The high, biting wind of the north swept over the ridge, carrying with it the faint, metallic tang of blood. Atop the crest, Colin stood motionless, his silhouette swallowed by the gathering gloom.
His gaze—sharp, detached, and circling like a winter falcon—swept over the sprawling valley below. He paid no heed to the obvious targets. The heavily armored patrols marching in rigid synergy, the towering watchtowers looming like wooden sentinels, the grand command tent fortified at the camp's heart—these did not interest him.
Those were merely the effects. They were the hardened shell, the sharp claws, and the bared teeth that this steel behemoth used to hunt and defend itself. To strike at them directly was to invite ruin.
What Colin sought was the cause. He was looking for the soft, pulsing artery that kept the monster breathing.
His eyes became a silent, invisible scalpel, coldly dissecting the physical anatomy of the enemy host.
He scanned the sea of infantry tents. No, too scattered. Arson there would breed chaos, but not a fatal wound.
He tracked the reinforced perimeter of the officers' quarters. No, the defenses are too dense, the occupants seasoned. A direct assault there is a quagmire.
His gaze paused for a mere tenth of a second over the squalor of the slave camp before cutting away with ruthless detachment. Now was not the time for the luxury of pity.
The scalpel moved on, sweeping across a vast expanse of fenced stables... and suddenly, his pupils contracted into narrow pinpricks.
As if drawn by a violent magnetic pull, his focus locked onto a deceptively quiet sector in the northwest quadrant of the camp.
It sat immediately adjacent to the massive stable complexes housing thousands of warhorses. Nearby, rows of heavy supply wagons stood parked in neat, rigid lines. But more importantly, the area was dominated by two towering mounds of dry fodder—vast, golden hillocks that even from this distance seemed to radiate the dry, sweet scent of parched summer grass. Beside them, walls of grain sacks were stacked high, hastily shielded by heavy, waterproof tarps.
It was the stomach of the ten-thousand-strong host. The power source for a terrifying cavalry.
Colin had found the behemoth's fragile, unprotected digestive tract.
A sudden spike of adrenaline made his pulse hammer against his ribs. The placement was flawed; the enemy commanders had blundered. The entire storage depot sat directly upwind of the rest of the camp.
Slowly, Colin raised his right hand. The black leather of his glove was tacky with drying enemy blood. He opened his palm to the elements.
The north wind was relentless. It blew a steady, freezing gale from behind their position, sweeping across the high grass and plunging straight down into the throat of the valley.
A plan—vicious, brilliant, and utterly mad—struck his mind like a bolt of black lightning. In an instant, it crystallized.
"But it's not impossible," Colin murmured.
He lowered his hand, the harsh angles of his face catching the faint moonlight. A cold, cruel arc curled the corner of his mouth. He extended a single, blood-stained finger toward the doomed northwest corner.
"Look there," he said, his voice dropping into a calm, terrifyingly confident register. "And feel this wind."
Beside him, Hask squinted through the darkness, following the gesture. At first, his brow furrowed in deep confusion. He couldn't comprehend why his commander was fixating on a mundane pile of supplies when a massive, iron-clad army loomed before them like a thundercloud ready to break.
But then, Hask's mind began to connect the dots. The mountains of dry kindling. The thousands of high-strung, easily panicked warhorses penned right beside them. The bitter, unrelenting north wind driving straight into the heart of the enemy lines.
It was as if a physical blow had struck Hask between the eyes.
The confusion vanished, replaced by a sudden, burning terror that quickly shifted into wild exhilaration. His muscles, rigid from the freezing cold and nervous tension, began to tremble uncontrollably.
"Leader..." Hask choked out, his voice a hoarse, reverent whisper that vibrated like a taut wire. "You mean to... burn them out?"
"Exactly," Colin said. The cruelty in his smile deepened, his tone carrying the absolute certainty of a judge delivering a verdict.
"An army cannot fight without bread; burn their grain, and their morale dies with the smoke. A cavalryman is nothing without his mount; spook those thousands of horses, and they will stampede through the camp. Their mad rush will do ten times the damage our blades ever could."
Colin turned his gaze back to the valley, the trap already springing in his mind's eye.
"When they are starving, trampled by their own beasts, and abandoned by a broken chain of command... that is when we ride in to harvest what remains. We will use a great fire as our blade, and their own stampeding horses as our hammer. We will force this behemoth to tear itself to pieces."
Hask's breath hitched, the blood roaring in his ears. It was insane. It was suicide. To take three hundred riders and attempt to completely dismantle a force of ten thousand?
It wasn't bravery—it bordered on demonic possession.
Yet, listening to Colin's icy, unshakeable cadence, the impossible suddenly felt inevitable. It felt entirely within their grasp.
Colin did not grant him the luxury of lingering awe. He snapped his gaze away from the camp, his eyes flashing with the cold brilliance of an unsheathed sword.
"Time is against us," Colin commanded, turning back to his mount. "Move out immediately."