He lifted an arm and pointed back toward the jagged line of the Razorbacks, their teeth cutting into the star-sprinkled sky.

  “Gorm knows,” Zarn said.

  The name dropped like a stone into a well. Even some of the shepherds flinched.

  “The High Chieftain,” Hareth muttered. “The Stone Eater king.”

  “He knows the Vanguard failed,” Zarn went on, voice gaining a wild edge. “He knows Gorak did not return with your head. He knows the tribes broke and ran instead of dying under his brother’s shadow.”

  Zarn took a breath that sounded like it hurt.

  “He has named us traitors,” he said. “The Ash Wolves. The Red Hands. The Broken Claws. The Black Fangs. We are no longer sons of the mountain. We are rot to be cut away.”

  “He’s punishing you,” Kaelen said. “You expected this.”

  “We expected blood price,” Zarn snapped. “Hostages. Oaths. Maybe a few heads on spikes to cool his rage.”

  His voice dropped.

  “We did not expect the Stone Walkers.”

  “Stone Walkers,” Hareth repeated, jaw tightening. “Who are they."

  "Stone Walkers are the elite warrior of the Stone Eater Tribe. And all the Stone Walkers are Steel rank battleforce warrior." Zarn said

  Kaelen flinched for a moment.

  “He sent Krag,” he said. “Krag, son of Gorm. With One hundred Stone Walkers. And more behind them. They do not come to conquer. They do not demand tribute. They march into valleys and burn them black.”

  He swallowed. In the moonlight, Kaelen saw the way his throat worked, as if forcing the words out through bile.

  “They hit the Black Fang lower camp three nights ago. We saw the smoke from the high ridges. When our scouts crept close, there was nothing left. No warriors. No mothers. No children. No horses. Only iron boots in the snow and ash on the wind.”

  Mara’s grip tightened on her staff. Even the sled oxen seemed to shift uneasily.

  “Now they turn their eyes to the Red Hand valley,” Zarn said. “After that, ours. The Ash Wolves. My father’s tents are packed. Our herds scattered. We run, but there is nowhere to run to.”

  He took a step forward, then stopped as Elias’s arrow tracked his sternum.

  “Our arrows cannot break on their armor,” Zarn said, the words coming faster now, tumbling. “Our best axemen cannot bite through their plates. We are hunters trying to bring down a mountain. We cannot win, Lord of the Valley. Not alone.”

  “And you think I can,” Kaelen said softly.

  “I know you killed Gorak,” Zarn said. “The tales move faster than ravens. A Lowland Baron who stands on his walls and fells a Bronze giant with iron discipline and tricks no mountain has seen. A lord who thinks like a war-chief, not a fat reeve.”

  He gestured to the sledges, to the sheared sheep huddled under tarps, to the organized escort.

  “You move wool at night with archers and slingers. You change how you plant the earth. You make stone cough less. You are not like the others.”

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  The last words drip-fed directly into Kaelen’s pride.

  Zarn drew himself up, as far as a man could while still being watched down an arrow.

  “The four chieftains have gathered,” he said. “My father Zark of the Ash Wolves. Rogh of the Broken Claws. Vron of the Red Hands. And Karsen of the Black Fangs.”

  “They meet tonight,” Zarn continued. “In the Hollow of Skulls. A place the Stone Eaters do not know, where their iron boots cannot easily tread.”

  He took another breath, as if stepping off a cliff.

  “They sent me to find you,” he said. “To bring you there. They want to speak with you, Lord. They want to offer you something the mountain has never offered the valley.”

  Mara snarled. “Raiders offering oaths? You’ll excuse me if I don’t piss myself with gratitude.”

  Zarn faced Kaelen squarely.

  “They will offer horses,” he said, jerking his head toward the destrier behind him. “A hundred for every season you stand with us. Two hundred if you help break Krag. We have thousands in the high meadows. Strong, wild-blooded mounts. They will carry your knights through snow and rock.”

  He swallowed.

  “They will offer the paths. Secret trails. Hidden passes. Ways through the mountain that only we know.”

  He hesitated, then added, throat tight, “They will swear, before stone and spirit, to leave your valley unraided if we live through this. To be your shield against Gorm’s next rage.”

  Kaelen listened without changing expression, though inside, possibilities were spinning like a thrown coin.

  Horses. Passes. Four tribes turned from raiders into a buffer state.

  Or four knives at his throat the moment he turned his back.

  “You could just be trying to trade my head to Gorm,” Kaelen said. “A pretty trophy to buy back your honor.”

  “If we wanted your head,” Zarn said steadily, “we would have put arrows in your back when you left your walls to play with sheep.”

  Hareth grunted. He didn’t like it, but he couldn’t deny it.

  Elias’s bow remained drawn. “My Lord,” he said quietly, eyes never leaving Zarn, “this smells like bait on a hook.”

  “Maybe it is,” Kaelen answered. “Maybe it’s a drowning man grabbing at the only rock in reach.”

  He looked at the wild horse again, imagining a whole line of knights astride such beasts, armored in mountain steel, charging down on enemies.

  He looked at the mountains, knowing there was high-grade iron hidden in those ridges, guarded by the very tribes whose heir now stood before him in the road, asking for help.

  “If Gorm wipes them out,” Kaelen thought, “he inherits their lands, their paths, their horses. He becomes the only lord of the heights. Then he walks down into my valley in spring with an army I can’t match.”

  The System’s silent logic hummed along the same lines in his head even without its blue windows.

  Four tribes afraid of their king. Four blades pointed upward, not outward.

  A chance to fracture the mountains before they unified.

  Kaelen made his decision.

  “Uncle Hareth,” he said. “You take the convoy the rest of the way. Get the wool to The Crossing, hand it to Victor’s men, then back to the keep.”

  “I won’t let you go up there alone,” Hareth growled.

  “You’re not,” Kaelen said. He jerked his chin at the archer beside him. “Elias is coming with me.”

  Elias didn’t lower his bow, but his jaw clenched. “Then I’ll make sure the first man to try anything dies with an arrow through his throat.”

  Kaelen looked down at Zarn.

  “You will ride in front,” he said. “If this meeting is a trap, you die first. Understand?”

  Zarn bowed his head once. “I understand, Lord.”

  He stepped back, swung into the saddle of his massive horse with the easy grace of a born rider, and turned the destrier uphill, toward a narrower, steeper trail that cut away from the main road like a crack in the mountain’s hide.

  “The Goat Path,” Hareth muttered. “Only idiots and smugglers take that way.”

  “Apparently, Barons too,” Kaelen said dryly.

  He leaned down in his saddle toward Hareth.

  “Get the wool through. We need this trade to work, or everything else we’re doing is just shuffling stones on a grave.”

  Hareth’s jaw worked. “You come back, lad,” he said, voice low and rough. “Or I’ll ride up there myself and drag your stubborn corpse home just so I can kick it.”

  Kaelen managed a faint smile. “If I come back, it will be with more than my own skin.”

  He straightened and nodded to Elias.

  “Stay close,” he said. “If my horse stumbles, pretend I meant to dismount.”

  “Yes, my Lord.”

  Together, Kaelen and Elias turned their horses toward the Goat Path, falling in behind the Ash Wolf heir and his wild mountain warhorse.

  Behind them, the sledges creaked forward once more toward the valley.

  Ahead of them, the narrow trail vanished into black rock and drifting snow.

  As they left the relative safety of the main road, the wind shifted, carrying the faint smell of smoke from somewhere high and far.

  Kaelen did not need a notification to know what it meant.

  Villages were burning in the mountains.

  The four chieftains waited in a place called the Hollow of Skulls.