When the black smoke rose in the distance, Linden did not rush. Instead, he slipped back into the dripping woods, moving as he once had when stalking mountain bears. One by one he checked his snares, adjusting those that had shifted in the rain, tightening cords, resetting triggers. Only when he was satisfied did he return to his hidden perch, eyes fixed on the narrow mountain road that wound toward the smugglers' pass.
The rain did not ease with dawn. It thickened, falling in sheets that blurred the world into gray. The downpour cloaked the forest floor, masking his traps beneath mud and leaf‑litter, but it also dulled his senses. Even Linden's sharpened hearing could catch nothing beyond the endless patter of rain on branch and stone.
The smoke signal vanished from the sky, smothered by storm or perhaps because the battle had already run its course. Linden did not dwell on it. He shifted his weight, easing the stiffness from his limbs, and remained still, though the rain had long since soaked through his clothes.
Half an hour crept by. Then—something. A sound beneath the rain. Linden turned his head, ears straining toward the woods where his snares lay hidden.
For a heartbeat, the world changed. The roar of the storm seemed to unravel, each sound separating cleanly, like books set in order upon a shelf. He could hear them all distinctly: the drip of water from a pine bough, the scurry of a vole in the underbrush, the faint scrape of boots against wet stone.
The strange clarity lasted only a few seconds before the storm swallowed it again. But it was enough.
Linden knew now—there were men in the woods ahead.
"There are twenty‑three in all," Linden murmured to himself, hand resting on the hilt of his blade. "Thirteen wounded, seven sorely hurt, and six already caught in the snares—beyond saving. Two in plate, though. Knights, most like. They will be troublesome."
Soon after, shadowed figures began to emerge from the far end of the mountain road. Through the curtain of rain, Linden could only make out their shapes at first, but as they drew nearer, their condition became clearer.
As he had judged from their voices, two men in plate marched at the center, guarded closely by the rest. Their bearing marked them as leaders. Around them shuffled the others—most in common garb, a handful in leather, spears clutched in weary hands, a few with longswords.
The count, however, was short of his earlier reckoning. Linden understood at once: the missing had fallen to his snares, their bodies left tangled in the dripping woods.
The survivors pressed on without pause. They scanned the slopes, found the narrow track half‑hidden in the weeds, and began to climb toward the smugglers' pass.
Perhaps it was only desperation that drove them, or the exhaustion of a night spent fleeing, fighting, and fleeing again. Whatever the cause, none of them spared a thought for hidden traps or ambush. Heads bowed against the rain, they trudged forward, blind to the death that waited in the mist.
The fugitives reached the foot of the hill, heads bowed against the rain, blind to the hunter waiting above them. The grass, the dripping trees, and the storm itself cloaked Linden's presence.
He had no thought of letting them pass and cutting them down piecemeal. They were weary, their strength spent. Better to strike now, head‑on, and end it swiftly.
When the two knights in plate reached his mark, Linden loosed the power he had been holding. He sprang forward like an arrow from the string, closing the distance in a heartbeat. The rain veiled his charge; the knights saw nothing until the flash of steel was upon them.
Cold steel kissed the gap beneath their helms. Weakness flooded their limbs, and they toppled to the mud, twitching helplessly.
The others had not yet grasped what had happened when Linden's blades were already in motion. He spun, his twin swords carving arcs of silver through the rain. The edge found the seam in a leather jerkin, sliced through flesh as if it were butter. Before the blood could spill, the blade was already seeking its next mark.
The Peacemaker's lessons burned in his muscles now—weak point attack. Not brute force, but speed, precision, and the ruthless exploitation of every flaw. In less than ten heartbeats, five armed men lay dead at his feet.
"Enemy attack!" someone screamed, the cry breaking through the storm. Panic rippled through the survivors, but their shouts did not touch Linden.
He was no longer a hunter, nor even a man. He was a machine of death, cold and inexorable. He drove into the spear‑men, his grip shifting to half‑sword, his strikes darting like a serpent's tongue. Each thrust found the soft place at the neck, each swing dropped another foe.
They fell before him like weeds cut down by the scythe.
Though the bandits knew they were under attack, they could form no defense. Their commander had fallen in the first heartbeat, and the long spears they clutched were useless in the press of close combat. They could neither strike nor ward off the flashing blades. All they could do was watch helplessly as death fell upon them.
