The skies cleared, but the torrent of water that had fallen made the trails a boggy quagmire of sucking mud. Moran's useless cavalry were forced to dismount and pull their unwilling mounts along narrow goat tracks. Their marching order broke down and scuffles broke out as they pushed and shoved each other, slipping and sliding for most of the day until they reached higher, drier ground.

  At dusk, they reached a collection of small hovels made of the local shale. It looked like the kind of place the dead were sent to work off their sins before they could pass to the afterlife. Two grim-faced families called the place home, smoke from the damp moss they burned giving each of them a bleary-eyed gaze and a hacking, wet cough.

  Two small huts were given to Moran and Natalia, and for everyone else, there was a covered shed that they would share with a handful of ragged-looking goats.

  Riot slunk around to the stabled horses and carefully rifled through the saddle bags of Moran's guards. Cavalry officers obsessed over their mounts, but this lot didn’t have a horse brush between them. They did have plenty of oats, and feed bags, so they certainly weren’t rank and file or most of that would have been traded for alcohol days ago.

  A shuffling sound caught his attention and Riot backed into the shadows. Loic ducked into the stables, peering around cautiously before rifling through the saddle bags. Riots hand strayed to his knife. He didn't like the idea of murder, though he’d done it before. But the northman wanted his blood, so there was nothing for it but to put a blade in him and drag his body out into the hills.

  Riot slipped forward, silent as a grave, just as a voice split the night.

  “Loic! We’ve got grog!” Rimmer called.

  Loic slipped out of the stables and Riot slid the knife back into its sheath, cursing softly.

  Moran had negotiated a sack of wrinkled vegetables and two large clay pots of harsh spirits from the villagers, and soon the Leybound and the guardsman were deep into their cups as a thin soup boiled away. Moran chatted easily, making jokes, and the laughter clashed with the sadness that wept from the settlement.

  “A warm fire, hot food, and gracious hosts—I told you I would make the journey more comfortable,” Moran announced.

  “How comfortable are they going to be when the Faelen come through here in a few days?” Riot nodded at the ragged villagers, gathered around their own cook fire. “Will we head up to the next ridge and watch?” He didn’t trouble to keep his voice down, and those within earshot took notice.

  The fixed smile on Moran's face never faltered. “As I explained to you, whoever was hunting you and your men took the road and likely returned to the Mazral army. Soon we will be in my mansion in Morbian, its walls are thick and its cellars stacked with ale.”

  The Leybound gave a cheer, caught up in the spell of the arcanist. He was a nobleman, born to lead. Following him was as natural for them as taking a breath.

  “Come, Sergeant Riot. Tell us a war story from the famed Duke of Fallow regiment. Something with glory and chivalry, great deeds on the field of battle.” Moran’s cheeks were flushed, and he drained his cup. Behind the arcanist robes and the chains of command, he was just a rich young man, acting as if he was hosting a party.

  “Riley wanted glory, he didn’t even get a grave,” Riot pointed out.

  “Arcanist Riley was a man of conviction. He knew that he was fighting for a greater good, that is the object of war.”

  “The object of war is to kill the other bastard before he can kill you,” Riot replied.

  Or kill him before he can get you killed. He added to himself.

  Natalia Quinn had been mostly silent, but now she spoke. “There is one famous tale from the Duke of Fallow regiments, if I recall. The story of the last man.”

  “That at least sounds like a story worth hearing,” Moran exclaimed.

  All eyes looked at Riot, but he stayed silent. Moran, Loic and Rimmer didn’t deserve a story about men whose memories were betrayed to protect the Arcanum. But he was just as bad, wasn’t he? He had kept his mouth shut, trading the honor of the dead for a sergeant’s chain.

  The thought brought a flaring of nausea as the leypower surged inside him. He murmured an excuse about checking the sentries and hurried out into the drizzle, making it to the edge of the small settlement before vomiting noisily behind one of the ramshackle homes.

  Wiping the spittle from his lips, he staggered to a thin stream and washed his face, hoping that the frigid water might somehow soothe the pounding in his head.

