If you were to consult the maps of this continent made by the various great powers five centuries ago, you would notice that the Marnadine mountain range and its foothills were often disputed. No two major nations’ commissioned maps agreed entirely on all borders, but the Marnadines, and the robust people who made them their home and live there to this day, were almost always claimed as the territory of more than one crown.

In a more factual sense, the people of the Marnadines were self-governing; the laws established on the plains surrounding them, in whichever kingdom you wished to consider, seldom reached into the mountains, which followed their own codes.

Tax collectors entered the Marnadines not much more often, and unwillingly; for it was rare that a tax collector who had gone in made it out.

And in this way, the Marnadines built an independently-minded people of their own, refreshed frequently by new blood fled from upheaval in one land or another, but all of them mountain people all the same.

There was a span of nearly a century, three hundred years past, where this was not the case, and where the Marnadines belonged unquestionably to the Valefic Kingdom, governed by a family that knew themselves Valefolk.

Of course, in time to come, this ended; the brief reign of that dynasty abandoned when one of their line proved an insufficient leader to the challenge, and the Marnadines became again effectively independent. But that is no tale at all; it is the story of miniscule mistake after minor failure, compounding upon themselves until a great change was achieved, and is dull to retrace in the archives and duller still to hear repeated.

The tale of Valmyr, scion of the Vale, and Ambra is a much better story, and it is also the story of how the Marnadines found themselves, for a time, subjects of a crown.

In brief, then, Valmyr was a knight of the Order of the Black Spear, the only Ordo Paladinate to have been founded in the Vale. And indeed it was no surprise that Valmyr carried knightly rank within its company, for so did his brother, his father, and his uncle, and so in fact had every male of the Valefic Royal House since the founding of the Order, not long after the Spear itself fell from the heavens, blackened by the flames of its journey through the fundament, and slew the previous ruler in battle.

It had been assumed, therefore, that Valmyr would one day enlist in the Order from the moment his birth was announced to the Kingdom, but it is worth knowing that he exceeded expectations all the same. Valwurn, his older brother, never rose below the first level of the Order, and their father, old King Valfleid, was accorded only the rank of Knight-Captain.

But Valmyr’s prowess in single combat, his courage under fire, and his insight into the threat of the moment marked him out for greatness, and in this time when the valley for which the Valefic Kingdom was named was only a small part of a greater nation, he had acquired the rank of Knight-General for his exploits on the far side of the kingdom, along the Erithnean border.

Ambra’s title was not so formal. The Marnadines had little in the way of official governance, but this did not mean there weren’t any in charge. Ambra’s mother commanded the various chieftains in the area whenever they came together, but she had no honorific for this; nonetheless Ambra was often called Princess Ambra by those who did not know her well.

From a young age Ambra had set out to earn respect, and she had chosen to acquire it through combat, at which she had trained until she excelled. She spurned the traditionally feminine, often describing it as the trappings of those who were bought or sold, not of someone who had their own authority and control over their own life. Her blonde hair was cropped brutally short, usually by her own hand, and any jewellery she wore had earned its place not through beauty but through one or another charm laid upon it; the thin silver band she wore across her hair for example, had the gift of turning away anything loosed at her.

The troop she led called themselves the Golden Lions. Though Ambra had inherited the unit, just a few years on fully half of them were new recruits, chosen by Ambra - some would say broken by her. She had set her sights on being the mountains’ elite, and anyone who couldn’t keep up in training was relentlessly punished until either they kept up or they left.

But for three chance happenings, the two might never have met. And yet those chance events all occurred, and very close together.

It happened that one summer, Ellard Wilfrayne was discovered to have been stealing from the Valefic Kingdom treasury and, being lucky enough to see what was coming for him shortly before discovery, he took what he could and fled the Kingdom. It further happened that he took a road north-west, which would leave the Kingdom through the Marnardines.

Lastly, it happened that Valmyr’s company of the Order was resting in the Vale at the time, and not at the front with Erithnis. At that time the two powers were at war more often than they were not, and if it had not been for this chance, someone else would have been sent after Wilfrayne.

