It had gone better than Solomon expected.
He stood on a low rise behind the defensive line and watched the Burned Men finally understand what they were looking at.
They had charged out of the village like a pack of wolves, screaming and brandishing weapons.
Now they stood frozen at the edge of the ditch, staring at the crude barricade bristling with spikes and the formed ranks of soldiers waiting calmly behind it.
Solomon allowed himself a small, cold smile.
“Savages who refuse to use their heads stay savages their whole lives.” He had been ready for the worst — a night fight at close quarters.
He hadn’t expected the mountain men to sit still inside the village all night long.
It wasn’t that Solomon had been unwilling to launch a night attack.
He simply hadn’t trusted his own men to handle close-quarters fighting yet.
Not against Burned Men.
He remembered what Tyrion had once said about the mountain clans.
The Imp rated them highly.
Especially the Burned Men.
Every other clan in the Mountains of the Moon feared them.
They proved their courage through self-mutilation — burning off nipples, fingers, ears, whatever body part they chose when they came of age.
The current war leader of the Burned Men, the one they called Red Hand, had supposedly burned out his own left eye with a red-hot knife to claim the title.
When the refugees had told Solomon last night that the raiders were Burned Men, even he had felt a flicker of unease.
But instead of trying to break out or hitting his half-formed lines while they were still digging, the Burned Men had stayed put.
Solomon had used the night to throw up the simplest defenses he could manage at the village’s only exit — a shallow ditch and a line of wooden stakes and barricades built from whatever timber and tools they could find.
It wasn’t much.
But it was enough to stop a headlong charge.
This was his first real battle in command.
His stomach was tight, but the numbers were on his side.
Three hundred against forty.
The advantage was his.
“Enemy attack!” Luden and Rosslyn were riding along the line, shouting orders.
“Archers ready!
Infantry form up!” The scene Solomon had expected never happened.
He had pictured the Burned Men screaming and charging straight into the barricade, trying to leap the ditch or hack through the wood while his spearmen stabbed upward and his axemen and swordsmen finished anyone who made it over.
Instead the mountain warriors stopped dead.
The ones in front leaned forward from sheer momentum, then locked in place like statues.
The ones behind crashed into them, turning their tight charge into a confused, milling mass.
They stood at the village mouth with weapons still raised, faces frozen in expressions that had been savage a heartbeat earlier and were now blank with disbelief.
They stared at the ditch.
At the spiked barricade.
At the lowlander soldiers standing in calm, ordered ranks behind it — the same lowlanders they had expected to see running and begging for mercy.
In the awkward, heavy silence that followed, one man finally moved.
A big Burned Man with especially vivid burn scars across his cheeks shoved his way through the others and strode forward alone.
He carried a spiked wooden club and walked like the ditch, the barricade, and the archers aiming at him didn’t exist.
The archers tracked him with drawn bows, waiting only for the order.
He stopped at the edge of the ditch, looked straight at the soldiers behind the barricade, and shouted in a voice full of contempt.
“Hey!
You valley cowards hiding behind your sticks!
Who’s in charge here?
Come out!” His voice carried clearly in the morning air.
He spoke like a man demanding an honorable fight between equals.
Three hundred against forty was already an unfair fight in his eyes.
Hiding behind wood on top of that was pure cowardice.
Solomon watched from the rise, expression flat.
The Burned Man had walked right up to them and demanded they come out and fight fair.
Just like that.
Solomon felt the last of the tension leave his body.
“Archers!” he called, voice cold and clear.
“Loose!” The bows sang almost as one.
A flight of arrows hissed over the barricade and slammed into the lone warrior.
More than ten shafts hit him at once.
Some punched through his animal-hide armor.
Most buried themselves deep in his chest, belly, and limbs.
At this range the arrows turned the front of his body into a bloody hedgehog.
His defiant shout cut off mid-word.
The spiked club fell from his hand and clattered into the ditch.
He staggered once, eyes wide with shock and pain, then toppled backward and lay still.
For a moment the Burned Men just stared.
Then the rage hit them.
They had fought other lowlander forces before.
Even ironclad knights.
Those men had always played by the same empty rules of “honor” and “fair combat.” They had never simply shot a warrior who stepped forward and demanded to speak with their leader.
These lowlanders had built defenses in the dark and then killed a man for asking for a fair fight.
“Archers — nock!” Solomon ordered again.
Luden and Rosslyn glanced back at him from their horses, clearly unsettled.
Solomon didn’t explain himself.
Why would anyone fight by rules when the other side was stronger?
War had never been fair.
One side always held the advantage.
Pretending otherwise was how idiots got themselves killed.
He kept his eyes on the Burned Men.
They were angry now.
Good.
Angry men made mistakes.