The column, having to re-wheel and refill the wagons, stopped on the far side of the ford for a hot meal. And, Ethan couldn’t lie to himself, to give the wounded as much rest as he could manage.

  Still, it wasn’t more than an hour later that they were pushing onward again. Snaking along the river valley and fighting its current inhabitants with nearly every step.

  But with only a few more hours in the day, they soon were forced to stop. Leaving enough time to dig in properly and at last give the wounded, and a partially refreshed Blake, some time.

  A full night of it, and with guards on Blake to make certain.

  And they, knowing how often their and their brothers in arms lives would depend on the Magister were politely insistent in a way that bordered on insubordinate at times.

  Ethan carefully didn’t notice.

  But the next morning found green light glowing through the camp, if only for the very worst of the wounded. And then it was onward and upward.

  Now where did that phrase come from? Ethan wondered for a moment, but was soon distracted by a jerk of motion. His head snapped back and up in time to see a prong horned four-legged beast bound upward across what he’d have sworn was a sheer face of stone.

  “Ermina!”

  She flinched. “I wish you wouldn’t do that. It’s like a voice inside my head.”

  “Look up!” He hissed raising a hand to point. “There, and keep watching.”

  She stared at the blank rock face confused. “Is this some kind of joke?”

  “Just keep wat- There!” The majestic creature darted from whatever hidden ledge it had found and bounced up the cliff face.

  “Was that-“

  “An Aetherhorn? I think so. Looked like the drawing.”

  “Are we then blessed?”

  He glanced at her bright eyes and smiling face. “Well, I am at least.”

  She turned confused for a moment, then caught him staring, unashamed. She blushed and looked away. Then glanced back with a small smile.

  ___

  “Will you look at that!” Ermina offered, smiling widely at the wide, flatish alpine meadow that extended up and away from the river to one side of a wider, flatter valley than most. A small lake even collected in an overfilled horseshoe bend halfway through.

  And even from where he stood on a small promontory at the entrance to this valley, he could tell it was teaming with fish. The mountains around them were less steep as well, reaching down towards the river and lake in spurs of steep forested slopes rather than rocky near cliffs.

  “Food, fresh water, clay for pottery and storage. Timbers… I think this might be it. About the right distance from Wegend…” She spoke, ticking the items off on her fingers.

  And from a certain point of view, it was. With a decent road, which they didn’t have yet, and a bridge, which they also didn’t have. This was a bit more than 2 days' travel from the last Forest Barony.

  But.

  “It’s…” Ethan began. Then stopped. Considering. “There is. No. Not like this.” He paused again. Then shrugged under Ermina’s increasingly baffled look. “Assemble, Please. No emergency.” Picturing his knights, Blake and after a second of consideration, Miro.

  “Patience, My Lady. If you would. Just a few minutes more.”

  And so they waited, though curiosity was clearly eating her alive. As the last member assembled, he still didn’t start quite yet. “If you’d grant us Privacy please?”

  She glared at him. Another delay, he could almost hear her say. But she held it in and with a gesture the world around them grew just a touch blurry in the bright light of the day.

  “Now spill! What’s this about?”

  “Alright, Alright My Lady. It’s not that I don’t want to say, it’s just that some habits are hard to break.”

  “And shouldn’t be broken, My Lord. Secrets as aren’t told aren’t lost.” James broke in.

  “A need to know only works when you do tell those as need it. And she does now.”

  “Need to know what?” Ermina demanded. Visibly frustrated.

  His voice hitched slightly, having to overcome a large lump in his throat to get the words out. “You know we have a core, yes?”

  “Of course, the Emperor, may his light shine upon us-“

  “-may his light shine upon us!” They echoed fervently.

  “-offered them for battle merits after the final battle.”

  “True, and yet completely unrelated.” Andrew offered, with a small, sad smile.

  “What- but you said… no, you never did say, did you? You just let me make my own assumptions.”

  Ethan nodded, a bit sheepishly, though he didn’t regret a bit of it.

  “So if what we all assumed isn’t true, then what is?”

  “That the core we have isn’t a hamlet core at all.” Ethan spoke, the words physically difficult. It was a habit formed over a lifetime, over nearly 3 lifetimes really. His father had told him about it after his majority, and in a rift for a second layer of security. Once. Then never spoke of it again. You did not speak of it. Not to anyone. Not until the time of dreams arrived.

  But it had. “It’s a Fortress core.”