A month later, perhaps less, Ambra’s Golden Lions clashed with the Order of the Black Spear. There were perhaps forty warriors on each side, no more, and by most standards it was a skirmish, but it was a brutal one and, more to the point, Valmyr felt it had been an unnecessary one. He was confident that Wilfrayne would not willingly remain in the mountains, where there was really only one city of any size; Wilfrayne was accustomed to his comforts and would be looking for somewhere in which he could retain them.

The Lions had opposed the Black Spear simply because it was a military force from another nation in what they saw as their territory, and with determination and bravery they had turned the knights aside.

Valmyr had called the retreat regretfully, but he would remember the sneer on the other commander’s face - as well as the calculating shift in her expression once one of his own underlings shouted defiance.

It was certainly true that, given a regiment of pikemen as well as the knights and against the Golden Lions without addition, they would have triumphed - they might have as it was, but Valmyr had seen how many they would lose in doing so, and he wasn’t willing to play it out further.

He had scolded Radwyn for his loose tongue, afterwards, the memory of her calculating eyes fresh in his mind. It seemed to Valmyr certain that before they could gather together and travel through the mountains again, the warrior woman would have sought out new aid.

*

This was, indeed, Ambra’s intention, but she tarried a little while before she acted on it. Like Valmyr she had seen that many Lions would be lost if the battle carried through to its uninterrupted conclusion. She had not felt the same concern over it at the time; however now, after the battle, her blood had settled again and with that had come a very different perspective. The men and women under her were well trained. They were an investment of her time and energy and drive. Spending their lives came with a cost.

Frustration and worry were two emotions Ambra found herself ill equipped to handle alone, but she had discovered by chance a way to burn them away and regain her equilibrium. She would take a man she encountered whose appearance pleased her back to her chambers (or, if far enough away from home, her tent). There, she would treat bedding them as a contest, though the court wags of the day, had they known of it, would surely have joked that the contest was weighted in her favour.

A young man by the name of Dever had been chosen this time. He was comely enough, had a body developed by farmwork, and had no real idea who she was, but was pleasingly nervous around her for all that. He’d come willingly enough to her tent in the Lions camp, all the same.

Ambra set herself to outlast him, rolling him onto his back with a vicious twist of her hips so she could control the pace, smirking down on him, and making her actions teasingly, achingly slow as she drew up and down along his length. She was proud of her strength in all things, but even prouder was she of her control over her own body.

With Dever effectively her prone captive, Ambra worked him, coaxing him on the whole way, until he spent himself inside her. She fixed him with a stare.

“Do you understand what you’ve done?” she asked, her voice soft but no less full of menace for that. She felt Dever twitch nervously beneath her and had to fight the urge to smile. “It’s all about you, is it?” she continued, shifting to lift herself from around him. “No. I don’t think we’ll be accepting that today.”

Dever’s eyes were wide, staring up at her. She had a hand out to brace herself against her tentpole. Noticing his eyes flick to her arm, obviously drinking in the strength of her bicep, she altered her position slightly to flex a little more, showing off her muscle. He seemed to shrink inside himself.

Warmth filled Ambra. This was her ritual for a reason; at moments like that, every man is vulnerable. Their fear and uncertainty, and the power she had over them in that moment, was nectar to her soul when she felt doubt.

“You’re going to make it up to me, little man,” she growled, and as she did so she made her way up his prone body until she sat atop him, burying his face in her folds, wet with his own seed. “Go on,” she urged. “Do what a man should.”

Tentatively, uncertainly, his tongue slipped out. He was so cautious, so tense, she could feel the discomfort beneath her, mingled with his distaste for his own flavour. Ambra was grinning, now, as he could no longer see her. She leaned backward, driving herself deeper onto his face, confronting him with an inevitability he would have to measure up to before she let him up.

Ambra knew exactly how he must feel, because she’d seen it in the face of every lover she’d done this with, after she let them up; the humiliation they felt in being forced to give a woman what they took from women naturally, as if by right.

She did not let him up until she was satisfied, and the sullen, quiet glint of resentment in his eye was the last little bit of seasoning on the experience. Ambra beamed as she waved him to the tentflap, dismissing him.

