"If the land remembers, let it remember who took it back."
—Connach of Clann Durnach, Warband Leader
The sea did not greet them. It simply opened, dark and cold, beneath the prow of the Phantomis-class trireme as it slid toward Caerwynd's broken shore. No torches marked their arrival. No oars slapped water. Only the moan of wind through the cliffs and the hush of surf across the bones of drowned villages.
Connach stood at the prow, blacksteel cuirass cloaked in dark linens, horsehair helm plume bound low to dull its profile. He did not speak. No need. The men behind him were Threnari, Auxiliary Warband, Moorfire Unit. They knew the mission.
Ten units had been launched this night. Ten warbands, spread like coals across a wet moor. Moorfire's target was Tor Rhydd, a coastal Dazhum outpost perched above a shale bluff. Twenty enemy garrison. Heavily armed. Isolated, but alert.
The trireme held position just off the black reef. Connach leapt first, landing in knee-high surf without splash, shield slung, falcata sheathed at the waist. Behind him, his unit descended in silent motion, each warrior in darksteel thorax and stormruned greaves, black-dyed chitoniskos beneath, shield backs camouflaged with peatwash. Moccasin boots gripped the slick stone like claws. Breath low. Eyes clear. Every step mapped by Echo Perception, every stance rooted in Grounding.
They were not yet Stormguard, but their shadow fell long.
The climb to Tor Rhydd was slow and coiled. The path wound through collapsed crofts and sea-blasted cairns, now overtaken by gorse and moss. Fog licked the path like a tongue. Moorfire moved in pairs, staggered. Falcata blades curved like hooked leaves at their sides. Javelins clicked gently in back-harnesses. Shields were held edge-down.
Ahead, the outpost rose, a stone-buttressed compound ringed by timber palisade. No banners flew. Only torchlight marked the towers, and the occasional silhouette of a pacing guard.
Connach halted at the base of the slope. He pressed two fingers to the earth, breathed once. Storm Breathing. Grounding. The land spoke in weight and pressure. The guard on the south tower was tired. The one on the west moved like a man fresh from relief. Sentries above. Eight more within the walls.
He made the signal: coil and strike.
Eorlas and Tuarin vanished west, bare shields strapped tight, bows slung flat to their backs. Sira and Firaen took the rear path toward the gate's blind side. Connach advanced up the slope with the center line, five Threnari, shoulder to shoulder, shields angled and close. Each step was quiet as drifting ash.
Then came the kill.
A thud, soft and wet. One sentry folded over the rampart, his throat opened by Tuarin's curved knife. A second archer tried to raise alarm but fell backward with a black-fletched arrow through his jaw. Eorlas caught the body, slumped it silently.
At the gate, Sira pressed her shoulder to the iron crossbar. The locking pin had rusted; it broke with a muffled crack. The gate opened with breathless precision.
Moorfire surged in.
A volley of five javelins flew first, thrown high and curved, landing with brutal accuracy on the outer bunkhouse. One Dazhum died instantly, another staggered, crying out. Connach didn't pause. He crashed through the threshold with his shield raised and falcata drawn, shoulder checked a panicked marine into the wall, and drove his blade down into the gap beneath the man's collarbone. Blood sprayed.
To his left, Aoan struck with the butt of his spear, staggering a defender backward into Urekh's overhand thrust. The blade hit armor, but the force behind it drove it through with a harsh grind of metal. Greaves skidded. Steel clanged. The falcata wasn't crafted for elegance or precision. It was made to end fights swiftly, to break through defense and bone alike. One Dazhum attempted to rally at the inner courtyard, barking orders. A warhorn hung at his belt, he reached for it. Firaen threw low. The javelin struck him through the thigh and pinned him to the palisade. He screamed once before Sira slit his throat.
The remaining defenders broke formation, half-armored, disoriented. They knew patrol work, not siege tactics. One man tried to drop from the wall and run for the coast. Eorlas cut him down before his boots hit the dirt.
Connach found the last resistance clustered near the firepit, five soldiers trying to brace behind an overturned table. He motioned to Urekh and Sira.
"Mirror Edge," he said.
They advanced together, shields locking. Connach led the charge, slamming his Boeotian shield into the wood barricade. The impact cracked bone and broke rank. Sira came over the top with a vertical slash, her falcata caught a marine from shoulder to heart. Urekh feinted low, then crushed a knee with his shield boss and followed with a killing thrust. They left no man breathing.
Within minutes, the outpost had fallen.
Tor Rhydd's fire flickered low. Blood soaked the stone courtyard. Corpses lay where they'd fallen. None would leave this island alive.
Connach stood at the center, breathing steady. The battle had cost them nothing. Not a single auxiliary had fallen. Not one step had faltered. It had been fast, clean, and final.
