Chapter 40 — The Supply Trail

The battle in Black Pine Valley ended within the hour, though the counting took longer. More than three hundred and twenty raiders had entered the pass. Wayne found over two hundred and seventy dead among the pits, rockfalls, burned ground, and brief fighting below the cliffs; more than forty had surrendered, and no one escaped while the approaches remained sealed.

FireStorm's losses were lighter than the field deserved. Two guards carried arrow grazes, several had cuts from the descent or bruises from controlling prisoners, and none had died. Wayne read the roll twice before handing it to Arlan. "A singer will add a dragon before the second cup."

"Then keep the written count where singers cannot improve it."

The clean numbers did not shorten the work. Men marked the pits so their own boots did not find them, beat fire away from the pines, and moved wounded prisoners upwind. Weapons, food, animals, and personal purses were separated before looting could turn every useful object into somebody's private recollection.

Arlan divided the captives by clan and placed three guards over each group. Men questioned beside friends would learn one story quickly; men kept apart might still lie, but at least their lies could be compared.

Wayne found the first useful object beneath the dead Bloodhand chief's belt: a worked bronze token carrying House Caron's nightingales. It proved that someone expected the bearer to recognize Caron authority. It did not prove who had handed it over or what had been promised.

The rest of the trail lay across the valley. Three grain sacks bore the same tally cut used by a warehouse that supplied Nightsong patrols. Forty-seven steel swords carried one maker's mark and a small inspection notch near the guard, while a captured mule showed an old nightingale brand beneath dye worked into its hair.

Wayne called three guards separately to inspect the swords. Each recognized the notch from Caron patrol stores, though one warned that the Rainwood smith sold to other houses as well. The mark narrowed the source without making every blade a confession. The mule's brand had been burned years earlier and could have changed owners more than once; its fresh dye showed only that somebody preferred the mark hidden during this march.

A narrow strip of rawhide had been tied inside the chief's coat. Four groups of notches divided the bargain into stages. The first section had been cut away; the others matched the quantities the prisoners named most often: grain, swords, and land after FireStorm fell.

"Marks are not names," Wayne said.

"No. Record where each was found before we decide what any of them means."

The prisoners supplied the next pieces. One described a lowland quartermaster missing the smallest finger of his left hand. Another remembered the man rejecting two swords because their edges failed inspection. A third said the nightingale token had been shown when the clans demanded proof that the southern road would remain open after the attack.

Their descriptions did not agree in every detail. The coat was black to one man and dark brown to another; one placed the meeting at Dry Well Valley, while another remembered a camp farther west. They agreed that lowlanders delivered grain and steel, promised the use of FireStorm's land, and spread word that Arlan would be three days away.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

A fourth captive had carried messages between clans. He could not read them, but he remembered the seal on the outer packet had been plain brown wax, not a nightingale. The man who collected it spoke the Common Tongue like somebody raised in the lowlands and knew the exact morning Arlan's party was expected to leave the eastern road. That knowledge connected the attack to FireStorm's false departure without identifying which watcher had passed it onward.

Arlan had only enough men questioned to establish the shared account. The rest would speak before Storm's End without first hearing every answer FireStorm wanted from them. He ordered the rawhide, token, warehouse marks, sword samples, and branded mule entered under separate witnesses.

"Keep the captives alive," he told Wayne. "No revenge, and no questions asked with a fist. A man who reaches Storm's End breathing can contradict us."

Wayne nodded toward the piles. "We can carry this to Renly now."

"After the valley is secure."

Before anyone moved, Morton’s clerk made two lists: one for the dead and captured by visible clan marks, another for the objects recovered from each part of the valley. The figures would remain imperfect until stone was lifted from the worst of the rockfall, but an uncertain count written now was better than a perfect number invented later.

A rider appeared at the northern entrance before the last fire had been smothered. His horse stumbled on the broken road, and the man nearly fell while dismounting. "My lord. Elton sent accusations to Storm's End before us."

Wayne's hand closed around the hilt at his side. "What accusations?"

"That FireStorm allied with the mountain clans, killed men after surrender, attacked lawful merchants, and prepared rebellion. Lord Renly sent Ser Alistair Florent with twenty knights and three hundred infantry. They are already near FireStorm."

The men around them had faced three hundred raiders from prepared cliffs without breaking. The word treason quieted them more completely than the battle had. Spears could be met with shields; lawful authority could make resistance itself part of the charge.

Arlan looked once more at the evidence laid across separate cloaks. None of it carried Elton's handwriting. That made the case slower to explain and harder to destroy by calling one parchment false.

"Ten men escort the prisoners," he said. "Wayne, take the token, one marked sack, five swords, and the rawhide tally. Another rider carries the witness list and descriptions. The mule travels with the main column. Morton keeps copies of everything already sent from FireStorm."

"And the dead?"

"Mark the site and leave a guard detail. We do not keep a living army outside our gate while we bury men here."

The prisoners received water before the march. Captured weapons traveled without handles or ammunition close enough for bound men to reach them, and the evidence was divided among several riders so one ambush could damage the case without erasing it. Two guards carried only names and recovery places, useful even if every marked object vanished.

Arlan rode at the front with no confession from the dead Bloodhand chief against his chest, only the knowledge that Elton's accusation had started first. If he surrendered without showing what FireStorm had found, Nightsong gained time and an undefended holding. If he drew steel against Renly's men, Elton gained the rebellion he had described.

The final rise revealed three hundred Storm's End infantry before FireStorm's closed gate. Twenty mounted knights waited ahead of them beneath Florent colors, while Morton and the remaining guards watched from the wall without aiming bows.

Arlan slowed the returning column until prisoners, animals, and evidence entered the road together. FireStorm swords stayed sheathed. He dismounted beyond spear reach and bowed to the knight at the center.

"Ser Alistair," he called. "Before you decide whether I arrive at Storm's End as a vassal or a prisoner, you should examine what crossed my boundary last night."