His eyes flickered from her naked body - her muscle and scars both showing, offsetting a beauty that could have been startling if she had set herself to embrace it - to the shield, the gleaming metal breastplate inlaid with mystic runes, the long bracers with orichalcum sigils set into the steel, and the sheathed sword and coiled whip that went with them.

Ambra had fallen out of the habit of threatening men who were not soldiers under her. Her existence was threat enough, she felt, and besides, the enchanted weaponry and armour that stayed in her room when she wasn’t going out garbed for battle would be a second warning if they were inclined to be foolish.

The result of this was that, whether or not they were inclined to be foolish, they kept that to themselves and didn’t try anything.

Even after dealing with her own frustrations by making Dever their scapegoat, Ambra spent that evening unsettled. Her troop had happened to patrol the area that the Valefolk had been riding through, or they might never have known. They still did not know what had driven the knights to invade the mountains. It was almost a certainty that they would be back.

Horsemen were lethal on the charge. Tacticians had evolved many methods of coping with this, but almost all those available to Ambra all hinged on knowing when and where they’d return. Laying traps, setting ambushes, bringing archers or crossbows to bear… You needed to know the battlefield or to travel with a larger army for any of them.

That left her with the option of being uphill from them (not guaranteed even in the foothills) as this blunted a charge, or finding a way to change the game. To Ambra that meant only one thing; magic.

There are few sorcerors or wizards worthy of the name anywhere you find yourself in this world, and the Marnardines held still fewer; while not always sociable, spellworkers tend to gather together, the better to share or steal ideas from one another, and few would choose mountain lands for it unless their magic gave clear reason for them to do so.

Ambra therefore did not go to a spellworker, not immediately. Her sword and whip tied to her hips, she put on the loose foresters’ jacket and trousers she wore when not expecting battle, and went into the deep interior or the Marnardines, bypassing the mountains’ biggest city entirely.

It took her a good week of travel to find the being she sought, and when she did she was most of the way up a mountain’s wintry east facing.

Legend had it that once he had been alive, had in fact been an elven adventurer centuries previously. That story told that he had offended a powerful sorcerer and had almost - but not quite - got away with it, instead transmuted into living stone which was bonded to the side of the mountain.

Over decades since, other adventurers had sought him out for advice, first to help them slay the sorcerer who had affected him, and latterly for insight and knowledge on adventuring and the area itself.

Certainly it was true that he had become a sort of oracle about the place itself, and certainly it was only the courageous who sought him out for his information. Legend was, if not fully accurate, a strong likelihood.

“I need power,” she told him, coming face to face with him. “What have you got?”

Onyx eyes glinted, catching the light, but it looked like the oracle had turned his attention to her. “What kind of power?” it asked.

“I have many kinds of enchantment in my armoury,” Ambra said. “Knights encroach upon us. I want the power to turn the tide of battle.”

“That is power indeed,” the oracle answered. “Most such things, alas, have been taken away already, and I doubt they have returned.”

Her lips settled into a thin line of frustration. “So tell me what you know of.”

“There is a sword, buried somewhere in the boundary between the mountain and the nether realm, which strikes with thunder,” the oracle said. “There is a shield which remains cool to the touch no matter how much flame or fire magic is poured upon it, in the same place. The same brave group took them down toward the netherworld, but they did not achieve their goal.”

Ambra made a dismissive gesture; however much value those both might have, they wouldn’t turn the tide alone.

“There is a ring which makes a single sorcerer as powerful as a regiment of them,” it continued. “It lies on the skeletal finger of its last owner in the same crevasse where her back was broken by the fall. I know, too, of a mechanical dwarven bird which seems as one alive to the observer, but which carries messages in the voice of the sender, finding its target even as they move.”

Another brief pause. “But I see in your face that these items are not useful to your circumstances. There is an item, a gift from elfking to his human bodyguard in times long past, which was designed to affect the guard and the regiment he led.”

Ah. “Go on.”

“I know only a little more,” the oracle said. “The elfking was born away by Marnard and taken to his roost. The guard went up there, but it was not he who slew Marnard.” Marnard, after whom the mountain range had been named, had been a dragon, so the stories said, and a dragon slain a thousand years before.

