We entered the town at dusk, cloaks shrouding our faces and turning a group kitted out for war into simply another group of slightly frumpy travellers. Vera looked downright portly with the way the material fell over her bandoleers.

  The innkeeper took our coin without complaint, and it was a welcome break to have a hot bath instead of washing in cold streams as I had been used to for many weeks now. After a warm meal – rabbit stew, basic but prepared with love by the innkeeper’s husband – we divided up into our assigned roles.

  Jorge made pleasant conversation with anyone he could find in a bid to gather information, while Sadrianna, Jacyntha and Nathlan went upstairs to ‘rest’. I doubted they would actually sleep – all our nerves were too highly strung for that given our location – but it was good to keep up appearances.

  Meanwhile, Vera and I would make contact with whatever semblance of the resistance remained intact. I had been chosen to accompany Vera to make her stand out less – she was tall and broad, especially so for a woman, but I was taller and broader, even if I lacked the thick muscle that wrapped her frame, and would hopefully draw attention away from her and onto me.

  She and Jorge had also agreed to have somebody present who could distract the duke’s men in the vanishingly small possibility that they came upon us. I was a fast runner, and even were I to be caught, Jorge could rescue me before any harm came from it, but we absolutely could not risk the duke being alerted to Vera’s presence.

  I was also pretty curious to see how everything worked, and Vera seemed to trust me for a task like this for some reason. Nathlan looked high-born, no matter his travel-stained clothes, and Sadrianna and Jacyntha were both clearly foreign. While normally I looked fairly similar to them, my appearance also giving off a ‘barbarian from the hills’ feeling, I probably looked the most familiar to the people of the Marchlands out of our entire group right now, Vera excluded of course.

  The heavy cloak obscured my strange armour and weapons, and my unusual hairstyle – shaved on one side and braided on the other – was a style sometimes worn by young men here, as Vera’s brother was a good example of. I also hadn’t shaved in nearly a week, so my stubble covered some of the scars I’d accumulated recently and generally covered up some of the rougher aspects of my appearance.

  We walked up to a cottage in the hamlet, a few doors down from the inn we were staying in, and Vera thudded a fist into the heavy oak door a few times. A few moments passed, where I rang my hands in the cold and stood in the street a few paces behind Vera, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible and no doubt failing abysmally. Then the door was wrenched open and golden torchlight flooded the wooden planks that passed for a main street.

  A gruff voice called into the night, directed at Vera and I, “Who’s that then?” and Vera stepped forwards.

  The old woman who spoke was hunched with age, gnarled like an old bough that endured too many storms to stand upright any longer. Her face held deep lines, and grey hair poked out from beneath a knitted woollen hat that looked like it was a permanent feature, turning her head into a tea kettle.

  She recoiled slightly at the large-cloaked figure before her, but then seemed to draw herself up with indignation. “Listen here, you’ve taken more’n enough of our time of late, and I’ve been questioned twice this week already,” she said as she waved a ladle at us from behind the doorframe. “There’s stranger-folk comin’ through here regular as the sun, and I don’t have half the time to keep up with it all, let alone tell you about it, ungrateful bastards that you are-”

  Vera leaned forwards then and lowered the deep hood of her cloak, and the woman blanched, colour draining from her face. She smacked Vera’s arm with the ladle and continued talking with barely a hitch in her voice. “Well, I can’t as well say no, can I? At least let me stay inside this time. Come, come.”

  She bustled us inside, and though she eyed me warily, it seemed she was more concerned with confirming that the street outside was free of prying eyes before she closed the heavy door. Vera reached up to remove her hood once more, but the woman once again batted her on the arm and waddled off, calling out to someone upstairs that she was going to the cellar for more flour. An even more dramatically aged voice replied something unintelligible, and we followed the old woman down the stairs.

  Only once the cellar door was closed behind them did the woman acknowledge Vera. She whirled on the big woman and started beating at her with her ladle, short sharp swings in the cramped confines of the room but the meaty smacking sounds I heard told me that she was stronger than she looked.

  Vera, for her part, seemed to endure the beating with nothing short of joy. She laughed and giggled like a girl, before sweeping the old woman up in a great hug, twirling her around and peppering little kisses on her head. I’d never seen her so animated before, and it was a bit of a shock. I stood awkwardly and tried to blend in with the little pots of dried herbs and jugs of gods-knew-what lining the shelves.

  “I’ve missed you Auntie,” she said, muffled as her voice was in the old woman’s neck.

  There followed a strange conversation, where Vera spoke to the old women still dangling off the floor in her arms, while enduring repeated blows of the kitchen implement. The old woman seemed to be using her ladle more as a linguistic aid than a true weapon, punctuating every point she made with a smack, any words needing emphasis swiftly followed by the thwack of an old ladle against flesh. I now saw where Vera got her habit of playful tapping to emphasise a point. She was always nudging with her shoulder, punching someone lightly on the arm or resting a hand on their shoulder.

