Chapter 338: Duke Ronan Halvar

At the gates of Deepwell—a fortified town in Duke Halvar’s western marches—the war still ground on. Even with their own troops and a contingent from the royal army, they had held a stalemate for days and nights. Blood ran; bodies were piled and burned on pyres. The count of the dead climbed without a victor to claim them. Duke Halvar’s defense was impeccable; the revolutionaries’ assault was relentless. Neither side gave an inch. Neither side dared to.

They could not lose. The duke could not allow it—for Ismyr’s sake. His lands were the hinge of the kingdom: harbors and shipyards, naval trade, the shield against seaborne invasions through the Blue Waters, the artery for soldiers and supplies bound to the fronts of a future empire. All of that belonged to the Duke of the West.

That was what the revolutionaries meant to seize. They ignored the White Circle and the Golden Circle. They did not march on the roads leading towards there at all. They aimed instead to cripple Halvar’s coast and, in the end, take the Blue Waters entire.

If they succeeded, the power they’d gain would be unthinkable.

Atop the gatewalk stood six of Ismyr’s hard points: Duke Ronan Halvar himself; Prince Dorian Aureliath; the duke’s right hand, Vel; Margrave Émile Fournier; Sir Eryk, newly named captain of the royal army; and Count Mireille Aubert. The six watched from the arch of the gatehouse.

The ground trembled—drums without rhythm, boots without order, steel finding wood, steel finding flesh. From the stone throat of the gate they watched the plain dissolve into noise. Standards that had left the city bright and clean already wore the color of rain-soaked ash. The field had no front anymore. Lines that had marched out in neat files were torn open and folded over, bodies pressed into heaps by the weight behind them. A charge would rise in a roar and vanish as if swallowed. What remained was movement. Elbows. Teeth. The dull hammering of shields. That thin, high scream that cuts straight through everything else when a pike finds a gap.

“FOR LIBERTY AND EQUALITY!” rolled up and broke against the walls like a black wave. “KILL THE GOLD! KILL THE GOLD! KILL THE GOLD!” came back in ragged time—not a chant so much as a reflex, spit between breaths. From the right, over the clatter of pavises dragged through mud, another thread: “Hail the Sun! Hail the Sun!” higher-pitched, frayed—the answer of throats already raw.

The rain had stopped at dawn, but Deepwell kept its water. The ground remembered. When bodies fell, the earth took them slow; boots tore free with a wet pop. The ditch before the forward stakes filled first—shields, then faces, then backs. The dead did not lie still. The living needed ground. A shoulder became a step. A hand was shoved aside. A helm turned into a foothold. The plain moved the way a market stampede moves after the first shout—every choice made without thinking, every thought arriving too late.

The taste of iron was everywhere. Everyone licked their lips and tasted the same thing.

A runner slammed into the inner gate, slid on the stones, rose bleeding from knees and palms. He tried to report and coughed up nothing useful. Words were too clean for what was happening.

At the left stake-line, a wedge tried to punch through. No trumpet called it. The wedge formed because there was space, and because the people behind wanted out of the crush as much as the people ahead wanted in. Spears flickered like reeds in wind. The wedge held for ten heartbeats. On the eleventh, the center knelt without meaning to—tendons cut like string. The faces behind didn’t see the fall until their shins struck armor and they went down as well, and the wedge became a knot, and the knot became a place that ate people. The sound there was different—shorter, wetter, close to the ground.

Someone hurled a pot of oil and missed. It shattered on a pavise and set a shield-bearer alight. His friends ripped the straps to free him and threw the burning plank down; the plank lit the churned straw beneath their feet; the straw lit a sleeve; hands beat at it; then it was out, and the space it opened closed again immediately, forgetting the man who still rolled at the edge, smoking.

At the center, a banner with the sun—stitched in thread that had once been gold—listed as its bearer staggered. A boy new enough to keep his chin smooth grabbed the pole and lifted—and took an axe in the back from someone who didn’t look at him after. The banner folded in half like a book shutting. “Hail the Sun!” someone cried, thin and formal and absurd in the mud, and someone else hit him in the mouth with a hammer.

The men on the gate all wore the same dull, cold eyes, but for different reasons. They kept watching. And waiting.

At last, far across the field, a horn sounded.

