Not long after the Webber host arrived, Ser Joel received a raven from House Rowan. The letter bore grim tidings: the combined forces of the Rowans and the Oakhearts had driven the bandits from the Red Lake Forest. Yet the victory was hollow. The outlaws had been beaten, not broken. Their numbers were still largely intact, their main strength preserved.
As Joel had foreseen, the bandits were now streaming toward Fort Steadfast, seeking to slip away by the hidden road that wound into the mountains beyond Cornfield. Whether by design or negligence, the Rowans and Oakhearts had left the work unfinished, passing the burden to Joel's smaller host. The letter urged him to intercept the fugitives, hold them near Fort Steadfast, and delay them until the rest of the coalition could arrive to close the trap.
What the Rowans had not reckoned on was the Webbers' desperation. To cleanse themselves of suspicion, they had marched with nearly their full strength—six or seven hundred men, well‑armed and well‑equipped. Their arrival gave Joel far more soldiers than he had first expected, and with them, the freedom to alter his plan.
Instead of scattering his men in ambushes through the forest, Joel chose a narrow valley along the smugglers' road. There, where the bandits must pass, he would meet them in open battle and crush them outright.
In the hall of Fort Steadfast, Joel traced the map with his finger, tapping the mark of a ram's horn etched upon the parchment.
"You will take ten men and station yourselves at Sheephorn Cliff," he told Linden. "If the bandits pass that way, light a signal fire. Hold them as best you can until we come."
Linden frowned. He knew the place well—he had scouted it himself. Sheephorn Cliff was indeed a chokepoint, but it lay far to the rear. Only if the front lines failed would fugitives ever reach it. If the battle went as Joel intended, no bandits would come that way at all.
And no bandits meant no chance for glory. No chance to carve his name in the songs. The order left a bitter taste in Linden's mouth.
On this occasion, Linden could not openly oppose Ser Joel's command. He offered only a measured suggestion.
"I have surveyed the ground there. It is not difficult to defend. There is no need to assign men to me. They are neither strong nor trained to fight at my side. If enemies come, they will only hinder me. Alone, I can hold it."
A hush fell over the chamber. Even the Webber knights, who had only heard whispers of Linden's disdain for his fellows, stared in surprise. To reject his own subordinates outright—such a request was unheard of.
Joel's attendants muttered among themselves, dismissing him as arrogant, even mad. But the Webber knights studied him with keener eyes. They had already wondered at his presence in the war council. Among knights and squires, he alone wore the garb of a commoner. That alone made him a puzzle worth watching.
Joel betrayed no surprise. He fixed Linden with a cold stare. "And why do you think you can hold fleeing bandits alone?"
Linden's reply was calm, steady. "I am a hunter. I know how to set snares. Bandits on the run will not be harder to deal with than mountain bears."
Joel held his gaze for a long moment, then gave a single nod. "So be it."
With his task set, Linden turned to leave the hall.
But before he could reach the door, a voice rang out. Al Morrison—his jaw still bruised from Linden's earlier blow—rose to his feet.
"Ser Joel," he said loudly, "though I do not doubt this hunter's skill, he is but one man. If bandits escape through the place he guards, we will fail to encircle the remnants of the Dragon. And if word spreads that we left such a vital post to a single commoner, others may think we meant to let the outlaws slip away. That could bring us no small trouble."
Joel glanced at his squire, a faint smile playing at his lips, before turning back to Linden.
"If a single man slips past the place you guard, you will be branded an accomplice of the bandits. And still you mean to hold Sheephorn Cliff alone?"
All in the hall expected Linden to falter, to reconsider. Instead, he only smiled faintly, nodded to Joel, and walked out without a word.
"You haven't—" Al Morrison began, baffled by Linden's indifference.
"Enough!" Joel's voice cracked like a whip. "The matter is settled. Better you turn your minds to the battle ahead than waste breath on such trifles." His gaze swept the chamber, hard as steel. "Your families sent you here to win honor, not to return as corpses. This is war, not some autumn hunt for your lordlings' sport. Do you understand?"
The reprimand fell heavy in the hall. Joel had shamed his own attendants before the Webbers, and the air grew taut with silence. The young squires flushed with anger and humiliation, while even the Webber knights shifted uncomfortably.
At length, Joel turned the council back to matters of deployment, and the tension eased. Yet though the talk was of strategy, many eyes still strayed to the door where Linden had gone. The Webbers in particular whispered among themselves, resolved to learn more of this strange commoner who sat in Joel's war councils and spoke as boldly as any knight.
Meanwhile, Linden had reached the cobblers' workshop. The leatherworker who had once tried to make things difficult for him now leapt from his stool at the sight of him. Bowing low, he fetched the altered armor from the shelf and laid it out with both hands.
"This set has been mended and cut to your measure, just as you asked," he said quickly, his tone respectful, almost fearful. "Try it on, my lord, and tell me if aught needs further work."
Linden examined the leather armor carefully. Not only had the cobbler adjusted the size to his measure, but he had also reinforced it with thin plates of iron, cleverly sewn beneath the hide. When Linden buckled the belts tight, the overlapping edges of the plates covered one another, closing the gaps and lending the armor the strength of scale without hindering his movement.
"Not bad. Very good," Linden said with a nod of approval. He drew out two silver stags and tossed them onto the table. "A fine piece of work. Take this as your reward."
