The sky was gray as steel when the Blackcoils reached the Halden road.
Cairon rode at the head, his black cloak trailing behind him like smoke. Beside him, Garran gave a low whistle as they crested the ridge. Below them, nestled between the snow-laced trees, the camp of House Avenlock sprawled in careless disarray.
Fires burned low. Tents were pitched without order. Pickets stood idle or wandered, weapons slung lazily. They had grown too comfortable, too sure of themselves. They had not expected a real fight. They had certainly not expected the Blackcoils.
"Spread the wings," Cairon said quietly. His voice needed no volume. Every officer nearby leaned in to catch his words. "Thirty men loop east, strike the right flank from the trees. Archers take the high ridge. Five dozen ride with me straight through the center. When they break, we cut them down. No survivors. No prisoners."
Garran grinned. "A simple plan."
Cairon's eyes were fixed on the valley. "The best ones usually are."
At his signal, the Blackcoils surged forward.
What followed was not a battle.
It was a slaughter.
Steel sang and blood sprayed across the snow. The Avenlock soldiers, soft from years of garrison life, screamed and scattered like frightened children. Their formations never held. They had never faced men like this before. The Blackcoils were not knights with banners and pride. They were killers. They were wolves in armor.
Cairon rode at the front, his blade dark and quick. He cut down two before his horse had finished the first charge. His sword opened bellies and split skulls, but it was his mind that won the day.
He led with precision. Every movement of his forces was deliberate. He had seen the shape of the field long before he ever stepped onto it. He fought with calculation, turning terrain and timing into weapons. What looked like chaos to the enemy was, to the Blackcoils, a perfect rhythm of slaughter.
Lord Harl Avenlock's nephew, a puffed-up fool in a gilded cuirass, tried to rally his men near the center. He screamed for lines to hold. He raised his sword and begged for courage.
Cairon took his head with a single stroke.
The Blackcoils pushed forward like a tide. Bodies were trampled. Tents caught fire. Screams drowned beneath steel and hoof. By midday, nothing remained of the Avenlock force. Smoke rose over the valley, black as the cloaks of the victors.
Garran rode up to Cairon, his blade dripping. "That's the end of them. Should we ride back to Blackstone? The old man will want to kiss your boots after this."
Cairon looked east, toward the distant hills.
"No," he said. "We ride on."
"To Redmere?" Garran raised a brow.
"To Redmere."
The march was swift and silent. No horns, no drums, only the crunch of hooves through snow and the low creak of leather. By the time they reached the gates of Redmere, night had fallen.
The guards were unprepared. Word of the slaughter had not yet reached them. They opened the gates to what they believed were travelers or retreating soldiers.
The Blackcoils poured in like smoke through cracks in a dying wall.
Within minutes, the inner yard was theirs. The guards surrendered quickly, too stunned by the suddenness of the attack. A few tried to resist. Their corpses were left to bleed out in the snow.
Cairon walked through the halls of Redmere like a man inspecting his inheritance.
He found Lord Harl Avenlock in the solar, half-dressed, clutching a wine cup, surrounded by stunned servants. The old man looked up at the intruder and opened his mouth to speak.
Cairon struck without a word.
His blade drove through Harl's chest, piercing silk and flesh. The lord gasped once, choked on his own blood, and died staring into the eyes of the monster he had helped create.
The same boy whose death he had once demanded. The one who had been sent to die in a penal levy for daring to defend his name.
Cairon sheathed his sword and stepped back.
"The house of Avenlock is broken," he said to the stunned onlookers. "Its lord is dead. His heir died four winters past. These lands now belong to the Blackcoils."
He looked at the captain of the remaining guards. "Swear fealty now, and you live. Resist, and I burn this keep to ash before sunrise."
They knelt.
By morning, the banners of House Avenlock were pulled down.
Black cloth, embroidered with the coiled serpent of Cairon's personal standard, flew from the towers of Redmere.
When the Blackcoils returned to Blackstone Keep two days later, they rode not as mercenaries but as conquerors.
And Cairon Blackthorn rode at the head of the column, his face veiled, his blade freshly sharpened, the cold wind at his back.
The boy they had once called filth now returned as the master of their fate.
And his vengeance was only just beginning.