"No," said Marshal Vex.
He didn't even look up from his maps. He sat at his camp desk with a cup of wine at his elbow and his milky eye half closed, and he said it the way a man swats a fly.
"I'm not asking for the army," said Ren. "I'm asking for the Ninth. Six hundred. We go north, fast, around the Varenhal lines, and we're at the walls of Solenne in eight days."
"And then what? You knock on the gate?" Vex finally looked up. "Solenne has three walls and twenty thousand men. You'd die in front of the first one. Very bravely, I'm sure." He went back to his maps. "Request denied, Captain."
"Then I'll ask the Empress."
"Ask her." Vex waved a hand. "Brisa rides tonight. You'll have your answer in four days."
Ren had his answer in four days.
He read it standing outside the Marshal's tent, in the hot afternoon wind, with Hob reading over his shoulder. It was in the Empress's own hand, a sharp, slanting script with no decoration.
No Captain of mine marches on Solenne with six hundred men. Not yet. Hold the line. Break their vanguard first. Then we'll talk.
I.
Ren folded it slowly and put it in his coat, next to Sho's letter.
"Twelve days," he said.
Hob didn't say anything. There wasn't anything to say.
***
Ser Brannoc was sitting outside a small tent at the edge of the Ninth's camp, splitting kindling with a hatchet.
They'd stopped tying his hands a week ago. He'd given his word not to run, and Ren had taken it, and so far Brannoc had kept it. He spent his days doing small jobs around the stockade without being asked. Mending harness. Sharpening blades. The soldiers of the Ninth had started out spitting when he walked past. Now some of them nodded.
Ren sat down on a log across from him.
"Tell me about the Festival of Light," he said.
Brannoc stopped splitting. He looked at Ren for a long moment. Then he set the hatchet down.
"Why?"
"Because they're going to hang Ogawa Sumiko at it."
The old knight's face didn't change. But his hands went still on his knees.
"The lawyer," he said.
"She got me the map. She bribed the guard. She sent me to the river." Ren kept his voice flat. "She's fifty three. She's Level 4. She's never hurt anyone in her life. A young priest told them what she did after they beat him, and now she hangs in twelve days."
Brannoc looked away, out over the camp.
"Why would I help you take the walls of my own city, boy?"
"I'm not asking you to help me take anything. I'm asking you to tell me where she'll be."
The knight was quiet for a long time. A wagon creaked past. Somewhere, Sable was laughing at something.
"The Square of Saints," Brannoc said finally. "In front of the Hall of Radiance. At noon, the High Seraph lights the Great Lamp on the steps. The whole city comes. Fifty thousand, maybe more. After the lamp is lit, the Church gives the people justice. That's what they call it." His mouth tightened. "Thieves. Heretics. Whoever they've saved for the day. They build the scaffold right on the steps, so everyone can see."
"Guards?"
"The whole Radiant Order. Every knight in Solenne, around the square. Every priest. And the heroes, the ones who didn't march." He looked at Ren. "You'll never get near it. Not with an army. Not alone."
"How did I get out last time?"
Brannoc stared at him.
"The vaults," he said slowly. "The river gate."
"Do they know I know about it?"
"They know." Brannoc shook his head. "They'll have it guarded."
"By who?"
The old knight opened his mouth, then closed it again. He picked up the hatchet and turned it over in his hands.
"I trained half the knights in that city," he said quietly. "I know who stands watch where, and who drinks, and who falls asleep at his post." He looked up. "I'll think about it, boy. That's all I'll promise."
"That's more than I asked for," said Ren.
***
He rode out to Millbrook that evening.
It was a small place, six miles west of the fort, at the edge of the Burnt Mile where the fire had stopped. A dozen stone cottages with new thatch on the roofs. A well. A pen of goats someone had found wandering. Wren Halloway was in the middle of it, on a crutch, shouting at two men who were putting up a fence in the wrong place.
She saw him and scowled. "Captain. Come to inspect your subjects?"
"Come to see how you're doing."
"We're doing fine. Better if these idiots could build a straight fence." She waved her crutch at the twins from Felling, who were chasing a goat across the yard. "They want to know when they can join the Ninth."
