"We beg your Grace’s pardon for the clamor. We shall put this wretch to the question or the crow-pole. As for you...up," muttered one of the guards, his fingers digging into the prisoner’s neck as he signaled his fellows to drag the man toward the shadows of the secondary tents.

"Release me, you ham-fisted fools!" the captive shrieked, his voice cracking like dry kindling. "I am no spy! I am a messenger!You dumbwit!"

"A messenger?" mocked a man-at-arms, shaking him until his teeth rattled. "And where is your ribbon, boy? You’ve the look of a gutter-rat and the smell of a stable-floor."

"I know nothing of ribbons! I come from Kakunia! I bear word for the Young Bull!"

At the mention of Kakunia, the heavy velvet flaps of the command tent parted. A man stepped into the light, the golden sun glinting off the raging black bull emblazoned upon his breastplate. Sir Latio, heir to the high seat of Kakunia, stared down the length of his nose at the shivering heap of the young man.

"Harald?" Latio’s voice was a low growl of disbelief. "Is that you?"

"Sir Latio! It is me, by Weaver protect me!" The messenger almost wept, his knees hitting the muck as the guards’ grip slackened. "Your father sent me. I have ridden three horses to death... I bring urgent news, sir!"

Nibadur flicked a hand, a silent command that sent the guards scurrying back in awkward confusion. They lingered a pace away, hands on their pommels, eyes darting between the prince and the peasant.

"Harald," Latio urged, stepping forward until he loomed over the man. "Speak. Why are you in such a state?"

"Travesty, sir! A travesty" Harald gulped at the air as if he were drowning in it, his eyes wide and haunted. "Ricorum... the city of his grace has fallen."

A stone dropped upon the grass on that moment would have echoed like a temple bell in the silence that followed.

All could feel the chill of the air.

The very wind seemed to die in the eaves of the pavilion. Latio’s jaw clenched so tight the muscles bunched like corded rope beneath his skin. Within his chest, his heart began a frantic, hollow drumming against his ribs.

Drum. Drum. Drum.

That was not possible...

"What madness has taken your tongue, Harald?" Latio hissed, the blood draining from his face. "How can the city have fallen? Ricorum is deep behind the lines. It is girt with stone and iron. Are you drunk on sour wine, or has the sun addled your wits?"

If it couldn’t be true. Ricorum was the throat of their campaign; it was there that the House of Kakunia had stockpiled the grain, the salt beef, and all the food intended to feed the League through the coming winter. If the city had truly fallen, their supply line had not merely been cut, it had gone up in smoke with a whimper.

"I speak the truth, sir... I swear it by the Gods," Harald sobbed. "The city has fallen...’’

All hell let loose.

The Lord of Mandigan shoved his way to the front, his gaunt face contorted.Even his usually calm exterior now cracking. "How? How can a city fall without a single scout sighting a banner? Is the Fox a sorcerer now?"

"Treachery!" Lord Cregan roared instead seeing now he would never get repaid for his efforts, his hand flying to his sword. "The Kakunians have sold us out! They’ve burned the stores to starve us!They must be in league with the Peasant."

"Where were the patrols?" another cried, crowding around Latio. "Where were the outriders? How many men did he bring? Speak, you dog!"

Latio stood at the center of the storm, overwhelmed by the hail of accusations and questions. He looked at the lords, then back at the broken man at his feet. He knew no more than they did, but he could feel the cold breath of starvation beginning to rattle in the back of his throat all the same.

Had Latio not moved as if dodging a headsman’s axe, the gathered highborn would have surely torn the messenger limb from limb. The air in the pavilion had grown thin and foul, charged with the static of a dozen unsheathed tempers that searched for answer for a situation they refused to believe in.

"How?" Latio roared, his fingers knotting in the messenger’s tunic, hauling the man up until their noses nearly touched. "Ricorum has walls of stone and a garrison of five hundred spears! Did the Yarzat dogs grow wings? Did they fly over the battlements?Did crows deliver those wretches!"

He shook the man, his knuckles as they held onto the man’s tunic.

"It was not the Yarzats, my lord!" Harald wailed, his eyes rolling in terror, seeing in his liege’s son the same rage that many dozens of lords directed at him. "They wore no black and white! No falcon flew above the gatehouse! It was not the Fox who led them’’

Latio’s grip faltered somehow, feeling the answer would be no more better to the lords’ mood. "Then who? Speak, or I’ll give your tongue to the Sea-God and his fishes!"

"It was your cousin, sir," the man wheezed, his voice a broken reed. "The banners... they were the Bull.Gods curse them for it.It was your cousin.’’

Latio’s hands went slack at that.Released by the hold Harald slumped to the rugs, but Latio remained standing only by the sheer, brittle strength of his pride. His knees felt as though they had been replaced by water.

The answer was clear now.

’’It is civil war...’’ The man mouthed from his knees as defeated and gutted as was the son of his prince.

Since the day Latio had mustered his host and marched beneath the League’s shadow, a cold finger of dread had been tracing the lines of his heart. It had whispered to him in the watches of the night that something was rotting at his back.

Now, he beheld the rot.

He did not fear the Fox as a man fears a wolf; perhaps that was a mistake in itself. But his cousin?Now he learned what it meant to be terrified.The old fear that had calmed when the Habadian had reassured they would come to aid after the war now returned with pride, waiting for him like an old glove ready to be worn.

All his father’s plan, up in smoke.

To learn that the Fox’s cunning had wedded itself to his cousin’s steel was a blow more certain than any stone.

He turned slowly, his gaze sweeping over the assembled nobility. He looked into the eyes of the Lord of Mandigan, the Prince of Habadia, and the scions of ancient thrones and fiefdoms. In that silent exchange, a terrible realization passed between them like a guttering candle.

These were men of war who made a vocation of it , coming from a caste whose very breath was drawn from the scent of blood and the song of steel. And now, the realization settled over them like a heavy shroud declaring the end of a teather play: the campaign was dead. The Bastion was no longer a prize to be won.

And none realized that more than ta certain man .

He who had masterminded this plan for a year, and tried to make it true in three. He who had nearly touched his dream of a unified south when he saw all these banners marching as one.

He who wished to sit above it all, and sheperd a land that was fractured and disorganized.

He who would have sacrificed most of all to beheld that dream.

All up in smoke, with no apparent explanation except that somewhere, in some deep ravine, hidden in the foliage that nature provided hidden by the sight of men, the Fox still stood, unbloodied, unbowed, and plain as fuck, also unbent.

It had taken two months of silence. But now all of them, the brave, the coward, the fearful, the ambitious, the pious and the sinner.

All of them now beheld his answer.

The coming of the master of the land they sought with greedy delight to take it for their own. The man who faced the might of more than half of the entire South , facing the biggest army the South had seen in 75 years, and yet seemed to feel no pressure at all, save for the weight of the sky and the turning of the seasons, the burdens the Gods provide for all of mankind alike.

Save for the snapping of the silk overhead, a sound like the wings of a great, dark bird, no noise climbed to the mortal plain. The lords of the South stood frozen, the gold of the circlets of their princes turning to lead within the cold air.

As then, from the midst of the six dozen lords, a single voice rose, a thin, wavering whimper that sounded more like a wounded animal than a man of rank, or a candle on the verge of being blown out.

No hope was in his tone. No providence to wait him.

" th...the Weaver... deliver us. I...I will need to lead my host home.Yes...that is what I shall do.Father will need me..."

Moaned the boy who on that fateful day saw all his future go up in smoke.

His sin? Choosing to go against the man who knew no defeat.