“What is this item?”

“It is worn around the throat,” the oracle told her, “a band of platinum in which three snow pearls were set, an inscription upon each. The power flowed through the wearer along lines of authority to those below them.”

“I didn’t know magic could do that?”

The oracle remained silent and did not move, yet Ambra still had the unmistakeable impression that it had shrugged.

Ambra considered.

*

“He won’t be staying there, Father,” Valmyr said, with confidence. “Considering the time it took us to return here to reinforce, I doubt he’s still there now. No, that has nothing to do with why I intend to go back.”

Valwurn smiled sardonically. “Does your return have more to do with hopes you will be covered in glory?”

Valmyr simply glowered in answer. “Glory has no appeal to me, brother, above a the satisfaction of the job done right.”

“And what job do you imagine you’re describing?”

“That of putting the Marnardines in their place, of course,” Valmyr said. “We tolerate this portion of our land ignoring us, failing to pay us tax, all these things, but if they are to do that we at least need to demand one simple thing of them; our troops pass through, and the troops of others do not. They need some fear putting back into them, Father.”

The two brothers glared at one another, then turned to their father.

“If we are to teach them a lesson,” King Valfleid said, “we should go about this sensibly. And for that, we need intelligence.” He looked at both sons significantly. “Which of you wants to please me by bringing back Wilfrayne and his stolen coin, and which of you by going to the Marnardines in subtle guise, to understand who these Golden Lions are, what allies they may count upon, and to bring me any secrets or information that will make our planning easier?”

*

Marnard’s Roost was the name of the tallest mountain in the range, these days. At one time the mountain had born a dwarven name, and the Roost had been the summit, called so for the simple reason that the dragon Marnard had lived there in the time of his power, before his defeat by a bold heroine of the mountainfolk. (This much detail in the story never changed. The rest shifted with every telling, even down to the fate of the dragon.)

The summit had a deep hollow a good hundred yards or more across, and while the weather had rearranged what lay within many times, it was possible with effort to find almost anything which was there. Ambra had put in the effort, having undergone the long climb to reach the summit, having searched it diligently from the moment she set foot in it until dusk the night before, then again from the moment the light of dawn grew strong enough for her to see.

There was plenty here - too much for her to load into a pack and carry all down, enough that she did not doubt others had done that before without carrying everything away. And Ambra did feel concerned, a worry within her breast that the snow pearls might have been carried away already and lost somewhere else, even lost further down the mountain and buried beneath an avalanche. The oracle would not have known, after all.

But in time she did find it, a thin band of platinum with three large pearls set inside at the front, and an ingenious hinge hidden behind them to allow it to be easily set into place. It was, of course, cold to the touch, but it was also beautiful. Elven smithcraft always was, sometimes at the expense of its utility.

Not so here; the hinge wasn’t just hidden from sight but also neatly concealed behind metal such that it couldn’t catch on the skin of the wearer. Ambra held it up to the light, admiring how it looked, and saw the pearls each seem to shine in turn. She felt a thrill through her, knowing this wasn’t just a reflection of the sunlight; there was magic here, there was power here.

She had a long descent ahead of her, and there was enough in her pack in any case. She put it on for the climb down, keeping it from being just another thing she had to carry. As she closed the hinge there was an audible mechanical sound, as of two pieces locking together; Ambra hadn’t seen a clasp but that simply meant the designer, whenever that had been done, had taken concealed details seriously.

*

In the borrowed garb of a vagabond mercenary, Valmyr felt as if naked. The sword at his hip wasn’t his favourite weapon, though it was a better choice for a fighter alone than a spear, and he at least had a thorough training in its use, and a buckler hanging from his other hip for defence. Instead of the good metal plate worn by the Order, he had on a tempered leather jack that left his arms bare, thick leather breeches, and steel greaves covering his thighs. The helm, the most distinctive thing of all, had had to be left behind.

There were benefits, and he wasn’t foolish enough to ignore them; people spoke in front of him with an openness he otherwise only received from his family, never dreaming they would need to watch their words around him. He had made it all the way to the Marnardines’ single great city, Caelban, without anyone trying to turn him away, delay him, screen him, or try to learn what he was interested in.

