It began with a massive ambush outside the tiny vilge of Brunn, where Simon used a hundred sheep to lure more than half that number of taur warriors to their deaths under a fusilde of crossbow bolts and surreptitious magic spells. It was the first victory, but it would not be the st or the rgest.

  Every town he went through now, he pelled a few members of the vilge defense force to join his little band. He didn’t feel great about doing it, but his pns required numbers as much as they required pig just the right battlefield.

  Sometimes, that meant box yons or cliffs. Other times, it meant camoufge or even ss, but with a little bait and the right edge, Simon was fairly fident they could win nearly every fight with a little pnniually, the men who fought with him even believed him, and few of them died as a result of that trust.

  Tchul. Krovel. Edenbrooke. Not every battle was bloodless, but everywhere they went, as Simon widehe scope to the north a, he did his very best to take advantage of the terrain to make it more likely that their enemy would flee instead of fight to the st. Eventually, when they passed close through to Bellum’s Cross, Simon finally made a brief stop arieved his maps from where he’d left them with the survivors he’d started this chapter of his adveh. He did this so he could add all the other pces he was visiting to the paper he'd put so much hard work into, but mostly, the vilgers took the opportunity to tell his panions about how he’d saved them single-handedly, further expanding his legend.

  Less than two months after he started his sed campaign as the Regent-General of the Raithewait Barony, he had a hundred men under him and roag a thousaaur skulls. It was brutal, bloody work, and whenever possible, Simon did it all without magic. He could start to feel the pull of extra years on himself now, and he only spared weeks and months for the injured men who fought valiantly by his side.

  But as time went on, especially during the winter months, new war bands and herds became harder and harder to find. Many of his men took that as a sign that they were winning, but Simon saw it differently. To him, it was evidehat they might never be able to win.

  When all of this had started, Simon had been too simplistic about it. He khat now. He thought he could hunt down the taurs like mobs in a video game and grind on them until he reached a certain kill t, and theure he sought to avoid would simply evaporate, like a quest that had been achieved.

  They were intelligent, though, in their way. They found weakness and fled from strength. When the taurs faced the inexplicable losses of Simon’s traps, they iably fled to another part of the prairie and found another oppoo faore favorable ground. So, if he’d just been trying to keep them away from Crowvar, that would have been easy.

  There was no guarahat would prevent the rise of a warrior that would uhe tribes into a sierrible fist, though. That was what forced him out, ever further into the wastends, away from the streams and the vilges that made up the heart of the Barony. It was not a popur decision, but really, there was no one who could tell him no anymore, not after all the victories he’d given them. Still, he could see it in the eyes of his men. They wao go back to Crowvar, cash in their winnings, and move on with their lives.

  Simon couldn’t do that, though, because now that he’d pushed the taurs to the edge of the wastes he had a new pn. Well, it was an old pn that someone else had probably e up with a few levels down. He was just giving it new life: poison the wells and the oases of the border areas.

  Poisoning the water supply hardly seemed like a valorous tactic. He would have preferred to meet the horse lords on the field of battle. However, now that they’d lost so many, the herds were skittish things, and no matter how tempting he made the ambush target, they would rarely take the bait. Instead, they fought with gnolls and or the rocky foothills or the dunes of the desert.

  “You sure we gotta keep going?” one of the younger men asked him the other day. Before Simon had drafted him to the cause, he’d been a green member of the city guard. Now, he ractically a blooded veteran who just wao go home and start a farm. “The Barony is as peaceful as I’ve ever seen it.”

  “It is,” Simon agreed, “But I want it to stay that way for lohan a few months. All we’ve done is make it safe enough to get pt again, but I want to end the threat for… well, for as long as we .”

  He’d almost said forever, but he held himself back. Eliminating all the monsters robably impossible. Even if it ossible, though, it might not be desirable. The taurs did good work keeping other invasive species away. If he was actually successful in eliminating the horse lords, then what followed might be worse. He didn’t want that. Not anymore, anyway. He just wanted better boundaries, and right now, the best way to do that was water or a ck of it.

