Hours later, with the storm long past and a few hours of restless sleep behind him, Matt walked into a room located near the basement of his castle and looked around.

  The Circle’s assassins were there with him, now dressed in light armor that looked to have been magically reinforced. There were ten of them, all checking over their weapons and other equipment with a seriousness and lethal attention that inspired confidence in him. At least, it made him feel more assured that if they hadn’t been ordered to come after him tonight, they’d do a good job killing his enemies at least.

  Twelve of his own lifeguards were there as well, mostly those best at combat or stealth. Balred, with his sword and a serious expression, Mulwan with her bow and illusion magic ready, Tiridine holding her currently extinguished flaming sword… The list went on in his mind as he looked them all over. They returned his attention with a nod or a salute and went back to preparing their own weapons for the challenges ahead.

  The only person who seemed like they were out of place was Gorfeld. His steward was standing in a spot off to the side of the room, watching the others with a wary eye. He was wearing his own scaled-down version of Matt’s armor, a jack of plates that would hopefully protect him from stabs or slashes. There was a dark hood over it that Matt didn’t think would do much for protection, but at least it would hide his identity if it came to it.

  Matt wore his own armor, which had been carefully repaired after the Battle of the Ridge. His mace was in his hand and his helmet was on his head. He didn’t carry anything else; this time, the battle wouldn’t be after a long journey or a hard march. There would be no need for food or other supplies, not when he was going to step across the distance in a single leap of magic. He felt like weighing himself down when an unknown number of Oath-sworn royalty was coming directly after him would be… unwise.

  He waited until they had all made their final preparations. They looked at him. He looked at Namathus. “Are we prepared?”

  The Wizard nodded. “Yes, King Matthew. Our place of return will be here, in this same room. As long as Psirofel remains close, he’ll be able to bring us back here without trouble.”

  “Good.” He had studied what information they had about Greyhenge over the past day, but the Alliance had been unusually tight-lipped about the place. He guessed it was a part of the Greymark Circle’s own tendency towards secrecy and illusions, but at the very least they knew where the dungeons would be located, and where other prisoners might be kept. It would be enough to get the job done.

  Matt looked around one last time, and then nodded. “What we do tonight, we do for the good of our people. The Alliance has taken it upon themselves to invade our territory, capture our people, and use them as tools of war. Their rulers have forced their people to pay the cost of a war they started out of pride. Now, tonight, we hold them accountable. Now, we will free the people they’ve taken, and return with them to our homes.”

  He nodded. “Strike hard, strike fast, and get the job done. For the Kingdom.”

  His lifeguards murmured the same words, while the Wizards simply bowed their heads. Then Psirofel drew in a deep breath. The Wizard seemed to be focused on whatever spell he was building; Matt could almost smell the magic gathering around him. A spike of pain went through his head, but Matt set it aside. Once this fight was over, he could come back and plan the campaign to free the Copper Hills. By then, maybe the war would finally be done.

  It was his last thought as light abruptly filled the room.

  When the light faded, they were somewhere else entirely.

  Thunder rumbled overhead, and Matt flinched before he realized it was just the same storm that had swept over Redspire earlier. Apparently, it had only reached Greyhenge now; even as he looked around, there was a flash of lightning that momentarily brightened the sky outside a nearby window. A second roll of thunder crashed down over them as he fought a brief burst of nausea.

  They were in a warehouse of some kind. There were crates on all sides, stacked up against the walls. A small space had been created by someone who had made a wall of the things, hiding the spot where they all now stood. Anyone who had just been looking into the spot would have assumed the entire room was full. He could make out a pair of windows, but they had been shut tight against the storms with a pair of shutters. Wind tore at them, making them creak and clatter.

  Namathus had taken a moment to look around. Then she whispered. “We’re within the walls. We’ll make our way into the keep and search for Alerios there. He is likely being kept in their main spellhold, near the keep itself. Stay wary.”

  Matt nodded. “Do we need to return here for the spell to carry us home?”

  “No. As long as you stay with the caster, he can send you back.” She motioned for them to come close. “We need to move.”