The duke’s head snapped left toward the tower. He caught a knight’s eye and nodded once. The knight lifted his own horn and blew.

At once, the men and women on the field began to fall back.

“So…” Dorian leaned forward, fingers resting on the parapet’s edge.

“Which high commander do you think they’re sending out this time?”

“Whoever it is… I beg you, my prince—send me this time.”

Captain Eryk’s hand tightened on the hilt at his hip.

“Though I understand you have steam to blow off, Captain,” Margrave Émile Fournier said, face set,

“I implore His Highness to make use of us. You ordered us here, and it is maddening to watch the men we brought die while we stand still. Half my people could barely stomach the voyage across the Blue Waters; some were sick the whole way—and still they’ve fallen in battle for you, one by one.”

Dorian glanced at him, then back to the field.

“Having you—or Count Mireille Aubert—ride out would lift your soldiers’ morale. But I brought you to grind them down, Margrave, and to break the revolutionaries’ will. Count Mireille’s troops are waiting in silence for the signal flare, ready to hit their rear and pinch them in, end it in one sweep.”

“Then why haven’t we?” Ronan Halvar snapped, jaw tight as he stared at Dorian.

“What opportunity are you waiting for? You keep saying ‘not yet,’ but our men are dying one by one for days already. The longer we wait, the more we lose. What is taking so long?”

“Patience, Duke.” Dorian’s tone stayed cool.

“If I fire the flare now—even when one of their high commanders breaks toward us—we’ll still have four more sitting in their camp. They’ll carve through the Count’s force in minutes. All our blood and time—wasted.”

“You think they’ll send all their high commanders at once?” Halvar shot back.

“There is always one left to guard their camp.” He wasn’t wrong. Until now the most they’d seen on the field at once was three of the five. That many had also only been once at the early stages of this war. Now…

“This war is in its final stage,” Dorian said quietly.

“Last week, the Church of the Sun declared a prophecy: the Sun God spoke to her—said this war would be decided within seven days. Today is the seventh.”

Their eyes widened.

“Then… all five of the Nine are coming?”

Dorian nodded.

“Yes. So—this battle ends today. Thanks to you both, Count and Margrave, we have held with weapons, men, food, and spirit. But everything has a limit. We must finish it now—not only because our supplies are thin, but also because—”

A portal tore open beside them. Hands went to hilts. A knight stepped through, dropped to one knee. Before he could speak, Dorian’s voice cut cold.

“Quickly. Why are you here at such a moment?”

“Your Highness… the Blue Waters have been invaded.”

“What?” Halvar snarled.

“What madness is that? How can the Blue Waters be invaded if we have not fallen? Have you lost your bloody mind boy?”

“Duke Halvar,” the knight said, visor turning toward him. His aura flared, bright and hard.

“As one of the king’s two personal knights—the right hand—speak to me in that tone again and you will be punished for it.”

His voice was colder than Dorian’s. Halvar blanched, then bared his teeth and threw out his own aura. Stone cracked under their boots. Captain Eryk and the others went pale—everyone but Dorian.

“You want to try to punish me?” Halvar said softly.

“Come on, then. Try. I’ll teach you who it is you’re glowering at, boy.”

“Enough.”

Dorian’s aura hit them both. Their aura withdrew; the stone grew still. He turned to the knight, who exhaled behind the golden helm.

“Nymira—the Kingdom of the Moon—has breached your line of ships on the Blue Waters,” the knight reported.

“They’ve crossed the border and are coming with alarming speed. All your soldiers at sea have sunk or been taken prisoner.”

Faces hardened. Halvar’s went dark. When he spoke, his voice was darker still.

“You’re telling me that instead of going north, toward another border, toward the capital, or toward the White Circle where the high nobility sits, they’re coming for my coast?”

The knight inclined his head.

“That is what I said.”

Halvar’s aura burst again.

“Those pest-ridden insects…! So the traitors are colluding with Nymira!?”

Dorian’s look made him bank it. But the Count, the Margrave, the captain, even the duke’s right hand—each wore the same bloodless fear.

“This is not good, my lord,” Vel said quietly.

“No one imagined the Children of the Moon would ally with the rebels. Now that they have… the plan we forged is about to be turned against us. We will fall if we do nothing.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Ronan snapped. He swung to the kneeling knight.

