Arthur had seen battlefields in daylight. Night made the same ground feel like a different world.
Chapter 12 – Spoiling Fire
By day, the Pelennor tried to pretend things were normal.
Carts still rolled in from the scattered farms, wheels rattling on stone as they climbed toward the city gates. Grain sacks were still unloaded in the lower markets, though their number had begun to thin. Prices climbed a little each week, soft grumbling rising with them. Blackened patches of earth showed where a barn or shed had burned and been hastily cleared away.
Arthur walked those streets between duties and saw the strain in small ways. A miller arguing with a clerk over short grain delivery. A woman pausing in her work at a stall to glance up when a horn sounded faintly from the Rammas, hand tightening around a bundle of herbs. Children playing at swords with sticks, their parents watching with faces that did not match the game.
He carried reports up to Torin, down to the Houses of Healing, back to the soldiers' barracks. Each passage through the city added details to a picture that was getting harder to ignore.
"They're hitting the grain stores closer to the river now," Lirael said one afternoon, leaning over a map in the same cramped room they always ended up using. Her finger traced a line from the eastern fields toward the north. "And barges are coming in with fewer sacks."
Torin grunted. "The captains of the Rammas say they can't be everywhere at once," he said. "They're right."
Arthur looked at the little marks of ink that meant farms, sheds, ditches. "How many of these places are empty now?" he asked.
"Too many," Lirael said. "Some folk moved inside the Rammas. Others went upriver. The ones who stayed are the ones who can't leave."
"They're about to find fewer places to run," Torin added. "Command wants to push back instead of waiting to be hit. We move tonight. Larger force. Not just answering horns."
That night, the call came earlier than usual.
Arthur was already half-armored in the barracks when the horn on the Rammas sounded in a pattern he didn't recognize—three long notes, a pause, then two short. Outside, other horns took up the answer.
In the yard, George stamped and tossed his head as Arthur approached, dark coat catching what little light the lamps gave. Arthur ran a hand down the gelding's neck, feeling the steady strength there, then checked the saddle and girth by touch.
"At least one of us knows how to rest when given the chance," he murmured, tightening a strap.
George snorted softly, as if in disagreement.
At the mustering ground, the air felt thick. More men than usual stood waiting in their places, horses shifting under them, lamps throwing light over a wide swath of stone. Torin moved between ranks, issuing orders. A senior officer from the Steward's household watched from a little distance, cloak lined with fur against the cold.
"Tonight we're not just chasing," Torin told the assembled captains. "Scouts say there's a cluster of camps east of the irrigation ditches. Enough fires to mean more than a raid. We hit them before they come to us."
Arthur's section fell in as part of the center. Eoric checked straps down the line, adjusting a crooked buckle, nodding to each man. When he reached George, he gave the horse a brief pat on the shoulder before looking up at Arthur.
"Everyone's outfitted," he said. "No loose gear, no dull edges. Spirits are… mixed."
"That's normal," Arthur said. "Anyone on the edge?"
Eoric hesitated. "Two of the newer men keep glancing at the gate more than ahead," he said. "I put them between steadier ones."
Arthur considered that. "Stay near them once we're out there," he said. "You see one start to drift, you pull him back into line. Don't wait for my say-so."
"Yes, ser," Eoric said.
They rode through the city and out the Rammas as a larger force than Arthur had seen at night in some time. Torches moved in lines along the road. Beyond the wall, the fields swallowed sound in a way that made the clink of mail and the low murmur of men seem too loud.
The night was moonless, clouds smearing what starlight there was. Torches on the Rammas gates glowed like watching eyes behind them.
Arthur felt George's stride lengthen slightly once they were on open ground, the gelding eager in the dark. Arthur kept the reins firm but not harsh, letting the horse's sure-footedness work over the uneven earth.
"Scouts say the camps are strung along the ditch line by the old orchard," Torin said as they drew up. "We advance in three columns. Arthur, you take the middle. When we see their fires, we put them out. Fast."
Arthur nodded. The old orchard had stopped bearing properly years ago but still marked a shallow rise. The ditches down there fed water to several important fields. Losing them would mean more than just mud.
They moved out at a steady pace, torches hooded, letting their eyes adjust. The land here was familiar to Arthur now: low, furrowed ridges, the dark slashes of waterways, occasional stone markers where paths crossed. George picked his way along the track with the ease of repetition, ears flicking toward every distant sound.
Arthur let his gaze sweep, then, briefly, allowed Spirit Vision to come into focus.
The world shifted.