  They all crept past the crates, fumbling their way to the entrance. Two of Namathus’ fellow assassins took up positions next to the door. They listened for a moment, and then carefully pushed it open so that they could creep outside.

  The hallway outside the storeroom was empty and dark, except for the occasional flash of lightning. Matt could make out pale stone along the walls, with a narrow strip of red cloth running along the center of the hallway. Banners and portraits decorated the corridor as they moved along it, the assassins fanning out ahead of him and the lifeguards taking up positions behind and beside him.

  As rain pounded at the windows and walls, as thunder roared and rolled, it seemed like his little party of warriors and killers moved with near silence. He thought he could sense the Wizards using some sort of spell to muffle their passage, but he couldn’t be sure. Either way, they reached the end of the hallway without incident, and the Wizards used the stairwell at the end to ascend.

  Matt followed, his heart beating hard in his ears. He knew that the rulers in this place had probably already sensed his presence, but he didn’t know how they might respond. They should have been asleep; would the Oath allow them to stay dreaming while he was nearby, or would it wake them? Would they try to dismiss it as some kind of nightmare that had disturbed them, or would they immediately sound the alarm?

  Every step he expected bells to ring and shouts to go out, but nothing had happened by the time they reached the top of the stairs and the Wizards paused. There was a door there, one that had been closed. Light, torchlight, was flickering from the space between the door and the stone below it, and occasional shadows passed over it as people moved around inside. He could hear the quiet murmur of idle conversation, the kind of thing that bored guards might exchange while on duty.

  Namathus turned and put a slender finger to her lips. She raised nine of her fingers and then pointed to the closed door. Her assassins gathered close around her, and he could just barely make out several of them whispering some kind of spell under their breath.

  Then it seemed like sound itself abruptly disappeared from the world, as if he’d been suddenly struck deaf. The Wizards shoved the door open and flowed inside, thin blades in their hands and other spells flashing silently from their fingers. Matt charged through with his lifeguards, only to find four of the enemy already dead or dying, with the other five in the process of being swiftly dispatched by the Circle of Echoes’ killers.

  He mentally gave thanks for the fact that they were supposedly on his side. Of course, he also made a note to include some kind of countermeasure against deafening spells in the future, but that task was for another day.

  The fighting was over in moments, and the sound came back as Namathus made a calming gesture. All of the enemy guards had gone down; there was no room for mercy or surrender this time. There were two sets of staircases heading further up into the building they were in. Namathus gestured for four of her people to stalk up each one. Then she gestured for Matt to follow her towards the exit.

  As Matt and the lifeguards walked in that direction, he thought he heard sudden gaps in the rainfall higher up in the building. If there had been other guards, however, they failed to raise the alarm or inconvenience Namathus’ people in any real way. They returned to the group moments later, wiping their blades clean and nodding to their leader.

  Namathus waited for them all to line up, and then she opened the door, gesturing for the others to fall in behind her as she stalked out into the storm. Rain swept across Matt’s helmet as he stalked after her, trying to keep low as she made her way up a ramp that led up to another guardhouse ahead. The ramp itself seemed to be climbing some kind of sculpted hill, with a steep drop on one side and a terraced wall on the other. Namathus had them all keeping close to the wall, skittering along it like rats.

  Lightning flashed as they reached the next tower. It was a relatively short, squat thing, only about three stories tall. The Wizards once again lined up outside the door; Matt imagined it might have been bolted shut, but one of them was making a gesture that suggested another bit of Air magic was solving that problem. He waited outside in the rain as the Wizards flowed into the tower, carrying silence and death with them.

  Some of his lifeguards ran in after them, but Matt hesitated. He knew he wasn’t the best killer in the group, by far, and he didn’t want to be in the way. Surely they could take care of…

  Up above, on the third floor of the guardtower, a door was suddenly flung open. He saw a pair of guards scrambling out and onto the next curving ramp, the one that ran between this tower and the next one a bit further up the hill. A quick glance told him that the Wizards were still busy inside.

  Matt called on his magic. Air seemed to whirl and dance within him as he constructed the frame for Rising Leaf. Then he jumped.

