Fletcher scurried back into the cover of the trees. Out of all of them, the old boatman seemed the least troubled by the constant downpour. “There’s about twenty of them down there; I’d swear it’s the same bastards that attacked us on the road,” he said.

“We’re better off fighting than dying out here in the cold. At least there’s a fire down there. I say we take 'em out,” Rimmer mumbled.

“You’ll keep your mouth shut, Rimmer, or I’ll shut it for you,” Riot growled.

He pulled out Riley’s map and tried to keep the rain off of it as he traced the goat track that they were on with a finger. The only route south took them past the village that squatted in the stretch of open land between the hills.

“I think that you have the wrong ways of that map, sarge. The coast is actually over to the west; you’ve got it fair placed ahead of us,” Lehan said, leaning over and pushing his glasses up his long nose.

“Keep your four-eyes on that bloody village, Lehan,” Riot snapped.

Lehan shrunk back, and Riot rotated the map, reorienting himself and cursing his foul luck. If Lehan hadn’t spoken up, he would have taken them west and right into the enemy.

Crease, the skinny cutthroat, appeared on the treeline. “Movement,” he hissed.

Riot folded the map and limped forward, hissing at the pain in his knee. Down in the village, the yellow-uniformed faelen were leaving the large, tavern-like building. An angry muttering rose up among the leybound as a hooded figure was led out behind them. His hands were clearly bound now, and a huge hulking Faelen pulled him along with a rope tied around his neck.

“See, we should have gone down there; we could have got him back too, for Riley,” Rimmer said.

“Go on then; whoever wants to join Rimmer and take that bastard down has my permission; I’ll be up here when you get back,” Riot said.

A part of him hoped Rimmer would take him up on it, but the man was spineless and contented himself with folding his arms and muttering.

“We wait till they’re gone, at dusk, then we go down,” Riot said.

They didn’t see the villagers from their vantage point because their bodies had been dragged behind the Priory.

The pile of corpses looked just like the ones he had seen all that time ago under Ivansrook—pale skin and bloodied wounds that looked almost black in the failing light. The sight sent a tremble through the barrier that held back the leyline and Riot took several steady breaths. It wasn't as bad as Ivansrook; he’d known those ones, fought along side them.

Behind him, Norton, the young boy from the Duke of Fallow regiment they had found on the road, retched noisily.

“Why would they do this?” Fletcher asked, his voice hollow.

Riot recalled the old man's awkward salute. “You never serve, Fletcher?”

“Not me, never been rank and file. I was caught smuggling on the coast.”

Riots gaze swept over the rest of the leybound who were scattered around the village, carefully searching the houses. They had lost forty men in the attack on the road, and now he knew why.

“How many of them have been in the regiments?” Riot asked.

Fletcher swept off his cap and scratched his head. “Hard to say. Loic has Crease too, and Rimmer, perhaps a couple of others. But most were like me, heading for the gallows and offered leybound.”

There was a shout from the priory behind them, and Riot hurried over to find Lehan, the clerk, ashen-faced outside.

“I just wanted to pay my respects; I wasn’t stealing anything. I just found him like that,” he said.

The heavy wooden door was smashed to pieces, and inside, the weak sunlight lanced through a large window and fell onto an alter where a man in a cassock lay dead, staring up at the rafters.

The burn marks on the cassock and the skin beneath had the black residue that the leybound had on their hands and that Riot had leaking out of his skin.

“He was killed by a leybound,” Lehan offered, hovering behind Riot.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“How do you know?”

“The arcanists call it ‘fouling’,” Lehan said, pushing his glasses up his nose and peering at the wound. “It's a by-product of being bound to a leyline.”

The question had been in the back of Riot's mind for some time now. “Why don’t the arcanists have this fouling then?” he asked.

Lehan adopted a scholarly tone. “The arcanists, like the wikkan and the faelen, absorb ley power from their surroundings. Think of it like an underground river, running through rock and such, being filtered and purified.”

“So what do we get?”

Lehans fouled hands glowed faintly in the half-light. There were only a handful of runes, lumpen misshapen scars. “Raw, unfiltered power. There are several schools of thought on the subject; it is highly debated.”

“What do you think, Lehan?”

Dirty gray light dripped from Lehan's hand, vanishing before it hit the floor. “I think the power they use is lifeless, cast off from the leylines. Ours is living power.”

