Alone in his tent, Solomon tapped his fingers on the desk.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Bronn's recruitment changed little strategically. One sword, however sharp, couldn't break a siege of thousands. And Bronn was right about the castle—it was a death trap.
Solomon understood Lord Lover's anger. It was easy to demand loyalty when you weren't the one starving behind stone walls.
But Solomon couldn't lift the siege directly. That wasn't a gamble; it was suicide.
He needed a plan that would make the besiegers bleed without him ever touching their main force. He needed chaos.
A faint smile touched his lips.
By now, the clans must have found the "traces."
Solomon knew the nature of the Mountain Clans perfectly: simple, direct, and vengeful. They were wolves. If you hurt a wolf, the pack comes hunting.
And that was exactly what he wanted.
Outside Deepden Castle. The Clan Camp.
Timett son of Timett rubbed his temples.
The stone walls of the Lowlanders were a nightmare. The clans had ferocity, but they lacked engineering. They had no siege towers, no battering rams. Just crude ladders that were too short and ropes that snapped under weight.
Every assault ended in a rain of arrows and rocks.
Suddenly, a piercing wail shattered the night.
It wasn't a battle cry. It was a scream of pure, unadulterated grief.
Timett leaped to his feet.
More screams followed. They erupted from every corner of the camp—Burned Men, Stone Crows, Moon Brothers.
Timett grabbed his looted sword and rushed out.
He ran toward the source of the first scream and froze.
The Chieftain of the Howlers—a man in his prime just yesterday—was kneeling in the dirt. He looked as if he had aged twenty years in an hour. His hair seemed whiter, his back bent.
In his arms, he cradled something charred and black. It was barely recognizable as a human body.
The Chieftain's eyes were bloodshot, his voice a rasping tear in his throat.
"My son! My boy!" he howled.
Timett realized then that the rumors were true.
The raiding parties hadn't just disappeared. They had been hunted. And the bodies... or what was left of them... had been found.
The Lowlanders hadn't just killed them. They had erased them.
"Kill them!" the Howler Chief roared, looking up at Timett with madness in his eyes. "Kill the Lowlanders! Avenge our warriors!"
"They are butchering us like pigs!" the Chief of the Milk Snakes screamed, drawing his knife. "I will chop them into meat!"
The camp exploded.
"Revenge!"
"Hunt them down!"
"Blood for blood!"
The anger spread like wildfire. Hundreds of eyes turned red with bloodlust. They didn't care about the castle anymore. They wanted the heads of the ghosts in the woods.
Timett's heart sank.
He was angry too. But he saw the bigger picture.
If they abandoned the siege now, everything they had bled for—the castle, the food, the winter shelter—would be lost.
"Stand down!" Timett bellowed, his voice booming over the chaos.
"The walls! The walls are the prize!"
He pointed at the dark silhouette of Deepden Castle.
"Have you forgotten how many have died for this? If we split up now, we lose everything!"
"Stay! We take the castle first!"
But reason had no place here tonight.
The Howler Chief stood up, trembling with rage.
"Timett son of Timett!"
"You sit in your tent while our sons are butchered?!"
"That was my boy!"
"I don't care about the castle! I want revenge!"
"I will kill every Lowlander I find! Man, woman, child!"
The Chiefs of the Milk Snakes and the Mist Sons stepped forward, spitting on the ground near Timett's boots.
"You are not our king, Timett!"
"We go where the blood calls us!"
Timett watched them go.
He watched the Howlers, the Milk Snakes, the Mist Sons—over three hundred warriors—grab their weapons and storm out of the camp.
They didn't know where the enemy was. They didn't care. They ran into the darkness, howling for blood.
The Stone Crows and Black Ears sent parties after them, caught up in the frenzy.
The siege lines thinned. The pressure on the castle dropped instantly.
A Burned Man warrior walked up to Timett, his face dark.
"What do we do, Red Hand? Our people are angry too. They want to hunt."
Timett looked at the diminishing backs of the other tribes, then turned his single eye toward the castle walls.
"We will have our revenge," Timett growled.
"But first... we take this stone box. And we kill everyone inside."
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