He had fallen in with a group of guards and, by buying them drinks, had begun to hear tails of the Golden Lions and their leader, and a few stories from other bands that operated within the mountain range.

His assumption about the mountainfolk had been that their only rulership was the mostly absent, laissez faire approach taken by his father and the court, where they provided governance with only a light hand on the reins, and that light only because there was no real infrastructure here to allow more efficient oversight.

He was discovering just how wrong this assumption had been piece by piece, the more he talked. The warrior-bands roaming the foothills and valleys weren’t bandits or brigands, they were paid and directed by a central authority, even if that authority was half-unofficial. It was still there and even still recognised, a real ‘everybody knows’ kind of arrangement. There even seemed to be taxation - they weren’t sending it on to the Valefic Kingdom, but there were taxes. They maintained the roads and took care of the old and infirm whose family couldn’t take care of them.

And they paid for a military. A very rough-and-ready one - the guards were technically part of it and even they couldn’t give him the name of a general in charge - but as he’d witnessed in that first battle it was an effective one. Valmyr had listened with mounting surprise as he heard stories of bandit raiders pressing into the Marnardines from all sides, including from his own kingdom, bandits who went unreported because their targets weren’t interested in sending word to the King.

At the suggestion they should, he’d been laughed at. “None of ‘em care about us,” one said. “Let ‘em think they own us. We know better. And we care for ourselves, so we’ll be the ones to protect ourselves, thanks.”

That was how Valmyr had discovered that the maps of other nations also laid claims to the Marnardines. The mountainfolk treated each of these claims with the same indifference.

Their own people received plenty of praise. A soldier himself, Valmyr had a good ear for the truth at the kernel of any given boast, and he was confident in his ability to tell what was real and what exaggeration. Some of these warrior bands clearly deserved the reverence they were held in, though others he was just as sure did not.

The Golden Lions very clearly fell in the former category. Valmyr listened to all they had to tell him about them, comparing it against his own memory of one engagement, drinking in everything he could. He was confident that they were the biggest threat on the battlefield; if the problem of the Marnardines was to be solved, he thought, breaking them was the single biggest contribution he could offer.

One night, perhaps a week after his arrival, he was resting at a table in the tavern where he was staying when a figure stopped in front of his table. He looked up idly to see who was there and blinked, eyes widening with surprise. He couldn’t help a nervous swallow.

*

Ambra noticed the nervous swallow and smiled thinly, it being (so far as she could see) nothing less than her due. She noted the scar along the jawline of the stranger. These usually meant a blade deflected along the edge of armour; this was a man who regularly fought in full helm, she thought. Not that the idea made him any more recognisable.

“I’m told you’ve been asking people about me,” she said. “A lot of people.” Then she waited, silent. Paired with surprise and fear, silence was as powerful an interrogation technique as any physical torture, in her experience.

The words hung in the air for a long while as Valmyr considered his possible responses. None seemed like guaranteed winners, and the longer it took for him to decide, he knew, the less plausible any of them would sound.

Eventually he settled on “True enough.”

“Why?”

He gestured to an empty seat at the table. “Join me, please.”

She glanced at the chair first, then rolled her eyes before sitting opposite him. Her long legs rose, one at a time, to cross at the ankle on the table. “I am not a fool,” she said.

“I do not doubt it.” He was surprised by how tentative he found himself around her. It was only partly the way she carried herself, only partly the threat of the sword and whip at her hips; there was something about the woman herself that sent shivers down his spine. This was a woman who expected to be in charge, and even as one raised as a prince, his authority seemed in shadow against hers.

“I won’t permit you to avoid answering me.”

Valmyr nodded. “Truthfully, you are not the only captain of the military here I’ve been asking about,” he began. “But, again truthfully, I have asked more questions about you than the others.” He added this hastily, when he realised that he didn’t know how detailed her reports about him might have been. It would be unwise to assume they were vague when he had recently learned how much more there was to this place’s government than he had assumed.

