The goblet struck the hearth before anyone finished reading the casualty report.
Wine splashed across the map as a servant reached for three little flags, then recoiled beneath the Flint Patriarch's stare. Those flags marked allies who collected his dues yesterday and lay butchered before sunset, while his son shielded their report.
The Patriarch planted both hands beside the valley inked on his map, "One week with a title, one afternoon in residence, and that bastard thinks he can execute three of my warlords?"
Heat lifted the parchment's edges beneath his fingers as the wine soaked through.
"Garrow's company broke within minutes, Father," his son said, drawing a surviving dispatch from its case, "and Malor never reached him twice."
The last sentence hung over the table, waiting for someone brave enough to finish it.
"The survivors say a celestial chain cut him in two." He flattened the dispatch beneath an unwilling palm.
