Olaf and Ruvan stood on the walls of the Southern Gate.

  They were looking toward the Black Forest, waiting for the mercenaries to return.

  The day was slowly sliding toward sunset, and still there was no sign of them. The only indication that a battle had begun somewhere deep in the forest was smoke—dark, heavy, visible even from the city walls.

  Below, in the camp before the city, Lenar was organizing field infirmaries. He assigned spaces, set routes, and prepared buildings for the wounded. Pillum helped him, advising how to house three visiting clans while keeping tensions between them and the townsfolk under control.

  Lenar knew: after the battle, Atrion would arrive in the city. And that would cause problems.

  Olaf and Ruvan were ready for it.

  All of the city’s nobility had been drawn into their plans. A corridor of shame. A ban on lodging in local taverns. Closed fighting workshops. Every detail was meant to send a single message: Atrion—like all mercenaries—was not welcome here. And they had no intention of hiding their attitude.

  They understood perfectly well: the common folk didn’t care about mercenaries. They cared only about their own needs—food, safety, a roof over their heads. So the only support to rely on was the nobility.

  And the nobility was ready.

  And then, at last, the first ranks of the guests appeared on the horizon.

  Broken, caked in mud, many of them bandaged. Some on stretchers, some with shattered limbs, some barely conscious. They moved chaotically and quickly simultaneously. These were the most severely wounded—the ones who needed help immediately.

  Lenar’s guard moved out to meet them at once. The wounded were taken up, carried to temporary infirmaries, and laid out on prepared places. Healers began working without pause.

  Tactical medicine among mercenaries was well-developed. They knew how to stabilize a man still on the battlefield—bind wounds, stop bleeding, splint injuries. It significantly increased survival rates. Training each fighter was far too costly, so first aid was not only about humanity, but calculation.

  But it bought only time. A few hours. After that, full treatment was needed—and that was exactly what Lenar, together with the mercenaries who had remained in the city, was meant to provide.

  Olaf and Ruvan watched it all from above, from the walls.

  “This doesn’t look like the mock battle you described to me,” Olaf said quietly.

  Ruvan said nothing.

  He had been sure the mercenaries were simply inflating their worth when they spoke of the enemy. He believed the only real threat was the sheer number of scavengers, and that after a demonstrative, almost staged clash, they would return with a sense of victory—one that could easily be spoiled.

  But what came back to the city were the gravely wounded. And mocking that would no longer be politics. It would be dishonor.

  “I’ll pass it on,” Ruvan said. “Tell them to put everything on hold for now.”

  “Yes,” Olaf replied. “And find out what actually happened out there.”

  Olaf turned and headed into the city.

  Half an hour later, the last mercenary detachments appeared on the horizon. Among them were Balrek and Atrion.

  Lenar went out to meet them.

  “Welcome, Sir Atrion, Sir Balrek,” he said in an even voice. “All arriving fighters have been placed and are receiving medical care. My guards are escorting your soldiers to their rest quarters. They’ll be able to wash and eat there.”

  “Thank you,” Atrion nodded. “Good work. Tomorrow morning,g I would like to brief the city leadership on the situation. Inform the mayor—have him gather everyone who needs to know what awaits us.”

  “Understood. I’ll pass it on,” Lenar replied.

  Atrion paused.

  “One more thing. There will be another meeting tonight. I want you there, the two men who went with you to the Pale Ones, and the engineer you brought back from there. Can you arrange that?”

  “Of course,” Lenar nodded. Then, after a brief hesitation, he added, “But… where are Rianes, Skeld, Syra?”

  Atrion didn’t answer at once.

  “Captured…” he said at last. “I hope—”

  He stopped for a few seconds and looked around.

  The Red Breach clan had returned with almost no losses.

  His Black Directive had lost many riders, but not its fighting capability.

  But the Blue Cohort was nearly destroyed.

  A quarter of its fighters were left on the battlefield. Of those who returned, a third were wounded and would spend a long time in the infirmaries. Only half were physically fit for combat—and morally, almost none.

  Many officers remained there, lying among corpses and ash.

  Of the four people who led the clan, three were taken prisoner. The fourth would need at least two months to recover.

  And the worst part wasn’t even that. The war was not over. It had only been postponed. Soon, these same fighters would have to take up arms again. The only hope was that the king would manage to return with the army in time.

  The Rejectedand the Vishaps were also trying to save those who had survived the battle.

  But it looked different.

  They were not as prepared for war as the mercenaries, and their level of organization fell far short of what was needed. There were no clear chains of command, no established infirmaries, and not enough people who knew how to deal with severe wounds. Soldiers dragged their comrades on their backs, bound injuries with scraps of clothing, pressed on bleeding with bare hands—often without understanding whether they were helping or merely delaying the inevitable.

  Healers were catastrophically few.

