The legion stopped just out of arrow range.
From the north wall, William watched the black-and-red mass settle like a dark tide hitting an invisible shore. The drums shifted, slowing into a steady, ominous beat... doom... doom... doom that made the palisade vibrate under his boots.
"Why'd they halt?" one of the archers whispered.
"Because they're not fools," Hobb said. "They see the ditch. They're deciding how much they care."
The shallow, muddy cut they'd carved across the north field shone dull under the gray sky. Water from the river trickled into it, turning the bottom into a churn of muck. Beneath the brown surface, sharpened stakes and broken plow blades waited like teeth.
"They can just go around," William muttered. "We didn't have time to extend it all the way."
"Yeah," Hobb said. "But they'll have to bunch up to do it. That slows 'em down. Makes 'em easier to see. Besides..."
He nodded toward the legion.
"We're not their problem yet. They're feelin' us out."
A line of cavalry peeled away from the main body—a hundred riders in scale and mail, black cloaks snapping, lances held upright. They trotted forward, horses stamping, breath puffing white.
At their head rode a man in darker armor, cloak lined in red, helm crested with a simple iron stripe instead of feathers. No overdone trophies. No gaudy charms.
He carried his helmet under one arm.
Black hair tied back, sharp features, pale eyes flicking from the ditch to the walls, to the gate, to the ridge they'd once stood on. He sat his horse like he'd grown there.
"Who's that?" William asked.
"Commander, most likely," Hobb said. "Or an officer trying to impress one."
William squinted. The distance blurred details, but something about the man's posture scraped at instinct. Calm—that was the worst kind.
Way out of bowshot, the rider raised a hand. The cavalry slowed, spreading out in a loose line.
He turned in the saddle, saying something over his shoulder to a standard-bearer. The Germania double-eagle snapped into clearer view.
"Felix Blackwell," Hobb said suddenly.
William blinked. "You know him?"
"Only by stories," Hobb said. "Blackwell the Binder. Light cavalry commander. Likes tidy lines and untidy flanks. Supposed to be the kind of bastard who remembers where every man stood when the fighting starts."
"Good," William said through his teeth. "Then he'll remember this."
An idea sparked.
Reckless. Stupid.
Exactly the size of their situation.
"Hobb," he said, pulse suddenly loud in his ears. "How many of our people can run fast in armor?"
Hobb gave him a look. "Depends. Why?"
"Because the ditch won't work unless they forget it's there," William said. "Right now, Blackwell's staring straight at it. We need him thinking about something else."
"What did you have in mind?" Hobb asked. He already looked like he knew he wouldn't like the answer.
"The gate," William said. "We open it. Take a group out. Just beyond the ditch. Enough to make noise, look stupid, throw insults. Make 'em angry."
"And then?" Hobb demanded.
"And then we run like hell," William said. "Back over the planks. You pull them the moment we're clear."
Hobb stared at him. "You want to taunt Germania's cavalry in front of their commander and then turn your back on them?"
William swallowed. "Do you have a better use for the ditch?"
Silence.
Below, villagers moved like ants, carrying last buckets, guiding last children into cellars. The drums kept beating. The cavalry line waited.
Hobb cursed under his breath. "I hate that this might work."
"Is that a yes?" William pressed.
"It's a 'you're insane and I'll help so it doesn't get everyone killed,'" Hobb said. "We'll need planks you can cross without them seeing. And you decide who goes, not me. If this is your stupidity, it's your responsibility."
William nodded, throat tight. "Twenty. Fast, brave, stupid."
"You've got one already," Hobb said. "Try not to pick nineteen children."
The gate yawned open on creaking hinges.
From the wall, the villagers watched, faces pale. The ten regulars who'd stayed leaned into their shields, eyes sharp.
William felt every pair of eyes on him as he stepped out onto the churned earth beyond the palisade. Under his boots, the ground was still damp from yesterday's digging.
A line of planks lay across the ditch, just wide enough for two people side by side. They were covered with a thin layer of mud and straw, camouflaged from a distance. Rope loops rested at either end, tied to the posts.
Hobb crouched behind the palisade's inner edge, hand on the ropes, jaw clenched.
"Last chance to call this off," he muttered as William passed.
"Last chance to admit it's clever," William shot back quietly.
"I'll write it on your gravestone," Hobb said. "Now go before I come to my senses."
Twenty villagers followed William out.
Not shiny knights. Farmers in boiled leather, old guards in dented mail, a few hunters with long knives on their belts, all clutching borrowed shields. Hara was there, jaw set, spear in hand. The smith, too, hammer tucked through her belt like a war club.
"This is insane," she muttered. "I like it."
"Remember," William said, voice low but steady. "We don't fight them in the open. Not today. We yell, we look braver than we feel, then we run on my mark. Straight back. No tripping over each other. If you fall, get up. If you can't get up, roll. If you freeze..."