Linden's speed was inhuman. To their weary eyes, there was no sword, only the glint of steel in the rain, a blur of light too swift to follow. Even had they been fresh and strong, they could not have evaded such strikes. Exhausted as they were, they were lambs before the butcher.
The five scouts at the head of the column heard the cries behind them and wheeled about, weapons raised. What they saw froze their blood.
Through the downpour, a dozen of their companions lay sprawled in the mud, blood mingling with the rain until the mountain road ran red. Among the corpses stood a lone figure, twin swords in hand. The storm veiled his face, but his gaze cut through the curtain of rain like a blade. It was the gaze of a phantom, a ghost from some old tale of vengeance.
Terror seized them. Whatever discipline they had fled. They turned and bolted up the road, shoving one another aside in their desperation to be first. Each man thought only of his own escape, hoping the others would buy him a few more moments of life.
Had they stood together, their spears might have formed a hedge, enough to slow Linden until the cliff road forced him to think twice about pursuit. But panic ruled them. They jostled and struck at one another, leaving their backs bare.
It was an invitation Linden did not refuse. He fell upon them like a shadow, blades rising and falling in merciless rhythm. They had scarcely run ten paces before all five lay dead in the rain.
After cutting down the last of the fugitives, Linden moved among the bodies, checking each in turn. Once certain none still drew breath, he allowed himself a moment's rest. He did not trouble to clean the field. Instead, he slipped back into the sodden woods to inspect his snares.
Most had been sprung, and all had done their work. Fourteen corpses lay tangled in the traps, their deaths swift and merciless. Linden made no effort to reset them or hide the carnage. He merely chose a vantage near the outermost snare and settled in to wait, patient as a shadow.
Half an hour later, more fugitives came—two groups, seven in one, thirteen in the other. The storm had blunted the coalition's encirclement; Joel's careful dispositions had not been enough to keep every fish from the net.
The survivors believed themselves safe. No pursuers hounded their heels, and the smuggler's path lay just beyond the trees. But the moment they entered the forest, they vanished. Linden struck like a wraith, cutting down stragglers, driving the rest into his snares. One by one they fell, until the woods were thick with corpses.
The stench of blood grew heavy, seeping into the rain‑soaked earth. It drew beasts from the hills, prowling shapes that made the forest more perilous with every passing hour.
Far from the slaughter, another figure moved upon the board. Ser Roman Webber, son of Ser Lyndon Webber and cousin to Lord Edmund Webber of Coldmoat. A long‑faced man, he bore the mocking name of the Gopher, for he spent his days burrowed in his manor, venturing out only to peer at the world before retreating again. Yet those who knew him well warned against underestimating him. The gopher's teeth were sharp, and those who dismissed him often rued it.
Now Ser Roman commanded a hundred men, patrolling the battle's edge. His charge was simple: to catch what the net had missed. More than that, he was to ensure that none of the Long loyalists—those few who had once dealt with House Webber—slipped free of the noose.
Had all gone as planned, they would have been feasting by now, celebrating the end of the Red Lake Forest bandits and the last tatters of the Long loyalists. But the storm had other designs. At dawn the heavens opened, and the sudden downpour turned the ground to mire. The host's ordered lines faltered, their pace uneven, gaps opening wide across the field.
The bandit chief proved no fool. He scattered his men into smaller bands, driving them through the breaches. Most were cut down in the attempt, but some few slipped the noose.
It fell to Ser Roman Webber to sweep up the stragglers. Yet the same rain that had undone the encirclement slowed his own pursuit. He had accounted for some of the fugitives, but others had vanished into the wooded hills near Fort Steadfast, right beneath his nose.
Ordinary outlaws he might have let go. But among those who fled, Roman glimpsed two in plate. Bandits in such harness were no common rabble. Men of that station might carry secrets worth killing for.
So Roman pressed on, driving his hundred men into the sodden woods, following the broken branches and muddied tracks left by the fugitives. Soon they reached the very forest where Linden had sown his snares.
When they found the trail leading inward, Roman gave the order without hesitation. "After them." His men plunged into the trees at his back.
They had not gone far before the column faltered. A hush fell as the foremost riders reined in, staring upward.
There, dangling from a branch, hung a corpse. Its feet swung above the ground, its chest transfixed by a jagged stump of wood. From a distance it seemed less the work of man than of the forest itself, as if the trees had risen in wrath to slay the intruder.