They came at dawn, exactly as Alaric had predicted, and the tower signal reached the valley a full three hours before the first banner crested the ridge road.
Thomas stood at the gatehouse with Victoria on one side and Alaric on the other, watching the column form at the milestone — sixty men, more or less, in the Baron's colors, with a scattering of hired swords among them whose mismatched gear marked them as Cade and Renfrew's recruits rather than proper household retainers. The Baron himself rode at the center, a heavier, redder-faced man than Thomas had pictured from Alaric's careful descriptions, his banner snapping in the cold morning wind with none of the plain restraint Alaric's own peace-banner had shown a season before.
"He'll stop at the milestone," Alaric said quietly. "Long enough to let the sight of his numbers do the work he expects them to do. He always gives the enemy one chance to break before he commits to spending his own men."
The Baron did stop, exactly as promised, and a rider came forward alone under a white cloth tied hastily to a spear — not a proper peace banner, Thomas noted, simply a gesture toward the form of one.
"Lord Thomas of Argenton," the rider called, his voice carrying thin across the frozen distance. "My lord Baron offers this final courtesy: surrender the valley and its works into his lawful keeping, and no man, woman, or child within it will be harmed. Refuse, and my lord will hold you and your household responsible for whatever follows."
Victoria's hand found Thomas's, once, briefly, the way it had on the day of Alaric's first arrival — not for comfort this time, he understood, but as a kind of anchor, a reminder that whatever answer he gave next, he would not be giving it alone.
"Tell your lord," Thomas called back, his own voice steadier than he felt, "that a court at Whitcombe already ruled this tenure lawfully settled, and that he burned two buildings and dismissed an honest man rather than accept that ruling. Tell him the valley he's come to take has fed his own tenants, healed his own tenants' children, and paid its dues honestly every season since the day it was granted. Tell him I will not surrender what three years of honest work have built to a man who has shown, twice now, that he values fire over law."
The rider carried the answer back, and Thomas watched, across the frozen distance, the Baron's shoulders stiffen at whatever was relayed to him. There was a long, taut pause — long enough that Thomas allowed himself, briefly, the foolish hope that words alone might yet be enough.
Then the Baron raised his own arm, and the column began to move.
"He's committing," Alaric said, already turning toward the tower signal-line. "Full advance, not a probing line. He means to end this in a single push before midday." He looked at Thomas, and for the first time since his arrival, something like genuine fear had crept into his controlled, careful voice. "Whatever you've built to defend this gate, Lord Thomas, I would use it now. He will not stop advancing until something makes him."
Wat was already moving, shouting positions to the men gathered at the trench-line, and Victoria had turned toward the undercroft stairs at a dead run, calling for Diccon to help her with the reserve stores. Thomas found himself, in the sudden roaring rush of it, oddly calm — the same clear, focused stillness he remembered from the first terrifying days after the anomaly, when panic had proven useless and only careful thought had kept him alive.
He looked out at the advancing line, sixty men and their reckless, red-faced lord, closing steadily on a valley that had never once, in three years, been built to fight a war.
"Sound the towers," he said. "Every bell we have. I want every soul who isn't holding a trench or a bandage in the undercroft within the quarter hour."
The bells began a moment later, ringing wild and urgent across the whole valley, and Thomas turned to Wat with the cold, final clarity of a man who had run out of every option except the one he'd sworn, three years ago, he would never use unless there was truly nothing left to try.
"Open the lower stores," he said. "It's time."