The wind carried smoke through the ruined streets and would not let it go. It clung to beams and broken shutters, threaded itself through doorways, and hung low over the cobbles like a dirty shroud. Osogorsk did not look conquered. It looked consumed.

  Roofs had collapsed inward. Doors had been hacked from hinges. The well in the southern lane had been choked with ash and scraps of burned cloth. A child’s wooden horse lay half-charred near a gutter clogged with rainwater and blood. Flies moved in black clouds over anything that did not move.

  Turmonge walked in first.

  He did not hurry. His boots pressed into soot and gravel with the steady weight of an elf who had known too many battlefields to mistake silence for safety. His wolf-hide cloak dragged in ash. His fingers rested loosely on the haft of one of his blades, thumb tracing the familiar scratch near the grip where a troll’s club had once struck it.

  Scrinivaan moved at his side, if one could call it moving. He seemed to flow between patches of smoke, cloak drawn close, steps measured and quiet. His hood was down. The ruined city reflected in his dark eyes as if he were cataloging it for later use.

  Aremis followed behind them, bow already strung. Her braid was tight against her back; ash caught in the dark strands. She did not look at the ground. Her gaze stayed high, scanning eaves, windows, rafters. Fire drove men into the streets. Survivors sometimes climbed.

  Bourin Kinslayer brought up the rear, axe resting on one broad shoulder. His beard, thick and red-brown, was clotted with soot. His eyes were narrowed slits beneath heavy brows. He did not like cities even when they stood. He liked them less like this.

  They moved as one body through the ruin.

  No one spoke.

  They passed a row of imperial soldiers sprawled in a narrow lane, armor stripped from some, others burned black where they had fallen. One had died on his knees, hands clasped around a broken spear shaft. Turmonge paused long enough to close the man’s staring eyes with two fingers.

  “They held,” he said quietly.

  “Aye,” Bourin answered. “They held.”

  Scrinivaan crouched beside another corpse, fingers brushing the torn leather at the man’s belt. He withdrew an imperial signet ring, turned it in his palm, then slipped it back where it had lain.

  “Looters came after,” he murmured. “Not during. See the cuts? Clean. Methodical. The battle was one thing. This was another.”

  Aremis did not look down. “How many?”

  “Enough,” Scrinivaan said. “Orcs for the slaughter. Men for the scavenging. Perhaps both.”

  Turmonge grunted and moved on.

  They reached the square.

  It had once been the center of Osogorsk’s pride. A stone fountain carved in the shape of a rearing stallion had stood there, water arcing from its mouth. Now the stallion lay in pieces, head split from body, basin cracked. The water had turned to a black pool thick with ash and congealed blood.

  Bodies lay everywhere.

  Half a dozen imperial soldiers slumped near the fountain, throats opened. More lay along the steps of the garrison hall, some with bellies speared, others burned so fiercely their armor had fused to flesh. The chapel’s spire had collapsed inward, its bell half-buried in rubble.

  And beneath the broken spire, on a giant stone, sat a chained corpse.

  Turmonge stopped.

  The air seemed to grow heavier.

  Bourin came up beside him and squinted through the smoke. “You know that one?”

  Scrinivaan did not answer. He walked forward, stepping carefully between the dead. His boots made no sound. He brushed aside a fallen banner and knelt at the foot of the bench.

  The cloak around the corpse was stiff with dried blood. Scrinivaan drew it back slowly.

  The man beneath had been tall. Broad in the shoulders. His breastplate bore the Montclef crest, (a snow wolf) now torn open as if by a monstrous fist. A hole gaped in the center of his chest where something large had punched straight through steel and bone alike. The edges of the wound were blackened.

  His heart was gone.

  General Bhraime Montclef stared upward, one eye caved inward, the other fixed on a sky he would never see again. His mouth hung slightly open, as though in the middle of a final command.

  Aremis came forward then, bow lowered. Her jaw tightened. “That’s him.”

  Bourin spat into the soot. “Fought like hell, I’d wager. Look at the square. They didn’t take him easy.”

  Scrinivaan wiped soot from the general’s brow with the corner of his cloak. “No. They made him a spectacle.”

  Turmonge stepped closer. He did not kneel. He did not bow his head. He simply stood over the dead man and looked.

  “He was a stubborn bastard,” Turmonge said. “I liked him for that.”

  “You argued with him for three days straight at Bordeaux,” Aremis said.

  Turmonge’s mouth twitched faintly. “Aye. He was wrong.”

  “He said you were insufferable,” she added.

  “He was wrong again.”

  Scrinivaan rose, eyes scanning the square. “They set him here to be seen. Not hidden. That means they wanted someone to find him.”

