CHAPTER 23: Scorched Earth
The Village of Oakhaven – Three Days North of Duskwatch
The smoke from the chimneys of Oakhaven smelled of pine and roasting boar. Children's laughter echoed between the stone-and-timber longhouses. Here, nestled in a valley carved by the Serryn River, the war was a distant story, a lord's quarrel told by passing merchants. They were loyal to the Sovereign, yes—he had driven out the Empire's grasping tax collectors—but their lives were governed by the seasons, not by crowns.
Myrren rode into the village square, the banner of Ravencair hanging limp from its staff. Behind her were thirty of Kael's most trusted soldiers. They did not look like liberators. They looked like ghosts.
An old woman, the village elder named Elara, greeted them with a bowl of warm, spiced milk. Her face was a map of wrinkles, each one earned through a long life in this valley.
"Welcome, shield-bearers of the Sovereign," she said, her voice warm but her eyes sharp. "You look weary. There is food, and our fires are hot."
Myrren dismounted, her heart a cold stone in her chest. She accepted the bowl but could not drink. "Thank you, Elder. But we are not here to rest."
She looked at the faces gathering around them—farmers, weavers, a blacksmith wiping soot from his hands. Hopeful faces. "I bring a command from Sovereign Kael."
Myrren's voice was flat, stripped of all emotion, because emotion was a luxury she could not afford. "You have until dawn tomorrow. You are to gather what food and tools you can carry on your backs. The young, the old, and the able-bodied are to march for the Ravencair mountains. We have established a refuge there, in the deep holds."
Confusion rippled through the crowd. A burly man with the blacksmith's shoulders stepped forward. "March? But the planting is in two weeks. Our homes…"
"There will be no planting," Myrren said, the words tasting like poison. "Your homes are forfeit. Your fields, your livestock, your granaries… everything."
A woman began to weep. The blacksmith's face hardened. "You would have us abandon everything? This is our home! Our ancestors are buried on that hill!"
"And they will have company if you stay," Myrren shot back, her voice finally cracking with the strain. She pointed south, though there was nothing to see but hills. "An army of one hundred thousand men is coming. They will not spare you. They will not take your grain and leave. They will burn your homes, salt your fields, and hang your men from the oak trees as a message. They are coming to erase this land."
She looked at the elder, Elara, whose warm eyes had turned to flint. "Kael's order is not a request. It is a mercy. He is giving you a chance to live."
The night was filled with arguments, tears, and the sounds of a village tearing itself apart. Myrren and her soldiers did not sleep. They went from house to house, helping families pack what little they could, their faces grim masks. They took the livestock to a ravine out of sight.
As the first light of dawn broke, cold and grey, the last of the villagers began their slow, mournful exodus north. A column of refugees walking away from the only world they had ever known.
Myrren stayed behind with a small contingent. She stood before Elara's longhouse, the one where she had been offered kindness just the day before.
She lifted her torch.
"Forgive us," she whispered to the empty valley.
The flames caught quickly on the dry thatch. Within an hour, the entire village of Oakhaven was a roaring pyre. The smoke, thick and black, blotted out the morning sun, carrying the smell of pine, roasting boar, and a hundred broken lives.
Myrren watched until the first roof collapsed, sending a shower of embers into the sky. Every instinct screamed at her that this was wrong—a crime against the very people they were sworn to protect.
But it was also necessary. This was the only path to survival.
She mounted her horse, her face streaked with soot, and did not look back. The war had begun, not with the clash of steel, but with the quiet, heartbreaking surrender of a home to the fire. And the land ahead of the Imperial Legions was now just a little colder, a little emptier, and a little less welcoming.