A night march gets into men's heads, especially a moonless one. Hours tick by with only the scrape of boots and the rattle of gear. A cough in the dark or the rustle of a tree becomes an enemy behind every shadowed hillock and the cries of animals rattle nerves already pulled tight as drum skins. Once a man gets good and fear-drunk on night march he’s next to useless the next day. You can force him into line at the point of a sword easy enough, but he won’t stand. He’ll be pissing down his leg before the first arrows nocked.

  Riot cursed and slapped at his neck, tormented by the biting insects. He would have argued against a night march, but he had more immediate problems. His barrier was failing, cracks growing bigger, and letting in a trickle of ley power that stung the raw channels in his body. At least the maddening itch was soothed, and he was able to stop scratching at his skin, but the cost was that every step felt like knives were being stabbed into the joints of his hips, knees, and ankles.

  Only the burned hedron scar on his hand was spared the pain, locked behind the frail, greasy barrier Riley had put in place. But in some ways Riot feared this more than the slow leak of the barrier. He hesitated to even draw his sword, lest he somehow disturb the protective layer. What would he do if the leypower flooded out and turned his hand into a burned and bloody stump on the end of his arm? The world was a hard place for cripples. He and Ruddle would be beggars inside a week, living off the army's scraps like fleas on a dog.

  The file slowed to a halt, and Riot was called to the front, where the small Lieutenant Fitz was receiving orders from Riley.

  “This is an excellent place to make camp, Fitz. I want my tent ready and a warm fire when I return,” the arcanist boomed.

  “Yes, sir,” Fitz replied with a salute.

  The valley was the worst place to set up camp. Open at both ends with a road wide enough for a full company of cavalry to charge down. What they needed were sentries, no fires, and everyone hiding in the ditches. Riot suggested this to Riley and received a condescending bark of laughter for his troubles.

  “Sergeant Riot, I thought you were made of sterner stuff! I shall be back before the next bell. Set the sentries and don’t let any of the wretches escape. Don’t hesitate to get rough with them. Fitz has the irons with him. If we have to lock them back up, we will. We can flog 'em when we get back.” Riley didn’t care to lower his voice and the Leybound nearby glared at him. “Where is Miss Quinn?” Riley added, peering into the dark.

  Riot searched the gloom around them. Natalia Quinn had been at the front of the file, but now there was no sign of her on the empty road.

  “Probably gotten lost. I said the wilds are no bloody place for a woman.”

  “Did anyone see where she went?” Riot called out.

  “If Quinn doesn’t want you to see her, then you don’t see her.”

  It was Loic, the northman who had spoken. He sat by the roadside and spat on the rusty blade on his lap and pushed a whetstone across it.

  “Well, we can’t look for her, can we? Got to keep our focus on the mission,” Riley stated.

  Riot felt the northman's eyes on him, hearing the steady schikt schikt of the stone on the blade. In any other regiment Riot would bring him down a rung or three, hard and fast. But there were sixty Leybound here and in the state he was in, it would more likely be slow and bloody and end with him lying face down in a ditch.

  Riot addressed the arcanist. “Suggest you take a man with you, sir?”

  “Really Sergeant I think I can–”

  Riot moved closer, keeping his words low. “A man on foot could be an advantage in an ambush, sir. As a distraction. Your mission is too important to risk you being captured.”

  Riley nodded thoughtfully. “A good notion Riot.”

  “Loic, go with Arcanist Riley,” Riot snapped.

  The young northman wore an evil smile as he got to his feet. “Very clever, but I’ll see you later, little man,” he rumbled as he passed Riot and trailed Riley into the dark.

  Riot pulled four men out of the file at random and ordered them two hundred paces down each direction of the road to keep watch. He would have gone himself, but the leypower in his body was cramping his guts so badly that he could barely stand. Instead, he found a place where he could watch the road in each direction and settled down alone.

  Fitz busied himself hauling Riley's tent from the horse, and some of the men joined him, hammering in the wooden pegs to the cold ground, the crack of the mallets echoing off of the hills loud enough to give away their position to anyone within a couple of miles. He should stop them, but his authority was hanging by a thread, and the Leybound looked to be one order away from mutiny.

  After an hour, Riot changed the sentries and moved further down the darkened road, straining his senses into the gloom. The nightfall bell had come and gone, and there was no sign of Riley or Loic. There was always a chance the northman had simply killed Riley and stolen his horse, a bright thought in the cold, damp around him.

  “Everything okay, Sergeant?” Fitz asked in a hushed voice. “We have a lovely fire going if you would like to join us.” The old man gave him a wan smile, seemingly oblivious to the danger around them.

  “If you don’t mind, sir, I think I’ll take a couple of the men to nip back and check the road behind us,” Riot said.

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  “I'll send two of them over. I have to say, I don’t think they like you very much.”

  “What do you think of them, Fitz?”

  “Oh they’re characters, alright, rough around the edges to be sure. If you want to make a good impression, then you should become friends with Loic. Most of them look up to him.”

  “The young northman?”

  “Yes,” Flitz confirmed. “I think you’ll like him. I’ll send the others over now.”

  Fitz scurried away, and two Leybound joined Riot moments later. A lean man who walked with a loping gait more suited to skulking in gloomy alleyways, introduced himself as Crease. The other was a skinny, bookish type called Lehan who wore round glasses and smelled like he’d just been pulled out of a tap house.