“What will His Majesty do?”

“Nothing,” the knight said at once.

Ronan’s face twisted.

“What?”

“The king will do nothing.”

“What?! Why?” Halvar’s voice climbed.

“Does he not see we’re about to lose? The Blue Waters—my waters—are about to be taken. He can stop this!”

“This is your final warning, Duke Halvar.”

The chill in those words cut even deeper. Ronan’s mouth flattened.

“You usel—”

“You are a duke,” the knight said, unblinking.

“You have your army, your people, your coin, your stores. If your marches and the Blue Waters are invaded, it is your duty to win. You must always win. If you cannot, then you will die trying. And if you do not die and you still lose—” he lifted his hand “—then I will execute you myself, immediately.”

Ronan’s eyes flared—but when he turned to the prince, he found Dorian and the others already staring back out over the killing field. He followed their gaze—and froze.

Four figures stood calm amid the drifted bodies.

A man in his late thirties: broad-shouldered, cropped black hair already touched with gray, a scar raked across his left cheek; a battered cuirass over a wool coat.

One of the Nine High Commanders—Marceau Renard.

A woman in her mid-twenties: small and wiry, skin pale; short auburn hair tucked beneath a hood; ink-stained hands and quick, cutting eyes.

One of the Nine High Commanders—Colette Duval.

Another woman, mid-thirties: tall, whip-lean, sun-darkened; braided black hair and a chain wrapped around one arm in place of a sword.

One of the Nine High Commanders—Sabine Morel.

And at last, a man in his early forties: lean, fox-faced, dark beard trimmed close; officers’ coats with the insignia torn away; two fingers missing from his left hand.

One of the Nine High Commanders—Henri Voclain.

Ronan let out a long breath.

“They’re not holding back anymore…”

Margrave Émile Fournier’s fists tightened.

“One is missing. Arsène Giraud. They’ve left him to guard the camp. They’re wary of a counterstroke.”

The duke pressed his lips thin.

“It doesn’t matter. Like this, they force our hand. If we don’t meet them, they’ll storm the gates and turn this into a sack. If we do, Nymira comes in off the Blue Waters with no one to hold them. It’s a lose-lose. They’ve boxed us.”

“Then we split,” Dorian said, eyes never leaving the four.

“Your Highness, I am under orders from His Majesty not to engage,” the golden-helmed knight said.

The displeasure around him was palpable—everyone’s but Dorian’s. The prince only nodded, as if he’d expected it.

“Then a favor,” Dorian said evenly.

“Send Captain Eryk, Count Mireille, and Sir Vel to where the Count’s soldiers are waiting. No signal flare. Strike from behind, take out the high commander, and return to the field at once. I’ll move with Duke Halvar to face these four. Margrave Émile—rally the soldiers here in Deepwell, put our ships to sea, and meet Nymira head-on.”

“…It may be our only course,” the Count conceded, “but Arsène Giraud… I’ve shared my share of liquor with the man. Three against one is not a sure thing when it comes to him.”

“I don’t care about Giraud,” Captain Eryk said.

“He’ll be handled. What I care about is you, Your Highness. You and the duke against four High Commanders—that is not sound.”

The duke answered first.

“The two of us can take two apiece,” he said, steady and sure—too sure, Eryk thought; they were High Commanders for a reason.

“A pack of traitor dogs won’t best me,” Ronan growled.

“I am Duke Ronan Halvar. I’ll remind them why the Sun has been shining on me for so long.”

Hearing the duke’s confident words, Dorian inclined his head to Eryk.

“I will be fine,” he said—nothing more. He glanced toward the golden-helmed knight, who met his eyes, sighed, and nodded.

“Very well… if only because it is you, Your Highness.”

He tore open a portal.

“May the Sun shine on you, Your Highness—and on Duke Halvar. Hail the Sun, and the Sun to come,” Count Mireille said. Sir Vel echoed him. Captain Eryk did the same, then stepped through.

“I wish the three of you a victorious battle…” the knight added. He closed the portal with a sweep, turned to the Margrave, and said, “If I am going this far, I can at least send you all the way.”

Another portal bloomed. Margrave Émile bowed his thanks, offered brief farewells to duke and prince, and vanished.

The knight knelt again—but Halvar spoke first.

