Chapter 707: The Price of the First Strike

Chapter 707: The Price of the First Strike

The swordsman tried to pull his arm free again. It stayed where Leon had put it.

For four seconds, everyone across the basin watched. Then two men rushed forward, and a third raised his crossbow.

The gray-haired leader stayed still, her gaze fixed on the trapped wrist. The men coming at Leon were a spearman with a blue line on his forehead and a thickset man carrying a hooked blade. They approached from either side of the kneeling swordsman while the crossbowman sighted on Leon’s chest.

Leon did not bother turning.

Seraphine reached the spearman before he finished his second step. A cut through the bronze fitting sent his spearhead clattering away. Before he could recover, she struck his temple with the flat of her blade and caught his collar, lowering him heavily onto the stone.

The thickset man reached Leon, only for Ira to drive the butt of her lance into his stomach. He folded over it, dropped his blade, and sank onto the stone. When Ira drew the weapon back, he stayed down.

The crossbow went off.

The bolt crossed the twenty paces between the crossbowman and Leon’s chest in a blur of bronze and stopped a hand’s width short, hanging in a fold of space that went nowhere. Leon let it hang there long enough for everybody to see it.

Then he let it drop.

It clattered on the stone at his feet, and the crossbowman lowered his weapon very slowly.

"Anyone else?" Leon asked.

The crossbowman shook his head. Even the man gasping around Ira’s lance managed to keep still.

The gray-haired woman opened her hands at her sides. Her gaze passed over the two men Seraphine and Ira had put down, then returned to the swordsman still kneeling before Leon.

"We yield," she said.

The words came to Leon as clipped foreign sounds and arrived as perfectly clear meaning, and he was already starting to get used to that, which was its own kind of strange.

"All of you?" Leon asked.

"All of us." Her jaw tightened. "You have made your point."

"Not quite yet." Leon released the swordsman’s wrist, and the man pitched forward onto his hands and stayed there, breathing hard. "You attacked first. On ground you’d claimed by walking onto it before we did. So here are my terms."

He did not raise his voice. He did not need to.

"Everything you’ve harvested from this spring comes to me. So does every treasure you’re carrying, every piece of equipment worth more than its weight in rations, and every route record you have. You keep your food, your water, your bedding, and enough tools to get yourselves somewhere else."

"That is robbery."

"Yes," said Leon. "It is."

She stared at him.

"You drew on me," he went on. "Your swordsman came across the stone with a blade already moving. If I hadn’t stopped him, would you be offering to return my belongings?" He shrugged slightly. "You lost. This is what losing costs."

The woman looked toward the ridge behind him, then at her crossbowman. The man set his weapon on the stone.

Leon waited. He had no interest in bargaining down the price of an attack on his people. ℯℯ𝑙.

"Agreed," she said.

He called Vyra in after that, and the twenty-five came over the rise in good order and took the basin in about four minutes.

The fifteen from Harrowmark sat in a line along the eastern edge under Ira’s supervision, which was supervision in the sense that Ira sat on a crate facing them and ate an apple very slowly. Nobody in that line made any sudden movements.

Loriel checked the three injured men. Ira’s opponent had a cracked rib, the spearman a concussion, and the first swordsman had bitten his tongue when Leon forced him to his knees. She treated them without asking. Leon left her to it; he had agreed to let them walk away, and he meant it.

Vyra had the recorders work in pairs, one checking each surrendered item while the other noted it down.

"Spring crystal already cut," she said, reading from a slate. "Eleven crates. Logged as seized stock, not as harvest — they didn’t come out of our cuts and they don’t go in the same column." She moved down. "Personal treasure. Three storage pouches, contents unknown until opened, logged unopened. One pouch of what looks like refined crystal — better grade than anything in the crates. Equipment: the crossbow, which Bai Heng wants to look at very badly. Two survey instruments I don’t recognize. Four blades with bronze fittings."

"And the route records?" Leon asked.

"A bound book and a rolled chart." Vyra laid both beside the slate. "The leader was reluctant to hand these over. We should have her explain them before she leaves."

"Keep her here," Leon said. "And put aside a sample of that refined crystal for my allocation."

"Already noted, Young Master."

Leon opened the pouch of refined crystal himself and looked at it for a while.

The crystals were pale green, cleanly cut, and hummed faintly in his palm with energy that did not belong to any single affinity. He held it toward the leader.

"From this spring?"

She nodded reluctantly. "The outer growth. Refined twice."

And now I get to find out what it does.

He closed the pouch, pleased despite the trouble. The spring had looked promising before. This was something he could test.

His internal plaque warmed against his chest while the recorders were checking the third crate.

He had expected Wen Shu, who was holding the ridgeline to the south. It was Tian Mingxu, from the entrance base.

"Senior Brother." Her voice came through level, which in Tian meant considerably more than it would in anyone else. "The gateway’s gone."

Leon stopped moving.

"Say that again."

"The gateway we came through. The watch saw its edges draw together. It vanished before they could finish calling me." A pause. "We’ve examined the site from the marked boundary. There’s no visible opening left."

"Your people?"

"All eighteen here. I’ve counted twice. Nobody was near the edge when it went and nobody’s hurt."

"When?"

"Three minutes ago. I counted everyone before contacting you. We have a record of the closure and the site as it stands. Nobody has tried to cross."

"Keep it that way," said Leon. "Don’t send anyone toward where it was. Hold the camp, record anything that changes, and check the ground every hour. If something opens, you tell me before anyone walks into it."

"Understood."

There was no point asking about Ji. Their plaques had never reached across the realm boundary, even while the gateway stood open. His master could be a few steps away on the other side and still know nothing of this.

"Tian. You did well."

"I couldn’t stop it," Tian said.

"That wasn’t your job. Keeping those eighteen alive is. Stay clear of it."

Leon kept the plaque in his hand after Tian ended the connection. He had expected his master to be waiting when he returned. Until this moment, he hadn’t realized how much comfort he’d taken from that.

Seraphine watched him from beside the crates. He gave her a small nod, then called the forward party together and told them what had happened.

Two carriers exchanged uneasy looks. A recorder sat down on a crate, his writing brush still in his hand. Wen Shu asked another scout to take her watch before coming down to hear Leon’s instructions.

"We have supplies and a secure base," Leon told them. "We’ll keep gathering information. If you notice anything about these people’s equipment that might help, tell Vyra."

The recorder looked toward the confiscated survey instruments, then stood and went to fetch his slate.

Seraphine came and stood at his shoulder.

"Young Master," she said, very low.

"I know."

"Do we know when it opens?"

"We don’t know if it opens," he said quietly. "Not on any schedule anyone’s told us about. Not from any direction I’ve seen."

He looked across the basin at the line of fifteen people in gray leather coats, sitting on the stone with their bruises and their confiscated gear. They had come in from somewhere. They had been here longer than the Palace had. Their leader kept watching the bound book beside Vyra’s slate.

Leon picked it up. He couldn’t read a word of it.

A few minutes ago, he had wanted to know where Harrowmark had found more treasure. Now he carried the book toward their leader with a different question.