  She stared at him, mouth gaping. “A…a… I need to sit down.” He caught her arm and eased her into a seated position, soon joined in a loose circle by the inner circle. He hid an inappropriate chuckle.

  “Why now?” Miro asked, having recovered slightly faster.

  “Because you never needed to know before.” Ethan repeated, answering the unasked question, and offering James what aid he could, considering the dark looks she was shooting his way. “And no, James was not free to tell you. Not unless he’d break an oath of brotherhood three generations in the keeping.”

  “And now?” Ermina asked.

  “Now we are in our own fief and you both do need to know. I value your input and we have a decision to make. One of the most important decisions in our life time.”

  He paused to catch her eye. “How ambitious are we going to be?”

  They stared at him, all except Conner, who simply nodded in agreement.

  Ethan pushed onward. “Two day’s travel by road, if there was one. That’s about the expected spacing if we hoped to be just another Baron. A little room to grow, but also close enough to join in mutual defense. Close enough that rifts are less likely to form, or can be regularly closed between us.

  “But it’s no da spacing for a new county.” Conner offered. Much less a dukedome a dozen generations in the future, Ethan added. If only in his own mind. “If wes want to be more, wes need more room to do it in. Wes need room not just to grow ourselves, but for entire baronies to crop up around us.” He spat to the side. “No to mention, room between us an de Count sos he don’t clip our wings afore wes fully fledged.”

  Ethan nodded easily. “Stopping here is the safe bet. It tells the count, when he finds out, which he will,” Ethan shot James a quelling look. “And in a fairly short time frame no matter what we do. A couple years if we are very lucky.” And thank the Gods that travel was so difficult through the outer frontier or it wouldn’t last even that long. “It tells him then that we are willing to play ball. And between that, and a strong defensive position, he’ll be unwilling to pay the price to remove us.” Hopefully, few things in life were certain.

  He met eyes around the circle, trying to divine their thoughts.

  “Or we keep going, find a place for a proper fortress, not a town, and he’ll know we plan to challenge him. Eventually, at least?” Andrew offered, picking at his armor as he rolled the question around in his head.

  “About how I read it.” Ethan agreed. “On the bright side, how would you all like to become barons?” They would need to fill the space!

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  _____

  They moved on the next morning.

  As Ermina put it, it wasn’t actually a choice. To have such a rare opportunity and refuse to reach for it would be to spit in Tycelus’s face. Mankind was entrusted with potential by their ancestors and the gods themselves. Failing to live up to both potential and good fortune was a sin.

  They followed the river northwest again. One bloody mile after another. For five brutal days. Hunting for something. What they weren’t quite sure, but they knew they’d know it when they saw it. Through verdant river valleys where the mountains drew back, or through passes beside the river so narrow they had to move rocks and lay timbers to get the wagons through. Even floated them on drag lines for a section.

  Even forced to ford the river twice more.

  And all along the way, they saw vast riches waiting to be developed. A rust strewn rock face their Quarrymen swore was an iron mine waiting to happen. Tier 0 on the surface, but you never knew what might be deeper in. Or at least Ethan could hope!

  A herd of elk-like creatures grazed peacefully in a dead-end canyon. With several wolf skeletons lying dead about the edges to give a lie to this seeming.

  A high meadow covered in purple flowering rhododendron, broad-leafed comfrey with its distinctive drooping tubular pink flowers, the white flowered ferns of yarrow, and two dozen other plants they had not the skill to identify.

  All of it with majestic, windswept, snowbound peaks looking down on them.

  No, not just peaks. Ethan watched without appearing to notice as a decade of men used their infrequent free time during a break to pile up stones, then place a small carved figurine of a Hammer and Anvil on it. If he looked just right and with an open mind, Ethan could just make out the shapes in the overlapping twin peaks that towered to the north, northeast.

  “Der Hammerschlag watch over us.” They offered reverently as they poured out a measure of their limited wine and smeared the blood from a fresh wolf kill beneath it.

  As the break ended and the column began to move, the shrine was not neglected either. With the following on decades and centuries adding a stone, a dram of wine or a carving to it.

  Lacrimarum, a Matron in tears if you held your head just right.

  Old Man Corvus, a jagged peak with a hint of a wing in black stone to the south.

  Like the constellations that also lay above them. It wasn’t always the most obvious of connections.

  But it was enough for the men to feel a connection to a land that was now theirs. And that could only be good.