"They're ten."
"I told them that. They said Pell was fifteen." She snorted. "Come here. I want to show you something."
She took him behind her cottage, to a patch of dirt under an old apple tree. She pulled aside a rotten board. Underneath was a hole, dug deep and lined with stones, with a ladder going down. Blankets. A water jar. A basket of bread.
"Root cellar," Wren said. "I dug it myself. Well. I made Edrin dig it, and I told him where." She looked at him with her hard brown eyes. "For when they come."
"They won't come here. You're behind the fort."
"They came to Felling," said Wren. "We were behind the fort there too."
Ren looked down into the dark hole for a long time.
Across the yard, old Edrin Holt sat on a bench by his door with a knife, whittling a little wooden horse for one of the twins. He saw Ren looking and lifted the knife in a slow wave.
***
The Varenhal vanguard came over the northern hills two days later.
Ren watched it from the walls of Fort Calder with Hana beside him. A long dark column coming down the road from the north, three thousand strong. White banners. Silver armor flashing in the sun. And at the front, a cluster of banners in different colors, gold and white and blue, with figures beneath them who didn't ride like soldiers.
He didn't need Read the Field to know who they were. He used it anyway.
Fujii Kenta · Berserker (Epic) · Level 34
Hasegawa Tetsuo · Guardian (Epic) · Level 31
Ishida Rina · Windcaller (Rare) · Level 26
Endo Mika · Cleric (Rare) · Level 22
Taguchi Goro · Sentinel (Rare) · Level 24
"Five heroes," said Hana. "And a Radiant Order captain with them. Level 35. That's a lot of power for a vanguard."
"It's not a vanguard," said Ren. "It's a hunting party."
He watched the column halt on the far side of the Burnt Mile and start pitching tents. In the middle of the camp, a huge red pavilion went up, bigger than any of the others. Kenta's, he thought. It looked like something Takeru would have bought.
Endo Mika, he remembered now. The young lay judge in the courtroom. The one who wouldn't stop twisting the ring on her finger. And Taguchi Goro, the bailiff, who'd stepped forward with his hand out like he could hold back the light.
They hadn't lied about him. They hadn't done anything to him at all. They'd just been in the wrong room on the wrong day.
Now they were Level 22 and 24, and they'd been sent to kill him.
***
Fujii Kenta couldn't sleep.
He lay on a camp bed in the red pavilion with his hands behind his head and stared up at the canvas. Outside, the camp was quiet. Somewhere a horse snorted. Somewhere a man coughed. Across the Burnt Mile, he could see the lights of Fort Calder on its hill, red and steady.
He was there. Right there. Three miles away.
Kenta sat up and pulled open his status screen and read it again, for maybe the hundredth time.
Fujii Kenta · Berserker (Epic) · Level 34
STR 104 · AGI 41 · VIT 92 · INT 14 · WIL 18
Bloodrage (Active): Strength doubled. Immune to fear and control. Will drained while active.
Strength 104. When he raged, 208. He'd broken a boulder in half with one swing of his axe in the training yard last week. The Church knights had stopped laughing at him after that.
He'd beaten Ren at the river. He was sure of it. He'd had him. If Kanzaki hadn't waited so long with the crossbows, if Ren hadn't been such a coward, running for the ferry like a rat...
Kenta lay back down.
He didn't like thinking about the river. Because every time he did, he heard Ren's voice, calm and flat, while the axe was swinging. *You were standing next to him when he walked back into the house with blood on his shoes.*
He had been.
He remembered it. He'd been in the kitchen of the Saionji house, looking for more ice. Takeru had come in through the back door with his face gray and his hands shaking. There'd been something dark on his white sneakers. Kenta had looked at it, and Takeru had looked at him looking at it, and then Takeru had grabbed him by the shirt and said *Ren took his car. Ren was driving. You saw him leave. Say it.*
And Kenta had said it.