The dark fields became a sea of faint, colorless shapes. Ahead, he could see the clustered auras of his own men and mounts—steady, bright where hearts beat hard but controlled. George's presence showed as a solid, calm glow beneath him. Further out, to the right, there were other shapes: smaller, anxious flickers where farmers huddled near a low wall. And somewhere ahead, beyond the next swell of ground, a denser knot of light—not bright, but concentrated, moving in uneven, restless patterns.
He blinked out of it before his head could start to ache. "They're ahead," he said quietly to Eoric. "Just past the next rise."
"How many?" Eoric asked.
"Enough," Arthur said. "We'll see soon."
They crested the rise and saw the fires.
At first they looked like a scattered line of coals, then as their eyes adjusted, shapes emerged around them—crude tents, rough palisades made of sharpened stakes and broken cart wood, hunched figures moving between. The camps sat close to the ditch line, the water a dark, twisting band behind them.
Torin's voice carried from the right. "On my signal," he called. "Archers first. Then we close."
Arrows hissed out of the dark a moment later, arcing toward the firelight. Orcs howled in surprise as shafts thunked into bodies and wood. Some dropped where they stood; others grabbed weapons and looked wildly into the blackness beyond their camps.
"Forward," Arthur said. "Stay together. Keep moving."
He swung down from George, handing the reins to one of the rear men. "Keep him back and ready," Arthur said. "If we have to pull out fast, I want him close, not wandering."
"Yes, ser," the man said, taking the leather and leading George a few paces off the track into deeper shadow.
Arthur's section advanced in a tight block, shields up, boots crunching on dry earth and loose stones. The ground rushed past in a dark blur until suddenly there were orcs in front of them, faces lit in jerky flashes by the campfires.
The first impact was chaos. An orc with a dented helm swung a cleaver at Arthur's shield; he took the blow on the wood, shoved back, and thrust under its guard. The man to Arthur's left took a spear on his shield rim and pushed it aside for a comrade to cut low.
Arthur dipped briefly into Spirit Vision again. The mass of auras ahead was a tangle of ugly, twisted flickers—less stable than human ones, almost oily. He saw where they bunched thicker, where more bodies pressed in, and steered his line slightly away from the worst knot, angling to slice through the looser edge.
"Shift right," he called. "Don't get bogged."
They moved, the section sliding like a single piece despite the melee. Eoric kept the rear tight, glancing back only long enough to make sure no one had dropped out of line.
The fighting went on longer than Arthur liked. The camps were more than just raiding dens; someone had tried to arrange them with a kind of crude order. More orcs spilled from between tents, some in mismatched bits of better armor, shields painted with rough symbols.
One of Arthur's men took a blow to the shoulder and staggered. Arthur saw the man's aura flare and dim, saw the second-line soldier behind him starting to panic at the sight. "Switch," he snapped, and the man behind stepped into the gap, shield raising almost on its own while the wounded man fell back.
"Eoric," Arthur called between blows. "Get him out, then back in line."
"Yes, ser!" Eoric shouted, moving quickly.
They cut their way through the first camp, stamping out a fire as they passed. Smoke and the smell of scorched cloth thickened the air. Torin's column slammed into another part of the line; from the left came the distant clash of the third.
An orc shoved a torch into the thatch of a nearby lean-to as it fled. Flames licked up greedily.
"Leave it," someone said, breathless. "Let it burn."
Arthur glanced once, saw in Spirit Vision the faint cluster of small, trembling auras huddled behind a low fence—a family who hadn't made it to the Rammas in time. Their bodies were hidden by stacked crates, but their fear was not.
"We can't," he said. "Two men, with me. The rest hold."
They cut a path to the burning lean-to, shields raised to protect against wild, last swings. One of the men doused the fire with water from a barrel tipped by brute force, while Arthur hauled open the gate and shouted to the family inside.
"Out," he said. "Follow the ditch north until you see the wall. Don't stop for anything that doesn't speak clear words."
They ran past him, clutching each other, faces streaked with dirt. He saw their auras thin but intact, and let them go.
By the time the last of the campfires were stamped out and the remaining orcs broke away into the dark, a grey hint of morning was just starting to touch the far edge of the sky. The ditch water ran quietly, reflecting the dim light.
Men moved among the fallen, checking who could be saved. Arthur's Spirit Vision picked out the dimming auras of those beyond help, the flickering ones that could still be dragged back, and the steady ones that just needed bandages and time.