  “Who?” asked Aremis.

  “Any who would dare stand against them I would imagine,” Scrinivaan replied."

  At that, Bourin’s grip tightened on his axe. “You still think it's just another pig face raid?”

  Aremis looked toward the chapel’s broken spire. “If Bhraime stood against them here, then I would say it is a tad more serious."

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  Turmonge nodded slowly. “The emperor's famed general doesn’t ride for nothing.”

  Scrinivaan’s gaze flicked to the southern road. “They took this very serious.”

  Silence settled again.

  Aremis lifted a hand.

  They froze.

  Hooves.

  Distant at first. Then clearer. Measured. Eight sets. No banners snapping. No shouted orders. Just disciplined approach.

  Scrinivaan moved first, melting toward the burned-out storefront to the east. Bourin slipped behind a toppled cart thick with shattered barrels. Aremis vanished behind the shattered altar of the chapel, nocking an arrow in one smooth motion.

  Turmonge remained standing for a heartbeat longer, studying the road.

  Then he stepped behind the stone where Bhraime was chained and lowered himself into shadow, blades ready.

  The riders entered the square.

  Black armor. Cloaks dark as the smoke around them. Helms smooth and lightless, save for the white cross etched into the steel of the leader’s helm.

  They dismounted in perfect sequence.

  The leader removed his helm. Bald head. Sharp jaw. Pale eyes that moved with calm assessment over ruin and corpse alike.

  “Montclef,” he murmured. “Poor bastard.”

  One of his men knelt beside the giant stone. “They tortured him something wicked.”

  “No,” the leader said. “Some type of savage ritual.”

  Scrinivaan’s knife left his hand before the words finished echoing.

  The blade struck the nearest Templar just below the jawline. It punched through the soft seam where helm met gorget. The man staggered, a wet choking sound bubbling from his throat as he clawed at the hilt protruding from his neck.

  The square exploded.

  Turmonge surged from behind the stone like a released spring. His two blades arced in a brutal horizontal sweep that forced the leader to throw up his sword in reflex. Steel met iron with a crack like splitting timber. The Templar was knocked off his feet, skidding across the ash.

  Aremis loosed.

  Her first arrow buried itself in a rider’s thigh, punching through plate where the armor joined. He screamed, stumbling backward. Her second struck another square in the throat before he could fully turn.

  Bourin roared from behind the cart and charged, axe held low. The wounded Templar with the arrow in his leg tried to raise his blade. Bourin’s axe came down in a savage diagonal cleave that split helm, skull, and jaw in one sickening motion. The dwarf wrenched the weapon free and pivoted immediately to meet the next threat.

  Two Templars closed on Scrinivaan. They moved with training, one high, one low, blades flashing. Scrinivaan ducked beneath the first strike, felt the wind of steel graze his hood, and slashed across a thigh in reply. Blood sprayed dark against the ash.

  The second Templar lunged, blade aimed at Scrinivaan’s chest. Scrinivaan twisted, the edge biting into his upper arm. He did not cry out. He stepped inside the man’s guard and drove his left-hand dagger up beneath the helm, into the eye socket.

  The man dropped like a puppet with cut strings.

  Turmonge and the leader met again in the center of the square.

  The Templar had regained his feet. He moved with precision, sword held in tight guard. His first strike was not wild. It was fast and measured, aimed at Turmonge’s exposed side.

  Turmonge turned with the blow. The blade skidded off the rim of his sword. He stepped in, closing the distance, and drove the swords pommel into the Templar’s face. Bone cracked. The leader staggered.

  “By Vrorn’s light—” the man began.

  Turmonge did not let him finish.

  The blade rose and fell.

  It struck the Templar’s shoulder with a crunch that echoed across the square. The man screamed, arm collapsing uselessly at his side. Turmonge reversed his grip and brought the sword down again, this time onto the helm.

  Steel caved inward like rotten fruit.

  To the west side of the square, Aremis had drawn her short blade. A Templar rushed her with shield raised. She sidestepped, the shield slamming into broken stone where she had stood. She rolled, came up behind him, and slid her dagger between the plates at the base of his spine. She felt resistance. Then give.

  He fell forward, twitching.

  Bourin faced two at once now. One swung high. The other aimed low for his knee. Bourin blocked the first with the haft of his axe and kicked the second square in the chest, sending him sprawling. The first tried to recover. Bourin stepped inside his guard and slammed his forehead into the man’s visor. The impact rang like a struck bell. As the Templar reeled, Bourin brought his axe up from below in a brutal upward arc that split open the man’s belly.

  The seventh Templar saw the tide and broke.