  Rain streamed past him as he shot into the air, quickly rising over the edge of the curving wall. He hadn’t poured all of his magic into the leap, but he had put in enough to clear the wall and come down on the two guards like a descending hawk. He smashed into one, knocking them hard against the next curving wall. The guard slammed into the stone with a crunch that even the rumbling thunder couldn’t cover up.

  The other guard turned, a spear in his hand. Matt swung his mace in a two-handed strike. He caught the guard in the chest and knocked him hard to the left, back towards the steep dropoff beside the ramp. Before Matt could catch him, the guard went over the side, his face blank with shock.

  Matt winced. The sound of a distant crunch wafted up out of the darkness below him, followed by a harsh curse from Tiridine. He looked over the side and found the body lying right next to his lifeguard. She looked at him with an incredulous stare and gestured to the body as if demanding an explanation.

  Before he could respond, a bell suddenly began ringing. Matt jerked and turned to look at the second guardhouse, but the bell was coming from further up the hill. It was in the castle itself.

  He gritted his teeth. Apparently, his presence had alerted the royals, but he didn’t know if they could suspect that he was already inside the walls. They would need to move quickly now if they wanted to keep ahead of whatever reinforcements the enemy could bring to bear.

  Something within him told him to glance out over the rest of Greyhenge, an instinct he’d been resisting up until now. What the next flash of lightning revealed stunned him to stillness.

  It was an ocean of campfires stretching out beyond the walls. The number of soldiers each one of those fires represented was terrifying. Had they somehow outdone the work for the Army of the Heroes? If an army that big reached Redspire, or even just the Copper Hills…

  Matt shook his head and turned back to see his lifeguards and the Circle assassins streaming out of the first guardhouse. Namathus shook her head at the guard that was still on the ramp, and then passed him a rope. “Can you jump to the next ramp, King Matthew?”

  He took the rope and nodded. “Absolutely.” If it got them to Alerios quicker, he’d jump all night.

  A single jump took him to the top of the next wall, with a cluster of ropes and climbing grapnels in his arms. He spent a moment setting the hooks on the walltop, and then Flowing Leaf Fall brought him back to the others. They took hold of the ropes and began to climb, following Namathus up the wall.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  As they climbed, Matt turned to the now-vacant guardhouse. He could see lights appearing further in on the town; there was another ramp leading away from the guardhouse to a small garrison building as well. He called up to Namathus, using Thunderous Voice to make sure his whisper was heard. “Do we need the guardhouse?”

  She paused in her climb long enough to shake her head, and Matt smiled.

  He called up the framework for his shattering spell, the one he had used to crumble the bridge at Brensville. If they didn’t need the guardhouse, then he could at least slow down any reinforcements by making them try to climb the rubble. Matt placed both hands against the tower walls, and let his Earth magic flow through them. The stones cracked and shattered, crumbling as he watched. With a terrific rumble that even the storm couldn’t hide, the entire thing collapsed into a tangle of wood and stone.

  Matt turned and used Rising Leaf to jump past his still-climbing allies. He turned and ran down the second ramp, approaching the second guardhouse from the castle side of the road. The miniature fort hadn’t been built to anticipate attacks from this direction, though he did see a couple of guards pointing at him from arrow-slit windows as he ran.

  He called up the shattering spell a second time as he reached the tower wall. It blasted through the stone as easily as it had for the first one. This time, there were screams and shouts as the tower came down, but Matt ignored them as he ran back up the ramp, heading for the castle gatehouse.

  The lifeguards and the assassins were already taking shelter against the outer wall. A massive portcullis had already lowered over the entrance, and another had just come crashing down inside of that. Guards were already looking over the walls; he saw one pointing in his direction as he joined the rest of his allies.

  Matt saw the assassins preparing their ropes again, but Gorfeld stopped them with a shake of his head. The steward made a gesture to Matt as if he was introducing his monarch to the wall. Despite himself, Matt smiled and set his shattering spell to its next use. This time, he concentrated the magical pressure in a small area, large enough for two people to go through. Beneath his hands, the stone didn’t just shatter; it crumbled to dust, mixing with the rain to run down across the ramp. A single kick knocked the entire plug inward in a shower of rock dust.