The cobbler snatched up the coins with trembling hands, wiping the sweat from his brow.
"I'll need rope as well," Linden added.
"How thick, my lord?" the cobbler asked quickly.
Linden gestured with his hands, showing the length and girth he required.
At once, the man fetched several coils of hemp rope, the kind used to bind prisoners. "Will these serve?"
"They will." Linden tested the cords with a sharp tug, nodded, and reached for another coin.
But the cobbler shook his head frantically. "No, no! Such things are common stores. You need not pay."
Linden did not press him. He slipped the coin back into his pouch, slung the ropes over his shoulder, and strode from the workshop.
Beyond the walls, the night pressed close. The road was rough and treacherous in the dark, and though Linden carried the instincts of a hunter, his pace was slower than by day. Step by step, he made his way through the forest, guided by memory and the faint light of the stars.
By the time he reached Sheephorn Cliff, nearly twice the hours had passed as it would have taken in daylight. The jagged silhouette of the cliff loomed against the night sky, stark and silent. Here, tomorrow, the fugitives would come. And here, Linden would be waiting.
Once he reached Sheephorn Cliff, Linden did not rest. He set immediately to work, arranging the snares and deadfalls he had planned during the day. When he had scouted the ground earlier, he had already marked the best sites for traps and gathered the needed materials. Now, in the dark, he had only to put his plan into motion.
Working alone, the labor consumed him until midnight. At one point, a lone wolf crept upon him, but Linden dispatched it swiftly. The carcass, however, drew other beasts with the scent of blood. He dragged it far from his work, and so the prowling carnivores did not disturb his traps.
The snares he laid were no common hunter's tricks. His predecessor had once brought down a mountain bear with such devices, proof of their deadly strength. And Linden, drawing on memories from another life, added refinements he had seen in the jungle warfare of armies—pitfalls masked with brush, weighted spikes, and trip‑cords that would strike where men least expected. The result was a killing ground both powerful and near impossible to guard against.
To some, it might seem shameful to rely on traps rather than face foes blade to blade. But for Linden, merit was what mattered now. Reputation he already had in excess—"Bear‑Hunter," "Master of the Twin Blades"—names sung by bards from Red Lake to Highgarden. Fame beyond his station had already drawn envy and malice, as Al Morrison's spite had shown. Better, then, to let his glory dim a little, to win quietly by cunning rather than blaze too brightly and draw more enemies.
Yet all of this depended on the bandits choosing this road. Linden could not know for certain they would. Joel likely did not know either. More than anything, Joel's decision to place him here seemed a gesture to appease his own attendants. After Linden had struck one of them down before half the host, Joel needed to show their families some token of balance. To send the hunter alone to the rear was explanation enough.
So Linden worked in silence beneath the stars, his ropes and snares strung across the cliff paths, his mind fixed on the morning to come. If the bandits came this way, they would find not a hunter, but a web of death waiting for them.
Over the past few days, Linden had come to see the truth clearly. The six so‑called squires at Joel's side were not truly his own. They had been foisted upon him by noble families eager to use this campaign against the so‑called "remnants of the dragon" to win their sons easy merit.
Ordinarily, a knight took but one squire. In rare cases, two or three. Barristan the Bold himself had once kept three at a time. But six? That was unheard of. Joel Flowers, famed as one of the "Twin Swords of the Reach" beside Fertimo Cliann, and even praised by Barristan himself, was no doubt a swordsman of renown. Yet his fame was confined to the Reach and its marches, and his birth as a bastard kept his station low. For such a man to keep six squires was not only unusual—it was arrogant, even insulting.
Joel was no fool. He must have seen the burden for what it was. That he still bore it showed he had little choice but to accept.
Nor were the squires themselves impressive. Al Morrison's clumsy skill had already revealed the truth: they were scarcely better than common veterans, boys who had learned a little swordplay but lacked the steel of true warriors. That such weaklings should march beside Joel into battle was strange indeed.
But none of this troubled Linden. What mattered was not the politics of other men, but whether he could seize his own chance.
Once his traps were laid, he withdrew to a hidden hollow overlooking Sheephorn Cliff. There he built a small fire of damp branches, its smoke thin and low, and set kindling ready for a signal blaze. Then he settled in to wait.
As the hours crept by, his thoughts turned to the campaign. Though Joel had placed him in the rear, far from the main clash, Linden knew there was still a chance for merit. If fugitives came this way, they would not be common rabble. Only the bandits' leaders, or men of true strength, would know of the smugglers' path and have the power to break free of the encirclement.
If fortune favored him, he might yet strike down one of their chiefs. Such a deed would weigh as heavily as any valor shown in the valley.
The night deepened. The forest whispered with the rustle of beasts in the undergrowth, the sigh of wind through the trees. Beyond that, there was only silence.
Linden fought back his weariness with discipline, forcing himself into brief, shallow sleeps that kept his mind clear without surrendering to exhaustion.
By the time the sky began to pale, he could not tell whether fortune favored him or mocked him. The cliffs of Sheephorn lay wrapped in a heavy fog, the cold wind spilling down from the northern slopes turning the mist into a fine, steady rain. The forest dripped and whispered, and the thick veil of rain and fog smothered sight for any ordinary man.
But Linden's eyes pierced the murk. Far off, beyond the ridges, he caught the faint smear of black smoke rising into the morning sky. His heart tightened. Fighting had begun in the valley ahead.