Rewrite That Witch
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Chapter 873: Nobles and Prisoners

Iron Axe entered Valencia and did not let himself react to what he found there.

The devastation was real — more extensive than he had anticipated even knowing the mortar’s performance figures from the drills. He had stood through dozens of training exercises, watched the crews work, timed the reloads, noted the shell patterns. He had run the numbers himself, counted the impact radius, accounted for fragmentation scatter. He had believed he understood what twelve mortars firing in coordinated volleys would do to fixed fortifications and elevated platforms.

He had been wrong about the scale.

It was not that the weapon had exceeded its specifications. It had performed exactly as designed. But design figures were abstractions; Valencia was stone and wood and bronze and the particular irreversible quality of things that had been standing for decades and now were not. The six platforms were rubble, the gate was a gap in the wall, and the street from the entrance to the city square was marked by fire residue and the particular grey ash that burning human material leaves behind.

A single mortar unit — five soldiers carrying equipment they could run with — had done this. He kept returning to that arithmetic. Twelve units had accomplished the rest.

He had understood, intellectually, why His Majesty had ordered the field artillery smelted down and returned to the Furnace Area. The solid-shot cannons were heavier, harder to move, impossible to bring through mud, and required witch assistance for transport on any terrain that wasn’t paved. The mortar had made them obsolete in the same way the culverin had made the crossbow obsolete. An obvious conclusion, in retrospect.

But understanding a conclusion was different from watching it demonstrated on a city that had spent two years preparing for the old kind of war.

No. It’s normal to run under this. Who wouldn’t break?

He let the thought complete itself and then set it aside. There was work to do.

At the center of the city square, the First Army had assembled the captured nobles into a group. Iron Axe’s eyes moved over them as he approached — their clothes disordered, their faces carrying the particular expression of men who had prepared for a dignified defeat and received something else entirely.

Before he could speak, one of them stepped forward. Chin elevated. The practiced posture of a man who had spent his whole life expecting rooms to arrange themselves around him.

“I am Kasyn, Earl of Shipbay. I would like to know where King Roland is.”

Iron Axe remembered the name dimly. Shipbay was a substantial territory, sandwiched between Valencia and Seawindshire — good land, good harbor access, the kind of holding that generated wealth and confidence in roughly equal proportion. The Earl’s raised chin was not rudeness exactly. It was the architecture of a lifetime of being addressed first.

“His Majesty is occupied with the Western Front. He entrusted this command to me.”

“You?” Kasyn’s frown was small but visible.

“He’s not Graycastle-born,” someone said from behind the Earl. “Obviously.”

“Roland Wimbledon sent a Sand Nation man to command an operation this size?” Another voice, skeptical. “Was he not concerned about desertion?”

“Commander Iron Axe is the undisputed commander-in-chief of the Eastern Front Army,” Lieutenant Bearpaw said, his voice carrying more heat than precision. “Every one of us will testify to—”

“Eastern Front Army?” Kasyn said. “What is that, exactly?”

“The army dispatched to retake the Eastern Region, of course—”

“Bearpaw.” Iron Axe’s voice was flat. The lieutenant caught himself and pressed his hand over his mouth.

A moment of silence.

Lady Edith’s assessment came back to him, the one she had delivered before the army departed Neverwinter, her voice precise and without condescension: They still affect the people. Even men who were not born to it will feel the weight of the title, and they’ll say something they shouldn’t while trying to prove they don’t. Bearpaw had been a hunter in a forest village not two years ago. He was brave, competent, loyal, and completely unable to maintain his composure in front of a man who had introduced himself by earldom.

Only Iron Axe seemed genuinely immune. He had grown up in the Sandpeople’s tribes, where the hierarchies were different and entirely physical. Inherited title meant nothing there. He had learned the Graycastle system from the outside, as a set of rules, and you could not be awed by a set of rules in the same way you could be awed by a father’s voice or a lord’s banner.

“Believe it or not,” Iron Axe said, “the truth remains what it is. I’m not the one asking questions here. Where is the Duke of Valencia? He was the appointed authority of this region.”

“The Duke gave his life in the battle,” Kasyn said, his expression shifting. “He led a charge himself. We couldn’t stop him.”

“The rider who was shot — that was him.” Iron Axe had seen it from a distance: a single horseman in good armor, one rider behind, driving into the First Army’s position. “He died as a soldier. That’s worth something.” He turned his gaze across the gathered group, counting. “My men reported two riders in that charge. Where is the rest of the Duke’s knightage? A Warden of the Eastern Region would have held considerably more than one knight.”

Kasyn had no immediate answer.

“Never mind that for now.” Another nobleman had pushed to the front — shorter than Kasyn, with the slightly too-rapid speech of a man used to filling silences before someone else could. “The point is this: we will surrender formally and acknowledge Roland Wimbledon’s authority, on the condition that he receives us personally. If His Majesty cannot come himself, we’ll accept an exchange of messengers.”

“And you are?”

“Viscount Ariburke.” He said it with the impatience of a man who expected the name to land. “We also expect to be housed and fed according to our station. If you’re interested in ransom, name the figure.”

“You committed treason,” Iron Axe said. The words came out at the same temperature as everything else he said. “Your titles don’t exempt you from a trial.”

“Duke Wilion committed treason,” Ariburke said, the logic already rehearsed. “He is dead. His crimes died with him. We were under his jurisdiction but not under his command — the law distinguishes between these. And in any case—” he gestured around, including Kasyn in the motion— “the final verdict rests with His Majesty. I assume even you don’t have the authority to sentence us yourself.”

It took Iron Axe only a moment to identify the architecture of the argument. He had seen it before, in stories of previous campaigns, in the histories Edith had walked him through on the long boat journey east. The assumption embedded in the nobles’ posture was not arrogance exactly; it was a professional reading of how these situations had always resolved. Defeat was not an ending in their understanding — it was a position in a negotiation. The king would want something. They would offer something. A figure would be reached. Men who could offer enough had historically been able to buy their way out of treason charges, and these nobles, standing in the smoking ruins of Valencia, were confident that they had enough to offer.

The king they were calculating for was not the king Iron Axe served.

“You’re right,” he said. “I don’t have sentencing authority. But until His Majesty issues a ruling, you are prisoners charged with treason. I’ll detain you here until the carrier pigeon reaches him and a response comes back.” He paused. “A month, perhaps. The food and quarters will be commensurate with your rank.”

“A month—” Kasyn began.

“The food and quarters,” Iron Axe repeated, “will be commensurate with your rank.”

He left them with that.

Two days later, near midnight, Bearpaw came into Iron Axe’s tent at a run.

“Chief.” The lieutenant’s breathing was off. “The castle dungeon — it’s on fire.”

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