By the time Keri had gotten into his enchanted armor, retrieved his Næv’bel, and made his way to the courtyard, Castle Whitehill was buzzing with as much activity as a beehive that had been knocked off a branch.

A dozen horses had already been saddled, and the stable boys were leading more out of the stable singly or in pairs. Keri made his way over to the knot of people that included Liv’s adopted family: Matthew, Beatrice, Julianne and Henry were speaking to Wren and Ghveris. As he crossed the yard, Eilis ka Väinis fell in at Keri’s side, though he was not dressed for war.

“Baron Henry and I leave in the morning for the south pass,” the older Elden man reminded Keri, speaking in Vakansa. “So I cannot accompany you. I will, however, offer you a word of advice, if you are willing to listen.”

Keri paused while they were not yet in speaking distance of the others, and turned to regard the elder of House Däivi. “Of course,” he said. “Even if you weren’t Liv’s family, you’re an elder of our people. And my father always taught me that anyone who ignores the words of the descendents of the Lord of Time is a fool.”

“Your father exaggerates,” Eilis said, dryly. “Our word of power is not what it once was. Nonetheless, I can tell you something that may be of use. Your hunt does not end tonight, Inkeris. It begins.”

Keri frowned. “What do you mean?”

“The Scourge of the North is not needed on the front lines when the Lucanians come,” Eilis told him. “You did not truly believe the cult of Ractia was confined to our people, I hope.”

“No.” Keri shook his head. “Never. That is why I went south in the first place, to warn the Lucanian council, so that they could deal with the traitors in their own lands. But they did not listen.”

“I cannot see how, precisely,” Eilis admitted. “But tonight is an opportunity. A confluence of factors that will allow you, if you are prepared, to track down the Ractian cult within Lucania. Do you understand?”

“Thank you,” Keri said, and extended his arm to clasp hands with the older man. “Whatever there is to find, I will search it out.”

“Good.” Eilis nodded. “I don’t know if I will see you tomorrow; Baron Henry and I leave for the south pass at first light. Be safe.” The two men released each other’s hands, and the elder turned about to head back out of the courtyard and into the keep.

When Keri reached the others, Matthew turned to face him. Keri had been wondering whether or not Liv’s adopted brother would be accompanying the group of riders; in all honestly, he would prefer not. He wasn’t quite clear on how the man had lost an arm between when they’d first met at Freeport, now; but Keri didn’t relish the idea of having to protect a crippled warrior. He wasn’t sure what it said about the Summersets that both their lord and their heir had been so severely wounded: it was either a testament to their bravery, or a glaring indictment of their incompetence.

“Inkeris, I’m placing Tobias here in command of fifty men,” Matthew explained, placing his remaining hand on the shoulder of a human man who looked, to Keri’s eyes, to be of advancing age. A veteran, then; that was good. “We can’t pull more than that without leaving the castle walls dangerously empty. I’ve also given him instructions to pick up the two best hunters in the city - present company excluded, Wren - on your way to the gates. The Foresters should at least be awake when you get there; a runner left just a few moments ago.”

“Even if they bring every man they have, we’ll outnumber them,” Wren said.

“And if we can get there before they strike, we can set an ambush,” Keri added, with a nod. “I’m more worried about keeping the farmers out of danger than whether or not we win, in all honesty.”

“I protect,” Ghveris declared, in broken Lucanian, and the rumbling words caused everyone else to stop and turn to the Antrian.

“I’ve been teaching him a little, when there’s time,” Wren explained.

“Excellent. Thank you all for being willing to help with this,” Matthew said.

“Until my family’s troops begin to arrive, I have little else to do,” Keri admitted. “Valtteri will send what forces he can as they are ready to travel, but between the fighting in Varuna and the eruption at the Garden of Thorns, it will take time to have our soldiers recovered and ready to march.”

“Still, you do have our thanks - all of you,” Julianne broke in. The duchess’s hair was unbound in the cold night air, and she had to brush it out of her face when the winter wind picked up. “If you can capture any of them alive, it would be to our advantage - especially the Erskines. They can be ransomed or traded when the fighting is over.”

Keri exchanged glances with Wren and shrugged. He wasn’t certain Ghveris had understood what was said, but he was confident none of the three of them would be placing their own safety at risk to take a prisoner.

“As your grace commands,” Tobias said. “It looks like the horses are ready. With your permission, then, my lords, my lady, we will depart.”

“Good hunting, Tobias,” Baron Henry said, from his wheeled chair.

Keri turned to find one of the stableboys holding the reins of a southern horse for him. He thanked the boy, handed him the shaft of his spear, and then placed a foot in the stirrup and hoisted himself up into the saddle. When the boy handed the spear back, Keri set the butt of it atop his left boot. He saw that Wren had accepted a horse, though she was clearly no skilled rider, while the Antrian juggernaut simply ran beside them, his enormous, metal-shod feet audibly crashing into the pavement stones with every stride. There were two extra horses, as well, which Keri guessed were for the hunters who had been mentioned already.