  At a gesture from Riot, the trio advanced cautiously. They kept to the side of the road and as it curved away from the camp they were alone with only the buzzing insects for company.

  “Someone up ahead,” hissed Crease.

  Riot didn’t know how the man could see anything in the twisting fog, but he drew his sword and weighed it in his left hand, too wary to risk disturbing the hedron scar on his right.

  After what seemed like an eternity, a darker shadow appeared before them.

  “Who goes there?” Riot hissed.

  A shambling, shivering spectre emerged from the mist, wearing the dark blue uniform of the Duke of Fallow. “Please don’t hurt me,” he called, before collapsing on the road.

  “What are you doing out here?” Riot hissed as he reached the boy.

  His name was Norton, and he didn’t look like he’d reached his twentieth year. After he’d taken sips of water with shaking hands, he explained that they had been caught outside the gates and chosen to flee to the hills. Ten of them had grouped together and found the road, and followed it in the hopes of finding a town or village.

  “You said that there were ten of you, where are the others?” Riot asked.

  His question was answered immediately by the distant clip clopping of hoof beats on the road.

  “It was Faelen cavalry,” Norton said, his voice breaking.

  “Back, back to the others,” Riot hissed.

  They hurried back down the road, and Riot ran straight to the meager fire and kicked it out, sending sparks everywhere.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” one of the Leybound snarled.

  “Horses coming, get up into the hills,” Riot hissed.

  “Cavalry? We can see them off,” the man spat. He was half a head shorter than Riot and had a face like a city rat, the ones at the docks with an uncanny ability to slip into places they weren’t wanted. A dirty-grey light leaked out of his forearms and filled the lumped scars on the backs of his hands.

  Riot didn’t care what power the Leybound might have at their fingertips, it couldn’t change the fact that they had been caught in a terrible position. The land on either side of the road was flat turf, perfect for horses to gallop, and it stretched all the way up to the hills on either side. Only a mad one hundred yard dash would give them any hope of reaching the sparsely covered slopes where the horses wouldn’t be able to follow.

  “We should run,” Riot argued.

  “A stone eye and a coward,” rat-face said.

  The Leybound laughed, but it was tinged with uncertainty as they glanced into the darkness around them.

  “Lieutenant, we need to get to the hillside, where the horses can’t follow,” Riot appealed to the tiny figure of Fitz, who fiddled with his lieutenant's chain.

  “What about Commander Riley and Loic? You want them to ride back into a platoon of cavalry?” Rat face countered.

  The mention of his master being in danger clearly swayed the small manservant. “Mister Rimmer is right. We shall hold them off,” Fitz declared.

  “To the back, stone eye, you’re no good to us,” the one called Rimmer spat.

  “Form up,” Fitz announced in his reedy voice.

  The cavalry were louder now, the echo of their hooves clip clopping deep in the mists. In moments, they would appear right in front of them, and Riot positioned himself off to one side, ready to run into the dead ground. He knew the Leybound would scatter to save themselves. As much as Riley wanted it to be true, they could never be a real regiment.

  “Get ready,” Fitz announced.

  Along the line, dirty gray light bled down the forearms of the sixty Leybound and pooled in their cupped hands, illuminating the grim expressions on their dirty faces. Exclamations of surprise came from the mist, and a handful of hazy red orbs appeared in the gloom as a blaring horn ordered the charge.

  Some of the Leybound crushed the power in their hands, grunting with the effort, while others were still struggling to fill their cupped hands with the grey light.

  Riot gripped his sword as the platoon of Faelen cavalry exploded out of the mist thirty feet from them, red darts ready formed in their palms.

  The Leybound closest to Riot opened his hands and released the dirty gray charge of arcane power. It cracked like a whip as a lumpen ball of dirty gray light the size of an apple shot out and vanished ten feet from their enemy.

  “Wait, wait,” Fitz called, his piping voice barely heard over the pounding of hoofbeats.

  Other arcane charges were sent cracking into the night, missing their targets wildly. In response, the red Faelen darts shrieked through the air and one caught a Leybound in the throat, sizzling into his neck. Though he clamped his hand to the wound, the damage was done, and hot blood gushed out between his fingers as he fell onto his face. Another dart caught a man in the leg, and he howled in pain but kept hold of his gray charge.

  “Now!” Fitz shouted.

  The leybound spells released with a deafening crack, and at close range, the scattered volley battered the charging cavalry. At least ten horses fell, hammering onto the road and tossing their riders. Five more Faelen riders were hit, two of them plucked out of their saddles entirely, while the others flopped listlessly as their well-trained horses held the line. The cavalry horn blared the retreat, and they swerved to the side of the road, galloping over the flat ground and fleeing the way they had come.

  The savagery of the leybound assault took Riot’s breath away. In a pitched battle, they were clearly no match for the long-range darts of the Faelen infantry, but as light troops, they were a killing machine.

  The Leybound whooped and jeered at the retreating cavalry as Riot grabbed the two wounded and pulled them back from the front rank. One was dead, while the other clutched his leg as Riot tied a strip of fabric to stop the bleeding. But he was too far gone, his lips moving softly to say whatever he felt he needed to in death before falling still.

  “They won’t be back,” Rimmer announced.

  But it was a promise the rat-faced man couldn’t keep, because behind them came the pounding of horses' hooves on the road and Riley burst from the mist, flailing desperately at his horse with his riding crop.

  The arcanist wore a terrified expression and behind him rose the spectral red glow of a second unit of Faelen cavalry.