The sun was just peeking over the horizon as Damien flew south, low over the trees, in the hopes of catching the bandits by surprise. He wasn’t optimistic. Sloan struck him as a clever man and he’d have to know Damien would be pursuing them. After leaving Lane and the barons Damien had run to the castle’s stables and found them empty.

A short ways ahead, the shingled roof of an old, weathered gray barn jutted up out of a clearing. That had to be the place. He hadn’t seen another sign of life since leaving the castle.

Damien strengthened his shield before he landed in a dusty yard fifty paces from the barn. Tracks covered the ground as far as he could see, leading to the barn. This was the place all right. To his left the burned-out husk of a farm house jutted out of its root cellar. Whatever had happened, it looked like it was a long time ago.

Amplifying his voice with soul force, Damien shouted. “Come out of there and I might let you live.”

Metal squeaked on metal as the barn door slid open. That had gone better than Damien hoped.

Ka-chunk!

A ballista bolt hurled out of the open door. He barely registered it before the iron-tipped bolt hammered into his chest. Damien flew back across the clearing, bounced twice when the bolt lost momentum, and skidded to a stop against the trunk of a twisted old oak.

He groaned and sat up, head spinning. Dizzy, but uninjured, Damien clambered to his feet and touched his chest. The bolt hadn’t penetrated his shield. Thank heaven for that.

He turned his furious gaze on the barn. In the dim light figures rushed around, cranking the winch, carrying another bolt over and sliding it into the slot.

Damien frowned and leapt into the air. He flew five hundred feet straight up, hovered a moment, and then accelerated toward the barn roof.

Dry timbers shattered when he struck.

Splinters the size of daggers bounced off his shield.

He hit the dirt floor and flooded the barn with white light.

Eight men surrounded him, one warlord and the rest regular warriors, squinting against the glare. The ballista rested on a swivel mount in the back of a wagon. The operator wrestled the heavy siege weapon around to point it at Damien. He managed to turn the ballista halfway before a blast of raw soul force obliterated both man and weapon.

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Six of the survivors charged him, waving a mixture of swords and axes. Lances of golden energy pierced the bandits from every direction.

Weaklings. They’d have been better off surrendering.

The men collapsed and the lances’ energy returned to Damien.

He turned to find the last man a foot from him, his iron-studded mace streaking for Damien’s head. The mace bounced off his shield.

The bandit warlord’s eyes went wide. Damien wrapped him from the neck down in soul force bindings.

He’d done it enough times now that removing the hellfire ward and putting the truth barrier in place took only a moment. Damien crossed his arms and glared. “Where are Sloan and Marris?”

The bandit’s jaw clenched and he looked away. Damien conjured a golden blade and used it to force his prisoner to look at him. Since he had just one prisoner Damien didn’t dare try any of the fancy interrogation techniques he’d learned.

“Talk or bleed.”

“Go to hell, sorcerer.”

Damien shook his head. Why were they all so stubborn? He drove his conjured blade into the bandit’s shoulder. It sliced through the man’s weak iron-skin technique like it was nothing. The bandit growled and clenched his teeth against the pain.

“You’ll have to do better than that if you want to break me.”

Damien caused needles to grow from the blade in every direction.

The bandit screamed as the needles burrowed into flesh and bone. After a couple of seconds Damien stopped them. “It only gets worse from here. Those needles take a long time to burrow to your heart.”

His prisoner panted and tried to swallow. He didn’t talk.

Damien shrugged. “Have it your way.”

“Wait! They rode south, back to base. Marris is going to have the prisoners killed.”

That was no surprise. “Where is this base?”

“Across the border. Twenty miles south and a little east. You can’t miss it, it’s the only building in the area.”

“Tell me more about your base.”

“Can’t you take this thing out of my arm?”

Damien made the needles grow another inch, prompting a shout of pain. “The base.”

The bandit snarled. “It’s an old stone fortress built into a rock formation. The bosses found it years ago, before my time, cleared out the scruffs, and moved in.”

Damien raised an eyebrow. “Scruffs?”

“Big, ugly lizards, with frills around their necks. We call ‘em scruffs. Three hundred of us live there, though most of the time it’s just forty or fifty. There’s dungeons on the lowest level. That’s where they took the women and kids.”

“What about the Bandit King?”

“That freak, him and his muscle. He showed up one day, maybe six months ago, and says we all work for him. That got a laugh. The way he killed the old chief didn’t. You’re an amateur compared to him. He made us all watch. When he finally finished he announced again that we all worked for him. No one argued. He hung around for a couple months then flew off. We haven’t seen him since.”

“Who’s in charge now?”

“Sloan and Janson handle the day-to-day stuff. That big armored bastard comes by once in a while to make sure we’re doing what we’re supposed to. Like we’d be stupid enough to do anything else.”

Damien nodded. He had a pretty good handle on things now. “Thank you. You’ve been very helpful.”

He sliced the bandit’s head off with a conjured blade. Now he had to catch Sloan and Marris before they could warn the others their plan had failed.