Valea Stormhoof was ten feet, four inches of muscle, fury, and regret.

The valley was a kill-box. She’d known it the moment her war-band rode in, but the scouts had said the pass was clear, and they’d been wrong. Now a hundred Tiressian soldiers blocked the way ahead, and twice that many were closing from behind. Crossbows on the ridges. Pike formations on the valley floor.

And Valea had twelve warriors. Twelve Firan, good fighters all, but twelve against three hundred.

The math didn’t work.

Her horse screamed and went down with three crossbow bolts in its chest. Valea hit the ground hard enough to crack stone, rolled, came up with her greatsword in both hands. The blade was seven feet of folded steel, weight optimized for someone her size. For a human, it would be a siege weapon. For Valea, it was precision.

The first Tiressian soldier to reach her died without seeing the swing. The greatsword cut through his shield, his armor, and most of his torso in one horizontal arc.

“On me!” Valea roared. Her voice carried like thunder across the valley. “Clan-wall formation!”

---

The Tiressians came like ants. Valea’s first true swing took three men. A pike thrust at her legs—smart, go for the large target’s mobility. She caught the thrust on her vambrace and brought her boot down on the pikeman’s chest. She weighed seven hundred pounds in armor. His sternum collapsed like wet parchment.

Three bolts hit her. One caught her in the thigh—buried itself three inches deep. The third hit her square in the chest, center mass. Her breastplate held, but the impact knocked the air from her lungs.

She left the bolt in her thigh and kept fighting.

Rujar looked at Valea, nodded once, and triggered his storm-rite. Lightning crackled from his hands. Both men convulsed and fell. The Tiressians swarmed him. Valea heard him die. Heard it and couldn’t do a damned thing about it.

Nine Firan left. Then six. Then five. Then four.

Valea’s greatsword felt like it weighed a hundred pounds now. Every swing was slower than the last. Blood ran from her thigh in steady pulses. The edges of her vision were gray.

A soldier with a halberd swept her feet out. Valea hit the ground like a falling tree. Impact drove the crossbow bolt deeper into her leg. She screamed.

They swarmed her. She killed three with her bare hands. A sword found the gap under her arm. Then her side. Then her back.

Too many. There were just too many.

---

Valea Stormhoof, war-leader of the Thunder-Run clan, died with seven blades in her, still trying to reach her greatsword.

The last thing she heard was Karuun—her shield-sister, her closest friend—singing the death-chant. The old words, the ones that guided warriors to the storm-father’s halls.

Then darkness.

And thunder.