The city of Whitehill was still, though the light of oil lamps shone from many of the paned windows of the more expensive homes near the castle. Tobias led the troop downhill, past the temple of the trinity and through the empty market, toward the gates at the southern arc of the city’s walls. Instead of proceeding directly out, however, he turned them down a side-street, reining up outside what Keri recognized as a blacksmith’s shop.

There, the old soldier called a halt, dismounted, and knocked his gloved fist against the door. When it opened, light from inside spilled out into the night around the silhouette of a large man with a great beard. The hunter - for that was so clearly what he was that Keri would have recognized him as one, even without Mathew’s words at the castle - had a longbow slung across his back, and a quiver of arrows.

“Master Kale,” Tobias said, extending his hand. “I’m glad the messenger reached you. We need to move quickly, tonight.”

“What’s the hurry?” the old hunter asked.

“Raiders, coming for a farm halfway between here and Fairford,” Wren spoke up.

“That sounds like the Chandler place,” a woman’s voice came from inside the house, and a moment later a woman dressed in winter furs and leathers, with her own bow and arrows in hand, stepped out of the house onto the street.

“That was my guess, as well,” Tobias admitted. “If we can get there before the raiders do, we can pull the Chandlers out and hide them before the fighting starts. If the enemy gets there before we do -”

From inside the house, the wail of a crying infant rose, and Keri could see the younger hunter flinch at the sound.

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“You can stay here, Emma,” Kale said. “There’s no need for both of us to go.”

“Dustin can take care of them for one night,” the woman said, shaking her head. “Let’s go.” She turned to close the door, then walked over to one of the two free horses without a moment of hesitation and swung herself up into the saddle.

There were no further stops, after that - not at the city gates, where the guards had clearly been warned of their coming, and not along the road. They set the horses to a fast trot that ate up the miles rapidly, flinging snow up behind them. When Tobias called a halt beneath a roadside tree with a thick trunk and a few convenient low hanging boughs, Keri could just catch the scent of woodsmoke on the wind.

“Tie the horses up here,” the old soldier hissed. “Hunters, ahead to scout the farm. If we’ve gotten here before them, one of you come back to report while the other two pull the Chandlers out to a good hiding place.”

“And if they’re already coming?” Wren asked, slipping down from her saddle.

“Then start the party and make a lot of noise,” Tobias told her. “We’ll be right behind you.”

Keri dismounted and took his spear in hand. There were a few things he might have done differently, but Tobias knew the area and had been placed in command. He’d had plenty of practice taking orders under Valtteri, so he settled in to wait, crouched near the base of the tree.

Ghveris settled in next to him, the Antrian’s bulk enough to make the tree-trunk look emaciated. “Quiet,” the war-machine rumbled in Vakansa.

“For now,” Keri agreed, whispering back.

“I should be diving down on them from the sky,” Ghveris said, clenching the fingers of one gauntlet in clear frustration. “Taking them from behind. Tearing their throats out as a wolf.”

Keri turned his head to regard the juggernaut. He tried to imagine how it would feel to awake in a body not his own, imprisoned in a shell of armor. Stripped of his magic, perhaps, and certainly of the ability to hold his son’s hand, to cradle Rei’s head against his shoulder while the boy fell asleep. He reached out and placed his own gauntlet on Ghveris’ shoulder, and those blue burning eyes turned to regard him.

“How you fight isn’t important,” Keri told him. “What’s important is that you’re here to protect the people in that farm. They’re probably asleep, with not the slightest idea death is coming.”

“That is how it always comes,” Ghveris responded.

A skidding, spraying of snow and a woman’s panting interrupted them, signalling the return of one of the three hunters. “We got here first,” the human hunter gasped, as everyone crowded around her. “Wren and my father are pulling them out of the house now.”

“Good.” Tobias nodded, the movement just visible under the dim light of the moon and the ring overhead. “I want a single line of crossbows - we can’t risk friendly fire in this darkness.”

“It doesn’t need to be dark,” Keri offered. “I can light the whole place up as bright as noon.”

“Can you, now?” Keri could practically hear the grin in the old soldier’s voice. “Alright then,” Tobias continued. “Two lines, forming half a square, with the corner set at the farmhouse, and the opening set facing the west. We’ll catch them in a crossfire.”

☙

The worst part of the entire night ended up being the waiting. Men huddled together against the winter cold, shivering. There was no way they could light a fire for heat, of course. Keri, stationed at the point where the two lines of Whitehill men converged in front of the farmhouse, more than once entertained the thought that Liv could have warmed them all up with a bit of what she called the ‘waste heat’ from one of her spells.

Still, it was better she wasn’t here. Whatever curse the enemy mages had set into that inscribed mana-stone, someone needed to figure it out, and how to counter it. She was a prodigy with magic, and Keri trusted that - along with the presence of her teachers - would be enough.