He knelt by one soldier whose chest armor had been smashed inward by a heavy blow. The man gasped like a fish, blood bubbling at his lips.
Even without Spirit Vision, Arthur knew this one. He had seen it on his old table often enough: ribs driven into organs, lungs filling where air should be. Back then, with tools, light, and an open chest, he might have had a chance. Here, in the mud, with minutes of darkness left, there was none.
He checked anyway. The aura was already dimming, edges fraying like smoke.
The soldier's eyes found him. "Bad?" he managed.
"Yes," Arthur said. There was no kindness in lying here. "I'll stay until you're gone."
The man's hand tightened briefly on Arthur's forearm, then loosened as the light that only Arthur could see slipped away.
When he rose, Eoric was waiting a few paces off, face set. "How is it?" he asked.
"We lost more than last time," Arthur said. "We killed more, too. The sums don't feel right."
Eoric's jaw worked. "We stopped them burning more fields," he said. "If they'd hit at dawn instead of now, it would be worse."
"I know," Arthur said.
They returned to where the horses waited. George snorted when Arthur reached him, as if impatient with the delay. Arthur rested his forehead briefly against the gelding's, hand on the warm neck.
"Still in one piece," he said. "Both of us."
George flicked an ear and nudged his shoulder with a soft thump that nearly pushed him off balance.
On the ride back, the men were quieter than usual. Some stared straight ahead; others looked back once or twice at the thin smoke rising where the camps had been. The family Arthur had sent toward the Rammas was nowhere to be seen. He allowed himself to assume they had made it.
In the city, the news spread along familiar paths. Farmers heard first, then the market stalls, then the taverns where river men and craftsmen traded coins and rumors. That night, Arthur passed a small group talking outside a bakery.
"…said they hit them before they could march," one man was saying. "That's why we're not running today."
"Someone said the black-armored captain was there again," another replied. "Him and Torin both."
Arthur kept walking. There was nothing to add to that. George's hooves rang softly on the paving behind him as a stablehand led the gelding back toward the lower stables.
Later, in the map room, Torin and Lirael stood over new marks.
"We hit three of their camps," Torin said. "Scouts say a few smaller bands slipped away in the dark, but the main cluster is gone."
"Until they gather again," Lirael said. "Further out, maybe. Closer to where we can't see the fires from the wall."
She glanced at Arthur. "You looked at them?" she asked. "The ones who fell. Not just with your eyes."
"Yes," Arthur said.
"How many could we never have saved?" she asked.
He thought of the man in the mud, of shattered ribs and an aura thinning like breath on glass. "Enough," he said.
Torin frowned at the map. "Command thinks these are feelers," he said. "They're waiting for a night when they can throw more than this. Troll tracks reported upriver. Scouts saw something big moving with them."
Arthur rested his palms lightly on the edge of the table. The ink marks blurred for a moment, then sharpened again.
"If they come in force," he said, "standing here and then counting bodies after won't be enough."
"What do you suggest?" Torin asked.
Arthur considered, then shook his head. "I don't have an answer yet," he said. "Just… the sense that we're treating fevers and ignoring the infection."
Lirael watched him for a long moment. "When you have an answer," she said, "make sure you're still alive to use it."
He didn't reply. There was nothing to say that wouldn't sound like a promise he couldn't keep.
That night, sleep came slowly. When he did rest, it was shallow. In his mind's eye he saw a dozen different fights—the ditch, the sheds, Osgiliath's stones—overlaid with the soft glow of Spirit Vision. Each time, there were a few auras fading just beyond the reach of his hands.
The next day, word came down from higher up: patrol schedules changed, reserves shifted, more men and mounts assigned to night duty along certain stretches of the Rammas. Arthur saw his own name and George's mark beside units slated for the eastern sector more often now.
He went up to the wall again after sundown. The fields outside were a dark, waiting expanse. From here, the burned patches and cleared camps were invisible, swallowed by distance. Only the faint memory in his own bones and the echo of horns told him they were there at all.
He let Spirit Vision flicker on for a moment. The city behind him was a hive of light—small, steady auras clustered in homes and taverns, stronger ones patrolling the roads and gates. Out beyond the Rammas, the darkness felt thicker. Here and there, very far off, something moved. Not a clear shape, not yet. Just a sense of mass gathering beyond the reach of the torches.
He blinked it away before his head began to throb.
If they were going to stop what was coming, he thought, it would not be enough to just hold lines and patch holes. At some point, he would have to put his sword not where the wounds appeared, but where they began.
The thought didn't settle comfortably. But it did not leave.