  Beyond the hole, he saw a stunned group of guards still arming themselves for battle. They were still struggling to prepare themselves when the assassins charged, and his lifeguards fell on them. This time, Namathus’ team didn’t bother to cover the sounds of combat with their spells. Instead, they waded in with their blades, sending out near-invisible cutting spells that caught and killed unwary soldiers.

  More and more guards poured into the gatehouse, some of them vaulting down the stairs that led to the second floor, while others rushed in through the door to line the balcony above. Some of them started firing bolts of fire or ice down on his allies, and Matt saw Rethferd stagger when one of the bolts struck his shoulder.

  Determined to keep the Wizards from stopping them, Matt channeled Rising Leaf and vaulted up to the second-floor balcony. He took the Alliance Wizards completely by surprise; the first one barely had enough time to gawk before Matt smashed him across the head with his mace and sent him toppling to the ground floor. Two more Wizards went down before they started to turn and fire at him, and by then Balred had jumped up as well, his sword flashing as the thunder rolled again outside.

  The assault from both below and above was too much for the enemy soldiers. They fell back, giving way before the lifeguards and assassins that were cutting them down. Matt had a moment where he thought they were about to break and run completely.

  Then he heard a roar from the rear of the Wizards’ ranks, and someone wearing a glittering shroud stepped forward. They carried a staff that crackled with power, and Matt recognized the fury in their face instantly. He swung at another panicked Wizard, knocking them out of the fight, and then crouched, ready to try to dodge.

  The newcomer grinned. “Time to die Tyrant! For all your sins!” He channeled magical energy, and Matt felt his breath catch at the sheer power behind the spell. There was no way he could dodge it.

  So instead, he shoved Balred out into space and threw himself off the edge. He felt flame wash across the balcony he had just left, hot enough to nearly sear his back through his armor. The remaining Wizards still on the balcony screamed for a moment before the flames caught them. On the way down, he channeled the Flowing Leaf Fall, which kept him from breaking his knees when he landed.

  He pivoted to look up and saw Balred drifting down next to him. The lifeguard gave him a brief look of impatience, but Matt didn’t have time to hear the Orc’s chastisement. Up on the stairs, he could already see the Wizard stepping forward again, staff ready to channel another stream of annihilating flame. Matt could still see the stones on the balcony above him glowing with heat; he didn’t want the man to get the chance to channel again.

  Then the Wizard abruptly stopped and clutched at his throat. Matt watched as he dropped his staff and abruptly was hauled skyward, his legs kicking as blood began to pour from his neck. Namathus was making motions as if she was pulling a rope of some kind. A closer look showed that she was yanking on a nearly invisible wire, one that had magic running through it.

  She looked at Matt and shrugged. Clearly, she’d been prepared for some interference from the Oath-sworn Wizards here. When he looked back, the man who’d nearly barbequed him gave a final jerk and went still. A moment later, Namathus let the body fall, dropping the corpse on top of the remaining defenders.

  The fall of their leader broke the morale of those that remained. In a matter of moments, the only Wizards still in the gatehouse were the dead or the dying. His lifeguards pursued the last of them out the door, but Wonoll, the furthest one forward, jumped back before he left the doorway. A thin crackle of lightning snapped at the space where he had been, and the Imp cursed. “They’re covering the doorway!”

  “Then we make our own!” Matt ran to the far wall, preparing his shattering spell again. It took the work of a moment to reduce another portion of the wall to dust. Before he could break through it, though, Balred charged into the gap, exploding through it with a roar.

  Matt saw a courtyard full of Wizards waiting for them. Many of them seemed confused, and quite a few had apparently been pulled from their beds. It was understandable. The bells had rung only minutes before, after all.

  Near the front of the enemy lines, however, was a small group of Elves. They wore Ponthuul colors, the traditional red and white, and there was an Elf in the midst of them that had a glowing crown on her head. She pointed at Matt and screamed a warcry, something that Matt and his lifeguards answered in kind.

  The Elves turned immediately, bows in their hands. They opened fire, and nearly a dozen shafts shot across the rain-soaked courtyard towards Matt. They should have killed him, but Balred had been ready. His spell reached out and diverted the killing shots, scattering the arrows like wheat thrown into the air.

