The slaughter on the high plateau was finished by the time the Calamity Squad reached the flat ground.
Captain Mira's forty light cavalry scouts were already moving through the scattered Battanian bodies, stripping iron weapons and rounding up loose mountain ponies. Wiping her notched two-handed sword with a rough piece of wool, Mira slid the heavy blade into the sheath across her back and turned her warhorse toward the tree line where the five friends waited.
Her scarred face tightened in recognition as her grey eyes locked onto Jade.
"I remember you, kid," Mira said, letting out a short, rough laugh. "You're the recruit who mouthed off to Lord Thomund in the middle of his own war council."
Jade grimaced, rubbing the back of his neck. "Rodrik made sure I regretted it five seconds later."
Mira chuckled, resting her forearms across her saddle horn. "Thomund is an arrogant tournament peacock. The lords from Jaculan think the sun rises because they gave it permission. Most green boys would have stared at their boots, but you nearly gave him an aneurysm. What are you doing all the way up on my ridge?"
"Rodrik sent us as a liaison patrol to check your screen," Jade replied. "Gorge trails are clear."
"They were until these woodsmen tried to slip behind us," Mira said, spitting into the scrub. "Paid skirmishers. Nothing we couldn't handle. Fall in behind my column, boys. We are heading back down to the river."
The ride south out of the crags was fast and quiet. By mid-morning, Mira's cavalry and the Calamity Squad crossed back over the stone bridge of Veron Crossing, riding into the bustling staging area of the Golden Boar where supply wagons stood locked in defensive circles while mercenaries sharpened blades, checked saddle girths, and pulled on heavy quilted jacks.
Inside the command pavilion, Captain Rodrik stood over the map table with Vice-Captain Kaelen, Squad Leader Bram, and Scout Officer Mara.
Lord Thomund's heavy leather purse of two hundred silver denars sat on the corner of the wood. The royal baron army under Lord Ingalther had already crossed the southern river to invest Garontor Castle, leaving the Golden Boar to execute Thomund's contract: raiding the two agricultural villages bound to Veron Castle to starve out Lord Achios.
"We split our forces to hit both at once," Rodrik was saying as Jade and Mira walked in. "Scout Officer Mara takes her archers and Bram's third company north to hit Goleryn. Burn the granaries, take the livestock, and put torches to the thatch."
Mara gave a curt nod. "We will clear Goleryn out."
Rodrik then turned toward Captain Mira. "Mira, your horses ran hard this morning and need water. You and your forty riders hold the base camp and the stone bridge at Veron Crossing. Guard the supply wagons and keep the crossing secure."
Mira grunted, stepping back from the table. "Understood. We will hold the bridgehead."
Rodrik shifted his hand, tapping the southern settlement of Veron, located in the shallow valley below the castle ridge.
"Kaelen and I take the main force to hit the village of Veron," Rodrik continued. "Fifty line infantry, thirty cavalry. We hit the road at a gallop, punch through the fences, and clear the houses."
Rodrik paused, his scarred face turning toward Jade and his squad, his eyes narrowing slightly as he recalled Jade's objections during the council five days earlier.
"Calamity Squad," Rodrik barked. "I know you boys came off a farm and do not have the stomach for a harvest raid. I am not having green recruits freeze up with cold steel while my veterans are clearing cottages."
Nathaniel let out a quiet breath of relief behind Jade's shoulder.
"You five take your mounts and circle around to the southern tree line behind Veron," Rodrik ordered, stabbing his thumb toward the back road. "Hold the dirt track where the path climbs into the gorse hills. Your job is simple: do not let anyone run. If any villagers try to slip out the back with silver or warnings for the castle, cut them off. Understood?"
"Understood, Captain," Jade replied.
Thirty minutes later, the Golden Boar deployed. Mara and Bram swung northeast toward Goleryn, while Rodrik led eighty mercenaries down the sunken cart track toward Veron, leaving Captain Mira's scouts formed up around the stone bridgehead at the river to keep the crossing secure.
The Calamity Squad split off to the right, trotting their five Vlandian work horses through a pine ravine to reach the southern rise behind Veron.
They dismounted beneath a cluster of rocky outcrops three hundred yards behind the settlement, tying their reins to a row of birch saplings before settling along the rim.
From their elevated position, the entire village of Veron lay laid out below them, showing two dozen stone and timber cottages clustered around a central well alongside wattle fences, vegetable plots, and haystacks. Across the open valley to the north, Captain Rodrik's cavalry troop was forming up on the road, their iron lances and broadswords glinting under the pale morning sun.
Numerius leaned on the stone ledge, resting his heavy two-handed mace against his leg. "Cutting off the road is fine by me, since it beats kicking down doors and listening to families scream."
"I am not complaining," Nathaniel agreed, checking the bolt track on his crossbow. "We sit on a hill, watch the smoke, collect our pay, and head back."
Mataranas stood silently beside them with his heavy cavalry shield unslung, his hand resting on the iron grip of his one-handed flange mace as his dark eyes scanned the dirt paths between the cottages.
Jade unslung his short spear and stepped to the edge of the granite lip, looking down at the village square while a cold, uneasy feeling settled into his stomach.
Something was completely off.