  He ran for his horse.

  Scrinivaan saw him first. He snatched up a fallen spear and hurled it with surprising strength. It glanced off the man’s backplate. Not enough.

  Bourin did not hesitate. He yanked his axe free from the corpse before him and hurled it with a roar.

  The weapon spun end over end and struck the fleeing Templar square between the shoulders. The man pitched forward, face-first into the ash, and did not rise.

  Only one remained.

  He stood near the cracked fountain, blade trembling in his grip, visor splattered with blood that was not his.

  “You don’t know what you carry,” he hissed, voice thick with fury and fear.

  Turmonge approached slowly. Aremis came up at his side. Scrinivaan circled behind.

  “Say it,” Turmonge said. “Tell me what I carry.”

  “The scroll,” the Templar spat. “It is blasphemy. It is corruption. It—”

  Turmonge drove forward.

  The sword struck the man’s chest with such force that the armor buckled inward. The Templar’s body folded around the impact. He collapsed without another word, blood pouring from the wound.

  Silence returned to Osogorsk.

  Crows descended to the rooftops. The flies did not pause in their feast.

  Scrinivaan leaned against the toppled cart, pressing a hand to his bleeding arm. “Eight.”

  “Eight,” Aremis confirmed, retrieving her arrows where she could.

  Bourin retrieved his axe and wiped it on a fallen cloak. “More’ll come.”

  Turmonge stood over the broken helm of the leader and stared down at the crushed steel.

  “They were on us faster than I expected,” he said.

  “Us,” Aremis said.

  “The scroll,” Scrinivaan corrected quietly.

  Bourin snorted. “Same thing.”

  Turmonge looked back at Bhraime Montclef.

  For a moment, the square faded. He saw instead a council chamber in Bordeaux. A long table. Bhraime leaning forward, hands planted on wood, arguing that the Empire must act swiftly against all invaders in the northern region.

  “You fight like a true warrior,” Bhraime had told Turmonge then. “Direct. Honest. But these are troubling times”

  Turmonge had laughed and told him blades are the best deterrent.

  Now he had died to those very premonitions in this square.

  “He deserved better,” Turmonge said quietly.

  Aremis stepped closer to the stone. She touched the edge of Bhraime’s torn breastplate. “He stood when others would have fled. That’s better than most would do.”

  Scrinivaan looked toward the southern road again. “The Templars will not ride alone. There will be others. Scouts. Perhaps a witch-scryer.”

  Bourin growled. “Let them.”

  “No,” Aremis said sharply. “Not here. Not in this graveyard. Next time they come it will be in greater force. With death priests.”

  Turmonge nodded slowly. “We move.”

  “West?” Bourin asked.

  Turmonge shook his head. “They expect west. We go north. Into the forest.”

  Scrinivaan’s eyes flickered with approval. “The mountain mist will hide tracks.”

  “The Spider Silk?” Aremis asked.

  “Yes,” Turmonge said. “We have little choice.”

  Bourin looked once more at Bhraime. “We leavin’ him like this?”

  Turmonge stepped forward at last and lowered himself to one knee. He took Bhraime’s chin gently and closed the man’s remaining eye.

  “We’ll not drag him,” Turmonge said. “We’d never make it. He will have to remain.”

  “You were stubborn,” he said. “And loud. And wrong more than once.”

  Bourin huffed softly.

  “But you stood,” Turmonge continued. “And you held. That’s enough.”

  Aremis added quietly, “May the gods who watch war know your name.”

  Scrinivaan said nothing. He simply listened.

  They did not linger.

  Turmonge turned away first.

  “North,” he said.

  They moved through the ruined streets once more, stepping past the dead, past the broken fountain, past the shattered doors and the flies.

  At the northern edge of Osogorsk, the road gave way to scrub and then to the first dark line of pine trees climbing toward the mountains. Smoke thinned there. The air tasted cleaner.

  Aremis paused at the tree line and looked back.

  The town smoldered beneath a gray sky. The square was hidden from view now, but she knew what lay there. Imperial dead. Templar dead. And one general who had refused to bend.

  “We’re not done with them,” she said quietly.

  Turmonge did not look back. “No,” he agreed. “We’re not.”

  Scrinivaan adjusted his cloak and stepped into the trees. “Then let them chase us.”

  Bourin followed, axe resting once more on his shoulder. “Let ’em choke on pine needles.”

  Aremis took one last breath of smoke and iron and turned north.

  The four vanished into the mountain pines, swallowed by mist and shadow, leaving Osogorsk to its crows and its ghosts.

  Behind them, the town of the dead was engulfed once more with silence.