The rain returned by nightfall.A cold, steady drizzle that turned the trampled earth outside Thornholt's walls into sucking black mud. It muted sounds and blurred the torchlights in the enemy's camp below.
From atop the western parapet, Garran watched the crimson banners of Harrowmont's men ripple in the wind. Even from this distance, he could make out the scurrying silhouettes — moving carts, loading fire barrels, the telltale hum of men preparing to storm a battered hold at dawn.
They wouldn't get the chance.
The plan wasn't born from desperation.It was simple reality.
Harrowmont's army, for all its numbers, was overextended. Siege warfare wasn't a thing of decisive moments — it was a grinding, miserable game of weeks and attrition. The enemy had neither the proper supply lines nor siege engines to break Thornholt by storm, and every day spent here tightened the noose on their own logistics.
Three hundred men eat a half-ton of grain a week. Horses drink four barrels of water a day.
And men sickened in the cold and mud.
The bulk of Harrowmont's men were mercenaries — their loyalty a matter of coin, comfort, and belief in eventual victory. A sharp enough defeat, at the right moment, and that belief would shatter.
That was what Garran meant to deliver.
Twenty-one men gathered at the stables.
Not picked for loyalty alone — but for stamina, quiet feet, and cold hearts. Mera stood among them, arm still bound tight, eyes sharp. Jorik grunted approval as he tightened the straps of his boiled leather.
"Light gear," Garran said. "Knives, short blades, bows. No armor. No one's to draw unless there's no other choice."
He laid a rough charcoal map across a saddle.
"We slip out here," he pointed, "along the deer path behind the east ridge. Cuts through the pines. Brings us to the enemy's rear camp. Their grain wagons, the horse lines, and Harrowmont's personal tent."
He looked them over.
"We hit hard. Fast. Kill officers, torch supplies, loose the horses. No hero's charge. If it goes to ground, pull back to the tree line. No one gets left behind without cause."
The men nodded — tight faces, none eager, but understanding.This wasn't the stuff of ballads.
They left under clouded moonlight.
The earth sucked at their boots. The world shrank to the hiss of wet grass and the scent of old pine. Garran moved at the fore, blade bare but low.
The trail was an old one, barely wide enough for a pack mule, but it was there — cutting between the hills. A relic of older times when Thornholt was still a border outpost guarding trade routes long since abandoned by kings.
The enemy had left it unwatched.
A mistake born of arrogance.
Harrowmont's rear camp was a sprawling, half-organized affair.Tents of varying quality. Picket lines. Carts half-mired in mud. The unmistakable stench of damp canvas, sweat, horse piss, and fatigue.
And at its heart, four larger tents — the officers' quarters and supply depot.
Garran crouched by a fallen log, the others gathering around him. The sounds of snoring, clinking dice, and soft muttered arguments drifted from the camp. The guards weren't slack — but they were mercenaries, far from their lord's eye. Tired. Complacent.
"Split into three groups," Garran murmured."Mera — east tents. Jorik — the horses. I'll take the grain stores and command tent. Wait for the horn. No fire until then."
Twenty-one men fanned into the darkness.
The killing was quick.Not clean. Not glorious.
A knife across a throat. A silent arrow through a sleeping man's neck. Garran moved through the tent lines like a shadow. A young squire barely old enough to shave reached for a sword — Garran's dagger pinned his hand to the ground, and the boy's final gurgle was lost in the night.
He found the quartermaster's ledger beside a pile of firewood.
Three days of grain left. No reserve. No promised reinforcements.
He burned it.
Jorik's men loosed the horses, slapping the beasts to scatter through the camp, breaking picket lines and crashing through tents. Confusion followed like a spark to dry leaves.
The first shouts rang out.
A horn blast split the night.Mera's signal.
Garran lit the fire barrels.Tents caught like kindling.Carts ablaze.
The camp dissolved into panic — mercenaries scrambling for weapons, their chainshirts half-fastened, their eyes wild with smoke and stampeding horses.
The Black Harp struck swift and hard, but only where the odds favored them. No stand-up fight. No hero's last stand. They cut officers first — men with gold chains and polished helms.
And then they vanished.
Back into the trees, under the cover of smoke and screaming.
By dawn, Harrowmont's army was a ruin.
A third of his men dead or missing. Grain burned. Horses scattered. Two of his chief captains slain. The field reeked of smoke and piss.
Morale, already brittle, snapped.
Mercenary companies began to pull out by midday — leaving behind unpaid claims, wounded comrades, and the scattered dead.
No one marches on half rations into an unwinnable siege.
Thornholt still stood.
And word would spread — of a captain who'd bloodied a lord's host, of a holdfast where no one bent the knee.
And every landless knight, desperate retainer, and hungry sellblade in Eldralore would hear it.
Opportunity.