  And then they found it.

  ___

  They stood at the top of a steep rock face, having spent the last ten minutes climbing up to it. And that only with Leo having provided a trio of knotted ropes, already tied into place.

  The valley below them opened up quite widely, for the mountains at least. Nearly a mile wide at its widest point. Though most of that was occupied by a large alpine lake. It's crystal-clear waters sporting fish, some darting snake like figures, and visible at even this distance Ethan wasn’t looking forward to dealing with them and even a significant beaver colony in a fine stand of timbers at the valley’s southern mouth.

  A thin section of clear land to the chased the mountain and lake to the left. Around for a wide sweep before nearly being blocked by a solid stone spur of the Southern mountains jutting out nearly fit to touch the northern.

  Or maybe it was two valleys they were looking at.

  Because that spur had been riven in some long-ago cataclysm or shaking of the earth. A jagged gorge filled with rock scree some twenty foot wide separated the mountain proper from a chunk of stone two hundred feet high and maybe 800 wide.

  The lake, or perhaps the river, wrapped around the right side of the massive stone and continued in the north-west direction with the continuation of river valleys they’d been traveling through this entire time.

  While the entrance to a large meadow peaked at them from the north and across the river. Barely visible by a stand of trees, their tops poking above a shorter spur of stone that nearly closed off the river.

  A small creak of ice melt joined the river from this half hidden meadow. Though it was hard to see much more from here.

  “Defense, a ready food source, water and an absolute command of any travel passing by.” Andrew offered. Nodding so hard Ethan half expected his head to fall right off.

  “Ready source of timbers and easy to retrieve stone for construction,” Ermina added.

  “Have you gotten a look at that, Sir Leosige?” Ethan asked. Pointing to the protruding trees to the far north.

  “Have to get a might closer. Through dat gap maybe. Or on top of dat rock.”

  He pointed to the gap first, then the massive mesa-like block of stone that jutted out into the lake.

  Ethan nodded agreeably. “We’ll do both.”

  “Be a bit of a climb.” Guile muttered giving the sheer sides of it a considering look.

  “Na.” Leo spat. “go up da mountain side there.” He pointed to the nearly vertical slope that made up the eastern edge of the valley. He pointed to the jagged, but narrow gap between the stone and the mountainside. “Then use timbers to bridge it.”

  “Is that climbable?” Miro asked, a bit doubtfully.

  Leo shrugged. “Depends on the climber. Better than yon rock face. But yous better off carving a path.”

  “Have to get there before we can try. But I don’t see why not. We have the men and the lines to do it, one way or the other. Be a hell of a view even if she’s not what we want.”

  “It’s a lot of work to sightsee.” Ermina objected. “Get a look through that gap first maybe? Make a hell of a town – no, a hell of a fortress. A fortified that gap would… well you are the experts in that regard.”

  Conner smiled. “I’d not bother. Either yous find a way around, or yous do what wes about to. Yous climb. But once they're above us, wes be right fucked Milady. No, yous always got to hold da high ground. And dat-” He pointed to the massive stand alone stone. “dat be one hell of a high ground to hold.”

  “Be a bit far from the water.” Miro offered cautiously.

  “Ropes and buckets work.” Andrew countered, while James studiously looked away.

  “Work is right, and a hell of a lot of it at that height.” She fired back.

  “You’re both right.” Ethan stopped them. “And maybe both wrong. Worst case we can do that and it will be a great deal of work. But best case? A core is more than a building. Or even a collection of buildings. Why build on it, when we can build in it. If we build down then at least the distance you have to haul it up will be considerably less.”

  With men and picks, it wasn’t a practical option. Even with skills, mining through solid stone while trying to heat and feed a large group through the long winters and short growing seasons? Not hardly. But with a core keeping them warm, a core and its build points to carve the galleries, tunnels and halls? Much of what wasn’t possible became so.

  Conner stared for a moment, then smiled widely. “I’s can see it now. No a keep on top, but quarried tunnels near to da surface cut with arrow slits. A drawbridge to bot sides. Across the river and across dat gap… Fook me but it would be impossible to assault!”

  “If wes can, we must! Sos how do we find out?”

  Ermina shrugged giving the stone a second, considering look. “Place it. Father said a core will speak to its placer and give them some options.”

  Ethan nodded. “Then, Sir Leosige, we’ll make a path for you and you find a path up for us? Yes?”