He paused.
"If you freeze, think of who's in the cellars," he finished. "Move for them."
They nodded. Some swallowed. No one backed away.
They advanced to just beyond the ditch and stopped, forming a loose line.
The Germania cavalry eyed them from a distance.
William raised his sword.
"Shields up!" he called.
Twenty shields rose in ragged unison.
From the wall, a slow rumble started—hands pounding on wood, villagers beating doorframes, archers slapping bows. The noise rolled out, thin but defiant.
William took a breath so deep it hurt.
Then he started shouting.
He didn't have clever Germania insults. He had volume.
He raised his sword and pointed it at the black line.
"Is this it?!" he roared. "Three thousand men to take one little village?! Did you bring all your friends so you don't get lonely?!"
The villagers around him caught on fast, of course. Rage is a language everyone speaks.
"Come on, then!" the smith bellowed. "Come taste Janoah steel's poor cousin!"
"Your banners look like a chicken bled on them!" someone else yelled.
"Bet your mothers think you're cowards hiding back there!" Hara cupped her hands around her mouth. "We've seen bandits scarier than you lot! At least they didn't need a drum to find the front!"
The sound rolled across the field.
On the ridge, the Germania lines didn't move.
But the cavalry line rippled.
Felix Blackwell watched from horseback, expression unreadable.
Beside him, a young lieutenant shifted. "They're... taunting us," he said, sounding faintly offended.
"Yes," Felix said mildly.
"A rabble like that shouldn't—".
"They're not a rabble," Felix cut in. His pale eyes tracked the ditch, the line of villagers, the gate. "They dug that ditch overnight. They disguised the planks. They're making noise because they want us to move fast."
The lieutenant frowned. "So we... don't?"
"We test," Felix said. "Detach one troop. Lances. See how they react. If there's a trap, better it spring on a hundred than on the line."
The lieutenant brightened. "Allow me, commander."
Felix's mouth twitched. "By all means."
The younger officer slammed his helmet on, visor snapping shut. He turned in the saddle, shouted an order.
A squadron of cavalry peeled out—fifty riders, lances coming down.
William saw the angle and felt his heart slam harder.
"Here they come," Hobb muttered from the gate.
"Archers!" William shouted over his shoulder. "Nock— hold! You don't fire till they're in the ditch! I don't care if their breath smells like garlic from where you stand!"
He lowered his sword, planting his feet.
The cavalry started at a trot.
The ground shook.
"They'll break and run," someone whispered near William. "They'll see the horses and—"
"Eyes on me!" William barked. "You run when I say, not when your fear decides!"
The horses rolled into a canter, cloaks snapping. Lances leveled. The armored wave thundered toward them, growing larger, louder, more impossible with every stride.
William's brain screamed at him to run.
His boots stayed.
The distance collapsed.
"Steady!" he shouted. "Steady... steady..."
The lead horses were close enough now that he could see the whites of their eyes, the foam on their bits, the lines on the riders' faces. The world narrowed to the pounding of hooves, the glint of steel, the sucking sound of the muddy field.
Hobb's hands clenched on the ropes.
Felix Blackwell watched through half-lidded eyes.
"Now," he murmured under his breath. "Show me."
At the last possible heartbeat—so late Hara would later swear he'd lost his mind—William dragged a breath into his lungs and roared:
"BACK!"
He turned and ran.
The line broke with him—shields still up, feet pounding, breath ragged. Mud splashed. Someone slipped, someone else yanked them up, no time for anything but forward.
"Straight! Straight!" William yelled, voice hoarse. "Don't look back!"
The ditch rushed up.
He hit the planks dead center.
For a heartbeat, it felt like running on air.
The wood flexed under their combined weight, slick with mud, but held.
They pelted across, bursting through the gate gap.
"Now!" William screamed.
Hobb yanked.
The ropes snapped taut. The planks jerked sideways, clattering into the ditch with a splash just as the first cavalry horses thundered over the crest.
The lead rider had just enough time for his eyes to widen.
Then horse and man hit the softened earth where the planks had been.
The ground gave.
Horses screamed.
The front rank plunged into the ditch, hooves flailing, legs snapping as they hit the concealed spikes. Riders flew, slamming into each other, into mud, into iron points. Armor became anchors, dragging them down into the sucking muck.
The second rank tried to stop, but momentum and the press behind drove them forward. They crashed into the tangled bodies, piling one on top of another. A few horses managed desperate leaps, landing half-in, half-out, only to stumble and fall with bone-crunching finality.
The world became noise.
Screams—not angry, but raw. Horses high and panicked. Men in guttural Germania curses as they scrambled for purchase on treacherous mud slick with blood and water.
William skidded to a halt just inside the gate, spinning back, chest heaving.
He'd never seen a battlefield before.
