Chapter 20 – The Fire in the Hills
Dawn bled slowly across the Greywatch, casting long fingers of red and ochre over the river's broken banks. Smoke still curled in thin ribbons from the charred ruins of border villages seized in the first sweep—Briar Hollow, Dellsward, and Fennrock—names already turning to ash in the mouths of fleeing Vokari warbands.
Lorien stood on a rise of wet stone and shattered pine, overlooking the basin below where his forces had begun to entrench. He had ordered a fortified camp erected on the second ridge east of the river crossing—a wide, sloping hill crowned with rock and ringed in newly-cut stakes. Already, banners snapped in the morning wind: the black sun of the Emberborn, the silver-stag of Thornvale, and a rising sprawl of newer standards belonging to the northern levies.
He had not slept. There was little use in it now. The enemy was near.
Below, Emberborn officers relayed silent signals across the lines. The discipline they carried was uncanny—men and women bred for stillness, for fire, for absolute obedience. Vale moved among them like a shadow, reading terrain and formations without speaking a word. She paused only to confer with Lorien before vanishing toward the western slope.
"They'll come through the pinebreak, just before noon," she said. "Scouts confirm two columns moving from the Hollow Trail. Maybe five thousand. All Vokari."
Lorien gave a slow nod. "And our position?"
"They know where we are. They just don't know who we are."
He turned his gaze eastward. A runner arrived from the lower ridge—one of the Thornvale captains, his cloak crusted with river mud.
"Conscripts are dug in. Militia hold the right flank. Emberborn center. Lady Sera commands the reserve."
"And the third line?"
"Half strength, but steady. We used survivors from the Briar Hollow clash to stiffen their ranks."
Lorien allowed himself a single breath of cold air. "Good. Tell the Emberborn to wait. Let them come close. I want their blood to hit the stakes."
---
By the sixth hour of daylight, the Vokari came.
Not in a screaming horde, but in tight, purposeful ranks—five thousand across two horns, each guided by seasoned chieftains wearing mail stitched with obsidian and bone. Their war drums were dull but steady, and their archers moved like migrating wolves along the ridgeline.
The first volleys came before the Vokari fully entered the basin. Thornvale's skirmishers loosed arrows from concealed positions along the south trail. Lorien had studied their reaction—he was not disappointed. The Vokari split. The left horn wheeled toward the false ridge, where trenches waited to swallow them whole. The right advanced uphill, toward the camp's exposed flank.
Vale was already moving. Emberborn detachments slipped down the slope and disappeared into the pinebreak. Silent as falling snow.
The trap began to close.
---
The fighting was not clean.
Steel on steel gave way to mud, blood, and screams. The Emberborn were precise, but the Vokari were furious. They fought like people who knew this land—not soldiers but reavers, hardened in mountain passes and ancient blood-feuds. Twice, Thornvale lines buckled before Emberborn could stabilize the breach. Lady Sera herself was thrown from her horse during the second wave. She fought from the ground until Lorien's standard reached her position.
The battle broke down into brutal, localized skirmishes. Emberborn squads isolated pockets of resistance, targeting Vokari leaders with cold efficiency. One commander—his face marked with ritual scars—was found pinned to a tree, three bolts through the neck.
Still, the Vokari did not rout.
Not even after their rear lines were harried by conscripted cavalry from Blackhold's frontier.
Not even when Lorien personally led the third line down into the basin.
They held, screaming defiance in their old tongue. They fought as if to make a monument of their dying.
---
Night fell like a hammer.
The basin was quiet again, though the silence was heavy. Fires burned low across the battlefield. The wounded were dragged from the mud, some still clutching broken blades. Lorien walked among them, his cloak torn and stained, flanked by Vale and Captain Dain of the Thornvale companies.
"Five hundred lost," Vale said softly. "More wounded."
"Ours?"
She nodded. "Their losses tripled. But they didn't break."
Lorien exhaled. His hands ached. His eyes burned from the smoke.
"They wanted to die here," he muttered.
"And they nearly got their wish," said Dain. "This wasn't a raid. This was a stand."
He nodded again, then turned to look west.
There would be more. The Vokari weren't done. And if this had been a test, it had nearly broken his front.
He would not survive another like it without change.
---
At sunrise, he summoned the Emberborn captains.
Forty-seven remained.
He stood before them without armor, stripped to shirt and sash, blood dried along his sleeves. His voice was hoarse, but firm.
"We held the river. That's not victory. That's survival. And survival is the lowest bar we will ever set."
Silence.
"We do not fight to hold. We fight to end this war. We fight to burn away every lie they've told about the north. We fight because no one else can."
He looked across their faces—scarred, cold, unwavering.
"So rebuild. Bury the dead. And prepare to move. The basin was just the beginning."
Vale stepped forward.
"Where do we go now?"
Lorien turned toward the mountains beyond the Hollow Trail.
"North. Into their heartland. Into the teeth of whatever waits."
Then, almost as an afterthought, he added:
"And this time, we won't be waiting for them to come to us."