  His defenses could not do the same for the Wizards, however. Dozens of them turned their attention to the charging Orc, their staffs glowing with power. Others set themselves to receive his charge, their weapons starting to gather magic for their strikes.

  Then one of them pitched forward as Mulwan’s arrow caught him in the throat. Another cried out and dropped his weapon as one of Namathus’ assassins unleashed a pointed blade of Air that cut him across the arm. Another group scattered as Templad, a High Imp in Matt’s lifeguard, unleashed a version of the spell that had detonated beneath the Army of Heroes.

  Yet it wasn’t enough to stop all of them. A volley of ice and fire shot out, reaching for the Leaffall exile. Matt felt his stomach clench as that wave of devastation reached for him.

  Then Balred leaped, apparently channeling his own version of Rising Leaf once again. He rose above the spells, which rushed past to smash against the stones behind, and then crashed down into the midst of the Elven archers while they struggled to draw back their second shots. His sword reaped a brutal cost among them as they frantically tried to fall back.

  His other lifeguards had seized the chance that Balred had given them. They rushed out of the breach and down from the second story door as well, slamming into the distracted Wizards and carving a path through them. Panic flooded through the ranks as the guards fell back, frantically trying to blast the warriors in their midst.

  Matt stepped forward, intending to charge alongside them, when he heard Balred cry out. The figure of the Elven Queen rose above his lifeguard, jumping just like he had. She held a sword that shone with ethereal flame, and Matt’s mind flashed back unwillingly to the moment during the Battle of the Ridge when a Knight of the Lion’s Roar had nearly killed him with a similar jump.

  This time, however, he wasn’t exhausted or wounded. So instead of just standing there, Matt channeled Haunted Dust and slapped at her with a pile of stone-turned-mud before dodging to the side.

  The Queen struck the ground and skidded; blinded by the clinging mud and her footing uncertain on the wet courtyard stone, she nearly fell. Matt leaped at her, ready to strike her down, but the woman pivoted like a snake and nearly cut his head off. Steam hissed from her blade and she swiped at her eyes, and a vicious grin twisted her lips. She took a step forward, pulling her blade back for another strike.

  Then she jerked in surprise. Matt saw the tip of a blade punch through the front of her gown; blood spread from the wound. The Elf Queen turned, trying to face the person who’d struck her, only for Gorfeld to jump up and latch an arm around her head. His steward stabbed his other knife deep into her, right between her neck and her collarbone. He gave the knife a quick wrench back and forth before jerking it back out and leaping off.

  The Elf staggered, her grace abandoning her. Her eyes locked onto Matt, and she attempted to lunge at him. Matt just stepped aside and caught her with a swing that knocked her to the ground. She collapsed to the ground in a puddle of rain and blood, where she twitched her life away. Gorfeld’s first knife was still driven into her back, up to the hilt.

  Matt nodded to Gorfeld in thanks, and his steward bowed. He snorted and turned back to the fight, ready to charge in and join his troops.

  Then his next breath suddenly refused to come. Matt felt his eyes go wide as he realized that there was a shimmering distortion in front of his vision. The sound had gone odd, as if it was no longer reaching his ears correctly.

  He turned back to Gorfeld in panic, and his steward’s eyes went wide. The Imp pointed at something beyond Matt. When he followed the Imp’s gesture, he saw a Wizard reaching out to him, as if she was trying to grasp Matt’s throat from across the courtyard. Hate was stamped on her features, and Matt felt a numb realization that she was somehow trying to strangle him.

  The edges of his vision started to go blurry. He shook his head to clear it and formed the spell for Endless Lung. Air seemed to flood his lungs again, and the blurriness fled. Matt took a couple of experimental breaths and then smiled.

  He was treated to a flash of fear and surprise on the Wizard’s face. She seemed to bear down on her spell, and the distortion around him seemed to increase. Matt wondered for a moment how she was doing it. Had she frozen the air around his head, or just created some kind of vacuum? Either way, apparently a normal spell from a mere peasant had managed to foil it. Bad fortune on her part, but such was life.

  Matt walked forward, forcing himself to keep to a steady stride. He didn’t know how much he could strain his own spell by running, and he figured that just walking casually might help convince her to abandon her efforts.