  There were far too many wounded—far more than the camp could handle without preparation. The ground around them turned into a slurry of blood, mud, and shattered gear. The screams faded not because the pain passed, but because people ran out of strength.

  And at the same time, the fight was not yet fully over.

  Those who could still hold a weapon gathered around a small rock—a stone outcrop rising above the scorched ground like an island in ash. Four mercenaries remained there.

  They were exhausted, blood-soaked, but still alive. And still dangerous.

  They were surrounded by a tight ring, held at a distance. No one hurried to come closer. The memories were too fresh—of how these same people had cut, broken, and held positions where it had seemed impossible.

  Ranuver and Hukan stood a little apart.

  They watched the rock, the four figures amid stone and bodies, deciding what to do with them. Kill them—easy. Take them prisoner—risky. Leave them—impossible. The battle was over. But its consequences were only beginning.

  “We have to finish them,” Hukan said harshly. “And send them back to Korosten without their heads. So the others understand: it’s better not to make enemies of us.”

  Ranuver slowly turned his head toward him.

  “Then the resistance will only grow stronger.”

  “It won’t,” Hukan snapped. “Fear is stronger than Sirain’s authority. What difference does it make who your king is if you can die tomorrow?”

  Ranuver clenched his jaw sharply.

  “You’re an idiot. Power built on fear doesn’t last. We’ll be putting out fires for years—in every village, in every valley.”

  “And how long did the Southern Empire last?” Hukan shot back. “Forty years? Fifty?”

  “Don’t talk about what you don’t understand,” Ranuver replied coldly. “King Fernus wasn’t always a fool. Decades of his rule were stable. Thoughtful. And without slaughter.”

  Hukan snorted.

  “So that’s how you justify yourself, huh?”

  Ranuver’s face changed instantly. Something dark, almost dangerous, appeared in his eyes. He took a step forward—but didn’t get the chance to answer.

  Sivash approached them.

  His arm was tightly wrapped, the cloth already dark with blood. Yet in his other hand, he still held the small mace. Even like this—wounded, weakened—he remained someone to be feared.

  The conversations around them died away.

  Fighters who had been watching the rock with the mercenaries turned toward him and began to step back—instinctively, without orders. They parted, clearing space.

  Sivash walked slowly.

  “What are you arguing about?” Sivash rasped. “How to tear rats out of a cellar?”

  Ranuver didn’t answer at once. He wasn’t looking at Sivash, but at the rock with the four mercenaries.

  “We need to negotiate with them.”

  Hukan snapped around.

  “Why negotiate? We can shower them with arrows and set everything on fire. End this here and now.”

  Sivash shifted his gaze to Ranuver.

  “Yes,” he said calmly. “Explain. Why do we need to negotiate with them?”

  “We need prisoners,” Ranuver replied. “And these are valuable. We have to keep them alive—to trade later.”

  Sivash tilted his head slightly.

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  “Trade them for whom?” he asked. “You think they took anyone captive? They ran. Or do you want to trade them for Korosten?”

  Ranuver finally turned to him.

  “Look around,” he said. “There won’t be a quick victory. We have nothing to lay siege to Korosten with. And without it, we’ll have to go around. If we don’t cross Leshana before winter, the war will drag on. A war of attrition. With prisoners on both sides.”

  He spread his hands.

  Around them, the siege engines were burning out. What only hours earlier had been the heart of the entire campaign were now blackened skeletons. Fighters tried to salvage at least something intact, but it looked more like gathering firewood than restoring machines.

  Months of preparation for the siege had burned away in a matter of hours.

  Hukan grimaced.

  “If their bodies reach the city without heads,” he said, “there won’t be any war. The cities will open their gates themselves. No one will want to risk their life for a handful of dead mercenaries.”

  Ranuver stepped toward him.

  “And if they don’t?” he asked quietly. “What will you do then? We must preserve every prisoner we can.”

  Hukan snorted with contempt.

  “Don’t tell me we’re supposed to treat them alongside our wounded.”

  Ranuver didn’t look away.

  “Yes,” he replied. “If necessary, we’ll treat them.”

  The air between them grew heavy.

  And everyone understood: this was no longer about the four mercenaries on the rock.

  It was about what kind of war this would become.

  “‘If necessary,’ you say?” Sivash smiled sharply, but there was nothing alive in that smile. “Or maybe it was necessary to place the barracks and siege engines farther apart—so they wouldn’t all burn together. With assault troops inside.”

  He slashed a hand toward the scorched machinery.

  “Or maybe you should have built that idiotic road of yours faster.”

  He gestured again at the blackened mechanism.

  “Your helpless plan burned down along with that trebuchet.”

  Ranuver didn’t even glance that way.

  “My plan began to fall apart the moment,” he said coldly, “when your incompetent agents first tried to kidnap the engineer—and then tried to kill the witnesses they themselves had hired for the abduction.”

