whole lot of them!” Every Burned Man went still and turned toward Wok son of Nego, the one-eared warrior.
“How many?” Wok asked, picking up his axe.
“Two hundred, maybe more,” Val answered quickly.
“They’ve blocked the only way out.
All of them carrying weapons and wearing armor!” This village sat in a strong position — a cliff on one side, a river on the other, only one narrow exit.
Wok stood up and motioned for the others to gather around him.
Among the Burned Men were even a few hard-faced women.
They held a council.
In the mountain clans, every warrior — man or woman — had the right to speak.
It made their decisions slow and often useless, which was why they had never truly threatened the valley lords.
Wok swung his axe and looked at Val.
“Do they have iron-skinned riders?” The Burned Men feared the armored knights of the lowlands.
“No!” Val lowered his head, ashamed of his earlier panic.
“They don’t even have iron skin!” A short silence followed.
Then the gathered warriors burst into loud, mocking laughter.
Two hundred foot soldiers without iron skin?
Wok roared with laughter.
“So two hundred soft little sheep want to eat Wok son of Nego!” A big, broad warrior wiped greasy hands across his burned face and laughed.
“We don’t even fear the ones in iron!
What do these people think they’re doing?” The Burned Men started shouting over each other.
“Last time I fought one of their warriors he cried and begged like he was scared of getting dirt on his pretty clothes!” “These valley men think numbers will save them?
Hahaha!” “They piss themselves the second they smell blood!” “Forty of us can charge out and kill every last one of them!” The council had turned into a contest of who could insult the lowlanders the loudest and boast the most about Burned Men courage.
In their eyes, they only truly feared iron-skinned knights.
Even those could be fought.
These men had no iron at all.
The Burned Men believed numbers meant nothing when the enemy had no real will to fight.
That was why lowlanders hid inside metal shells and stone houses.
They lived soft lives in the fertile valleys.
They had never known the brutal struggle of the mountains.
Their bodies and spirits were like untempered iron — weak and brittle.
Wok son of Nego looked at his warriors, satisfaction flickering in his one good eye.
This was how Burned Men should be.
He raised one blackened, burned hand and cut through the noise.
“Quiet!
You’re right.
They’re valley men.
They don’t understand real fighting.
They don’t understand real courage.” He looked around the circle.
Every Burned Man was watching him with hungry eyes.
Wok lifted his axe high.
“Wok son of Nego does not hide.
Wok son of Nego does not run.
Because we are the Burned Men!” “The cliffs and peaks are our home.
The cruel land shaped us — cold and merciless as the mountain wind.” “The valley men want to surround us?
Good!” “At first light we charge out!” “Let them see how the wolves of the mountains tear apart the sheep of the valley!” A wild, savage roar went up from the warriors.
It sounded like forty hungry bears that had finally caught the scent of prey.
For the Burned Men, being surrounded by two hundred unarmored valley men was not a trap.
It was an opportunity — a feast of easy kills.
They felt no fear of the coming battle.
They felt anticipation.
In their eyes these Riverlands men were not warriors.
Just sheep without iron skin, waiting to be ripped apart.
They were certain forty Burned Men could send two hundred lowlanders running and screaming.
This was just a small problem in their raiding season.
Kill them, then move on to the next village.
The night passed with the Burned Men mocking the lowlanders and looking forward to morning.
They slept lightly, wild instincts keeping them alert.
Dawn broke.
The Burned Men woke almost together.
Without wasted words they seized their weapons — axes, swords, spears, and spiked wooden clubs.
Time was blood.
Every moment they delayed, another clan might be taking loot that should be theirs.
More than forty Burned Men let out fierce war cries and charged after Wok son of Nego toward the village’s only exit.
They expected to see panicked valley faces.
They expected the wet sound of axes splitting flesh and the sweet music of cowards screaming.
Instead— Wok son of Nego’s face twisted in confusion and rage.
“What the fuck is this?!
What’s happening?!” In front of them was a freshly dug ditch — not deep, but wide enough that they could not simply leap across.
To reach the valley men they would have to climb down into it and fight upward while the enemy struck from above.
And even if they crossed the ditch, a row of crude but solid wooden barricades waited on the other side, bristling with sharpened stakes.
Behind those barricades stood ranks of valley soldiers.
They were not panicking.
They were in formation.
A line of archers stood in the front, arrows already nocked and drawn.
The moment the Burned Men stepped into range, those arrows would fly.
Behind the archers stood spearmen, ranks tight and ready.
The Burned Men stopped dead at the village entrance.
Sunlight fell across them, but they stood frozen, staring at the ditch, the spiked barricade, and the disciplined soldiers waiting behind it.
Their minds went blank.
They had expected sheep.
They had found a wall.