  Once their hug had ended and the woman firmly on the floor, they spoke at such a rate, jabbering back and forth to one another, that even with my god-given title I struggled to keep up and understand what they were saying. Clearly, though, ten years was a long time to catch up on, and I excused myself, giving them space to talk and simply standing quietly outside the cellar. The old woman tried to stop me, but I insisted, especially after seeing Vera's grateful nod.

  They didn't come out for another half a bell. By her slightly puffy eyes and rouged cheeks, I think Vera may have been crying while in there, but I'd never actually seen her doing so in our travels and so I didn't have a good frame of reference for what it looked like. Perhaps there was just a lot of pepper in the air, it being a cellar and all that.

  I was then introduced properly to her aunt, apparently a woman of some influence in the village, and surprisingly, one who had faced few repercussions for her niece's actions. She was well-respected in the village and known widely by many in the various village-councils that organised the running of much of the Western Marchlands, and so when she had initially been abducted during the duke's counter-insurgency push, workers had downed tools until she, among others, was returned.

  She still had to endure weekly visits from the duke's men for a good two years until it became clear that Vera and the rest of the rebellion were either dead or had left, or were so broken that they would not continue their war.

  I was surprised when she explained the logic behind the words she had uttered as we'd opened the door. Apparently, there were tensions rising in the Marchlands once more and strangers were now a common sight. The duke's men had been more paranoid of late, visiting her often to ask about the goings-on in the area. She never managed to give them much information of note and they were sceptical about her motives.

  Given that she had much to lose and nothing to gain, and the rebellion had shown hide nor hair of itself in almost a decade now since Sternsbridge, it seemed they were willing to tolerate her presence. She suspected it was more a show of force and intimidation than a true attempt to get any workable information anyway. Just a reminder to let her know that they were still here, were still watching, and could find her at any moment should she step out of line. After hearing all of that I had to admit to being impressed that she still was willing to harbour and associate with Vera, though obviously hoping to do so without notice.

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  The aging man upstairs hadn't shown his face and hadn't seemed to show any signs that he'd heard of us either, and Amelie – Vera’s aunt – explained that he was a lodger that had been with her for two years now. The last of his family dead, he couldn't sustain himself and so she opened her home to him. I was quickly building a picture of the type of person this elderly woman was, and some of Vera’s iron-hard backbone and deep well of compassion was beginning to make sense.

  After catching up, discussing some of our travels and generally sharing news over a hot cup of tea and some hard-baked cakes that, in my opinion, toed the line between the definition of cake and bread, we talked more seriously of our purpose. Amelie stopped us though as we began to say more.

  “No, I don't want to hear it,” she said. “If I know nothing, then I can't say nothing when they come asking. But all you tell me here is going to get me in trouble and risk you getting found out. I'm no friend of the duke, but I'm too old to be tramping off into the wilderness. Even organising supply lines and the like is far beyond me. I am going to be living out my final years in peace here,” she said with finality.

  Vera nodded in understanding. “Is there anyone left?” she asked. “What about Senlin and his boys?”

  Amelie just shook her head sadly. “Died of the wasting three winters past. His boys have moved over to the Riverlands, I think. Said they intended to get a ship down the Leviathan coast and work cargo on the barges between the two there. From what I've been hearing though, the Riverlands isn't the safest place to be right now,” she said, a forlorn note creeping into her voice at the end.

  A significant look passed between Vera and I, and we decided not to speak of the possible civil war on the horizon. She’d said she was too old to go traipsing about, so there was no need to add more stress and heartache onto her old heart for no gain.

  “There must be someone left,” Vera said. “Archie, Jacqueline, Fandar...even Penham? He was always a strange one, but I can't imagine they've managed to ferret him out of the hills yet.”

  Her aunt snorted. “Not much point in that venture, no. Old Penham's still there as far as I know, but nobody's seen much of him in the last few years. There are still some of the old guard, Vera, but I don't rightly know the state of ‘em. Look, I can put you in touch, but that is as far as I go, understand? And I don't want you bringing war back to this place, Vera. I agree with your cause – the gods know I do - but... there's not much reason to start things back up now, far as I can tell.”

  Vera sighed and nodded. “Well, I won't be able to convince you if I can't share what I know. But I'll just say that there's a good reason I've returned. I'm not coming just for revenge, auntie – I gave that up long ago.”

  The older woman held her gaze. “You promise, Vera?”

  Vera just nodded back. “Yeah, I swear it.”

  It was a heavy moment, and I coughed quietly to break it once I thought both had got what they needed from it. “So, you were about to tell us how we can contact whatever resistance remains in place?” I said gently, and the older woman nodded.

  She then gestured at the plate of stottie cakes and told me to eat up. “Young men like you should be constantly eating...Eat up, I know you're hungry,” she said.

  I sighed and took another one, chewing the gravel-like cake into submission. The flavour was nice, but did everything here get baked until it was hard and dry and dense as the earth below? I was starting to see why Vera was built as she was; much like a stottie cake - dense and unyielding.