  He took a step forward.

  “Your role here is Suggestion. That’s why we accepted you. Not for your ambitions. Not for your ideas about power.

  Don’t forget, Sivash—you are not one of us.”

  That was enough. Sivash stopped holding back. He snapped the mace up and pointed it at Ranuver.

  Ranuver convulsively grabbed his throat. The air vanished. He staggered, struggling to stay on his feet, gulping at emptiness.

  Hukan watched—and recognized the sensation. The same thing. The same. Tension flared instantly around them. The Rejected nearby reached for their weapons. The Vishaps, seeing it, tensed as well—but there were fewer of them. Far fewer.

  Ranuver was still standing. On willpower. On anger.

  “Go on…” he rasped. “Finish me.

  “Without an army, you’ll be left knocking on the gates of Korosten with a stick—maybe they’ll open for you.”

  Sivash slowly looked around.

  At the Castoffs’ faces. At the hands tightening on sword hilts. At the readiness to surge forward—not on command, but on instinct. He lowered the mace. Air slammed back into Ranuver’s lungs. He dropped to his knees, coughing, but alive.

  “Fine,” Sivash said dryly. “Handle it yourselves.

  If there’s a Suggestor among them—call me.”

  He turned and walked away without looking back.

  Hukan watched him go and understood: the support was gone. Everything had changed. A compromise had to be found—fast. Before Ranuver reminded him, once and for all, who was in charge here.

  “All right,” Hukan said after a short pause. “Then another way. We take them prisoner.

  “But we will arrange a duel between Rianes and me.”

  Ranuver slowly lifted his gaze to him.

  “The winner lives,” Hukan went on. “If I win, I throw him into the abyss.”

  Ranuver grimaced.

  “You’re far too confident. Why won’t he leave you alone?”

  Hukan’s eyes darkened.

  “Because you don’t know what they did in our lands. They took villages. Tortured prisoners.

  Their leaders must answer for that. And one of them is standing on that rock right now.”

  He looked up.

  There, among stone and shadow, Rianes was still holding on.

  “And if he wins?” Ranuver asked calmly.

  Hukan snorted.

  “He won’t. He always hides behind others. Behind orders. Behind maps and plans.

  All he knows how to do is move pieces on a board.”

  Ranuver said nothing.

  He looked at the rock, at the small dark silhouettes on its crest. He wasn’t thinking about honor or justice—he was thinking about consequences. About what would happen if he refused. And what would happen if he agreed?

  At last, he nodded.

  “Fine,” he said quietly. “So be it.”

  He waved a hand and started toward the rock.

  And with that gesture, the decision was made.

  “Hey, you,” Ranuver called up. “Rianes. Or whatever your name is.”

  A reply came from behind the rocks—calm, almost lazy:

  “Yes, that’s me. Are you surrendering already?”

  Ranuver grimaced.

  “He’s joking, too. Idiot.”

  He stepped forward and raised his voice:

  “I have a proposal. The war will be long. If your brothers-in-arms get lucky and manage to fight well, you’ll be exchanged for something valuable.

  I’m offering you surrender without a fight. I guarantee safety for your people.”

  Silence followed for a few seconds.

  Then Rianes replied:

  “Something valuable…” he drawled. “You mean your people, who’ll end up prisoners before the first frosts? Because you won’t take anything else of value.”

  Ranuver slowly turned to Hukan.

  “Maybe you were right,” he said through clenched teeth. “We should’ve cut his head off right away.”

  “Told you,” Hukan replied shortly.

  Ranuver looked up again.

  “You’re not in a position to joke. So—what do you say to my offer?”

  There was no answer for several seconds.

  “The offer isn’t bad,” Rianes finally said. “But you haven’t said your ‘but’ yet.”

  Hukan stepped forward.

  “You and I will fight,” he said. “On the edge of the maw. One on one. An honest duel to the death.”

  “Listen,” Rianes replied, “I don’t even know you. But you want to kill me like I took something from you.

  Did I steal slaves from your family?

  Or was one of those officers near Korosten your relative? Because I didn’t get a chance to ask.”

  Hukan snapped.

  “I won’t just kill you—I’ll tear you apart, you piece of shit! You have no honor!”

  “All right, all right,” Rianes said calmly. “Relax. You’ll get your fight.”

  “This will be your last fight!” Hukan roared.

  “Maybe,” Skeld cut in. “But before that, give us something to drink. And something to eat.”

  Ranuver shot him a look.

  “Fine. The duel will be tomorrow. You’ll have time. Anything else?”

  Skeld didn’t hesitate.

  “Yes. Introduce us to his wife.”

  The Vishaps erupted. Someone shouted. Stones flew toward the rock.

  It was an old wound.

  Once, when humans had taken Vishap cities, their women had not resisted. They fell in love with human men quickly, easily, almost without hesitation. It left a deep, humiliating scar—no one ever truly understood why. There was something unnaturally attractive about humans to Vishap women.