“What is His Majesty thinking? Tell me the truth, boy. He’s letting another kingdom—one that threatens our future—cross our waters and our shores, then forcing us to fight on terms stacked against us? His Majesty is not reckless enough for ‘it is your job’ to be the whole of it.”

The knight lifted his visor a fraction.

“His Majesty is not presently in a state to care about the west of the Black Circle—particularly as he left the palace a few hours ago with orders to be alone.”

Both men stiffened—Dorian, too.

“His Majesty… hasn’t set foot beyond the palace in a year,” Dorian said softly.

“Why now?”

“I am unaware,” the knight replied.

“I have delivered what I was ordered to deliver—should this ever happen.” He rose, turned, and opened another portal before disappearing in it.

Halvar exhaled through his teeth, tired and angry all at once. He walked to the crenellation and stared across the field at the High Commanders who stared calmly back.

“Shall we move, Your Highness?” he asked without excitement.

“Yes,” Dorian said.

“We shall.”

“The—”

The blade struck before the word could finish. A sword slid through the duke’s chest clean as a whisper. Blood flowered from the wound and from his mouth at once. His eyes went wide—not with rage, but with the shocked, childlike disbelief of a man who feels his heart pierced and wonders, for a small, dying moment, how.

“Uhk—”

The steel slipped free. Halvar turned—toward the hand that held it.

Prince Dorian watched him without warmth, with the sword in his grip.

“I thought,” Dorian said, conversational, almost bored, “that by the end of this prophesied week you might produce a plan—half-decent at least. I would have played along. I would have won a war with you and then killed you, afterward, with a tidy tale about how you fell giving your life for the kingdom. But you remained an overgrown ego with a wooden brain to the last hour, Duke Halvar.”

The duke stumbled backward, coughing blood, sank to his knees. His gaze never left Dorian’s face.

Betrayal hollowed it out.

Dorian sighed. There was no anger in it. No pity, either. Only the efficiency of a machine, the calm of a murderer who has known what he would do for a long time. The sword in his hand dripped in short, neat ticks onto the stone.

“This war did its work,” he went on.

“First, it let us smuggle enough revolutionaries into the White and Golden Circles. It drew others to our side. Your coast, the Count’s ports, the Margrave’s harbors—key points of Ismyr—can now be taken in sequence. But who would have thought you would lose the war you were meant to hold? That you would fail to guard your marches and the Blue Waters at all? You left me to do most of it while you whined. You make me ill. No wonder you tried for years to have the royal army fight your battles—you trained your own men to be as incompetent as you.”

“No…” the duke choked, fingers clamping over the wound as if he could push the blood back inside. His face had gone gray.

“W-why… Your Highness… why..?”

Dorian stepped in close, bent until his lips hovered by the duke’s ear, and let a cold breath ghost against the skin.

“Because I hate the aristocrat system.”

Halvar’s eyes widened. His mouth formed the start of a word.

Dorian stepped back and raised the blade.

“Wa—”

Steel fell.

For a heartbeat there was no sound at all. Then blood erupted like a geyser, freckling Dorian’s cheek and throat, spattering the stone. The head of Duke Ronan Halvar bounced once on the parapet, tipped into the air, and tumbled down the outer wall. It hit the foot of the gate and rolled, rolled, rolled, until it faced the four High Commanders across the field—eyes frozen wide, terror locked forever inside them.

Just like that, one of Ismyr’s five dukes was gone—cut down in the battle he was sworn to win—while the revolutionaries and the Kingdom of the Moon pressed in together. Count Mireille, Captain Eryk, and Sir Vel struck Arsène Giraud hard enough to defeat him, but the High Commander slipped away into the smoke. At sea, the Margrave lost the naval fight; he lost half his ships and his left arm before he could drag the survivors back toward Deepwell’s harbor.

On land, the four High Commanders overran the outer trenches, then the ditch, then the first gate. The prince—fell back with the remnants rather than be caged and burned. There was no time to lift the duke’s body. Deepwell’s streets became alleys of iron and flame. Those who fought were killed, one by one, in doorways and on stairs.

By dusk the gates were theirs.

And only the High Commanders knew the cleanest piece of the tale—the part no proclamation would ever speak aloud:

It was not the revolution that killed Duke Ronan Halvar.

It was High Commander Prince Dorian Aureliath.