"We don’t have long." Her voice carried the rasp of soone who had slept too little. "The Varzadians sent riders after the night assault. Reinforcents will be marching hard."
"Hours, not days." Josephine joined them, arms overhead in a languid stretch that popped three joints in her back. She grinned at Lyan’s quick glance, then dropped her arms, erald eyes sharpening. "They’ll expect we dig in, repair walls, beg for Prince William to catch up."
"Which ans we do the opposite." Lyan’s tone settled into that calm command he saved for maps and imminent danger. "Fortress Eboncliff. Hit fast, hold faster."
Belle padded up, still shrugging into her erald cloak. Her hair, loosened for sleep, now frad her face in soft waves. She caught Lyan’s eye and offered a single nod. "I’ll need two scout pairs and six smoke pots. Enemy patrols are thin west of the listone outcrop—easy to mislead."
"Take them." Lyan gestured toward the supply row where freshly sharpened spears rested against crates. "Paint the outcrop with their torch-marks. If they double back, I want them chasing ghosts."
Belle’s smile curved sly. "Leave the ghosts to , Commander."
Alicia approached next, a small notebook tucked under one arm. Her silver eyes were clear despite the faint shadows beneath them. "I can maintain three major illusions at once without collapsing," she reported, fingers flicking through ntal figures. "But large-scale mirage work—that’s Belle’s domain. My psychokinesis can shift loose stones, maybe topple a gate brace, nothing bright."
Lyan dipped his head. "Understood. We’ll marry both talents. Your kinetic push for structure sabotage, Belle’s veil for numbers."
Alicia looked relieved. "I’ll trace ley lines as we move. Less strain that way."
Josephine stepped closer, rolling a shoulder as if testing its range. "My riders?" The question was a spark inside green eyes.
"You’ll harry everything that moves between this fort and Eboncliff," Lyan answered. "Small strikes. Burn a cart. Kill one horse, let the driver flee. They must believe a legion shadows every tree."
She flicked an imaginary feather from her cuff. "Chaos is my native tongue."
Hooves clopped in the mist—Xena and Ravia led their infiltration unit up the main lane, light armor buckled, black cloaks damp. Xena’s bow already strung, arrow nocked but pointed ground-ward. Ravia’s hand rested on her curved blade, silver eyes scanning for new threats even inside camp.
"We’re set," Xena said. "Sentries count eight watch rotations north of Eboncliff. Two-thirds are conscripts."
"Conscripts lose nerve fast." Ravia spoke low, but her words cut crisp. "They’ll fold once we silence the captains."
Lyan t their gaze. "You’ll open the eastern gate. Try not to sound the alarm until Josephine starts her fires."
Xena’s grin was quick. "They won’t even see loose."
Ravia rely inclined her head, confidence carved from stone.
A faint clank announced Wilhelmina adjusting her gorget. "Main force forms in three columns," she said, pulling a small slate from her side pouch. "I want sappers front-right, siege shield-left, archers center, ready to break into staggered lines on signal."
Josephine leaned to peek at the slate. "You wrote all that without ink?"
Wilhelmina tapped the chalk tip she’d wedged behind her ear. "Habits. We move before midday."
Lyan watched the interplay, noting how Belle’s foot bounced with contained energy, how Alicia shifted weight to keep circulation flowing, how Xena’s eyes tracked the sun’s crawl through the clouds. He filed each observation, weighing strengths against the titable in his head.
(They’re ready, but bone-tired,) Cynthia murmured. (A lighter march pace buys them stamina for the walls.)
Lilith humd a wicked lullaby. (Or you could promise sweeter rewards after victory.)
Lyan ignored the last comnt and spoke loudly enough for the officers to hear but softly enough not to carry. "Rest of the fort will believe we entrench. Leave enough troops to make noise. Spare pikes ramd into parapets, cooking fires double-stoked. Show of force for any wandering scout."
Belle’s hand flicked a sign toward the scout sergeant. "I’ll seed false foot-prints along the north ditch. Six boots can read like sixty if they loop."
"Good," Lyan said.
From inside the tent a sleepy voice called, "You could have woken , you know." Josephine turned—the remaining won were stirring. Xena offered them a sharp whistle. "On your feet, ladies. War waits for no one."
Ravia snorted. "Neither does breakfast. Soone throw oats on the fire."
Lyan gave them a mont, then cleared his throat. The small assembly focused. "Eboncliff is stone, but its garrison is flesh. We crack the flesh first."