  We returned to the inn after another bell or so. Vera obviously wanted to stay longer but deemed it too much of a risk to her aunt's safety were the duke’s men to come knocking while we were there.

  So it was that I found myself ensconced in another bath, the warm water soaking away the pain, discomfort and stress from the last few weeks. I sighed in satisfaction, swirling the water around with my hands and feeling a great weight leave my shoulders.

  My decision had been made.

  Days of agonizing over how to perpetrate this war in a way that wouldn’t result in mass death. I'd been thinking of it long and hard for many weeks to be honest, and especially so after crossing into the Riverlands and seeing the devastation that instability could lead to on a state and its populace.

  No matter how I turned over the problem of our insurgent war against the duke, I couldn't ever see it playing out in a way that wouldn't result in mass suffering for those living within the Western Marchlands. Everything I'd heard about the duke implied that while he may be surrounded by idiot nobles and incompetent guardsmen, he himself, along with his spymaster and a core group of his men, were disciplined. Smart. Capable.

  The Lions also, while in some ways prone to the folly of pride, were still a capable mercenary company. Francis himself had been powerful, and I wasn't convinced I would beat him in a fair fight even now. I'd never felt the limits of his strength and only seen perhaps one skill he possessed. While I'm sure Jorge or Vera would flatten any of the Lions, I couldn't say the same for the rest of us, and if there were even a dozen more like him, we would be hard-pressed to come out of this alive, let alone successful.

  As soon as we lay siege to Castle Ryonic, the Lions would be called in for support, and if this siege went on for more than a day, I had no doubt that elites from the rest of the Sunsets would come pouring in as well, desperate to put down an uprising of peasants before it could spread to their own territories. The only way I could see it working was if in some sort of lightning-fast decapitation strike we could break in, secure the castle, kill Duke Ryonic and proclaim the Western Marchlands free under the control of Vera or whatever civil administration the local councils could erect in short order.

  In many ways, the local village councils already ran the country anyway and such a political structure still remained in place, greatly diminished of real power as it may have been these last few years, but all Duke Ryonic did was ensure protection for the workers through his guardsmen. They patrolled the roads to prevent bandits from the Riverlands crossing over and they acted as a deterrent to other parts of the Sunset Kingdoms who may think about gobbling up the land. They also kept a limit on wild beasts, but there's nothing magical about their influence that could not be picked up easily by some other power.

  The true running of the economy, the trade, the mining, the towns themselves, was all done by the local councils composed of mostly mine workers and foremen as well as wise women and notables from the villages and towns that speckled the Marchlands and the swamps within. The mining of half-silver used to outfit those who would sweep the swamps for natural treasures and the long grasses that were sold for high prices in the Desolate Empire was all controlled and run by an administrative council divorced from Duke Ryonic and his hierarchy, though very much under his largesse.

  But how to get through the castle? I had confidence Vera could slay the duke in one-on-one combat, and I'm sure Jorge could as well. If they teamed up, I was sure that they could breach the gates too, but when I had asked both earlier, Vera and Jorge had assured me that taking a castle was no easy feat.

  Not only were they impressive structures, but the magical defences woven into their thick walls could be powerful too. Vera had no doubt that it was more than simple stone that protected castle Ryonic. The storm-wards of the Leviathan Coast were unique in their scale, and because they relied on free-form warding magic to interface with the power of the storms that wracked the coast, but most of the rest of Tsanderos relied on protection in the form of rune circles embedded within stone or wooden structures during its construction.

  My old Fault-Line skill was based upon diving into the substructure of stone and realigning mineral fault lines and cracking them apart. It was not hard to imagine a support class with similar skills that could rearrange mineral deposits in solid stone to form runic circles that could confer additional protection or hide traps, perhaps repel an enemy, or even prevent magical destruction of the stone itself. This was all speculation from my part and I didn't really understand the details, but Jorge, Vera and Nathlan had all explained that while a castle itself may not seem that intimidating in the light of our enhanced attributes, it was almost always more complicated to besiege. After all, they wouldn’t be used if they were that easy to bypass.

  I thought back to the settlements in the Riverlands that had small stone walls no higher than a couple of meters surrounding them and wondered if perhaps those had been magically reinforced, too. Not that it had helped them at Darrow’s Edge.

  I turned away from the black thoughts and back to the problem at hand. The only way I could see this working is if one of us could get into the castle first and somehow open up their defences from the inside.

  And so, the culmination of all my hard-earned planning; I had decided that I would give myself up. Duke Ryonic was looking for a god-touched and it just so happened that our party had one available right now.

  It wasn’t much of a plan at all, being honest. More of an inciting incident really, but I knew my weaknesses as well as my strengths, and detailed planning was definitely more of the former than the latter. I had a seed of an idea, and I needed the sunlight of my companions to help it grow into a flourishing plan-tree.