She said nothing, simply staring at him. His gaze kept flickering treacherously south of her eyes, taking in not just her cleavage but the strange metal choker around her throat, the three pearlescent stones shining in the light of the tavern.

Although, he suddenly realised, shining wasn’t the word for it, was it? They were shimmering, something that made little to no sense in steady light.

Unless there was enchantment to them.

She was still waiting.

“I’ve been a sellsword,” he said. “I’ve been a soldier, too. Not here.” He waited, heart in his mouth. It was all true, but it felt like lies. Let her see his nerves, he thought, just so long as when she did she jumped to the wrong conclusion.

“What makes you think you deserve to be in my troop?” she asked, low and threatening, her eyes firmly on his.

Valmyr hesitated again. Did he want to spend time with them, or did he just want her not to probe deeper into his reasons for being there? “I’ve done alright for myself.”

“And yet you’re not in your homeland. Not with your regiment. Sellswords who’ve been soldiers are often deserters.” She looked him up and down again and Valmyr found himself actually flinching at her scrutiny. “Cowards, in short.”

Well, his own improvisation had trapped him to this… “Put my courage to any test,” he said. “It will not be found wanting.”

She looked him up and down again. “Any test?” she asked.

*

He was pinned down under her, watching her expression as she rode him, and he was enjoying it in spite of himself.

Her people, he had learned, called her a princess; she was nothing like the princesses he had known, and that was a shame - she was not what he wanted, though there was something intoxicating in her confidence and the coiled power of her muscular thighs and shoulders - but he could understand her as a commander, a ruler, and his earlier clash against her on the field of battle had engendered in him a healthy respect for her capabilities.

There was something in her expression now which made him think she considered this, too, a battle. Not just a contest to be won, but something where your opponent would be the lesser for it.

He might have been willing to lose. He wasn’t willing to be defeated. It occurred to him that most likely they had more in common than he’d thought, in that way.

She was taking her time, seemed to be toying with him. If he hadn’t been wondering how this was battle, he might have quite enjoyed it.

Was he expected to fold early? To be less of a man than she was a woman?

It was less clear thought process and more a stubborn drive born out of his own emotions, but he determined that he would not let that happen.

In its way, it was a battle of wills, each of them trying to outlast the other. At one point, Valmyr’s eyes locked onto Ambra’s. He saw her realise what his goal was.

Their actions intensified. She reached down, caught him by one wrist, pinned it down. Her way of reasserting control.

He reached up, catching a handful of hair in his hand, and pulled her head in for a kiss. She fought back, at first, but their lips met, their mouths opened, and they found a path to passion together.

The pressure on his wrist lessened and he rolled over, pinning her under him instead, and he heard her startled yelp quiver. There was delight in that tone, he knew it, and he fell to with gusto.

Ambra was squirming under him, trying to find places to brace her feet against. He was absolutely certain she’d end up on top again if she made that work so he slid his own foot out to sweep it out from under her. Her eyes widened as her buttock slapped back down against the bedding. Valmyr realised suddenly that he was fiercely grinning.

They came at the same time, their mouths locked again in a passionate kiss, and sagged together.

She stirred herself from him.

*

Lisede Draconkyn tilted their head to one side and wondered whether the Oracle’s expression had changed.

; sked, “but is it possible for you to smile?”

“At times such as these, yes,” the Oracle answered. “Please excuse my inattention. There is something I must do.”

“Of course,” Lisede said, slightly taken aback, but more than content to wait.

The Oracle’s view came from sightless pearl eyes. It remembered the lack of respect Ambra had showed it, and it gently tweaked the skeins of possibility.

*

Lying back, Valmyr watched her rise, the lazy satisfaction he had given her only barely overlying an annoyance. No wonder she’d been annoyed, of course; he had pushed things further than he should have done.

Below her face he saw the sheen of mystic energy across the snow pearls she wore around her throat, and couldn’t help but stare. The shimmering was brighter now, and faster, and more intense in general; glistening on the stones were two drops of his seed. He had no doubt that these connected to the glow from the pearls, nor that Ambra was now more deeply ensorcelled than before; but he could not have said how his seed had managed to get there.