Because Takeru was his best friend. Because Takeru had been his best friend since they were thirteen, when Kenta was a big dumb kid with bad grades and no friends, and Takeru had picked him for his team in gym class and said *this one's with me* and made everyone else back off. Because Takeru paid for everything. Because when Kenta was next to Takeru, people looked at him like he mattered.
And Ren had cut his head off in the sand.
Kenta's hands curled into fists.
It didn't matter what happened in Tokyo. It didn't matter about the car. Takeru had been on his knees, begging, and Ren had killed him anyway. That was what mattered. That was the only thing that mattered.
The tent flap opened. One of the Church scouts stepped in and bowed.
"Hero Fujii. You asked to know if we found anything." You are reading on g.com, the official source.
Kenta sat up. "And?"
"A village, west of the fort. Millbrook. Outside the walls." The scout's face was blank. "The peasants the Demon Hero took from Halden's Ford live there now. The Empire gave them the land. There are some others. Refugees from the border. About sixty, all told. Lightly guarded. Twenty soldiers of the Ninth."
Kenta stared at him.
"His people," he said slowly.
"The Imperial soldiers call them that, Hero. The Demon's people."
Kenta got up and pulled on his boots.
***
Hasegawa Tetsuo was waiting outside the red pavilion when Kenta came out with his axe.
He stood in the dark with his arms folded. He'd been standing there for a while. He'd heard everything.
"Don't," Tetsuo said.
Kenta stopped. "Get out of my way, old man."
"They're farmers."
"They're his." Kenta hefted the axe onto his shoulder. "He took them. He gave them a village. He sat by the fire with them and let them swear to him like he's some kind of king." He spat on the ground. "He wants to play king? Let's see what kind of king he is."
"Fujii." Tetsuo didn't raise his voice. "My wife was a nurse. She worked nights in a children's ward. She used to come home and fall asleep on the couch in her uniform because she was too tired to change." He looked at Kenta steadily. "Whatever you think you're doing tonight, she would be ashamed of it."
Something flickered in Kenta's face. For a second, he looked very young.
Then it was gone.
"I'm not doing it for your wife," Kenta said. "I'm doing it for Takeru."
He shouldered past and went off into the dark, shouting for the cavalry.
Tetsuo stood there for a long time, alone, listening to the horses go.
***
Ren woke up an hour before dawn, gasping.
He didn't know why. He sat bolt upright on his cot in the dark with his heart hammering. For a second, he thought he'd had a nightmare. Then he felt it again.
Through the bond. Dozens of candles, all at once, flickering. Not going out. Shaking, the way a flame shakes in a strong wind. Frightened. In pain. All in the same place.
West.
He was out of the tent before he'd finished pulling on his boots.
Garrick was already outside, half dressed, with his hatchet. So was Sable. So was Old Hob, wrapped in a blanket, his face gray in the starlight.
"You felt it too," said Ren.
"Like someone grabbed my heart," Garrick said. "What is it?"
"Millbrook."
They were halfway to the stockade gate when the horn blew from the walls above. A sentry, shouting down. A rider coming in, alone, from the north. Under a white flag.
Ren met him at the gate.
It was a Church squire, barely older than Pell, on a sweating horse. He was terrified. He held out a folded piece of paper with shaking hands and didn't dismount.
"From Hero Fujii," the boy said, "to the Demon Hero."
Ren took it.
It was written in Japanese. In big, clumsy letters, pressed so hard into the paper that the pen had torn through it in places.
I have your farmers. 34 of them. The ones in your village who didn't run fast enough.
Come to Corran's Field. Alone. No army. No Empress. Just you.
Starting at sunrise, I kill one every hour until you get here.
Kenta
Ren looked up. Over the walls of Fort Calder, to the east, the sky was already turning gray.
"Where's Corran's Field?" he asked.
"North," said Hob, very quietly. "Across the Mile. Two hours' ride."
The first edge of the sun came up over the hills.
Ren felt it before the System told him. A small, steady candle inside his chest, one of the first from Halden's Ford. An old man with a white beard down to his belt, who had ridden the whole eight miles through the dark on Garrick's back.
The candle went out.
Sworn soul lost: Edrin Holt.