He outlined assignnts, voice steady, but every na carried weight: Belle, the wind in the forest; Josephine, the thunder clap; Alicia, the veil; Xena, the silent arrow; Ravia, the midnight blade; Wilhelmina, the iron wheel. He ended: "We hit at dusk. We finish before their night cookfires burn out."
Wilhelmina, arms folded, let the slate rest against her hip. A small, rare smile curved her lips—a crescent moon rising. "It’s bold. Risky. But it’ll work."
As the group broke apart, the camp erupted into quiet, purposeful motion. Belle was the first to vanish. One mont she stood beside the watch-fire tugging her erald cloak tight, the next she lted into the treeline as though the mist itself had swallowed her. The half-light under the pines turned the rich green of her cloak almost black, and every ti she took a step the cloth seed to breathe, never snagging on root or briar.
"Mark the alder," she whispered to the two scouts flanking her—thin, wiry lads fresh from the hill tribes. One tapped the trunk with a resin-tipped arrow, leaving a shiny dot invisible to a casual glance. To allies it would glint like morning dew. "East patrol follows the ga trail," Belle continued. "We bend them off it."
She crouched, pressed her palm into the damp earth, and murmured a spell bare as a sigh. Illusory boot prints—deep, confident, spaced like a squad in march—ford across the dead leaves, veering south. A gelding’s hoofprint appeared beside them, weighty enough to fool even an experienced tracker. The younger scout’s eyes widened. Belle tapped her lips—quiet—then pointed west. "Real route goes that way."
They slipped through bracken to lay more signs: a frayed scrap of blue cloth snagged on a thorn, a dented ss-tin half-buried in moss. Little lies, each one a needle nudging the enemy compass off true north.
Just beyond a fork in the stream Belle paused. Varzadian voices drifted through the fog—bored, joking, completely unaware. She pinched her cloak’s edge, coaxing shimring air around it. Threads of light unwound from her fingertips, weaving into a full-body veil. To a distant watcher the cloak beca another patch of mist. She breathed in, breathed out, and her outline vanished. The scouts lost sight of her at once and had to rely on faint pine-needle crunches to track her. Sowhere ahead the Varzadian patrol would soon discover a trail that scread: "An entire regint passed here." By the ti they followed it, Belle would be long gone.
Across the river flats Josephine’s cavalry moved like a rumor. The mares were blanketed in mottled gray cloaks to break their silhouettes, hooves wrapped in leather to deaden thunder to a muted drum. They never stayed still; three riders would burst from a copse, drive a wedge between startled sentries, scatter pikes with feigned panic, then whirl away. A clatter of hooves, a flash of torchlight, and they were shadows again.
"Count loud, lads!" Josephine called, her voice pitched halfway between laugh and battle-cry. "Let them think we’re fifty." She raised her curved saber, its edge catching the moon, then dropped it forward. Her unit charged a baggage cart lumbering toward Eboncliff. Two riders slashed harness straps; a third lobbed a smoke pot into the wagon bed. Thick indigo fus billowed, spooking the draft horses and blotting out any tally of attackers.
When the smoke thinned only broken crates remained. Josephine leaned from her saddle, plucked a Varzadian officer’s plu from the mud, and tucked it behind her ear. "Souvenir," she announced to no one in particular, then wheeled her horse and vanished north to repeat the trick.
Every survivor of these brief clashes ran screaming that an army of demons rode them down. Josephine made sure the rumors arrived ahead of the real army.
While Belle and Josephine rewrote the landscape with fear, Alicia worked at the river ford with silent intensity. She knelt on the stony bank, palms hovering, eyes silvered as she summoned threads of psychokinetic force. Pebbles rose, rippling outward like minnows startled to the surface. One by one she flicked them toward Eboncliff’s western wall. They weren’t weapons—just distractions. A clink against masonry here, a tumble of gravel there, enough to send jittery sentries racing the wrong way.
Alicia wiped sweat from her brow. Her magic ca without bright flares or swirling glyphs; it was pressure, torque, an invisible lever prised beneath the world’s joints. She exhaled, then nudged a larger stone. It pivoted, rolled downhill, and struck a wooden buttress supporting a small watch gate. The aged beam creaked. A final push from her mind sent it snapping. The gate sagged just an inch—no alarm, but the hinge was now one good shove from failure. Perfect for later.
She stood, knees trembling, and almost bumped into Lyan. He’d co without escort, stepping so lightly she hadn’t sensed him. His gaze swept the ford—the half-collapsed beam, the scattered prints disguising troop depth—and he nodded. "Your work?"