When the enemy finally came, he didn’t notice them, at first. It was the woman, Emma, who nudged Tobias and whispered: “There!” A moment later, Keri heard the soft neigh of an approaching horse.

A rustling of movement travelled down both lines as the men lifted their crossbows, fitted bolts to strings, and began working the winches as quietly as they could. Longbows would have been a better weapon for this particular mission, Keri decided.

Once the soldiers to either side of them were ready, Tobias reached out for Keri’s shoulder, leaned in, and whispered. “You ready, lad?”

Keri nodded, then spoke to be certain the other man wouldn’t be confused. “It’ll just take a quick incantation.”

“Pass the word up and down the line,” Tobias hissed. “Eyes closed. Work your magic,” he told Keri.

“Savelet Orvis!” Keri raised his spear, and the metal head shone for a moment as mana coalesced around it, focused by the enchantments graven into the steel and carved into the wood haft. He forced half the mana he could hold into the spell, more than he’d used at any point beneath the Tomb of Celris, and a blinding orb of sunlight erupted into existence, hovering thirty feet in the air at the midpoint of the battlefield Tobias had chosen.

The raiders on horseback flinched back from the sudden, dazzling light, and cried out in pain, shielding their eyes. Keri had no such problem - his own magic would never blind him. And the Whitehill soldiers on either side had been warned to shield their eyes just before he cast.

“Volley!” Tobias shouted, and fifty crossbow bolts released at once, catching a mere score of riders fully exposed to the crossfire.

Some bolts pierced the chests of horses, who screamed and reared up on their hind legs, throwing their riders. Others took men in the shoulder, the throat, or even, in one case, an eye. Corpses fell to the ground, and the wounded screamed and bled.

Keri was on his feet the moment the volley had been released, spear in hand, running across the frozen ground in front of the farmhouse, making directly for the young man with a rapier at his hip. The fine weapon picked him out from all the other riders, along with the quality of his clothes. That would be the commander.

Somewhere behind him, Ghveris must have risen up from his crouch, because the sharp, staccato bark of the Antrian’s shoulder-mounted weapon cracked across the chill night air. Keri was surprised to find that he trusted the war-machine not to hit him, despite the brief period of time they’d known each other.

Explosions of blood, from horse and man alike, were the only sign of the Antrian’s assault at first - followed by more animals and raiders falling to the ground. The enemy commander wheeled his horse around, opened his mouth once, presumably to cast, and was interrupted by taking a shot to his thigh which bent him over in pain. That gave Keri enough time to get to the man.

“Sceō-” the leader of the raiders began, but Keri swung around the butt of his spear and caught him in the temple, knocking him out of the saddle with a crack. The raiders were only lightly armored, having come dressed for stealth and warmth, rather than for an actual battle. The man hit the ground hard, and his horse bolted off into the night; Keri let it go.

He whirled his spear around and set the blade against the throat of the man on the ground. “Don’t move,” Keri ordered, in Lucanian. “Not if you want to keep your head.”

The man - he was young, Keri saw, now that he had a chance to get a good look - blinked up with the unfocused eyes of a man who hardly knew where he was. They’d have to get him to a chirurgeon, or better yet to Arjun.

“My name is Rowan Erskine,” the raider gasped. “I’m heir to the Barony of the Strand. My father will pay my ransom.”

“That he will,” Tobias called out as the old soldier strode over. “After you’ve sat out the rest of this war your arse of a king’s decided to start. Rope!” he called.

Keri glanced around and saw that the battle - if something so one sided could even be called that - was already over. With two crossbow bolts in the first volley for every man among the raiders, followed by Ghveris’ assault, they’d never had a chance.

“The enchanted stone,” Keri said, turning back to the captive at his feet. “Where is it?”

“Here.” Rowan Erskine fumbled beneath his cloak, then extended his hand with a smooth, polished chunk of mana stone cradled in his glove. Beneath the light of his shining orb, above the field, Keri could clearly mark the Vædic sigils carved into it. He reached out and took the stone, then stepped back to allow the Whitehill men to tie up their new captive.

Tobias clearly had things well in hand, but Keri frowned. There’d been no sign of the cult of Ractia, so what had Eilis meant?

“Search them all,” he called out. “Look for anything like a statue of a pregnant woman, a carving. Anything that reminds you of a mother.”

He’d given the order without even thinking, used to commanding his own men and women, but when the Whitehill soldiers looked to Tobias for approval, the veteran simply nodded. Keri decided he’d have to thank the man for that, later.

“Something like this?” one of the soldiers called, and Keri strode over where a man with a thick, red beard crouched over a corpse. The Whitehill man lifted his glove, holding it out so that Keri could see - a small, clay figure of a woman with wide hips, generous bust, and a swelling belly.

“That’s it,” Keri said, taking the icon of Ractia. “I need to know who this dead man was. I need to know now.”