Up here in the hills, the rain was a fine mist that seeped everywhere. The twenty surviving leybound found pitiful shelter in a small corpse of trees and quickly gave up trying to make a fire out of the sodden wood.

Riot sat apart from the others, kept awake by the very real fear that if he closed his eyes, he would open them to find his skin burning away. The fortress-like barrier that held back the colossal pressure of the ley line was battered and leaking through hundreds of cracks. Riley was gone, and any hope of relief was gone with him. Even now he could feel it seeping into his body, the searing sweetness he could taste on the back of his throat, his skin covered in sickly veins of the black residue as the ley power gradually leaked out.

Many of the leybound gazes were openly hostile, as if they knew. They were the damned, but he was a condemned man walking among them.

He needed to get back to the city and find an arcanist. The mission gave him a sense of purpose, and as the weak sun tried to penetrate the gloom around them, he roused the men.

“Up, up you sorry excuse for soldiers, line up for company inspection,” he shouted.

A few reacted to the order and made their way into a ragged line, though about half remained defiantly still, and those who slept grumbled and rolled over.

“The last one in line will be court marshalled by me right now. Test me, and I’ll drag you back down the hill and lay you next to Riley.”

For some of them, the uniform and the sergeant's stripes still counted for something; for the others, they had seen him drag a rider out of the saddle only a few hours ago and run him through, so one by one they emerged and formed a line of the most sorry bunch of miscreants he had ever seen.

The army wasn’t totally made up of the scum of the continent; many were just poor or hungry and looking for paid work, while others might have found trouble at home and needed a place to run to. But the leybound were criminals—murderers, thugs, and petty criminals—who had agreed to be mutilated to avoid punishment. Riot knew them, each and every one of them, down to their bootstraps, and though they didn’t know him, they would respect him.

There had been officers who had held the respect of regiments, men like the old Duke of Fallow. He would walk the line, talking genially to the men, asking them about themselves, and they would laugh appreciatively at his jokes. Then they would salute, bursting with pride to know that he knew their names, cared about them.

But the Duke had a title and the easy confidence of the monied class, and all Riot had was a battered blue uniform, a cheap sword, and broken shoes tied together with twine and strips of leather.

Still, an inspection was routine, and there was a feeling of control in the procedure that he grasped at like a drowning man clutching a log.

First in line was Norton, the boy they had encountered on the road who had miraculously survived the assault. He visibly quivered, a boy stuck in enemy territory. “We gonna head back to the city, sarge? Perhaps they beat them back and cleared the gate? Or we can sneak in,” he asked.

“No, we’ll have to go around,” Riot replied.

There was a chorus of mumbling from the leybound, and many of them shook their heads.

“Shut it; this isn’t a bloody knitting circle,” Riot snapped.

He moved on to the first of the leybound, a tall, bespectacled man with a pinched, clever face who looked like a school teacher. What crime might he have committed that made him choose to be leybound?

“Name?” Riot snapped.

“Lehan.”

Lehan saluted, showing the lumpen scars on the back of his hand that looked like they had been carved by a blind butcher. The scars that Price, Quinn, and Roveran had were fine, delicate work, and he wondered what the difference might be. He had dozens of questions about the buildup of ley power and the barrier that seemed to be constantly failing, but asking would look weak, and he couldn’t afford that right now.

Lehan carried a small napsac, and Riot had seen him earlier, wrapping a small book carefully in a strip of waxed leather and stowing it away.

“What are you, some kind of clerk?” Riot asked.

“I was a book binder.”

Riot glared at the man.

“Sarge,” Lehan corrected.

“Why the hell are you leybound, Lehan?”

“I seduced a magistrate's wife.”

The other leybound chuckled lightly.

“When we see the faelen, you can go out first, see if they take a liking to you.”

Some of the men laughed, and there was a flash of anger in Lehan's pinched face. That was good. Lehan looked like a stiff wind would blow him over, but he had survived the assault well enough.

The next man was the oldest of the group by some margin, with a weatherbeaten face and a litany of blue tattoos on his neck that marked him as a sailor. Judging by the thick scar that ran around his neck, someone had tried to hang him, but somehow he must have slipped the noose. The leybound scars on his hands said that he had not waited for them to try a second time.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“Name?” Riot asked.

“Fletcher, sarge.”

“What did you do before this, Fletcher?”

“Boatman, sarg,”

“A bloody smuggler, you mean?”

He was old, with a rummy eye, but he’d been sharp enough to scramble up the hill when forty others died in the damp valley.

The next man had rounded shoulders; in fact, everything about him seemed hunched over, with only his rat-like face peering out. His leybound scars were significantly neater than the others, the detailed runes flashing silver as if they had been painted by an artist.

“Name?”

“Rimmer.”

“Why did they make you leybound, Rimmer?”

“Killed a sergeant,” he replied.

More laughter. Rimmer was a troublemaker, and he needed a beating, but the Rimmer’s of this world knew just how to toe the line to stay on the right side of a thumping. He was so good, he could step right up to it and peer over with his little rat face.

Riot moved on.

“Crease, sarge.” The next man said before Riot could ask.