  “You can’t keep it out forever, you know,” Quinn said behind him.

  “You sneak up on people, and you’re likely to get into trouble,” Riot replied.

  “I don’t think I have much to fear. Look at your hands.”

  The skin was waxy and yellow where it wasn’t stained black. How long had they been like that? He touched his face, and the skin was loose, slack, and paper thin.

  “It feels like bitter honey on the back of your throat, doesn’t it? You’ve done well to even survive this long, but it’s a long way through the hills; you’ll have to get over your wounded pride and ask Walden for help.”

  “Walden, is it? If you want to help, you can tell me what we’re really doing out here; why are we being hunted?”

  The ley line pushed against the barrier, and more of the power leaked in, soothing and poisoning at the same time.

  Quinn pursed her lips. “I had heard that Erudorans were prideful, but you seem more willing than most to chop off your nose to spite your face.”

  “I don’t owe you anything.”

  “The Leybound know what is happening to you. They think you a fool for resisting Moran's help. Are you surprised that they will not follow you when they see you throw your own life away so carelessly?”

  Riot tested the raw areas of the barrier inside him like he was exploring his tender gums after losing a tooth. It was a fractured mess, leaking in a dozen places. “Riley said that there was another way to deal with the pressure. And don’t tell me I don’t have the bloody patience for it.”

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  "No, Sergeant, you are clearly the very model of composure," Quinn said, her tone mocking. "Distilling ley power is no great secret; it’s just hard work, like chopping wood or digging a garden. But for your spirit, not your muscles.”

  When Riot said nothing, Quinn sighed. “You are an extraordinarily stubborn man. How do you expect to lead these men if you cannot ask for this simple thing?”

  The words landed like physical blows and he felt a fool.

  “Okay, show me.”

  She appraised him for a moment, then turned on her heel and strode out of the village. “Come with me.”

  The summit of the hill overlooked the pathetic hamlet. Down below, the Leybound sat around the small fire. The twang of music and Fletcher’s warbling voice floating out into the hills.

  Quinn sat cross-legged on the cold ground and gestured for Riot to join her. He winced at the pain in his knee and sat in front of the noblewomen, feeling like some foolish schoolchild. She must have been around the same age as him, but she seemed older. The world had made her hard beyond her years, while those same years had ground him down to the nub.

  “How is your hand?”

  The question caught Riot off guard, and he saw that she was staring at him with the same intensity she had when she had questioned him in the court chamber in the city.

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “I will help you to survive, and you will answer my questions. I think it a fair exchange.”

  “It’s healing,” Riot replied.

  “What did it feel like when you activated the hedron?”

  Riot frowned. The memory was a fractured mess of gray light. “It felt like it pulled the air into it, but there was no wind. Then it exploded.”

  “Nothing else?”

  There had been a moment before it exploded, when he had thought of his company being burned alive and willed the force to flood out before him. It had responded, hadn’t it? But without knowing what that meant, he kept it to himself.

  “Nothing.”

  Her eyes bored into his, but Riot had stared down officers for most of his life.

  The silence extended for some moments before Quinn spoke, suddenly business-like. “The ley power leeching from your skin relieves the pressure, but it destroys your body, and it will kill you. To distil ley power, you will draw it back from your skin, through the channels it has burned in your body, and into your core, to the place the ley line first touched.”

  She placed a hand on her own stomach, slightly above her navel, and drew a deep breath.

  Riot recalled the ley line, snaking out of the sky and plunging into his gut. He took a dozen deep breaths, but all he felt was lightheaded. “This isn’t working.”

  “Keep going.”

  Riot focused on the distant flickering fire lights in the village and took a steady breath. He pictured the ley line as an enemy that he was fighting in the chaos of the melee, where only those who keep their heads survive. The light of the fire grew brighter, and the world around him was picked out in dull gray light, the details growing so sharp that his eyes began to water.

  “I think I have it,” he said.

  “Now breathe out and push all of the air out of your lungs. When you have no air left at all, compress what remains.”

  Riot tried, but the gray light faded from his vision, and pain flooded back to his skin, making him curse at the dry burning sensation.

