The sky above Castle Valerius was no longer blue. It was a bruised purple, choked by the thick, black smoke of pitch fires and the dust of pulverized granite. For three days, the Imperial trebuchets had sung their rhythmic, terrifying song: Crank. Release. Thud. Ragnar stood upon the shattered remains of the East Bastion. The wind whipped his dark hair, now matted with sweat and stone dust. Below him, the valley was a sea of crimson. General Kaelas had deployed the 7th and 9th Legions in a wide crescent, their shields interlocked in a testudo formation that looked like the scales of a great, iron serpent.
"They are moving," Hrolf growled, his voice vibrating in his barrel-like chest. The chieftain stood beside Ragnar, leaning on an axe the size of a man's torso. "The trebuchets have stopped. Kaelas thinks the breach is wide enough."
Ragnar looked at the gap in the wall. A thirty-foot section of the curtain wall had collapsed into a jagged ramp of rubble. To any Southern general, this was the "Golden Path"—the invitation to end the siege with a final, decisive surge.
"He is a student of the 'Architect of Ruin'," Ragnar whispered, his eyes narrowing as he spotted the glint of sunlight on Kaelas's golden eagle standard. "He thinks in lines and angles. He believes that because the stone has fallen, the spirit of the defenders has fallen with it. He is about to learn that stone was merely the shell. The meat is in the breach."
The False Retreat
"Signal the withdrawal," Ragnar commanded.
Hrolf let out a sharp, skeptical bark. "Withdraw? We've spent three days bleeding for these stones!"
"Do it, Hrolf," Ragnar snapped, his voice cutting through the air like a blade. "Move the men into the inner bailey. Leave the breach empty. Let them see the 'cowardly barbarians' fleeing from the might of the Empire. I want their blood up. I want them sprinting into that gap."
The order was given. The Northern warriors, though grumbling, vanished into the shadows of the inner keep. From the Imperial lines, the sight of the empty breach triggered a thunderous roar. A thousand trumpets sounded the charge. The "serpent" of shields broke apart as the legionnaires, sensing victory, surged forward in a chaotic, competitive rush to be the first to claim the "barbarian king's" head.
General Kaelas, watching from his command tent, smiled. "Predictable. They have the hearts of beasts; they cannot handle the pressure of a sustained siege. Send in the heavy infantry. End this before nightfall."
The Killing Zone
The Imperial infantry poured into the breach like water into a cracked jar. They scrambled over the rubble, their heavy boots slipping on the blood-slicked stones. As the first three hundred men cleared the debris and stepped into the outer courtyard, they stopped.
They expected to find a panicked, retreating rabble. Instead, they found a courtyard that had been transformed into a labyrinth of death.
Ragnar had spent the nights prior constructing "The Funnel"—a series of temporary wooden palisades reinforced with iron scraps, angled to force the mass of soldiers into a narrow, twenty-foot-wide corridor. At the end of this corridor stood nothing but a wall of heavy oak.
"Now!" Ragnar shouted from the gallery above.
From the hidden alcoves within the palisades, Northern hunters thrust long, hooked pikes through narrow slits. They didn't aim for the chest; they aimed for the ankles and the back of the knees. The front line of the Legion stumbled, tripped by invisible hands, and was immediately trampled by the weight of their own comrades pushing from behind.
"Archers!"
The battlements, which Kaelas thought were cleared, suddenly erupted with fire. Ragnar's men didn't use standard arrows. They used "Fire-Jacks"—bundles of reeds soaked in animal fat and sulfur. The arrows didn't need to pierce armor; they only needed to ignite.
The narrow corridor became a furnace. The legionnaires, packed so tightly they couldn't even raise their shields, were engulfed in flame. The screams were no longer the sounds of soldiers; they were the sounds of burning metal.
The Earth's Breath
"They are trying to retreat!" Hrolf yelled, watching the back of the legionnaire column attempt to push back through the breach.
"They can't," Ragnar said, his eyes fixed on the center of the courtyard. "The weight of the men behind them is too great. They are an engine that cannot stop."
This was the moment of Ragnar's masterstroke—the one he had learned from reading the Baron's secret architectural blueprints. Beneath the outer courtyard lay the "Cooling Vats," a series of deep, brick-lined cisterns used to store ice and water for the castle's kitchens. Ragnar had ordered them emptied and filled with every ounce of lamp oil, pitch, and dry hay in the province.
He had connected these vats to a series of iron pipes that led to the breach itself.
Ragnar picked up a heavy clay pot filled with burning embers. He looked down at the mass of Imperial soldiers below—thousands of men who followed a code he had spent weeks imitating.
"For the North," he whispered.
He dropped the pot.
It shattered against a pre-laid trail of black powder. A second later, a dull, subterranean THOOM shook the very foundations of the castle. A geyser of flame erupted from the ground beneath the breach, turning the rubble ramp into a volcano.
The fire didn't just burn; it pressurized. The liquid pitch, ignited and forced through the narrow pipes, sprayed across the Imperial vanguard like the breath of a dragon.
General Kaelas watched in horror as his elite 7th Legion was incinerated in a matter of seconds. The breach, their "Golden Path," was now a wall of white-hot fire that cut the army in two. Half were trapped inside the courtyard with Ragnar; the other half were stranded outside, watching their brothers burn.
The Wolf Unmasked
The fire cast long, dancing shadows across Ragnar's face as he drew his sword. It wasn't the light Southern blade anymore; he had found a heavy, two-handed claymore in the armory, forged of dark, folded steel.
"The fire will die down in ten minutes," Ragnar shouted to Hrolf and his men. "When it does, the ones inside will be broken, blinded, and leaderless. We do not take prisoners. We do not ask for surrender. We show them the 'grace' of the North."
The Northern warriors let out a roar that drowned out even the crackle of the flames.
Ragnar led the charge down the stairs. He didn't fight like a knight. He didn't parry with elegance or wait for an opening. He moved like a whirlwind of iron and hate. His blade sheared through the weakened brass of Imperial helmets and the leather of their gorgets.
He found a Centurion—a man in silver-trimmed plate—trying to rally a group of blinded soldiers. Ragnar didn't duel him. He stepped into the man's guard, grabbed the rim of his helmet, and slammed his forehead into the Centurion's face-mask. As the man staggered, Ragnar drove his blade through the gap in the armpit.
"You died for a map!" Ragnar roared over the din of battle. "I kill for the dirt!"
By the time the moon rose over the smoking ruins of Castle Valerius, the courtyard was a lake of blood and ash. Three thousand Imperial soldiers lay dead. The rest of the Legions had retreated to the treeline, their discipline shattered by the sight of the "impregnable" vanguard being consumed by the earth itself.
Ragnar stood in the center of the carnage, his chest heaving. His blackened armor was slick with blood, and his face was smeared with soot. He looked toward the Imperial camp. He knew Kaelas was still there. He knew the Empire would send more.
But tonight, the Wolf had fed.
He walked over to the discarded golden eagle standard of the 7th Legion. He picked it up, snapped the pole over his knee, and tossed the eagle into the dying embers of the pitch-fire.
"Tell the General," Ragnar said to a lone, wounded survivor he had spared. "Tell him the 'barbarian' on the throne has decided to expand his kingdom. And my next map... includes his capital."