  Ethan grabbed the waiting ropes without waiting for a response. Quickly helping Ermina into a loop and belaying her down the moss-covered 60-degree slope.

  In five minutes, they were back on the valley floor, followed quickly by the ropes, then Leo himself, jumping lightly down the face.

  Ethan quickly began to bark orders. Directing three of the large Formations to sweep from where the slope was too steep to stand to the lake's edge. Through tall grass and the stands of trees. Another formation would anchor the lakeside, and stand between any aquatic beasties and the flocks. Another as a reserve force to the center and the last to bring up the rear.

  Then they did what they’d grown quite good at doing. They swept the valley clean of anything that was too vicious or stupid to let them pass. Yells, screams and the occasional jet of blood marked their passing. Mostly beast or monster blood, but the occasional bit of human was certainly not missing.

  It took them an hour and a half to make the gap, and realized it was a bit more of a job than it looked at a distance to get through. Piles of gravel, scree and shale were stacked to the top of their covered wagons, and so unsteady a footing as not even Leo wanted to risk it without a real need.

  Instead, they settled down and dug in a camp in the lee of the massive mountainous spur. Fishing lines were tossed into the river, herds were set to graze, to put some of the weight they’d lost in the travels back on. Men and women set to the thousand and one chores and tasks that never seemed to get done with the constant need to move.

  And all the while, nearly 5 centuries of Labori under the direction of Quarrymen and Stone Masons began the two-fold task of cutting a trail up the slope to their east, and cleaning out the gap.

  It was nearly nightfall by the time they’d cleared enough stones and lay a few timbers atop the rest, for Leo to risk it. He returned quickly with a glowing report of a large meadow extending up the side of the mountain between two ridges like a bowlegged prostitute, as Leo put it at least. “She gathers at both heels and crotch with the lovely bits not neglected between.” Ethan had to turn away at Ermina’s outraged sputter. Holding his shaking lips together with difficulty.

  Upstream around the river, the valley expanded out to, though not a patch on this one. Maybe 300 feet wide but lush with grasses well over his head in height. A sign of good earth, but he’d not been willing to risk finding what else it hid.

  It was nearly past sunset before the climbing path and bridge were in place above and a stream of people made their way up and out onto what they hoped would be their new home.

  If they hadn’t needed guards on the flocks, food stuffs and wagons, every single person would have been on top of the massive stone with them.

  Instead, it was merely around six hundred. All but a few of the Original Bandsmen and representatives from the newcomers.

  It was nearly flat, that top. Despite having a noticeable slope down towards the river. A sheet of basalt, with layers of slightly different colors visible at a sharp, regular angle.

  There was room for all of them, and even, with many sitting down, sight lines were a bit strained. But despite blocking the view, a thick circle of men surrounded Ethan. Facing him with backs straight, shields grounded and spears held in salute.

  No, not just Ethan. Ethan and the standard.

  The beating heart of the Band and the symbol of their long history.

  “Are you ready?” Ethan asked softly, looking out at his oldest friends and comrades. The Bandsmen who’d been with him from the beginning. Winning the chance that lay before them.

  “Aye!” The massed rumble struck him like the blow of a massive drum.

  “And the rest of you?”

  “AYEEEEE”

  They howled and screamed, loosing out to the massed, uniform voice of the Band, but making up for it in frenzied excitement they weren’t ashamed to share.

  “Pre-sent! Standard!” Ethan called. Standing at attention, hand to chest in salute as the heavy standard was dropped parallel to the ground and hanging in front of him.

  Ethan nodded, then with a smooth, graceful motion-

  Struck.

  His blade slipped free of its sheath with no warning, striking the demon skull impaled atop the standard and carving off a curling horn to one side and a thick slice of the skull with it.

  A mass cry of outrage quickly faded as a blue jewel the side of two clenched fists emerged from the wreckage.

  “My Grandfather found it. In a rift that claimed his father’s life. He couldn’t use it and knew he likely never would. But he had a dream. A dream that one day, WE would. That his Band. His Blood. Would not disappoint him.”

  “And we haven’t!”

  “Hoa!” The barking call and the stamp that followed it shook the very rock.

  “So, he hid it, inside this very standard! For most of three generations, it’s been our hope. Our touchstone. Our Dream of a better life. Hidden under the symbol of what we were. Demon killers for hire.”

  “It’s time, my people! It’s time to become something more!

  Yes!

  ___