"Just a little nudge," she answered, voice shy but proud.
"Keep so strength in reserve," he advised, softening the words with a brief hand on her shoulder. His eyes lingered a beat too long on the curve of her jaw before he turned away, cape swirling. Alicia felt heat flood her cheeks and thanked the mist for hiding it.
Lyan’s pace through the column was unhurried, yet every step left a ripple of adjustnts. A spear angled too high—he tapped the shaft so the head lowered, silhouette blending with the pines. A cart wheel squeaked; he pointed, and a quartermaster dabbed grease on the axle. Soldiers straightened unconsciously when he passed, sensing the weight of his scrutiny.
Wilhelmina kept pace, slate in hand. "Left column drifts toward the bog on the current bearing," she murmured. "Soggy ground will slow siege wheels."
Lyan changed the line’s angle with two sharp hand signals. The file corrected itself like river water redirected by a dam. "Better?" he asked.
"Better," she acknowledged, allowing herself the smallest upward curve of mouth.
He caught her studying him—saw the quick flick to his collar where last night’s hurried dressing left a clasp half-twisted. He adjusted it, embarrassed, and she looked away before he could gauge her expression. Was that amusent? Fondness? He had no ti to dissect it.
Dusk painted the sky iron-grey. Eboncliff rose ahead, black walls rging with the ridgeline so seamlessly one could mistake the fortress for a natural cliff. Sporadic torches dotted the battlents, amber beads on a dark thread.
Xena crouched in the gulch below the east wall, heartbeat steady. She tested the grapnel line with a tug—secure. Ravia checked oil on her blade so it wouldn’t glint. Behind them six handpicked fighters waited, breaths muffled by wool wraps.
Xena mouthed, "Go," and threw the line. It caught on the crenel, barely scraping stone. She ascended first, pulling with practiced grace. At the top she rolled over the parapet, sighted a sentry leaning drowsily on a pike, and loosed. The arrow slamd through the man’s throat; his gurgle barely rose above the wind. She eased the body down, signaled.
Ravia flashed upward next, landing like a cat. Her sword whispered out. Three steps, one slice, and the second guard folded, eyes wide with surprise that never beca sound. Together they moved along the wall, deaths following like punctuation marks—quiet, precise, final.
Down in the courtyard a stablehand turned, puzzled by a faint thud. Ravia dropped behind him, hand over mouth, blade through heart, lowering him into straw. She resisted the urge to wipe the blood—no ti. Xena’s fingers twirled in the agreed pattern: gatehouse clear. They t at the lever wheel. Xena braced, Ravia cranked. The eastern gate groaned inward a handspan, enough to signal the shadow outside.
Lyan felt the gate move more than he saw it. An opening breath of cold air rolled across his face. He raised his glaive. "Advance."
The first rank broke into a jog, shields up. Belle’s illusions blossod with their movent: towering silhouettes stalking just behind, torchlight flaring around phantom banners. From the walls a lone horn wailed—confusion, not alarm. Too late.
Josephine’s cavalry poured through the widening gap, hooves striking sparks. She led them straight into a parked line of ballistae, torches high. Pitch-soaked rags flew, sails of orange that clung to siege wood. Flas roared upward, painting her armor gold. She laughed, the sound bright and lethal. "Scatter and sting!"
Archers on the parapet loosed toward shapes that weren’t there—Belle’s conjured warriors evaporated into mist when iron passed through them, re-forming elsewhere to mock the bown. Panic layered panic.
Inside the bailey, Wilhelmina planted herself on an overturned cart, voice ringing like a bell. "Left archers, nock—release on my count! Engineers, forward ram to inner gate!" She pointed, and n obeyed as if tugged by puppet strings.
Lyan carved a path to the command tower. His glaive hooked a Varzadian captain’s ankle, yanked, then reversed to split the man’s breastplate. He saw recognition in the officer’s eyes—the hawk helm, the runed steel—then nothing. Another officer tried to rally; Lyan punched the butt-spike through the man’s visor slot and moved on, emotionless.
(Do not linger,) Griselda urged, electric with battle joy. (Hunt the next heartbeat.)
He did.
Within an hour the fortress heart cracked. Fires consud stores; officers lay dead or fled; conscripts tossed arms aside and sprinted into darkness. Belle’s scouts darted through smoke, blades flicking, cutting short any cry that might carry.
When the last shout faded, Lyan stood at the inner ward, armor spattered but eyes clear. "Hold,"
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