  The Vishaps had not forgotten. And Skeld had just reminded them.

  Ranuver knew they were deliberately provoking Hukan before the duel. He had tried to explain it to him before—but Hukan hadn’t listened.

  “The sooner the duel happens, the better,” Ranuver said aloud. “Let a dead Rianes finally ruin their mood.”

  The mercenaries came down.

  They were surrounded and led toward the maw—where the ground for the duel was already being prepared.

  Where, tomorrow, one of them was meant to die.

  In the room sat Atrion, Balrek, Lenar, Yakhim, Kesh, and Oryst.

  It was the same place where, before the battle, Rianes had gathered his officers. No one had bothered to tidy anything up. The items remained where they had been left—like the owner had stepped out for a minute and was about to return.

  The map still hung on the wall. The enemy camp’s layout. Marked routes. Barracks circled. Red crosses where the trebuchets had already burned. Several marks were crossed out crudely, in haste—the traces of those very hours when the plan was still alive, but already beginning to crack.

  Atrion stood apart.

  Slowly, almost absentmindedly, he examined Rianes’s belongings. He picked them up—tested their weight, the familiar balance, the small scratches. Turned them in his hands, lingered, then placed them back exactly where he had taken them from.

  As if he were trying to remember not the objects themselves, but the man who had used them. A sword. A horn. A notebook with warped page edges.

  The others sat at the table in silence.

  Balrek sat with his arms crossed, staring into nothing. His armor had already been removed, but a mark still ringed his neck—the dark stripe from the strap that hadn’t yet faded.

  Lenar held himself steady, but his gaze kept returning to the map. He was already thinking ahead—about the consequences, the wounded, about what he would have to explain to the city tomorrow.

  Yakhim sat motionless, as if afraid that even a small movement might break the silence.

  Kesh silently ran his fingers along the edge of the table.

  Oryst looked out the window, where evening was slowly thickening over the city.

  At last, Atrion spoke.

  He didn’t raise his voice or try to sound solemn—he spoke as if continuing a conversation that had begun before the battle.

  “I received some information about you,” he said, “passed to me by Rianes before the fighting. And I want to support his proposal.”

  He swept his gaze over everyone present.

  “For helping our people and making a significant contribution to this cause, we offer you—and your families—the chance to relocate to our cities. There you’ll receive housing, provisions, and work.”

  Atrion paused, letting the words settle.

  “Alternatively, we can offer you a monetary reward. The amount is still open for discussion. Or you may take a few days to think it over.”

  Silence filled the room.

  The guests exchanged looks. This was not what they had prepared for. Not a threat. Not a demand. A choice.

  Balrek broke the silence first.

  “I’d choose the first option, honestly,” he said. “And I recommend it to you. You’ll like it with us.”

  Atrion stepped closer to Oryst.

  “Lift your head,” he said calmly. “Look at me.”

  Oryst hesitated only a moment, then raised his eyes.

  Atrion looked straight at him—carefully, without judgment, but without illusions.

  “The skin around your eyes is already starting to darken,” he said quietly. “In a year, you won’t be welcome in Korosten. Possibly sooner.”

  He didn’t look away.

  “But with us, there will be a place for you.”

  It didn’t sound like a promise.

  It sounded like a fact.

  “Yes,” Oryst said after a short pause. “I agree. It would be an honor for me.

  But I need to collect my things from Zhuravlyk.”

  Atrion nodded, almost without thinking.

  “That won’t be a problem.”

  “It is a problem,” Oryst objected. “What if the Vishaps take it? They don’t have to march straight here, under Korosten’s walls.”

  Balrek smiled faintly.

  “And why would they go to Zhuravlyk? Kilometers through swamps just to settle—and then more swamps beyond.”

  “There are no swamps there anymore,” Oryst replied calmly. “The clans built roads.

  From Zhuravlyk, you can reach Mosun in a couple of days now.”

  Balrek and Atrion exchanged a glance.

  The smile vanished.

  Both fell silent almost at the same time.

  For several seconds, a silence hung in the room—not heavy, but wary. The kind that appears when someone says too much by accident.

  “So when can I leave?” Oryst asked carefully.

  Atrion looked away from Balrek and back at him.

  “Tomorrow morning,” he said. “Come to me. I’ll escort you.”

  After that, Atrion and Balrek said their goodbyes quickly and left the room. Without explanations. Without discussion.

  The door closed.

  Oryst slowly shifted his gaze to the others. Yakhim, Kesh, and Lenar remained silent. No one hurried to speak first.

  Everyone understood: the mention of Zhuravlyk had changed something.

  What exactly—it was still unclear.

  But something else was obvious.

  Atrion’s briefing, planned for the next day, had already begun to change.

  Right now.