It was nearly midday, with the sun hanging high above the stone towers of Veron Castle on the distant ridge, yet neither laundry nor dogs were in sight, and not a single wisp of smoke rose from any stone hearth.
"Yuzon," Jade said, his voice dropping into a tense whisper. "Take a look through the glass."
Yuzon was already pulling his brass spyglass from his belt, clicking the lenses into focus and resting his forearm on a boulder to steady his view across the fences, roofs, and open lanes.
His hand went rigid against the brass casing.
"Yuzon?" Jade asked. "What is it?"
"I feel like I am in danger," Yuzon said, his voice dead flat and completely stripped of its usual calm. "The hair on my arms is standing straight up."
Nathaniel leaned forward with a nervous frown. "What are you talking about? Rodrik has eighty heavy fighters charging the front gate, so what danger could there be?"
"Look at the people, Nate," Yuzon whispered, his eye pressed hard against the lens. "There are only five men in the entire square, standing by the well."
Jade shielded his eyes with his hand, looking down.
To the north, thirty Golden Boar cavalrymen were already galloping down the dirt road, their warhorses thundering across the turf with steel blades drawn and loud mercenary war cries echoing off the hills.
Yet the five figures in the square made no move to scatter or scream, standing completely motionless as the charging cavalry bore down on them.
"Where are the women and children?" Jade muttered, his pulse suddenly racing. "Where is all the livestock?"
"There are no cattle, and not a single goat is in the pens," Yuzon said, his tone tightening as he kept the glass steady. "The doors on the cottages are barred from the outside with heavy timber beams, and those five men standing by the well have their feet planted wide like seasoned soldiers rather than farmers."
Nathaniel went pale as the pieces fell into place. "If the cottages are barred and the farmers are gone..."
"It is not a village," Jade breathed, the cold dread hitting him all at once. "It is a kill zone."
Down in the valley, Captain Rodrik's heavy cavalry was moving at full gallop, barely fifty yards from the perimeter, with Vice-Captain Kaelen riding on the left flank while fifty line infantry double-timed across the meadow behind them.
"RODRIK, PULL UP!" Jade shouted from the ridge, waving his spear, though the wind and the thunder of hooves completely swallowed his voice.
The lead cavalry horses hit the narrow grass strip twenty paces outside the wattle fencing, and the ground collapsed under their weight.
A massive, fifty-yard trench, dug deep into the hard clay and carefully concealed beneath woven branches, dry turf, and straw, caved inward in an instant.
The front row of warhorses plunged straight down into the hidden ditch at full speed, where fire-hardened oak stakes impaled charging mounts through their chests and bellies with horrific, wet crunching sounds, snapping legs and sending four-hundred-pound beasts tumbling head over heels.
Vice-Captain Kaelen's black charger slammed chest-first into the ditch, snapping its forelegs instantly and hurling Kaelen from his saddle through a wooden fence, sending his armored body skipping across the dirt. Six horses directly behind him could not check their momentum in time, slamming into the wreckage of the ditch and piling on top of the impaled mounts while crushing their own riders beneath falling saddles and thrashing hooves.
The entire Golden Boar cavalry charge collapsed into a screaming knot of broken bone, trapped horses, and shattered iron.
Before the dazed survivors could scramble out of the ditch, wooden trapdoors burst open along the cottage roofs. Imperial Palatine Guards in purple tunics and steel kettle helms rose from the attics, drawing heavy composite recurve bows and sending steady volleys of black-fletched bodkin arrows into the packed mass of dying mounts and trapped mercenaries.
Down from the stone battlements of Veron Castle, a deep iron horn blew three long, resonant notes, and the cellar doors beneath the cottages were kicked open from below as sixty Imperial Menavliatons, hidden in the basement tunnels for three days, poured out into the sunlight with eight-foot polearms leveled.
Rodrik was on his feet in the dirt, his helmet gone, screaming for the line infantry to form a circle as Menavliatons drove heavy steel blades through shields and unarmored throats. It was an outright execution.
On the high southern ridge, Nathaniel stumbled back from the ledge, his face bone white. "We have to run. Jade, we have to mount up right now."
"Wait," Yuzon whispered, his eye pressed back against the brass tube of the spyglass, his hands shaking so violently the metal rattled against his cheek.
Yuzon did not look at the slaughter in the village. He was swinging the glass south, toward the winding river road leading back to Veron Crossing.
A low, deep vibration began to hum through the granite beneath their boots, shaking the loose gravel from the rocks.
From the southern pine gaps across the river, a second horn answered the castle, harsh, brassy, and utterly distinct from the infantry calls.
"The village was only half the ambush," Yuzon said, his voice dropping as he lowered the glass, staring toward the crossing with wide eyes. "Achios drew our entire company across the river to pin us here."
Through the trees two miles south, sunlight flashed off an unbroken wall of silver lamellar and barded brawn.
Heavy Imperial Cataphracts, armored from the tips of their nasal helms down to their horses' hooves, were galloping out of the southern tree line in an iron wedge, charging straight for the stone bridge at Veron Crossing to cut off the Golden Boar's only escape route back to Vlandia.
Between the slaughter in the valley below and the iron wall closing on the bridge, the Calamity Squad was entirely cut off.
"The crossing," Jade breathed, his knuckles white around his spear. "Mira is holding the bridge alone."