  “You’re trying to use your muscles. You cannot bully your way through this; you must command it.”

  Riot tried again, breathing deeply until he felt the light-headed buzz of ley power, then breathing out until his lungs were aching. He sensed the ley power gather in his core, waiting, and sighed at the relief of pressure being removed from the aching channels.

  “Now gently crush the power, but be careful; use too much force, and it will resist you.”

  It felt like trying to grasp a ball of water; grip too hard and some of it slipped out of the cracks in his fingers. Having no air in his lungs just made the task more difficult, but he managed to get the ley power down to around a third of its size before he was forced to take a shuddering breath.

  The arcane power flooded back through his body, and he hissed with the stinging pain. “It’s worse than before,” he growled.

  “Of course it is; you’ve been drinking ale, now you’re turning it into hard liquor inside your body. In the long term you will become stronger, but for now, at least, I imagine you feel better than you did.”

  It did seem as though the pressure on his skin had reduced and his hands had already lost their deathly pallor, the blood flowing once again. “What about the barrier? It’s cracked,” he asked.

  “You can repair it, but you cannot replace it without an arcanist shielding you from the leyline. You’d be burned away the second you tried to take it down. Walden can help you with this if you ask him.”

  It didn’t matter. He didn’t trust Moran and he had what he needed. He would keep distilling as much as he had to until they got back.

  The chill rain relented slightly, and the clouds parted, revealing a dark sky scattered with stars. He should go back, but right now he was far from the hostile Leybound, and Quinn was here. He’d be the first to admit that he wasn’t much to look at, not unless your tastes ran to a face so weathered it looked like it had been used as a figurehead on a ship that pounded the open seas for a decade. But she was seen as a foreigner here, like him, and both were leybound.

  “The men do not like you,” Quinn stated after some time.

  “They don’t have to like me; they just have to follow orders.”

  “Loic tells me that common soldiers in the regiments actually prefer noblemen as their leaders.”

  “Loic tried to kill me; did he tell you that?”

  Quinn gave a wry smile. “He has not tried again, so you must have made an impression. In the East, you and Loic would both be great captains. There, we choose those who are the best equipped to be our leaders.”

  “Look how that worked out; the Eastern lords tripped over each other to join the Mazral after the Faelen turned up, they make up half their forces.”

  “There were cities like mine that chose to stay free, as they had always done.”

  “If you’re here working for the wikkan, that can’t have worked out well for you.”

  “My father refused to join the Faelen, and they took his land. And I do not work for the witches, for now our goals are aligned.”

  “So you just spy for Kerne?”

  Quinn’s brown eyes flashed dangerously.“You think you can win the war simply by swinging a sword?”

  “So I should put my trust in Moran? He’s not escorting us, if anything, we’re guarding him. He’s lucky he’s managed to stay alive this long with that group of toy soldiers he calls cavalry. If he thinks I’m going to let my men get dragged into his mess, he’s mistaken.”

  “So they are your men now?”

  "Yes, they’re my damn men, and he’s not going to take them away from me and get them killed.”

  “You are blinded by prejudice. You could work with him; he needs you.”

  “He needs me because what he knows about soldering couldn’t fill half my boot.”

  “This is not the answer, but even if you do not like him, he can help you. Your defenses against the leyline are weak, and they will fail. It is more difficult the older you are.”

  The runes on her hands were smaller and more intricate than any of the Leybound in the unit, but where did she get such confidence and knowledge about the binding? He knew there were Leybound in Erudor, but he had never heard about them in the East.

  “Who made you leybound?” he asked.

  She appraised him, as if weighing something inside of him, and he found himself hoping that the scales tipped in his favor.

  “That is not a discussion we will have,” she said finally.

  “Who made your spellcraft?" Riot pressed.

  “Ask Moran for help,” she said, starting off back down the hill.

  Riot waited for her to leave before pulling the rag from the scabbed wound on his hand. It was clear that Quinn was interested in it, but why? Even if she had a hedron, she would be a fool to use it.

  He pushed the thought out of his mind, he had bigger problems for now.