The arcane light was reflected in Lehan's glasses, and his fixed smile was unnerving.

“Just see that he’s buried,” Riot said.

There were too many bodies to bury properly, so they threw them all into a shallow grave and covered it with a layer of soil. The war had come to every corner of the continent, and in years to come, you wouldn’t be able to plow a field without digging up a pile of bones.

As night fell, the tavern was a welcome relief from the constant drizzle of rain. Riot sat apart from the others, too far away to hear their muted conversations. The leyline pulsed in his eardrums, and he felt a strain in each beat of his heart. The fouling covered his skin in fine black powder, but he couldn’t tell if it was leaving his body faster than it came in.

Could he just rip the battered wall down? It would likely hurt, but perhaps he could rebuild it stronger. But a voice in the back of his head that whispered in the judging tones of Natalia Quinn told him that taking down the barrier would be the last thing he did.

He eventually found a troubled sleep in the corner of the room before the older leybound, Fletcher, nudged him awake.

“Crease says those horsemen are back, sarge,” Fletcher mumbled.

Outside was total darkness under a heavily clouded sky. Crease waited outside the door.

“Where are they?” Riot hissed.

“North side of the village, they came down from the hills same as we did, about two score of them by my eye.”

Riot was amazed that the skinny leybound could see anything in this darkness, but the bigger question was how the horsemen had left on the eastern road and come full circle so fast.

“Fletcher, get them out here,” Riot said.

He was sick of running, and his knee hurt like the blazes. The tavern was dry, and he wasn’t about to give it up. The square was a good place for an ambush; horses would be useless, and a dozen steps would bring the leybound close enough for their gray charges to be deadly.

The rest of the leybound filed out of the tavern, and he saw that the surly looks that he had endured for the last day were gone. They looked uncertain, glancing at the shadows, unsteady. Fitz had lined them up to face the enemy head on, all glory and honorable conduct, and while it was true that sometimes you had to face the enemy with your banners flapping and beat them so everyone could see, out here, with only the dead to bear witness, war was about survival, and that meant killing them before they had a chance to kill you.

“You wanted a shot at these bastards, and now you’ve got one. Who here has served?”

There were a handful of murmured confirmations.

“Earl of Westmarsh regulars,” Crease said.

“A hard regiment,” Riot said, genuinely impressed. “Anyone who's been in the regiments goes with Crease. Let them come past you, then when they reach the square and the fighting starts, make sure none of the bastards get out of here alive.”

Five of the leybound loped off after Crease into the darkness, and Riot turned to the rest. They looked at him expectantly now, even Rimmer.

“The rest of you, I want half in the priory and half in the tavern; when they’re in the middle of the square, we attack on my order.”

They slinked off into the darkness; most of them were criminals, after all, and well suited to this kind of work.

Loic made a muffled protest and Riot pulled the gag from his mouth.

“What about me?” Loic asked.

“What about you?” Riot replied.

“Cut me free; I can help.”

“So you can sell us out to them like your friend Price?”

The northman strained at the bonds on his wrists, his face contorted with rage. “I’ll cut your lying tongue out of your head. I’m no traitor.”

“Put the gag back on and take him into one of the houses,” Riot ordered.

He made his way over to one of the houses that bordered the square and slipped inside the darkened doorway as the first hint of daylight began to brighten the sky to the north. The sound of hooves on the road grew louder, and Riot tensed, feeling the familiar creeping anticipation of a fight. Soon the first of them would round the corner and enter the square, and he drew his sword. The moments ticked by, but the sound of the horses stopped, and the only thing that entered the square was the silence of the grave.

The sky brightened as the darkness retreated further, and with a curse, Riot moved out into the square and began to creep cautiously to the road that led north, every careful step feeling like he was walking into a trap. He heard scuffed footsteps behind him and knew that at least some of the leybound had followed him.

Riot reached the road out of the village and heard the sound of running feet. “Get ready,” Riot murmured, glancing behind him to see four leybound, the glow of gray light glowing in their cupped hands.

Crease rounded the corner at a job, his eyes widening as he took in the small force ready to attack. “Bleeding hell, it’s me,” he shouted, sliding to a halt, his arms raised.

“Bloody hell, Crease, what's going on?” Riot asked, slamming his sword back into its sheath.

“Best you speak to Commander Moran, Sarge; he’s on his way.”