Crease had the look of a man who was always looking for the exit because they were guilty of something and weren’t going to wait to be caught. He was the shadowy figure you saw in a back alley before you got a knife in your kidneys.

“You’re a cutthroat, Crease,” Riot stated.

“Leybound now, sarge. That’s all now, just leybound.”

Just leybound. Crease had the scars, neat and delicate, and Riot recalled that he had killed the faelen who had tried to loot Fitz’s body at sixty paces, just forty less than the faelen darts.

Larkin, Rife, Brigs, and Loe were next, and then Riot lost track of the names. Each of them had lumpen scars on the back of their hands, and each of them gave surly replies and lazy salutes. Loic hadn’t even joined the line, preferring to lean against a tree and glare.

“Riley and Fitz are dead, and I’m in command.” Riot said, walking slowly back down the line. “We’re going south, and we’re going to keep to the hills, away from the road. When we get to the coast, we’ll find a boat to take us back to Helgan’s Rest.”

“We’re not going.” Loic said, scratching at the stubble on his chin and spitting on the floor.

This wasn’t the carefully measured insolence of Rimmer; big men like Loic challenged authority simply by existing. There was only one way to deal with men like that, and if he didn’t do it now, more of them would fall into his orbit, and he would have to fight them every step of the way.

"Loic, you’re on report.”

“No.” Big men like Loic didn’t need to raise their voices.

“Get in line; that’s an order.”

“I don’t take orders from you; you’re not an officer; you’re not even a real leybound.”

Riot let the tension rise. This was a delicate lesson for all of them, and when he was done, he wanted to make sure he didn’t have to come back and teach it again.

“Your orders are to fall into line and march to the coast. If you fail to obey this order, I’ll bury you right here; there’s plenty of stones around here even for a fat bastard like you.”

The pitch-perfect sound of twenty-two men holding their breath resounded from the group, and Loic broke the silence first.

“We’re heading east, over the Castemeres into Taria; it's sunny down there; good wine; women and work for fighting men.”

A chorus of mumbling agreement followed these words, and Loic sensed he had the upper hand as he swaggered over. He was taller than Riot and carried far more weight in bulk and muscle. In a fair fight, Riot wouldn’t have stood a chance, but he wasn’t an officer, and this wasn’t a duel.

Riot’s fist caught Loic in the gut, and he buried it as deep as he could, winding the big man, who collapsed on his knees in the mud, his face beet red and his eyes streaming as he desperately tried to draw breath.

“We’re taking the low road around the hills and down to the coast,” Riot said, addressing the men as though nothing had happened. “Anyone who can’t keep up gets left behind.”

Riot saw the old boatman; Fletcher’s eyes widen and ducked instinctively, feeling Loic’s wild swing pass over his head. The northman was thrown off balance, and as he spun around, Riot followed up with a straight punch that snapped his head backwards.

Loic spat a bloody lump onto the floor and smiled with blood-stained teeth. “It’ll be nice for Riley and Fitz to have some company.”

He moved with a speed that belied his size, tackling Riot in the stomach and smashing him to the ground. The impact rocked the fragile barrier that held back the tide of ley power, and the part he had desperately repaired cracked open, letting in a flood that burned sweetly like boiling honey in his veins.

The men gathered around, calling out encouragement and advice to Loic, who began to rain down blows of his fists and elbows. Riot desperately tried to block the northman’s barrage as he raged against the tide, trying to shut off the ley line. His defenses eased closed, but there was nothing he could do about the ley power that had already leaked in, pulsing against his skin. He blocked Loic’s arm, giving him a vicious jab to the throat with the flat of his palm that made the big man gasp and keel over sideways.

Both men scrambled to their feet at the same time, and Loic pulled out a short blade, swiping it through the air as Riot jumped backwards out of the way.

“You stupid bastard, they’ll hang you for this,” Riot yelled, his muscles spasming from the torrent that flooded within him.

“I’ll tell them you died yesterday, running like a stone-eyed coward while Riley fought and died,” Loic crowed, his bloodied face wearing a savage smile of triumph.

Riot stumbled, and Loic cackled with glee and lunged, only realizing at the last moment that it had been a feint. Riot pushed up from firm footing and seized Loic’s knife hand, pulling him off balance, and as the big man staggered forward, Riot grabbed his greasy hair and pulled down as he raised his leg. The big man's nose snapped with an audible crack, and Riot cursed as he felt something break deep inside his knee.

Loic flopped onto the floor, gasping for breath, his nose a smashed mess, streaming blood onto his face. The others shouted for him to get back up and fight, but their cries were silenced when Riot drew his sword and pointed it at the Northman’s neck, trying not to scream at the white, hot pain that lanced through his knee.

“You’re under arrest, Loic. Norton, tie this bastard up and bring him with us. Make sure you gag him so I don’t have to listen to his shit. If he won’t walk, leave him here for the wolves.”

The young man snapped into action, binding Loic’s wrists with rope and hauling him to his feet, where he swayed slightly.

“Fall in,” Riot snarled to the rest.

They followed him now; he could feel their hatred, but they followed. Being kindly only worked for the officers who came from money and privilege, and if Riot had to beat them all the way to the coast, then that’s what he would do.