Now he couldn't look away.
A rider's face turned up toward him, helm gone, eyes wild. He had a beard, a scar across his nose, teeth bared in something between fury and terror as he tried to haul himself up the ditch wall. His boot slipped. A stake punched through the gap in his greave. The scream clawed at William's ears.
His stomach lurched. Bile surged.
Hobb's hand slammed into his shoulder.
"Lockhart," he snapped. "Eyes up. You did this. Finish it."
William swallowed hard.
Then he dragged his gaze higher.
"Archers!" he shouted, voice cracking. "Loose!"
The first volley snapped out.
Arrows hissed down into the writhing mass. Some glanced off armor; others found gaps—necks, armpits, faces turned toward the walls. A horse reared and went over, forelegs flailing uselessly. A man reached for his comrade and took an arrow through the wrist instead.
"Again!" William yelled. "Pick targets that can still crawl! Don't waste shafts on the dead!"
A second volley. A third.
The initial panic in the ditch turned into a different sound—gurgling, choking, the wet thuds of bodies going limp. A few riders managed to stagger back, retreating toward their lines, leaving a trail of blood in the churned mud.
William's hands shook against the palisade.
I did this.
The thought came not with pride, but with a cold weight.
Hara stood beside him, knuckles white on her spear, watching the ditch she'd dug swallow the men riding toward her children.
"One for my boy," she whispered, voice low and trembling. "Two, three, four..."
On the ridge, the main legion line did not break.
It did not surge forward in rage.
It... adjusted.
Felix Blackwell had not moved during the whole charge.
Now, as the surviving riders limped back, he turned his horse slightly, taking in the carnage in the ditch with a cool, measured eye.
The lieutenant who'd led the troop staggered up the slope, one arm hanging, armor dented, face gray.
"Commander," he gasped. "They—the ground—"
"I saw," Felix said.
He didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to.
The staff officers nearby stood very still.
Felix's gaze tracked from the wrecked cavalry, to the muddy ditch, to the hastily built defenses on the wall, to the glimpse of Lockhart crest on the young man shouting orders.
"Lockhart," he murmured, almost to himself. "They sent a banner-boy to the Marches? Hm."
He looked at the lieutenant.
"You lost thirty men and forty horses to a village," Felix said. "Next time, don't charge blindly at peasants smirking."
The lieutenant flushed, shame cutting deeper than any arrow. "Yes, commander."
Felix's fingers tightened on his reins for just a heartbeat.
Then he smiled.
It wasn't kind.
"Good," he said. "Now we know they can think. Now we treat this as a skirmish worth having."
He raised his hand.
"Signal the first cohort," he said. "Shields up. Advance on both sides of that ditch. Skirmishers screen. We tighten our formation. We take their walls apart piece by piece. No more bravado."
The drummers shifted rhythm.
Deep. Relentless.
The main force began to move.
"Let's see," Felix murmured, eyes on the village. "How long your courage lasts when it isn't hiding behind a trick."
On the wall, the adrenaline began to fade.
Some villagers cheered, high and wild. Others stared, stunned, as if only now realizing what they'd done.
The air reeked of churned mud, blood, and horse sweat. The ditch had become a grave.
William leaned on the palisade, forcing his breathing to slow.
Below, one of the Germania riders still alive dragged himself free of the ditch. He crawled on hands and knees, leaving a trail of blood.
William's hand tightened on the palisade.
"Hold fire," he said suddenly.
The archers hesitated.
"Let him go," William said.
Hobb glanced at him. "They won't spare you if you fall in their ditch, you know."
"I know," William said. "But I'm not going to shoot someone crawling away already beaten unless we have to. We bleed them, we don't... revel."
He didn't know if that was principle or just his stomach begging for mercy.
Either way, the crawling man made it back over the rise and vanished.
Hobb shrugged. "Your call. Might be the one who tells his commander you're not stupid."
"I can live with that," William said.
He looked out at the legion, now regrouping.
"Did we buy anything?" he asked quietly. "Time? Fear?"
"We took their measure," Hobb said. "They know we're not easy prey. That alone slows smart men down. He'll probe now. Look for a soft spot. That buys Reeve minutes he wouldn't have had."
"Minutes," William repeated. The word felt thin.
He watched the Germania lines shift, split, flow around the ditch like water around a rock.
On the ridge, Felix's banner moved to the center.
He wasn't underestimating them anymore.
"Round one," Hobb said, nudging William's shoulder. "You won."
William stared at the bodies in the ditch.
"Feels less like winning," he said, voice low, "and more like not losing fast enough."
"Welcome to real war," Hobb replied. "Keep buying minutes. That's all we get."
The drums rolled.
The infantry advanced.
The first charge had bloodied them both—and impressed a Germania commander who now wanted to see just how far an Unlit heir and a handful of villagers could be pushed before they broke.