Chapter 38 — The Empty Road to Storm's End

Three days after Elton's grain wagons withdrew, a courier from Storm's End reached FireStorm. Morton read Renly's summons twice before setting it on the table. "You have to go," he said. "And Elton knows it."

Wayne stood over the border map with one hand on his sword belt. "The road to Storm's End takes us close to the mountains for days. If we take enough men to protect you, FireStorm looks weak. If we leave the guard here, the road looks weak."

Arlan tapped the mark for Black Pine Valley; the passage lay north of FireStorm where steep walls narrowed the easiest route south from the Red Mountains. Bloodhand raiders had used the same approach before, and a large band trying to reach FireStorm quickly would almost certainly use it again. "We go to Storm's End," Arlan said. Morton frowned.

"Publicly. With forty guards. Enough noise that every Caron patrol and mountain contact hears that FireStorm is nearly empty."

Wayne understood first. "Then we turn back."

"Before the road opens east." Arlan's finger remained on Black Pine Valley.

"Elton has been waiting for the summons to pull me away. Give him the departure he expects. If he has promised Bloodhand another chance, he will tell them the holding is exposed."

Morton looked from the map to Arlan. "And if they don't come?"

"Then we lose several days preparing ground and continue to Storm's End afterward. Better that than discovering the plan while FireStorm burns." For three days the holding prepared two journeys.

Arlan kept the circle of people who understood the deception small; most villagers genuinely believed he would ride east after the public departure, because a secret shared with two hundred frightened people was no secret at all. Morton knew, and Wayne knew. The guards selected for the ambush learned only what they needed as the work progressed.

Messages about the departure were allowed to travel through ordinary channels instead of being planted through an obvious spy, and a trader heard it at the gate. A carter heard Morton complain about provisions; a patrol on the distant road saw horses being prepared. If Elton had watchers, they would collect the same story from several independent mouths.

The deception still had limits. A watcher close enough to count the guards returning through the woods could ruin it, while a small scouting party might enter Black Pine without committing the larger force. Wayne therefore sent observers beyond both mouths of the valley and gave them separate signals for scouts, a partial war band, or the full column. No rockfall would be released merely because the first men appeared where Arlan hoped to see them.

The public preparations involved food sacks, horse tack, spare cloaks, and Morton complaining loudly about how many guards a lord needed on a dangerous road; men carried supplies through the yard in plain view. Patrols near the gate were deliberately less secretive than usual, giving anyone watching from outside plenty to report.

The real preparation happened after dark.

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Wayne led trusted guards into Black Pine Valley with picks, shovels, rope, and axes; at the entrance they dug pits deep enough to take a running man, drove sharpened hardwood stakes into the bottoms, and covered them with branches and loose soil. The traps were placed where a crowded column would have little room to avoid the first men falling.

The middle of the valley was narrower still, and boulders rested above the road on both sides. Men levered additional stones into place and secured them with wooden wedges and ropes that could be cut from concealed positions.

If released at the correct moment, the rockfall would divide an enemy column and close routes between its sections.

The guards practiced cutting each rope in darkness and then moving away from the fall line, and Arlan made them reset one section after a badly placed wedge sent a test stone into the wrong part of the road. A trap that worked only in daylight under calm supervision was not ready.

At the valley entrance, thin trip lines connected to warning markers rather than directly releasing every rock; Arlan wanted human judgment at the decisive moment. Twenty scouts entering a valley should not trigger the same response intended for three hundred attackers.

At the deepest section, clay pots of Red Sun Flame were buried or hidden along the ground where thrown containers could spread the spirit over a compressed mass of attackers, and oil-wrapped arrows were prepared separately.

The spirit was not treated as sorcery; men placed the pots where broken clay would spread liquid across packed earth and dry brush, then cleared safe strips around their own descent routes. Buckets of dirt waited beside the concealed positions in case a premature spark ran uphill, and Red Sun Flame burned fiercely, which made careless handling as dangerous to FireStorm as to anyone below.

Arlan walked every section himself, and he checked sight lines from the cliffs, the distance between the pits and rockfall, and the routes FireStorm's men would use to descend after the trap closed. An ambush that trapped allies with enemies was merely bad carpentry performed on a larger scale.

The Forging Group supplied part of what the holding could not make quickly.

Arlan paid for fifty hardened steel crossbow bolts, twenty fine steel spearheads, and ten heavy hardwood crossbows, and he inspected the latches and strings before moving them from the locked room. The system could deliver finished goods; it could not make an untrained man accurate, so Wayne assigned the heavy crossbows to guards already comfortable with bows and winches.

No one was invited to inspect the explanation closely, and on the third morning, Arlan rode out with forty guards in full view of FireStorm.

Morton stood at the gate with half the village watching; supply bundles were tied to pack animals. Men on the wall waved, and a Caron patrol far enough away to believe itself unnoticed could see the entire procession moving toward the Storm's End road.

Less than ten miles from FireStorm, the column entered thick forest, and they did not emerge on the eastern road.

The men who rode past the distant Caron watch point continued just long enough to sell the story; only after the patrol could no longer see them did the column break formation and use the wooded track back north. Hoofprints on the main road would show a departing party for miles before weather blurred them, and the deception relied on ordinary observation, not on a messenger obligingly carrying a false report straight to Nightsong on command.

Under cover of trees, Wayne split the men and turned them north by smaller tracks. Before dark they were back inside Black Pine Valley, hidden in dug positions along the cliffs with the traps beneath them. Night closed over the pines.

Hours passed, then hooves and voices came from the north. Wayne crawled beside Arlan's position. "Scouts count more than three hundred. Bloodhand remnants and at least two smaller groups, and a new chief in front. Steel sword." The first figures appeared below.

They moved without caution because someone had told them FireStorm's main force was three days away, and more than three hundred raiders entered the valley. Twenty of the leading men reached the disguised ground at the entrance; the earth gave way beneath them.

Screams rose from the pits; Arlan lifted one hand. "Do it."