  Three guards broke away from the melee and charged in at him with swords and axes flashing. He met them partway, swinging his mace wildly. His strike smashed its way through the first Wizard’s guard easily; compared to a Knight’s strength, the Wizard barely seemed to be trying. Matt delivered a second blow to put the man down, and then sidestepped the wild swing from the second guard. She staggered past, and he struck her in the back, leaving her for Gorfeld to finish.

  The third guard stabbed at him, a sword rimed with frost in his hands. Matt deflected it and then swung at him. He cursed as the Wizard backed up and dodged, and then pulled back for a second, lethally accurate stab. It was a perfect move; Matt almost felt ashamed when Mulwan shot the man in the heart a second later.

  As the third guard fell, the distortion abruptly vanished. He looked over to see Wonoll crash into the Wizard who had been casting the spell, his spear stabbing frantically. The Imp delivered an additional pair of stabs before another Wizard stepped in to blast him with a burst of fire, sending the lifeguard rolling away through the rain.

  Gorfeld shouted at him, and Matt caught sight of a gigantic spear of ice forming nearby. The Wizard channeling it had a look of desperation on his face. It was clear who his target was, and Matt felt his eyes narrow as the Wizard snarled at him.

  He channeled the Rising Leaf again, only this time he focused his leap horizontally. Matt shot across the courtyard like something fired out of a cannon. The Wizard channeling the ice spear had half a moment to shout in horror before Matt caught him with a brutal blow to the head as he went past.

  Matt landed in the middle of the Wizards’ ranks, the Wizard’s corpse tumbling along in his wake. The enemies around him froze for just a moment, long enough to give him the chance to form the framework for Thunderous Voice. He poured all the power of his second Source into it that he could and sucked air into his chest.

  Around him, the Wizards were all turning to face him. Their staves glowed with power, their weapons flashed with magical force. The closest of his lifeguards were too far away to help; Matt thought he could hear them crying out in despair.

  Then he screamed at the top of his lungs, a brutal warcry that tore across the castle’s courtyard like a physical blow.

  Wizards screamed and fell to their knees. Weapons and staves tumbled from stunned hands. Those closest to him spun away as if he had physically struck them. Even his own warriors, still some distance away, staggered backwards in shock.

  As the sound faded, Matt allowed the spell to vanish. He struck down the closest Wizard with his mace and kept swinging as they tried to stagger back upright. “For the Kingdom of Iron!”

  His lifeguards echoed the cry with hoarse throats, charging into the fight again. The Wizards, however, had seen enough. The fight had gone out of them; half threw down their weapons and ran, while the rest barely kept themselves composed enough to turn and fire the occasional blast of magic back at the attackers.

  Matt dodged at least one such blast; a second sprayed ice along his armor for a moment, but the cold didn’t pierce through the plates sewn into the fabric. None of the others came close to him, and he sighed with relief as they fled up the steps and into the relative safety of the tower. He looked around for a moment before he picked out Namathus among the assassins. “The spellhold?”

  She gestured to a tower to the side of the courtyard. It wasn’t nearly as tall as the keep, two stories compared to the keep’s five, but it seemed much older, somehow. The stone had been weathered nearly smooth by the years of wind and rain, and the style of the architecture was different. He nodded. “Go. Find Alerios and anyone else inside. We’ll be right there.”

  Namathus nodded and gestured for the remaining assassins to follow her. There were only six left of them; two had been killed outright during the melee, and another had been wounded badly enough that Psirofel had sent them back to Redspire.

  His dozen lifeguards had fared only a little better. Their heavier armor had saved any of them from death, but they were clearly the worse for wear. Balred was bleeding from half a dozen wounds, thanks to his charge into the ranks of the Elves, and Wonoll was still limping from the burn wounds he’d endured. Matt gestured for them all to follow Namathus, and then trotted after her himself. It was tempting, beyond tempting really, to charge into the keep in pursuit of the Wizards, but he had no idea how many more warriors were waiting in there.

  Besides, fighting those warriors wasn’t the point of the mission. They had to find Alerios and get out. After that, they would finally have won.