He slowed as he reached the edge of the forest, slipping in behind a towering pine. Closer now to the stockade, he could pick out more details though the smoke was still thick. There were only a couple of Tsurani dead around the northern approach, for the bulk of them were by the gate and the road that headed southwest and the safety of their territory.

As he moved slowly, he noticed something down by the stream. A dark mound rose up amid a small copse of trees. It was almost covered with snow. It took a moment for Dennis's eye to make sense of the dark shape, but then he saw it: moredhel dead, several dozen of them and the picture began to fit together in Dennis's mind.

Clever bastards. They had carried off their dead to leave a puzzle, hiding them nearby. In another two hours, Dennis would have been looking at just another snow-covered bump in the earth. If that force was as large as Tinuva speculated, most of them might be heading up to visit the Tsurani now holding Mad Wayne's, but chances were the rest were lurking nearby, watching, most likely on the other side of the clearing.

Damn clever. Then a more obvious possibility occurred to him.

If we and the Tsurani were fighting a battle here, Dennis thought, both sides would most likely be rushing up reinforcements even now. They'd reach the clearing and stop, the same way we did. Dennis wondered if at this very second there were other eyes, Tsurani eyes, gazing at the fort and wondering what to do next. Curiosity, however, would lead most finally to venture in. Once out in the open the trap would be sprung. He realized with a cold certainty that the moredhel heading up the trail to Mad Wayne's were not a force heading out on an additional raid, or fleeing. They were an anvil, waiting for the trap to be sprung and for those fleeing the trap to run straight into them. It could be that they were less than a couple of hundred yards off, and no more than a quarter of a mile. As certain as he was of anything, Dennis knew that he was being watched by moredhel scouts. If they hadn't seen Tinuva or Gregory, they might think him an advance trailbreaker who would soon return the way he had come to carry word to his commander; they would wait until the Kingdom soldiers returned in force, then spring their trap.

Now what?

Trap the trappers most likely deployed on the far side of the clearing, go after the smaller group circling behind him, or get the hell out now?

Use caution when dealing with their kind, Jurgen had always said. His old friend would have told him to get the hell out. If Brendan and the Tsurani had been wiped out by them, there were undoubtedly enough moredhel nearby to annihilate Dennis's small command. Had the moredhel scout who was surely watching him known that a short distance down the trail sixty-odd cold, tired, and hungry Kingdom soldiers waited, he would be carrying word at this moment. Dennis knew what he must do.

Get out, circle around, then warn off any Kingdom troops that might be approaching from the south. He knew he would have to stand up, glance around as if satisfied that no danger lingered and move quickly back to where his command waited. Let the moredhel think him a solitary scout. Dennis would not be returning this way, and neither would any Kingdom force if he could intercept them. Let the Dark Brothers and the Tsurani fight with each other for a while.

The moredhel would not linger to occupy a human stockade, and if the Tsurani managed to drive them away, Duke Brucal, Earl Vandros of LaMut, and Baron Moyet could decide how to drive them out of here and Mad Wayne's next spring.

Dennis and his scouts had signals to use in these situations. He would remove his heavy cloak, shaking it as if he was trying to rid it of excess water. That would let Tinuva and Gregory know he was under scrutiny and they needed to withdraw without being seen.

Dennis was on the verge of standing up to do just this when he saw the enemy. Stepping out of the forest, down on the southwest side of the clearing, a lone Tsurani appeared, easily picked out by his bright blue lacquered armour.

Dennis grinned. Damned fool, typical of them. Make a big show of bravado. A new plan instantly formed in Dennis's mind. Except for a couple of their best units the Tsurani were blundering fools in the forest compared to his Marauders. The moredhel had to know additional Tsurani were here. In fact, it lessened the likelihood the moredhel knew that Dennis's unit was nearby. The trap was set for the Tsurani. Let the two sides slaughter each other while we slip away, or luck the Tsurani will so weaken the moredhel we might even finish them both off and reclaim the fort for ourselves. This might actually get amusing, he thought with a wolfish smile, and then he heard the crack of a branch.

'It is a trap,' Force Leader Asayaga hissed, gesturing towards the smoking ruins of the stockade.

Sugama said nothing, but Asayaga could already read what his second-in-command was thinking, and what he would do.

The night march had been an exercise in stupidity and waste. Two hours of double-quick march in daylight could have brought them to this position, but instead they had endured a frigid, miserable night. His men were exhausted, shivering from the wretched cold, and the perverse gods of this world were sending down bucketful's of snow.

Now this damnable disaster. It was obvious that Force Leader Hagamaka of the Gineisa had launched the attack without waiting for the reinforcements Asayaga was bringing up. The thought of a Minwanabi ally failing so miserably, so publicly, might have brought Asayaga some pleasure, except for the sight of so many fine soldiers of the Empire dead, slaughtered in a futile battle. It was yet another tragic waste of good men. But why the urgent command for a night march through dangerous territory if Hagamaka wasn't going to wait?

He first suspected that Hagamaka had intended to embarrass him, to order reinforcements up, not wait and launch the attack, then accuse him of failing to arrive in a timely manner.

Yet, as he surveyed the carnage, he wondered: it was obvious the attack had turned into a rout, a pile of nearly two score dead were clumped on a low rise not a hundred paces into the clearing, and a trail of dead led all the way back to the fort.

No garrison of fifty Kingdom troops could have done this. Did they have more hidden inside the ruined fort, or a force waiting in the woods which had cut Hagamaka off? Then, if so, why the abandoned fort?

The Kingdom considered this a key link in their chain which guarded the shadowy northern front. From the Lake of the Sky's eastern shore down to the northernmost peak of the Grey Tower Mountains, only the chains of stockades prevented the Tsurani from sweeping eastward, then south into Tyr-Sog and the other Kingdom cities of Yabon. Earlier in the year the forces of the Empire had taken Mad Wayne's fort to the northwest. If they could also hold Brendan's, they could control enough of this area to stage an invasion down into Yabon in the spring. With a second invasion pressing out of the Free Cities to the southwest, the Kingdom would lose Yabon inside a year. The Kingdom knew this, and were desperate to garrison and supplying these small fortresses. If they had destroyed Hagamaka they would, at this very moment, be barricading the shattered gate, making repairs… and looting the dead. Messages would already have been sent south for more reinforcements.

Asayaga shook his head. No. Something was dreadfully wrong with this entire situation. He looked over at Sugarna but knew there would be no sage advice. He was, after all, of House Tondora, allegedly assigned to Asayaga's force for training in anticipation of the Tondora joining the Warlord's host in the spring. It was an unusual but not unprecedented situation to have a junior officer train with the forces of an ally, but everyone knew that this was simply a charade. The Tondora – while publicly 'politically neutral', in the Great Council – were Clan Shonshoni and a client House of the Minwanabi, so everything they did was at Minwanabi bidding.