The creed held: Endure. Advance. Uplift. Defend.
But more would come. The outpost was only the first strike.
Connach looked to the distant ridge where Garnath Hold loomed beyond the moors. His men gathered around him, black-armored, silent, shaped by wind and war. The fog began to drift inland.
No flare was lit. No banner raised.
They had barely finished dragging the last body when the warning came.
Eorlas dropped from the parapet. "Torchlight. Twenty on the lower trail. Not part of the garrison. New units, marching in with weapons slung."
Connach cursed under his breath. Reinforcements. Whether a relief shift or rotation, it didn't matter. Twenty trained Dazhum marines. Moorfire had no high ground left to claim. No wall to defend. Just open space and shallow mist.
He didn't hesitate.
"Hide the dead. Fast."
They worked in silence. Bodies were dragged into the bunkhouse. Blood was swept with soaked cloaks and covered with peat. The outpost looked like it had been abandoned, rushed in retreat.
Connach signaled the unit into position.
Sira and Firaen took to the slope overlooking the main path. Eorlas, Tuarin, and Urekh concealed themselves behind the low stone wall flanking the gate, spears drawn, shields buried beneath wild grasses. Connach, Aoan, and the rest waited along the inner shadows of the palisade, tucked in darkness, knees braced, breathing shallow and paced.
The fog would help. The torchlight of the Dazhum glowed like phantom stars in the mist, coming steady, boots crunching on gravel, armor clinking in rhythm. Connach noted it all. They were tired, but not complacent. Formation was loose but alert. Too much talking among them, though. The kind of chatter that comes before warm beds and rations.
He crouched low. Murmured one word: "Coil."
Then: "Break."
The ambush struck with the suddenness of lightning.
Firaen's first javelin flew from the left ridge, piercing a marine through the neck. As his cry choked off, the others turned, too slow.
Sira's second javelin followed half a breath later, hammering a torch-bearer through the chest. The torch dropped, sizzled in the mud. Darkness swallowed half the line.
Then Connach's center charged.
Black-armored shadows erupted from both flanks. Urekh and Tuarin came over the stone wall with shields high, smashing into the rear of the Dazhum column. Eorlas swept a leg from beneath one soldier and drove his spear down through the ribs before the man hit the ground.
The rest turned to form a hasty wedge, but the fog betrayed them. Footing slid. Breath hitched. The Threnari were already among them, shields battering, falcatas slicing beneath the collar and gut.
A Dazhum captain roared for a line to hold, back to back, shields locked.
He almost made it.
Connach himself crashed through the gap, shield locked to his side, falcata rising in a brutal arc that cleaved through the captain's helm. The strike was not elegant. It didn't need to be. The man dropped like timber.
The rest folded. One dropped his shield and fell to his knees, hands raised, voice cracking through the mist.
"Mercy. I yield, I yield!"
His helmet was gone, and blood ran down one side of his face. His eyes locked on Connach's.For a breath, the moor fell quiet.Sira did not pause. She stepped forward and silenced him with a clean thrust beneath the ribs.He exhaled sharply, then collapsed.The others turned to flee. Firaen struck them down before they cleared the slope. One fell screaming into the peat, speared through the back.
It lasted less than a minute.
Twenty had come. None remained standing.
The fog returned. Breaths slowed.
Connach stood in the trail's hollow, blade wet, shoulders rising and falling with measured calm. Around him, the moor whispered again, unchanged by blood, as if it welcomed it.
No flare had gone up. No warning had been sent.
The outpost was theirs. The path was silent. The corpses were gathered and dumped in an open pit. The Dazhum would not know they were missing for at least a day. By then, the Blacktide Spear Corps would have reached Garnath Hold. By then, the storm would already be breaking.
Connach stared west, toward the high spine of Caerwynd. The old stones seemed to watch him now. Not with malice. With something older, weathered patience, as if they had seen many such men before.
He whispered to the earth, more to himself than to any god:
"The blood of the moor never stays buried."
The wind moved through the high grass like a whisper too old to translate. Low clouds rolled over the ridge, heavy with the scent of rain and stone.
Connach turned back to his unit.
The mission had one final line:
"Wait for message. Hold the outpost. If none came… then decide and adjust."
They stood quiet, breath misting in the cold. Faces roughened by wind and weather, hardened not just by battle, but by the Stormguard creed.
He gave the signal.
No horn sounded. No banners rose.
Only work began. Stakes into soil. Watch rotations planned. Patrol routes marked into the wet ground by boot and chalk.
Because war was not the clash of heroes.
It was preparation.
It was watching the fog.
It was choosing to hold, long before the enemy came.
And when the order arrived, if it arrived at all, they would meet it with steel and fire.
Under clouds that never cleared.
On ground that remembered every death.