  So, five months after Simon had started his apparently endless war against the taurs, it ended with a whimper instead of a bang. There was no final battle. There was no single bat with a twelve-foot-tall stallion with eyes full of murder. Instead, they just filled all the watering holes that were nowhere he trade roads but still within a few days’ ride of vulnerable vilges with corpses of whatever they could kill, leaving behind a toxic curtain that he hoped would be enough to keep the monsters at bay, or at least redirect future attacks to the most defensible locations along the roads and rivers.

  With that done, Simouro Crowvar for a hero’s wele. He hadn’t expected it, of course. But as soon as the gates opehere was a celebration already waiting for him. They’d seen his small army ing from quite a ways off, it seemed.

  Still, he was determined not to let his guard down, even after both he and his horse were draped with flarnds. The an might wele a warrior, but the powers that be still looked at him with suspi from balies and sed-story windows.

  Simon didn’t pay too much attention to any of that, though. Instead, he looked at the damaged walls that had never been fully repaired, and the burned-out buildings that had never been repced from the orcish attacks years before.

  His proactive defense against the taurs and even his murder of Varten might keep things from getting worse, but really, whe down to it, had he made things aer? It was hard to say that he had.

  He was weled ih the main gates and the fortified residen the ter, where a small feast awaited him. He brought several of his trusted lieutenants with him, more to honor them for all their hard work than because he feared a trap. There were undoubtedly traps, of course. He just wasn’t afraid of them.

  “Did the King tell you that you kill me yet?” Simon asked the nobles as he came in.

  Most of them only scowled, but the tax collector said, “His Majesty enced us to find a solution to the matter ourselves and suggested that perhaps the Regent could marry Lord Raithewait’s widow and—”

  “Like that would ever happen,” a at, making Simon raise an eyebrow. He agreed with her, of course, but he had no idea that the woman who had been sitting among the rest of the nobles was the widow iion until just that moment.

  “...and barring that,” the tax collector tinued, “That we find amicable arras and solve our own problems, lest he appoint a neion of the nd ahem down to y cim to ‘this troublesome province.’”

  Simon smirked at the quote at the end. Instead, he sat down at a pce at one of the lower tables that obviously hadn’t been the one reserved for him, and he raised his gss to call for wine. “Well, let’s have a toast then,” Simon said, “To the defeat of the taurs and never marrying the widows offallen foes.”

  Quite a few people scowled at that, but he was surprised to see that Lady Raithewait at least raised her cup. She was clearly very in favor of at least that idea of his, though otherwise, she seemed uo help put him out if he was on fire.

  The diarted not long after that, and though the seat of honor at the high table remained spicuously empty, the servants worked it out. The tables were piled high with roast pork bread while beer and wine flowed like water. It was the best that any of them had eaten in months. At least until Jak started coughing up blood, and it became apparent that the man had been poisoned.

  He started vulsing as Simon lowered him to the floor and whispered a word of lesser cure to see that he lived. He could heal him more ter if he o. Ohat was done, he stood and shouted, “Seal the doors! No one leaves until this is sorted out.”

  Simon tasted the wine and then spat it out immediately. The poison was bitter and obvious, and whoever had do had clearly waited until they were drunk before they’d tried to end Simon.

  “I spend the best part of a year… Jak freezes his ass off most nights fighting to make the world a better pce for the people of Crowvar, and this is the thanks he gets?” Simon demanded. “We e baly to be killed by those who think they are our betters?”

  A few ried to speak ciliatory words then, but Simoalking. He didn’t care much for sotion after attempted murder. He would not be mollified. Instead, he marked the faces of every snake in the grass, which let their glee show a little too clearly on their well-bred faces as he spoke. He would never know who had given them poison, but he already kneished it had succeeded, and that would be enough.

  “There is no oer than Jak in this room,” Simon yelled over them. “There is no one who’s taken more arrows or shed more blood than the man who just took one more blow for me, and someone will pay for this e.”

  The denials started then, but it was too te for that. Simon picked out the half a dozen men who seemed most gleeful about what had just happened and ordered the guard to “Seize them and lock them in the dungeon before I decide which of them o be hanged for this e.” There was a flurry of shod e then, but Simon didn’t care. Instead, he turned his gaze back to his sied rade and tried to decide what more o be done for the man.